Hullabaloo

Saturday, March 17, 2018

 

Focus, focus

by Tom Sullivan

A reader from San Francisco wrote this week and said she was "wising up [and] watching local races more."

That echoes the thoughts of Christopher Hooks. He writes in the Texas Observer that he believes local races matter. He has grown weary of the perennial chatter about Texas Turning Blue as if "we were monitoring a patient suffering from hypothermia." The problem with "TTB" is it views Texas politics through the eyes of the quadrennial national race for president.

TTB is an all-or-nothing proposition that works for the standard horse-race narrative of media professionals with no stake in the balance of power in state legislatures or county government. Even the media buzz over the recent Texas primary presents a false picture of how things really change. The excitement was over the high Democratic turnout in the 15 most-populous counties that trend Democrat anyway. The Democratic turnout this year was certainly eye-opening:

But on election night, the statewide results, from across all 254 counties, were quite different — because of course they were. In the end, there were still more Republican ballots, 1.54 million, than Democratic ballots, 1.04 million.

Hooks wants to see TTB retired:

The thing is, the way the state goes on the electoral college map doesn’t mean very much at all for the way Texas is governed. And while it’s possible that the party jumps back to life with the shock of winning one or two statewide elections — that there will be a proof of concept, and then everyone suddenly gets serious — it’s more likely that things change slowly, over an extended period of time, and that small gains and positive signs feed bigger gambits. What’s most important in the long run is the overall composition and strength of the Texas Democratic Party at the local and state level.

Which is why I suppose a county chair from Alabama wrote this week to ask if "For The Win" 2018 is ready. (It's not, but will be by the end of the month.) It is why a woman from Virginia, an activist as of November 9, 2016, wrote that she now finds herself a Democratic county chair looking for help to change the political trajectory of her county and state.

Republicans took over Texas slowly, Hooks writes. They had plenty of setbacks. That's what is wrong with the all-or-nothing narratives of the national media. It was four decades between Republican John Tower winning his Senate seat in 1962 and Republicans winning the Texas House in 2003. The horse race elides those decades.

The idea of Texas Turning Blue embraces both kinds of that sloppy majoritarianism — that demographic groups will “flip” the state, and the state will become something other than what it is. We live in a majoritarian system, of course. But politics is about margins and incremental advantage. When possible, we ought to use language that reflects that, and shun that which doesn’t.

Choosing the right language is fine. But it was more than language that turned Texas red. And yes, conservative billionaires backed the conservative movement and conservative media for years. But it wasn't just their money that won them ground. It was the years. Those in control got there by being relentless, something for which many progressives are just now developing the patience. As I wrote about the last Republican president:

I used to describe George W. Bush as a Jack Russell terrier playing tug of war with a knotted rope. Once he sank his teeth into something, he simply would not let go. You could lift him bodily off the ground and watch his butt cut circles in the air as he wrestled with his end of it. But in the end you would tire of the game first, let go, and he'd retire triumphantly to his doggy bed with his prize. I was never sure myself whether I meant that as a cut or a compliment.

This how the right wins and we lose. The thing is, conservatives often beat the left, not simply with money, but with sheer relentlessness. They play tortoise. Liberals choose hare.

The tortoise makes a better avatar.

* * * * * * * *

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


Undercover Blue 3/17/2018 06:00:00 AM

Friday, March 16, 2018

 
Run Andy, run

by digby

I don't normally back law enforcement types for office. But in this case, I'm making an exception. 

Andrew McCabe should run for office. It's the only way for THE PEOPLE to make a statement in this bullshit case. This is nothing more than a thuggish appeasement of that piece of work we call a president by that shameless neo-confederate piece of shit Jeff Sessions: 

Here's McCabes statement:

I have been an FBI Special Agent for over 21 years. I spent half of that time investigating Russian Organized Crime as a street agent and Supervisor in New York City. I have spent the second half of my career focusing on national security issues and protecting this country from terrorism. I served in some of the most challenging, demanding investigative and leadership roles in the FBI. And I was privileged to serve as Deputy Director during a particularly tough time.

For the last year and a half, my family and I have been the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country. Articles too numerous to count have leveled every sort of false, defamatory and degrading allegation against us. The president’s tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all. He called for my firing. He called for me to be stripped of my pension after more than 20 years of service. And all along we have said nothing, never wanting to distract from the mission of the FBI by addressing the lies told and repeated about it.

No more.

The investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has to be understood in the context of the attacks on my credibility. The investigation flows from my attempt to explain the FBI’s involvement and my supervision of investigations involving Hillary Clinton. I was being portrayed in the media over and over as a political partisan, accused of closing down investigations under political pressure. The FBI was portrayed as caving under that pressure, and making decisions for political rather than law enforcement purposes. Nothing was further from the truth. In fact, this entire investigation stems from my efforts, fully authorized under FBI rules, to set the record straight on behalf of the Bureau and to make it clear that we were continuing an investigation that people in DOJ opposed.

The OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As Deputy Director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the Director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter. It was the same type of exchange with the media that the Deputy Director oversees several times per week. In fact it was the same type of work that I continued to do under Director Wray, at his request. The investigation subsequently focused on who I talked to, when I talked to them, and so forth. During these inquiries, I answered questions truthfully and as accurately as I could amidst the chaos that surrounded me. And when I thought my answers were misunderstood, I contacted investigators to correct them.

But looking at that in isolation completely misses the big picture. The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.

Here is the reality: I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey. The release of this report was accelerated only after my testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed that I would corroborate former Director Comey’s accounts of his discussions with the President. The OIG’s focus on me and this report became a part of an unprecedented effort by the Administration, driven by the President himself, to remove me from my position, destroy my reputation, and possibly strip me of a pension that I worked 21 years to earn. The accelerated release of the report, and the punitive actions taken in response, make sense only when viewed through this lens. Thursday’s comments from the White House are just the latest example of this.

This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally. It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.

I have always prided myself on serving my country with distinction and integrity, and I have always encouraged those around me to do the same. Just ask them. To have my career end in this way, and to be accused of lacking candor when at worst I was distracted in the midst of chaotic events, is incredibly disappointing and unfair. But it will not erase the important work I was prevailed to be a part of, the results of which will in the end be revealed for the country to see.

I have unfailing faith in the men and women of the FBI and I am confident that their efforts to seek justice will not be deterred.

The FBI has gotten a message. It remains to be seen what that is.

.
digby 3/16/2018 10:46:00 PM

 
Friday Night Soother: baby otters and more

by digby

I think this week requires some otter pups don't you?

Via Zooborns:

The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium recently announced the arrival of seven babies, representing three at-risk species, born in late January and early February. The new additions are: five Asian Small-clawed Otter pups, a Silvered Leaf Langur baby, and a Humboldt Penguin chick. 

According to the Zoo, each new little one contributes to maximizing genetic diversity within their species and sustaining populations of those facing serious threats to their future in their native ranges. 

