Hullabaloo

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

 
Ooh, scary liberals

by digby

This ad is just downright nasty:



And here's the point: messing with liberals:




The Washington Post found at least a couple of NRA members who saw what this thing was really all about:

“I’m an old white guy and a life member, but this BS is disgusting,” Facebook user Eric Eugene Rush commented under the post. “When you spew crap like this, you don’t speak for me anymore. I try to avoid doing things on the spur of the moment, but I’ll be thinking about canceling my membership.”

“Jeeeeesus … it almost looks like you’re encouraging violence against demonstrators,” Steve van der Lacy wrote. “Just let the police do their jobs when or if protests get out of hand.”

There was a lot of commentary from the left that this was a call for civil war. But it isn't it's a call for an authoritarian crackdown by the US Government. You may think that's an unusual tack for the 2nd Amendment zealots to take but it isn't. They consider themselves to be adjuncts of the police when it comes to fighting liberal protesters, African Americans and immigrants. They were on the ground "protecting businesses" in Ferguson. And you can bet that if there are widespread protests that challenge the police, they'll be with them.

They are happy for the government police agencies to crack down on their political enemies. They only hate the government when it comes to guns and taxes.

Remember, Trump himself celebrated vigilantism on the trail. He has no trouble with the idea of armed citizens taking on the "criminals" to "help"the police. As long as the criminals are the right criminals, if you know what I mean.



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digby 7/05/2017 12:00:00 PM

 
What does The Donald really want from Vlad?

by digby

I wrote about Trump's big upcoming foreign adventure for Salon today:

In a couple of days President Trump is going overseas again, for a meeting with world leaders of the G-20 in Hamburg. This time he will also meet with his favorite leader of all, Vladimir Putin, one on one. This is ostensibly the first time they will have met in person. I say ostensibly because Trump has made so many contradictory statements that for all we know they’ve been secret pals for years.

Recall that back in October of 2013, when asked what he thought of Putin, Trump told David Letterman that he “met him once.” In November of that year, Trump told MSNBC that he had a relationship with him. In February of 2014 he went on “Fox & Friends” and said Putin contacted him during the Miss Universe pageant and was “so nice.”

The following March, regarding Putin, Trump told the Daily Mail: “The relationship is great, and it would be great if I had the position I should have. That June he answered “yes,” when asked by Fox News’ Sean Hannity if he’d had any contact with Putin.

After Trump announced that he was running for president in 2015 he started to say simply that he thought he’d “get along well” with the Russian president, but he stopped saying that he’d already met him. Although when right-wing radio host Michael Savage asked him directly if he had met Putin, Trump said, “Yes, yes, a long time ago. We got along great, by the way.”

When the issue came up in a Republican primary debate in November 2015 Trump said, “I got to know [Putin] very well because we were both on ‘60 Minutes,’ we were stablemates, and we did very well that night. But, you know that.” (He later admitted that the program had just featured separate profiles on the two men.) By February 2016 he changed his tune again, saying at a rally that he had no relationship with Putin. Then in May of that year, when asked if he’d ever spoken to Vladimir Putin, Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier, “Yeah, I have no comment on that, no comment.” Baier asked again and the candidate said, “Yeah, but I don’t want to comment because, let’s assume I did. Perhaps it was personal. You know, I don’t want to hurt his confidence. But I know Russia well.”

By July, on the verge of the general election campaign, Trump was denying having any relationship with Putin of his government at all. He told a Miami CBS affiliate, “I have nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do, I never met Putin, I have nothing to do with Russia whatsoever.” He repeated that at the campaign debates with Hillary Clinton in the fall.

So, we really don’t know whether Trump has met the Russian president before. He’s lied about it one way or the other. We do know that he greatly admires him and has been one of his most strident defenders in the last few years, whether it was against accusations that Putin had poisoned political enemies, invaded a neighboring country or ordered the killing of opposition journalists. Indeed, Trump has been known to say that America does the same thing, implying it’s no big deal if Putin does it too.

The Washington Post reported last week that there was a major battle within the White House over this meeting:

Many administration officials believe the U.S. needs to maintain its distance from Russia at such a sensitive time — and interact only with great caution. But Trump and some others within his administration have been pressing for a full bilateral meeting. He’s calling for media access and all the typical protocol associated with such sessions, even as officials within the State Department and National Security Council urge more restraint, according to a current and a former administration official.

Some advisers have recommended that the president instead do either a quick, informal “pull-aside” on the sidelines of the summit, or that the U.S. and Russian delegations hold “strategic stability talks,” which typically don’t involve the presidents.

One imagines that some of the political people were leery of the optics of Trump and Putin together in the middle of this Russiagate firestorm. And the policy people were undoubtedly terrified that Trump will say something that sends the world careening on a course nobody anticipated.

As it turns out, Trump put his foot down and they are going to do the whole dog-and-pony show, a “full bilateral meeting.”

Most foreign policy experts think Trump should bring up the Russian election-meddling, but there’s no indication he has any intention of doing that. After all, he is one of the country’s greatest skeptics that Russia was involved at all. National security adviser H.R. McMaster recently told CNN that the Trump-Putin talks had “no specific agenda. It’s really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about.” What could go wrong?

We do know that Trump has asked for a list of “deliverables” he could offer to the Russian president when they meet. There was some speculation that it could include the return of the compounds in the U.S. that were seized by the Obama administration last winter as punishment for the reported meddling in the campaign. Needless to say, lifting the sanctions over the invasion of Crimea will certainly be at the top of Putin’s wish list.

No one knows what Trump might ask in return. He certainly doesn’t seem to be inclined to put human rights on the table and the administration is thinking of withdrawing from the international nuclear-weapons treaty (which may be the only thing keeping the world from a new arms race) so a nonproliferation pact is not likely to be high on the president’s list.

But there is one thing Trump has talked about in the past that he could ask for in return for his “deliverables.” Speaking about Putin back in 2015, Trump told Anderson Cooper:

He would never keep somebody like [Edward] Snowden in Russia. He hates Obama. He doesn’t respect Obama. Obama doesn’t like him either. But he has no respect for Obama. Has a hatred for Obama. And Snowden is living the life. Look if that — if I’m president, Putin says, “Hey, boom, you’re gone.” I guarantee you this.

If Vladimir Putin wants to create some more chaos in the U.S., that would be one way of doing it. It would give Trump a big win in the eyes of the intelligence community that has been harshly critical. It would enrage many of the Russia skeptics on the left who have defended Trump’s outreach to the Russian president. Europeans would be sharply divided, Americans would be arguing along old faultlines and the entire Russia story would go sideways.

I have thought from the day Trump won the election that Vladimir Putin could well see this as the perfect inauguration present for his friend. If he can get Trump to agree to loosen sanctions or otherwise reward him handsomely — in exchange for something that costs him nothing, and could be viewed as ridding himself of a problem he doesn’t need — Putin will have proved that he, not Donald Trump, is the world’s greatest dealmaker. And Donald Trump won’t even know he’s been played like a balalaika.

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digby 7/05/2017 10:30:00 AM

 
You go, Handmaids

by digby


This is a powerful image:

They've appeared in Texas, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, California, and New York; cloaked in stark red robes and white bonnets, the women sit in silence with their faces turned down, subdued and still yet quietly creepy.

On Tuesday, the handmaids went to Washington: over a dozen women dressed in costume circled the Capitol in protest of the Senate Republican health care bill that would strip Planned Parenthood of funding and block Medicaid patients from receiving health care at the clinics.

