Hullabaloo

Saturday, November 03, 2018

 

The referendum he always wanted

by Tom Sullivan

This is the last day of early voting in North Carolina. It had better be a good one. The current long-term forecast is for rain in our end of the state much of the day on Tuesday as well as in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. That goes for Atlanta as well, where the Georgia governor's race is polling at a what? A dead heat? Neck-and-neck? Given the racial tensions in play there, a lot of cliched descriptions have dark connotations hard to escape.

In Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports two federal courts have thwarted attempts by Republican candidate for governor and secretary of state Brian Kemp to reject absentee ballots over alleged signature mismatches:

The U.S. Court of Appeals has declined to stop an injunction that prevents Georgia elections officials from rejecting absentee ballots over signature discrepancies.

U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May issued the injunction last week as part of two separate lawsuits filed against defendants that include Secretary of State Brian Kemp. May declined on Wednesday Kemp’s request to pause the injunction while he appealed the decision.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals made the same decision Friday, issuing an order rejecting a similar request. That means May’s original order — which requires elections officials across Georgia to provide absentee voters more opportunities to rectify signature-related ballot issues — remains in effect.

Rain is expected as well in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker also faces a tight race for reelection against Democrat Tony Evers. An Emerson College poll of likely voters released Friday shows Walker trailing by 5 points. The Week reports that with unfavorable ratings of 50 percent, Walker is dangerously close to losing on Tuesday:

The best poll Walker has seen in the past few months has still only shown him up by one point, while Evers has maintained a lead of between two and 13 points in others. The Cook Political Report classifies this race as a tossup, while FiveThirtyEight gives Evers a 60.2 percent chance of defeating the two-term governor.

Early voting in Wisconsin is at 140 percent of 2014 levels. In fact, Axios reports 26 states have surpassed their 2014 vote totals during early voting (data via Michael McDonald's Elect Project). Some states may have near presidential turnouts before this is over. There are a lot of assumptions wrapped up in what that means. What percentage of party registrants will vote with another party? Which way will the independent voters break? What will Election Day turnout look like?

Axios samples some of the largest early vote totals:

• Texas, where 4.3 million have already voted compared to 2 million total early votes in the last midterm election.
• Tennessee, where over 1.3 million people have already voted. In 2014, the total was 634,000 early votes.
• Florida voters have already cast more than 4 million votes, compared to 3.1 million.

The election on Tuesday (Why Tuesday?) will be "the purest midterm referendum on a sitting president in modern times," writes Dana Milbank:

Will we take a step, even a small one, back from the ugliness and the race-baiting that has engulfed our country?

Or will we affirm that we are really the intolerant and frightened people Donald Trump has made us out to be?

Unprecedented early turnout suggests the country agrees this is the referendum on Trump Trump wanted. The outcome could answer Milbank's questions.

Even in the "heartland," there are signs Trump's white nationalism has worn thin. “That’s just Trump being Trump” isn't playing there anymore. At least, not in Iowa City, where as "an issue of grave moral and ethical import" the Press-Citizen Editorial Board urges "all voters to turn in a straight-party ballot for Democrats":

The Republican party of the United States has allowed its proud history to be hijacked by a leader who gleefully spreads lies and dangerous conspiracy theories, malevolent rhetoric, barely disguised racist dog whistles and calls the media “the enemy of the people.” Women, Mexicans, the disabled, the transgender, the poor, African-Americans – almost any single subset of the American populace not straight, white and reasonably wealthy – has been targeted by this President.

And the rank and file Republicans – up and down the ballot – have either stood silently by or issued only the faintest, mildest condemnations of the President’s words and actions, fearing the wrath of his political base and Twitter account.

Until that changes, the paper will not endorse any of them. Neither should the rest of us.

[h/t JR]

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.


Undercover Blue 11/03/2018 06:00:00 AM

Friday, November 02, 2018

 
Friday Night Soother: Baby elephant!

by digby

h/t to The Pie Master for this one:


Watch the baby elephant though😂😂👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/GSEV1JgOTz

— Jimmy ✊🏾 #PowerToThePeople (@jwheels74) October 29, 2018


Do what you have to do this week-end. Don't stress. Don't eat your feelings. 

The midterm elections are turning out to be nearly as stressful as the 2016 presidential election — especially for Democrats.

