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Francisco 2.0

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Francisco 2.0

  1. Gee, imagine that:

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/office-legal-counsel-dni-whistleblower-complaint-not-release-congress

     

    Quote

    In a new opinion, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel declared the director of national intelligence does not have to release the contents of whistleblower complaint that centers on President Trump’s call with Ukraine to Congress.

    The OLC argues that the conduct described in the complaint does not involve an “urgent concern” as the intelligence community inspector general described it. The OLC said it made that determination because it “does not relate to ‘the funding administration, or operation of an intelligence activity’ under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.”

    “As a result, the statute does not require the Director to transmit the complaint to the congressional intelligence committees,” the opinion reads.

     

    Quote

    The content of the whistleblower complaint has fueled an explosive tug-of-war between the House Intelligence Committee and the White House in recent days. The complaint reportedly focuses on Trump’s alleged efforts to get the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on his political opponent — former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump reportedly withheld nearly $400 million from Ukraine in the week leading up to the phone call with the Ukrainian president.

    The complaint and the call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky are now at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. The director of national intelligence is set to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The White House released its version of the call between Trump and Zelensky on Wednesday morning.

     

     

  2. Apparently, Barr had no idea Trump name-dropped him in the phone call:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/politics/ukraine-transcript-trump.html

     

    Quote

    The Justice Department said Wednesday that Mr. Barr was unaware that Mr. Trump had told Mr. Zelensky that he would contact him. The department said that Mr. Barr has never spoken with Mr. Trump about working with Ukraine to investigate anything related to the Bidens and that he has never spoken with Mr. Giuliani about “anything related to Ukraine.”

     

  3. Let's assume for a moment Bill Barr was given a heads up prior to the call.

    How would you, Bill Barr, like the idea of the President tossing your name to a foreign dignitary and casually asking that person to reach out to the AG to handle an investigation of a potential political rival?

     

     

  4. 10 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

    Eh, Rudy is Trump's attorney.  I don't see anything particularly untoward about a client authorizing his attorney to review the transcipt of the client's own phone call.

    Not in this instance.

    The phone call was an official phone call from the President to a foreign dignitary.  Why would the President's private attorney have access to something that has not been released to Congress yet?

    • Like 4
  5. Just now, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

    How did it even get brought to a vote?

    Since that has to go through Mitch....

    I just have a feeling.  Mitch knows how to read a room.  He's a cocksucker, but he's also a political animal.  He's gonna cast Trump adrift in some weak-ass attempt at saving his own skin.  It might just work.  

    • Like 1
  6. So, admin officials tried to keep Trump from contacting the new President of Ukraine out of fear he would do exactly what he did:

     

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-pursued-shadow-ukraine-agenda-as-key-foreign-policy-officials-were-sidelined/2019/09/24/ee18aaec-deec-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html

     

    Quote

    President Trump’s attempt to pressure the leader of Ukraine followed a months-long fight inside the administration that sidelined national security officials and empowered political loyalists — including the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani — to exploit the U.S. relationship with Kiev, current and former U.S. officials said.

    The sequence, which began early this year, involved the abrupt removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the circumvention of senior officials on the National Security Council, and the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid administered by the Defense and State departments — all as key officials from these agencies struggled to piece together Giuliani’s activities from news reports.

     

    Quote

    Several officials described tense meetings on Ukraine among national security officials at the White House leading up to the president’s phone call on July 25, sessions that led some participants to fear that Trump and those close to him appeared prepared to use U.S. leverage with the new leader of Ukraine for Trump’s political gain.

     

    Quote

    As those worries intensified, some senior officials worked behind the scenes to hold off a Trump meeting or call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky out of concern that Trump would use the conversation to press Kiev for damaging information on Trump’s potential rival in the 2020 race, former vice president Joe Biden, and Biden’s son Hunter.

     

     

    Spoiler

    “An awful lot of people were trying to keep a meeting from happening for the reason that it would not be focused on Ukraine-U.S. relations,” one former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

    White House officials disputed these accounts, saying that no such concerns were raised in National Security Council meetings and that Trump’s focus was on urging Ukraine to root out corruption. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

    But Trump admitted this week that he had done some of what his own advisers feared, using the call to raise the issue of Biden with Zelensky. And the wave of consternation triggered by that call led someone in the U.S. intelligence community to submit an extraordinary whistleblower complaint, setting in motion a sequence of events that now includes the start of an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.