While a new television show has brought Margaret Atwood's dystopian sci-fi book "The Handmaid's Tale" newfound popularity, women around the country are bringing handmaids to life — and to their state capital buildings — for reasons that have more to do with science than fiction.

At the New York state legislature in Albany last Wednesday, handmaids appeared for the third day in a row to silently urge lawmakers to bring a floor vote on two reproductive health bills they say would protect women against potential federal restrictions many fear the Trump administration could bring.

Vanessa Giraldo, a Brooklyn resident who works with special-needs children, took two days off work to take part in the demonstration Monday and Tuesday.

"We’re trying to pass the Reproductive Health Act in order to at least protect New Yorkers because the federal landscape is very hostile to women’s reproductive rights," said Giraldo.

Giraldo said that standing before her state's leaders stock-still in the restrictive garb was "terrifying" but powerful: "It felt like, this could very well be our future. And it’s definitely our past."

In Atwood's dystopian novel — and the Hulu show based on the book — handmaids are slave women forced to serve as reproductive vessels for powerful but infertile elites. Ritually raped and made to become pregnant over and over, the handmaids are little more than walking wombs with no say over their own lives.

"The Handmaid’s Tale is based on what actually has happened to women throughout history, where women have been essentially narrowed down to their reproductive abilities," said Stephanie Craddock Sherwood, executive director of the Ohio abortion fund Women Have Options (WHO).

Sherwood crafted the white bonnets worn by activists in Ohio who entered the statehouse in Columbus on June 13. She said her group banded together with other reproductive rights organizations, like NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, to stage the silent protest against a bill that would effectively ban abortions after 13 weeks.

The #OhioHandmaids waiting silently as the state considers the next plan to force women to give birth against their wishes or medical advice pic.twitter.com/pGBBBlK9rO

— NARAL ProChoice Ohio (@ProChoiceOH) June 13, 2017

The tactic of dressing like handmaids to observe legislative debates and votes on women's healthcare started in Texas this March, where NARAL Pro-Choice Texas director Heather Busby got the idea from watching actors promote the Hulu show on the streets during the South By Southwest festival.

A 'Texas Handmaids' Facebook group was created to organize the first demonstration, at a March 20 state senate debate on two abortion-related bills — one would ban doctors from performing dilation & extraction procedures, while another would give doctors permission to lie to a pregnant patient about fetal anomalies if they thought she might consider an abortion.

"I was nervous at first about whether it would work, would people understand or would they think it was some kind of red riding hood thing. But they got it," said Busby, who has since helped organize sewing parties to create more of the red cloaks.

In the U.S., worries are building among reproductive rights advocates who fear the Trump administration could severely roll back access to abortion and other forms of women's health care.

"The Handmaid’s Tale is a cautionary tale about a future without reproductive rights and the critical need to protect access to that care," said Danielle Wells, assistant director of state policy media at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

As the demonstrations continue to spread, and more women appear in statehouses dressed as handmaids, the red-cloaked allegory gets stronger.

"Any limits to reproductive healthcare access, on birth control and abortion access, is essentially forcing women into pregnancy and motherhood," said Sherwood. "It’s limiting our futures and lives, so that we are only our uteruses and our reproductive ability."

That's about it.

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digby 7/05/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

"A mindset is not a fact"

by Tom Sullivan

Tonya Jameson

Chief Rausch said that when investigating complaints, it is essential to understand an officer’s mindset to determine the facts. A mindset is not a fact.

My wife traveled from North Carolina to a private residence in the Knoxville, Tennessee area last summer to pick up a used truck she bought from the owner days earlier. There is absolutely no way — none — that she would have experienced what happened in May to Tonya Jameson. My wife is white.

Jameson traveled there from Charlotte and Jameson is black. A week later, the former Charlotte Observer reporter published this account on her blog:

I was putting my license plate on an Isuzu SUV that I bought on April 28 from a nice lady in Jefferson City, TN when it happened.

I rented a one-way rental from Charlotte, NC to Morristown, TN, and took an unmarked taxi to the woman’s house on May 3. I talked to her the day before and told her that I would be coming to pick it up and she could remove her license plate because I had NC plates. The car was parked in the same spot in her driveway as it was the previous week when I purchased it from her.

After the cab dropped me off, I got the plate and my screw driver out of the duffel bag to put my plates on. I was screwing in the license plate when I heard: “Hands up, I’m an off duty officer.”

I turned slowly with my hands up. I explained that I bought the car the previous week. He didn’t lower his gun. He’s the seller’s son-in-law, also a Knoxville cop, and lives across the street. He said he saw me get out of a car, which sped away.

It was a taxi, I explain. From where, he asks, still holding the gun on me. Morristown (about 20 minutes away), I reply.

He’s incredulous. I tell him the registration and bill of sale (signed by the woman) are in my duffel bag. I tell him the keys are in my pocket. He tells me not to move. I ask if I can put down the small screwdriver that I’m sweatily holding in the air. He says yes. I ask if I can put my hands down, and he says yes.

He’s still pointing his gun at me as he calls 911. He reports a suspected auto theft. He finishes the call and holsters his gun. I exhale and lean against the truck. He tells me to sit on the step beside the house.

I again invite him to check the registration in my bag. I share various details about his mother-in-law. He tells me he knew she was selling the car, but she didn’t tell him she’d sold it.

A Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy arrives. I’m thinking this should finally be over, and I can be on my way back to Charlotte. The off-duty cop tells his side of the story. I tell the deputy I have the registration in my bag. Does he check it? Nope. Does he run the plates? Nah. I offer him the signed bill of sale and keys. Not good enough.

He tells me to call the cab company and tell the taxi to return to the house. The dispatcher says “sorry honey,” but is willing to talk to the deputy. He doesn’t want to talk to her. He wants to talk the woman who sold me the car, which no one can reach by phone. She’s not home. She’s out cutting the grass on a hill, and she isn’t answering her cell. We’ve been over this already. No one can get her by phone.

I tell the deputy again that registration is in my bag, and it matches the VIN on the car. Or he can simply run the plates. He asks for the title. I tell him that I don’t have the title with me.

He asks if I have the phone number of the woman who sold me the car. Yes. He asks for her number. I read it to him from my phone. He compares it to the number on the bill of sale. It matched. (I’m not sure what that proved). He still doesn’t run the plate.

Since I was finally allowed to pick up my phone off the ground, I text a friend: “Cops here. They don’t believe I bought the car. Just stay on the line ... gonna call.”

Finally, the off-duty cop gets the seller’s daughter on the phone. She confirms that the car was sold to someone in NC. Did I mention that the off-duty cop was the seller’s son-in-law, and knew she was selling the car?

They let me go with a weak apology, and the typical, “There’ve been a lot of burglaries in the area.”

The deputy thanks the off-duty cop, who’d held the gun on me.

All of that talk about police de-escalating situations hasn’t reached Jefferson County, TN. The Knoxville cop’s first inclination was to point a gun at me. I was kneeling down with my back turned to him screwing in a license plate. It was broad daylight. I wasn’t fleeing nor was I threatening him in any way. He could’ve just asked me what was I doing without drawing his gun first. Then instead of following common sense by simply running the plate, the Jefferson County deputy asks me a bunch of nonsense questions.