The baby boom began with the arrival of the five Asian Small-clawed Otter pups, born during the early morning hours of January 26. 

Native to coastal regions from southern India to Southeast Asia, Asian Small-clawed Otters (Aonyx cinereus) are often threatened by habitat destruction, pollution and hunting. These factors place them at risk in their native range, and they are currently classified as “Vulnerable” by the IUCN. 

The pups (three males and two females) were born to first-time parents, Gus and Peanut. Peanut was born in 2014 and arrived at the Columbus Zoo in April 2017 from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Father, Gus, was born in 2008 and arrived at the Columbus Zoo from the Bronx Zoo in 2014. 

According to staff, the young pups are thriving under the watchful eyes of both of their parents and are expected to be on view to the public later this spring.

The Columbus Zoo was also proud to welcome a female Silvered Leaf Langur baby on February 16. The female was born to mother, Patty, and father, Thai. Patty made her way to the Columbus Zoo from the Bronx Zoo in 2007 and has given birth to seven offspring. Thai arrived at the Columbus Zoo in 2015 from the San Diego Zoo and has fathered a total of four infants. 

Patty, Thai, and the newest Langur arrival are currently on view in the Zoo’s Asia Quest region. Staff reports that the baby is easy to spot as Langurs are born bright orange, as opposed to their adult counterparts with black fur and silvered tips. This difference in coat color is believed to encourage other female Langurs to assist in raising the young, a practice called “allomothering”. 

In their native ranges, Silvered Leaf Langurs (Trachypithecus cristatus) can be found in areas including Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. The species’ populations in these countries are decreasing due to habitat loss as lands are cleared for oil palm plantations or destroyed by forest fires. Langurs are also hunted for their meat or taken for the pet trade. 

The Columbus Zoo’s pairing of Patty and Thai was based on an SSP recommendation, and the birth of the new baby will play an important role in helping manage this at-risk species. Silvered Leaf Langurs are listed as “Near Threatened” by the IUCN, due to population declines caused by habitat loss. The arrival of this Langur baby at the Columbus Zoo is an important part of sustaining the population among AZA-accredited zoos, certified related facilities and conservation partners. 

Have a drink, watch some Netflix. We will reconvene over the week-end to continue documenting the atrocities.  :)

.


digby 3/16/2018 06:00:00 PM

 
Chaos? What chaos?

by digby

I just thought I'd share some headlines from this afternoon in case you've been out of the loop:

Scoop: Kelly says Trump probably contributing to staff chaos stories — John Kelly acknowledged in an off-the-record session with reporters today that his boss, Donald Trump, is likely speculating about staff moves to people outside the White House and that reporters are then talking to those people.

Donald Trump and John Kelly Reach Truce — White House chief of staff had made cryptic comments suggesting he may have been the next senior adviser to step down — WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump and White House chief of staff John Kelly have settled on a truce, at least temporarily …

Trump jokes 'who's next?' as tumult engulfs his White House — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump consumed Thursday morning's TV headlines with amusement. Reports of tumult in the administration were at a feverish pitch — even on his beloved Fox News — as the president reflected …

Trump decides to remove national security adviser, and others may follow … President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt …

Trump gives McMaster the Tillerson treatment — President Donald Trump's national security adviser H.R. McMaster isn't getting fired, he's getting Tillersoned - kept in a state of perpetual limbo about his future in the administration, aware that his unpredictable boss could keep …

The Daily 202: Trump may hire multiple cable news personalities as part of shake-up

The Latest: White House says no more staff changes coming

It's going very well. 

.
digby 3/16/2018 04:30:00 PM

 
"He seeks to weaken an institution that serves to constrain the abusive exercise of executive authority"

by digby




I'm glad to see someone of Tom Edsell's stature say this in such stark terms:

More than any president in living memory, Donald Trump has conducted a dogged, remorseless assault on the press. He portrays the news media not only as a dedicated adversary of his administration but of the entire body politic. These attacks have forced the media where it does not want to be, at the center of the political debate.

Trump’s purpose is clear. He seeks to weaken an institution that serves to constrain the abusive exercise of executive authority. He has initiated a gladiatorial contest pitting the principle of freedom of the press against a principle of his own invention: freedom from the press.
[...]
The news media “have been incorporated into the political style of the governing party as fixed hate objects,” Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at N.Y.U., wrote in an email to me.

Rosen observed that the history of right-wing attacks on the media extends back through Agnew’s speeches for Nixon to Goldwater’s campaign in 1964 and winds forward through William Rusher, talk radio, and of course Fox News, which founded a business model on liberal bias.

There is an underlying strategy to Trump’s critique of the media. Rosen continued:

Trump is not just attacking the press but the conditions that make it possible for news reports to serve as any kind of check on power. Trump is the apotheosis of this history and its accelerant. He has advanced the proposition dramatically. From undue influence (Agnew’s claim) to something closer to treason (enemy of the people.) Instead of criticizing ‘the media’ for unfair treatment, he whips up hatred for it. Some of his most demagogic performances have been exactly that. Nixon seethed about the press in private. Trump seethes in public, a very different act.

[...]
In a 2017 paper, “Enemy Construction and the Press,” RonNell Andersen Jones and Lisa Grow Sun, law professors at the University of Utah and Brigham Young University, argue that Trump’s goal is fundamentally malign:

The Trump administration, with a rhetoric that began during the campaign and burgeoned in the earliest days of Donald Trump’s presidency, has engaged in enemy construction of the press, and the risks that accompany that categorization are grave.

Insofar as Trump succeeds in “undercutting the watchdog, educator, and proxy functions of the press,” they write, it leaves the administration more capable of delegitimizing other institutions and constructing other enemies — including the judiciary, the intelligence community, immigrants, and members of certain races or religions.

Jones and Sun contend that in many respects, Trump is reminiscent of Richard M. Nixon: Nixon, like Trump, accused the media of being out to get him and predicted that the press would mischaracterize his public support or the reception he received. He believed the liberal media to be biased against him personally, maintaining that he had “entered the presidency with less support from the major publications and TV networks than any president in history” and that “their whole objective in life is to bring us down.”

Unlike Trump, however, Nixon (like the country’s founders)routinely reaffirmed to both the press and the public that he conceived of the press as central to democracy. Indeed, in his first speech to the public regarding the Watergate scandal, Nixon acknowledged that “the system that brought the facts to light and that will bring those guilty to justice” was a system that included “a vigorous free press.”

Trump stands out, according to Jones and Sun, in that his administration has passed a threshold not approached by previous administrations in their tensions with the media. Trump is signaling — through his terminology, through his delegitimizing actions, and through his anticipatory undercutting — that the press is literally the enemy, to be distrusted, ignored, and excluded.
[...]

In “Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball,” Joseph Fishkin and David E. Pozen, law professors at the University of Texas and Columbia, write:

For a quarter of a century, Republican officials have been more willing than Democratic officials to play constitutional hardball — not only or primarily on judicial nominations but across a range of spheres. Democrats have also availed themselves of hardball throughout this period, but not with the same frequency or intensity.

