Hullabaloo

Sunday, December 18, 2016

 
The antidote to fake news and mainstream perfidy is right here

by digby












Well folks, it's that time again, when I come to you and ask for a little holiday cheer to keep the old blog going for another year.  I wish I could make a pitch for your support in 2017 based upon a sense of shared relief and hopefulness for the future. Unfortunately, that's not the case. We are in the midst of a political maelstrom within which it's very hard to see how the future is going to play out.

This past year has been a political horror show on every level. And I've documented the atrocities with six or seven posts a day, seven days a week on this blog, with at least one major thousand word analysis Monday through Friday that is also posted on Salon.com. I have covered the right wing and particularly Donald Trump almost exclusively, with a few forays into horrible terrorist attacks, mass shootings, media malpractice and a few natural disasters. I did 22 one hour "Clown Car" podcasts about the GOP primaries with Jay Ayckroyd, which started out as a fun chronicle of the 17 candidates tumbling out of the tiny circus car which ended up being a dark, scary story featuring one very frightening clown.  I watched dozens of Trump rallies start to finish and read virtually everything about him that's been written.  I even forced myself to read all the books his ghostwriters wrote for him. (So far, I think I've escaped PTSD, but I'm not entirely sure.)

I know more about this man than I ever wanted to know and his ascension to power is the most terrifying political event of my lifetime. This is the most powerful nation on earth and a cretinous, authoritarian demagogue who has surrounded himself with paranoid lunatics is going to be running it.

So, what do we do now? Everyone will have to do something, that's for sure. It's all hands on deck whether organizing, donating time, marching in the streets, mass resistence or all of the above. For me, it's all of those things, but first and foremost as a writer and blogger, it's a commitment to be as clear and uncompromising in documenting what's happening as I possibly can be.

The cacophony around us, the chaos, the fake news, the perfidious media, the timorous Democrats all serve the interests of Donald Trump and a Republican Party that was having a nervous breakdown even before he appeared on the scene. The normalization of Donald Trump is happening before our eyes, slowly and inevitably, and it is not normal.

I started this blog at another moment of deep crisis. We had just come through a disputed election and a major terrorist attack and the country was hurtling headlong into the Iraq war,  the media was in a state of ecstatic bloodlust and the Democrats were paralyzed. We were a small community of like-minded citizens just trying to make sense of the senseless and take heart in our shared sense of discombobulation and despair. Somehow it helped to know that others saw things the way we did.

The online world today is totally changed and we have social media to provide us with that shared sense of community.  But I think there is still value in blogs like this one, which is one of the few to have survived all the way through from Bush and Cheney to Obama to today.

My colleague Tom Sullivan writes every morning on a range of topics with particular focus on Democratic organizing and state level politics in his home state of North Carolina --- the new epicenter of anti-democratic GOP perfidy. Gaius Publius writes about our most important global challenge, climate change. Spocko tracks the right wing media and from time to time tristero and Batoccio each contribute original observations and deep thoughts about current events. My old friend Dennis Hartley reviews current films and offers his take on the political scene from a cultural perspective.

We are all progressive, liberal, left, whatever you want to call us, who are out here trying, to coin a phrase from The Donald himself, to "figure out what the hell is going on." It has never been more important to have places to go and people you trust trying to do that. We are one of those places.

After the election all the mainstream newspapers reported a huge uptick in subscriptions. Many of the less mainstream publications did too. It's understandable. After watching what happened with the surge in fake news and the tendency of the feedback loops to create false narratives that have the capacity to change the world it's important to support real journalism and I do it myself.

But I would respectfully submit that there's also value in supporting sites like this, were we spend a lot of time (in my case, all of my time) sorting through the information out there, including that from mainstream sources, and trying to synthesize the daily churn for people who don't have the time to do all that.  We can't get to it all, and we miss a lot, but I think that a stop here can usually give you a little perspective and often one you won't get in the mainstream papers or on cable TV.

I hope you will consider a donation or a subscription to this little outpost this year. And many, many thanks to those who have contributed in years past and continue to do so. It's a great privilege and honor to be able to devote my time to this little project and I could not do it without you.

So, here are the buttons to donate. If you prefer to use snail mail, the address is at on the column to your left.

And once again --- Happy Hollandaise, everybody. Fasten your seatbelts. This is going to be the bumpiest flight we've had yet.

cheers --- digby
digby 12/18/2016 11:00:00 PM

 
A Battle Plan

by digby

I've tweeted out the link to the document a few times over the past few days, but I thought this New Yorker article gave some nice background on something that's gone viral in the progressive online world:

On Wednesday, around 7 p.m., a Google document entitled “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” began making the rounds online. Its origin was the Twitter account of Ezra Levin, a thirty-one-year-old associate director at a national anti-poverty nonprofit, and self-described “Twitter novice,” who lives in D.C. and, until a few days ago, had roughly six hundred and fifty followers. His tweet’s simple message, “Please share w/ your friends to help fight Trump’s racism, authoritarianism, & corruption on their home turf,” belied three weeks of unpaid work by some three dozen mostly young progressives who had been collaborating on the document since the week of Thanksgiving.

Levin and his wife, Leah, had gone to Austin, Texas, where he grew up, for the holiday, and had met with a college friend of his, named Sara Clough, at a local bar. Clough was an administrator of a private Facebook group that describes itself as “a place for support, healing, helping, sharing, community and love in the wake of the 2016 election.” Clough and others who belonged to progressive online communities—such as Pantsuit Nation—were “trying to figure out how best to act,” Levin said. “They knew that making calls and signing petitions were helpful, but then they hit a wall. They didn’t know what else to do or how to effectively engage Congress.” It seemed to Levin that there would be value in “describing what Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil already know.” As former congressional staffers—until 2011, Levin was the deputy policy director for Congressman Lloyd Doggett, who represents a district in central Texas—he and his friends could “demystify” congressional influence.

In the end, thirty or so thirty-somethings—most, but not all, in the D.C. area—ended up contributing, often virtually but sometimes sitting around a table in Levin’s Columbia Heights living room, crafting a guide to best practices. Some wrote whole sections; others edited for content or proofread. “A lot of folks contributed specific tactics they’d seen in their own congressional offices, or had read or heard about,” Levin said. They showed the evolving document to some of their parents and to people outside their D.C. bubble, asking, “Does this make sense? If you received it, would it be useful?” Though still unnamed, the project “became our hobby,” he said.

There was no deadline, he noted, “except we wanted to get it out before people left town for Christmas and the holidays and stopped checking e-mail or reading documents that are twenty-three pages long about how to save democracy.”

Even in its publicly released version, it’s still described as a “work in progress.” It is, by design, more practical than philosophical. “It’s not rocket science,” Levin said. “There are specific steps you can take to make change happen.” The text contains four chapters, amounting to a wonky choose-your-own-political-adventure: “How grassroots advocacy worked to stop Obama,” “How your MoC thinks and how to use that to save democracy,” “Identify or organize your local group,” and “Four local advocacy tactics that actually work.” Experience and research had revealed to Levin and the other authors that, “despite the despair that many progressives may be feeling right now, there really actually is a model for success.” Unfortunately, it belonged to the Tea Party.

