Hullabaloo

Monday, November 06, 2017

 

QOTD: F-ing Moron abroad

by digby

Here's your embarrassing, humiliating presidential quote of the day:

Addressing how he first became acquainted with Japanese Prime Minister Abe — who Trump referred to by his first name, Shinzo — Trump made the off-hand comment, appearing to go off-script from his prepared remarks.

“So my relationship with Shinzo got off to quite a rocky start because I never ran for office, and here I am,” Trump remarked. “But I never ran, so I wasn’t very experienced. And after I had won, everybody was calling me from all over the world. I never knew we had so many countries.”

Go to the 14 minute mark:



Hire an idiotic reality TV star con man and this is what you get.

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digby 11/06/2017 06:00:00 PM

 

They loved Trump from the start

by digby

This is strange. The Russians backed Trump very early. Why would they do that?

Kremlin-backed support for Donald Trump’s candidacy over social media began much earlier than previously known, a new analysis of Twitter data shows. Russian Twitter accounts posing as Americans began lavishing praise on Mr. Trump and attacking his rivals within weeks after he announced his bid for the presidency in June 2015, according to the analysis by The Wall Street Journal.

….In the three months after Mr. Trump announced his presidential candidacy on June 16, 2015, tweets from Russian accounts reviewed by the Journal offered far more praise for the real-estate businessman than criticism—by nearly a 10-to-1 margin. At the same time, the accounts generally were hostile to Mrs. Clinton and the early GOP front-runner, Jeb Bush, by equal or greater margins.

Kevin Drum takes a stab at some of the reasons why they might have chosen to back this gadfly so early in the primary season:

It was just a test. Social media manipulation was new to the Russians too, and they figured Trump might make an interesting test of how effective it could be.

In the early days, you had to be very, very cynical about the United States to think that a race-baiting blowhard like Trump had a chance to win. Maybe Putin knew us better than we knew ourselves.

The Russians never really thought Trump had a chance of winning. He just seemed like a good vehicle to sow a bit of random chaos.

This whole thing started at a fairly low level by some guy who’d been pushing to “really try out this social media stuff.” His superiors finally got tired of him and told him to knock himself out. This low-level guy, it turns out, was a big Trump fan for personal reasons we’ll never know.

I've got another one: they had a deal.

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digby 11/06/2017 04:30:00 PM

 

No, Jose Andres isn't begging for FEMA money

by digby

God, everything is life isn't about shilling for money. But I guess that's how we think in 2017:

The Trump administration has found itself in a public feud with celebrity chef Jose Andrés, who has helped cook and deliver more than 2 million meals to help out the citizens of hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico.

One FEMA official tells BuzzFeed that the agency is dismissing Andrés’ criticisms of the agency as being made by a “colorful guy who gets a lot of exposure” and “a businessman looking for stuff to promote his business.”

FEMA says that Andres, who was contracted by FEMA to help make meals to give to Puerto Ricans trying to recover from the destruction left by Hurricane Maria in September, was unhappy that his organization, the World Central Kitchen, was not given a long-term contract to help people harmed by the hurricane. The agency says that it could only offer World Central Kitchen short-term two-week contracts, or else it would have to go through the formal federal bidding process.

However, Andrés tells BuzzFeed that it’s not right for FEMA to claim that his criticisms stem from purely selfish motivations.

“For them to say I was a businessman trying to make a buck, whoever said that should be very ashamed of themselves,” Andrés told the publication.

Yes they should. He is one of the most famous chefs in th world. He doesn't need money.

He is not a friend of Trump's though, that's for sure. He's one of the chefs who backed out of he contract at Trump's DC hotel after he demagogued immigrants and Trump sued. So there's history there. But Andres is certainly not feeding people in Puerto Rico and complaining about the response because he wants money from the government. That's just ridiculous.

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digby 11/06/2017 03:00:00 PM

 

Did Trump Jr imply he could deliver?

by digby

I have no idea what this means but it's interesting. The Russian lawyer in that Trump Tower meeting says Junior was interested in a little horsetrading:

A Russian lawyer who met with President Donald Trump’s oldest son last year says he indicated that a law targeting Russia could be re-examined if his father won the election and asked her for written evidence that illegal proceeds went to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, said in a two-and-a-half-hour interview in Moscow that she would tell these and other things to the Senate Judiciary Committee on condition that her answers be made public, something it hasn’t agreed to. She has received scores of questions from the committee, which is investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Veselnitskaya said she’s also ready -- if asked -- to testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Her June 9, 2016 encounter with Donald Trump Jr., President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then campaign manager Paul Manafort in New York plays a key role in allegations that the campaign worked with Russia to defeat Clinton.

Veselnitskaya said she went to the New York meeting to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes and to lobby against the so-called Magnitsky law that punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.

‘If We Come to Power’

“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Trump Jr. said of the 2012 law, she recalled. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it,” he added, according to her.

Veselnitskaya also said Trump Jr. requested financial documents showing that money that allegedly evaded U.S. taxes had gone to Clinton’s campaign. She didn’t have any and described the 20-minute meeting as a failure.

Who know what she's up to? Clearly there's a lot of game playing going on so I won't say that this actually means anything. The most intriguing speculation I've seen on this is the idea that somebody in that meeting wore a wire. But again, who knows what was actually said?

This article from last July about Rinat Akhmetshin, one of the attendees at that meeting, is interesting in light of all this. We know he testified before the Grand Jury...


Update: Emptywheel has a very interesting timeline here that casts the story in a whole different direction.
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digby 11/06/2017 01:30:00 PM

 

Yes, he is really this dumn

by digby

Yes, of course he is:

Several Japanese automobile industry firms have been really doing a job. And we love it when you build cars — if you're a Japanese firm, we love it — try building your cars in the United States instead of shipping them over. Is that possible to ask? That's not rude. Is that rude? I don't think so. (Laughter.) If you could build them.

He did acknowledge in his usual jumbled rhetoric that the japanese already build cars in the US, so he remembered that he'd been briefed about the fact that they do "contribute" to our economy.

But this comment betrays something he deeply believes and it informs his ideas about trade, such as they are.

Here he is talking about the same issue in 2016 in an interview with Bob Woodward:

DT: You look at Japan. They send their cars in here by the hundreds of thousands. You go to Los Angeles, you look at those docks, and these cars get driven off those boats at 40 miles an hour. You’ve never seen anything like it. They just come pouring into our country. And yet when — you talk about an imbalance, when it comes to us selling to Japan? They take very little.

This is the man everyone looked to as the big expert on "trade" who was going to bring back manufacturing jobs to America. He's a dunce. But you knew that.

Also, his mention of being "rude" has particular resonance in Japan which places great store in manners. Again, he was briefed on this so he had to mention it. He's unable to behave like a normal adult.

