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So Joe Scarborough is causing the MSNBC honchos some heartburn for being completely in the tank for Donald Trump. Go figure:
Last November, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough sat on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York and recounted the various times he had given Donald Trump political advice.
"I've actually called him up and said, 'Donald, listen, you need to speak in complete sentences at debates," Scarborough said. "After the second debate ... I walked into his office, I said, 'Donald, do you know how to read? ... I said, 'You should read before a debate! ... Read a paragraph on Syria, read a paragraph on education reform!'"
The anecdotes, which were meant as a testament to Trump's off-the-cuff political savvy, drew laughter from the audience. But today, at NBCUniversal's headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center, Scarborough's relationship with the Republican presidential frontrunner has become a subject of frustration among staff, and an increasingly problematic issue for the network's top brass.
In background discussions, NBC News and MSNBC journalists, reporters and staffers said there was widespread discomfort at the network over Scarborough's friendship with Trump and his increasingly favorable coverage of the candidate.
"People don't like that Joe is promoting Trump," one MSNBC insider said. Others described Scarborough's admiration for Trump as "over the top" and "unseemly."
Four of those sources also said that the growing media scrutiny over the two men's relationship has caused the network's leadership to more closely monitor Scarborough's comments. "The higher-ups are definitely aware about what's going on," said another person within MSNBC. "It's an issue."
Scarborough and NBC News declined to comment for this article. "Morning Joe," which airs weekday mornings, is followed closely by Washington and New York's political and media influencers, and is seen as a key platform for political figures.
Both Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski are close friends with Trump and members of his family. Scarborough, a former four-term congressman from Florida's 1st district, has often stayed at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Club, in Palm Beach, Florida, with his family and was there during the week between Christmas and New Year's, two sources at the hotel during that time said.
On the night of the New Hampshire primary, Scarborough and Brzezinski visited Trump's hotel room for what MSNBC described as background discussions with the candidate's senior staff and a conversation with Trump that "lasted less than five minutes."
In recent weeks, Scarborough has spoken about Trump in increasingly glowing terms, praising him as "a masterful politician" and defending him against his political opponents and media critics. The Washington Post has noted that Trump has received "a tremendous degree of warmth from the show," and that his appearances on the show, in person and over the phone, often feel like "a cozy social club."
Scarborough has always been opinionated and outspoken, and he has never made any secret about his political opinions. Nevertheless, some of his colleagues believe that his coverage is influenced by his friendship.
Some MSNBC insiders also cringed at an on-air exchange Scarborough had last month with radio host Hugh Hewitt, who pressed Scarborough on whether he would serve as Trump's vice president. Scarborough ruled out the possibility but not before saying he would do "just about anything to try to get the White House back."
Trump, meanwhile, has also spoken in glowing terms about Scarborough.
"He's a great guy, and he has a great show ... and we have a lot of fun," Trump told Howie Carr, the Boston talk radio show host, in January. "Joe's doing well. You know, he's making money for the first time in his life, really making some pretty good money."
That's sweet. The article goes on to point out that Trump hyimself has openly called Joe and Mika supporters on the air and they got flustered and had to explain that they had actually been critical of The Donald a time or two, really!
One wonders if the Village rumor mill that's breathlessly poring over Clinton emails which show reporters agreeing to demands from the State department to shape stories in a certain way is similarly shocked by this.
And then, there's this which absolutely nobody cared about.
These issues have all been out there for years. You'll have to forgive for being a little bit cynical that anything's going to change.
"If you're the Urban League, isn't the question who would help black voters the most?" he asked Morial. "Whose policies would actually break away the ongoing vicious cycle we have where the rich get poorer, the poorer—I mean the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, isn't that what's critical? Because it's black Americans who share the disproportionate burden of those numbers."
Morial said his organization wants to know which candidate would give African Americans the "opportunity" to be a part of the country's policy discussions.
"I would frame it this way, who offers to African-Americans an opportunity to be a significant part of their governing coalition once they become President? That's the issue," Morial said.
Scarborough continued to press Morial on what would be the most important issue for African-American voters.
"Is that more of the issue than jobs?" he said. "Getting black teenagers back to work? Black Americans back to work instead of who is going to give me a job in the administration."
Morial said that being involved in how "policies are shaped" was critical.
"You don't understand what I'm saying," he told Scarborough. "Being a part of a governing coalition means you will have a seat at the table to be a participant as policies are shaped."
They really should listen to Scarborough. If anyone knows the best way for African American leaders t5o achieve their goals it's him. digby 2/12/2016 03:00:00 PM
Ted Cruz’s campaign has pulled its most recent ad, “Conservatives Anonymous,” after learning one of the actors in the spot is also a softcore porn star.
The ad, which was set at a group therapy session of conservative voters who feel betrayed by Marco Rubio on immigration, featured actor Amy Lindsay, who played a woman telling another group member, “Maybe you should vote for more than just a pretty face next time.”
Lindsay has appeared in several softcore porn films, including Erotic Confessions, Carnal Wishes, Secrets of a Chambermaid, and Insatiable Desires.
BuzzFeed News, after learning of Lindsay’s prior filmography, requested comment from the Cruz campaign. Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told BuzzFeed News in a statement that the campaign is taking the ad down and replacing it with a different one.
“The actress responded to an open casting call. She passed her audition and got the job. Unfortunately, she was not vetted by the production company. Had the campaign known of her full filmography, we obviously would not have let her appear in the ad,” Tyler said.
Prior to the Cruz campaign pulling the ad, Lindsay told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview on Thursday that she’s a Christian conservative and a Republican. While she emphasized that she did not do hardcore porn and that she also appeared in non-erotic films, Lindsay said she thinks it is “cool” that an actor who has appeared in softcore porn could also appear in Cruz’s ad.