According to a poll conducted by YouGov and commissioned by the fitness site Daily Burn, Democrats are 50 percent more likely than Republicans to say they’re “eating their feelings” as a result of the current political climate. They’re also drinking more (a 2-to-1 ratio over their GOP counterparts).

The ostensibly good news is that these stressed out Democrats are also working out more, by as much as 40 percent; but even exercise can be overdone.

“I’m seeing some people so stressed at the moment they're doing two, even three soul cycle classes at day,” Dr. Navya Mysore, a primary care doctor, tells NBC News BETTER. “Exercise is good for you, but too much is not. You [risk] dehydration and your body needs time to rest and rejuvenate.”

What appears to be happening among many concerned voters, is that they’re resorting excessively to the habits that help us de-stress, whether that’s eating, drinking or exercising.

“Depending on how you’re used to dealing with stress, people tend to gravitate toward that habit more,” says Dr. Mysore. “If you had a hard day, you’ll have a glass of wine, so maybe you’re doing that more. Same for people who are stress eaters — they’ll eat more. If you're more prone to sweat it out when stressed, then you'll do that more.”

How do we stop the stress-induced madness?

They offer the usual healthy tips. But there's really only one that will help this week-end:

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND OUT IN THE COMMUNITY

Emotional eating, drinking your feelings and even excess workouts aren’t productive ways of handling any amount of stress, and they certainly won’t help shift the results of the election.

Rather than succumbing to this lonely feeling of powerlessness, get more involved with the political changes you want to see.

“Find a way to get involved in the process — go out and vote, volunteer for a cause you believe in and contribute to causes that you find important,” says Dr. Helen Odessky is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of “Stop Anxiety From Stopping You: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Panic and Social Anxiety.”

By making a difference hands-on, even in small ways, you’ll probably feel more inspired to get back on track to the things that help defeat stress on a daily level like gratitude, positivity and self-care.

This is it. If you can canvas or call and you haven't done it yet, it's time.

We can all drink and eat cake on Tuesday night, whether to soothe or celebrate. This week-end is for engagement. We'll feel better!


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digby 11/02/2018 06:00:00 PM

 
"If you criticize me, you are inciting violence"

by digby

Trump didn't say exactly that. But it was close. And it is implicit in the veiled threats coming from the right about the left being "uncivil."

Asked about new @ABC News/WaPo poll finding 49% believe he encourages politically motivated violence with the way he speaks, Pres. Trump tells @karentravers, "You're creating violence by your question...A lot of the reporters are creating violence by not writing the truth." pic.twitter.com/pm4YI4VTao

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 2, 2018

They will define it any way they choose. In this case, Trump is defining "incivility" as asking a question about a poll.

We've seen his fans take the next step just last week. He is continuing to incite them. I think he might truly think at this point hat the press will come to heel if they get a little bit of a beating ... if you know what I mean. We know he will blame them for provoking it if it gets (more) violent and someone gets hurt. After all, he blamed the synagogue where one of his fellow travelers killed 11 people last Saturday for failing to "protect themselves" with armed guards. I could easily see him blaming the press for being so "negative" that it just drove some man crazy.

Maybe if they don't ask the president all these unpleasant questions the media can protect themselves too, amirite?


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digby 11/02/2018 04:30:00 PM

 
"Name one country run by a black person that’s not a shithole."

by digby



That's Trump, of course. And it certainly explains why he thinks the United States was a shithole before he descended from heaven to save us.

We know he's a racist. It's been obvious since the 1980s when he wrote that offensive Central Park Five ad.His rhetoric from the beginning has bee explicitly bigoted, over and over again. His former lawyer Michael Cohen confirms that he's just as bigoted in private, which means it's not a schtick to appeal to his racist base, it's him:

Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, was among those closely following the story. The son of a Holocaust survivor, Cohen has remained largely silent since the F.B.I. executed search warrants on his home, hotel room, and office this past spring. In August, he pleaded guilty to charges related to campaign-finance violations and tax fraud, and at the advice of counsel, he has not spoken publicly about his case or his relationship with the president ever since. Privately, he has been cooperating with investigators in the Southern District of New York, the special counsel’s office, and New York State. (He faces sentencing in the Southern District next month.) Yet Cohen wanted to express himself in the wake of the tragedy. Shortly after the sun rose on Tuesday, he tweeted, “In honor of those sadly being buried today resulting from #AntiSemitism #PittsburghSynagogueShooting, let’s follow the wisdom and thoughtful words of #RabbiJeffreyMyers ‘it can’t just be to say we need to stop hate. We need to do, we need to act to tone down rhetoric.’”

