Hullabaloo

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

 
When Ailes Is Out, Will Murdoch's Sons Clean the Fox House?
by Spocko

One of the things that I've learned is that corporations don't like to associate their brands with certain repugnant behaviors and activities.

When these behaviors are brought to the attention of the public, the corporation needs to distance themselves from the person or persons engaged in them.

How a corporation goes about showing their investors they are "taking actions" varies depending on how little they believe they can get away with.

"Alies is out. No more sexual harassing here! Problem solved. Let's talk about Bill Clinton and the woman who stood by him while he was in the White House! What does that say about her?"

And the show in show business goes on. As in "show me the money." If the NewsCorp shareholders believe that canning Ailes is enough to stop the bad PR they won't demand more action.

So how do we convince the shareholders it's not enough?  By encouraging more stories from the survivors, and then not attacking them for failing to speak up sooner.
 
We could also ask other media outlets to do some research, Gawker has nothing more to lose. But maybe they won't. Then we should look for stories of repugnant activities, since that door is now cracked open. I suggest that we also look for people engaging in criminal acts at Fox News.

Because dollars to doughnuts, when you turn over the rock of Fox News you will find illegal acts.

Let the dirt digging begin!


Spocko 7/19/2016 06:30:00 PM

 
Guess who said he planned to edit Melania's speech?

by digby

That's right:

Trump told the New York Times, he’s going to deal with this head-on by having Melania talk about “women’s issues” and Ivanka about “her passion for gender equality.” He also says he’s planning to edit their remarks himself and add “ideas, jokes, points about Trump.” 

According to MSNBC, the draft the speechwriter Matthew Scull turned in did not contain the Michelle Obama remarks.

Occam's razor folks.

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digby 7/19/2016 05:30:00 PM

 
The movement puts their best face on the trainwreck

by digby

This is from Viguerie's shop. Clearly, the prime directive is to keep the rubes as angry with the establishment as they can throughout this debacle so they can keep the dollars flowing after November:

Day One of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention – and make no mistake about it this is Donald Trump’s convention – was notable in many ways large and small, but the most important was its minimal airtime for politicians, especially establishment Republican politicians.

And this is exactly how Trump’s people wanted it.

Donald and Melania TrumpHaving a bevy of establishment Republican politicians like the Senate’s Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush would have stepped on Donald Trump’s message that he’s the anti-establishment candidate.

So instead of establishment Republican politicians that millions of Americans hate, Trump got his message out – verbally and non-verbally – through a host of decidedly non-establishment speakers and advocates.

And it worked.

But can you imagine the buttoned-down uptight Romney crowd putting the hirsuite Willie Robertson, star of the hit TV series “Duck Dynasty,” on stage?

Or Calvin Klein male fashion model and actor – and legal immigrant – Antonio Sabato Jr. on national TV to sell their candidate?

Never happen.

But the Trump people and Donald Trump understand marketing and communications on a completely different level than your typical establishment Republican politician, and so they understand that not only is “the medium is the message,” as media genius Marshall McLuhan insightfully put it, but that sometimes “the messenger is the message.”

And so Trump’s message of “I’m not one of them” came through loud and clear last night, even as the establishment media talking heads keep wanting to make a big deal out of the fact that certain politicians weren’t on the stage.

That doesn’t mean there were absolutely no politicians; freshman Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa spoke, Congressman Michael McCaul, Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee was perhaps the most notable Capitol Hill establishment figure to speak and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, revered among populists and believers in American exceptionalism, also spoke.

But the strongest messages – indeed the core messages of the Trump campaign – were delivered for the most part by non-politicians, such as Benghazi heroes Mark Geist (OZ) and John Tiegen (TIG), Milwaukee Country Sheriff David A. Clarke and Patricia Smith, whose son Foreign Service computer specialist Sean Smith was also killed in Benghazi.

Law and order, the truth that Hillary Clinton is a liar and directly responsible for the deaths of brave Americans, and the dangers of her policies on Islam and the Middle East were delivered not by Henry Kissinger or some other striped pants diplomat or scholar, but by a mother, a county sheriff and two brave Americans who fought an epic stand worthy of the Chosin Reservoir, The Lost Battalion or Landing Zone X-Ray, and became through their book and movie “13 hours” heroes that to this day remain unacknowledged by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In an evening program of strong messages and unconventional messengers two stood out to me; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump’s wife Melania.

There is probably no one at the national level of Republican politics who has known Donald Trump longer, and knows him better than Rudy Giuliani.

And there’s probably no Republican politician who does not share the conservative social agenda and yet retains tremendous respect and credibility with the conservative grassroots than Rudy Giuliani.

Until Donald Trump came along, for conservatives west of the Henry Hudson Parkway Rudy Giuliani was the only New Yorker who actually resonated – and especially after 911 – came to represent the spirit, the pride, the greatness, the vast economic success of New York.

So when Giuliani said:

I have known Donald Trump for almost 30 years. And he has created and accomplished great things. But beyond that this is a man with a big heart.

Every time New York City suffered a tragedy, Donald Trump was there to help.

And he did it anonymously. (I bet that's a surprise)

You deserve to know this personal side about our next President. He has been a great father, father-in-law, grandfather and friend to me and my family.

He will keep us safe and help us achieve and embrace our greatness.

Even conservatives who most assuredly disagree with Giuliani's position on many items on the conservative agenda found his message about Trump pursuasive and credible.

That's because when Rudy Giuliani took the stage Donald Trump wasn’t being endorsed by a politician – a former Mayor and unsuccessful presidential candidate – he was being endorsed by the Empire State Building, the New World Trade Center and the muscular power that Americans used to associate with New York, before it was abandoned (once again) to the Democrats and to squeegee men, Occupy Wall Street, street thugs and Far Left liberal corruption and craziness about regulating soft drinks and gender pronouns.

Likewise, the key to Mrs. Trump’s effectiveness was not so much what she said, it was how she said it and how she presented herself.

And once again we look to Marshall McLuhan to understand that Mrs. Trump’s role was one of refined and highly targeted communications, which to my mind she executed it with precision as America’s first political spokesmodel.

This is not meant as criticism of Mrs. Trump, quite the opposite.

In the world of commercial and retail mass marketing no one would hire Bill Clinton to sell anything, especially his wife.

It is no different in politics – unless you are a Kool aide-drinking liberal – no one wants to buy anything from the crude, grasping, horndog-in-chief Bill Clinton.

And just by showing up he’s a one-man reminder of the scandals, the avarice, the lies and the two Americas – the lawless elite and the rest of us – that Obama and Clinton have created.

Mrs. Trump, on the other hand, communicated a sophisticated grace, humor and glamour – the essence of the Trump brand for his hotels and office buildings – which is simply another side of Trump’s “Make America Great” political message.

Unlike the other speakers, Mrs. Trump wasn’t on the stage to sell policy or any other ideas, she was there as the embodiment of the Trump brand, a role she played exceedingly well.