I'd love to know which campaign's oppo person recognized her...
I wrote about John Kasich and his new billionaire benefactor for Salon today:
So it looks like John Kasich, the latest great hope for GOP establishment sanity, found himself a benefactor, and none too soon. (He’s down to his last two million.) This would be one of the benefits of former great hopes dropping out of the race, as Christ Christie did this week, leaving one of his billionaires shopping for someone else to buy. That billionaire is Home Depot co-founder and investment banker Ken Langone.
In the first half of 2015, Langone gave $250,000 to the pro-Christie super PAC America Leads. “Would I write a check for $10 million? No, no I wouldn’t. But I do something better than that,” he said last year in an interview with National Journal. “I go out and get a lot people to write checks, and get them to get people to write checks, and hopefully result in a helluva lot more than $10 million.”
“I’m relentless. I’m not going to stop. I put a mirror under your nose. If I see mist, I ask you for money. If there’s nothing there, I’m talking to a stiff.”
This is a big get. Jeb Bush was in the hunt too and Langone was said to have been a fan. But Jeb doesn’t need money so Langone would just have jumped on top of a big pile of billionaires who are throwing away their cash, which doesn’t sound like much fun. If Kasich were to pull it off, he’d have Langone to thank for it.
Langone is known, for some reason, as an establishment guy but it’s hard to understand why. In a recent interview with CNBC he expressed a lot of admiration for Donald Trump because “he’s saying what the American people are thinking” and took the Tea Party view of Congress:
Last year, I can’t tell you how many times I got calls on how much money, how many checks I wrote. We’ve got to get control of the Senate. If we get control of the House and the Senate, we can get things done. Well, we’ve had control of the House and Senate since January and we’ve gotten nothing done.
I am absolutely — first of all, if I was John Boehner and I was Mitch McConnell I would resign as the leaders right now. I’d say somebody else take a shot at it. I am not getting anything done…they are being led around by their nose by the President of the United States. It’s almost as if the legislative branch doesn’t matter. And this is what is wrong. I think the American people are fed up.
Like so many right-wingers he seems confused about how government works. Apparently, he expected that the House and Senate could somehow force the president to do their bidding without offering any compromise or cooperation. It’s so interesting how differently they see things when a Republican is in the White House though.
His view of President Obama is pure Tea Party too:
He’s not bringing us together. He’s willfully dividing us. He’s petulant. Ronald Reagan would never go into the Oval Office without his jacket on — that’s how much he revered the presidency…
Divide us and we all lose. And this has got to stop. And if [Obama’s] listening, or one of his people are listening, and you can quote me exactly for what I say, he is not acting presidential, he is behaving in a way designed, in my opinion, to divide us and make us look at each other with skepticism, with suspicion.
That’s the end of America as we know it when that happens.
This guy [Obama] worked like hell to be president . . . Behave like a president. Let me look at you as a model to how we should behave. What does he say? Fat cats, jet airplanes. What is the purpose? Us versus them.
It’s an article of faith among many on the right that Barack Obama misbehaved so badly that he forced them to take extreme measures to obstruct all of his proposals and do everything in their power to keep the country from functioning normally. Langone obviously signs on to that view, and people nonetheless persist in believing that he’s moderate based solely on the fact that he’s previously supported guys like Rudy Giuliani and his old friend Ross Perot. (And yes, he’s occasionally thrown some money at New York Democrats like Andrew Cuomo and Chuck Schumer.) But his own views are not moderate in the least.
Langone’s ire at Obama’s comments about “fat cats” can probably be explained by his history of malfeasance and corruption as the head of the New York Stock Exchange’s compensation committee that ended in his friend Dick Grasso’s downfall at the hands of New York’s Attorney General at the time, Elliot Spitzer. It’s a delightful story of greed and avarice in which Langone demonstrated the grace under pressure of an upstanding American businessman:
“They got the wrong fucking guy…I’m nuts, I’m rich, and boy, do I love a fight. I’m going to make them shit in their pants. When I get through with these fucking captains of industry, they’re going to wish they were in a Cuisinart–at high speed.”
Despite his profane rhetoric, Langone is a devout Catholic. But he does part ways with the Pope on one important issue. He doesn’t care for the pontiff’s statements on market capitalism and complained to Cardinal Dolan of New York that big donors were balking at pitching in for a 180 million dollar renovation for St Patrick’s cathedral unless the Pope changed his tune. He suggested that the Pope would “get more with honey than with vinegar” and said he thought he was probably just confused because he had spent so much time with crony capitalists in Argentina and hadn’t been exposed to the higher caliber of billionaires we have here in America. Cardinal Dolan hastened to explain that the pope is “very grateful for the … legendary generosity of the Catholic Church in the United States.” Langone was presumably appeased by the Church’s reassurance of his superiority and goodness, because the renovations of the cathedral are proceeding apace.
There's more at the link. The issue that probably pushed the harsh anti-choice Langone in to Kasich's arms was Kasich's promise this week to sign one of the most draconian anti-Planned Parenthood laws in the nation. They are on the same page.
Here is a hilarious observation from conservative writer John Podhoretz about last night's Democratic debate:
The message from Thursday night’s Democratic debate is that everybody in America should get on a leaky rowboat and find somewhere, anywhere, else in the world to live — because life in the United States is a nightmare from which millionaires and billionaires and the Koch brothers and the Republicans will not allow us to awake.
Has he listened to any of the Republican debates? In their view American is a dystopian hellscape of epic proportions on the brink of total ruin at the hands of foreigners who are making us eat beans tacos against our will, terrorists who are plotting in our own neighborhoods to kill us in our beds and require the survivors to live by Sharia law, and gays and feminazis forcing everyone to have abortions and marry members of their own sex. And that's just for starters.
The frontrunner for the nomination openly says:
“This country is a hellhole, and we’re going down fast.I want to make this country great again.”