Like many, Cohen has observed the president’s scorched-earth campaign tactics as the midterm elections approach, and as the prospect of a Democratic House majority beckons, with its attendant promise of investigations and inquiries. He has heard Trump’s constant invocation of the migrant caravan moving through Central America; he’s noticed the president threaten to revoke birthright citizenship; he’s noted Trump’s tweet calling Florida’s African-American gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum, a “thief,” without any evidence. He also watched Trump shirk responsibility after it was discovered that Bowers invoked the caravan in posts online ahead of the mass murder in Pittsburgh, and after one of his ardent supporters was charged last week with mailing pipe bombs to notable Democrats and other frequent Trumpian targets. (The suspect plans to plead not guilty.) On Twitter and during rallies, Trump has referred to the media as “the enemy of the people,” blaming the free press for “the anger we see today in our society.”

That message rang hollow to those most familiar with the president and his language, including Cohen, who said he has spent the last several months quietly reflecting on his former boss and his own role in the Trump Organization.
[...]
During our conversation, Cohen recalled a discussion at Trump Tower, following the then-candidate’s return from a campaign rally during the 2016 election cycle. Cohen had watched the rally on TV and noticed that the crowd was largely caucasian. He offered this observation to his boss. “I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television. Trump responded, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me.’” (The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

This conversation, he noted, was reminiscent of an exchange that the two men had engaged in years earlier, after Nelson Mandela’s death. “[Trump] said to me, ‘Name one country run by a black person that’s not a shithole,’ and then he added, ‘Name one city,’” Cohen recalled, a statement that echoed the president’s alleged comments about African nations earlier this year. (White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied those comments at the time. She added that “no one here is going to pretend like the president is always politically correct—he isn’t.” She subsequently noted that it was “one of the reasons the American people love him.”)

Cohen also recounted a conversation he had with Trump in the late 2000s, while they were traveling to Chicago for a Trump International Hotel board meeting. “We were going from the airport to the hotel, and we drove through what looked like a rougher neighborhood. Trump made a comment to me, saying that only the blacks could live like this.” After the first few seasons of The Apprentice, Cohen recalled how he and Trump were discussing the reality show and past-season winners. The conversation wended its way back to the show’s first season, which ended in a head-to-head between two contestants, Bill Rancic and Kwame Jackson. “Trump was explaining his back-and-forth about not picking Jackson,” an African-American investment manager who had graduated from Harvard Business School. “He said, ‘There’s no way I can let this black f-g win.’” (Jackson told me that he had heard that the president made such a comment. “My response to President Trump is simple and Wakandan,” he said, referring to the fictional African country where Black Panther hails from. “‘Not today, colonizer!’”)

In retrospect, Cohen told me that he wishes he had quit the Trump Organization when he heard these offensive remarks. “I should have been a bigger person, and I should have left,” he said. He didn’t, he said, because he grew numb to the language and, in awe of the job, forgave his boss’s sins. Cohen, in fact, even defended the president publicly against charges of racism. Last year, he explicitly tweeted as much. Cohen explained that he defended the president because he thought the magnitude of the office would eventually force him to be more judicious with his words. “I truly thought the office would change him,” he said. But it hasn’t, Cohen continued. In fact, he said, it has exacerbated his rhetoric.

Cohen’s claims would damage most presidents. Trump, however, survived the Access Hollywood tape in the run-up to the presidential election in 2016. His supporters stayed with him after his jarring “both sides” comment regarding the racial violence in Charlottesville and didn’t bend when Omarosa Manigault Newman accused him of using vile racial language after she left the White House (Trump referred to her as “that dog” after her book came out). When Trump portrayed Brett Kavanaugh as a man under siege, his poll numbers went up. Trump seems to perform best with his base when he appears like his back is up against the wall. For Cohen’s part, he said he is hoping that people bear his words in mind as they cast their ballots on Tuesday. He will.

His voters talk like that too. Sarah Sanders wasn't wrong. His bigotry is what they love about him.