In an email, Fishkin wrote:

As with so many things about President Trump, it strikes me that he didn’t start the fire. He got into office because it was already burning and now he’s pouring on gasoline.

In Fishkin’s view, Trump will do all he can to make the conflict between his party and the press “sharper and more intense, in the same way that he depends on and aims to intensify partisan polarization.”

Pozen warned in an email:

Accusations that the press has a political agenda can, perversely, help create an agenda which is then said to corroborate the accusations.

Pozen described Trump’s denunciation of the press as “the culmination of several decades of comparable attacks by media pundits, such as Rush Limbaugh” and he argues that Trump’s calls
to lock up one’s general election opponent, encouraging online hate mobs, lying constantly, attacking the press constantly, contradicting oneself constantly, undermining the very idea of truth are individually and in common potentially profound threats to the integrity and quality of our system of free expression.

The question is whether the news media can mount an effective check on the exercise of power when the media itself has become an object of hatred for a large segment of the electorate.

Rosen of N.Y.U. notes the cross pressures on the news media:

I think our top journalists are correct that if they become the political opposition to Trump, and see themselves that way, they lose. But they have to go to war against a political style in which power gets to write its own story.

Rosen draws attention to a September 2017 article in The Atlantic, “Trump’s War Against the Media Isn’t a War: You need two sides for that,” which quotes Marty Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post: “We’re not at war; we’re at work.” Baron is right, but for those without any understanding of — or respect for — freedom of the press, first principles can be brushed aside without a second thought.

It's interesting that at the same time Trump is denigrating the press for "fake news" certain foreign actors who seem to like the cut of his jib have also weaponized propaganda in a way that validates his claims even though he's wrong.

Keep in mind that this is all in service of authoritarianism and oligarchy. It's not benign "partisan politics." It won't end well.

I honestly don't know how we can work our way out of this mess. I guess we just have to hope that somehow common sense reasserts itself and the people begin to wake up. But just trying to cling to reality right now is a very daunting task.



digby 3/16/2018 03:00:00 PM

 
Trump wants to kill drug dealers --- unless he's doing business with them

by digby




Trump wants to be Duterte. But maybe someone will have to ask him about this:

President Trump now chats with the leaders of China and Singapore about executing drug dealers.

But back in the 1980s, Trump helped a multi-kilo cocaine dealer escape with a minimal sentence.

And a little over a decade ago, Trump worked with a convicted pill pusher to develop Trump Tower Philadelphia, a real estate deal that also involved Don Jr. and Ivanka.

The dealer turned developer was Raoul Goldberger, aka Raoul Goldberg. He had previously been caught with a loaded gun that had been fired. He had also done time for smuggling and distributing considerable quantities of ecstasy. He would follow the Trump Tower Philadelphia dealings by being convicted of selling opioids. He remained number 46245-054 in federal prison when Trump was elected.

The cocaine dealer was Joseph Weichselbaum. He was indicted for heading a Colombia-Miami-Middle America cocaine ring in 1985, even the helicopter service owned by him and his brother Franklin was getting more than $2 million a year from Trump to ferry high rollers to and from his casinos in Atlantic City.

The charges against Joseph Weichselbaum were brought in Cincinnati, but after he pled guilty there, the case was mysteriously transferred to New Jersey for sentencing and assigned to Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. She recused herself two weeks later, reportedly in part because she and her husband had taken rides in Weichselbaum choppers.

The case was given to fellow New Jersey federal Judge Harold Ackerman, along with the implicit message that she had some connection to the defendant. Ackerman then received a September 1986 letter from the Donald himself, regarding Weichselbaum and written with full knowledge of his big-time drug dealing.

“A credit to the community… conscientious, forthright and diligent,” Trump wrote in a missive first reported by the late, great Wayne Barrett.

More minor participants in the drug ring were hit with as much as 20 years. But the kingpin Weichselbaum got just three years. He served only 18 months and then was released to a halfway house.

At the time of his sentencing, Weichselbaum was living in Trump Plaza in Manhattan in an apartment owned by Trump. The rent was a cut-rate $7,000 a month.

I'm fairly sure that he just wants to kill Latino and black drug dealers. In fact, that's really the point. Killing white men with money is almost certainly not what he has in mind.


.

digby 3/16/2018 01:30:00 PM

 
Paranoia, purges and threats

by digby

Joe McCarthy and Trump's mentor Roy Cohn

This is some fascist stuff here and I'm not kidding:

Two months into the Trump administration, a distraught State Department Iran expert named Sahar Nowrouzzadeh asked her new boss for help.

A conservative website had published an article depicting Nowrouzzadeh as a Barack Obama loyalist who had “burrowed into the government” under Trump and even had ties to the hated Iranian regime itself. Focusing on her role in the negotiation of Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, the article was headlined, “Iran deal architect is running Tehran policy at the State Dept.”

Nowrouzzadeh emailed Brian Hook, the new chief of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, where she worked on Middle East issues, to insist that the article was “filled with misinformation.” She assured Hook that, since joining the government under George W. Bush in 2005, she had always “adapted” to shifting U.S. policy priorities — as any career government staffer is expected to do. She asked for his help in correcting the record.

Hook was already well aware of the story. The article, which appeared in an obscure online publication called Conservative Review, had caused a stir among conservative activists and incoming Trump officials who were busy trying to establish who Nowrouzzadeh was — and whether she could be purged.

According to emails obtained by POLITICO, the agitators included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who sent the article to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s chief of staff, and a Trump official who told top Tillerson aides that Nowrouzzadeh “was born in Iran” — she was not — and that she had wept after Trump’s election.

The emails show that State Department and White House officials repeatedly shared such misleading information about Nowrouzzadeh, deriding her as an Obama cheerleader and strong advocate for the nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump had repeatedly denounced. Later, after Nowrouzzadeh was reassigned to another job, some State Department officials tried to mislead a POLITICO reporter about whether she’d completed her full tenure in Hook’s policy shop.

The exchanges provide a window into the intense suspicion — critics call it paranoia — of senior Trump officials toward the employees they inherited upon taking over the government, especially in the realms of foreign policy and national security. In one email, a staffer was described as “a leaker and a troublemaker,” while another was branded a “turncoat.”

This is reminiscent of earlier McCarthyist accusations that the State Department was riddled with communists. I think it comes from their fundamental xenophobia and mistrust of people whose job it is to speak to foreigners.

In this case there is also the basic stupidity of Trump and the people around him and the ease with which they are manipulated by actors with agendas:

Although career staffers generally observe an ethos of nonpartisanship, many Trump officials saw them as constituting a “deep state” cabal determined to sabotage the new president’s agenda. The emails also suggest that Nowrouzzadeh may have been targeted in part because of her ethnicity, which would be a violation of federal employment law.

The emails were the subject of a Thursday letter to the White House and State Department from Reps. Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel, the top Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, respectively. The letter calls the emails, provided to Congress by an unnamed whistleblower, “extremely disturbing” and demands further documents from the Trump administration.