Here's just a sample from the last debate:
Bush: The idea that somehow we're better off today than the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States is totally an alternative universe. The simple fact is that the world has been torn asunder.
Carson: You know, when you go into the store and buy a box of laundry detergent, and the price has gone up — you know, 50 cents because of regulations....And everything is costing more money, and we are killing our people like this....It's the evil government that is putting all these regulations on us so that we can't survive.
Trump: Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show....We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people....Those two young people — those two horrible young people in California when they shot the 14 people....Many people saw pipe bombs and all sorts of things all over their apartment. Why weren't they vigilant? Why didn't they call? Why didn't they call the police?...We have to find out — many people knew about what was going on. Why didn't they turn those two people in so that you wouldn't have had all the death? There's something going on and it's bad. And I'm saying we have to get to the bottom of it.
Rubio: This president is undermining the constitutional basis of this government. This president is undermining our military. He is undermining our standing in the world....The damage he has done to America is extraordinary. Let me tell you, if we don't get this election right, there may be no turning back for America.
Kasich: In this country, people are concerned about their economic future. They're very concerned about it. And they wonder whether somebody is getting something to — keeping them from getting it. That's not the America that I've ever known.
Christie: When I think about the folks who are out there at home tonight watching....They know that this country is not respected around the world anymore. They know that this country is pushing the middle class, the hardworking taxpayers, backwards, and they saw a president who doesn't understand their pain, and doesn't have any plan for getting away from it.
In the Republican psyche it is midnight in America.
And by the way, I haven't heard any Republicans touting the improved economy lately, have you? Have any of them talked about the low unemployment rate? I guess I may have missed those comments on the stump. I listen to and read a lot of right wing talk. They are convinced that Barack Obama has turned this nation into a third world nightmare from which we may never recover. In fact, they are in a daily state of full-fledged panic over it. Sanders' abstract indictment of the financial system and Clinton's dry list of policy improvements are downright cheery and Reaganesque by comparison.
Why are the GOP groups so wimpy in their criticisms of Trump?
by digby
This is the best they can do?
Yesterday on MSNBC some South Carolina Republicans were shown Trump being profane and juvenile on the stump and they didn't like it. The implication was that Southerners are more genteel than northeasterners and won't like his crude personality. I don't know if that's true or not but perhaps it is.
What is astonishing to me is that everyone in the Republican Party knows they cannot attack him for his barbaric proposals to deport millions of people, build walls, ban Muslims, kill and torture suspects families, waterboarding "and worse". These are all things the GOP base favors and they dare not challenge it. The only thing they can go after him for are that tepid bowl of mush in the Club for Growth ads, none of which are deal breakers for anyone.
Trump is the ultimate expression of the Republican base and they're stuck with it.
GOP-sponsored voting restrictions passed across the country in recent years will come into full force as the primaries roll on. Laws such as North Carolina's massive 2013 election law, for example, ostensibly passed to combat all-but-nonexistent voter fraud. The Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA) is awaiting the judgment of a federal court, much like the federal court that last Friday overturned the GOP's congressional redistricting in the state. Republicans weakened some of VIVA's provisions just days in advance of going to court. Why? Because they knew.
We will begin to see soon who the casualties are. Some of the effects were felt this month by Reba Bowser, 86, of Asheville, North Carolina. A staunch Republican, Bowser attempted to comply with the new voter identification requirements put in place by her party's state leadership. She went with her son, Ed, to obtain a photo ID at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Peter Onge of the Charlotte Observer takes up the tale:
On Monday, they went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in west Asheville. There, they laid out all of Reba’s paperwork for a DMV official – her birth records from Pennsylvania, her Social Security card, the N.H. driver’s license she let expire because she no longer wanted to drive.
But there was a problem. When Reba got married in 1950, she had her name legally changed. Like millions upon millions of women, she swapped out her middle name for her maiden name.
Reba Miller Bowser, the married name she'd used for decades, had never been an issue before, not in applying for driver’s licenses in other states or for flying to foreign countries. Until now. The computer kicked out a discrepancy and the DMV denied her application.
The DMV failed to mention a provision in the new law that would allow Reba to sign a name-change affidavit. Bowser's daughter-in-laws was none too pleased. Her son got the point:
It’s an issue that the Bowsers haven’t followed much, at least until it snagged Reba. But now, Ed says: “I’m thinking how this affected an 86-year-old woman with limited transportation and resources. You think about extending that to poor communities and minority communities.”
That’s what Republicans were thinking, too, when they crafted the voter ID law. They knew the hassle they created would mostly affect the people who vote for their opponents.
But that is where most of these tales of woe and intrigue stop. Dahliah Lithwick speculated in 2013 that these laws designed to suppress the votes of Democrats might also disproportionately suppress the votes of Republican women. With the focus on how voter ID laws affect Democrat-leaning groups, this is an effect the press and studies routinely miss. It speaks volumes about the Machiavellian nature of the GOP's vote suppression effort. I wrote about it in regard to North Carolina's voter ID law for Crooks and Liars three years ago:
Democratic voters are the GOP’s primary but not its only targets. VIVA is a weapon of mass disruption that will harm Republicans as well.
In a report issued in April, the NC State Board of Elections estimated that 176,091 registered Democrats are without the state-issued photo identity card most will have to pay $20-$32 for before they can vote under VIVA. Plus 73,787 unaffiliated and 1,126 Libertarian voters. Among registered Republican voters, 67,639 have no photo identity cards. Over 2/3 are women.
See, GOP leaders are playing the percentages. They figure that VIVA's voting restrictions will hurt more Democrats than Republicans -- and they will hurt Republicans. Still, Republican leaders calculate that, in the end, the net result will help them hold onto power. Indefinitely.