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digby 11/06/2017 12:00:00 PM

 

He would "love" to be spending his time locking up his enemies

by digby

I wrote about Trump's increasingly common authoritarian rhetoric for Salon this morning:

President Donald Trump is overseas right now, doing personal appearances at his properties and making a fool of himself. So far, he's asked Japanese car makers to start making cars in the United States, apparently ignorant of the fact that three out of four Japanese-branded cars and trucks are already manufactured in America. And he hawked U.S. military equipment as if he were selling Trump steaks on YouTube.

That wasn't the worst of it. He also told American and Japanese troops that no nation should "underestimate American resolve." Then he quipped, "Every once in a while, in the past, they underestimated us. It was not pleasant for them, was it?"

Trump's previous foreign trips have also been embarrassing, but he seems more off-kilter than usual this time. That's obviously because of the pressure he's under back home, with the indictments of his former campaign officials by special counsel Robert Mueller. That pressure has once again brought out into the open the authoritarian impulses that are becoming more and more pronounced by the day.

Back when Trump took out full-page ads calling for capital punishment and allowing police to brutalize citizens, he was just another tabloid blowhard. And during the presidential campaign, when he endorsed torture and war crimes and made racist comments about a judge's Mexican heritage, people assumed he was just being hyperbolic. When he repeatedly declared his opponent guilty of crimes, even spitting out the nasty jibe, "If I were president, you'd be in jail," at Hillary Clinton in a presidential debate, nobody thought he actually meant it. But after more than nine months of his presidency, it's become clear that Trump truly has no respect for the rule of law.

He's gotten himself into some trouble because of this. He asked FBI director James Comey to give his friend Michael Flynn a pass and then fired Comey when he refused to play ball, an impulsive act that ended up with the appointment of Mueller. Trump then tried to get the Justice Department to go easy on former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and when that didn't happen he just pulled out his pardon pen and set Arpaio free, sending a strong message to all his cronies that he looked out for those who stood by him. But the one thing that both thrills his supporters and gives him sustenance is continually calling for Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted.

Just before the president set out for his Asia trip, he went on a Twitter spree and gave a series of interviews that made it clear he's serious about this. He tweeted frantically about the bogus story being pushed by Fox News about Clinton supposedly "selling out" the country to the Russians in that 2010 uranium deal. Trump made his most revealing comments of all on a radio show last Thursday:


I look at what's happening with the Justice Department. Well, why aren't they going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with her -- the dossier? I'm very unhappy with it, that the Justice Department isn't going. I am not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated by it.


The reason I say it's revealing is that one phrase: "I am not supposed to be doing the kinds of things I would love to be doing." Clearly, what Trump would love to be doing is persecuting his defeated political rival. Whether he would love to do that out of simple sadism or because he thinks it would effectively intimidate those who are investigating him or simply to muddy the waters is unknown. To do it based upon discredited disinformation created by Fox News and various Republican operatives, working together in what has basically become his personal propaganda operation, makes it all the more chilling. This is the work of a dictator in a banana republic, not the elected leader of a major Western democracy.

The fact that all this is being met with a big public shrug is more than a little bit worrisome. The president may not be officially directing the Department of Justice to prosecute Hillary Clinton on spurious grounds, but DOJ officials certainly know he would "love" them to. Republicans in Congress also understand the game that's afoot. They've initiated three different "investigations" into these ridiculous Clinton questions and on Friday took the next step, proposing a resolution that calls for Mueller to "resign from his special counsel position immediately," since he was FBI director when Clinton allegedly committed all her traitorous crimes and therefore showed "willful blindness" to Russians to infiltrate the United States and spread corruption.

Trump's authoritarian tendencies are showing up in other ways as well. Axios reports that when he met with Native American tribal leaders and they complained about land use regulations that prevented them from extracting energy resources, he responded, "But now it's me, the government's different now. Obama's gone; and we're doing things differently here. So what I'm saying is, just do it." Trump may actually believe he has the unilateral power to lift any regulation he wants to, and he unquestionably wishes that were true.




He recently told reporters, "My attitude is the only one that matters," when it comes to dealing with North Korea, adding that he is "stronger and tougher" than his advisers. Similarly, when Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Trump last week whether he planned to fill appointments at the State Department, he replied, "Let me tell you, the one that matters is me. I'm the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that's what the policy is going to be."

We don't know how much this president really understands about the limits of his authority. And we don't know how far the members of his own party and law enforcement officials who support him are willing to go. But we know what he would "love" to do because he's told us. He would love to use the police power of the federal government for his own purposes. By firing Comey and pardoning Arpaio, he's already pushed the boundaries. This used to be called abuse of power. Under Trump it's business as usual.
digby 11/06/2017 10:30:00 AM

 

Do NOT speak against Dear Leader

by digby

In America you can say what we want about politics if you work for yourself --- or a company that doesn't have anything to do with the government or isn't run by someone who disagrees with you. Otherwise ...

The picture, snapped by a White House photographer traveling with the president as he left his golf course in Sterling, Va., went viral almost immediately. News outlets picked up the story when it appeared in a White House pool report. Late-night talk show hosts told jokes about the encounter and people on social media began hailing the unidentified woman as a “she-ro,” using the hashtag #Her2020.

The woman’s name is Juli Briskman. Her employer, government contractor Akima LLC, wasn’t so happy about the photo. They fired her over it.

In a Saturday interview with HuffPost, Briskman, a 50-year-old mother of two, said she was stunned that someone had taken a picture of her giving Trump the middle finger.

As the photo circulated online, Briskman decided to tell Akima’s HR department what was happening when she went to work on Monday. By Tuesday, her bosses called her into a meeting and said she had violated the company’s social media policy by using the photo as her profile picture on Twitter and Facebook.

“They said, ‘We’re separating from you,‘” said Briskman. “Basically, you cannot have ‘lewd’ or ‘obscene’ things in your social media. So they were calling flipping him off ‘obscene.’”

Briskman, who worked in marketing and communications at Akima for just over six months, said she emphasized to the executives that she wasn’t on the job when the incident happened and that her social media pages don’t mention her employer. They told her that because Akima was a government contractor, the photo could hurt their business, she said.

Virginia is an employment-at-will state, meaning employers can fire people anytime and for any reason. But Briskman said what’s been particularly infuriating is that a male colleague kept his job after recently posting lewd comments on his Facebook page that featured Akima LLC as his cover photo. She said this colleague was reprimanded for calling someone “a fucking Libtard asshole” on Facebook, but was allowed to delete the post and keep his job.

There's nothing she can do. "At will" employment means they can fire her for anything that isn't a class protected by law. You can be fired for anything you say that the boss doesn't like, including a political opinion.

Someone else, with a more liberal understanding of what's important in America should hire her immediately.

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digby 11/06/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

Reset the "Now is not the time..." clock

by Tom Sullivan

Opioids aren't the only addiction epidemic killing people in America.

Buzzfeed:

• At least 26 people are dead after a gunman opened fire during a Sunday service at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said via Twitter: "Our prayers are with all who were harmed by this evil act."
• President Trump wrote on Twitter while visiting Japan: "May God be w/ the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas."

We just reset out clocks Sunday morning, so why the hell not reset the "Now is not the time..." clock?

Cue Sarah Sanders.