In the early months of Trump’s presidency, conservative media organizations such as Breitbart News and the Conservative Review published several stories singling out career civil and foreign service staffers by name. The reports often called such employees “Obama holdovers” — even though many, like Nowrouzzadeh, joined the government well before Obama took office — and urged their firing. The stories were terrifying to career employees who, in some cases, had spent decades working out of the spotlight. Nowrouzzadeh, who would not comment for this article, told Hook that she feared for her safety.

And yes, they are also thugs.

This adds up to a fascist bent that is becoming normalized. This story didn't even cause a ripple and yet it's actually very horrifying.


.
digby 3/16/2018 12:00:00 PM

 
Of course he threatened her

by digby

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

Stunning. Stormy Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti disclosed on Morning Joe this morning that Stormy Daniels was physically threatened regarding the NDA she signed.

Knowing Trump henchman/thug Michael Cohen's pseudo-Godfather persona and past history, I'm gonna guess it was the classic "You won't be so pretty if someone throws acid in your face" kind of coercion -- which, if it happened before she signed, may invalidate the agreement. But we won't know until after the 60 Minutes interview appears on March 25.

"Was she threatened in any way?" Mika asked.

"Yes," Avenatti said.

"Was she threatened physical harm?"

"Yes."

"Was her life threatened?"

"Again, I won't answer that. People will have to tune in to '60 Minutes.'"

Avenatti refused any details. He would not say whether the threat came from the president (I doubt that, he uses Cohen for that sort of thing), although when asked directly if the physical effects came from Trump, he said, "I will neither confirm nor deny."

Michael Cohen is known for his lurid threats:

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.

I have no doubt that he threatened Daniels. Whether they can prove it, who knows?

.
digby 3/16/2018 10:30:00 AM

 

No one from the clandestine service should run the CIA

by digby

I wrote about Gina Haspel, the covert CIA agent implicated in torture who Trump wants to reward by promoting her to head the CIA, for Salon this morning:

On Thursday evening ProPublica issued an important correction concerning Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel, the woman Donald Trump has nominated to head the agency if and when current Director Mike Pompeo is confirmed as the new secretary of state. It was apparently ProPublica that first reported last year that Haspel ran the secret CIA "black site" prison in Thailand in 2002 when supposed al-Qaida detainee Abu Zubaydah was brutally tortured, and that Haspel had personally mocked the prisoner. In an extended correction signed by editor in chief Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica has now retracted those claims.

Haspel did indeed run that secret prison in Thailand, but according to this new report did not take over as director until after the Zubaydah interrogation had ended. If this new information is accurate, this was a monumental error that will likely mean that Haspel is ultimately confirmed as CIA director. We can expect the Republicans in the Senate to use this to turn her into a "fake news" victim and set her up as a patriotic martyr.

It may seem odd that the GOP would defend such an avatar of the "deep state," considering all the mud they've thrown at the intelligence community over the past year. Likewise, Democrats will attack her for her admittedly murky role in the Bush-era torture program, despite the fact that they've been defending the community's analysis of Russian interference in the 2016 election. That may look like shallow partisanship but it really isn't. This tension has existed since the beginning of the Cold War.

Hawks have long seen the CIA as mainly a tool for covert action to advance American foreign policy, whether that meant toppling unfriendly regimes or propping up friendly ones. They admire and protect the clandestine service but thoroughly mistrust CIA analysis. That's because the CIA often produces threat estimates that undercut right-wingers' insistence on ever-expanding military spending. Back in the 1970s, as the nation was dizzy from all the revelations of CIA misdeeds ranging from revolutions to attempted assassinations, the hawks used the opportunity to challenge the CIA estimates of Soviet military capability and formed outside groups like Team B and the Committee for the Present Danger to argue for what became Reagan's massive military buildup. Unsurprisingly their cooked estimates of Soviet power turned out to be hugely overstated and the CIA's were much closer to reality.

Similarly, during the run-up to the Iraq war Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly pressured the CIA to back up the administration's claims about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration even created a parallel intelligence operation called the Office of Special Plans, based in the Pentagon, to provide senior government officials with raw intelligence, unvetted by intelligence community analysts. We all know how that turned out.

Meanwhile, the liberal doves have been unrelentingly hostile to the covert, unaccountable side of the CIA and other agencies, which tend to operate like a law unto themselves. They oppose the U.S. government's interference in the internal workings of other nations, including assassinations, torture and other immoral and illegal behavior. But most liberals have tended to accept intelligence community analyses, checked by outside experts, mainly because it's got a fairly good track record. Now that everyone has access to the international press, distortions or disinformation get challenged pretty quickly.

The divides on the Russia scandal and the Haspel nomination illustrate that old tension once again.

ProPublica's statement explains how they got the original February 2017 story wrong through a series of misinterpretations of official comments, certain passages in a book by CIA contractor James Mitchell (one of the notorious psychologists who developed the Bush-era torture regime) and the agency's unwillingness to address the specific charges in the story before it was published. It was only this week, after Haspel was nominated for the top job, that various sources came forward, including Mitchell, to correct the record about when Haspel took over the direction of the prison. Mitchell told Fox Business News on Wednesday that Haspel was not the "chief of base" he described in his book who oversaw the infamous Zubaydah interrogation (during which the prisoner somehow lost an eye) and made grotesque comments about his suffering.

The black site program was documented in depth by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her exposés on the CIA's secret interrogation program, and the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, both in her magazine articles and the book "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals." Those who were intimately involved in that ugly chapter of the CIA's history have no business running the the agency. And anyone who was involved in destroying evidence, as Haspel was, simply cannot be entrusted with the vast power of the CIA.

No one disputes that Haspel was chief of base at the Thai prison at the time another prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was waterboarded three times. When Priest first reported on the existence of the black site program in 2005, Jose Rodriguez, the head of the agency's counterterrorism center, became concerned that videotapes of the torture of terrorism suspects would become public and reflect badly on the CIA. According to his memoir, Rodriguez ordered Haspel, who was back in Washington working as his chief of staff, to draft a cable ordering that the 92 tapes be destroyed. She did, and they were. Haspel was up to her neck in the torture program, both on the ground in Thailand and during the cover-up of the agency's nefarious deeds.

We have never heard from Haspel about her involvement in that cover-up, but since she was destroying the evidence of her own culpability it's doubtful she argued against it. Not that it matters. The Nuremberg defense ("I was just following orders") shouldn't work for the cover-up any more than the torture regime itself.

It's unlikely there will ever be any real accountability for the depraved torture program of the post-9/11 years. George W. Bush granted immunity in 2006 to all CIA agents who worked on the program, and while Barack Obama denounced torture he said he held “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” and let it go. We all know how Donald Trump feels about torture: He loves it. The president has repeatedly insisted that torture works and has said he would do far worse than waterboarding if he had the chance. Rewarding someone who was intimately involved in the torture program and the cover-up by handing her the reins of America's most important intelligence agency proves he's serious about that.