But the real story North Carolina and the rest of the country misses is that Republican leaders consider any of their own voters hurt by these vote suppression measures collateral damage. Acceptable casualties. Expendables.
And two-thirds of them women. Meet Reba Bowser.
"You see? I kill my own men." – supervillain Cassanova Frankenstein, Mystery Men (1999).
We interrupt our regularly scheduled political pouts and tantrums to bring you this little bit of news:
US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have announced that peace talks in Munich aimed at reaching resolution on the conflict in Syria have brokered a deal that could see a ceasefire “within a week”.
Military action against Islamic State fighters would continue, but humanitarian access for civilians besieged by years of civil strife would be the key priority, they said.
There are many details and copies of the agreement at the link. The most important thing is to get humanitarian aid in there as quickly as possible. And then, we'll see. Lets hoe this is a turning point ...
I get a little bit concerned when I hear Democrats telling me that Kasich isn't so bad and if he won the GOP nomination it wouldn't be the end of the world.
The Ohio legislature moved Wednesday to cut off $1.3 million in public health grants to Planned Parenthood in a closely watched vote that could have repercussions for the surging presidential campaign of Gov. John Kasich (R).
The bill, which cleared the Senate last month and passed the House on Wednesday, prohibits the Ohio Department of Health from giving state or federal grants to organizations that conduct or “promote” abortions. Kasich, who placed second in the Republican primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday, has said he would sign the bill.
[...]
The measure had been a top priority of antiabortion activists in the state...
The Ohio bill is different in that it targets state and federal programs addressing HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, infant mortality and other problems. Planned Parenthood receives a large percentage of that money every year to administer the programs across the state. Under the new bill, the organization would be barred from administering those programs because of its role as an abortion provider.
A Kasich spokesman said the governor plans to sign the bill, calling it a fiscally responsible move.
Maybe that's no big deal. But keep in mind that even if the GOP sobers up and rejects Trump and Cruz, their most moderate of candidates is happy to deny people vital life saving programs in order to stage a cheap political stunt.
"I'm gonna grab one more cookie, one more cigarette. Alrighty then." ---Oregon occupier David Fry, after agreeing to surrender
The family of Michelle Fiore (Blond haired woman in the center), Nevada legislator and "negotiator" of the surrender
The last four holdouts in the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon surrendered peacefully Thursday morning, 40 days after the standoff began.
Three of the four walked out to waiting F.B.I. agents over the course of a few minutes after 9:30 a.m., but the fourth, David Fry, at first said he would not.
In an extraordinary, hours long negotiation with supporters and F.B.I. agent, with thousands of people listening to the conversation on a live stream online, he aired a wide range of grievances, said he was suicidal, and said repeatedly that his choice was “liberty or death.” Ultimately he gave himself up without a fight.
The occupation by antigovernment militants appeared to be reaching its end in late January, when 11 of its most prominent members — including the leader, Ammon Bundy — were arrested while venturing out of the refuge. One protester was killed, and some of the remaining occupiers heeded calls by Mr. Bundy and others to go home.
But four refused to leave, and held out for another two weeks until three gave themselves up Thursday to the F.B.I. after lengthy negotiations by phone. The Rev. Franklin Graham and Michele Fiore, a Nevada state lawmaker and supporter of the Bundy family, helped smooth the surrender, first speaking by phone to the occupiers in a conversation that was streamed live online. They then accompanied the F.B.I. agents who drove to the refuge and arrested the holdouts.
The end of the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge came the day after the F.B.I. arrested Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon Bundy and an icon to antigovernment activists in the West, who was at the center of another armed standoff with government agents, in Nevada in 2014.
Speaking with the four holdouts, Ms. Fiore urged them to surrender peacefully to the F.B.I. so that they could continue to spread their message. “A dead man can’t talk, a dead man can’t write,” she told them. “We have to just stay together, stay alive.”
Reverend Graham said, “You all just do everything they told you to do, and it’s going to work out great.”
The occupiers replied that they would walk out to meet the F.B.I., stressing repeatedly that they would be unarmed, and that they were leaving their guns behind.
At 9:38 a.m., one of them, Sean Anderson, said he and his wife, Sandy, were walking out, and he could be heard yelling “coming out!” to the agents. Mr. Fry described the Andersons making their way out, hands raised, with Mr. Anderson holding an American flag in one hand, until they were taken into custody.
At 9:42, Mr. Fry said another of the occupiers, Jeff Banta, was going toward the agents, hands in the air.
Then Mr. Fry, who had seemed calm to that point, lit a cigarette and became agitated. “Unless my grievances are heard, I won’t come out,” he shouted. Supporters on the phone, and those at the refuge, urged him to remain calm and surrender.
“I’m actually feeling suicidal right now,” Mr. Fry said. He said he was sitting alone in a tent. “I have to stand my ground,” he said. “It’s liberty or death. I will not go another day as a slave to this system.”
“I declare war against the federal government,” he said a few minutes later. “I’ve peacefully voted and nothing is ever done.”
Mr. Fry said his grievances had not been addressed. He claimed his taxes were being used to pay for abortions. “Until you guys address my grievances, I will just sit in here by myself.”
“Sometimes it’s better just to die. Liberty or death,” he said. “I declare war against the federal government.”
In past interviews, Mr. Fry said he had come to the occupation after becoming friend with one of its leaders, LaVoy Finicum, over the Internet. Mr. Finicum died on Jan. 26 in a clash with the authorities.
The refuge, about six hours from Portland, was taken over by a small band of armed militants on Jan. 2. They demanded that two local ranchers, imprisoned on arson charges for a fire that spread to public lands, be released, and that federal lands that the occupiers said were improperly taken from local ranchers in decades past be returned to local or private control.
The remaining four occupiers had repeatedly invoked the killing of Mr. Finicum, by federal agents during a traffic stop as a sign of the government’s unwillingness to bring the standoff to a peaceful end.