I filed a complaint with the Knoxville Police Department’s Internal Affairs regarding the officer who drew his gun on me. I talked to Jefferson County Sheriff G.W. “Bud” McCoig about how his deputy handled the call. McCoig said his deputy acted appropriately despite not running my tag or looking at the registration (the deputy denied that I told him I had the registration). Since the deputy only stayed for 11 minutes, McCoig didn’t think it was a big deal. I explained that after one cop pulls a gun on you, and then the law enforcement officer who arrives won’t follow common sense and simply run the plate, but instead interrogates you, 11 minutes is an eternity. I told him his officer created an even tenser encounter. McCoig was unsympathetic and concluded the conversation with, “I’m glad everything worked out and as far as I’m concerned this is closed.”

I’m waiting to hear back from the KPD’s Internal Affairs. They needed additional information from me today. I’m not sure what if anything I can do about the ineptitude at the Jefferson County Sheriff Department.

I do know that I’m thankful that I survived that day. I understand how easily a police encounter can escalate. Some cops are willing to draw guns first and ask questions later. It also showed me how they protect each other. We’re expected to be thankful they didn’t kill us, beat us or lock us up in the name of public safety. The system isn’t set up to protect us. It’s set up to protect them when they abuse their power.

Unacceptable: "We must remain calm while facing a loaded gun while the trained officers can panic and overreact." https://t.co/CVpDRAwiF2

— Becky Bond (@bbond) July 4, 2017

“I told the chief point blank, I don’t think the officer would’ve reacted the same way if he saw me as a white female or a white male,” Jameson said.

Knoxville's Internal Affairs concluded in late June that Officer Matthew Janish’s actions "were lawful and proper":

"In this case, even though he was off duty, the investigation showed that Officer Janish acted within the bounds of his training and appropriate police work in investigating a situation that appeared suspicious to him," reads a statement from Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero.

"Any of us can imagine what it would be like to be alone in an unfamiliar area, having done nothing wrong, and suddenly be confronted by a man with a gun," Rogero's statement continues. "Ms. Jameson had a terrible experience, and she was understandably upset by it."

Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch flew to North Carolina on Tuesday to "meet with (Jameson) to explain the situation, to explain the results of the investigation, and to allow Ms. Jameson the opportunity to ask questions," said KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk.

But in mid-May, former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith told WATE Janish had a better option than approaching Jameson with a weapon drawn:

“The smart thing, and what he’s trained to do, is to notify the jurisdiction just like anybody else, call 911 or if he had a police radio and it was in reach of Knox County Communications District, he could have gotten on the radio and said something. Unless there was some aggression or threat, he was not trained to flash his weapon.”

On Saturday, Jameson was back writing for the Charlotte Observer:

My case is another example of how the system is broken. Although my encounter didn’t end tragically, it could have, as all too many have (Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Michael Brown and others), and his actions likely would have still been deemed “lawful and proper.”

The system is designed to exonerate police officers, not provide justice for their victims. My incident, however, gives me new insight into just how much the law values police lives over the citizens they are supposed to protect.

Chief Rausch said that when investigating complaints, it is essential to understand an officer’s mindset to determine the facts. A mindset is not a fact.

Here are the facts that Janish appeared to focus on – the unmarked cab, a black person, the duffel bag and the license plate.

Then here are other facts that he ignored – he knew his mother-in-law was selling the car, it was broad daylight, and I knew her first name, but not her last name. I offered to show him the keys, registration and bill of sale signed by his mother-in-law.

Those are the actual facts. Officer Janish’s mindset was the scenario he created in his head. His fears weren’t facts.

Jameson told the Knoxville Mercury, “He painted this whole picture where he felt threatened. And if they feel threatened, the system’s going to let them off. And that’s crazy.” The transcript of the 911 call, Jameson asserts, shows Janish was "amped."

She concludes her Observer column describing the ludicrousness of the encounter:

I fought every impulse to do anything that would make him feel threatened. I don’t have de-escalation training. I’m the one being held at gunpoint. I’m the one thinking my life could end if he panics. Yet, I’m the one expected to remain calm.

But Janish didn't shoot her, so it's all good:

"He didn't do anything wrong, and he apologized," said Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch. "It was just one of these unfortunate incidents that happen," he added.

Just not to white people, he didn't add. As Jameson said, if police feel threatened, the system’s going to give them the benefit of the doubt before the people they are supposed to protect.

Two weeks ago, another off-duty cop in St. Louis, but black like Jameson, came out of his house to assist fellow officers with a stolen car that crashed down the street. No screenwriter would write this. It's too cliché:

According to a department summary of the incident released later Thursday, two officers who encountered the armed off-duty officer ordered him to the ground. He complied. When they recognized the off-duty officer, they told him he could stand up and walk toward them.

Another officer just arriving at the scene saw the off-duty officer get up and, not knowing he was an officer, fired his weapon once at the man. He hit the off-duty officer in the arm, the department said.

The police first claimed their off-duty colleague had been hit in crossfire between officers and suspects.

Mindset indeed. Is "shoot first" a must-check box on police academy applications these days or do they simply train that into them? "We're the only country in the world that polices like this," a critical Sheriff Mike Chitwood of Volusia County, FL told the Tampa Bay Times. I've written about this again and again, yet we seem still to be training and arming police for war, not for peacekeeping. For resolving situations with force, not for deescalating them. It's racial profiling, but it's more than that. It's a culture. Let's call it "Code Blue."*

Recall this scene from A Few Good Men in which Capt. Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon) tries to undermine the defense by demonstrating that "Code Red" ritual beatings appear nowhere in the Marine Corps manuals:

You can bet Code Blue is not in police training manuals either. "Stop going for my gun!" is not in there. "He was reaching for his waistband" is not in there. "Stop resisting!" is not in there. Nor other "cover-your-ass" justifications for excessive and deadly force by police. Nor deleting crime scene video. Instituting implicit bias training to reduce racial profiling is not enough. Implicit means unconscious. Code Blue is a culture. It is something learned.

* Not to be confused with the police scanner Code Blue.


Undercover Blue 7/05/2017 06:00:00 AM

Tuesday, July 04, 2017

 
Revolution for Dummies

by digby

This would be funny if it weren't for that fact that these pathetic loons carry real guns:

A few hundred armed militia group members, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Ku Klux Klaners, supporters of President Donald Trump, and other self-described patriots descended upon the Gettysburg battlefield Saturday to defend the site’s Confederate symbols from phantom activists with the violent far-left group Antifa.

Some carried semi-automatic rifles ― permitted in Pennsylvania ― as they peered out across the battlefield with binoculars, on the lookout for the black-clad, face-masked anti-fascists, anarchists and socialists they said they had heard were traveling to the national park to dishonor Confederate graves, monuments and flags.

There are lots of families with kids touring Gettysburg on this week-end. And it's a very moving experience. It's just lucky one of these bozos didn't shoot one of them.

One of them did, however, get a shot off:

Although many came expecting violence ― even after Antifa made it clear its adherents never planned to show up ― the only bloodshed came when a lone militia group member accidentally shot himself in the leg.

digby 7/04/2017 06:00:00 PM

 
They love him, they really love him

by digby

If you are distressed and disturbed by our president's cretinous behavior consider this:

The online poll of 4,965 adults, taken June 29 to July 3 (error estimate: +/- 2.5 points), found:

33% of Republicans say they get their news only from Fox.

64% of all adults disapprove of Trump's use of Twitter (89% Dems, 38% Republicans).

Describing his tweets (all adults): undignified 47% ... mean 34% ... entertaining 26% ... presidential 7%.

Jon Cohen, Survey Monkey's SVP, survey research, emails me his takeaways:

"A red flag for Democrats continues to be a perception that Trump is isolating himself from the GOP base with his tweets. Not only do most Republicans approve of his use of Twitter, but asked to describe those tweets, the No. 1 mention among the GOP is 'truthful,' with 'entertaining' in second place." 