In the early days of TV one of the ways consumer products built their brand was to sponsor television variety shows and dramas, such as the General Electric Theatre hosted by Ronald Reagan.

Had Reagan hosted the Children’s Hour or the Howdy Doody Show he would have never been President because there was a symbiotic relationship in those shows; the quality of the content reinforced the brand of the host, just as the host’s polished delivery and informed commentary reinforced the sponsoring brand and its products.

And that really summarizes Day One of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention. Trump’s goal, as we see it, was to build and reinforce his brand, as much through non-verbal as through verbal communications.

By keeping establishment Republicans like Paul Ryan, that millions of Americans hate, off the stage, and by putting Mrs. Trump, the very embodiment of the Trump brand, plus a highly targeted group of political outsiders on the stage, Trump went far in accomplish that goal.

His brand is chaos, dishonesty and fraud so this is really going quite well for him.

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digby 7/19/2016 04:30:00 PM

 
Chachi on the dais

by Dennis Hartley

Distinguished thespian and stentorian speaker Scott Baio gave an awesome speech at the RNC last night! He tore Hillary a new one:

“We have a choice in November, we can go for Hillary Clinton, … who wants to continue the same policies that are wrecking this country, policies that make us unsafe, a woman who somehow feels that she’s entitled to the presidency, that she’s somehow owed it, or we can go for Donald Trump.”

Dude! He cut her so low! Speaking of “wrecked”, here’s Baio delivering his finest turn in the best ABC After-school Special ever:





ACT-ing!


Cross-posted from Den of Cinema

Update from digby:

Here's Chachi on his misogynist tweet:

Baio told Hall that he wrote his short speech in church in Sunday morning before delivering it on Monday night. The host immediately seized on Baio’s invocation of his religious foundation to call into question a meme he posted on Twitter just over a week ago that appeared to label Hillary Clinton a “cunt.” “Did you think about that in church when you tweeted it out?” she asked.

As he has said in previous interviews, Baio dismissed the idea that there was anything offensive about the tweet, saying he was offering up the tweet “without commentary” and “just put it up there” for people in interpret as they will.

“But you know what it meant when you tweeted it out,” Hall said, asking him where his religious “moral compass” was when he decided to put that message out into the world.

“You can look at it any way you want,” Baio said, disingenuously. “It's the word ‘count,’ that's what she's standing in front of, I just put it up there. There's no commentary attached to it, I didn't call her anything, and the fact that you question my faith over putting up a picture is not nice.”

Yeah, it's not nice to question the "faith" of some washed up sit-com star who tweets that Hillary Clinton is a cunt. Very not nice. She should be ashamed of herself.

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digby 7/19/2016 03:00:00 PM

 
The GOP argument in a nutshell

by digby

The best-selling button at the RNC

This observation by Josh Marshall is important:

Numerous speakers from the dais, including some of the top speakers of the evening, called for Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned. At least two - and I think more - actually led the crowd in chants of "lock her up!" There has never been any evidence of criminal activity on Clinton's part. An investigation with a lot of pressure to find something amiss concluded that no charges should be recommended against her and that no prosecutor would bring charges against Clinton for anything connected to her private email server.

It goes without saying that it is a highly dangerous development when one presidential nominee and his supporters make into a rallying cry that their opposing candidate should be imprisoned. This is not Russia. This is not some rickety Latin American Republic from half a century ago. This is America. For all our failings and foibles this is not a path we've ever gone down.

This is not a disagreement about a matter of law: it is a demand for vengeance and punishment, one rooted in the pathologies of the current Trumpite right and inevitably to some extent about the fact that Clinton is a woman. If you have a chance rewatch the speeches by Rudy Giuliani or even more ret. Gen Michael Flynn. These are not normal convention speeches. It is only a small skip and a jump to the state legislator in West Virginia who demanded Clinton by executed by hanging on the National Mall. In such a climate, don't fool yourself: worse can happen.

This is the way authoritarians think to be sure. And the Trump Party is authoritarian through and through. But this sloganeering about how Clinton belongs in jail is sadly not confined to the right. There is an element of the left which consistently says the same thing, at least if my social media feeds are any example, with certain members of my own tribe calling for Clinton to be dragged off in chains for ... well, the crimes don't really matter.

I've never seen anything quite like it. I remember calls in the past for Karl Rove to be "frog-marched" to jail for his role in the Plame scandal. But the calls to jail Clinton are of an other variety, going back to a famous column by William Safire back in the 1990s in which he claimed that she was about to be indicted. Of course,she never was despite tens of millions of dollars and a totally unaccountable hostile independent prosecutor on the trail. In fact,  she never lied about all the things everyone said she lied about. But the idea of locking this woman up for something persists and it is one that really seems to appeal to a certain segment of the American population.

There is an entire cottage industry devoted to this meme.  Indeed, there were reports that there were pre-printed signs like these in the crowd at the RNC last night:

This is a disturbing one: gun lube:

This is some sick stuff and it would be really nice if people who hate Clinton but aren't completely batshit crazy would at least find a different way to express their loathing.

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digby 7/19/2016 01:30:00 PM

 
Plagiarism is a "shared value" according to Dr Ben

by digby

You cannot make stuff like this up:

“If Melania’s speech is similar to Michelle Obama’s speech, that should make us all very happy because we should be saying, whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, we share the same values,” he told reporters after addressing a Florida GOP delegation breakfast at a hotel here 20 minutes outside Cleveland, where the RNC is taking place.

“If we happen to share values, we should celebrate that, not try to make it into a controversy,” he added.

His comments come as Melania Trump faces intense scrutiny over a portion of her Monday night speech that echoed, nearly word for word, part of the first lady’s 2008 address at the Democratic National Convention. The Trump campaign insists that Melania Trump’s speech was not plagiarized, and Carson echoed that.

“I don’t think they were plagiarized. I think there are general principles that are very valuable to Americans, and of course to express those principles you’re going to use similar language,” Carson said.

He would say that, of course:

Carson, a former presidential candidate himself, is no stranger to dealing with fallout from plagiarism. In 2015, he apologized for examples of plagiarism found in his book, “America the Beautiful.”

Pressed on why he apologized then, if he was willing to wave off evidence of plagiarism now, he said as he ducked into a car, “Because I don’t like to keep a controversy going. I like to talk about positive things.”

Meanwhile the rest of the GOP reacts as expected. Paul Manafort blamed it all on Hillary Clinton saying it's yet another example of her smearing any women who opposes her. (No, I don't know how he spit that one out either.) And then there's this:

Yes, they have are officially losing it.


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digby 7/19/2016 12:00:00 PM

 

The Big Moment

by digby

This really happened. pic.twitter.com/GWHJlWUPLp

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) July 19, 2016

So did this:

Patricia Smith stood on the stage of the Republican National Convention and emotionally blamed the death of her son in Benghazi, Libya, on Hillary Clinton. Suddenly, Fox News Channel cut away to interview the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump. 

