Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I have just read and reread the White House Counsel's letter, and it is, without a doubt, the worst piece of legal writing I have ever read.

I didn't see anything that bad when I was in law school and working for an immigration lawyer and had to read pro se pleadings from people who barely spoke English.

I once had a lawyer client who had literally lost his mind and spend years sending the IRS lengthy handwritten diatribes instead of tax returns, and he wrote better.

I mean, I would expect more in a fourth grade civics class.

That is a whole new level of bad.

It seems more a political than legal document. If playing to the common voter, it’s about 7 pages and twenty lines too long.

I could not read it. I got a headache. But I will say this: The “Sharpie Signature,” filling a third of a page (as his client likes to sign bills) is tacky and should be banned.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It seems more a political than legal document. If playing to the common voter, it’s about 7 pages and twenty lines too long.

I could not read it. I got a headache. But I will say this: The “Sharpie Signature,” filling a third of a page (as his client likes to sign bills) is tacky and should be banned.

In an embarrassing letter, that signature is perhaps the worse thing.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

[Adder]

Abandoning the Kurds seems like it should be getting more outrage than it is getting, particularly from the GOP.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Abandoning the Kurds seems like it should be getting more outrage than it is getting, particularly from the GOP.

This Administration is not interested in what most people think, so most outrage doesn't seem consequential.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

Abandoning the Kurds seems like it should be getting more outrage than it is getting, particularly from the GOP.

The whole thing is so blatant, and will so obvious trigger broader conflict, that I suspect Trump wants a war to distract people.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

In an embarrassing letter, that signature is perhaps the worse thing.

I wasn't kidding when I said the letter gave me a headache. It's impossible to follow. Reads like a fourth year associate's first draft of an appeal of a court's rejection of an equity or public policy argument.

Should have been signed with a giant smiley face.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I wasn't kidding when I said the letter gave me a headache. It's impossible to follow. Reads like a fourth year associate's first draft of an appeal of a court's rejection of an equity or public policy argument.

Should have been signed with a giant smiley face.

https://www.theonion.com/law-school-...m_content=Main

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

https://www.theonion.com/law-school-...m_content=Main

I just looked up Cippollone's Wikipedia page. Made $6.7 mil last year.

I should not jump off a bridge at lunch why? The universe is not irretrievably broken, and we are not living in a Monty Python script how?

That letter indicates a mind so cluttered, so incapable of holding even the slightest tether of continuity or capacity to maintain linear progression between thoughts, that were it to be offered to me as a judge in support of a motion, I would demand counsel redraft it in "English."

It's not a bad letter. No, that's not the term. It's the kind of letter that truly presses the question: "Should the 'R' word be acceptable where it's the only adjective that truly fits?"

Others here have disputed my argument that, in keeping with the theme of your Onion cite, any fucking idiot can make it in Washington DC. I worked with entertainment people in LA and NY long ago, and I always thought, "these people are really Not That Bright." I figured those folks were the basement, but increasingly, DC appears to be the dumbest city in the United States. Not because of Trump, though he certainly contributes, but because No One is Accountable. A man with a waterlogged Nerf football for a brain like Cippollone could only achieve such success in a town where no one ever has to make a payroll, no one ever has to worry about quarterlies, and govt money flows like the giant chocolate river in that fucking Willy Wonka movie.

Goddamnit, we're fucked.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I just looked up Cippollone's Wikipedia page. Made $6.7 mil last year.

I should not jump off a bridge at lunch why? The universe is not irretrievably broken, and we are not living in a Monty Python script how?

That letter indicates a mind so cluttered, so incapable of holding even the slightest tether of continuity or capacity to maintain linear progression between thoughts, that were it to be offered to me as a judge in support of a motion, I would demand counsel redraft it in "English."

It's not a bad letter. No, that's not the term. It's the kind of letter that truly presses the question: "Should the 'R' word be acceptable where it's the only adjective that truly fits?"

Others here have disputed my argument that, in keeping with the theme of your Onion cite, any fucking idiot can make it in Washington DC. I worked with entertainment people in LA and NY long ago, and I always thought, "these people are really Not That Bright." I figured those folks were the basement, but increasingly, DC appears to be the dumbest city in the United States. Not because of Trump, though he certainly contributes, but because No One is Accountable. A man with a waterlogged Nerf football for a brain like Cippollone could only achieve such success in a town where no one ever has to make a payroll, no one ever has to worry about quarterlies, and govt money flows like the giant chocolate river in that fucking Willy Wonka movie.

Goddamnit, we're fucked.

There is only one answer. We need to bring in immigrants to do all the jobs.

If we catch someone crossing the Southern Border illegally, they should immediately be given a job replacing one of Trump's political appointees. Their sentence, our salvation.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Others here have disputed my argument that, in keeping with the theme of your Onion cite, any fucking idiot can make it in Washington DC.