The document analyzes the strategic wisdom of the Tea Party, focussing on its local activism and emphasis on defense rather than offense. “We tried to be really clear in the document that, like it or not, the Tea Party really did have significant accomplishments—facing more difficult odds than we face today—and that it’s worth thinking about what parts of their strategy and tactics really enabled that,” Levin said. “We aimed to balance that acknowledgment by being very clear that we’re not endorsing the Tea Party’s horrible and petty scare tactics.”

Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and a former staffer for Senators Edward Kennedy and Harry Reid, told me that he was impressed that the document “urges people to play defensive baseball.” “I understand the need for a positive agenda, as do they,” he added. “But I think they’re correct in their assessment on copying some of the tactics of the Tea Party and trying to make Republicans feel pain or pay a price for some of the stuff they’re about to vote on.” He said that he planned to keep the document on his desktop and work with it in the future.

There was some internal debate over whether the document should have a proactive agenda, or, like the Tea Party, focus on “just saying no” a lot. “We had to accept the hard truth that Republicans have unified control of the federal government and will be setting the agenda,” Levin said. “So when we’re thinking about what strategy local activists should take when they’re talking to their own members of Congress, they’re going to have the greatest impact if they’re being extraordinarily responsive to the agenda that those Republican members of Congress are setting.” There was also a lot of discussion about the guide’s name. “I don’t think anybody is wed to it,” Levin said. “There were a lot of policy wonks involved, not branding people, and that shows. I’ve misspelled the word ‘indivisible’ several times.”

Three authorial Twitter handles appear on “Indivisible,” belonging to Levin, Jeremy Haile (who worked in Congressman Doggett’s office with Levin), and Angel Padilla (one of Levin’s friends from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he got a graduate degree). “We were three of the only people who had Twitter accounts,” Levin explained. “We also didn’t want there to be some kind of mysterious, anonymous document that came out and inspired folks to speculate about its author. To avoid that scenario, we put a handful of names on it.” Beyond that, he hoped, the document would speak for itself.

The guide declares, “Our goal is to provide practical understanding of how your MoCs think, and how you can demonstrate to them the depth and power of the opposition to Donald Trump and Republican congressional overreach. This is not a panacea, nor is it intended to stand alone. We strongly urge you to marry the strategy in this guide with a broader commitment to creating a more just society, building local power, and addressing systemic injustice and racism.”
[...]
No print edition is planned, Levin said, “unless the folks out there that have the guide decide to print it. I hope they export it to a Word document and make it their own. That would be amazing to see.”

This is the link if you want to take a look and share it with your social networks.

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digby 12/18/2016 11:00:00 AM

 
QOTD

by digby

One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true -- they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They ore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and bred without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted." --- John Fowles, The Magus

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digby 12/18/2016 09:00:00 AM

 

Cool clear water

by Tom Sullivan

AQUA America water tank north of Raleigh, NC (from Google Earth).

With all the hot-and-heavy, super-session legislatin' going on in Raleigh, NC this week, I'm just getting around to another issue near and dear to America's Most Avaricious: water.

Something smells foul about the water in Corpus Christi, TX. The BBC:

The contaminant, they say, is Indulin AA-86, an asphalt emulsifier which can burn human skin in concentrated form.

On Wednesday the city of 320,000 people announced that residents should not touch, drink or use the water.

The ban has since been lifted for some city dwellers while officials investigate the origin of the spill.

"Boiling, freezing, filtering, adding chlorine or other disinfectants, or letting the water stand will not make the water safe," officials cautioned. The BBC continued:

City spokeswoman Kim Womack told a local news station that officials had inspected the suspected site of the contamination and had not found a "backflow preventer".

"They're saying there is one and we're telling them 'show us,'" she told KRIS-TV.

This lefty blogger is a piping engineer by trade, kiddies. Backflow preventers are required in city water lines connected to industrial users to prevent this sort of contamination. They are kind of hard to miss:

Here's the latest from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times:

Ergon Asphalt and Emulsions Inc. issued a statement Saturday evening that confirmed Indulin AA-86 and hydrochloric acid did escape the confines of a mixing tank it operates in the industrial district.

"A soap solution, which is comprised of approximately 98 percent water and 2 percent Indulin AA-86 and hydrochloric acid, back flowed into the separate water line within the Valero terminal," the statement read.

The statement did not indicate when the backflow may have occurred, or how much of the chemical is believed to have seeped back into the system.

Nobody knows just what the threshold effects are. The contamination may date back to November 23 and a few people are reporting symptoms of Indulin exposure.

Charlie Pierce writes:

This is the third water crisis for the area in two years. And it will not surprise you at all to learn that there are already lawsuits flying in the direction of Valero, the parent company of the firm in question, Ergon Asphalt and Emulsion of Jackson, Mississippi. The whole country is in the middle of a "backflow incident" right now. I think we're going to wash up, finally, in 1879.

But let's look at another source of fouled drinking water which the residents of Flint, MI might recognize. Some 81,000 homes in Pittsburgh received letters this summer warning of possible lead contamination in their water. Financially stretched public utilities around the nation are turning to the private sector water companies to help out with their aging infrastructure: global water barons such as Nestle and Suez, and smaller for-profit outfits such as Aqua America. Mother Jones from October:

Pittsburgh's utility called in Veolia, a Paris-based company that consults with utilities, promising "customized, cost-effective solutions that reflect best practices, environmental protection and a better quality of life." Veolia consults or manages water, waste, and energy systems in 530 cities in North America, with recent contracts in New York City, New Orleans, and Washington, DC. Last year, the company, which operates in 68 countries, brought in about $27 billion in revenue.

By the end of 2015 "the utility had laid off or fired 23 people—including the safety and water quality managers, and the heads of finance and engineering." Veolia switched from soda ash to a cheaper corrosion inhibitor:

Such a change typically requires a lengthy testing and authorization process with the state's Department of Environmental Protection, but the DEP was never informed of the change. Nearly two years later, as news spread about the disaster in Flint, the utility switched back to soda ash.

After Veolia took control in Pittsburgh, prices went up, billing became erratic, and customers initiated a class action lawsuit over "grossly inaccurate and at times outrageously high bills." Mother Jones reports:

Last December, facing the class-action lawsuit, a state citation for changing corrosion controls, and mounting debt, Pittsburgh terminated its contract with Veolia. All told, PWSA had paid Veolia $11 million over the course of the contract.

Earlier this month, the utility announced it was suing the company. According to a press release, Veolia "grossly mismanaged PWSA's operations, abused its positions of special trust and confidence, and misled and deceived PWSA as part of its efforts to maximize profits for itself to the unfair detriment of PWSA and its customers."

Pittsburgh follows Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Gary, Ind., and Buenos Aires and other international cities that found for-profit water not such a bargain. There's a reason for keeping public utilities public.

I've written plenty about water privatization and our decaying, once great American infrastructure. Our interstate highway system, for example, and other national projects worthy of a great nation. Now we are a country so fixated on the bottom line, we are turning our backs to public oversight, maintenance and capital investment. Wake up and smell the austerity. America can no longer afford Americans.

Mario Piscatella (one damned smart campaign manager) wrote this hours ago on Facebook:

As I come to the end of another cross country journey, my mind is stuck on the audacity of a different generation of political leaders - the Eisenhower interstate system was an unfathomably large undertaking, and any discussion of the cost must have induced gut tightening sticker shock in even the most strident supporters. But programs like the interstate system, the WPA, and so many other things that became the core of America were taken on and achieved before the rise of the self-centered quarterly profits first right.