    Though the whistleblower report focuses on the Trump-Zelensky call, officials familiar with its contents said that it includes references to other developments tied to the president, including efforts by Giuliani to insert himself into U.S.-Ukrainian relations.

    Trump announced Tuesday that he would release a transcript of his call, insisting that it would show there was “NO quid pro quo!” and would reveal a conversation that was “friendly and totally appropriate.”

    But even within Trump’s party, few have gone so far as to say they would consider it appropriate for the president to solicit foreign help in an American election. And his political fate may hinge on how lawmakers and the public assess not only his intentions on the call but also the actions of his subordinates in the events surrounding it.

    U.S. officials described an atmosphere of intense pressure inside the NSC and other departments since the existence of the whistleblower complaint became known, with some officials facing suspicion that they had a hand either in the complaint or in relaying damaging information to the whistleblower, whose identity has not been revealed and who is entitled to legal protection.

    One official — speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity — described the climate as verging on “bloodletting.”

    Trump has fanned this dynamic with his own denunciations of the whistleblower and thinly veiled suggestions that the person should be outed. “Is he on our Country’s side. Where does he come from,” Trump tweeted this week.

    Trump’s closest advisers, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who was ordered by Trump to suspend the aid to Ukraine, are also increasingly targets of internal finger-pointing. Mulvaney has agitated for foreign aid to be cut universally but has also stayed away from meetings with Giuliani and Trump, officials said. But the person who appears to have been more directly involved at nearly every stage of the entanglement with Ukraine is Giuliani.

    “Rudy — he did all of this,” one U.S. official said. “This s---show that we’re in — it’s him injecting himself into the process.”

    Several officials traced their initial concerns about the path of U.S.-Ukrainian relations to news reports and interviews granted by Giuliani in which he began to espouse views and concerns that did not appear connected to U.S. priorities or policy.

    The former New York mayor appears to have seen Zelensky, a political neophyte elected president of Ukraine in April and sworn in in May, as a potential ally on two political fronts: punishing those Giuliani suspected of playing a role in exposing the Ukraine-related corruption of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and delivering political ammunition against Biden.

    After the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election, Giuliani turned his attention to Ukraine, officials said, and soon began pushing for personnel changes at the embassy while seeking meetings with Zelensky subordinates. He also had his own emissaries in Ukraine who were meeting with officials, setting up meetings for him and sending back information that he could circulate in the United States.

    The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, became a primary Giuliani target.

    Yovanovitch, a longtime State Department Foreign Service officer, arrived in Ukraine as ambassador at the end of the Obama administration, more than two years after an uprising centered on Kiev’s Independence Square ousted the Russian-leaning government.

    Though she was widely respected in the national security community for her efforts to prod Ukraine to take on corruption, Giuliani targeted Yovanovitch with wild accusations including that she played a secret role in exposing Manafort and was part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the liberal financier George Soros.

    “She should be part of the investigation as part of the collusion,” Giuliani said in a recent interview with The Washington Post, adding that “she is now working for Soros.” Yovanovitch is still employed by the State Department and is a fellow at Georgetown University. She declined to comment.

    Giuliani also said the entire State Department was a problem, and officials familiar with his actions say he regularly briefed Trump on his Ukrainian endeavors. “The State Department is a bureaucracy that needs to change,” he told The Post.

    Many of Giuliani’s charges were either recycled from, or subsequently echoed by, right-wing media outlets.

    In late March, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. amplified this campaign with a tweet calling for the removal of “Obama’s U.S. Ambassador.”

    Yovanovitch, who was to depart in July after a three-year assignment, was prematurely ordered back to Washington, a move that both baffled and unnerved senior officials at the State Department and the White House, officials said.

    Within days of her ouster on May 9, Giuliani seemed determined to seize an unsanctioned diplomatic role for himself, announcing plans to travel to Ukraine to push for investigations that would “be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

    Giuliani canceled the trip amid an ensuing backlash over his purpose but later met with one of Zelensky’s senior aides in Madrid and pressed the issue of Ukraine’s helping against Biden.