Cue Mitch McConnell.

Cue the NRA.

"Now is not the time..." has been the NRA's response for so many years, it's as much a punchline as "thoughts and prayers" (the people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs were praying).

Dave Weigel pointed out the "now is not the time" reflex in 2012:

After the Feb. 14, 2008, shootings at Northern Illinois University that killed six: “We think it is poor form for a politician or a special interest group to try to push a legislative agenda on the back of any tragedy. Now is the time for the Northern Illinois University community to grieve and to heal. We believe there is adequate time down the road to debate policy and politics."

After the April 3, 2009, massacre at a Binghamton, N.Y., immigration center that killed 13: “Now is not the time to debate politics or discuss policy. It's time for the families and communities to grieve.”

After the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting spree that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six: “At this time, anything other than prayers for the victims and their families would be inappropriate.”

After the July 20, 2012, massacre at an Aurora, Colo., theater that left 12 dead and 58 wounded: “We believe that now is the time for families to grieve and for the community to heal. There will be an appropriate time down the road to engage in political and policy discussions.”

Will someone please call into INFOWARS to speculate that regular mass shootings are an NRA plot to reset the clock every few weeks to ensure it is never "the time"? Otherwise, it is feeling as if we are all trapped in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.


Undercover Blue 11/06/2017 06:00:00 AM

Sunday, November 05, 2017

 
It worked for Bush the Elder

by tristero

The NY Times:

You may recall the Horton commercial, which the elder George Bush ran in his 1988 presidential campaign. It showed a black man who had raped a white woman and assaulted her husband while free on a Massachusetts prison-furlough program that was supported by Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate. As a vote magnet, it worked for Mr. Bush. 

Indeed it did. What distinguishes Bush's appeal to racists from the use of racist ads by modern Republicans is...well, I can't think of any:

[Republican NY Nassau county executive candidate Jack Martin's] mailer shows three shirtless Latino men, covered in tattoos and representing MS-13, the vicious gang begun by Central American immigrants in Los Angeles that now menaces Long Island. “Meet Your New Neighbors!” a headline above them says, adding this about Mr. Martins’s Democratic opponent: “Laura Curran will roll out the welcome mat for violent gangs like MS-13!” Ms. Curran, the text says, is “MS-13’s choice for county executive.”

But wait, there's more:

In the close Virginia governor’s race, an ad for the Republican candidate, Ed Gillespie, links the Democrat, Ralph Northam, to a sanctuaries-cities policy that “let illegal immigrants who commit crimes back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13.” 

In New Jersey, a plainly desperate Kim Guadagno, the Republican nominee for governor, reached back a decade in a dismal attempt to pin a soft-on-immigrant-crime tag on the Democratic front-runner, Phil Murphy. A Guadagno commercial twists a Murphy comment about undocumented immigrants — his “having their back” — as somehow meaning he supports a brutal killer named Jose Carranza. 

Mr. Carranza, an unlawful arrival from Peru, was one of six men found guilty in the execution-style murder of three young people in a Newark schoolyard in 2007. “Murphy,” the Guadagno ad says, “will have the backs of deranged murderers like Carranza.” 

Yes, the lessons Poppy Bush taught Republicans have never been forgotten.




tristero 11/05/2017 09:00:00 PM

 

The definition of insanity

by digby

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Actually, the definition of insanity is electing mentally deranged people to be the Attorney General of your state.

By the way, there was a mass shooting at a Walmart in Colorado a few days ago. A bunch of poeple were armed. Look what happened:

The chaos of panicked people running out of the store, shoppers who pulled their own guns and multiple victims created a difficult situation for police and slowed their investigation.

Meanwhile, the suspected gunman, Scott Ostrem, remained at-large until he was captured by police at 8:11 a.m. Thursday about six miles from the scene, stuck in rush-hour traffic in Westminster..

The shots were reported at 6:10 p.m. Wednesday, and Thornton police sent the first tweet about it at 6:27 p.m.

The first officers on scene needed to assess the situation and develop a strategy to go inside because it was unknown whether the shooter was dead or alive and whether he was still inside or already fleeing with the store’s customers and employees, Avila said. Police teams searched the other stores in the Thornton Town Center and the surrounding area.

Police also had to make sure paramedics and EMTs could safely reach victims. And then once they determined the store was secure, detectives escorted a store employee back inside to begin reviewing security video footage from the dozens of cameras in the store and the shopping center parking lot.

“We had a lot of footage, and hundreds of people self-evacuating,” Avila said. “Obviously, it took time.”

When detectives began reviewing video footage, they noticed multiple people drawing guns, Avila said. That slowed the process of identifying who and how many suspects were involved in the shooting, he said.

“Once the building was safe enough to get into it, we started reviewing that (surveillance video) as quickly as we could,” he said. “That’s when we started noticing” that a number of individuals had pulled weapons. “At that point, as soon as you see that, that’s the one you try to trace through the store, only to maybe find out that’s not him, and we’re back to ground zero again, starting to look again. That’s what led to the extended time.”

These NRA zealots are like robots. Brainwashed and unable to think for themselves. They will never change their mantra and I don't know what it will take to change this country. One thing is certain --- it does not matter how many innocent people are gunned down so these cultists can have their lethal toys. It will take something besides the river of blood this country is drowning in to make it change. I have no idea what that might be.

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digby 11/05/2017 06:00:00 PM

 

ICYWW, Trump is in freefall

by digby

There's been so much news the past few days that this is buried. But it's interesting. He is... uhm ...not popular. Not at all: And it's getting worse, not better:

A majority of Americans say President Trump has not accomplished much during his first nine months in office and they have delivered a report card that is far harsher even than the tepid expectations they set for his tenure when he was sworn into office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey.

Approaching the first anniversary of his victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Trump has an approval rating demonstrably lower than any previous chief executive at this point in his presidency over seven decades of polling. Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans — 37 percent — say they approve of the way he is handling his job.

Trump’s approval rating has changed little over the past four months, which have included tumultuous events, from hurricanes to legislative setbacks to indictments in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the role Russia played in the 2016 campaign.

President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Manafort's former business associate Rick Gates and Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos have all been charged in the special counsel's investigation into Russian election interference.

The president’s disapproval rating has reached 59 percent, with 50 percent saying they strongly disapprove of the job he is doing. While little changed since the summer, both represent the worst marks of his presidency.

He is the only president dating back to Harry S. Truman whose approval rating at this point in his presidency is net negative — by 22 points. The next worst recorded in that time was Bill Clinton, who had a net positive of 11 points by this time in his presidency.

Trump began his presidency with only modest expectations on the part of a public that was divided coming out of last year’s contentious election. Roughly 100 days into his presidency, 42 percent said he had accomplished a great deal or a good amount while in office. Today, that has declined to 35 percent.

Meanwhile, 65 percent say he has accomplished “not much” or “little or nothing.” This is up from 56 percent last spring. Forty-three percent of all Americans give him the lowest possible rating, saying he has accomplished “little or nothing.”