Those leaders of the middle of last century inspired people to understand that by doing these big things, by investing in our infrastructure and our communities, everyone's lives would improve* and the investments would enable greater opportunity for individual innovation, entrepreneurship, and prosperity. These are the same outcomes falsely promised by trickle-down-greedonomics, but actually realised.

I've been tremendously privileged to see at least some piece of nearly every interstate highway coast to coast. I've seen many national and state parks, as well as forests, monuments, and other landmarks. We have a beautiful country filled with wonderful people.

Over the past few decades, we haven't been without the big ideas, the innovations for national prosperity, but those ideas have consistently been stomped on by those who wish to preserve their wealth and power. They have kept high speed rail offline while allowing our existing public transit systems to decay. They have allowed the state, federal, and municipal buildings built all those decades ago to crumble, giving people the vision that government is old and broken. Those highways and bridges that have powered our economy were consistently underfunded, ratcheting up the costs of repair in an insane fiscally irresponsible manner. They point to the pot holes and tell us it is because government can't do it right.

Then they privatize and pocket the profits... While the quality of service to the end user declines... And the cost escalates uncontrollably.

We don't just need big ideas. We need leaders able to inspire us. We need leaders that can make Americans believe in America again.

* Not really everyone. Communities of black, brown, and poor Americans, and basically everyone else but the wealthy white communities were systematically shafted time and again.

Well said. Somehow I don't think those are the kind of leaders taking over in January, or the kind of greatness they have in mind.




Undercover Blue 12/18/2016 06:00:00 AM

Saturday, December 17, 2016

 

Saturday Night at the Movies


Michael and me in Trumpland

By Dennis Hartley 

Growing up as a military brat is not easy. It’s a nomadic life; not so much by choice as by assignment. In the military, you follow orders, and if you have a family, they follow you. To this day, no matter where I’m living, or how long I have lived there, I feel like a perennial “outsider”.

And so it was, back in the summer of 1968, that my dad received a reassignment from Ft. Wainwright, Alaska (where we had been stationed for 4 ½ years) to Clinton County Air Force Base, Ohio (yes, he was in the Army, but certain Army units were attached there…I could explain why, but if I did, I would then unfortunately have to kill you, and I am a man of peace). Now, understand that Fort Wainwright was a sizable installation; and my family lived on-base. Living in the “family quarters” of a large army base is analogous to living in a dense metropolitan environment. Nobody is “from” the locality where you all happen to be thrown together; consequently there’s a rich diversity in a concentrated area…social, racial, religious, and cultural.

Not so much in the sleepy hamlet of Sabina (also known as “The Eden of Ohio”), which is where my family ended up living “off-base” from 1968-1969. The 2010 census counted 2,564 souls, of which 97.0% were white, 0.9% African American, 0.3% Native American, 0.43% Asian, 0.07% from other races, and 1.12% from one or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.15% of the population. I don’t have the town’s ethnic breakdown for 1968, but between my memories and my suspicions, those ratios likely have not deviated much since Sabina was founded in 1830.

You’re probably getting the picture here that Sabina’s populace is the opposite of “diversity”. There is also a tendency (I have found) in your smaller burgs, in your more rural areas, for the locals to be less than welcoming to “outsiders” and somewhat clannish (and since we are talking about Ohio, you could spell that with a “k” and not be historically inaccurate). Now, before y’all get riled up and start to accuse yours truly of “flyover state” stereotyping, or painting with broad strokes (sins of the fathers, and all that), let me say that I am sure 99.9% of the folks currently living in beautiful Sabina, Ohio are good-hearted people…and fine, upstanding citizens.

However, my own personal interactions with some Sabina locals, specifically from autumn of 1968 through late summer of 1969, do not exactly make for pleasant memories. In fact, my 7th grade year was a living fucking hell. Now, I realize that nearly anybody you would care to ask has an anecdote or two about getting “picked on” at school while they were growing up; the law of averages guarantees that you will be bullied at some point in your 12 years of public schooling.

But what I’m talking about here isn’t an isolated incident or two. What I’m talking about is unrelenting harassment, verbal and physical. What I’m talking about is being informed that “we’re going to be waiting for you after school to kick your ass” on a daily basis. I’d been bullied before, but there was an added element to the intimidation unique to my Sabina experience. This was the first (but unfortunately, not the last) time someone ever called me a “kike” while pushing me around. I managed to keep most of this from my folks, until the day one of these bushwhacking yahoos sat behind me on the bus and boxed my ears so hard I had to see a doctor.

Good times.

So what does my personal memoir of woe have to do with this week’s film review? Well, as fate would have it, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, filmmaker Michael Moore has intuited the Clinton County seat of Wilmington as the perfect microcosm of what he calls “Trumpland” (Wilmington is only about ten miles from my old “stomping” grounds in Sabina).

Michael Moore in TrumpLand (***) was an “October surprise” of sorts; sprung by Moore on an unsuspecting public with no advance hype. The high-concept title of this 73-minute film, (documenting a “one night only” performance piece by Moore) says it all…whether you are a fan or a hater-you know this is going to be a “fish-out-of-water” narrative, layered with irony. First, there’s the venue, the historic Murphy Theater. It’s prime benefactor? Glenn Beck (it burns!). And Moore takes pains to point out he’s in Clinton County, which is antipode to Clinton country.

Aside from an opening montage featuring locals parroting Breitbart memes and reinforcing the more cartoonish stereotypes of the “typical” Trump voter, Moore suppresses any further urges to shoot fish in a barrel. In fact, Moore telegraphed his good intentions not only by making his show admission-free, but requested that “Trump Voters Welcome” be added to the theater’s marquee.

After taking a “show of hands” census to establish how many in the audience support Hillary, how many support Trump, and who is undecided or supporting independent candidates, it appears that he is dealing with a fairly balanced mix. Employing his trademark mix of entertaining shtick and genuine empathy, Moore attempts to build rapport with the Trump supporters, and really seems to get inside their heads. At least for the first 30 minutes…then, he pulls a bait-and-switch.

It’s subtle. After disarmingly confiding he’s never voted for either Clinton, he mentions the chapter “My Forbidden Love for Hillary” from “Downsize This!” to segue into…his forbidden love for Hillary. By the time he’s finished with what morphs into an impassioned summation of the humanity that’s always driven her dedication to public service, obscured and weather-beaten as it may be from enduring years of anti-Hillary vitriol and character assassination, there’s nary a dry eye in the house…Trump supporters included. It is a master class in rhetorical showmanship.

While my description of that rhapsodic interlude could indicate otherwise, the film is not a Hillary hagiography. For example, Moore makes no bones about his disappointment regarding some of Hillary’s voting decisions while she was serving in the Senate; and he promises to hold her feet to the fire on her campaign promises if she wins. But he also waxes hopeful; launching into a speculative Utopian reverie on how things will be once Hillary becomes POTUS (*sigh*).