Mr. Finicum was shot when he reached for a firearm, the F.B.I. said. Ammon Bundy, the leader of the occupation, was arrested during the stop along with several other members of the group, including his brother, Ryan.
About 50 or 60 cars were parked at the roadblock outside the sanctuary, most of them belonging to journalists and the rest belonging to protest sympathizers waving flags and signs. One woman held a sign saying, “I live in America, not Russia.”
Thomas Wagner of Christmas Valley, Ore., stood on top of his pickup truck at the roadblock, wearing full military fatigues — from boots to helmet — and waving an American flag. A 32-year-old unemployed security guard with a Confederate flag bumper sticker on his truck, he said, “I came here to support these four patriots, to let them know that they are not being abandoned.”
The standoff has highlighted the anger of many Western ranchers and farmers over federal government ownership of vast tracts of land in Western states, which they believe should be turned over to the states or to private ownership.
Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon and Ryan, became a national figure in 2014, after federal officials tried to confiscate his cattle because he had refused for more than two decades to pay fees to the federal government for grazing his cattle on federal land. Heavily armed self-described militiamen flocked to his ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., to face down the authorities, and when the agents retreated rather than risk a shootout, Mr. Bundy hailed it as a victory for those angered by federal regulation. He has been seen as a hero by the Oregon occupiers and by people sympathetic to their cause.
Cliven Bundy’s lawyer, Michael Arnold, said his client had been arrested at the Portland airport and would face a felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties, in connection with the 2014 standoff.
These are the revolutionaries who are going to save us from tyranny. God help us.
Donald Trump is telling people that the unemployment rate could be as high as 42%. And yes there are probably more unemployed than are reflected in the official numbers. But let's just say he's exaggerating. I know, hard to believe, coming from him.
Unemployment has really come down. Obviously, the losses in income incurred over that period period of Great recession --- time, wealth accumulation, career advancement, debt are still hanging over people. But it is getting better, at least in this regard.
And yet Trump says the real unemployment rate could be as high as 42%.
If we could get rid of their debt overhang, the younger generation might be looking at a slightly brighter future than we thought they would be a few years ago.
As long as the Republicans don't take total power and do what they always do --- destroy everything and leave the mess to their rivals.
With the losses last week of Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul in the wake of the Iowa caucuses, and now Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie after New Hampshire, the GOP clown bus has been traded in for a nice sedan and the whole troop has moved down to South Carolina.
If past Republican primaries in the Palmetto state are anything to go by, we are in for some fireworks.
Everyone no doubt recalls that in 1988 George H.W. Bush had a notorious campaign manager from South Carolina by the name of Lee Atwater. He had been a consultant for both winning Reagan campaigns who specialized in dirty tricks; by 1988 he was ready for the big time. He’s probably best known for the Willie Horton ad (which he didn’t produce but which had his fingerprints all over it). Much more important, however, was his creation of what became known as the South Carolina Firewall.
As Earl and Merle Black’s book “The Vital South” recounts, Atwater understood that his home state’s political culture was so traditional and machine-dominated that it would inevitably support the conservative party establishment’s choice for president. Therefore, the party would schedule the South Carolina primary immediately after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, where reform-minded candidates often appealed to more independent electorates, thus stopping them before they could really gain traction.
He first put this strategy into effect on behalf of the presumptive nominee, Bush senior, in that 1988 campaign. Bush lost Iowa to Bob Dole, and came uncomfortably close to losing in New Hampshire, so Atwater turned Bush into a Holy Roller, gathered every establishment figure in the state and went ruthlessly negative. It worked. Bush won handily and went on to destroy all comers on Super Tuesday. South Carolina became the state where insurgencies were strangled in their cribs.
Atwater died in 1991, but his strategy has remained in place ever since. In 1996, when Pat Buchanan took New Hampshire and threatened to win with his nativist pitchfork army, it was Bob Dole’s turn to use the firewall and Atwater’s machine to stop him. But it was most famously employed in service of the Bush family once again in 2000, when George W. Bush had every establishment player in the party lined up and then John McCain unexpectedly trounced him in New Hampshire by nearly 20 points. McCain was a darling of the political press corps, holding court all hours of the day and night, generously allowing the boys on the bus to bathe in his macho “authenticity.” He was a serious threat.
Bush’s campaign manager, of course, was Karl Rove, who studied at the knee of Atwater and was well schooled in his dark arts. They unloaded everything they had on McCain, including whisper campaigns about his adopted daughter from Bangladesh being a “black baby,” along with harshly negative ads and a full court press from the political establishment. Once again it worked. McCain never knew what hit him. (It didn’t stop him from hiring the same smear merchants for his own campaign eight years later.)
Now it’s 16 years later and the Bush family is back in South Carolina. And his supporters seem to think that even though he has been down in the polls for months, finished at the bottom of the pack in Iowa and took a fourth place finish in New Hampshire, that the firewall will work one more time.
“He needed to be in the game, and last night, he was able to do so,” said Barry Wynn, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who is raising money for Bush. Although Donald Trump tops GOP polls in the Palmetto State, Wynn denounced the billionaire’s “Kardashian-style vulgarity.”
“I don’t think that sells as well in the South, as it does in New England,” he said. “You may find that South Carolina corrects some of the mistakes of New Hampshire.”
We know what kind of “corrections” those tend to be, don’t we?
Bush has a bit more of a challenge than his father and brother in that he is facing two insurgents, the Trump juggernaut and the Ted Cruz evangelical revival tour. So what’s his plan? Well, according to Politico:
Jeb Bush is already laying the groundwork for a brutal South Carolina campaign against establishment rivals John Kasich and Marco Rubio.