At the 100-day mark of Trump’s presidency last spring, Americans were split almost evenly on the question of whether he was keeping most of his major campaign promises, with 44 percent saying he was and 41 percent disagreeing. Today the verdict is more severe, with a majority (55 percent) saying he is not keeping most of those promises.

The public sees Democrats acting mostly as an opposition party, rather than offering ideas of their own. Asked whether the Democratic Party is presenting alternatives to Trump’s proposals or mainly criticizing the president, 61 percent said mainly criticizing, identical to the percentage who said this of Republican Party leaders one year after Obama’s election. Only a plurality of Democrats (47 percent) say their leaders are offering alternatives to Trump’s ideas.

Trump’s actions and behavior have drawn sharp criticism from a few members of his own party, most recently from Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona. Former president George W. Bush delivered a recent speech that, while never mentioning Trump by name, was seen as a rebuke of the way the president is conducting himself in office.

The Post-ABC News poll asked self-identified Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP whether they believed their party leaders should speak out when they disagree with the president. Overall, 71 percent said they should, with just 27 percent saying those leaders should avoid criticizing him, including 65 percent of Trump voters who say Republicans should air their disagreements.

On four key issues, Trump has not matched the early expectations for his presidency, and today, majorities — in some case strong majorities — give him negative reviews. Those issues are the economy, dealing with race relations, improving the health-care system and dealing with the threat of terrorism. (Part of this survey was conducted before the terrorist attack on Tuesday that left eight people dead in New York.)

The president has pointed to what he sees as significant accomplishments in the area of the economy, with the stock market at record levels, unemployment at 4.1 percent — a 17-year low — and growth in the two most recent quarters at 3 percent.

But the public gives him little credit for the state of the economy. Last January, 61 percent offered a positive assessment when asked how they thought he would handle the economy. Today, 44 percent give him positive marks, while 53 percent say he has not done well.

In January, a majority (56 percent) said they believed he would do an excellent or good job dealing with threats of terrorism. Today, 43 percent give him positive reviews.

Trump receives even lower ratings on race and health care. Fewer than 3 in 10 say he has done a good job dealing with race relations, which is 12 points below the 40 percent who said in January they thought he would handle race issues effectively. Half of all Americans say they believe Trump is biased against black people and slightly more (55 percent) say he is biased against women.

The racial assessment follows a backlash to Trump’s comments about the white supremacist rally in August in Charlottesville, where marchers chanted Nazi slogans and the ensuing violence left one woman dead and others injured. Two state police officers also died when their helicopter crashed after assisting in the unrest. Trump was slow to condemn the marchers and at one point said there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazi demonstrators.

In January, 44 percent said they expected him to handle the issue of health care effectively, including 87 percent of Republicans. Optimism has faded sharply, with 26 percent of Americans and 59 percent of Republicans giving him positive marks today. The overall percentage offering a negative assessment has jumped from 51 percent in January to 70 percent today, including 47 percent who give him the lowest rating, “poor.”

Political independents have soured the most considering Trump’s pre-inaugural expectations and current ratings. The percentage of independents saying Trump is doing a good job on the economy, race relations and health care is more than 20 points lower than the percentage that expected him to perform well in January. On terrorism, today’s ratings are 17 points below early expectations among independents.

Congressional Republicans were stymied in their efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, despite years of promises to do so. The House, after first failing to pass a bill, eventually approved a measure and sent it to the Senate. Senate Republican leaders struggled to get a health bill to the floor for consideration. When they did, they fell short of the necessary majority needed to keep the process moving.

Throughout that process, Trump prodded the Republican leadership, principally Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), with demeaning tweets demanding action. Ever since the effort broke down, Trump has attempted to focus the ire of disappointed conservatives on those congressional Republicans, but the failed effort also appears to have taken a toll on him.

A solid majority (59 percent) also see Trump as trying to make the federal health law fail. Less than one-tenth of the public says they support those efforts to scuttle the law through executive actions, while overall, 50 percent of the public opposes what they see as Trump undermining the existing program.

As tensions mount over North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon and delivery system capable of hitting the United States, the public has little trust in the president to handle the problem responsibly. A majority (51 percent) say they trust him “not at all” on this national security issue and 16 percent say they trust him “just some.” Meanwhile, 32 percent say they trust him “a great deal” or “a good amount.”

Other measures highlight the degree to which Trump is governing with the support of a minority of the population. Four in 10 say he is a strong leader. That’s 13 points below the level in April. On this question, he has gone from a net positive of eight points to a net negative of 19 points. Roughly twice as many Americans say that under Trump, U.S. leadership in the world has gotten weaker rather than stronger, 53 to 26 percent.

Trump campaigned on his dealmaking ability, but the public doubts his ability to forge political agreements. Almost 6 in 10 say he is not good at making political deals while under 4 in 10 say he is good at making deals.

One-third say he is honest and trustworthy, down only marginally since April. On the question of whether he has the temperament and personality needed to serve as president, 31 percent say yes, while 66 percent say no. That is the lowest since August 2016, when candidate Trump was embroiled in a controversy with a Gold Star family.

digby 11/05/2017 05:00:00 PM

 

You can't take him anywhere

by digby

Think Progress:

President Trump warned during his first visit to Japan — a country America attacked with atomic bombs twice during World War II — that dictators, regimes and nations have underestimated American resolve in the past. Roughly 200,000 people were killed or injured in the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“No dictator, no regime, and no nation should underestimate ever, American resolve. Every once and a while in the past, they underestimated us. It was not pleasant for them, was it?” he asked the audience of U.S. service members stationed in Japan.

Watch:




While his remarks sounded a bit tone-deaf in English, they reportedly sounded particularly worse in the Japanese translation:

“Those who underestimated us in the past didn’t meet a good end,” New York Times reporter Hiroko Tabuchi‏ observed was the translation that scrolled along a major Japanese television network.
Trump never mentioned North Korea specifically, but promised to defend freedomfrom foreign adversaries. Trump’s relationship with Japan was already on unsteady footing stemming from remarks he made while on the campaign trail.

During a March 2016 interview with the New York Times, Trump said America no longer has the money and the military is too depleted to continue protecting Japan from adversaries such as North Korea.

“There’ll be a point at which we’re just not going to be able to do it anymore. Now, does that mean nuclear? It could mean nuclear,” Trump said, suggesting that perhaps Japan should become a nuclear power.

Trump also took to Twitter last year to ask if Obama during his trip to Japan, would discuss the U.S. ally’s “sneak attack on Pearl Harbor” during WWII. He also cautioned that Obama should not apologize for the U.S. nuking Hiroshima.

digby 11/05/2017 03:30:00 PM

 

Dispatch from Bizarroworld

by digby

That is not an SNL sketch. It's where the most powerful man in the world gets his information.

Buzzfeed:

The rumour started with a video posted in September that warned viewers about an "upcoming civil war." It was posted by Jordan Peltz, who works for the private company US Warrant Service and maintained a Facebook page that had a profile picture of donkey wearing a Nazi armband. Peltz also has a website called Nazi-donkeys.com.