    In a May 19 interview on Fox News, Trump recited repeatedly disproved allegations that then-Vice President Biden had coerced Ukraine to drop an investigation into the owner of an energy company, Burisma, for which Biden’s son Hunter was a board member.

    The allegations were baseless. Though Hunter Biden had served on the Burisma board for five years — a questionable decision given his father’s influential position — he was never accused of any wrongdoing by Ukrainian authorities. The probe had been shelved before any action by the vice president, and the elder Biden’s efforts involved removing a prosecutor widely criticized by the West as failing to tackle corruption.

    Nevertheless, Trump is alleged to have used his July 25 call with Zelensky to get Ukraine to revive this dormant inquiry and widen it to include possible wrongdoing by Biden.

    In Washington, officials outside Trump’s inner circle who were dismayed by Yovanovitch’s ouster reacted with growing alarm and confusion over Giuliani’s subsequent activities.

    Then-national security adviser John Bolton was outraged by the outsourcing of a relationship with a country struggling to survive Russian aggression, officials said. But by then his standing with Trump was strained, and neither he nor his senior aides could get straight answers about Giuliani’s agenda or authority, officials said. Bolton declined to comment.

    “We had the same visibility as anybody else — watching Giuliani on television,” a former senior official said. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev were similarly deprived of information, even as they faced questions from Ukrainians about whether Giuliani was a designated representative.

    “The embassy didn’t know what to do with the outreach,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who traveled to Ukraine this month.

    The perception of a parallel, hidden agenda intensified in the summer as officials at the NSC, Pentagon and State Department began reacting to rumors that hundreds of millions of dollars of military and intelligence aid to Ukraine was being mysteriously impeded.

    “There were never any orders given, any formal guidance from the White House to any of the agencies,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter. “And the NSC was scratching their heads: How is this possible?”

    NSC officials, including Tim Morrison, who had replaced Fiona Hill as the senior director for European and Russian affairs, began organizing meetings to try to understand these hidden forces affecting Ukraine policy, officials said.

    But even then, clear answers proved elusive. Officials were told that the money was being blocked by the Office of Management and Budget, without any accompanying explanation.

    “It was bizarre,” the official said.

    A former official familiar with the meetings said participants began to file out raising troubling questions about what was driving the White House to withhold the aid as well as a meeting with Trump that had been all but promised to Zelensky.

    Although the question of a linkage or leverage never came up in the formal NSC discussions, participants began to believe that Trump was “withholding the aid until [Ukraine] gave him something on Biden or Manafort.”

    It was during this stretch, in July, when some officials began to hesitate about the wisdom of proceeding with a Trump call with Zelensky. In part, there was a desire to hold off until after Ukraine’s parliamentary elections. But, mindful of Giuliani’s agitation and influence, some worried that even if Trump were coached before the call, the president would not be able to resist pressing Zelensky for dirt on Biden.

    On July 24, Mueller testified before Congress on the outcome of the Russia investigation, a probe that had threatened Trump for much of his presidency and was focused on whether he had conspired with Moscow to influence the U.S. election.

    The next day, Trump spoke with Zelensky on a call, and the vague misgivings that had risen over the preceding five months hardened into alarm. Among those who listened in on the call or were in position to see a transcript, the president’s persistence with Zelensky on the corruption probe marked the crossing of a perilous threshold.

     

    • Like 1
  7. Wonder what new bombshells will come out in the coming days, since a bunch of shit is happening at warp speed now?

    Barely 10 days ago, no one had any idea of this coming down the pike. Odds are someone or some group is going to get emboldened enough to leak out something that makes this Ukraine stuff seem quaint.

     

  8. 1 minute ago, Degenerate Gardner said:

    Usually I'd agree but Trump laid out a unique buffet of lawlessness and opportunity.  GOP leaders filled themselves at the trough.  They've been operating like there's no tomorrow, not like pols who will one day be accountable to voters.  

    You might be right.

    I'm still of the opinion Mitch will make some kind of futile effort in order to get on the right side of history here.   