In an internal memo circulated late Tuesday evening, the campaign distributed talking points to top campaign aides and surrogates, highlighting lines of attack they plan to take against both candidates.
The memo suggests that Kasich, who campaigned extensively in New Hampshire, does not have a realistic path to winning the Republican nomination.
“Governor Kasich has little to no chance in South Carolina, and does not have a national organization that can compete,” the memo says. “Kasich has consistently supported gutting the military and has no viable path in the Palmetto State.”
The memo also outlines hard-hitting avenues of attack against Rubio, who for months has been in Bush’s crosshairs: “Senator Rubio has lost momentum and has been exposed as completely unprepared to be president,” it says, repeating an argument that Bush has used frequently against Rubio.
It adds: “Rubio has demonstrated no respect for the nomination process and expects this to be a coronation.”
Asked by reporters what he thought of the results, Bush said that New Hampshire voters “pushed the pause button. The coronation after a third-place finish — looks like they canceled it. So, everybody’s going to have to make their case. It’s kind of a re-validation of what the primaries are about. I’m excited about being here. The field will likely narrow and as it narrows, we’ll have more of a consolidation as it always has been.”
That’s right. Bush is going to waste more time and money going after two flaccid rivals who are just as dead in the water as he is instead of employing the family’s tried and true method to destroy the insurgent threat with the Atwater strategy. Kasich has no chance of winning in ruthless arch-conservative South Carolina with his Sunny Optimist™ gambit and Rubio is a walking punchline.
Perhaps this is some kind of a head fake and this is an elaborate misdirection to take trump and Cruz off their game. But frankly, considering that Bush has spent more than 50 million dollars to win four delegates, it’s hard to imagine that his sad sack campaign is capable of anything quite that Machiavellian.
The Oregonian reports that Cliven Bundy, 74, was arrested when he arrived last night at Portland International Airport. Bundy faces charges related to the 2014 standoff at his ranch:
He faces a conspiracy charge to interfere with a federal officer -- the same charge lodged against two of his sons, Ammon and Ryan, for their role in the Jan. 2 takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns. He also faces weapons charges.
[...]
Bundy has been under federal scrutiny since his ranch standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He has not paid grazing fees on federal land and he owes the agency $1 million in unpaid fees and penalties. He and militia supporters confronted federal agents who had impounded Bundy's cattle that were found on federal property.
[...]
Another key participant in the Nevada showdown was Ryan Payne, a Montana militiaman who helped organize militia snipers to take aim at federal agents in Nevada. Payne is considered the tactician behind the Oregon takeover and also has been arrested and faces a federal conspiracy charge.
The four remaining occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns panicked over a live telephone feed as FBI agents brought in armored vehicles and moved into the compound yesterday:
At one point on the audio, Sean Anderson was heard yelling, "Did your boss send you here to kill innocent Americans?"
At another point, an agent over a loudspeaker said: "David, I want to talk to you."
"What do you want?" Fry replied, then yelled, "You guys killed LaVoy" and "You let Obama bring terrorists into our country."
There was plenty more of that in the feed, to be sure. LaVoy Finicum, shot and killed while reaching into his jacket during a traffic stop, has become the latest militia martyr. “Just shoot me,” he yelled at officers moments before. (The FBI video is here.)
The group is expected to surrender this morning, but "only if escorted by Nevada politician Michele Fiore and Franklin Graham," reports KGW TV Portland.
Before these developments last night, Dave Neiwert wrote that the "American far right’s endless cycle of violence and victimhood" will not end with the occupation:
The patriot movement would never let a good martyr go to waste. For the antigovernment movement, an embrace of martyrdom isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, an essential element of what makes such extremist belief systems tick. Born out of the whitewashed remnants of the radical racist-right movements of the 1960s and ’70s — particularly the viciously anti-Semitic and racist Posse Comitatus movement, which then morphed into the “militia movement” of the 1990s and provided the structural framework for most of today’s claims by so-called “constitutionalists” and “Patriots” — this movement has a long history of attracting violent actors who are willing both to kill and be killed in the name of their extreme worldview.
Neiwert warns:
There is always a price to this martyrdom, as it comes to embody the squaring of accounts and the dispensation of justice in the minds of the True Believers. That amounts to a kind of expiation in the form of retributive violence, the kind that was unleashed on the federal Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, by Tim McVeigh and his patriot comrades.
That is the dark cloud that now hangs over the whole affair, beyond the deaths and injuries that came about because of the Bundys’ quixotic quest to prove their “constitutionalist” fantasia somehow legitimate. Finicum’s martyrdom now means that someone, somewhere, someday, will be seeking retribution.
In "Patriot" America, freedom means needing a private arsenal to defend yourself against your neighbors and the government. Cue Lee Greenwood.
Despite a disappointing finish in New Hampshire, Ben Carson says he is not feeling any pressure to exit the Republican race, predicting a strong finish in South Carolina.
“Not getting any pressure from any of our millions of supporters. You know, I’m getting a lot of pressure to make sure I stay in the race," he said in an interview on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. "You know, they’re reminding me that I’m here because I responded to their imploring me to get involved. And I respect that and I’m not just going to walk away from the millions of people who are supporting me."
Carson finished behind Carly Fiorina and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday night, both of whom had suspended their respective campaigns by Wednesday evening. The retired neurosurgeon won three delegates with his fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, but he drew a blank in New Hampshire, winning just 2.3 percent of the votes in the Republican primary.
"I think I can win South Carolina,” he told CNN. “The people here align extremely well with the kind of philosophies that I have, and I think you'll see the evidence of that."
If I were a political vendor in South Carolina I'd be very careful about extending credit to this campaign. It's very doubtful they'll ever get paid.