Guys... it's not just him. It's his voters too. Luckily they aren't a majority. Unluckily, their party is nuts and holds most of the political power in the country and they're trying to create roadblocks so that the rest of us aren't able to vote.

What's wrong with these people?

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digby 7/04/2017 04:30:00 PM

 
How to survive Trumpcare

by digby

One of Lawyers, Guns and Money's sharp commenters took the time to explain how to be a smart health care consumer under Trumpcare. Bookmark it. You might need it:

I think I’m starting to see the brilliance of the conservative Republican market driven, outsourced delivery model. For example, consider a massive heart attack strikes a 55 year old man without a health insurance policy but a HSA with 6 month’s of contributions.

Step 1 – call Uber, not 911. Pay the peak pricing gladly – it still beats a fully loaded EMT response . Plus, if they don’t show up you get a $5 credit, should you survive

Step 2 – remember to not go comatose. Such lack of discipline at this critical pricing decision point could adversely impact your ability to make a rational decision on the services you may be willing to pay for and which supplier in your particular market you may want to utilize. You can ignore this if you live in a rural market and the nearest regional hospital with an ICU is 25 miles away.

Step 3 – direct the Uber driver to the nearest accredited hospital while you use your iPhone to solicit quotes from alternative medical retail establishments (hospitals, clinics, etc) don’t forget to read the reviews. At these times it’s also especially helpful to bring up your pre-defined Excel template that you cribbed from Consumer Reports to plug in the quotes as you are making your way to the first medical retail establishment in your itinerary for this medical emergency. Be glad you aren’t a rape victim so you can be sure that whatever fully informed facility and treatment path you decide on, the hospital won’t refuse to treat you according to your wishes. OTOH, the medical retail establishment might not treat you unless you can produce a current liquid net worth and credit score that meets their patient treatment scoring index. Subprime can lead to restricted options.

Step 4 – If your are alive and still conscious when you reach the first medical retail establishment remember ‘you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.’ Just think of the ER staff and attending physicians as Turkish rug merchants. They need your business, keep in mind that you may need to just walk away if they refuse to bargain in good faith. Beware of hardball negotiation and scare tactics like:

You should have called 911 instead of Uber, now it’s going to cost you an extra week in ICU.

If you had been getting regular checkups and lowered your cholesterol from 525 you wouldn’t need the bypass and the stent.

You should take our offer because you won’t make it to the next medical retail establishment.

Don’t let these medical financial predators stampede you in to making rash split second decisions that they claim are life or death. Take your time, gather all the data, read all the reviews and make a carefully considered, rational decision. Don’t treat this like that impulse buy when you bought that overpriced, red convertible that had that incredibly hot model in the magazine ad.

Good luck, with a solid plan and the patience to not panic under pressure you’ll be able to get a great deal. Should you die, it’s not your problem anyway. If you have severe brain damage, you might still have gotten a bargain by not paying for services you didn’t get. Plus using Uber is a major savings opportunity. Not everybody needs trained medical technicians administering CPR, oxygen, or other stabilizing procedures.

Next week: how to determine if you really even need Uber to reach your local medical retail establishment.

Previous articles: How to have physicians bid for your business when your appendix has burst

Thinking of selling your blood, plasma, organs – read this first!

digby 7/04/2017 03:00:00 PM

 
No strategery

by digby

He's not a thinker. He's a reactor:

Tim O’Brien, who authored the 2005 book “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald,” said on CNN’s "New Day" that Trump’s use of social media isn’t "strategically driven" and largely comes from a sense of self-preservation.

“I think there’s usually two ways of understanding what motivates what he does: Either self-preservation or self-aggrandizement,” O’Brien said. "I think in this case a lot of this is coming out of self-preservation."

O'Brien said on Monday that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is hanging over Trump and is likely driving a lot of his decisions, saying it “cuts to core issues in Trumplandia.”

“I don’t think it’s necessarily even collusion or obstruction that preoccupies him,” O’Brien said. “It’s the money trail and what it might say about his business relationships and his past financial dealings.”

I think that's true. He's petrified at what the full power of the federal government to look at anything and look anywhere is going to turn up about his shady financial dealings. He doesn't seem to have realized that being president might bring that sort of scrutiny on him. His juvenile, comic book view of the presidency has hurt him there. He thought it was a performance.

It may also be true, however, that some Republican operatives and members of his entourage decided to help the Russian government meddle in the election when they realized that it was trying to take down Hillary Clinton. They don't think too much beyond their immediate need to destroy their political enemies. It's their raison d'etre. Republican operatives that is. I assume that the Russian government had a more sophisticated plan in mind.

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digby 7/04/2017 01:30:00 PM

 
Canción del verano

by digby

There are some songs meant to be heard on a tinny car radio driving down Pacific Coast Highway with the top down. That's southern California culture, for better or worse. Today it's for better. It's beautiful.

Here's my choice for song of the summer. It happens to be in America's second language, the one that's so common where I live that people don't even notice it. For folks like me who live in

the Southwest, it's as American as hot dogs and apple pie --- and tacos. Same thing for New Yorkers and Floridians. The idea that Hispanic culture is "foreign" is just ... incorrect.

Anyway, enjoy!





digby 7/04/2017 12:00:00 PM

 
Madmen, traitors and spies from the very beginning

by digby

I wrote about Benedict Arnold and Michael Flynn for the Fourth for Salon this morning:

I've heard dozens of people over the pre-Fourth of July weekend make the comment that the founders must be rolling over in their graves at the spectacle of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Maybe they are, but not because they are shocked at the spectacle of an incompetent leader. After all, at the time Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence they were dealing with the Donald Trump of his day: Mad King George. In fact, they pretty much wrote the Constitution with him in mind. And he wasn’t the only one. There had been many European monarchs who were off their rockers, and much of the Enlightenment was informed by that fact.

Thomas Jefferson's “Original Rough Draught" of Declaration of Independence (with revisions by John Adams & Benjamin Franklin): pic.twitter.com/Csv0pbLSIm

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 3, 2017

This comparison to Trump isn’t an original thought, of course. Almost from the moment he took office people have been comparing him to the Mad King. Last February in the New Republic, in the wake of the president’s bizarre first press conference, Jacob Bacharach surveyed unhinged rulers of the past from Caligula on down and recalled the 1994 film “The Madness of King George,” in which William Pitt, the prime minister, said:

We consider ourselves blessed in our constitution. We tell ourselves our Parliament is the envy of the world. But we live in the health and well-being of the sovereign as much as any vizier does the Sultan.

But the Trump administration isn’t just evoking images of the Mad King on this Fourth of July. As it happens, one of the more interesting dramas of recent years about the revolutionary period is the AMC series “Turn: Washington’s Spies,” about the famous Culper spy ring. It’s a harrowing story of daring and bravery that I enjoyed very much when I was a kid, and it served as my introduction to the Revolutionary War.


This version is sexed up for our time and, according to Revolutionary War buffs who have followed the show closely, some of the historical details are way off. For instance, every historical drama has to have a “24”-style torturing psycho, and this one decided to sully the good name of a British officer named John Graves Simcoe, the Culper ring’s nemesis. By all reliable accounts, the real Simcoe was an honorable soldier who went on to become the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. Overall, however, “Turn” gets pretty good marks for authenticity.