Anti-Trump protests were planned from Nov. 4 onward by Refuse Fascism, but the group told BuzzFeed News that the protests are meant to be non-violent. No "antifa" group has called for violence online during the Nov. 4 protests.

"What they're saying is completely false," Taylor said. "They’re blatant lies, and they’re creating and intending to intimidate people who want to stand up to the Trump/Pence regime. It's concerning that these lies are being spread and that they're unleashing threats."

The "antifa apocalypse" and "antifa overthrow" ideas were then baselessly perpetuated by right-wing websites like InfoWars and the Gateway Pundit.

The false narrative gained more and more popularity as it was being repeated. Right Richer, a newsletter written by The Hill editor Will Sommer, even noted fabricated campaign posters and InfoWars sold Nov. 4 swag.

Many publications picked up on the claims to debunk them, including Time, Snopes, Washington Post, and BuzzFeed News. However, the Fox News report put more weight on the false claims of pro-Trump commentators. "Antifa apocalypse? Anarchist group's plan to overthrow Trump 'regime' starts Saturday," says the headline. The Fox News article already has 46,000 shares, comments, and likes on Facebook according to social tracking tool BuzzSumo. Fox News didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

digby 11/05/2017 02:00:00 PM

 

Welcome to the Paradise Papers

by digby

The Big Story of the moment is the Paradise Papers, a trove of leaked emails from a secretive law firm in the Bahamas that reveals where a whole lot of rich people's money and associates are. Another guide to the international oligarchy, if you will. This one features some folks from the Trump administration. First up is filthy rich commerce secretary Wilbur Ross who seems to be entangled with Russians. Imagine that.

Apparently, this is just the beginning of a big story that investigative reporters from all over the world have been working on for months.

Apropos of nothing, I can't help but recall when Trump was talking about all the wealthy plutocrats in his administration last summer and said,

"I love all people, rich or poor. But in those particular positions, I just don't want a poor person."

Or when he said back in 2016,

"We're going to make our country rich again; we're going to make our country great again. And we need the rich in order to make it great, I am sorry to tell you."

All the way back to July 2015:

I -- I know the richest people in the world, I know the toughest people in the world, I know these people, they're brutal. You wouldn't like them and they probably wouldn't like you very much.... These are brutal people, great negotiators, great business people, but not nice people, they're not the happiest people. They are very rich, they are very smart. I would use them to negotiate against Japan. I would get one of them, bing, you're here, you're here, you're here like checkers, like -- like chess...."

Populism, 2017.


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digby 11/05/2017 12:30:00 PM

 

Only the best people

by digby

Trump promised to being in only the best people. He's an expert on that because he's rich and famous. You can trust his judgment.
Strangely, it turns out they aren't even the best criminals:

Federal investigators have gathered enough evidence to bring charges in their investigation of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser and his son as part of the probe into Russia's intervention in the 2016 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation.

Michael T. Flynn, who was fired after just 24 days on the job, was one of the first Trump associates to come under scrutiny in the federal probe now led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Mueller is applying renewed pressure on Flynn following his indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

The investigators are speaking to multiple witnesses in coming days to gain more information surrounding Flynn's lobbying work, including whether he laundered money or lied to federal agents about his overseas contacts, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

From left, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, his son Michael G. Flynn, and Boris Epshteyn, a spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump, board an elevator at Trump Tower in New York on Nov. 17, 2016. Carolyn Kaster / AP file
Mueller's team is also examining whether Flynn attempted to orchestrate the removal of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars, two officials said.

A spokesperson for the special counsel had no comment.

Flynn's son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with his father, accompanied him during the campaign and briefly worked on the presidential transition, could be indicted separately or at the same time as his father, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son, two of the sources said, it could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences.

The pressure on Flynn is the latest signal that Mueller is moving at a rapid, and steady, pace in his investigation.

Flynn isn't just dirty, he's nuts. Everyone knew he was nuts too. And he was Trump's most important National Security Adviser.

Also, one of Trump's most egregious obstructions of justice was firing the acting AG who warned them and then telling the head of the FBI to go easy on Flynn.


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digby 11/05/2017 11:00:00 AM

 

QOTD: Who else?

by digby

He's smart. He has a good brain. He uses all the best words

The U.S. president said he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles, the sources said.

What was it Rex Tillerson called him? Oh right. Fucking moron. Yeah. That.


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digby 11/05/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

Disquiet on the western North Carolina front

by Tom Sullivan

Boundary line between North Carolina's 10th (right) and 11th (left) Congressional Districts. League of Women Voters of Asheville–Buncombe County

A left turn here. A right there. Up a block, over, then back. Several hundred citizens surveyed the front lines of high-tech gerrymandering yesterday by walking and running them through neighborhoods in Asheville, North Carolina. The local League of Women Voters sponsored the first Gerrymander 5k in this heavily Democratic city to drive home the reality of redistricting performed "with almost surgical precision."

In last year's presidential primary, I voted in North Carolina's 10th Congressional District. By November, I was in the 11th Congressional District. Again. That is where I had voted until the Republicans' first 2011 redistricting maps split the city in two. Multiple court challenges to those maps had the line flipping back and forth over my house. Not that the flipping improved my representation. Patrick McHenry, professional Republican, represents NC-10. Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows represents the 11th.



League of Women Voters of Asheville–Buncombe County

John Kennedy, a video producer and artist who first thought about holding a run in 2016, told the Guardian, “Democrats must have been asleep at the wheel when the Republicans took this gerrymandering to a whole new level.”

They were. In their hubris, state Democratic leaders rebuffed requests to move to nonpartisan redistricting when they had control. Terry Van Duyn has a story she tells here often:

Before state Sen. Terry Van Duyn, a Democrat, ran for office in North Carolina she lobbied against gerrymandering only to find out that her predecessor, Martin Nesbitt, a fellow Democrat, wasn’t so opposed when his party was drawing the maps.

"I would go to Raleigh every year and ask him to support nonpartisan redistricting," she said in an interview at her home in Asheville. "He would just lean back in his chair and say, 'Terry, Democrats draw great districts.'"

Until they didn't.

Now it is Republicans in control, and they are not bashful about the products of their designs. They are boastful:

"I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law," state Rep. David Lewis, chairman of the House’s redistricting committee, is quoted as saying in a transcript of a committee meeting last year when the legislature was forced by courts to rework the maps again. "I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats."

That lawsuit notes that Democrats won 51 percent of statewide votes in 2012, but Republicans won nine of 13 seats, adding a tenth seat the next year with just a slim 53 percent majority of votes.

“It’s fundamentally messing with democracy,” Alana Pierce, president of the League of Women Voters of Asheville-Buncombe County, told the Guardian.

Calling Asheville "the best example of cracking in the country," David Daley, author of "Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count," reinforced in yesterday's Asheville Citizen-Times why I harp on progressives' misplaced infatuation with the quadrennial presidential contest. The front-line battles are local and more frequent. Daley writes, Republicans "locked-in power by going down-ballot – and then drawing themselves such friendly, unbeatable districts that they’d control veto-proof supermajorities in many states even with fewer votes." President Bernie can't help with that. Neither can president Hillary.