It was clearly Moore’s intention that Trumpland (filmed October 7 and released a scant 2 weeks afterwards) would ideally be seen by as many people as possible before November 8. However, he was careful to cover all his bases. If there is one consistency about Michael Moore’s films, it is that they are prescient…and already, I can identify at least one nail he hit squarely on the head.

This comes in the form of another speculative scenario Moore lays out, this one for Trump supporters to envision, should the election go their way. Moore assures them that he feels their pain; as a fellow Midwesterner from a manufacturing town in neighboring Michigan, he “gets” the frustrations that have been building up within the ranks of a certain white, working-class demographic, why they are feeling squeezed out, and why Trump might appear to be their savior.

Suddenly, in a wonderfully theatrical flourish, Moore seems to shapeshift into a Trump voter. He talks about how they are going to feel on Election Day, how incredibly empowering it will be to put that “x” in the Trump box on their ballot card. It’s going to be the “…biggest ‘fuck you’ ever recorded in human history” when their boy takes the White House. “It’s going to feel REAL good,” Moore assures them, “for about…a week.” Uh-oh. “A week?” What’s he mean by that?

It will kind of be like Brexit, Moore explains after a suitable dramatic pause to let things soak in. Remember how eager the Brexit supporters were to shake things up in their country, and give a big “fuck you” to Europe? Sure, they “won”. But then, buyer’s regret set in. There was even a desperate stab to petition for a re-vote, spearheaded by many of the very people who supported it!

OK, so maybe Trump voters haven’t quite reached that stage yet, but they will. Their soon-to-be Fearless Leader is sending up oodles of red flags with kleptocratic cabinet appointment after kleptocratic cabinet appointment. Now, that seems to be in direct contradiction to his campaign stance as champion of the working class…d’ya think? So…just give them time (and pitchforks).

That’s what I say about Moore’s film…give it time. And here’s a stock tip: go long on pitchforks.


Michael Moore in TrumpLand is streaming on Amazon.

# # #

BTW here’s a great government website that might not be here after January 20. Better cache it.


More reviews at Den of Cinema

--Dennis Hartley
digby 12/17/2016 06:01:00 PM

 
Swastikas Came to My Block in Manhattan

by tristero

No, that is not hyperbole. This is from my block association today here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan:

Graffiti Attack on [UPPER WEST SIDE BLOCK]:

You may have heard that we have had a recent graffiti incident on Tuesday, December 13 during the evening or night. The graffiti was noted on buildings *** and *** RSD as well as [***] WEA. It appears the graffiti were swastikas and a letter “A” with a circle around it. 

The police were called to the locations. I am in contact with Police Officer *** of the 24th Precinct Graffiti Squad and will provide you with any progress they make toward apprehending the perpetrators.  

It should be noted that the perpetrators struck on the evening of our block security guard’s day off. Our block security guard works six days a week.

Sure, it was probably drunk young people who had no idea what they were doing. Then again, a lot of those who perpetrated Krisatllnacht were probably drunk young people who had no idea what they were doing.

Adding: I am very afraid, but not personally. I am very afraid for the communities that Trump singled out for the attention of his deplorables.
tristero 12/17/2016 05:00:00 PM

 
Fascism is good for ratings

by digby

One scary ad:

Trump's lunacy is compelling. But the media should be careful about using it as a sales pitch for "the news."



digby 12/17/2016 03:30:00 PM

 
When Trump threatened to kill people in the streets

by digby

Philippine President Duterte has been bragging that he personally killed people. It's quite shocking.

Our new president hasn't said he has done it. But he's certainly implied that he'd like to. And he celebrated vigilantism too:




I wrote about this psycho fantasy for Salon back in October of 2015:

On the stump last week-end, Donald Trump entertained his followers in the wake of the massacre in Oregon with colorful fantasies of him walking down the street, pulling a gun on a would-be assailant and taking him out right there on the sidewalk. He said, “I have a license to carry in New York, can you believe that? Somebody attacks me, they’re gonna be shocked,” at which point he mimes a quick draw. 

As the crowd applauds and cheers, he goes on to say “somebody attacks me, oh they’re gonna be shocked. Can you imagine? Somebody says, oh there’s Trump, he’s easy pickins…” And then he pantomimes the quick draw again. 

Everybody laughs. And then Trump talks about an old Charles Bronson vigilante movie and they all chanted the name “Death Wish” together. Keep in mind that this sophomoric nonsense took place just two days after a disturbed man went into a classroom and shot 17 people.

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digby 12/17/2016 02:00:00 PM

 
The carbon election

by digby

Ron Brownstein, whom I consider to be the best (and most prescient) of all the electoral analysts, offered up a very interesting observation about the election this week. He comes at the question of polarization from some original perspectives:

For Democrats, the lingering question of whether it was demographic or economic anxiety that primarily motivated Donald Trump’s coalition is a little like poet Robert Frost asking whether the world will end in fire or ice.

The answer may be the same, too. Frost, of course, concluded that either would do the job. “I hold with those who favor fire,” he wrote, before adding: “for destruction ice/Is also great/And would suffice.” Likewise, with Trump, the accumulating evidence suggests his core voters feel eclipsed by both the cultural and economic changes reshaping American life.

Trump’s polarizing appeal has deepened the existing geographic and demographic fault lines in American politics into a chasm so imposing it could mark the border between two countries. On one side, Hillary Clinton routed Trump in the racially and culturally diverse metropolitan centers that are helping forge a globalized, information-based, and low-carbon economy. On the other, Trump posted crushing margins in the places that feel eclipsed, or threatened, by all of those trends.

The latest evidence of this widening divide comes from Trump’s repeated selection of oil-industry allies for key Cabinet positions: Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of state, former Texas Governor Rick Perry for secretary of energy, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the Environmental Protection Agency administrator. Tillerson and Perry have both displayed some nuance in their approach to energy. But, overall, with those choices, Trump has indelibly endorsed the fear that reducing carbon emissions to combat the destabilizing threat of global climate change will undermine economic growth.

Experience simply doesn’t justify that fear. As Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, calculated in an important recent analysis, since 2000 the United States increased its economic output by 30 percent while reducing carbon emissions by 10 percent. Over that period, he reported, fully 33 states grew their economies while reducing their emissions.

Yet despite these reductions, the states most bound to the fossil-fuel economy, like Oklahoma and Texas, still emit vastly more carbon per person than greener states do. And that energy divide now almost perfectly tracks the current political divide.

Comparing the latest federal figures on states’ per capita carbon emissions with the 2016 election results produces a clear pattern. Trump carried all of the 22 states with the most per capita carbon emissions, except for New Mexico, and 27 of the top 32 in all. (Colorado, Illinois, Delaware, and Minnesota were the Clinton-voting exceptions.) The Democratic nominee won 15 of the 18 states with the lowest per capita emissions—with the exception of Florida, North Carolina, and Idaho. 

The Carbon Connection

This divergence sharpened the pattern already evident under President Obama. Among the 18 lowest-emitting states, Clinton lost only one—Florida—that Obama carried in 2012. But among the top 32 emitters, five Rustbelt states that Obama won last time flipped to Trump: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Energy policy wasn’t the principal reason those states switched. But carbon emissions illuminate a state’s broader economic structure. The high-emitting states, as Muro noted, are either “producers of oil, gas, and coal or big consumers of it, with a heavy manufacturing base across the Midwest.” By contrast, “the bluer, lower-carbon states are much further along in the transition to a post-industrial economy,” he added. “They are dominated by digital and related technology and business services, they are more urban and therefore more [energy] efficient.”American politics seems destined to increasingly align the Democratic Party with voters most comfortable with the nation’s hurtling economic, demographic, and cultural change.