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digby 11/02/2018 03:00:00 PM

 
The fascist zombie returns to Europe

by digby

On Fox, the White House strategic communications director misleadingly characterizes everyday border crossings as "a daily caravan," and claims that "the larger caravan" is “putting women and children on the front line” to “invade our country." pic.twitter.com/j23lZsAB3A

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) November 2, 2018

When the government takes over the media ....


Check out what's happened to the media in HUngary when the Prime Minister and his rich friends decided to take action:

If you’re wondering what attacks on the news media around the world mean for the future of democracy, it’s worth a trip to Budapest. Consider it a cautionary-tale vacation.

When I visited Hungary recently, I knew I was entering a waning democracy that’s become increasingly authoritarian. I knew that Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a third term in April by convincing voters that a phantasmic combination of Muslim migrants, the Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros and European Union bureaucrats was coming to get them.

But I only understood how Mr. Orban pulled this off when I spoke to Hungarian journalists. They explained that Mr. Orban first criticized the press for being biased against him. Then he and his allies took over most of it, and switched to running stories that promote Mr. Orban’s populist agenda and his party, Fidesz.

This happened fast. The investigative website Atlatszo estimates that more than 500 Hungarian media titles are now controlled by Mr. Orban and his friends; in 2015, only 23 of them were. Loyalty trumps experience: Hungary’s biggest media mogul is a former pipe fitter from Mr. Orban’s hometown.

In some cases, Orban allies bought publications and shut them down. One morning in 2016, journalists at Nepszabadsag, one of Hungary’s biggest dailies, were simply locked out of their offices. Its new owner, an Austrian businessman, claimed financial problems; the paper had just run a series of articles exposing government corruption.

Other news organizations were bought and transformed from within. Some now reportedly take their talking points directly from the government. Recent headlines at Origo — once a respected online news site — were a numbing assortment of articles about migrants wreaking havoc on various European cities and conspiracies about Mr. Soros.

Headlines were strikingly similar on the website of Lokal, co-founded in 2015 by one of Mr. Orban’s top advisers. Its free print version, handed out at train and bus stations, is now Hungary’s highest-circulation newspaper.

There’s still independent news online, but most Hungarians don’t see it. And when one of these websites exposes corruption, Orban-friendly publications align to attack it.

“This is what the government would like to teach society — that there are no reliable sources at all among those who criticize the government,” explained Attila Batorfy, who tracks the Hungarian media for Atlatszo.

This wouldn't happen exactly like that here. But you could see some billionaire media moguls deciding that it's in their interest to get with the program. Fox was set up to do that. But others could follow. Maybe some more takeovers and mergers could happen. Some pressure from the FEC, dominated by conservatives could help. It's hrd to imagine in such a big country with so many outlets. But you never know.

The fact that it's happening in Europe is disheartening, that's for sure. It seems that fascism just went dormant for a while. It didn't die.

And its cousin is here.

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digby 11/02/2018 01:30:00 PM

 
Evangelical conservatives join with MBS in the wake of the Khashoggi murder

by digby



I wish I could say that I'm surprised by this but honestly, I'm not. These people have a nihilist agenda dressed up as Christianity. They are basically a doomsday cult:

A group of U.S. evangelicals, including former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), held a rare meeting Thursday with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman at his palace.

The delegation to Riyadh was led by Bachmann and communications strategist Joel Rosenberg, who are each known for pushing an apocalyptic worldview relating to events in the Middle East, and the heads of other Israel-tied evangelical organizations, reported Al Jazeera.

“We’re under no illusions about the challenges that are in Saudi Arabia and that remain,” Rosenberg said. “But I think it’s respectful to go and listen to leaders who have the opportunity to make life better for Christians and Muslims and potentially for Israel as well and who are against the crazies in Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“I’d ask people to pray,” he added. “Pray for the (Jordanian) king, pray for the crown prince, pray for the people of Saudi Arabia — and I think it’s the right thing to do.”

The unusual visit came a day short of the one-month anniversary of Washington Postcolumnist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

An adviser to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday the journalist was “dissolved” after he was murdered and dismembered.

The crown prince, who has denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance, reportedly described the journalist as a dangerous Islamist shortly after he vanished in a phone call with White House adviser Jared Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton.