On the ballot in Asheville Tuesday is a referendum on whether the city of 90,000 should accept or fight the city council districts forced on it by the GOP-controlled legislature this year:

The bill, which passed into law on June 29, requires Asheville to amend the city’s charter to implement six single-member election districts for seats on City Council by Nov. 1, a deadline Manheimer says the city has met. The law also establishes a Nov. 15 deadline for the city to draw the district lines.

Asheville’s not rushing to draw the lines, the mayor says. “We are in a bit of a showdown here with the legislature, because we haven’t taken any steps to draw lines, and we’re going to look at the outcome of the vote and decide what to do,” she explains.

In North Carolina, if your city is blue you are a target.

A federal court in April overturned as unconstitutional a similar, state-mandated redistricting plan for Greensboro. U.S. Middle District Judge Catherine Eagles ruled the districts had been drawn to give Republicans an advantage. “The appropriate remedy for a law that violates the one-person, one-vote principle is an injunction against elections conducted under the Act’s unconstitutional redistricting,” Eagles wrote.

After several failed efforts by the Republican legislature to correct unconstitutional racial gerrymanders in N.C. House and Senate districts, Eagles last week entered an order from a three-judge panel to have a "special master" redraw them instead. Republican objections were overruled.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.


Undercover Blue 11/05/2017 06:00:00 AM

Saturday, November 04, 2017

 

Saturday Night at the Movies

One and-a-half bar mitzvahs and a wedding: The Women’s Balcony (***½)

By Dennis Hartley

In his 2009 Guardian piece “Does Judaism discriminate against women?” Dan Rickman writes:

There is however, a deep conflict between Judaism and feminism which stretches from the public (in synagogue) to the private. For example, in all Orthodox synagogues men pray separately from women and in many women are relegated to an upstairs gallery. Gender hierarchies are entrenched in Jewish thought: a blessing orthodox Jewish men are required to say everyday thanks a God "who has not made me a woman". […]

There are many couples where the husband is involved and the woman is estranged. What drives this is the dissonance between women's lives in society at large where, at least in principle, all options are open to them, and their role in traditional Jewish life which is limited and constrained by laws developed by (male) rabbis.

Oy. So that begs an obvious question: Can you really be an Orthodox Jew and a feminist? Funnily enough, that is the name of a 2014 Telegraph article by Emma Barnett (an Orthodox Jew by upbringing and a feminist), who writes:

You see as a fully paid up feminist, I demand and expect total equality in my secular life and yet some would view what I accept as normal in my religious Jewish world, as anything but equal. Although believe me, no women in my personal Jewish life feel oppressed; if anything, they are in total control. […]

In the secular world, common sense must be the order of the day. It isn’t reasonable not to have women occupying the same roles as men and vice versa. But in a religious sphere, where faith is the binding force of a group of people, rationale has less sway or place. If you started applying logic to the beliefs held in most faiths, things would start to fall apart pretty quickly at the seams. […]

Male-led religions present a big dilemma to feminists in the modern world. And yes, on this topic, I am a full fat hypocrite. But as they say, faith begins often where logic ends.

This dilemma lies at the heart of a warm, witty and wise new Israeli dramedy called The Women’s Balcony, from director Emil Ben-Shimon and screenwriter Shlomit Nehama.

The story is set in present-day Jerusalem, in the predominately orthodox Bukharan Quarter neighborhood. As the film opens, a small but lively and close-knit congregation, led by venerable Rabbi Menashe (Abraham Celektar) gather at their modest synagogue for a bar-mitzvah. Unfortunately, what begins as a joyous celebration takes a dark turn when the “women’s balcony” collapses mid-ceremony. Luckily, all survive, but sadly, the rabbi’s wife sustains serious injuries that require indefinite round-the-clock hospital care. The aging Rabbi Menashe, not in the best health himself, has a nervous breakdown.

This leaves the congregation with two major deficits; no place to worship until repairs can be facilitated, and no spiritual leader at the helm until the rabbi (hopefully) recovers from his debilitating mental trauma. A few days after the accident, several of the men from the congregation are discussing the future of the synagogue and decide to pray on it.

However, they realize that they are a few bodies short of a minyan (a quorum of 10), which they will need in order to conduct a service. They ask a young man who passes by.

As fate would have it, he happens to be a rabbi, who is more than happy to fetch some of his students and shore up the minyan. The men instantly take to the charismatic Rabbi David (Aviv Alush), who quite quickly ingratiates himself as the “temporary” head of their synagogue. A little too quickly, perhaps, for the women of the congregation, who are chagrinned to learn that the hastily remodeled synagogue eschews the open balcony model for a stuffy glorified walk-in closet where they’re now relegated to sit for services.

The more the charming but duplicitous Rabbi David’s ultra-orthodox slip begins to show, the less enthralled are the women, who eventually find themselves reluctantly engaged in virtual guerilla warfare against this fundamentalist redux of their previously progressive synagogue. Still, they must step lightly; with marriages and long-time friendships on the rocks (much less the future of their once harmonious congregation) there’s much at stake.

This formidable coterie of strong female characters are well-served by their real-life counterparts (Israeli comedian Orna Banai, in her first major screen role; popular Israeli singer Einat Sarouf, making her film debut; acclaimed Moroccan-born actress Evelin Hagoel; actress-comedian Yafit Asulin) who deliver a wonderful ensemble performance.

How this extended family resolves their fractious row is relayed with compassion and astute observation, steeped in what I once described in a review as “...a rich tradition of comedic expression borne exclusively from a congenital persecution complex and cultural fatalism (trust me on this-I was raised by a Jewish mother).” That said (if I may re-appropriate a classic advertising slogan) “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye” or in this case, to love Ben-Shimon and Nehama’s real Jewish wryness.

Previous posts with related themes:

Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?
A Serious Man
The Student
Religulous
The Little Hours


More reviews at Den of Cinema

On Facebook

On Twitter



--Dennis Hartley
digby 11/04/2017 05:30:00 PM

 

Trump pleads innocent

by digby

What me worry?

Trump pleads innocent. But he sure doesn't sound very convincing:

"Well I hope he’s treating everything fairly and if he is I’m going to be very happy because when you talk about innocent, I am truly ... not involved in any form of collusion with Russia. Believe me. The last thing I can think of to be involved in."

okie dokie

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digby 11/04/2017 04:30:00 PM

 

Banana Republicans getting their hate on

by digby

Here's an incomplete timeline of "lock her up" and it's ongoing and getting more dangerous by the day:

Dec. 22, 2015

Then-Republican primary candidate Trump tweeted a picture of what appears to be one of his own supporters wearing a "Hillary for Prison" shirt.

Women defy media narrative, love Trump at packed Michigan rally.
VIDEO: https://t.co/yreUny7shA pic.twitter.com/dE9odwIRQi

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2015

June 2, 2016

As Trump was closing in on the GOP nomination, he intensified his attacks on Clinton, who also appeared poised to take the Democratic nomination.