  9. 1 minute ago, Degenerate Gardner said:

    Disagree.  It's pacifying subterfuge though I can't yet tell you what flavor.  Mitch is all in with Trump.  

    Mitch is a pure politician.  Trump isn't.  Mitch will sacrifice Trump in an attempt to cover his ass.

    Don't forget; these fuckers all are only interested in the next election.  If this thing gets uber-ugly for Trump, Mitch sure as hell doesn't want voters to be reminded of their alliance in the good days.  

     

  10. 4 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

    Maybe the Republicans WILL save us!
     

     

    McConnell sees the writing on the wall. He's getting ahead of this as much as he possibly can + try to get some daylight between he and Trump.

     

    I'd say at this point, he's looking more at covering his ass for November 2020 and hopefully keeping the Senate with the GOP rather than running interference for Trump.

  11. 3 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

    Mike Pence will never win a presidential election. Let him try. 

    I'd rather not.

     

    Evangelicals will commit voter fraud and vote twice (or more) in the same election to get his ass in office if it's necessary to keep out some godless socialist mixed race lover Democrat out of the Oval Office.  Hell, I'm pretty sure some state election officials will pass out the ballots to be filled out on Sunday morning, then collected with offering.

     

     

     

  12. 11 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

    So the speech at the UN today should be pretty banal. I'm sure there will be nothing of any interest at all. 

    "should".

     

    I'm guessing there will be a litany of the greatest hits:  fake news, migrants, wall, no collusion, greatest presidency ever, climate change a hoax, alabama, deep state, et al.

     

     

  13. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-quietly-sounding-out-house-democrats-about-whether-to-impeach-trump-officials-say/2019/09/23/98a33fd8-de5f-11e9-8fd3-d943b4ed57e0_story.html

     

    Quote

    Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been quietly sounding out top allies and lawmakers about whether the time has come to impeach President Trump, according to multiple Democratic officials, a major development in the ongoing investigation of the president that suggests the House could eventually vote to oust him.

    Pelosi, according to multiple senior House Democrats and congressional aides, has asked colleagues whether they believe that Trump’s own admission that he pressured a Ukrainian leader to investigate a political foe is a tipping point. She was making calls as late as Monday night to gauge support in the caucus, and many leadership aides who once thought Trump’s impeachment was unlikely now say they think it’s almost inevitable.

     

    Spoiler

    The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly.

    Pelosi’s office declined to comment Monday night. But an official familiar with her thinking said most members have been calling her and those conversations have focused on how to force disclosure to Congress about a whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s conversations with Ukraine.

    Pelosi had made it clear on Sunday that she would no longer stand for months of administration stonewalling.

    In a letter to Republicans and Democrats, she wrote, “If the administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the president, they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation.”

    Pelosi’s conversations — and reconsideration of her long-held position that impeachment is too divisive — comes amid a new clamor for impeachment in the House Democratic Caucus. A group of moderate lawmakers from swing districts is now backing an impeachment inquiry, and Democrats say there’s been a significant shift in the tenor of the discussion following reports that Trump pressured Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and his family.

    Trump on Monday denied that he offered military aid to the Ukraine leader only if the country launched a probe.

    Seven freshman Democrats with previous service in the military, defense and U.S. intelligence said Monday night that if the allegations against Trump are true, “we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense.”

    “We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over. Now, we join as a unified group to uphold that oath as we enter uncharted waters and face unprecedented allegations against President Trump,” the seven wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post.

    The seven — Reps. Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia — said they did not arrive at their decision lightly and called on their colleagues to use all congressional authorities, including impeachment hearings, to “address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security.”

    In one telling shift, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) issued a lengthy statement Monday calling Trump’s conduct a “reckless abuse of power” and a “turning point.” A close Pelosi ally of similar views and temperament, she described being previously reticent to pursue impeachment for similar reasons as the speaker has stated: the fear that it would divide the country and a Senate acquittal might backfire.

    But she said her thinking had changed, writing that an impeachment inquiry “may be the only recourse Congress has” to reproach Trump.

    “Congress must meet this pivotal moment in our nation’s history with decisive action,” she wrote.