For nearly 11 minutes on Monday night, Trump overshadowed his party’s convention with a telephone interview that provided no major news but allowed him to brag about his primary victories, attack the news media and plug his wife’s upcoming speech. 

This was supposed to be the week that Trump finally stopped fighting for the nomination and pivoted to the general-election campaign. This was supposed to be the week that he stayed in the wings, like presumptive nominees usually do, and allowed others to introduce him and explain why he should be president. It was supposed to be the week that Trump showed voters a softer, more personable and compassionate side. 

But on the first day of the four-day GOP convention, Trump showed that he’s unable to yield the stage and a prime-time audience to others. 

He started the day by calling Fox News Channel to accuse President Obama of using “body language” that encourages racial division and anti-police sentiments that lead to the killing of police officers. For the rest of the day, he boomeranged between the spotlight and the shadows — disappearing for hours, then reemerging with an angry tweet or an unexpected interview. There was even a pre-taped interview that aired on the Golf Channel during the convention.

digby 7/19/2016 10:30:00 AM

 
Fear and Loathing in Cleveland

by digby

As the keynote speaker Senator Joni Ernst was on stage

I wrote about Day 1 for Salon this morning:

The first day of the Republican National Convention started off with a bang. Even before the event was gaveled into order Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort picked a huge fight with Ohio Governor John Kasich for reasons that made little sense to anyone. He went on all the morning news shows to denounce Kasich for being "petulant" claiming he's “embarrassing his party in Ohio.”
for failing to attend the convention in his own state. The Governor's adviser John Weaver told the New York Times, “Manafort’s problem, after all those years on the lam with thugs and autocrats, is that he can’t recognize principle and integrity."

What happened on the convention floor later that day was anything but normal as the Never Trump delegates wanted a roll call vote to change the rules and the party chair blatantly knocked them down resulting in boos, catcalls and delegate walkouts:

Video: Drama in Cleveland -- GOP delegates shouting down the chair, demanding a roll call vote https://t.co/RZMXLZG8cL

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 18, 2016

That's not something we've seen at a political convention since the 70s at least.  But then Trump's whole campaign is a throwback to that era so it isn't surprising.

Let's just say that as the Republicans  prepared for their big opening night of "party unity" it seemed to be as elusive as ever. But as the evening festivities unfolded it became obvious that there was one overriding theme that might just do the job: fear and loathing of foreigners and Hillary Clinton. In other words, a CPAC convention.

It started out fairly light. The first few speakers of the evening were examples of the exciting celebrities Trump had been promising for the last month or so. They opened with the star of Duck Dynasty, Willie Robertson who joked about how he and Trump were both reality stars with hot wives, which I'm fairly sure was the first time anyone's ever said that in a presidential endorsement speech. He was followed by former TV star Scott Baio who, along with soap actor Antonio Sabato Jr (appearing later in the program) may have been assumed to be Latino outreach despite the fact that they are actually Italian Americans. There were no real Hispanics featured on opening night anyway.

Then came former Texas Governor Rick Perry, last heard railing against "Trumpism" as a cancer on the Republican Party. He didn't mention Trump at all, instead using his time to introduce war hero Marcus Luttrell who gave a heartfelt speech about patriotism and duty leading up to a message for the kids today: "your war is here,you don't have to go searching for it...Who among you are going to step up and take the fight to the enemy because it's here!"

Next was a searing speech from Patricia Smith, the mother of one of the four people killed in Benghazi who blamed Hillary Clinton personally for the death of her son and joined the crowd when they shouted and chanted that Clinton belongs in jail, the first of many such eruptions during the evening. It was a rather sad and disturbing performance.  The two men who wrote the book “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi,” then droned on for what seemed like 14 hours recounting details of the event, also blaming Hillary Clinton for everything. Perhaps these people need to have a chat with Trey Gowdy while they're in Cleveland.

Onward to the Mexican criminal portion of the program. There were more memorials to the dead with the siblings of a border patrol agent and several more grieving people whose relatives were killed by drunk undocumented immigrants and gang members, which is also Hillary Clinton's fault.

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark followed with a fiery fearmongering speech about law and order. His message in a nutshell:

What we witnessed in Ferguson, and Baltimore, and Baton Rouge was a collapse of the social order. So many of the actions of the Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter transcends peaceful protests and violates the code of conduct we rely on — I call it anarchy.”

I think you can guess who is to blame for that, not just Clinton --- who belongs in jail herself --- but Barack Obama who has achieved his goal of dividing the country.

Senator Tom Cotton gave a traditional GOP hawk speech, barely mentioning Trump, that didn't set anyone on fire and Senator Jeff Sessions weirdly talked about trade and the economy as if he'd gotten the wrong instructions from the convention planners. And then came Giuliani with the night's traditional barn burner, described by the National Memo's Joe Conason on twitter as Mussolini meets Mr Magoo.  Among his many contributions to the scarefest was "there is no more time for us left to revive our great country! No more time to repeat our mistakes of the past!" signaling the end of the world apparently.

The crowd was very revved up when the stage filled with mist and the shadow of The Donald appeared to emerge out of it. There he was, the man himself who came to introduce his wife Melania, which he did in unusually succinct fashion after proclaiming "we're gonna win" several times. Melania gave a nice speech which in my notes I called "the most professional sounding speech of the night." As it turns out it "bears striking similarities" to Michelle Obama's 2008 DNC speech so that actually makes sense. In fact, it's pretty clearly plagiarized. As I write this nobody really knows exactly how this happened, but it's hardly surprising considering that Trump himself has blatantly lifted every one of his slogans from Reagan and Nixon without ever acknowledging it.

After Melania Trump left the stage people began filtering out of the hall since she'd been billed as the main attraction but the speeches went on and on afterwards with a bizarre, rambling speech from retired general Michael Flynn that sounded like it too was plagiarized --- from "Dr. Strangelove." Senator Joni Ernst spoke to a hall that was two thirds empty and there were even more people speaking late into the night after she was done.  For a convention that was supposed to be showbiz slick, the first night certainly had a haphazard feeling to it.

It finally, blessedly, came to an end with a prayer from the odd televangelist Paula White, who was rumored to have "brought Trump to Christ."  She said that never as before our nation needs prayer because "honesty has been outlawed." That's going a bit far, but it was at least temporarily suspended at the Quicken Loans Center in Cleveland last night.


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digby 7/19/2016 09:00:00 AM

 
Christmas in July

by digby



Just a little hair of the dog ...

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digby 7/19/2016 07:30:00 AM

 

Lock her up!

by Tom Sullivan

Hillary Clinton was the focus last night at the RNC convention in Cleveland when cultural resentment wasn't in the spotlight. In spite of the fact that Melania Trump's speech introducing her husband was supposed to be the headline event, speakers had Clinton in their sights all night.