I have noticed, however, that since Trump’s election the theme of loyalty and betrayal has more resonance to current politics than it had before. You see, the Culper ring was responsible for uncovering information about one of the most infamous episodes in American history, the treason of Benedict Arnold, a homegrown war hero. “Turn” adds in some love-triangle stuff involving Arnold and a British spy named Major John André that isn’t historical. But the real-life spy ring was instrumental in repelling Arnold’s first action as a British turncoat (a planned surrender of West Point) based upon some intercepted correspondence between the general and the British agent. When it was foiled, Arnold defected to the Crown and led many raids and battles against the Continental Army.

The name Benedict Arnold remains synonymous with the word “traitor” in America. I’m sure once they learn the story, kids still call friends by that name when they feel betrayed. He is the most notorious turncoat in our history. If you discount the Civil War, in which dozens of U.S. Army generals took the other side, he’s the only general who ever defected. And his reasons were pretty parochial.

Arnold was a brave soldier who was gravely wounded in battle and was beloved by his troops. But he had a prickly personality and was a man his fellow officers found to be a pain in the neck. He was terrible at politics and got caught in a number of shadowy financial schemes trying to impress his 18-year-old loyalist fiancée. After that he survived a court martial but became so resentful and embittered about it that it drove him into the arms of the British.

Before he went over to the other side, Arnold wrote a series of hysterical letters to George Washington, in one of which he declared:

Having made every sacrifice of fortune and blood, and become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet the ungrateful returns I have received of my countrymen, but as Congress have stamped ingratitude as a current coin I must take it!

He needed money, and that was part of it. But Arnold also felt that his country had betrayed him, which he rationalized as a justification for betraying his country right back.

As I watched the show and thought back to my school days and the stories I read about Arnold’s treachery, I couldn’t help but think of former Gen. Michael Flynn. By all accounts, Flynn was extremely resentful at being fired by President Barack Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and nursed grudges against his rivals in the other intelligence agencies. He had been popular with his own troops but others in the military came to mistrust him and considered him a little unhinged.

After Flynn left the government, at first he simply parlayed his insider knowledge into big dollars as a foreign agent lobbying for Russia and Turkey. When he met up with Donald Trump, Flynn evidently found an outlet for his resentment against his former rivals. We don’t yet know whether this actually led him to work with a foreign government to subvert his own. There are certainly allegations that he may have tried. Today Flynn finds himself in the crosshairs of a government investigation into both his financial dealings and his political activities.

One can easily imagine him testifying before Congress and saying, “I little expected to meet the ungrateful returns I have received of my countrymen, but as Congress have stamped ingratitude as a current coin I must take it!”

Karl Marx’s old adage holds that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. I’m not sure which one we’re witnessing at the moment. Let’s just say that there are echoes of another leader’s derangement and a different general’s obsessions in all this. America has been dealing with such human peculiarities from the beginning. The good news is that we seem to have a knack for surviving them.


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digby 7/04/2017 10:30:00 AM

 
Happy Fourth

by digby

digby 7/04/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

We the Rugged Individuals

by Tom Sullivan

Aerial photo of the California Aqueduct at the Interstate 205 crossing. Photo by Ian Kluft via Wikimedia Commons.

An acquaintance yesterday posted several tweets in response to one from a young attorney who insisted government can only take from some to give to others. Government cannot create. It only takes. Cousin to the familiar "Government never created a job," it employs a tortuous definition of "create" to advertise, in a backhanded way, individual entrepreneurship by demeaning Americans' collective efforts. All the more ironic, in this case, coming from a government employee working for the state Republican caucus. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Still, a million-plus workers alone in this country owe their cars, their homes, their kids’ education, their steady paychecks, and their retirements to the private-sector, free-market entrepreneurs of the American defense industry. Imagine this ad during the Sunday bobblehead shows:

The Defense Industry — meeting demand for fine consumer products like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the fuel-efficient M1 Abrams tank, Tomahawk cruise missiles, the Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyer, and the Hellfire-equipped Predator drone. PREDATOR — reach out and touch someone.

Free Market Capitalism. Because government never created a job.

Or the U.S. Constitution, one supposes. Anyway, it reminded me of this post I wrote at Crooks and Liars four years ago after my last visit to the Golden State. (I had to fix one dead link.)

An America In Retreat?

Has America – and the American Dream itself – gone into retreat? Once the largest, most prosperous in the world, the American middle class is faltering, crumbling like our nation’s schools and bridges.

Flag-pin-wearing American exceptionalists tell crowds this is the greatest nation on Earth, and then repeat “we’re broke.” They hope to dismantle safety net programs, telling Americans working harder than ever – at jobs and looking for jobs – that they don’t have enough “skin in the game.” Wake up and smell the austerity. America can no longer afford Americans.

Some of us remember a time when America’s dreams were boundless.

One summer when I was a child, I traveled with my grandparents to visit my aunt and uncle in Lawton, Oklahoma. My uncle was serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Sill. They lived off-base with their toddler son. The apartment backed up to a drive-in theater. "Old Yeller" was playing.

We left from Chicago driving Route 66. (The Nelson Riddle theme to the TV show is still the hippest ever.) The trip took a couple of days. The highway was still two lanes as you went further west. That was already changing.

Beside Route 66 and elsewhere, Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System – the vast system of roads most of us take for granted – was taking shape from border to border and from coast to coast. It was a national project worthy of a great nation. The country was on the move.

Astronaut Alan Shepard was a national hero. Our parents wanted us to go to college. Our president wanted us to go. Our country wanted us to go. Getting an education was not just a key to a future better than our parents'. It was a patriotic duty. Not just something you could do for you, but what you could do for your country.

America was going to the moon by the end of the decade. We needed scientists and engineers and new technologies. Between the G.I. Bill and government-backed student loans, America was making it more affordable than ever to get an education. It was good for you. It was good for your community. It was good for all of U.S.

On another trip last month through California’s dry Central Valley, I rode past miles and miles of crops and orchards. Tomatoes. Lettuce. Vegetables. Strawberries. Walnuts. Cherries. Pistachios.

San Joaquin Valley agriculture accounts for more than 12 percent of the nation’s output by dollar value, according to Associated Press. It produces 25 percent of America’s food on about one percent of U.S. farmland.

What goes onto your dinner plate and into your mouth is made possible in large part, not by daring, bootstrap entrepreneurs, but by the huge public works project we saw on our journey. Sierra snowmelt harnessed to grow food on dry lands. Dams. Reservoirs. Pumps. Pipes. Aqueducts.

And beside those canals, farms providing food and jobs along 700 miles of the California Aqueduct and the Central Valley Project. Begun during the Great Depression. Built with public money. By Americans. For Americans.

But today, that America is in retreat. Its dreams are shriveled. Instead of investing in public infrastructure like aqueducts, highways and bridges, we watch ours collapse as China’s rise. In Washington, pundits and politicians wring their hands over nickels and dimes for Americans while spending hundreds of billions of deficit dollars to maintain a global empire. Almost 900 overseas military bases? Was that our Founders’ vision of greatness?

Meanwhile, tax cuts starve cities and states of revenue until grasping investors – foreign and domestic – can gobble up public infrastructure built with your sweat equity. The privateers hope to extract the last drop of value out of what we, our parents, and our grandparents built to benefit all Americans. These patriots will hide their gains offshore and whine about tax rates they don’t pay while pocketing billions in public subsidies.

Tom Sawyer conned friends into paying him for the privilege of painting his aunt's fence. Tom Sawyer, Inc. is not far behind. These guys won't be satisfied until we are paying them to work for them.