Trump called for Clinton to be jailed during a campaign rally in San Jose, Calif., calling her "guilty as hell."

“Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. She has to go to jail. I said that,” he said.

It was at the Republican national Convention where it really took off, with Chris Christie leading chants of "guilty!" and "lock her up" becoming the crowd's favorite slogan, led by Michael Flynn and others from the podium.

Roger Stone and Alex Jones pushed the "Hillary for Prison" t-shirts and signs and there were people throughout the crowd dressed in orange jumpsuits with Hillary Clinton masks.

That was when it took on a life of its own --- on national television before millions and millions of people and the chant was heard at every rally. The crowds loved it just as much as "the wall." The media shrugged.

That's Trump, just doing his thing. Besides, she deserved it because she wasn't "accessible" --- or something. And emails.

Aug. 22, 2016

Trump called on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Clinton foundation donors received special treatment while Clinton was secretary of State.

“The Justice Department is required to appoint a special prosecutor because it has proved to be, sadly, a political arm of the White House,” he said at a rally in Akron, Ohio. “Nobody has ever seen anything like it before.”

Trump's comments came after the Clinton Foundation announced that it would no longer be accepting foreign donations if Clinton was elected president.


Oct. 9, 2016

Trump publicly warned Clinton at a debate in St. Louis, Mo., that he would look into her private email server if elected president.

"If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, deception — there has never been anything like it," Trump told Clinton.

"When I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people who have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious," he continued.

Clinton pushed back at Trump's characterization of the situation, saying, "It's good that somebody with the temperament of Donald Trump is not running this country."


Oct. 28, 2016

Trump reacted to then-FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress that said new emails pertaining to the probe into Clinton's emails had been discovered.

"I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made," Trump said, referring to Comey's previous announcement that charges would not be filed against Clinton.

"Hillary Clinton's corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office," Trump said.



Nov. 22, 2016

President-elect Trump appeared to walk back his previously aggressive rhetoric toward Clinton, saying that he did not feel as strongly about prosecuting her for the use of a private email server.

“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways," Trump told The New York Times.

"My inclination would be for whatever power I have on the matter is to say let's go forward. This has been looked at for so long, ad nauseam," he continued.

Trump quickly faced backlash from his supporters, most notably the conservative media site Breitbart.com, which ran a headline blasting Trump's "broken promise" to his base.



July 25, 2017

Trump was in the midst of launching a slew of attacks on his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions, when he lashed out at him for his weak position on Clinton.




The president went on to rip then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe for not investigating Clinton.






Sept. 22, 2017

Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Alabama that they would have to “speak to Jeff Sessions” after the crowd chanted “lock her up” in response to a reference to Clinton.

“You’ve got to speak to Jeff Sessions about that,” Trump said.



Nov. 2, 2017

Trump said that he hoped the Justice Department was investigating Clinton and that he was "frustrated" that he couldn't be involved in the process.

"Hopefully they are doing something," Trump said of the Justice Department probing Clinton during a radio interview with host Larry O'Connor on Washington's WMAL. "At some point maybe we're going to all have it out."

"The saddest thing is, because I'm the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved in the FBI. I'm not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing and I'm very frustrated by it," he continued.



Nov. 3, 2017

Trump doubled down on his call for the Justice Department to investigate Clinton and Democrats after former acting Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile said the party tipped the scales in Clinton's favor during last year's primary.



"I’m really not involved with the Justice Department. I’d like to let it run itself, but honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats," Trump told reporters outside of the White House.

“They should be looking at Podesta and all of that dishonesty, they should be looking at a lot of things, and a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me,” he said, referencing the former chair of Clinton's campaign.

Now he has the congress in on it and he's pressing for a partisan special prosecutor. He's not letting this go. His slavering base demands it. They are deplorable, horrible people.

But then a whole lot of people in this country from all sides seem to think this isn't a big deal and I'm sure many of them would be very happy to see the hated old woman thrown in jail if actually comes to that. The fact that a sitting president of the United States is pushing for a political prosecution of his defeated rival doesn't seem to raise the hackles of anyone too much. If he manages to do this, we're fucked. It will be over.

Just remember, in the kind of Banana Republic where they lock up their rivals, no one is safe. It won't just be that person you hate who gets caught in this maw. The next person will likely be someone you like.

It might even be you.

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digby 11/04/2017 03:00:00 PM

 

This isn't a diplomatic trip. He's visiting his properties

by digby

This is not normal people. Not normal at all. He's basically doing promotional public appearances at his global properties on the taxpayer's dime:

President Trump stopped at Trump International Hotel Waikiki during his trip to Hawaii on Saturday so he could "say hello" and thank employees. A statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump wanted to congratulate employees on the "tremendously successful" project.

“The president stopped by the Trump Hotel on his way to the airport. It has been a tremendously successful project and he wanted to say hello and thank you to the employees for all their hard work," Sanders said.

Pool reports said that press members were kept in vans while Trump and senior White House aide Jared Kushner entered the hotel.

And he's spending extra time with his BFF, the monstrous admitted murderer Rodrigo Duterte. I'm sure he'll want to visit his Philippines property too:

Trump embarked Saturday on a five-nation visit to Asia, which will include stops in China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. The president announced Friday that his trip would be extended by a day in order to include a key summit of eastern Asian nations, the East Asia Summit.

The summit, held in the Philippine city of Angeles, is a two-day summit of more than a dozen countries. The administration had previously informed Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that Trump would not attend the summit, but that decision was reversed.

“We’re staying an extra day, because the following day is actually the most important day,” Trump told the White House press pool on Friday.

I'd guess the two blood-thirsty leaders want a sleep-over to exchange authoritarian despot tips.

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digby 11/04/2017 01:30:00 PM

 

The gripping story of the DNC hack

by digby

This is your long-read assignment of the week-end. You don't have to read it all now, but I urge you to read the whole thing at some point. If you want to understand the Russian hacking story, this is an important addition to the body of knowledge. This is an excerpt:

The Clinton campaign was no easy target; several former employees said the organization put particular stress on digital safety.

Work emails were protected by two-factor authentication, a technique that uses a second passcode to keep accounts secure. Most messages were deleted after 30 days and staff went through phishing drills. Security awareness even followed the campaigners into the bathroom, where someone put a picture of a toothbrush under the words: “You shouldn’t share your passwords either.”

Two-factor authentication may have slowed the hackers, but it didn’t stop them. After repeated attempts to break into various staffers’ hillaryclinton.com accounts, the hackers turned to the personal Gmail addresses. It was there on March 19 that they targeted top Clinton lieutenants — including campaign manager Robby Mook, senior adviser Jake Sullivan and political fixer Philippe Reines.

A malicious link was generated for Podesta at 11:28 a.m. Moscow time, the AP found. Documents subsequently published by WikiLeaks show that the rogue email arrived in his inbox six minutes later. The link was clicked twice.

Podesta’s messages — at least 50,000 of them — were in the hackers’ hands.