Attacks on Clinton went beyond the "Hillary for Prison 2016" tee shirts worn in the streets by followers of Alex Jones. Pat Smith, mother of one of the U.S. Foreign Service officers killed in Benghazi, told the crowd Clinton "ought to be wearing stripes." Mocking Clinton's pantsuits, Colorado Senate nominee Darryl Glenn in his speech suggested Clinton "deserves a bright orange jumpsuit." By the time retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn delivered his fiery, but rambling "Wake up, America!" message about politicians failing to win wars, the crowd had begun shouting, "Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!" The general joined in.

"BURN THE WITCH!" would not have seemed out of place.

Several speakers — most prominently former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — insisted on loudly repeating "radical Islamic terrorism" as if it were some kind of Harry Potterish incantation learned in a Defence Against the Dark Arts class at Hogwarts. (A spell, they implied, the feckless Muggle occupying the White House refuses to deploy.) The recitation strangely echoed #BlackLivesMatter protests after Sandra Bland's death in police custody: #SayHerName. You can bet that was accidental.

What might not have been accidental were passages in Melania Trump's speech (probably the best of the night) her writers appeared to have lifted from Michelle Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic convention. New York Public Radio's Mike Hearn (among others) thought that was a bit obvious:

So that's pretty blatant, right? pic.twitter.com/EPnHME7afV

— Mike Hearn (@mikehearn) July 19, 2016

It was, as several others noted, a pretty dark night, one about fears and threats and enemies. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst's speech was all about ISIS being in your town and on your street, coming to kill you in your beds with their long, curved knives. Not exactly "Morning in America." An LBJ campaign video criticizing Barry Goldwater captures the unease more mainstream Republicans might be feeling about now (h/t Nancy LeTourneau):



Months more where last night came from.


Undercover Blue 7/19/2016 06:00:00 AM

Monday, July 18, 2016

 

Speaking their minds at the RNC

by digby

Congressman Steve King on All In:

... Esquire writer Charles Pierce declared that the 2016 Republican National Convention would be the last time "old white people" would command the attention of the Republican Party. 

"This whole business does get a little tired, Charlie," King said. "I would ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?" 

"Than white people?" MSNBC host Chris Hayes interjected. 

"Than—than western civilization itself that's rooted in western Europe, eastern Europe and the United States of America, and every place where christianity settled the world," King said. "That's all of western civilization."

Letting it all hang out on day one.

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digby 7/18/2016 06:30:00 PM

 
QOTD: Trump's ghost

 by digby

Well, his ghostwriter, a man named Tony Schwartz:

Schwartz thought that “The Art of the Deal” would be an easy project....For research, he planned to interview Trump on a series of Saturday mornings.... But the discussion was soon hobbled by what Schwartz regards as one of Trump’s most essential characteristics: “He has no attention span.” 

....“Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn’t seem to be fully understood,” Schwartz told me. “It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then . . . ” Schwartz trailed off, shaking his head in amazement.

That's from a fascinating interview with Schwartz by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker and just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone who knows this man knows that he's got issues.  This is just one of them.

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digby 7/18/2016 05:00:00 PM

 
They think Reality TV is real #Hissecretweapon

by digby

His biggest selling point

In light of the post below about Trump's dominance among non-college educated white Americans, this piece by Rick Perlstein about two RNC delegates is amazing. I have no idea what her educational level is, but she seems to be someone who watches TV and lives inside the GOP cocoon.

Linda Luccesse is a handsome woman in her 60s, soft-spoken and calm, tastefully accessorized in some very smart silver jersey that matched the silver hair she pulled back in a ponytail. We sat down outside a Starbucks in Park Ridge, where she lives and used to own a dance studio, and she asked me about the publication I was working for:

“This is a Republican paper?”

“No, the New Republic.”

“So are you national?”

Lucchese is not what you’d call a political insider. She’s never been involved before in a campaign, she said, “Because I’ve never been gung-ho about politicians. But when I heard that Trump was going to be running, I found his website and saw that I was, you know, in favor.” She signed up, and received an email from a Trump campaign coordinator. “You know, ‘Does anyone want to be a delegate?’ So I said I was interested,” and the Trump campaign guy replied, “‘Get these papers in to me.’

“So I sent in, you know, the few papers he needed, and, you know, lo and behold, I was picked as one. And then my name was on the ballot.”

She signed up on the website, and received an email from a Trump campaign coordinator. “You know, ‘Does anyone want to be a delegate?’”

She has no idea why she was one of three potential delegates chosen by the Trump campaign; she suspects it might have been her punctuality. “Because I know most people drag their feet on a lot of things. I pay my bills a month in advance, so there are never any late fees or anything.” She also has no idea why she ended up as the only Trump-pledged candidate to win election for one of the three delegate spots for the ninth district; she never heard back from the Trump campaign with any guidance, nor did she ever campaign. “Though I did go to one Republican club meeting around here. They wanted candidates for different things to voice their opinion, so I went for the heck of it, and, um, voiced my opinion as everyone else did at that time, because everyone was running. So that was about it.” It was her first political speech.

One way or another, she ended up winning, bound for Cleveland. There was a congratulatory email; maybe a few others; she doesn’t really recall. “I didn’t keep the emails, or anything like that. But, um, it was virtually that simplistic.” Sic.

I asked Luchesse what attracted her to Trump.

“Well, I was impressed with—he’s been in the public eye for so long. And there hasn’t really been anything negative about him. Yes, he did have his girlfriend Marla on the side, but he married her, had a kid, whatever. But his television show, I was impressed how he handled it, that he had two advisers,” whose advice he weighed. “And all those celebrities that he went through: You never heard anything negative about him. They seemed to sit there—and there was quite a variety of celebrities on that show—they seemed to sit there, and they showed him respect. They didn’t have to be there. They could have done charity work. In so many other venues. But I was impressed at how he handled it: You know, he listened to those two advisers he had, and then he came up with some rationalization between the two suggestions. And he moved on it. You know, right or wrong, he moved on it. You know: ‘You’re fired. Because you didn’t do this or this.’”

That quality of decisiveness, she said, is “why a lot of congressman are scared of him: ‘He’s going to point the finger at me if he finds what I do. Trump is going to call me out.’”

Lucchese’s voice lowered conspiratorially when she observed that Park Ridge, where she’s lived for 36 years, is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s hometown. “You know, they don’t even know what I know about this town. I’ve had a business here. So I know the town.” (I asked her for details. They were underwhelming.)

I asked if she’d seen Hillary’s latest commercial.

“Probably not.”

I said, “It involves the man of the hour.”

“Of course. She’s gotta attack him.”

I showed her the new ad, which it turned out she had seen. It’s the one that features little children staring at TV screens as Trump says awful, offensive things. Luchesse’s eyes darkened as she watched. “You know, they could do the same on Hillary.”