When they have stripped America bare, the vulture capitalists will move on. Hands over their hearts, still waving their flags and humming the national anthem, they’ll move on, leaving America to crumble to dust. And they will shake the dust from their feet.

How much longer will We the People tolerate that?

Finally, as patriotic as it may be on Independence Day to celebrate free speech, the 2nd Amendment, and individual initiative by shooting yourself in the leg, try to find other ways to recognize public employees than by needing them to improvise a tourniquet and ferry you to the hospital.


Undercover Blue 7/04/2017 06:00:00 AM

Monday, July 03, 2017

 
Just say no

by digby

History will note that some people said no:

In a scathing post on LinkedIn, Justice Department compliance counsel Hui Chen announced her decision to resign last month, saying it was impossible to go after corporate fraud and corruption when President Donald Trump himself was engaging in such practices.

“Trying to hold companies to standards that our current administration is not living up to was creating a cognitive dissonance that I could not overcome,” she wrote.

Chen, a former lawyer for Microsoft and Pfizer who since 2015 was one of the top attorneys in the DOJ’s Fraud Section, said her work began to feel hypocritical and hamstrung as investigations into the Trump administration escalated.

“Even as I engaged in those questioning and evaluations, on my mind were the numerous lawsuits pending against the President of the United States for everything from violations of the Constitution to conflict of interest, the ongoing investigations of potentially treasonous conducts, and the investigators and prosecutors fired for their pursuits of principles and facts,” she wrote. “Those are conducts I would not tolerate seeing in a company, yet I worked under an administration that engaged in exactly those conducts. I wanted no more part in it.”

It's disappointing there aren't more of them. But it's still early days. There will probably be more. Lets hope so anyway.


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digby 7/03/2017 05:00:00 PM

 
There goes the Real America

by digby

Oh look, someone who got it right but nobody cares:

Ask Google the question “who predicted Trump winning the election?” and you get 19.3 million results.

Most are about professors with oddball prediction systems, or the rare pollster who got it right, or the liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, who famously sent out a mass gut-level warning about Donald Trump’s appeal last summer.

One name that doesn’t come up: Christopher Parker.

“Nobody in the media has called me up and said ‘you were right,’ ” says Parker, a political-science professor at the University of Washington for the past 11 years.

Parker has his suspicions about why he’s been overlooked, which we’ll get to in a minute. But first: He correctly foresaw in September 2015 that Trump would win the GOP nomination — eight months before Trump clinched it.

Then, last September, Parker told anyone who would listen, which was not many, that Trump could well win the presidency. And now, most important, new research shows Parker was more than just prescient about the outcome. He was nearly alone in nailing why it would happen.

“It’s what the data showed and what history would suggest, so I didn’t see it as some out-there guess,” Parker shrugs now. “It seemed like a no-brainer to me.”

On Monday researchers released the most comprehensive survey data yet aimed at understanding what actually went down in Election 2016. The group includes academics but also right-leaning outlets such The Heritage Foundation and left-leaners like the Center for American Progress.

What’s different about the Voter Study Group is that it tracks the attitudes and votes of the same 8,000 adults since before the 2012 election, and then throughout the 2016 election. So it’s like the nation’s largest, longest political focus group.

The story we’ve told ourselves — that working-class whites flocked to Trump due to job worries or free trade or economic populism — is basically wrong, the research papers released this week suggest.

They did flock to Trump. But the reason they did so in enough numbers for Trump to win wasn’t anxiety about the economy. It was anxiety about Mexicans, Muslims and blacks.

Here’s how they put it in academese: “What stands out most, however, is the attitudes that became more strongly related to the vote in 2016: attitudes about immigration, feelings toward black people, and feelings toward Muslims,” writes George Washington University professor John Sides. He notes that the media focused on less-educated whites, but negative racial attitudes fueled by Trump were a big motivator for college-educated whites, too.

A substantial share of Trump voters “appeared to embrace a conception of American identity predicated on birthplace and especially Christian faith,” Sides found.

This is the drum Parker has been banging for years. His 2013 book on the tea party, “Change They Can’t Believe In,” with professor Matt Barreto (now at UCLA), used survey data to show it was not a small government movement as advertised. It was more about America being stolen from “real Americans” — a reaction triggered by the election of President Obama.

“I’ve got three words for you: scared white people,” Parker says. “Every period of racial progress in this country is followed by a period of retrenchment. That’s what the 2016 election was about, and it was plain as it was happening.”

To be clear: Neither Parker, nor the latest research, is saying that Trump voters are all racists. Most voting is simply party-line no matter who is running. What they’re saying is that worries about the economy, free trade and the rest were no more important in 2016 than in previous elections, but racial resentment spiked.

It makes sense, considering the candidate himself was maligning Mexicans and openly calling for banning Muslims.

What’s doubly interesting is that Parker suspects the reason his research gets overlooked is because he is black. He senses it’s assumed that as a black man he must be biased about race, or is too quick to invoke it.

“I get a whole lot more respect over in Europe,” Parker told me. “There, it’s all about the ideas and whether my social science is sound. It’s not about who I am, like it so often is here.”

Meanwhile, white writers such as J.D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” are seen as guru guides to Trump country. Even though the mostly colorblind story of economic dead-end-ism Vance tells apparently isn’t what really turned the election.

Parker and Barreto now are working on their own book, out next year, called “The Great White Hope: Donald Trump, Race and the Crisis of Democracy.” Will that get ignored, too?

“I get it, nobody wants to be told what they don’t want to hear,” Parker says. “People want there to be a more innocent explanation, about jobs or trade or something. But sorry, everyone — it just isn’t there. My plea to people is we ought to start focusing on what’s real.”

This is an inconvenient story and nobody wants to hear it because economic determinism does not explain it. And if there's any true state religion in America, on all sides of the political spectrum, it's economic determinism. Money explains everything.

Except it doesn't. Humans are complicated creatures motivated by many things and money is only one of them.

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digby 7/03/2017 03:00:00 PM

 
What kind of democracy is this anyway?

by digby

This is from Rosenberg:

The list of reasons why Americans feel their politics are broken is long and growing. Here’s one of many: The U.S. Senate, which due to the way the U.S. population has grown and settled, has developed a “small state bias” so grave that it is on the verge of becoming an undemocratic institution. The issue is serious enough that it has become necessary to question whether major reform of Congress, and particularly the Senate, is needed.

According to the 2010 census, it is now the case that half of the United States’ population lives in just nine states, with the other half of America living in the other 41 states. While the voters in these top nine states have equal representation in the House with 223 Representatives (the other half has 212), in the Senate it is a different story. Because of this population distribution, the half of the U.S. living in the largest nine states is represented by 18 Senators. The other half of the country living in the other 41 states has 82 Senators, more than four times as many. You don’t have to be good at math to see how much less representation in Congress those living in the big states have today.

Let’s take a closer look at this dynamic by examining California. With a population of about 37 million, California has more than 66 times the population of the smallest state, Wyoming, which has 563,626 people. California has 53 Representatives, and two Senators; Wyoming, one Representative and two Senators. So despite having 66 times the population of Wyoming, California has only 53 times the number of Representatives and an equal number in the Senate.

Furthermore, the four smallest states combined have eight Senators, giving California only a quarter as many Senators as Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming, even though California has 14 times the population of these states combined.

And let's not foget that we send a boatload of money to the federal government to help fund all these small states needs. I don't think Californians mind that. But it would be nice if our votes counted the same as everyone else's when it comes to the national government.