.
digby 3/16/2018 09:00:00 AM

 

A game of hide the privilege

by Tom Sullivan

This poster from the era of the Dawes Rolls advertised land for Native Americans prompting opportunistic white men to pay to be Indian, via Indian Country Today.

My roommate cracked up.

I said I'd told my mother about a friend who'd gotten another kid into treatment. The other kid was a junkie. She grew visibly uncomfortable at the idea that I knew people with ... "problems." She couldn't say the word junkie.

"Problems?! Problems, man?!" my roommate burst out laughing, waving his hands about wildly.

"The guy's a junkie! He's got a two bag a day habit! You could say he's got problems!!"

Then in his twenties and attending an upscale university, as a teenager in Boston he'd been a heroin user himself.

All these years later, it's still a thing in white suburban communities that they don't engage topics that make them uncomfortable. It's their privilege not to.

Washington Monthly's Nancy LeTourneau points to a school controversy outside Milwaukee over a Martin Luther King Day assembly exercise. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that parents in the mostly white community of Oconomowoc complained about the discussion of privilege in society:

Oconomowoc Superintendent Roger Rindo said he was directed by board members during a closed-door, executive session shortly after the Jan. 15 assembly not to allow future activities around the topic of privilege except in classrooms where it is related to a specific course and teachers can provide appropriate context.

Like the all around us kind of context?

White parents must have turned up the heat:

The timing of the board's edict, just weeks before the February resignation of Principal Joseph Moylan, has fueled speculation that Moylan was pushed out in part for allowing the student-led exercise during the assembly Jan. 15.

Board member Steven Zimmer, a friend and supporter of Moylan, also resigned, in protest. He said last week that he "disagreed with the way board members used the MLK Day assembly to push (Moylan) out."

The January 15 assembly included an exercise featuring a "privilege aptitude test" from the National Civil Rights Museum. The introduction explains:

The following exercise invites you to try to contemplate as to how our lives are different from the lives of others due to the privileges with which we live or privileges we have not. Each of these questions are relevant to your race, class, creed, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

Sorry. Not allowed. What keeps this union from becoming more perfect is stifling discussion about unwritten social rules that make a mockery of "created equal." How's that for context?

You have to wonder what the ancestral residents of Oconomowoc might think about who is and who is not privileged.



* * * * * * * *

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


Undercover Blue 3/16/2018 06:00:00 AM

Thursday, March 15, 2018

 
Limbaugh on Stephen Hawking's passing

by digby




He waxed philosophical as only he can:

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST):  If there are questions we can ask to which we will never have the answers, then that gives me confidence that there is more than just life on Earth. What is the point of creating beings who can ponder such places if they don’t exist? Certainly the Big Bang.

Again, I’ll admit I’m just a college dropout radio guy, okay? I’m not a professional physicist. I’m not a professional scientist. I do not own a lab coat, white or light blue. So they tell me that the Big Bang is where everything began. Hawking says it’s the Big Bang and we’re still expanding.

[...]

Okay, the Big Bang. There was this whatever-size — call it a golf ball-, tennis ball-size of matter that banged and we’re all here. Where was it? Where was this glob of matter that banged that created the universe? Where was it? No, no, no. You can’t say, “It was in the void.” You can’t say it was in another dimension, parallel or otherwise, astral plane.

It had to be somewhere. Where was it? What was around it? Could you see it? Could somebody see this golf-ball-size bit of energy if they were not part of that? Could you be somewhere and see it?

Could you be somewhere and witness this Big Bang instead of being a part of it? If so, where were you? Well, since nobody could see it, how the hell do they know it really happened?

But I’m not supposed to ask that.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone wants to listen to that idiotic drivel. But is everyone who does listen to it equally cretinous?

Well, the proof is in the pudding. Donald Trump is president. And Limabaugh remains one of the most influential political personalities in our culture. You do the calculations ...

And we have to be grateful that he didn't make fun of Hawking the way he and Trump usually mock those with physical disabilities. Of course he might have done it off the air. In fact, I'd bet money that he did.

.


digby 3/15/2018 06:00:00 PM

 
The Fox and Friends administration

by digby

Don't say he didn't warn us

On Ring of Fire with Sam Seder, we've been joking for weeks that Trump was going to end up staffing his administration entirely with Fox News personalities.

Uhm, well ..

Who's next? What's next? While Wednesday was a wee bit quieter than Monday and Tuesday, there were numerous stories about further White House shakeups to come. "We are told that there could be a 'bloodbath,' if not tomorrow, then Friday at the latest," Fox's John Roberts reported on "Special Report." (Earlier in the day, Roberts was spotted heading to a lunch with VP Mike Pence. Maybe this is a complete coincidence, but the lunch had other W.H. reporters buzzing.)

Roberts also affirmed reporting by other outlets that H.R. McMaster could be replaced by John Bolton -- who is currently a Fox News contributor.

Earlier in the day, another cable news commentator, CNBC's Larry Kudlow, was confirmed as Trump's pick to replace Gary Cohn...

Surprise!



Kudlow has been a mainstay of CNBC for almost 30 years. Naturally his first TV interview about the new job was with CNBC's "Closing Bell."

"I didn't know" the announcement was happening on Wednesday, Kudlow said. "I wasn't watching TV this morning. The president called and he said, 'It's out.' Cuz I don't think he was intending to put it out til tomorrow or Friday. I said 'Oh.' He said, 'You're on the air.' He said, 'I'm looking at a picture of you. Very handsome.' So Trumpian!"

--> CNBC president Mark Hoffman wished Kudlow well in a memo...

"Trump TV is a pipeline for Trump hires"

Chris Hayes on "All In" Wednesday night: "Trump TV is a pipeline for Trump hires..." He pointed to Fox host turned State Dept spokeswoman Heather Nauert's new promotion: "Despite having zero prior experience in diplomacy, Trump just installed Nauert as the acting undersecretary of the state for public diplomacy... In less than a year, Nauert has gone from 'Fox & Friends' to No. 4 at the State Department."

NYT's James Poniewozik tweeted: "I guess I owe President Trump an apology for all the remarks I made about how much time he spent watching cable TV, when in fact he was vetting future top advisers..."

Brian Lowry emails: The latest hirings/promotions invite the question: Has any president ever put more stock in people who opine on television? The closest analogy I can think of is professional football and basketball coaches, who tend to go back and forth between providing color-commentary/analysis and actual sideline gigs...

And the chaos continues...

On Wednesday Axios quoted an anonymous W.H. official saying "this is the most toxic working environment on the planet." The WashPost's Josh Dawsey tweeted that "officials have begun betting pools of sorts among each other on who's getting ousted next." He added: "Lot of people who are usually in the know are not in the know." So take the leaks with grains of salt...

Hegseth next?