She explained her theory that Senator Clinton must have had something awful on Barack Obama, which was how she blackmailed him into becoming Secretary of State Clinton—and that she, in turn, must have had something awful on Obama, or else why would he have forced her out of that job? I noted that Clinton left to run for president, with the president’s support, an interpretation that left her unimpressed: George H.W. Bush didn’t stop being vice president when he ran for president, did he?

I asked Luchesse what she thought of the media coverage of Trump. She was not impressed. “They have to report something sensational,” she said, “so they can get the Nobel Prize or whatever.”

The right has no monopoly on conspiracy theories these days although they have been at it longer. And I'm going to guess that if a reality TV star had run as a Democrat a lot of these same people would have voted for him. This isn't about politics.

Be sure to read the rest of Perlstein's story about the Kasich delegate he spoke to. Let's just say it's quite a contrast.

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digby 7/18/2016 03:30:00 PM

 
Trump's voters all have one thing in common

by digby

This is a good piece by Nate Cohn in the NY Times about the current polling and what it means. He explains how the cumulative info shows Clinton with a consistent lead and explains why and how it breaks down. This is it in a nutshell:

The polls tell a very clear story about the country’s divisions in an era of sweeping economic and demographic shifts. For white voters with a college degree and nonwhite voters, the 2016 presidential election must look and feel like a landslide. Mr. Trump trails by as large or larger margins among these voters as John McCain did in 2008.

But the story is very different for white voters without a college degree, who remain a very large bloc of voters in the electorate. Here, Mrs. Clinton is doing far worse than President Obama last time. On balance, these two shifts have canceled out — leaving Mrs. Clinton ahead by roughly the same margin as Mr. Obama was in pre-election polls from 2012.

These big demographic divides have added confusion to the polls in battleground states. Those states have such different demographic characteristics that Mrs. Clinton has seemed to fare very well in some states while struggling in others.

On balance, Mrs. Clinton is excelling in diverse and well-educated states like Virginia, Colorado and even North Carolina. But she is struggling to match Mr. Obama in less educated or less diverse places in the Midwest and Northeast, like Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, or even Maine’s Second Congressional District. Yet Mrs. Clinton appears to be tied or ahead even in these states. The combination gives her a strong advantage in the Electoral College.

Polls right now aren't very predictive of anything so it all had to be taken with a grain of salt. But as Cohn explains once the conventions are done and the expected bounces fade (or don't) we will have an idea of where we stand. Right now we should all just take a deep breath.

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digby 7/18/2016 02:00:00 PM

 
Ten-to-one this is why Trump picked Chachi

by digby

Here's a https://t.co/eZA6pZW1z7 me exactly where I CALLED her, a name or anything? @allieri @THR @HuffingtonPost pic.twitter.com/VMOIhJern2

— Scott Baio (@ScottBaio) July 17, 2016

digby 7/18/2016 12:30:00 PM

 
Divide and conquer

by digby

In 1964, in the midst of major concerns about Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, the Democratic campaign ran an ad called “Confessions of a Republican” that gave voice to those worries and fears.

Today, facing Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee this week in Cleveland, Hillary for America is releasing a new web ad, “Confessions of a Republican II,” featuring the same person, Bill Bogert, making the same case.

Echoing concerns of many of his fellow voters (Republicans, Democrats and independents across the country), Bogert makes the case that Trump is unqualified, totally unfit and far too dangerous to be President of the United States. In the video, he again says “This man scares me. […] I think the party is about to make a terrible mistake in Cleveland and I’m going to have to vote against that mistake on the 8th of November.”

There are a few Republicans like this starting to come out of the woodwork. I had a neighbor tell me that he thinks Hillary is much too liberal but he "can't put that idiot in the White House". I suspect there are fewer of these sane Republicans than we might hope but there have to be some.




digby 7/18/2016 11:00:00 AM

 
Feel the convention magic

by digby

I wrote about the dynamic Trump-Pence duo for Salon this morning:

The GOP convention kicks off today and if it goes as well as Trump's Vice President roll-out drama it should be exciting in a fiery train wreck sort of way. If there's one thing Trump does understand it's the reality TV show formula. His most important decision of the campaign was an exercise in public humiliation for every one of the sad, desperate men who threw their integrity to the wind and prostrated themselves before him. He didn't even offer them a rose.

By the middle of the week, it seemed to have come down to three, Gingrich, Christie and Pence. Keeping the suspense high, a formula requirement, the campaign leaked like a sieve, each story contradicting the other. Chris Christie who had pretty much become The Donald's man servant over the last couple of months was probably the most pathetic, appearing to have sold his soul without realizing that Trump's trusted son-in-law, Jared Kushner would likely put the kibosh on him since he put Kushner's daddy in jail for a very long time. It's a pretty big ego that would have believed that wouldn't be a problem, but this is Chris Christie we're talking about.

Then there was Newt, the garrulous psuedo-intellectual whose aggressive nasty streak was very appealing to the equally nasty Trump. Kushner was rumored to be in his corner, largely at the behest of Sheldon Adelson, a real multi-billionaire, who actually writes big checks. But the rest of the Trump brood reportedly preferred the midwestern wingnut Mike Pence, likely out of some deluded and desperate belief that they could normalize their father by choosing a standard issue conservative Republican. Unfortunately, after it had leaked that he was chosen, the campaign insisted that a choice hadn't been made so they could keep the "suspense" alive until the big announcement. When that had to be postponed because of the horrific events in Nice, Newt went on Fox and made a last minute hail Mary play for the job by taking a position on terrorism even more preposterous than Trump's, by proposing a sort of Inquisition demanding that all Muslims disavow Sharia law and deporting all those who "fail the test."

It was later reported that Trump was calling his advisers that night to find out if there was any way he could get out of his dull choice. Whether it was because he saw Gingrich's boldly fascistic performance is unknown but it wouldn't be surprising if it made him wish he'd gone with his gut. Sadly, the end result is that Gingrich abased himself for nothing and had to backtrack madly the next day while the man who was left waiting in New York for the big announcement looked like a consolation prize. The NY Times reported one wag commenting about the process, “It’s death by humiliation. Slow, twisting and played out in public, like a reality show elimination.”

Trump finally announced his choice via twitter and the campaign released the new Trump Pence logo which featured a weirdly suggestive image of the letter "P" being penetrated by the letter "T." Coming as it did from a family that is known for being branding experts it seems odd someone wouldn't have noticed this before.

At the ceremony Trump openly implied that he was reluctantly talked into Pence saying, "I think if you look at one of the big reasons that I chose Mike, and one of the reasons is party unity. I have to be honest. So many people have said 'party unity,' because I'm an outsider" and went on to talk about himself for about half an hour. He didn't even bother to stand on the stage next to Pence as he accepted the honor. There's only one dominant silverback and he doesn't share the stage with a lesser males in the clan.