    Senior Democratic officials cautioned that no steps have been finalized and there were still questions about timing and how to conduct the proceedings. Some Democrats, for example, want House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to have a role in whatever impeachment process moves ahead. Some senior Democrats are also discussing the possibility of a special select committee that would combine House Judiciary with other panels such as Intelligence.

    In the meantime, House leaders are planning to hold a vote on a resolution to either condemn Trump’s actions or express the sense of the House that the administration turn over the whistleblower complaint, a move liberals are already dismissing as insufficient. The language has not been finalized.

    Until then, lawmakers have been anxiously speculating about what Pelosi, who has been reluctant about impeachment, will do. The speaker is concerned about the political blowback for her majority makers — the Democrats who won seats in districts where Trump prevailed in 2016.

    In the Senate, Republicans have made it clear that they are standing with Trump and are unlikely to convict him if a trial occurs.

    Impeachment dominated a meeting of chiefs of staff for lawmakers in competitive districts on Monday, according to one official familiar with the talks. The individual said the session grew heated an angry, pitting those congressional aides who thought it was time to back impeachment against those who worry about the political fallout.

    Meanwhile, freshman Democrats — most of whom were back in their districts Monday — have been in constant discussion about how to respond to the Ukraine controversy, with plans for a conference call Monday night.

    The drama is all building toward Thursday, a make-or-break moment in the eyes of House Democratic leaders. Pelosi gave the director of national intelligence until then to turn over a whistleblower complaint that details Trump’s conversations with Ukraine.

    Under the law, any matter deemed of “urgent concern” is supposed to be shared with Congress. But the Trump administration has refused to hand over the document — despite an inspector general’s determination that it has met that “urgent” threshold. 

    “The Director of National Intelligence must comply with the law on Thursday,” Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.). “If not, the Trump administration has left Congress with no alternative but for the House to begin impeachment proceedings, which I will support.”

    On Monday night 145 Democrats backed impeachment, well over a majority of the caucus. But Pelosi has long said that any impeachment would need public support as well as backing from some Republicans.

    Currently, she has neither. Voters still overwhelming disapprove of Democrats impeaching the president though those polls where conducted prior to last week’s reports about the whistleblower complaint.

     

  14. 4 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

    Terrible outfit and terrible new haircut.
     

    But hey, we have foreign fashion critique.  Plus that skirt was $2,130.  I'm not sure what is more disgusting; the fact that skirt cost over 2 grand; that she wore it to this kind of event, or the Dailymail ran this fluff piece of how glamorous she is, how well she was put together and her weekend jet setting to and fro a wedding:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7494699/Ivanka-Trump-heads-New-York-City-Misha-Nonoos-Rome-wedding.html

    Quote

    Ivanka Trump made clear that she isn't suffering from any Monday blues, despite just returning from a fun-filled weekend in Italy with her husband Jared Kushner and a slew of A-list stars who attended designer Misha Nonoo's wedding to oil tycoon Mikey Hess. 

    The 37-year-old first daughter was pictured at the UN General Assembly in New York City on Monday morning, looking incredibly chipper, while wearing a chic ensemble - and a very large smile on her face. 

    Ivanka, who is attending the global summit alongside her father, President Donald Trump, wore a $2,130 funky floral skirt from Prada, which featured 3-D flower embellishments, including several stem-style tassels that fell below the hem of the white design. 

     

    Quote

    She paired the pricey skirt with a form-fitting blue silk button up that was tucked into the slim-fit design, and added a pair of simple black pointed-toe heels.  

    While Ivanka was in high spirits however, it seems as though her weekend of fun may well have taken its toll on her feet; the first daughter was seen wearing a Band-Aid on the heel of her right foot, perhaps in order to cover up a few blisters that may have been sustained over the weekend.  

    Still, the White House advisor looked every inch the fashion favorite as she made her way into a meeting on religious freedom on Monday, while many other attendees at the General Assembly chose to attend the Climate Summit - including her father, who stopped into the event for 15 minutes, having previously said he would not attend. 

     

     

  15. Translation: Why did that uppity black man get one and I can't?  So unfair!  

    https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/23/trump-nobel-peace-prize-1508484

     

    Quote

    President Donald Trump on Monday revived his beef with the selection committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming that the process is rigged against him.