CNBC's Jim Cramer had the scoop about his co-worker Kudlow earlier this week. Now there's this: Fox contributor and Townhall editor Katie Pavlich says "Trump is expected to fire VA Secretary David Shulkin and is strongly considering replacing him" with Pete Hegseth, co-host of "Fox & Friends Weekend."

These aren't the first. Remember, he hired K.T. McFarland direct from Fox as his deputy National Security Adviser.

Could you ever have imagined something like this? It is insane.

*That report was from CNN's Brian Stelter's news letter.


digby 3/15/2018 04:30:00 PM

 
Make 'em an offer they can't refuse

by digby

Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract. That's a true story.



Trump's new economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Trump's tariffs, who appears to be back on his 100k a month blow habit:

"It’s a Trumpian way of negotiating. You knock them in the teeth and get their attention. And then you kind of work out a deal and I think that's what he’s done. My hats off to him. He had me really worried. Now I’m not.”

That's not negotiating. That's something else entirely.

And the success of that particular "tactic" depends on the other guys not knocking you in the teeth right back. Or pulling out a gun and shooting you.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? Do they really believe that the United States is an invincible gangster state that can do anything it wants? Uhm. We're not.

You know what happened to Luca Brasi, right?

digby 3/15/2018 03:00:00 PM

 
He doesn't do homework. He's, like, smart. He went to good schools.

by digby

by digby

Trump's bragging that he is a dumb liar and there's nothing anyone can do about it at a fundraiser last night raises some important questions about what comes next with North Korea:

This isn't the first time we've got a glimpse behind the curtain. Early in his presidency, The Washington Post obtained transcripts of his calls with the leaders of Australia and Mexico. Trump's call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull turned contentious after Trump became enraged by an agreement the Obama administration made with Australia to take some refugees. Trump didn't seem to have any understanding of the agreement of Australia's policy of not accepting refugees who arrive by boat

What happens if Trump takes this approach — or the one from the meetings on guns and immigration — to his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un? Can a guy who can't be bothered to understand the basics before talking to foreign leaders and lawmakers do the kind of homework required for very sensitive and complicated negotiations involving nuclear programs? And what if he doesn't even try? What if he decides to wing it, as he did with Trudeau?

He won't do homework. He can't. He has no capacity to learn new facts that conflict with the worldview he adopted more than 30 years ago. He operates entirely on a feral instinct for grandiose self-aggrandizement and personal survival.

If we get out of this alive it will be a miracle. And if we do he will brag that he saved us.

.
digby 3/15/2018 01:30:00 PM

 
A woman in Trump country

by digby





There are a lot of women running for congress this year but most of them are Democrats. Here's a Republican woman who "avidly supports the president."The profile gives a good flavor of what it's like for women in Trump's GOP these days. I pick up the story at a fundraiser with Anthony Scaramucci of all people:

Scaramucci returns to the lobby, but rather than coming to sit with her, he’s chauffeured over to a table to meet Rep. James B. Renacci, current occupant of the 16th District seat, now running for the U.S. Senate. Her campaign consultant, Harlan Hill, who is also working for Renacci, and her political director, Allan Betz, join the meeting. They instruct Hagan to stay put, watch their bags and order something to eat.

“I feel so weird just sitting here,” she says, but she keeps sitting. They’re the experts, brought in from New York and Washington. Hill is on the advisory board for Trump 2020. Betz had worked for Trump’s campaign in Stark County. They had helped an underdog win, and that’s what she has hired them to do for her.

They have redesigned her campaign materials, swapping out a photo of Hagan holding her 2-year-old daughter for a large head shot. They remind her when to use fewer “big words” and ask her to carry a “nice wristlet” instead of a purse, which doesn’t look good in pictures. They help her figure out the right thing to say, and sometimes stop her from talking when she isn’t saying it, like during an interview for this story, when she is asked whether she considers herself a feminist.

“I guess, a conservative feminist,” she begins and then pauses, looking at Betz’s expression. “You’re worried about the terminology,” she says to him.

She starts again. “I think that I’ve never really —”

He interrupts: “In the sense that the word feminist, as it is right now? Absolutely not.”

This reporter explains that he cannot answer the question for her.

“No, I’m just saying, when you say feminist, do you mean the Women’s March?” he asks.

“No,” Hagan says, “that’s not — ”

“Well, that’s feminist,” he says.

“No, no,” she says.

“Yes, it is,” he retorts.

“That’s your opinion of what feminism has been portrayed as,” she says. “But I think that modern-day feminism, as culturally perceived, would not be a direct correlation of who I am.”

She begins to explain who she is — a woman who doesn’t expect anyone to vote for her because she’s a woman; who doesn’t believe that her sex is severely disadvantaged; who feels like the Women’s March kept out women like her, “who choose to embrace the fullness of our biological greatness” — and Betz cuts her off again, asking to pause the interview. “Something has come up,” he says.

At least he didn't grab her by the pussy. That we know of ...

Honestly, I can barely understand why any woman would be a Republican. But a Trump supporter? There's some kind of screw loose.

*Actually, that's not true. They have their reasons and it has to do with sexism. Basically, Trump dredges up these women's fears --- even of him --- then tells them he'll protect them (as long as they are good girls.) Some women find it easier to believe that than believe the truth.

.
digby 3/15/2018 12:00:00 PM

 
So much chaos we don't even notice the graft and the corruption anymore

by digby



I wrote about the odd way Trump is draining the swamp for Salon today:


After Economic Adviser Gary Cohn's resignation in the wake of President Trump's impulsive tariff announcement and the abrupt dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week, it's assumed that Trump's apparent decision to throw caution to the wind and follow his gut will lead to more firings, perhaps immediately. It's not as if he's being coy about it. Trump keeps saying that he's "almost" got the administration he wants, every time the press queries him about the massive turnover.

This has all of Washington on a sort of death watch, wondering whether the rumors that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is out are true. Then there's the greatest thorn in Trump's side, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as well as Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, who is in a pitched battle with his own staff.

Axios' Jonathan Swan quoted a White House staffer summing up the atmosphere these days:

This is the most toxic working environment on the planet. Usually tough times bring people together. But right now this atmosphere is ripping people apart. There's no leadership, no trust, no direction and [at] this point there's very little hope. Would you want to go to work every day not knowing whether your future career was going to be destroyed without explanation?

That is in apparent reference to the fact that people are being summarily dismissed and marched out of the White House without even being able to gather their personal items, almost on a daily basis. This is said to often be because of failure to gain security clearance, and then "serious financial crimes," in the case of Trump's personal assistant John McEntee -- who was fired earlier this week. (He was immediately hired by the 2020 Trump campaign as a "senior adviser," so his career seems to be on track.)

One thing Trump's game of musical chairs is accomplishing is that it's become almost quaint to worry about the massive amount of corruption within the administration. It is now so commonplace that when it becomes public there is a moment of hand-wringing in the press and then . . . nothing happens. For all the turnover in this administration, virtually none of it has been because of the self-dealing and profiteering that's reported virtually every day.