With only a few exceptions, cultural dynamics reinforce these economic contrasts. The high-carbon states—centered on the Plains, the Mountain West, and portions of the South—also tend to be more rural, more religiously traditional, and often less racially diverse than the low-carbon states. Following that trail, American politics seems destined to increasingly align the Democratic Party with voters most comfortable with the nation’s hurtling economic, demographic, and cultural change—and the Republican party with voters most resistant to it.

That resistance can’t reverse the change—on any front. Kids of color will comprise a majority of the under-18 population soon after 2020. Though Clinton won less than one-sixth of America’s counties, Muro’s research found her counties account for nearly two-thirds of the nation’s total economic output. And even Trump’s greatest exertions aren’t likely to reverse the long-term shift from high- to lower-carbon alternatives in both energy sources—from coal to natural gas and renewables—and economic activities—from manufacturing to services and digital innovation.

This is the important thought about the future:

The Democrats’ challenge is that their coalition has crumbled in states that fear these changes, particularly in the Rustbelt, faster than it has coalesced in the states benefiting from them, which are mostly across the Sunbelt. To recapture the White House in four years, they’ll need recovery on both fronts. But the Democrats’ long-term prospects will likely rely on accelerating their leap across these overlapping economic, cultural, and energy divides.

Though renewable sources are gaining ground in some Midwest states, Democrats face structural challenges in a preponderantly white and older region where manufacturing powered by low-cost, coal-generated electricity looms so large. More promising for them may be racially diversifying Sunbelt states that are also decoupling from fossil fuels as they shift toward both renewable energy sources and post-industrial employment. Already, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida rank in the bottom 20 states for carbon emissions.

Reflected in choices like his oil-drenched Cabinet, Trump’s agenda looks to mid-20th century America as its inspiration—not only culturally, but also in its vision of an economy where manufacturing and fossil fuels play a larger role, and immigrants and imports a smaller one, than they do today. Smart Democrats will recognize that, in the process, he’s leaving them an opening with the industries and regions more likely to propel growth in this century. Against the ice of Trump’s restoration, Democrats may have no choice but to stoke the fire of transformation.

Interesting, no? And with far reaching implications. I think we know that acquiescing to these folks' desire for a return to their old economy is a losing proposition for everyone, including them.

Brownstein believes that the regional realignment is inevitable and that 2016 was caught in the transition with the GOP's new rust belt states moving more quickly to the new composition than the Democrats' move to the sun belt. If he's correct in his analysis, then Democrats may be fighting the last war. A war they already lost. And in doing so they may lose the big one.  

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digby 12/17/2016 12:30:00 PM

 

A quick test for The Donald

by digby

In case you had any doubts about our new president being a sick piece of work, take the following short test (it only takes a few minutes) as if you were Trump. Indeed, all you really have to do is look at the questions.

http://personality-testing.info/tests/SD3/


About the test:

The dark triad personality traits are three closely related yet independent personality traits that all have a somewhat malevolent connotation. The three traits are machiavellianism (a manipulative attitude), narcissism (excessive self-love), and psychopathy (lack of empathy). The dark triad has traditionally been assessed with three tests different tests, each of which had been developed individually. Most commonly, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) was used as the measure of narcissism, the MACH-IV for machiavellianism and the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP) for psychopathy. Format differences between these (multiple choice versus scale rating) complicated administration and analysis. The Short Dark Triad was developed in 2011 by Delroy Paulhus and Daniel Jones to provide a more uniform assessment and also to trim down the total length.

Procedure: The test consists of twenty seven statements that must be rated on how much you agree with them. The test should not take most people more than five minutes.

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digby 12/17/2016 11:00:00 AM

 
He has a good brain

by digby

No he wasn't trying to be clever.  They went back and fixed it later.

Also, he's ginning up a war.


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digby 12/17/2016 09:30:00 AM

 

Not the comfy chair!

by Tom Sullivan

The special "get even" session called by Republicans in control of North Carolina's legislature ended yesterday with the sobering message that the Republicans' model for all-American governance is heads, we win, tails, you lose. Yesterday's session included the arrest of 39 protesters and passage of bills to curtail the power of the incoming Democratic governor. It was, to borrow from Churchill, the end of the beginning.

There will be more arrests, more legislative gamesmanship, and more court cases to follow. The problem for Democrats, both in North Carolina and nationwide is who will lead? Responding to President Obama's Friday press conference, Michelle Goldberg finds his "near-supernatural calm and dispassion" more hindrance than help, leaving his party "leaderless, marching toward the post-inauguration abyss without a fight."

Jeet Heer at New Republic wishes Democrats had in place an opposition leader position to fill the void. Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be a natural under current circumstances:

Warren would be the go-to person when the media wants the Democratic Party’s response to Trump’s latest words and actions; other politicians and surrogates would take their cues from her. She would take the lead on setting and articulating the party’s talking points, while Pelosi and Schumer work to whip Democrats in Congress. Warren would give the party the tough-but-appealing face, and voice, it so badly needs. And grassroots Democrats could, and would, amplify her voice—they’d have someone to rally around, to point to as their key anti-Trump champion.

Democrats are, by nature, rule-followers—and there’s no tradition of having an official role for an opposition leader in one of the major parties. Crafting a position like this for Warren would be a radical move. But radical times call for radical measures. Democrats have to oppose Trump as hard and effectively as they can—and they can’t wait till January 20 to start mounting that opposition. The only way the party can hope to put the brakes on the worst of the Trump agenda is to come together as a cohesive party. And that means rallying around a leader who can help it speak with one voice.

The glue that holds our republic together is in acceptance of norms of democratic behavior. Trump, McConnell, NC Republicans shattering them

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) December 16, 2016

But radical just makes many Democrats uncomfortable, even when Democrat's just another word for nothing left to lose. After the losses of November 8 and the legislative coup this week in Raleigh, Democrats ought to be ready to try something new. They won't. Liberals are supposedly more inclined to trying new things. Yet a party stripped of power still treats its organization, worn and tattered, like the comfortable chair it can't part with. Rather than trading in "old and busted" for the "new hotness," party regulars again will be inclined to play it safe, to hunker down and wait out the Trump storm. Radical moves are called for, and just what Democrats from the sitting president on down are disinclined to try.

At New York magazine, Jonathan Chait finds Sen. Chuck Schumer's strategy for protecting rather than expanding his Senate caucus emblematic of that problem, exacerbated by looking for ways to cooperate with the Trump administration:

Schumer’s idea is a faithful reflection of the way Congress thought about politics years ago, when Schumer was coming up through the system. It’s a totally plausible model, which assumes that vulnerable members of Congress can shore up their standing by proving to their constituents that they can win concrete achievements. That is how Schumer has built a career, and he wants to help Democrats in red states do the same, by finding some bills where they can shake hands with Trump and cut ribbons on some bridges, and so on. Schumer’s idea can be boiled down to:

Senate Democrats work with Trump → Voters conclude Senate Democrats are doing a good job → Senate Democrats win reelection.