Though the heart of the campaign was now compromised, the hacking efforts continued. Three new volleys of malicious messages were generated on the 22nd, 23rd and 25th of March, targeting communications director Jennifer Palmieri and Clinton confidante Huma Abedin, among others.

The torrent of phishing emails caught the attention of the FBI, which had spent the previous six months urging the Democratic National Committee in Washington to raise its shield against suspected Russian hacking. In late March, FBI agents paid a visit to Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters, where they were received warily, given the agency’s investigation into the candidate’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.


Signs posted in a bathroom at Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn were put up to remind campaign workers to keep their computers and passwords secure. (AP Photo/Julie Pace)

The phishing messages also caught the attention of Secureworks, a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, which had been following Fancy Bear, whom Secureworks codenamed Iron Twilight.

Fancy Bear had made a critical mistake.

It fumbled a setting in the Bitly link-shortening service that it was using to sneak its emails past Google’s spam filter. The blunder exposed whom they were targeting.

It was late March when Secureworks discovered the hackers were going after Democrats.

“As soon as we started seeing some of those hillaryclinton.com email addresses coming through, the DNC email addresses, we realized it’s going to be an interesting twist to this,” said Rafe Pilling, a senior security researcher with Secureworks.

By early April Fancy Bear was getting increasingly aggressive, the AP found. More than 60 bogus emails were prepared for Clinton campaign and DNC staffers on April 6 alone, and the hackers began hunting for Democrats beyond New York and Washington, targeting the digital communications director for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and a deputy director in the office of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The group’s hackers seemed particularly interested in Democratic officials working on voter registration issues: Pratt Wiley, the DNC’s then-director of voter protection, had been targeted as far back as October 2015 and the hackers tried to pry open his inbox as many as 15 times over six months.

I keep hearing people saying that this had nothing to do with the Russians trying to help Donald Trump. The fact that they only did this to Democrats would seem to indicate otherwise.

Anyway, read it all when you have time. It's actually quite a gripping story. And it's totally depressing that the Republicans in congress are so corrupt, stupid or confused that they are going to do everything they can to make sure it happens again.

What was it they used to call that? Objectively pro-fascist? Something like that.


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digby 11/04/2017 12:00:00 PM

 

Bringing in the sheep

by digby

He's a very good boy who loves his job:

A young sheepdog lent new meaning to the phrase “bringing the sheep home” after he led a flock straight into a farmer’s home.

Rosalyn Edwards was working in her kitchen on Wednesday 25 October, when she suddenly started to hear strange noises.

When she turned around she was stunned to discover her Border collie puppy, Rocky, had proudly led nine sheep into her house.

The seven-month-old sheepdog-in-training had taken advantage of an open gate to usher the sheep through into the Edwards’ home in Devon via the back door.

Mrs Edwards, 40, said: “I thought it was funny at the time, but then there was quite a lot of wee, poo and mud everywhere. It took me a little while to clean it all up.

“My son and husband had gone out into the field, and the gate was left open. Rocky got them out and led them to the house.

“I was in the kitchen and heard a noise. I turned around and the sheep were just standing there. There were about nine of them.


“I took the children into another room and then tried to guide the sheep out.”

Mrs Edwards later posted a video of the livestock melee in her home on Facebook, in which she and her husband, Andrew, 41, can be heard trying to shoo the animals from their home.

Eventually the flock was marched out via the porch at the front of their home, leaving a trail of muck in their wake.

Mrs Edwards added: “Rocky did look quite pleased with himself, but he's going to need more training.

“He brought a whole new meaning to 'bringing the sheep home'.”

digby 11/04/2017 10:30:00 AM

 

The petulance epidemic

by Tom Sullivan

A tweet by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer jumped out from the Twitter machine this week:

People don’t get paid what they are worth. They get paid what they negotiate. https://t.co/GaaNXupjPX

— Nick Hanauer (@NickHanauer) November 3, 2017

You remember Hanauer for his "controversial" TED talk saying billionaires such as himself weren't gods. Furthermore (I'm paraphrasing), people should stop taking seriously their claims to special status and privileges as "job creators." Just a short mental jump away from "the Creator," Hanauer added.

The JCs' preferred narrative has worked its way so deeply into the public consciousness that Americans elected an arrogant, narcissistic, supposed billionaire as president one year ago. For who better to run a government that's not a business as though it were? Oddly enough, he's proven as superior at running a government as Facebook proved at sniffing out political ads purchased with rubles.

Like many plutocrats, he reacts badly to not getting his way and the deference royalty wealth demands.

The New York Times reported this week that another of the president's fraternity killed off his own business rather than treat employees as respected partners:

A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two of New York City’s leading digital purveyors of local news, celebrated victory in their vote to join a union.

On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down.

Digital media is a tough business, to be sure. Still, Ricketts' approach to to his employees was familiarly authoritarian. He wrote before the vote, “As long as it’s my money that’s paying for everything, I intend to be the one making the decisions about the direction of the business.” When he couldn't get his way, he threw a tantrum and broke his toy.

Hamilton Nolan writes about the closure in a New York Times op-ed:

Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, is worth more than $2 billion. He is the owner of DNAinfo, a local news site that covered New York City and Chicago with unparalleled skill, as well as Gothamist, a network of city-oriented websites that DNAinfo bought this year. He is also a major right-wing political donor of rather flexible morality. During the last presidential primaries, Mr. Ricketts spent millions of dollars funding ads that portrayed Donald Trump as an untrustworthy, dangerous misogynist. Once Mr. Trump secured the nomination, Mr. Ricketts spent a million dollars to support him.

One might think that such flexibility would allow Mr. Ricketts to bend but not break when faced with every plutocrat’s worst nightmare: a few dozen modestly paid employees who collectively bargain for better working conditions.

Like Martin Blank, the assassin whose Army psych profile showed a certain "moral flexibility" too, one would think Ricketts might roll with it. But no. Spending millions for and against the same untrustworthy, dangerous misogynist is one thing. But negotiate for better wages with serfs who challenge his position in the social pecking order? Well, they had it coming.

To give the Ricketts decision more context, Nolan adds:

It is worth being clear about exactly what happened here, so that no one gets too smug. DNAinfo was never profitable, but Mr. Ricketts was happy to invest in it for eight years, praising its work all along. Gothamist, on the other hand, was profitable, and a fairly recent addition to the company. One week after the New York team unionized, Mr. Ricketts shut it all down. He did not try to sell the company to someone else. Instead of bargaining with 27 unionized employees in New York City, he chose to lay off 115 people across America. And, as a final thumb in the eye, he initially pulled the entire site’s archives down (they are now back up), so his newly unemployed workers lost access to their published work. Then, presumably, he went to bed in his $29 million apartment.

It is unfortunate that petulance got left out of the Deadly Sins. It seems to be epidemic.

Now, if only the American electorate would stop fawning over people who believe their wealth confers on them the right to rule, we might put this country right again. We did it before. We might even pay people decently, too.

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Undercover Blue 11/04/2017 06:00:00 AM