I ran for president with the message that the government needs to once again work for the people, not the people work for the government. And while running for president I tried to reinforce what I have always believed - that speaking your mind matters, that experience matters, that competence matters and that it will always matter in leading our nation. That message was heard by and stood for by a lot of people, but just not enough and that’s ok. I have both won elections that I was supposed to lose and I’ve lost elections I was supposed to win and what that means is you never know what will happen. That is both the magic and the mystery of politics - you never quite know when which is going to happen, even when you think you do. And so today, I leave the race without an ounce of regret. I’m so proud of the campaign we ran, the people that ran it with me and all those who gave us their support and confidence along the way. Mary Pat and I thank you for the extraordinary display of loyalty, friendship, understanding and love.
I dunno who paid him to take down Rubio, but it was worth every penny.
Christie was supposed to be the dude who took on the prude. It didn't work out that way. Trump made Christie look like one of those kindergarten teaches Christie likes to scream at on the stump by comparison.
I can't say I'll miss him. He's one of the most repulsive characters in politics. And that's saying a lot in a world that includes people like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
You might be wondering how Donald Trump gets the GOP nomination without having a majority of the GOP behind him. This article by Sam Wang from a couple of months ago explained that it's all about the delegate math. The Republicans have put in place a byzantine system that was supposedly designed to keep long drawn out 2012 battles from happening and it's resulting in something very, very different.
I'll leave it to you to read the piece with all the charts and graphs explaining the mechanics. But the upshot is that if he can keep his 35-40% he can win it. Wang concludes his piece with this:
If no candidate gets to an outright majority, the convention becomes genuinely suspenseful. Party insiders should not necessarily be consoled by this idea. Delegates are usually selected for loyalty to their candidate. If current trends were to persist, the convention floor in Cleveland would be filled with close to 1,000 Trump delegates. These delegates won’t be from the usual pool of party loyalists. They seem like an unpromising starting point for elites to work their magic.
Is it wrong for me to hope so strongly for this shitshow?
Yes, actually it is. You don't play around with the presidency and these people are all very dangerous, especially Trump and Cruz who are the most likely to come out the winners in my opinion. The stakes are just too high to be cavalier about handing power to fanatics.
This campaign was always about citizenship—taking back our country from a political class that only serves the big, the powerful, the wealthy, and the well connected. Election after election, the same empty promises are made and the same poll-tested stump speeches are given, but nothing changes. I've said throughout this campaign that I will not sit down and be quiet. I'm not going to start now. While I suspend my candidacy today, I will continue to travel this country and fight for those Americans who refuse to settle for the way things are and a status quo that no longer works for them.
Our Republican Party must fight alongside these Americans as well. We must end crony capitalism by fighting the policies that allow it to flourish. We must fix our festering problems by holding our bloated, inept government bureaucracy accountable. Republicans must stand for conservative principles that lift people up and recognize all Americans have the right to fulfill their God-given potential.
To young girls and women across the country, I say: do not let others define you. Do not listen to anyone who says you have to vote a certain way or for a certain candidate because you're a woman. That is not feminism. Feminism doesn't shut down conversations or threaten women. It is not about ideology. It is not a weapon to wield against your political opponent. A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses and uses all her God-given gifts. And always remember that a leader is not born, but made. Choose leadership.
As I have said to the many wonderful Americans I have met throughout this campaign, a leader is a servant whose highest calling is to unlock potential in others. I will continue to serve in order to restore citizen government to this great nation so that together we may fulfill our potential.
I think we'll all remember her most for this, don't you?
Jeb Bush is already laying the groundwork for a brutal South Carolina campaign against establishment rivals John Kasich and Marco Rubio.
In an internal memo circulated late Tuesday evening, the campaign distributed talking points to top campaign aides and surrogates, highlighting lines of attack they plan to take against both candidates.
The memo suggests that Kasich, who campaigned extensively in New Hampshire, does not have a realistic path to winning the Republican nomination.
“Governor Kasich has little to no chance in South Carolina, and does not have a national organization that can compete,” the memo says. “Kasich has consistently supported gutting the military and has no viable path in the Palmetto State.”
The memo also outlines hard-hitting avenues of attack against Rubio, who for months has been in Bush’s crosshairs: “Senator Rubio has lost momentum and has been exposed as completely unprepared to be president,” it says, repeating an argument that Bush has used frequently against Rubio.
It adds: “Rubio has demonstrated no respect for the nomination process and expects this to be a coronation.”
The memo also claims, "Jeb also did well because he remains the only GOP candidate willing to take on Donald Trump and willing to stand up for conservative values."
"As we saw in the last week, this race is increasingly coming down to who has a proven record and who is best prepared to be Commander-in-Chief, and that is not an unserious reality television star or backbench senator who has never made a tough decision."
What planet are these people living on? What's it going to take for them to realize that there are two frontrunner and neither of them are named Kasich or Rubio?
After all this, Jeb is training his firepower on those two pipsqueaks when it's Cruz and trump who are running away with this thing. And if he thinks they can't compete in South Carolina, he's even stupider than we think.
That's just sad. but I guess it's good for the economy. All that billionaire money goes to line the pockets of GOP functionaries and local media so I guess you could call it a sort of stimulus --- like paying people to dig holes and then fill them up again.
I’ve been writing about the Donald Trump phenomenon several times a week for seven months now. As his candidacy evolved from a bizarre spectacle to a serious campaign, it’s become clear that this is a pivotal moment in American politics. It’s not just that we have a shocking demagogue or a profane performer topping the polls in the Republican presidential race. It’s the alarming notion that a crude authoritarian white nationalist is appealing to a very large section of the American people. Even worse is the realization that there is a path for him to actually win the presidency.
Last night he won the New Hampshire primary and he won decisively. His effect on the GOP electorate is already profound:
Only 40 percent of New Hampshire Republicans support deporting millions of Latinos, so that’s what passes for good news in all this. They didn’t ask about summary execution or torture or killing terrorist suspects’ families, but it stands to reason that at least the 35 percent who voted for Trump are for it. Those aren’t the kind of issues people easily overlook when they vote for someone.