Hello? McFly? That's not how it works anymore. Chait continues:

Under Obama, Schumer logic would have dictated that vulnerable Republicans demonstrate a willingness to work together with the extremely popular new president. Instead, the Republican Party denied any bipartisan support for almost any bill, despite the popularity of both Obama and the proposals at issue. This created a sense of partisan dysfunction that allowed Republicans to make major gains in midterm elections, despite the fact that their party and its agenda remained deeply unpopular. The actual dynamic, then, is:

Senate Democrats work with Trump → Voters conclude Trump is doing a good job → Senate Republicans and Trump win reelection

or:

Senate Democrats don’t work with Trump → Voters conclude Trump is doing a bad job → Senate Democrats win reelection

How's that first one been working for ya?

North Carolina Democrats will be electing a new state chair about the same time the national party elects a new leader for the DNC. Even in the face of what happened this week, there will be an inclination among party regulars of Jim Hunt vintage to back a safe choice, someone not too radical or confrontational, someone who won't ruffle any feathers among establishment members or drive off regular donors — as if the party still has something left to lose.

Expect the same dynamic to play out in the race for DNC chair. Howard Dean was once the crazy radical who if elected DNC chair would ruin everything. Instead, he brought to the party a model for raising online millions from small-dollar donors and a 50-state plan that helped Democrats win in districts that had not had seen assistance from the DNC in years. Those helped turn 2006 into a big pickup year for Democrats and paved the way for Barack Obama's win in 2008. Then Democrats went right back to their comfy chairs. Dean was out. Wasserman Schultz was in.

It's not enough to have a progressive ideology, of course. It also takes skills. And the right combination for the right time. Plus a party willing to let a new generation of leaders take the reins.

Old and busted or new hotness?


Undercover Blue 12/17/2016 06:00:00 AM

Friday, December 16, 2016

 
Friday Night Soother

by digby


Kaheem saves Santa!

Kaheem just saved Santa #KaheemSavesDC 😩😩😩😭😭😭❤ pic.twitter.com/wxdTicHxuH

— SUNNI (@SunniAndTheCity) December 16, 2016

Oh heck, here's a cute kitten and a husky:

Get a kitten they said, it will be fun they said pic.twitter.com/28QRKo0T2N

— Baby Animals (@BabyAnimalPics) December 15, 2016

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digby 12/16/2016 05:30:00 PM

 
Nothing to see here folks, move along

by digby

The media is being very defensive about President Obama's contention that they were obsessive about Hillary Clinton's alleged corruption during the campaign. Very defensive.

John Amato caught Jake Tapper being particularly testy on the subject:

CNN's Jake Tapper addressed how he felt the media was being unfairly tarred by both the Clinton and Trump campaigns.

He said he didn't want to draw false equivalencies, but in reality that's why he actually did. Tapper rightly called out Trump surrogates for attempting to deny Russia's involvement in cyber espionage on our election process.

He said, "U.S. intelligence agencies are saying very clearly that Russians conducted these hacks of the DNC and John Podesta - some of the e-mails ended up in the public domain through Wikileaks and that may have had an influence on the election, one way or another...And that's just a fact."

On the flip side he argued against Clinton and President Obama for claiming that the media focused way too much on Clinton's emails and the Foundation and not much else.

Tapper said, "We're hearing this from comments Hillary Clinton made last night and President Obama suggesting "there's no doubt it contributed [the Russian hacks] to the atmosphere in which the only focus for weeks at a time, months at a time were Hillary's e-mail, the Clinton Foundation, political gossip surrounding the DNC."

Tapper claimed, "That didn't happen. There was no time during the election where the only thing we heard about was Hillary's e-mail, the Clinton Foundation, political gossip surrounding the DNC."

He continued, "You can argue we heard about it too much, but I certainly recall a lot of negative coverage of Donald Trump."

Tapper apparently hasn't heard or didn't understand the real critique. It's not that the press didn't offer negative coverage of trump, it's that they pounded on simple story about Clinton allegedly being secretive and corrupt over and over and over again until it took on a life of its own. It got to the point that the word "email" and Clinton added up to Watergate in people's minds. And it simply was not justified. Clinton's so-called "corruption" was a pale imitation of what we're seeing with Trump and I don't think very many reporters were following his conflicts of interest and the fact that he had no plan to deal with it. It only came up in one primary debate at the very beginning of the cycle --- and Maria Bartiromo let trump get away with saying ythat giving his business to his kids is the same thing as a blind trust.

There was no contest between the Clinton email story and the overwhelming number of egregious conflicts, crimes and
grotesque abuses in Donald Trump's history. To see the press defend their phony need to "balance" that coverage is really depressing.


FWIW, I wrote a piece about the press for Salon last June in which I mentioned a Clinton state department story that Jake Tapper seemed to see as an extremely important example of government malfeasance that played into Clinton's reputation for secretiveness. This is an excerpt:

Here is an example of false equivalence from just this week. Nobody has done more to probe Donald Trump's noxious views than CNN's Jake Tapper. His grilling of the candidate over his bigoted comments about the federal judge overseeing his Trump University lawsuit in California was as good as it gets and he received many kudos for his aggressive journalism.

He continued to report on Trump on his show yesterday but also featured a harsh criticism of Hillary Clinton in which he lambasted the State Department's stated inability to release emails pertaining to her work on the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal to reporter David Sirota until after the election. He took on a very aggressive tone, editorializing about the importance of releasing this information when people are deciding whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

However, he notes that while Clinton was President Obama's Secretary of State she openly advocated for the deal in glowing terms, even calling it the "gold standard", facts which have been known for years and have been well hashed out on the campaign trail and in the debates with Bernie Sanders. Now she says she has changed her mind and is against the deal. Politifact called it a flip-flop.

So what exactly does Tapper think they will learn about her position that they don't already know? Maybe she was more involved than she says she was, which would be interesting, but somewhat meaningless since we know she advocated strongly for it all over the world. In the end you either believe she's really changed her mind or you don't and these documents from years ago will not shed any new light on that.

I don't mean to pick on Tapper. He's a great journalist, one of the best on cable news. The temptation to try to "even things out" with this sort of coverage has to be overwhelming when a personality like Trump dominates the coverage the way he does. It must feel to a straight mainstream journalist as if they're piling on him every day and it looks like they're being partisan and unfair. Certainly the right wing is accusing them of that non-stop --- as they have been for more than 30 years.

But the result of this "distortion toward the middle" as Jay Rosen calls it, has the perverse affect of normalizing Trump and pathologizing Clinton in a way that equalizes them to Trump's advantage. He is an unqualified, unfit, unhinged authoritarian demagogue and she is a mainstream Democratic party politician. There is no equivalence between them. Let's hope the press listens to some of these critics and does a serious gut check whenever they are tempted to "balance" the coverage in this election.

This is what happened. And it had an effect. A big one, even if they refuse to admit it.


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digby 12/16/2016 04:30:00 PM

 
Where's Jesus?

by digby

I don't think there are enough Christmas trees on stage myself. And were are the angels toppers?  No crosses? Is this some kind of pagan "Xmas" pageant?

I call bullshit.

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digby 12/16/2016 03:00:00 PM

 
Consensus at last

by digby

Well, better late than never I guess, but really, really late:

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials.

Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion — and officials say that he never changed his position — suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA.

“Earlier this week, I met separately with (Director) FBI James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” CIA Director John Brennan said in a message to the agency’s workforce, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.

“The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing the thorough review of this issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led by the DNI,” Brennan’s message read.

So that's good.

Recall this from November 1st:

Comey was concerned publicly blaming Russia for hacks of Democrats could appear too political in run-up to elections

By Ellen Nakashima November 1

FBI Director James B. Comey advised against the Obama administration publicly accusing Russia of hacking political organizations on the grounds that it would make the administration appear unduly partisan too close to the Nov. 8 election, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

But he supported the administration’s formal denunciation last month as long as it did not have the FBI’s name on it, they said. Comey was sensitive not only to his agency appearing to influence the election but also to seeming biased while it was conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

At the same time, the bureau works with Russian services on a variety of terrorism and criminal matters.

[U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaigns to interfere in the 2016 election]

The FBI declined to comment.

Nonetheless, Comey’s concern about election timing has some officials scratching their heads in light of his decision last week to notify Congress — 11 days before the election — that the FBI was planning to review newly discovered emails in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

That notification set off an uproar in both parties, as lawmakers demanded to know what was in the emails and whether there was any indication of criminal wrongdoing.

“It’s really hard to square” the two, said one official, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal discussions.

Comey’s reluctance to have the FBI linked to the public attribution was first reported by CNBC.

Other officials familiar with Comey’s thinking say that there is no contradiction in his actions. In the case of the newly found Clinton emails, the official said, he was well aware of the approaching election. But he determined it was more important to inform Congress of the development, given that he had testified that the investigation was completed and that he nonetheless would look at “any new and substantial information.”

In the debate over publicly naming Russia, the FBI has investigative interests to protect, officials said. At the same time, other officials said, the aim of public attribution was to stop Russia from undermining confidence in the integrity of the election.

On Friday, Oct. 7, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint statement, formally blaming Moscow for attempting to interfere in the election, including by hacking the computers of political organizations.

Although the statement did not name victims, it was clearly alluding to the breaches of the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic organizations, and the subsequent leaking of embarrassing emails of Democratic officials on sites such as WikiLeaks.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.

The news of the DNC hack broke in June, with cybersecurity experts who responded to the breach concluding it was the work of Russian government hackers. FBI investigators at the time privately said that was their conclusion, too. A series of other breaches soon came to light, including of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which the FBI privately said were carried out by the Russians.

But the White House, Justice Department, State Department and other agencies debated for months whether to officially blame Moscow.

Comey’s instincts were to go with the public attribution even as late as August, said one participant in the debate. But as the weeks went by and the election drew nearer, “he thought it was too close,” the official said.

When, by early October, the decision was made, the talk shifted to who would make the announcement. In December 2014, it was the FBI that publicly pointed the finger at North Korea for hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment and damaging its computers. That was because the attribution to Pyongyang was based on an FBI investigation, said a senior administration official. In the Russian case, the attribution was based on a fusion of intelligence from intelligence agencies, the bureau and private-sector cyber experts, the official said. “So it made sense that the people who were responsible for integrating all of that information” — the ODNI — should be part of the announcement, he said.

DHS joined the attribution because it is the agency responsible for working with state and local governments in protecting election systems.

The announcement did not mention the White House, which also had been very concerned about appearing to influence the election.

He should be fired. But he won't be.

The FBI may have come around, bu I'm going to guess they will be happy to assist the Republicans in the cover-up. It's clear they are complicit.

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digby 12/16/2016 01:30:00 PM

 
Trump's army

by digby

Krugman talks about useful idiots in his column today:

It’s important to realize that the postelection C.I.A. declaration that Russia had intervened on behalf of the Trump campaign was a confirmation, not a revelation (although we’ve now learned that Mr. Putin was personally involved in the effort).

The pro-Putin tilt of Mr. Trump and his advisers was obvious months before the election — I wrote about it in July. By midsummer the close relationship between WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence was also obvious, as was the site’s growing alignment with white nationalists.

Did Republican politicians, so big on flag waving and impugning their rivals’ patriotism, reject this foreign aid to their cause? No, they didn’t. In fact, as far as I can tell, no major Republican figure was even willing to criticize Mr. Trump when he directly asked Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It has long been obvious — except, apparently, to the news media — that the modern G.O.P. is a radical institution that is ready to violate democratic norms in the pursuit of power. Why should the norm of not accepting foreign assistance be any different?

The bigger surprise was the behavior of the news media, and I don’t mean fake news; I mean big, prestigious organizations. Leaked emails, which everyone knew were probably the product of Russian hacking, were breathlessly reported as shocking revelations, even when they mostly revealed nothing more than the fact that Democrats are people.


Meanwhile, the news media dutifully played up the Clinton server story, which never involved any evidence of wrongdoing, but merged in the public mind into the perception of a vast “email” scandal when there was nothing there.

And then there was the Comey letter. The F.B.I. literally found nothing at all. But the letter dominated front pages and TV coverage, and that coverage — by news organizations that surely knew that they were being used as political weapons — was almost certainly decisive on Election Day.

So as I said, there were a lot of useful idiots this year, and they made the election hack a success.

Yes there were many useful idiots then and the phenomenon continues. I've lost interest in internecine battles and policing of hypocrisy, both liberal and conservative. All of that seems completely irrelevant now.

There has never been anyone like Trump, so I recognize that he's difficult to wrap your mind around. But I truly believe he's also the greatest threat to world peace and American democracy we've seen in many a moon. America is still the most powerful nation on earth and it's in the hands of a cretinous demagogue with fascist tendencies and he's surrounding himself with sycophants and lunatics. It will be a miracle if we manage to avoid catastrophe.


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digby 12/16/2016 11:00:00 AM

 
Will the congress hold the cabinet to a higher standard than the American people have held the president?

by digby

I wrote about the upcoming hearings for Salon this morning:

Anyone who is observing this trainwreck of a presidential transition will not be surprised to learn that one of its most important duties is being carried out in slipshod fashion. According to the Wall Street Journal, the interviewing of nominees for the cabinet and other important administration jobs is haphazard at best. Announcements come at the whim of the president-elect, making it very difficult to create what is normally a thematic introduction of the new administration. Donald Trump just throws names out when he feels like it, and nobody has time to prepare the ground with the Senate and gather “sponsors” who will usher the nominees through the hearings and create an orderly process.

The incoming administration is also apparently failing to vet its nominees correctly, which is usually the most important job in the transition. According to the Journal, Trump is announcing his choices “without requiring a review of extensive paperwork about their background and financial records, including tax returns.” This is a vital task to ensure that a new administration is not met with any surprises in the hearings. With so many nominees without previous experience in government and so many potential conflicts due to their business careers, this ought to be of particular importance.

And it’s not just the newbies who aren’t being properly vetted. Even Sen. Jeff Sessions, nominated for attorney general, has raised eyebrows among Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats by refusing to give answers or provide material in response to the standard questionnaire. When the committee followed up, he still failed to provide the information they requested, which may not be surprising, since Sessions was famously denied a federal judgeship due to a troubling racist history turned up by this same committee in the 1980s.