Reports about the haphazard planning and Trump's interference are everywhere. According to The New York Times, the Republican establishment is very nervous:

Republicans are queasy over the possibility of Mr. Trump going off half-cocked if a convention moment is not to his liking or rebellious delegates go ahead with a plan to try to block his nomination, while some are concerned that he will be heavy-handed in urging speakers to attack the Clintons, immigrants or others with language that alienates undecided voters.

Have they met Donald Trump?

Meanwhile, Trump has been working overtime to continue his feud with the #NeverTrump contingent which was defeated in the Rules Committee over the week-end. Always the gracious winner, he tweeted:

#NeverTrump is never more. They were crushed last night in Cleveland at Rules Committee by a vote of 87-12. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2016

The Rules committee meetings were contentious, with accusations of the votes being "rigged" from the #NeverTrump forces. There were even reports of Trump associates strong-arming delegates who attempted to organize against their man, according to the Washington Post:

Kim Taylor Fralick, a delegate from Lousiana, said she received at least three emails from Carl Paladino, a New York delegate and close associate of Trump. He was responding to an email sent by Fralick encouraging convention delegates to join Unruh's group.

"It's like pissing up a drain pipe. You get wet. A revolt will never materialize," Paladino wrote to Fralick.

He was downright threatening to a delegate from Utah.

"You should be hung for treason Stefani. There will not be a Republican Party if you attempt to replace Trump. I'll be in your face in Cleveland."

Lest you think Paladino is just some fringe right wing functionary from an upstate dairy farm, he was the Republican nominee for Governor of New York in 2010.

Trump and his followers managed to enrage there #NeverTrump group so much that there are now plans afoot to create chaos on the floor by forcing procedural motions that will bog down the program. And they may attempt a full roll-call in prime time where delegates from each state can call out their preferences for anyone but Trump. Whether that's a real possibility remains to be seen but feelings are running very high.

And that's just the drama taking place inside the hall. In the streets of Cleveland, there are groups gathering from around the country to protest and counter-protest, from bikers to anarchists to open-carry zealots. For many reasons, let's hope that Trump is not spared the spectacle of an angry mob inside the convention hall because of one outside of it.


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digby 7/18/2016 09:30:00 AM

 

Trump treated him like a lowly schoolteacher

by digby

Poor Chris Christie.  Now he knows what it's like to be one of his public employees:

...While minding my own business at the Starbucks inside the Westin hotel this morning, I saw a man engage Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in conversation about the VP selection process. The man, whom I couldn't identify, suggested that Pence was a smart pick and Gingrich would've been a disaster. 

'Christie was livid, right?' the man said at one point. 'Yeah,' Manafort replied...

He's speaking at the convention but they're not calling him a headliner like Rubio and Cruz.  Ofcourse he didn't get very many votes in the primary either. His main accomplishment was caving early and kissing Trump's ring. It didn't work out for him.

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digby 7/18/2016 08:00:00 AM

 

I love the smell of Cleveland in the morning

by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Mike Licht via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

“What you won’t see is any military-style equipment," Cleveland Police Department deputy chief Ed Tomba told reporters in May in advance of the Republican National Convention. That stuff will be carried by civilian gun-rights advocates — in spite of the Cleveland Police Union's unheeded plea to Gov. John Kasich to suspend Ohio's open-carry law during the convention. The gun-rights rally Northeast Ohio Open Carry planned for downtown Cleveland yesterday afternoon attracted just two people.

Except for its new Bat-cycles, Cleveland will keep its fifty million dollars in new federally funded riot gear, steel batons, and tactical armor largely out of sight as the Republican National Convention begins today.

No worries. The city has built in extra buffer times to keep legally armed protesters separated from hippies prohibited from carrying toy guns, umbrellas with sharp tips, tennis balls and canned goods. So, it's all good.

But the possibility of street disturbances is not the reason so many GOP leaders are staying away from the Republican presidential nominating convention. Donald Trump simply doesn't smell like victory. Politico reports:

Only 17 percent of GOP insiders said they are more excited about this year’s convention than in past years — though many of their comments were mordant. Numerous insiders compared the convention to a train wreck or car accident.

“Excited in the way one can’t stop staring at a train wreck,” said a Pennsylvania Republican who is “more excited” about Cleveland. “It's a mixture of disgust and fascination.”

[...]

“Conventions are usually about being excited for your party’s nominee,” an Ohio Republican said. “This one is about how to help the other people you care about while you have the top of the ticket embarrassing you.”

What's embarrassing is how Trump says out loud what "politically correct" Republicans have known for years to say only in dog whistles. I have said before that the Republican M.O. is this: Find the line. Step over it. Dare someone to push them back. If they don't get pushed back, they've established a new normal. It's the Overton Window for bullies. Donald Trump has dispensed with lines altogether. And with dog whistles. And with truth.

“There is something very belligerent about the way he presents facts, as if he thinks nobody will have the balls to stand up to him,” said Richard C. Seltzer, an attorney who faced Trump in several real estate lawsuits. So far, nobody in Republican leadership has had the "balls" Sen. Elizabeth Warren has had for counter-punching Trump. He had best thank his lucky stars Warren doesn't show up in Cleveland.

What is scarier than a Trump nomination is a Trump win in November (as unlikely as that now seems). And it's not just what Trump might do as president. A friend observed over the weekend at the Netroots Nation conference, the conservative takeaway from a Trump win will be that there is no longer any need to be polite about hiding the animating passions of the base. They will feel free to unleash the Furies.


Undercover Blue 7/18/2016 06:00:00 AM

Sunday, July 17, 2016

 

QOTD: The Orange Julius Caesar

by digby

There's always something. This one's especially juvenile:

"I don't care," he said during an joint interview with his running mate that aired Sunday night on "60 Minutes." 

"It's a long time ago. And he voted that way and they were also misled. A lot of information was given to people." 

Trump reiterated that he was against the Iraq War from the beginning and said the war was "handled so badly." 

But the presumptive GOP nominee has attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote for the war — often calling it an example of her "bad judgment." was also pressed on why he attacks presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for voting for the Iraq war, 

When pressed about his attacks on her for it, he said: "Many people have [attacked her for her vote], and frankly, I'm one of the few that was right on Iraq," Trump said. 

"He's entitled to make a mistake every once in a while," Trump said of Pence. 

"She's not?" Lesley Stahl asked. "No. She's not," Trump said.

Well ok then.

Jesus H. Christ ...

Update:  Oy

Stahl: Do you think John McCain is not a hero because he was captured? 

Pence: I have a great deal of respect for John McCain and --- 

Stahl: Do you think he went too far? 

Trump: You could say yes I --- that's ok. That one you could say yes ... I mean you're not --- it's fine - hey look. I like John McCain. But we have to take care of our vets. 

He actually gave his Vice President "permission" to say what he believes. Just this once though.

On national television.

What kind of a sycophantic wimp do you have to be to allow this Orange Julius Caesar to humiliate you like this in front of the whole country?