Most surprisingly, he won substantial support across all classes, educational status, gender and ideology. He is a true frontrunner now and is highly likely to gain support as people see him as actually able to pull it off. After all, he may be crude, but when you strip away the bluster, many of his proposals and promises — particularly when it comes to law and order, immigration and national security — are supported by a whole lot of Republicans.
Last night in his victory speech, Trump proclaimed,
“We’re going to make America great again but we’re going to do it the old fashioned way. We’re going to beat China, Japan, beat Mexico at trade. We’re going to beat all of these countries that are taking so much of our money away from us on a daily basis. It’s not going to happen anymore.”
Essentially, he has promised to kick out foreigners who are here, ban foreigners from coming here and beat foreigners that are “taking so much of our money.” But then, if he and his followers believe real unemployment is possibly above 40 percent as he claimed last night, drastic action would understandably be in order. The number is completely daft, of course. He undoubtedly got it from sources like World Net Daily which commonly flog ridiculous statistics such as that.
By Michael Vadon (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
President George W. Bush was not a mistake. The conservative movement worked for decades to put him there, or someone else just like him. That movement conservatives didn't like it when they got what they wanted seems not to have sunk in.
"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," Ronald Reagan declared in his first inaugural address. The movement had its marching orders and set off double time. By the end of the Reagan years, Rush Limbaugh had arrived to bring the message daily into millions of households across the country. It was a Two Minutes Hate that lasted for hours. By the mid-nineties it was, "America Held Hostage: Day (Number of days in Clinton's term)." Government is the problem. Government cannot be trusted. Put us Republicans in charge and we'll prove it. They did.
Even after the September 11 attacks, it persisted. Only now we were a country with a case of collective PTSD (that has yet to subside). Bush was president when the towers fell, but somehow it was not "on his watch." Then he and Dick Cheney lied the country into invading Iraq where the promised WMDs never appeared. They proved the case that government is the problem. Despite the fact that many a good conservative will never admit error — Conservatism never fails; it can only be failed — conservatives knew they'd been had. The sense that the government cannot do anything right (except kick other country's asses) deepened.
Then a frustrated but hopeful American public elected a black president. The economy collapsed from financial fraud of biblical proportions and Wall Street got a bailout, yet the “malefactors of great wealth” never faced justice. They showered in gold while turning families out into the street and the only trickle down was to grasping politicians. Mission accomplished.
Reagan's case was made. The nativists grew restless.
And here we are. One of their kind, Donald Trump, has won the Republican primary in New Hampshire and appears on track to win the Republican nomination for president in 2016. With zero percent experience as a legislator or in government service.
"When Americans have more faith in the military than the political class, democracy is in trouble," read the subhead on Glenn Reynolds' piece last month in USA Today. A longtime purveyor of "government is the problem," Reynolds is now worried by his own partisans, and with reason. Reynolds knows his readers:
If this were just one-sided anger at the Obama Administration, then it would be troubling, but not dangerous. But if, as seems plausible, a majority of Americans don’t think a Republican administration would represent a substantial improvement, then we’ve got a bigger problem. If voters think that they can’t vote their way out of a problem, then they may look to other solutions.
A much-hyped YouGov poll from last fall found that 29% of Americans could imagine supporting a military coup. That poll probably overstated popular support — it didn’t ask if people favored a coup right now, just whether they could imagine supporting one, including in the instance of the government violating the Constitution — but there was also this, as Newser reported: “Some 71% said military officers put the interests of the country ahead of their own interests, while just 12% thought the same about members of Congress.“
NBC News examined a Pew poll back in November. It revealed the lowest levels of confidence in government in a half century:
Just one month after 9/11, 60 percent of Americans said they could trust the government. But confronted with the Iraq War and economic uncertainty, trust began to decline. By July 2007, it had fallen to 24 percent. Since then, the survey found that public trust remains at historically low levels.
Distrust of government also varies along party lines. Twenty-six percent of Democrats say they can trust the federal government nearly always or most of the time, compared with just 11 percent of Republicans. Since President Obama took office in 2009, Democrats have expressed greater trust in government than Republicans.
Pessimism over politics has pervaded the public's perceptions in a number of ways. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say that on issues that matter to them, their side loses more often than it wins. Even for millennials, the future seems bleak: only about four-in-ten adults younger than 30 say they have "quite a lot" of confidence in the nation's future.
On the Democratic side last night, millennials in New Hampshire chose an anti-establishment candidate, Bernie Sander, by over 3 to 2.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from December yielded similar results:
Perhaps most vexing for the dozen or so candidates vying to succeed President Barack Obama, the poll indicates widespread skepticism about the government's ability to solve problems, with no significant difference in the outlook between Republicans and Democrats.
"They can't even seem to get together and pass anything that's of any importance," said Doris Wagner, an 81-year-old Republican from Alabama who said she's "not at all confident" about seeing solutions in 2016. "It's so self-serving what they do," said Wagner, who called herself a small-government conservative.
In Texas, Democrat Lee Cato comes from a different political perspective but reached a similar conclusion. She allowed for "slight" confidence, but no more. The 71-year-old bemoaned a system of "lobbyists paid thousands upon thousands of dollars to get Congress to do what they want" for favored industry. "They aren't doing anything for you and me," she said.
In Donald Trump, Republicans have reaped what they've sown. After 25 years of Clinton smears, Hillary Clinton has gotten caught in the fallout. Plus, whatever her lefty bona fides, if transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street groups come out, she's toast with Millennials who came of age during the Great Recession and face life in an unforgiving, metastasized capitalism.
It's an anti-establishment electorate out there. Buckle up.