    Speaking to reporters before a bilateral meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump asserted that “I would get a Nobel prize for a lot of things, if they give it out fairly, which they don't.”

     

    Quote

    Trump then offered up former President Barack Obama as an example of the prize being unfairly awarded.

    “They gave one to Obama immediately upon his ascent to the presidency and he had no idea why he got it,” Trump said, joking: “You know what? That was the only thing I agreed with him on.”

    Obama received the famed award in 2009, less than nine months into his term in the White House for what the Nobel Committee said were “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” and his calls for nuclear nonproliferation. The honor drew confusion at the time from some in the international community who questioned what he could have done so soon in his presidency to merit such an achievement, especially with wars in the Middle East still raging. Even some in the White House expressed surprise at the win.

     

    Oh, and Trump was never gonna ask for one:

     

    Quote

    In February of this year, Trump announced that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to broker peace between North and South Korea. Prior to that, South Korean President Moon Jae-in reportedly said last April that Trump deserved the Nobel Prize for his work to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, remarks Trump called “very generous” at the time.

    Asked during a Cabinet meeting at the time whether he thought he deserved the honor, Trump told reporters: “Everyone thinks so, but I would never say it."

     

  16. Stewart Mandel weighs in this morning on The Athletic:

     

    https://theathletic.com/1232677/2019/09/23/mandels-forward-pass-five-theories-about-what-has-happened-to-michigan/?source=dailyemail

     

    Quote

    On Nov. 26, 2016, No. 3 Michigan came within a few inches on a fourth-down spot from beating No. 2 Ohio State at the Horseshoe and advancing to the Big Ten championship game to play for a College Football Playoff berth. That team suffered three losses by a combined five points, produced 11 NFL draft picks the following spring and looked every bit like a program on the cusp of perennial national contention.

    But rather than building on that promising Year 2, Jim Harbaugh’s program has somehow descended to its lowest point in Year 5. On Saturday, No. 14 Wisconsin went up 35-0, at one point outrushing the Wolverines 200-0. Final score: 35-14, making it slightly more respectable than their past two games against Power 5 opponents, the infamous 62-39 blowout at Ohio State last November and 41-15 Peach Bowl loss to Florida. Wedged in between: A double-overtime escape at home against Army.

    There’s no sugarcoating it at this point. Michigan — which just last year strung together 10 wins in a row — is in a free fall. It’s been an abrupt and baffling turn of events.

     

    Spoiler

    Harbaugh performed an all-time turnaround at Stanford. He took the 49ers to the Super Bowl. The $7.5 million-a-year coach began his tenure in similarly promising fashion … until things suddenly went so jarringly wrong, leaving much of his previously adoring fan base up in arms following Saturday’s latest indignity.

    Because Michigan is as closed off as any program in the country, and because Harbaugh speaks only in vague shorthand when discussing his actual football team (“outplayed, out-prepared, outcoached” was his assessment Saturday), it’s near-impossible to get a good read on what’s happening behind the scenes there.

    But I do have a few theories — some obvious, some less so.

    • Ohio State broke Don Brown’s defense. Most have focused on Harbaugh’s thus-far bungled attempt to remake his offense, but the most stunning aspect of Michigan’s last five football games is how drastically its previously dominant defense has imploded. The Wolverines finished No. 2 in the country in total defense in 2016, No. 6 in 2017 and entered last year’s Ohio State game ranked No. 1. That now seems like eons ago.

    Yes, the Wolverines lost a lot of key players from last season (DEs Rashan Gary and Chase Winovich, LB Devin Bush). But watching Badgers star Jonathan Taylor run for 203 yards and QB Jack Coan do whatever he wanted, it looked less like a case of inexperience and more like a unit that lost all its swagger and confidence that fateful day in Columbus and has yet to recover it.

    • Harbaugh and his OC are not on the same page. When Harbaugh, a tried-and-trued Bo Schembechler smashmouth disciple, hired former Alabama receivers coach Josh Gattis to remake the Wolverines into a 2019 spread outfit, it seemed like his concession that times have changed. What we don’t know is: Does he really believe that?