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digby 7/17/2016 06:00:00 PM

 
It worked out great at Altamont

by digby

This should work out well:

#Bikers4Trump plan to protect #Trump

supporters during the RNC - GODSPEED PATRIOTS!

GOD BLESS #Trump2016 #Trump

https://t.co/wCeoASnXZc

— TRUMP WORLD (@Trump_World) July 17, 2016

digby 7/17/2016 04:00:00 PM

 

And now a word from the Deep Bench

by digby

Schmaaht as a whip:

When Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence was a talk radio show host in Indiana, he wrote an op-ed declaring the film Mulan was an attempt by some “mischievous liberal” at Disney to influence the debate over women in the military.

The 1999 op-ed ran on a website for Pence’s radio program that was uncovered by BuzzFeed News.
“Despite her delicate features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis with her cloddish cohorts,” wrote Pence. “Obviously, this is Walt Disney’s attempt to add childhood expectation to the cultural debate over the role of women in the military.”

“I suspect that some mischievous liberal at Disney assumes that Mulan’s story will cause a quiet change in the next generation’s attitude about women in combat and they just might be right,” Pence continued. “(Just think about how often we think of Bambi every time the subject of deer hunting comes into the mainstream media debate.)”

Disney’s film is based on the 6th century Ballad of Mulan. 

Pence argues Mulan’s romance with a superior officer proved women cannot serve in the military.

Don't tell him about Boadicea. Or Joan of Arc. He'll get all confused.

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digby 7/17/2016 02:30:00 PM

 
Which side are you on Johnny?

by digby

NEW: Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association drafting asking OH Gov. John Kasich to suspend open carry in Cleveland during RNC Convention.

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 17, 2016

Trump: "We grieve for the officers killed in Baton Rouge today. How many law enforcement and people have to die because of a lack of leadership in our country?" Trump, the party's presumptive presidential nominee posted on Facebook. "We demand law and order."

The NRA official policy:

"The National Rifle Association unapologetically and unflinchingly supports the right of self-defense and what that means is that our members and our supporters have a right to carry a firearm in any place they have a legal right to be. If that means open carry, we support open carry. If it means concealed carry, it means concealed carry. So unequivocally we support open carry, we've been the leader of open carry efforts across this country, the leader in opposing efforts to curtail the ability to carry firearms, and that's something we're proud of and we do every day for our members."

Can you see the problem his gun fetish is presenting to that nice John Kasich fellow? I knew that you could.

This fault line has always fascinated me. Police do not want open carry, for obvious reasons. They don't want concealed carry either for that matter. They tend to believe that people should be allowed to have guns in their homes and businesses for personal protection but not be allowed to carry them on the streets because well... it's fucking dangerous. The NRA and it's paid minions disagree.

Trump is all about "law and order" but he's endorsed by the NRA.  It should be interesting to see where this goes



Update: Johnny says no go. Remember, Republicans believe that the Bill of Rights is just a suggestion --- except for the 2nd Amendment which is sacred in 2016 because the founders believed everyone should be packing heat on the streets to repel the King. Or something.

Case in point:

Instead of suspending 2d amt rights at the Cleveland Convention, how about suspending 1st amt rights and ban the protesters?

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 17, 2016

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digby 7/17/2016 01:00:00 PM

 
Time for a little reminder of what Citizens United was all about

by digby

Reading Tom's piece below about Hillary Clinton "coming out" against Citizens United via video at Netroots Nation, I thought maybe I'd re-run a piece I wrote for Salon a couple of years ago that might sway some of the skeptics who seem to think she's lying outright or simply doing it as a pander to Bernie Sanders. Apparently people don't know anything about the history of the case or the group that took it all the way to the Supreme Court. If they did they'd understand that Hillary Clinton being anything but actively hostile to the ruling is a bit of a stretch:

You have to wonder how many people in America, even those who are well informed, make the connection between the notorious Supreme Court decision that unleashed unprecedented campaign spending and the slimy political assassination outfit called Citizens United that brought the case? It’s not that people of low character have never succeeded in winning Supreme Court cases before. But it’s difficult to find a group with less integrity than this one.

You probably don't recall that the case itself was about a film called “Hillary: the Movie,” which was produced by Citizens United in anticipation of the 2008 election and which the FEC ruled was not a movie at all but rather a 90-minute campaign commercial that was “susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.” This designation as an advertisement ran afoul of elements of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation and Theodore Olson, Citizens United’s attorney, filed a case against the FEC claiming its First Amendment rights had been violated. And the rest is history.

What many people may not know, however, is the history of Citizens United. It goes all the way back to the 1980s when it was created by the notorious hatchet man from Arkansas, Floyd Brown of Willie Horton fame. In 1992, in anticipation of a flood of juicy opportunities for character assassination of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, he brought on David Bossie, a young and ambitious GOP operative. Their joint effort was a massive and instant success with the media, which used it as a major “source” for years. As early as 1994 some media critics were concerned about the group’s allure among the press corps. Trudy Lieberman wrote an exposé of the group called “Churning Whitewater” for the Columbia Journalism Review, although nobody in the mainstream media seemed particularly concerned.

Lieberman described the scene this way:

In a cluttered office tucked away in one of the many red-brick office condominiums that ring Washington, D.C., David Bossie, source par excellence to journalists dredging the Whitewater swamp, handles one of the eighteen calls he says he gets each hour. This one is from Bruce Ingersoll, a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The discussion centers on bonds. “I have a whole file on bond transactions,” Bossie tells Ingersoll. “I will get a report on what I find. I know you are trying to move quickly on this. You want to come out before they come out.” A few minutes later Bossie says, “I don’t know what I have to give you,” but promises to spend the next couple of hours going through materials. “You’re on deadline, I understand that.” He then points Ingersoll in another direction. “Have you done anything on Beverly? [Presumably that is Beverly Bassett Schaffer, former Arkansas Securities Commissioner.] You guys ought to look into that. There will be lawsuits against the Rose law firm,” he adds.

“Lot 7,” Bossie tells me between calls, is the next big story. “ABC and U.S. News & World Report are looking at Lot 7. We’re the only ones that have the abstract. Wade [Chris Wade, a real estate agent who sold some of the Whitewater lots] dumped the property and got something from the Clintons.”

The phone rings again. Bossie addresses the caller as “Judge.” “That judge who called,” Bossie explains later, “called me in August and said he had a friend, [another judge named] David Hale, who was in trouble because of Bill Clinton.” It was this phone call and the charges that Hale later made through Bossie’s organization, Citizens United, that fueled David Bossie’s zealous investigation into Whitewater. Bossie’s efforts have, in turn, generated daily page-one headlines and another chapter in the saga of American pack journalism. “I’m the information bank,” he says.