Who? A consistent theme you hear if you do any political organizing/working with volunteers on advocacy, actually having contact with people in power is demystifying. People assume elected officials and their staff are smart/knowledgeable and impressive, but often they are not.

Personally, I think this also applies to business executives. Definitely applies to lawyers, even some very highly compensated ones.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Who? A consistent theme you hear if you do any political organizing/working with volunteers on advocacy, actually having contact with people in power is demystifying. People assume elected officials and their staff are smart/knowledgeable and impressive, but often they are not.

Personally, I think this also applies to business executives. Definitely applies to lawyers, even some very highly compensated ones.

I agree. But I think it applies more in a locale like DC than in NY, Philly, Boston, even Baltimore.

DC is awash in cash and people who are full of shit. Nobody's doing serious deals in DC. The heavy lifting regarding financing and structuring is taking places where the adults work, in NY or Boston, or some similar city. In challenged cities like Philly or Baltimore, counsel has to provide value because the clients are nasty about paying.

In DC, however, it's jerkoffs going to lunch a lot and talking about policy and legislation. There aren't many measurable metrics, because even the best lobbyist or lawyer-playing-lobbyist can't control the politics. Nobody is really accountable for anything.

Talking to DC counsel and NY counsel is night and day. One guy's full of fluff and another has to get to the point because he has three more calls in the queue. In DC, people still wear suits all the time. There's still en emphasis on "the show." What professional wears a suit these days unless he has to be in court?

You are correct - the rot starts at the top. Any common jackass can run for office, and as voters are increasingly tribal, and of a "low information" character, being uninformed and saying and thinking dumb things is actually kind of an asset. So we've a collection of middle-intellects (being generous) in office, a number of whom are senile or close to it (which is a whole other issue) and a bunch of professionals servicing them. I don't know about you, but if I've a dolt for a client and I know my results can't be measured, I'm not going to provide the effort or quality of thought I would for a client who was aggressively measuring the success of my efforts. I'd get lazy, as I was when I worked in a large firm. If a person can cruise, they will.

And cruising is all anyone does in DC. If you can think, if you're fast with numbers, or have a penchant for innovation, the town is hell. The people driven to it are those who want to wear suits, twist arms at lunches, and practice "government lawyering" (dicking around with policy issues). There's nothing wrong with that, of course. But it's not said enough, and it needs to be said: Washington DC is an intellectually mediocre city of ineffective people, most of whom couldn't survive if they weren't swimming in a pool of cheap and easy govt money.

The town deserves no respect.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Adder

Who? A consistent theme you hear if you do any political organizing/working with volunteers on advocacy, actually having contact with people in power is demystifying. People assume elected officials and their staff are smart/knowledgeable and impressive, but often they are not.

Personally, I think this also applies to business executives. Definitely applies to lawyers, even some very highly compensated ones.

Smart people hire people who have done it before. Want a wall put in? Hire a sheetrock guy who has put in a thousand partitions. Want to sue a cab? Hire a cab suer who has sued a thousand cab companies, not someone who HE went to HARVARD.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I wasn't kidding when I said the letter gave me a headache. It's impossible to follow. Reads like a fourth year associate's first draft of an appeal of a court's rejection of an equity or public policy argument.

Should have been signed with a giant smiley face.

If you were counsel to the House Democrats, I think you'd have some interesting questions about how to proceed. I would subpoena WhatsApp for the Sondland messages, and I would do it in a public way that would prompt Trump to go to court to try to quash the subpoena. That lets you isolate the question of whether the House's subpoena is facially valid, on facts where Administration were conducting public business on private accounts.

Anyway, seems like you don't want to take on all of the issues at once -- you want to look for a way to chip away at the craziness.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

If you were counsel to the House Democrats, I think you'd have some interesting questions about how to proceed. I would subpoena WhatsApp for the Sondland messages, and I would do it in a public way that would prompt Trump to go to court to try to quash the subpoena. That lets you isolate the question of whether the House's subpoena is facially valid, on facts where Administration were conducting public business on private accounts.

Anyway, seems like you don't want to take on all of the issues at once -- you want to look for a way to chip away at the craziness.

My chief objection was to style. I haven't even gotten to substance.

1. You don't write 8 page letters, to anyone, ever, unless you're in the 18th Century and you won't see your true love for three years and a fortnight.
2. You don't mix the legal with the equitable with the political and vomit it on the page like some regurgitated word salad. Write multiple letters. Save your powder. Offer things in discrete categories which people can digest.

Do these fucking people have any clue about crisis management? A fucking PR flack could do better.

Yes, I agree a subpoena that forces a public hearing, in a cherry-picked venue not favorable to Trump, is probably a best first step.