One cabinet member who was forced to resign over his nearly half-million dollars in travel expenses in the first few months of the administration was former HHS Secretary Tom Price. If anyone thought the president was making an example of him, it didn't take. Since then, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has also been taken to task for excessive travel costs and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt racked up huge bills for personal travel, insisting he needed the extra security of first-class travel because someone once shouted something insulting at him in coach. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a man worth $300 million, requested government planes that cost $25,000 an hour to fly him and his wife to their European honeymoon.

Meanwhile, the office redecorating costs are skyrocketing under the Trump administration. It was reported this week that HUD Secretary Ben Carson fibbed when he said he didn't know anything about the $31,000 dining room table that he and his wife ordered for his office (even as he is overseeing massive cuts to programs for poor people.) Zinke spent $139,000 to replace three doors, and Pruitt has built a $43,000 "cone of silence" for his office so that nobody overhears his top-secret environmental policy phone calls.


Carson and Zinke are still Trump favorites, and there's talk of promoting Pruitt to the Department of Justice if Trump finally gets around to firing Jeff Sessions. (What could be better for the country than a deeply paranoid attorney general?)

The wealthiest man in the administration is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and, according to this article by David Dayen at the Intercept, his conflicts of interest are massive -- even aside from his holdings in Russian, interests that look suspicious under current circumstances. After the release of the Paradise Papers, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., complained that Ross had seriously misled the Congress in his confirmation hearings and compared his financial statements to "Russian nesting dolls." He's never been more influential in the cabinet.

Then there are the Trumps and the Kushners. The emoluments issue seems to have disappeared, despite the fact that foreign governments are routinely spending massive sums at Trump hotels to curry favor with the president, and God only knows what they're doing at his foreign properties. Donald Trump continues to do almost weekly promotional appearances at this resorts and golf properties, charging people big bucks for access to him and pocketing the money. CNN reported on Wednesday that the Defense Department spent nearly $140,000 at Trump properties in the first few months of the administration on meals and lodging. Another $17,000 was spent at the troubled Panama hotel (now no longer under Trump management), for reasons that are obscure.

The Trumps have even tried to use the presidential seal to sell their cheap branded merchandise:

The presidential seal being sold on mugs at Trump Tower.

[breaths]

It’s illegal to use the seal for commercial purposes. https://t.co/HPiEGK83rO

— ProPublica (@ProPublica) March 7, 2018

You can say one thing for Trump. He never leaves even one dime on the table.

I wrote about Donald Trump Jr.'s Indian adventure awhile back, selling foreign policy and condos in one whirlwind trip. Now it looks like Ivanka Trump herself is finally coming under scrutiny. She did not divest her holdings in the Trump Organization and is receiving more than a million dollars a year from projects with state-owned companies around the world, even as she works in the White House without proper clearance and travels the globe as a representative of the U.S. government. It's astonishing that she is getting away with this.

But that's nothing compared to her husband Jared Kushner, who secured loans for himself and his family in excess of half a billion dollars after meetings in the White House about possible infrastructure projects. Then there are the suspicions that Kushner pressured the government of Qatar to bail out his family debt and changed American foreign policy to punish the Qataris when they didn't come across.

This is just the corruption we know about. Some of it is penny-ante and some of it is massive in scale. There's skimming from the taxpayers and leveraging government policy for personal gain. As in a banana republic or a mob-run kleptocracy, it's pervasive in every part of the administration, woven into the fabric of everyday business. But because this presidency is such an epic disaster in every way, all of this looks like a third-order scandal.

.
digby 3/15/2018 10:30:00 AM

 
He's proud to be a dumb liar

by digby




He even brags about how stupid and dishonest he is:

President Trump boasted in a fundraising speech Wednesday that he made up information in a meeting with the leader of a top U.S. ally, saying he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States runs a trade deficit with its neighbor to the north without knowing whether that was the case.

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.

“... So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. ... I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’

‘Well, sir, you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber. … And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.’ It’s incredible.”

The Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.

Apparently all the rich Republicans sycophants ate it up. I guess he makes them feel good about themselves by comparison.

Oh God the rest of it was even worse:

He also seemed to threaten to pull U.S. troops stationed in South Korea if he didn’t get what he wanted on trade with Seoul, an ally. He said that the country had gotten rich but that U.S. politicians never negotiated better deals. “We have a very big trade deficit with them, and we protect them,” Trump said. “We lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military. We have right now 32,000 soldiers between North and South Korea. Let’s see what happens.”

“Our allies care about themselves,” he said. “They don’t care about us.”

Trump’s rare comments that laid bare his approach to arguing trade facts with foreign leaders show how he might try to engage with other heads of state in the coming weeks. Trump has said he will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as soon as next week, a steep increase in duties that could impact some of the U.S. government’s biggest trading partners.

Trump said countries can request exemption from these tariffs but only after direct negotiations with him. And the audio from the fundraiser shows how difficult these discussions could prove.

In his 30-minute speech to donors in Missouri, Trump lavished praise on himself while ticking through a list of U.S. allies that he said were actually taking advantage of the United States.
[...]
Trump described his decision to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un through the prism of making history and besting his predecessors while lamenting his media coverage, questioning U.S. allies and labeling his presidency as “virgin territory.”

“They couldn’t have met” with Kim, he said, after mocking former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. “Nobody would have done what I did.”

“It’s called appeasement, please don’t do anything,” he said of other presidents.

“They say, 'Maybe he’s not the one to negotiate,' ” he said, mocking the voice of a news anchor. “He’s got very little knowledge of the Korean Peninsula. Maybe he’s not the one. ... Maybe we should send in the people that have been playing games and didn’t know what the hell they’ve been doing for 25 years.”

The through lines of his meandering speech were simple: Trump was tougher than all the rest, and the United States was not going to be laughed at or taken advantage of.

He accused Japan of using gimmicks to deny U.S. auto companies access to their consumers, said South Korea was taking advantage of outdated trade rules even though its economy was strong and said China had single-handedly rebuilt itself on the back of its trade surplus with the United States.

“It’s the bowling ball test. They take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and drop it on the hood of the car,” Trump said of Japan. “If the hood dents, the car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible,” he said. It was unclear what he was talking about.

He said he didn’t even want Japan to pay the tariffs but to build more automobiles in the United States, which he said Japan would do if tariffs were imposed. There is no evidence of such a possibility as of now.

His comments were among his most protectionist to date and didn’t identify a single benefit the United States receives from its trading relationships.

The "free-trade globalists," he said, are against his trade moves because “they’re worldly people, they have stuff on the other side.” Gary Cohn, the president’s top economic adviser, recently quit over the tariffs and was derisively labeled by his critics as a globalist.

Trump mocked other politicians for wanting to keep NAFTA, calling Mexico “spoiled” and saying that Canada had outsmarted the United States. “The best deal is to terminate it and make a new deal,” he said.

Above all, he cast his presidency in historic proportions, saying he was attracting so much media criticism because he was doing so well. He seemed fixated on his media coverage, even talking about a specific CNN segment with Erin Burnett.