The dreadful performance of the press in that era was fully exposed in the book “The Hunting of the President” by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons and Lyons’ earlier “Fools for Scandal.” (If you are a young person who is unfamiliar with the moldy details, these are the books you’ll need to read to get up to speed before the next election.) The media claque was dazzled by the gothic and byzantine world of small state politics and there were, as usual, plenty of con artists and grifters ready to feed them exactly the kind of lurid tales that would appeal to their big city imaginations. Citizens United became a clearinghouse for all this shady material, alternating between spoon feeding enticing tidbits to the press and dumping vast amounts of incomprehensible material that sounded bad but ended up being misleading at best when the facts were untangled. This was the essence of ’90s-style “smell test” politics in which many people observed the sheer volume of complicated accusations, threw up their hands and assumed that where there’s this much smoke there must be a fire somewhere.

But David Bossie didn’t stop there. He was a major player in a later scandal of his own when he moved up the conservative ladder to serve as the chief investigator for congressman Dan “watermelon man” Burton and was eventually forced to resign in disgrace. The Washington Post reported on his sordid denouement in May of 1998:

The chairman of the House investigation into Clinton-Gore campaign financing abuses apologized to fellow Republicans yesterday for the uproar over his release of transcripts of Webster L. Hubbell’s prison conversations and removed his chief investigator under pressure from House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The move came as Gingrich sought to contain the damage, condemning “the circus” that took place within Indiana Republican Dan Burton’s Government Oversight and Reform Committee and scolding Burton at a closed Republican Conference meeting for refusing to say that he was embarrassed by the episode…

His hard-driving chief investigator, David Bossie, submitted a letter of resignation later in the day, saying that he wanted to blunt the “unjustified attacks” coming from House Democrats and the White House.

The editing and release of the Hubbell tapes, subpoenaed by the committee last year, was described by one insider as a “Dave Bossie project,” opposed by the panel’s chief counsel and other committee staffers but ultimately approved by Burton.

In meetings this week, Gingrich and other leaders have voiced their concerns over Burton’s staff. While Burton defended his senior investigator publicly and said Bossie was leaving of his own accord, Gingrich told the conference yesterday that Bossie, who had survived repeated previous attempts, had been fired.

When even Newt Gingrich thinks you’re beyond the pale, you are beyond the pale. But this is the GOP we’re talking about and its practitioners of the dark art of character assassination have more lives than a feral cat. Within a year Bossie was given the Ronald Reagan Award by the Conservative Political Action Conference for his “outstanding achievements and selfless contributions to the conservative movement” and was soon after merrily pimping conspiracy stories and cultivating his fan base in the press corps. By 2004 he was all over television talking about his lawsuit against Michael Moore, with the Federal Election commission claiming that Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 451″ violated campaign finance laws. Yes, that was the same David Bossie whose organization Citizens United just four years later made “Hillary: the Movie” into a crusade that ended up leaving the campaign finance system in tatters. You can’t make this stuff up.

Charles Pierce caught up with him at the 2012 Republican convention where he was the toast of the hall and described Bossie’s new state of grace: He “has had his life’s work blessed through the incredible naivete of Justice Anthony Kennedy by the highest court in this land. He is sanctified by it. His entire career has been made pure.” It was the highlight of a long, illustrious career of dirty tricks and hatchet jobs.

So what’s Bossie up to these days, you wonder? Well, he’s turned up in Colorado with a new film made in tandem with another longtime conservative operative Michelle Malkin about the leftist billionaires who have turned the state into a dystopian hellhole crawling with gun-grabbing potheads who are trying to destroy the energy industry. And, needless to say, once more Citizens United stands accused of selectively editing interviews to deceive the audience and give the opposite impression of what the subject actually meant.

David Bossie told Charles Pierce back in 2012:

“I think your career has different chapters. Before the Supreme Court was a chapter. Just leading Citizens United. Post-the Supreme Court decision is a different chapter. My time on Capitol Hill as an investigator was a chapter. My time as a fireman living in a firehouse was a chapter. So, you know, everybody has a chapters in their lives.

The book on David Bossie is actually a pretty unlikely tale. He’s a standard-issue Republican dirty trickster whose mundane wet work has somehow managed to have a profound effect on the American political system for more than 20 years. In the world of partisan hit men he may be the best there ever was. And he isn’t done yet.

Bossie is now running one of Trump's super pacs.

Here's the right wing hit job trailer for Hillary: the Movie



Propaganda is powerful isn't it? It permeates the national culture until people don't even know where it comes from and they just thinks of it as being "true". In this case the idea that Hillary Clinton is some how in favor of Citizens United --- or doesn't care about it --- is proof of just how well it works.

Seriously folks, if you don't know about this stuff read this e-book book by Lyons and Conason. It's free.







digby 7/17/2016 11:30:00 AM

 
Yes, we are too stupid to survive

by digby

Just this ...

Shooting down cops on the day before the GOP convention. What could go wrong?



digby 7/17/2016 10:00:00 AM

 

Citizens United is still a thing?

by Tom Sullivan

Secretary Hillary Clinton announced yesterday she would in her first 30 days as president propose a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The announcement came in a video to the Netroots Nation 16 conference (St. Louis, #NN16):

"I will also appoint Supreme Court justices who understand that this decision was a disaster for our democracy, and I will fight for other progressive reforms, including small-dollar matching and disclosure requirements. I hope some of the brilliant minds in this room will seek out cases to challenge Citizens United in the courts."

The Washington Post's Dave Weigel tweeted:

Applause -- and no boos -- when Clinton appears via video at #NN16

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) July 16, 2016

Here's why #NN16 -- in 11 years of existence, never a hotbed of Hillary support -- applauded her. https://t.co/ULiRHqyDCj

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) July 16, 2016

However, a cluster of seven or eight people towards the back of the hall stood and turned their backs to the screen, a friend reports. One Twitter user asked if Netroots Nation is still a thing. It is. (But I missed the closing session.)

Weigel writes:

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Clinton pledges to promote Securities and Exchange Commission "rulemaking requiring publicly traded companies to disclose all political spending to their shareholders" and to sign an "executive order requiring federal government contractors to fully disclose all political spending." She has discussed versions of those ideas on the campaign trail, but the forum of Netroots Nation — a conference in its 11th year that she visited in person only once — was a striking place to make the statement.

NetRoots Nation Executive Director Raven Brooks thinks the announcement is significant, and a further move towards positions rival Sen. Bernie Sanders championed. Brooks tells Politico:

“I don’t think there really was any thought or expectation that she would be carrying this issue forward,” Brooks said.

“She’s adopted some of his other stuff. Notably some of the college and student debt things, but I thought campaign finance was going to be left behind.”

The proposal may be merely symbolic. And no doubt some Sanders supporters will see the move as pandering. But it is doubtful that Sanders would have any greater chance of pushing such an amendment through what is still a Republican Congress. Clinton herself will find that problematic unless November proves a sweep year for Democrats. Regardless of the messenger, the message coming from such a high level is one to welcome. I look forward to when people can ask if Citizens United is still a thing.


Undercover Blue 7/17/2016 06:00:00 AM