    LSU coach Ed Orgeron, who’s seeing astonishing returns from hiring pass game coordinator Joe Brady, has been clear he wanted a more wide-open offense since the day he got the job. USC’s Clay Helton went to the Air Raid not just to save his job, but because he knew his receivers were the strength of the team. Did Harbaugh choose Gattis because he truly believed in his vision? Or just because he felt he had to try something after the way last year ended?

    Because three games in, Michigan has less of an offensive identity now than it did most of last season, when QB Shea Patterson was at least having modest success. So far, he’s regressed badly.

    • Staff turnover. It made relatively modest waves at the time, but in hindsight, should we have waved a red flag last winter when D-line coach Greg Mattison, a Michigan assistant since 2011, left to be co-defensive coordinator at Ohio State of all places?

    Assistants come and go across college football, but Harbaugh has seen a lot of churn for an ostensibly successful program. Gattis is the fifth different offensive assistant in five years to hold “coordinator” in his title, none of them lasting more than two seasons. The only remaining holdover from Harbaugh’s original staff is his son, Jay.

    Some programs (hint, Alabama) can withstand constant staff churn just fine, but most eventually feel the effect.

    • The message has worn thin. I’ve lived within 20 minutes of Harbaugh’s two most recent employers since 2011. One thing that’s always struck me is that despite leading both to glory, he is not at all missed. I remember being puzzled at the time how he fell out of favor with the Niners so quickly after leading them to three consecutive NFC championship games, so I asked around with people who’ve worked with him. The general response I got was this: His uniquely maniacal energy works wonders upon first taking over a down-on-their-luck group of players, but with time, it eventually, it wears down everybody in the building.

    It’s fair to ask whether that’s what’ happening here. Is it possible “Enthusiasm Unknown to Mankind” and “Who Has It Better than Us?” stop resonating once you’ve suffered a few too many blowouts? Remember, this, Year 5, is the longest he’s lasted in any of his four head-coaching jobs to date.

    • Maybe this is as good as it gets. This is the one no Michigan fan will entertain, but it’s been 15 years since the program’s last Big Ten championship, a drought unlikely to end in 2019. Since Lloyd Carr’s 2007 retirement, the school has tried the innovative outsider, Rich Rodriguez, and it failed spectacularly. It tried the former Carr assistant, Brady Hoke, and it failed spectacularly. On paper, Harbaugh, the former star QB and highly accomplished head coach, was about as ideal a fit as one could possibly imagine. And though he’s been an improvement from his two predecessors, he, too, is falling well short of where Michigan believes its rightful place in the sport should be.

    And that’s what must be so vexing for Wolverines fans today. You want to fire Harbaugh? Who are you going to get instead that’s an obvious upgrade? Urban Meyer’s not likely to switch sides to The Team Up North. Jeff Monken? Matt Campbell? Luke Fickell? None have anything close to Harbaugh’s résumé at the time of his hire.

    Could it be that perhaps Michigan as a program has a lower ceiling today than it did back when Bo was battling Woody? The city of Detroit, ostensibly its main recruiting pipeline, has seen its population nearly cut in half over the past five decades. Its archrival, Ohio State, is one of the sport’s premier juggernauts.

    And yet … there was only a few inches’ separation between the two as recently as 2016. Michigan State has managed to win three Big Ten titles more recently than Michigan without the recruiting stars. Ditto the Wisconsin program that hammered the Wolverines on Saturday.

    Maybe Michigan will never be Alabama or Clemson, but the Wolverines certainly could have it better than this.

     

  17. 4 hours ago, Bruh Man said:

    So what do you guys think about all the Republican leaders at the Modi rally in Houston? Trump, Cruz, Cornyn and the rest of the stooges were there. Are Indians in Hou/DFW going to vote for R's?

    They're brown-skinned people they approve of.

     

     

  18. Just now, texifornia said:

    Man what'd that kid do? Not go in motion quick enough?

    Either that, or lined up wrong, so they couldn't get the snap off in time, then had to call time out to avoid losing yards, and most importantly, stopping the game clock.

     

    It's pissed-worthy for Malzhan.

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