He said the news media was criticizing him for “conceding” a meeting with Kim.

“They were afraid of being blown up. Then all of a sudden, they say, let’s not meet,” he said of reporters.

While Trump said some decry his rhetoric and think his bellicose and mercurial tendencies could bring the United States into a war, he explained why he taunted the North Korean president as “Little Rocket Man.” He said the South Koreans told him that Kim was agreeing to meet because of the tough U.S. sanctions and that they promised to not do any nuclear tests or missile launches until a meeting occurred. That comment could not be verified.

“He’s going to get us in a war,” he said, again mocking a news anchor. “You know what’s going to get us in a war? Weakness.

Somebody needs to stop him from drinking so much diet coke (or doing whatever it is that makes him so over-stimulated. )He is on a manic tear and it's getting really scary.

.
digby 3/15/2018 09:00:00 AM

 

Poor, poor Paul

by Tom Sullivan

House Speaker Paul Ryan's dead-eyed earnestness is ordinarily pretty hard to take seriously. For one thing, the man who would explain to us all how the economy works hasn't worked in it his whole adult life.

In the aftermath of Democrat Conor Lamb's special election win in PA-18 on Tuesday, Ryan's explanations for the GOP loss were comical. Slate's Jim Newell made sure readers didn't miss just how much:

House Speaker Paul Ryan, during a Wednesday morning press conference, gave credit to President Trump, who “helped close this race” by hosting a rally in the district over the weekend. It’s an interesting position to take, that the president could be lauded as a “closer” when the candidate he supported didn’t appear to … win. But Ryan had more where that came from.

“Both of these candidates, the Republican and the Democrat, ran as conservatives,” Ryan argued. “Ran as pro-gun, pro-life, anti–Nancy Pelosi conservatives. And I think that’s the takeaway we see here.”

One can think of other takeaways beyond the race being a great night for conservatism. Let’s look at that litany of issues that Ryan mentioned. On guns, Lamb did not support limits to magazine clips or a new ban on assault weapons, but he did support the sort of expansion of background checks in the Manchin-Toomey proposal, which many conservatives claim would mark the beginning of the end of the Second Amendment. He holds the Tim Kaine position on abortion: He doesn’t personally support abortion but believes it should be legally available—a position known as being “pro-choice.” In the same interview in which he told the Weekly Standard that he does not use the term pro-life to describe himself, Lamb also said that he would have voted against the 20-week abortion ban. It is true that he said he wanted “new leadership” in Congress and would not support Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi’s feelings were likely unhurt.

Not to mention Lamb's describing Ryan's signature achievement, last years's GOP tax bill, as "giveaway" to the rich and large corporations.

As an early test of GOP messaging and recruitment for November, Tara Golshan writes at Vox, "a wave of Democratic enthusiasm" demonstrated their weakness.

Republicans chalking up the loss to Lamb's looks — his it-factor — came in for a special kind of sarcasm from Newell:

Reader, do yourself a favor: Take a look-see at members of the House Republican Conference. Do you think Glenn Grothman make it to the United States Congress through sheer force of his charisma? Did John Faso charm his way into the hearts and minds of New York’s 19th Congressional District? How was George Holding able to inspire the masses in North Carolina’s 13th? Saccone just didn’t “pop” quite like Peter King or Andy Harris.

If anything, Lamb's victory on Tuesday made it clear Democrats running against Paul Ryan's economic message and Republicans' attempts to wreck Obamacare might work better for them than Republicans' perennial demonizing of Nancy Pelosi.

Although Lamb has a point in calling for new leadership. Democrats' stagnation comes from leadership not knowing when it's time to pass the baton and move on. Succession planning is not their forte. Democrats are still kicking around the idea of Joe Biden running for president in 2020. For all the Republican booga-booga, the scariest thing about Nancy Pelosi still leading the House Democratic caucus is a stroke leading to her being succeeded by Steny Hoyer.

* * * * * * * *

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


Undercover Blue 3/15/2018 06:00:00 AM

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

 

QOTD: A person who made a bad decision

by digby

"This is the most toxic working environment on the planet. Usually tough times bring people together. But right now this atmosphere is ripping people apart. There's no leadership, no trust, no direction and this point there's very little hope. Would you want to go to work every day not knowing whether your future career was going to be destroyed without explanation?"

— A White House official to Axios

Senior officials are equivocating privately when asked whether they think John Kelly and H.R. McMaster are staying or going. Nobody knows because it’s Trump, and the way he dealt with Rex Tillerson was sudden, even though he’d long been fed up with his Secretary of State.

But the clearance issues are more serious:

West Wingers believe more people are set to be escorted out the building for security clearance issues.

Swan has learned that it’s not just Johnny McEntee — the president’s trusted body man — who’s been pushed out for security clearance issues in recent days.

The same thing happened last week to an aide to the First Lady. He was escorted from the premises and his former colleagues don’t know what the security clearance issue was that forced him out. 

Why this matters: This acute level of uncertainty — and these rapid fire executions, especially the security clearance issues — are shredding an already devastated morale inside the building. 

Maybe if they weren't all a bunch of crooks...

.
digby 3/14/2018 06:00:00 PM

 
Meanwhile in Bizarroworld

by digby





In the Trump TV universe, this is what you will see:

Tucker Carlson used his prime-time spot on national TV this week to defend a group of white nationalists who believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and who had previously tried to stop humanitarian ships from rescuing drowning migrants.

Noted Twitter troll Brittany Pettibone and her boyfriend, Austrian far-right activist Martin Sellner, were barred from entering the U.K. when they landed at Luton airport on Tuesday. Separately, far-right YouTube personality Lauren Southern was stopped by Border Officials at Calais and barred as well, with authorities saying her presence was “not conducive to the public good.” Immigration authorities removed Pettibone and Sellner based on intelligence that the two were planning to meet with far-right figure Tommy Robinson, and that their visit was designed “to insight [sic] tensions between local communities in the United Kingdom.”

On Tuesday night, Carlson dug in. “American YouTube personality Brittany Pettibone and her Austrian boyfriend were barred from entering the U.K., because they planned to interview Tommy Robinson, an outspoken critic of Islam,” Carlson said. “Then, on Monday, British police halted a visit by Canadian journalist Lauren Southern, on the grounds she was, quote, ‘a radical Christian,’ and therefore, possibly a terrorist.”

He complained, “Meanwhile, radical Muslims, more than 400 former ISIS fighters were welcomed.”

Pettibone previously described herself as “one of the leading authorities on Pizzagate,” a fringe conspiracy theory that claims former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is involved in an international child sex ring.

These are among the nuttiest of the nutty. And they are being feted in prime time by the conservative network that is the main source of news for tens of millions of Republicans.

Carlson has always been a snotty little twit and a rank opportunist. He's all the way out in Alex Jones territory now. He's a follower, not a leader so I have to assume that's what his audience is looking for. Good god ...

.


digby 3/14/2018 04:30:00 PM