And it would be kind of nice not to be the right wing's punching bag too. We are Americans whether they like it or not.

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digby 7/03/2017 01:00:00 PM

 
Online civility

by digby

Here's a little story about the journalist who noted on twitter that the person who created the president's adorable video depicting him stomping CNN to the ground is a neo-Nazi.

Update: Paul Waldman writes about the media's annoying reflex to excuse what Trump's doing by saying "but his base loves it." As he points out that's not necessarily true but even if it is, it's the wrong thing to say. (He doesn't say, but I will, that his "base" are as awful as he is.)

He concludes:

... if you react to the latest vile Trump tweet with, “Whatever else you want to say about it, Trump’s base loves it,” you’re excusing his behavior. You’re putting it into a value-free context where the only thing that matters is whether it works. It probably doesn’t work, but even if it did, the president of the United States is sending out videos created by racist Reddit trolls that fantasize violence against the news media. That’s what’s important here, and if you don’t acknowledge that central and horrifying fact, you’re doing everyone a disservice.

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digby 7/03/2017 11:00:00 AM

 
Oppositeland

by digby

At the picnic, when they blatantly lie about the effects of the ACA (as the Secretary of HHS, Tom Price did) suggesting that there are more uninsured than ever and the GOP is coming to "provide relief" throw this in their face:

Watch the uninsured rate drop across the country as the ACA went into effect. pic.twitter.com/IdmYgnwkc4

— Jason Sparks (@sparksjls) July 2, 2017

It was a very imperfect law that needed changes in a dozens different ways and the addition of a public option to make it work properly. But it was a big improvement on what was happening at the time and at least changed the structure of the system in such a way that further improvement was possible. But that assumed Republicans weren't in the grip of a corrupt, sadistic, power trip. That didn't work out.

They want to go back to what it was before --- and make it even worse. It's hard not to conclude that they are affirmatively trying to kill people.

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digby 7/03/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

Apostasy in the provinces

by Tom Sullivan

Kansas State Capitol, Topeka. Photo via National Park Service.

Cutting "wasteful spending" (waste, fraud and abuse, to be more precise) has long been the perpetual motion machine of American conservatism. If only it could only be harnessed, it could power virtually the entire government, a political version of "zero-point energy." The latter is pseudo-science. The former we might call pseudo-economics — along with trickle-down theory. It seems a few Republican leaders out in the provinces belatedly have arrived at that conclusion. Or at least, they have begun to question their faith. The same cannot be said for their colleagues inside the Village.

The New York Times reports:

Conservative lawmakers in Kansas, South Carolina and Tennessee have agreed to significant tax increases in recent weeks to meet demands for more revenue. They are challenging what has become an almost dogmatic belief for their party, and sharply diverging from President Trump as he pushes for what his administration has billed as the largest tax cut in at least a generation.

It seems you can't pay for something with nothing. States with constitutional obligations to provide for public education are finding starving it both unpopular and illegal. Waste, fraud and abuse don't fill potholes or build new roads.

The debate promises to test the enduring relevance of one of the most fundamental principles of modern conservatism — supply side economics, the idea that if you cut taxes far enough, the economy will expand to the point that it generates new tax revenue.

With the federal deficit growing and economic growth sputtering along in the low single digits, the Republican Party is facing questions from within over what many see as a blind faith in the theory that deep tax cuts are the shot of economic adrenaline a languid economy needs.

Leeching and bloodletting worked on the same principle. Recognizing that after years of crushing budget deficits, last month the Kansas legislature overrode Governor Sam Brownback's veto and raised taxes by $1.2 billion. Brownback's experiment in trickle-down economics has trickled out.

Stephanie Clayton, a Republican legislator from the Kansas City area, had advice for colleagues in Washington eager to cut federal taxes even more: Don't do it. Clayton wasn't through:

She criticized what she said was a desire by her party to be more faithful to the principle than to the people Republicans were elected to help. Mr. Brownback and many conservatives, she said, overpromised on the tax cuts as a “sort-of Ayn Rand utopia, a red-state model,” citing the author whose works have influenced the American libertarian movement.

“And I loved Ayn Rand when I was 18 — before I had children and figured out how the world really works,” Ms. Clayton added. “That’s not how it works, as it turns out.”

A lot of people read Ayn Rand in high school. Most of them grow up.

The current Speaker of the House is not one of them. Rep. Paul Ryan would do well to listen to Clayton's advice when he's not at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue holding the hand of another elected official who never grew up.


Undercover Blue 7/03/2017 06:00:00 AM

Sunday, July 02, 2017

 
The evil eye

by digby

The best one you will ever see in your life:



Thank God for adorable kids and cute animals or I would lose my ever-lovin' mind. That, and gardening, are all that is keeping me going ...


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digby 7/02/2017 06:00:00 PM

 
Another hysteric chimes in


by digby

Nervous Nellie's like me have been freaking out over the fact that Donald Trump's election represents an abrupt change in the world order that might just result in something catastrophic and we are generally being dismissed and silly old fools who are just trying to justify Clinton's loss ... or something. Whatever. I see what I see.

Anyway, here's another old biddy with some similar concerns:

America led by Donald Trump is the greatest menace facing the world today, Sir John Sawers, a former head of MI6, has declared, warning the policies being pursued by the divisive US President are “going to have a major disruptive effect” globally.

Sir John was speaking at the annual Herzliya security conference in Israel where senior public figures from the field of politics, military, and intelligence were asked who, in their view, presented the greatest threat to international security.

Some said it was Isis, others Islamist terrorists and North Korea with its nuclear capabilities. Others, perhaps mindful of where they were, talked of Iran and the Lebanese Shia militia, Hezbollah, both considered mortal enemies by the Jewish state.

But Sir John, who was the last chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, stated: “I have got serious reservations about Donald Trump as President of the United States.”

He continued: “The biggest threat the world faces is how we all adjust to the progressive withdrawal of responsible American leadership and the network of alliances that America maintained with Europe, with Asian countries and the partnerships they had across the region.”

The chaotic presidency of Mr Trump has been mired in controversy with investigations into his secret links with Russia; his attempts to ban travel to the US from a number of Muslim countries; fractious relations with Nato and EU; the US pulling out of the Paris climate agreement; threats of a trade war; threats to dismantle the Iran nuclear accord and contradictory and confusing  positions in the current confrontation between Qatar and the Saudi led Gulf Sunni states.

The coming to power of Mr Trump was, Sir John acknowledged, a manifestation of the populist and isolationist mood in America exacerbated by military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the consequences said Sir John, were “now having a major impact in the security world, the behaviour of countries trying to take advantage of it, and I think how we adjust to that, the behaviour of other countries trying to take advantage of it, which poses the biggest threat in the world.”

During an arms-selling trip to Saudi Arabia, Mr Trump had accused Iran of fermenting terrorism, and, going on to Israel, he has called for an alliance of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states against Shia Iran.

But Sir John, who had also served as the UK’s ambassador to the UN, pointed out that Iran is “an emerging country that is becoming the most powerful in the region” and “enjoys better prospects than Saudi Arabia”.

The US and the West, he argued, needed to be careful to form an alliance with Riyadh, which has failed to carry out essential reforms, against Iran.

The issue of alliances was also crucial for post-Brexit Britain, Sir John maintained after his appearance at the conference forum.

There was a danger that Britain would be an outsider with “nose pressed to the window” of the EU while international decisions are being made.

“We will be part of Nato, yes. But as the US withdraws from global leadership,” he asked, “can we rely on the alliance for anything more than territorial defence? The regions the US has protected since 1945 have to determine their own defence and security: that includes Europe”.

