Metaphor series 27: Irresponsible weather, untweeted tweets &c
[ by Charles Cameron — also lots from Friday March 22nd, more, and the Barr comment on Mueller Report breaks, March 24th ]
.
Let’s start with the weirdest tweet ever:
That’s a crowd-sized tweet, y’see, and in the crowd-sized small print it says:
He didn’t tweet it, he actually said it.
Take a look at the same image full-sized — full photo-sized, here.
**
Unpredictable weather:
Okay, that’s my excuse for a NASA DoubleQuote:
Here’s what Joshua Stevens of NASA Earth Observatory says in the caption:
Several communities west of Omaha (between the Elkhorn and Platte Rivers) either flooded or temporarily became islands as floodwaters encroached from both sides. One third of Offutt Air Force Base was inundated and 30 buildings were damaged, according to news reports. Rising flood waters forced people in dozens of communities to evacuate.
Wha??
Bob Dylan to the point:
A change in the weather is known to be extreme
**
Okay, down to mores serious business..
Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, made a fascinating and provocative suggestion to Nicolle Wallace yesterday, and I’ll offer here my transcription and some comments:
To go back to this notion, and the clip of him {The President] saying the American people won’t accept this {Mueller results &c] because these are people who were not elected.. Let’s focus on that. Do you know what that sounds a lot like to most law enforcement officers, this notion that you can’t abide by anything by anyone who has not been elected? The Sovereign Citizen‘s movement.
These are people who, when they get pulled over by the police, shoot the police officer. Why? The police officers were not elected. They recognize only the sheriff. They don’t pay taxes, right? We are essentially seeing the President as a Sovereign Citizen, not recognizing the authority of anyone who wan’t elected. It’s a dangerous philosophy.
He’s going to go with that theme that only elected officials can decide his fate, and there’s going to be a substantial part of the American public that’s going to buy into that..
The Sovereign Citizen Movement was featured in this now-archived FBI page:
Sovereign citizens are anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or “sovereign” from the United States. As a result, they believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement.
This causes all kinds of problems—and crimes. For example, many sovereign citizens don’t pay their taxes. They hold illegal courts that issue warrants for judges and police officers. They clog up the court system with frivolous lawsuits and liens against public officials to harass them. And they use fake money orders, personal checks, and the like at government agencies, banks, and businesses.
That’s just the beginning. Not every action taken in the name of the sovereign citizen ideology is a crime, but the list of illegal actions committed by these groups, cells, and individuals is extensive (and puts them squarely on our radar). In addition to the above, sovereign citizens:
Commit murder and physical assault; Threaten judges, law enforcement professionals, and government personnel; Impersonate police officers and diplomats; Use fake currency, passports, license plates, and driver’s licenses; and Engineer various white-collar scams, including mortgage fraud and so-called “redemption” schemes.
Sovereign Citizenship, is very like a religion –n but the sort of religion where the dogma is loose, and each member pretty much defines their own version. Catholics might recognize this as cafeteria Catholicism, but Pentecostals with each one informed by individual inspiritation strikes me as a more apt comparative.
**
Just caught this from late 2018:
Natasha Bertrand, The Eerie Parallels Between Trump and the Watergate ‘Road Map’
Lawmakers thought Nixon’s gathering of inside information about the Watergate probe from DOJ was an impeachable offense:Nearly 45 years ago, the House Judiciary Committee concluded that President Richard Nixon’s contact with high-level Justice Department officials overseeing the Watergate investigation, detailed in a 62-page “road map” of evidence collected by prosecutors in 1972–73, amounted to an impeachable misuse of executive power.
A half century later, the FBI’s former top lawyer, Jim Baker—a close friend and associate of fired FBI Director James Comey—is laying out parallels, albeit subtly, to President Donald Trump’s interactions with the law-enforcement officials who have been investigating him and his campaign team since July 2016.
Parallels, subtly drawn: from a geometrical perspective, parallels are’t subtle, they’r exact — but parallels as a metaphor for similarities in patterning are all the better for subtlety.
**
running (in an election), off the hook (wrt prosecution), — these are among the sports metaphors for politics that are so obvious, so basic that it’s barely worth noting them — and yet they’re bassic to more detailed metaphors we’re very interested in.
and then there are the images I catch,but not the sentences they’re embedded in, let alone the paragraphs.. %strike)Brennan saying “firestorm” at a moment when the TIVO or whatever captured the feed had a hiccup), deliberate or otherwise.. Joy of SM Joy’s “spiked the ball at the fifty yard line”*****, for instance, was a fleeting capture of an often repeated basic phrase, “spiked the ball” which would be better caught in a more detailed context..
A quick Melber chyron before I lose it, at 22:
**
Hardball:
Chris Matthews: all these dots we are now to believe don’t connect ..
Chris Matthews: I could see the President announcing in two or three weeks, I split the double header. I got off collusion, all they’ve got me on is this argument about obstruction, by the way I’m allowed to obstruct if I’m innocent ..
should they feel they just skipped justice?
43 stars / constellation .. [ a nice para — transcript? ]
Chris Matthews: it’s the politburo ..
Chris Matthews:
The Democrats have been riding this camel for a lot of miles through the desert, waiting for an explosive report that would decide whether the President did something impeachable or not ..
All In, Chris Hayes:
Julia Ainsley:
And then this is the part I think is the most magical. At five o’clock, the congressional liaison at the Justice Department knew his job would be to go brief the committees, but they didn’t want to have any jealousy about who might get this first and how this might go down, so they dispersed a team to the Democrat and Republican side of both the House and the Senate Judiciary, to make sure that the letter .. was put down in front of those committees, all four, Republican and Democrat, Senate and House, Judiciary at the exact same time, five o’clock..
Neil Katyal:
And now Mueller is really like a relay racer, handing off the baton to other folks..
Anna Galliard:
Well, boy, it’s one of those moments where you have to walk & chew gum & juggle. & fight for the soul of democracy all at the same time ..
Carol Lam: a Japanese Tea ceremony .. [transcript?]
Rachel 3-22
51-2: chuck rosenberg: I think this is far too early for Mr Corsi to be dancing in the end-zone ..*****
@58 or 50?, katyal: lanes & batons ..
the mueller probe is officially over, and the torch has been handed to .. cf baton
MTP (3-22?)
brennan: I think Bob Mueller understands the firestorm that this report was, you know, going to be out into ..
nicolle w: andy mccabe .. [distorted] .. a tree house ..
ari m: he’s a wild-card here, who could ..
graphic of mueller investigation ..
nicolle: the earth could change under our feet ..
he had access to five-eyes intel ..
ari: i got the football and i might be passing lots of it by this weekend ..
katyal: we generally don’t have secret books in this country ..
meacham: will there be a MAGA pitchfork rebellion?
AM Joy 3-23:
sat am: malcolm nance: koresh-style . [transcript?]
AM Joy 3-24
and not dropped, like a nuclear bomb, on the white house, on friday ..
59 or 00: over on Earth II or Fox News ..
**
Listen up:
Here’s the breaking news of Barr’s comments on & quotes from Mueller’s report, Sunday 3/24/2019, pm:
**
Two comments summing up this remarkable day:
MSNBC, commentator unknown:
This is a very good day for the President, and they’ll be spiking the football from here to the election, likely..
Barr’s letter to Congress:
The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’