One would assume Sessions might have learned his lesson since then, but committee Democrats and groups like People for the American Way are justifiably concerned that he has failed to provide records of any speeches, Op-Eds or interviews prior to 1998, specifically on touchy subjects like immigration. The senior Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has requested that Sessions’ confirmation be postponed until he provides all the requested material. So far, there is little reason to believe that’s going to happen.

In years past, this lackadaisical vetting process might well have ended with a nominee forced to withdraw, or even a possible rejection. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush nominated John Tower, a longtime Texas senator and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to be his secretary of defense. Being a member of the club, everyone assumed he’d be easily confirmed but it turned out that Tower was known as an excessive drinker and womanizer and he was voted down 53-47.

A few years later, President Bill Clinton nominated lawyer Zoe Baird to be the first female attorney general, and she was forced to withdraw when it was revealed that she had hired an undocumented nanny and failed to pay Social Security taxes for her in a timely manner. His next nominee, Kimba Wood, was also quickly withdrawn when it turned out she had also employed an undocumented nanny, although she’d paid the required taxes. The press was in a frenzy for weeks over all this, even dubbing it “Nannygate.” Clinton finally was able to seat the first female A.G. by finding a nominee who had no children, Janet Reno.

When President Obama named former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2009, his nomination was derailed when it was found that Daschle hadn’t reported income on one of the required forms, and had failed to pay some taxes on a car and driver that had been provided for him. He paid them late, but the Republicans called for the fainting couch and Daschle was forced to withdraw as well.

The upshot is that cabinet nominees are supposed to be squeaky clean, and under normal circumstances any slight problem with their financial records or their personal behavior can be lethal. So far there have been some grumblings among Republican senators about Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO Trump has chosen to be secretary of state, largely because of Tillerson’s business ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin. So members of the media are breathlessly anticipating grueling hearings.

But why? We just elected a president who insulted POWs and Gold Star parents, who talked about his penis on national television and was heard on tape bragging about grabbing women by the crotch. He is an admitted fraud who refuses to divulge his taxes. His conflicts of interest, and those of his family, are unprecedented. It is clear that the FBI stepped into the election in the final days on his behalf, and we are now embroiled in a global scandal and potential national security crisis due to evidence that Vladimir Putin himself intervened in the election to help Trump win the election.

Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that the GOP Congress, and by extension their voters, will find something disqualifying about Trump’s cabinet choices? Sure, there are conflict-of-interest laws that apply to people who aren’t the president. Even so, how can anyone demand that a cabinet official release his financial information when the president, a billionaire with potential conflicts all over the world, has refused to? What personal misdeeds could possibly top what we know about Donald Trump’s predatory activities? The idea that hiring an undocumented nanny could be disqualifying when Trump has employed thousands of undocumented immigrants as construction workers or hotel staff is laughable. Sure the Democrats will bring these matters up, but it’s highly doubtful that the GOP majority will deny any appointment. They only apply such double standards to Democrats.

Yesterday it was reported that Trump has decided not to divest himself of his business, and that his team has found a “loophole” in the nepotism laws that make it illegal for his family to be directly involved in his administration. So let’s not kid ourselves. We have crossed into new territory in which there are no rules, and barely any laws, constraining the presidency. Whatever fireworks may happen at the confirmation hearings will all be for the reality show we now call politics.

digby 12/16/2016 09:30:00 AM

 

NCGOP: Ruthless is as ruthless does

by Tom Sullivan

A former state lawmaker tells me Republican colleagues encountered in the halls of the North Carolina state legislature yesterday tried to avoid discussing the rolling coup the NCGOP is conducting. Their brush-off? "I'm not in leadership." No, they are in followership. Evil really is banal.

Having lost the governor's mansion to Democrat Roy Cooper, Republicans in special session have introduced measures to cut Cooper off at the knees before he takes office. The efforts are as devious as they are clumsy. The New York Times Editorial Board calls it a brazen power grab:

... Republican lawmakers introduced bills to, among other things, require State Senate confirmation of cabinet appointments; slash the number of employees who report to the governor to 300 from 1,500; and give Republicans greater clout on the Board of Elections, the body that sets the rules for North Carolina’s notoriously burdensome balloting.

[...]

This legislative power grab is the latest underhanded step by a state Republican Party desperate to stay in power in a state where demographic changes would normally benefit Democrats. Republicans in North Carolina, a presidential battleground state, have used aggressive redistricting and voting suppression measures that are among the most brazen in the nation to win elections. The courts have blocked some of these efforts, but Republicans have found workarounds, for instance, by limiting voting hours and sites.

“I think they’re doing this because they think they can get away with it,” said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina.

Cooper, the sitting state attorney general, has threatened to sue.

Jamelle Bouie calls the effort "a new nullification crisis," something the South and North Carolina have seen before:

The Republican Party of North Carolina in 2016 isn’t avowedly white supremacist or openly opposed to the participation of black Americans and other disfavored groups. It isn’t a replica of that older iteration of the Democratic Party. But in this age of backlash, it has been captured by a similar spirit of reaction and illiberalism. And while the aims are different—partisan control for right wing, ideological reasons—the means are very familiar: disenfranchisement of blacks, attacks on the machinery of elections, insinuations of fraud, attempts to usurp the voters themselves.

The trouble is that if this spirit of nullification and white tribalism—this spirit of Confederacy—has captured the former party of Lincoln, then history suggests its hold may last for decades. Jim Crow government held sway until the 1960s, when it fell in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and our second Reconstruction. If unchallenged, disenfranchisement works. And under President Donald Trump, there’s little chance of challenge; soon the federal office tasked with protecting voters will be held by a man who supports the effort to suppress the vote.

Gov. Pat McCrory's overreach on the anti-LGBT HB2 cost him his job, but only by 10,000 votes. Still, not an insignificant achievement in a state that went for Trump for president. But had the courts not intervened to strike down much of the state's 2013 vote suppression law last summer, McCrory might have squeaked by, as his colleagues well know.

To Bouie's point ("if unchallenged"), as I wrote yesterday, massive resistance is about the only play North Carolina progressives have left. Democrats don't have the votes. Next year they won't have the U.S. Supreme Court or the Department of Justice either. If Republicans get their way, they will dominate state and county Boards of Elections as well. But the Moral Monday/Forward Together fusion movement the NC-NAACP led successfully to defeat McCrory is not going anywhere. They were there last night being arrested again for civil disobedience:

9 people have been released from the detention center, 8 to go! THANK YOU WE LOVE YOU #RespectOurVote #ncga #ncpol pic.twitter.com/RR8ZkWJjJD

— NC NAACP (@ncnaacp) December 16, 2016

Saturday February 11, 2017 (10 a.m.) is the tentative date for HKonJ (Historic Thousands on Jones Street), an annual march and rally in Raleigh led by NC-NAACP president Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II. There were at least 30,000 people when I attended last in 2014 (local media reported 80,000) to protest Pat McCroy and the NCGOP's voter suppression efforts. Weather permitting post-Trump inauguration, it could be massive enough in 2017 to draw national press that ignored it then.

Forward Together will be at the legislature on Jones Street again today at 10 a.m. EST this morning. The way to successfully challenge the ruthless? Be relentless.


Undercover Blue 12/16/2016 06:00:00 AM