Maybe after Trump  blows the whole global security umbrella up the world will evolve a different system that will benefit everyone. That would be nice. But at this moment we have no idea what's going to happen and it could very easily go sideways. We managed to avoid another worldwide conflagration in the nuclear age for 60 years. Maybe that was the best we could hope for. Electing Trump certainly proves the adage "history repeat, the first time as tragedy the second as farce."





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digby 7/02/2017 04:00:00 PM

 
QOTD: Modo

by digby

I think most women picked this up with no problem:

I gave Trump the benefit of the doubt after his comment on Megyn Kelly about “blood coming out of her wherever” when he claimed he meant her nose. But later, a longtime Trump associate told me that Trump had practiced that line before he said it on CNN and that it was meant to evoke an image of Kelly as hormonal.

Of course he practiced it. He had to clean that up for public consumption. If he hadn't he would have said "she was such a bitch she must have been on her period." We've all heard that.

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digby 7/02/2017 02:00:00 PM

 
Politics and Reality Radio: Digby on Trump’s Assault on Democracy; David Dayen on CA’s Single-Payer Debacle

with Joshua Holland

This week, we'll be joined by OG blogger and Salon columnist Heather "Digby" Parton to talk about Kansas' AG Kris Kobach and what looks like the beginning of a nationwide campaign of voter suppression and intimidation. We have an authoritarian in the White House, but this is how we risk becoming an authoritarian country.

Then David Dayen will talk about his Intercept piece about how single-payer advocates -- and a few Democrats trying to ride their energy to greater prominence -- introduced an unpassable single-payer bill and then blamed the Speaker of the Assembly for not forcing his caucus to vote on it. It's all pretty dispiriting.





Playlist:
Prince Buster: "Shaking up Orange Street
Old 97s: "Stoned"
TLC: "Intermission-lude"


As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes, Soundcloud or Podbean.
digby 7/02/2017 11:30:00 AM

 
Fake, fake fakey

by digby

Trump's tweeting his silly wrestling footage and calling CNN fake. I guess he thinks that's clever. To me, it just exposes him as fake since he's the guy pretending to be a wrestler. But whatever. It's juvenile and stupid just like all of his statements. It's who he is.

Now watch this:

Feels like the right moment to re-up this. JFK on the press, and the presidency, in a free society. pic.twitter.com/4nKnewp6a8

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 28, 2017

He was the youngest president in history but he was a hundred times wiser than the old one we have now.

Like every political pundit in the world, I wrote about Trump's love affair with wrestling many times during the campaign It the perfect metaphor for him: violent, phony and immature. This one was after the inauguration:


So President Donald Trump is taking his act on the road again. Apparently being president isn’t nearly as much fun as running for president and he needs to cut loose in front of an adoring crowd to charge up his batteries. So he’s having one of his victory rallies in Florida on Saturday. And yes, they’re calling it a campaign rally so stock up on the Stoli and Beluga caviar, because that means Trump is already running for re-election.

On Thursday he gave his followers a little teaser by holding his first real press conference since the inauguration. It was what professional presidential scholars refer to as “a doozy.” The press was more pungent in its criticism. CNN’s Jake Tapper called it “unhinged” and “wild” and a “Festivus airing of grievances.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted, “We can agree across all ideological, political and partisan divisions that this is a deranged performance, right?” Even Shep Smith of Fox News seemed shell-shocked, saying, “It is crazy what we are watching every day; it is absolutely crazy.” CBS News’ Scott Pelley said, “Today we learned the length of the president’s fuse.” (Which unfortunately brought to mind what my great-aunt used to say about her first husband: “He was a 6-foot, 3-inch stick of dynamite with a little bitty fuse.”)

That was just the tip of the iceberg. The Daily Beast reported:

[A]s the official White House press conference disintegrated further into unhinged criticism and belligerent sniping, reporters seated in the East Room could hardly contain themselves. There was an awkward mix of laughing with Trump, and chuckling at him as the president kept venting and sneering. The reporters present couldn’t stop quietly gossipping about Trump. “What is going on?” one journalist whispered to another. “This is insane” and “What the hell?” were other popular refrains in the room.

There have been dozens of articles and listicles already published about this inane and surreal event, so I won’t go through the whole litany again. If you’ve got the time, it’s worth watching the whole press conference just to bear witness to the wholesale destruction of what we used to call the dignity of the office. Trump makes George W. Bush look like George Washington by comparison, and Bush was the guy who spit a wad of chewing gum into his hand before signing the Treaty of Moscow.

Trump mostly concentrated on how much he loathed the lyin’ press and despised all the fake news, oddly insisting that it’s nothing more than a cover-up for Hillary Clinton’s “terrible loss.” In fact, he just can’t quit her, which presidential historians note is very odd:

Hard to think of another President who kept talking about his defeated opponent one month into his Presidency.

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) February 16, 2017

I think there’s a good reason Trump does this and it’s related to why he needs to get in front of his cheering followers. He is obviously in over his head and cannot deal with the complexity of the task he has been elected to perform. If anyone watching the campaign thought he must have hidden depths he or she has been disabused of that by now. His full range of talents were on display on stage in those rallies.

Trump told us during the campaign, “I yam what I yam,” and so he is. He is a trash-talker. But unlike the trash-talking master of all time, boxer Muhammad Ali, who pretty much invented the form, Trump is a Wrestlemania political performance artist who unfortunately believed his own hype. Ali talked trash, but he also had the goods. Trump does not.

During the GOP primary he took out one rival after another by bestowing them with puerile nicknames and hurling nasty insults in their faces. They didn’t know what hit them. When he got to Hillary Clinton, it was also no holds barred. He said to her face that she was filled with hate, called her the devil and paraded women who had accused her husband of assaulting them in front of her. He made barely restrained cracks about her looks and insisted over and over again that she was weak and didn’t “look like a president.” He played the crude, aggressive wrestling “heel” throughout the campaign, and his supporters roared with pleasure as he took down his opponents one by one.

Trump participated in professional wrestling storylines for years. He loves it. Indeed, the press conference on Thursday showed that he’s lost without it. He needs a rival, a real opponent. He doesn’t have one at the moment, so his shtick just seems wild and unfocused, as if he were flailing at phantoms. Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University, described it as “bizarre theater,” saying “he turned a presidential press conference into a reality TV show in which he can be the star and browbeat anyone who objects to him with the power of his office.”

Of course, Trump has always used “the media” as a foil, and since he assumed office and no longer has a specific opponent to spar with, consigliere Steve Bannon has tried to make the press corps into the rival at whom Trump can swing his bat and keep his show going. Bannon has called the media “the opposition” and clearly pumps up Trump, not that it’s hard to do that since the president spends inordinate amounts of time assessing his image on television and clearly doesn’t like what he sees.

But it won’t work. The press isn’t “the opposition” and the presidency isn’t a competition or even a phony wrestling match. If you want to compare it to a form of entertainment, it’s a drama — often a tragedy — and the press is the Greek chorus. It makes no sense to turn media commentators and reporters into key players, particularly when there are real political adversaries out there jockeying for position. But Trump seems to not be interested in fighting real battles or even engaging in genuine politics. It’s all a pageant to him, a fixed narrative, a rigged game in which he’s is supposed to be the big winner in the end, with the cheering and the booing just being all in good fun. But nobody’s having any fun, least of all him. And putting on a show is all he knows how to do.




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digby 7/02/2017 09:30:00 AM