The American right-wing Christian delegation, which included Mike Evans, founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, met with Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi ambassador to the U.S. prince Khalid bin Salman and secretary-general of the Muslim World League Mohammed al-Issa.

Saudi Arabia has long insisted that normalizing relations with Israel requires its withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war — which Palestinians seek for a future state.

“We aren’t here for a short-term purpose,” Bachmann told CBN News. “We are not here for a photo op, we could care less about that. We’re here to build long-term relations and to benefit our brothers and sisters that are here in this region.”

Johnnie Moore, the group’s spokesman who also serves as the White House’s unofficial liaison to conservative evangelicals, said they “discussed” Khashoggi’s killing, but declined to elaborate, and he insisted they were not representing Israel or Trump in any way.

They said the White House knew nothing of their visit. Maybe. But it doesn't make any difference. They are on the same page. There is a temporary alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia forming to combat Iran and they are as excited as John Bolton is about that.

It brings the Rapture that much closer.

Hallalujah.

Update: More on American conservative (alleged) Christians, who provide the single most fervent bloc of Trump supporters. They don't just support him they love him with a passion:

CBN consistently stoked fears in several articles that “radical leftists” were behind the caravan, and that it was full of “felons” and “exotics” — one of its sources’ terms for migrants of Middle Eastern or African origin. Little attention, if any, was paid to migrants’ reasons for leaving their homes behind, or the social and political instability in Honduras that is attracting the travelers to the United States. (CBN has not responded to an emailed request for comment.)

The nativist rhetoric spouted by outlets like the Christian Broadcasting Network and plenty others has proved toxic. Elsewhere, intimations of Soros-related conspiracy theories have proven fatal. A Pittsburgh man is suspected of fatally shooting 11 people at a synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday. He frequently posted nativist sentiments and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the caravan and other political issues on the far-right social networking site Gab. In one post, he apparently blamed Jews for aiding and abetting “invaders” — meaning the Honduras migrant caravan.

In the wake of that violence, it’s worth asking a wider point: How did white evangelicals come to so fully embrace the Trumpian rhetoric on immigration? How did a religious group whose foundational sacred text explicitly mandates care for the poor, the sick, and the stranger become a reliable anti-refugee, anti-immigrant voting bloc?

They don't really believe in Christian teachings, obviously. They were really waiting for their own Messiah. And they got him.


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digby 11/02/2018 12:00:00 PM

 
 “It's my only form of fighting back. I wouldn’t be here if I didn't do that.”

by digby




My Salon column this morning:

All presidents lie at one time or another. Some have told monumental lies ("Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction") and others have told self-serving lies ("I did not have sex with that woman") but no president has told an average of 8 lies per day on every subject, important or not, as Donald Trump has done. After observing him for the past two years we can be confident in saying that he is the most dishonest president in history.

Even he cannot really deny it. Jonathan Karl of ABC news interviewed him this week and said "I remember, you remember well in the campaign, you made a promise. You said, 'I will never lie to you,' So can you tell me now, honestly, have you kept that promise at all times? Have you always been truthful?" In a revealing reply, the president said:

Well, I try. I mean, I do try. I think you try, too. You say things about me that are not necessarily correct. I do try, and I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth. I mean sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that's different or there's a change. But I always like to be truthful.

He tries. He likes to be truthful. When he can, he tells the truth. Apparently, most of the time he cannot. And we know why. He doesn't know what he's talking about so he makes things up.

But just as he reveals himself in that comment, the last couple of weeks have revealed something else. If anyone wondered if there were any limits to what he would say and do to win, he has shown us that there are not. As Salon's Amanda Marcotte points out, the sharp escalation in xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric, boosted through a feedback loop with Fox News, makes that clear. And nothing will stand in his way, not even a week of violent threats and assaults, leaving 11 dead by assailants who parroted his lies and racist demagoguery.

That's not to say he wasn't personally upset by those awful events. He was. Vanity Fair reported that until they happened he'd been in a buoyant mood, assured by his pollsters that the midterms were going well. His rallies were raucous events featuring his greatest hits. He had gone sharply negative, particularly against the media, and was feeling the energy and excitement that brings among his followers. Then these violent extremists came along and inflicted carnage and terror and ruined all his plans. He has even said as much, in tweet form.

Again, according to Vanity Fair, there had been some talk of having him do a prime-time address on the topic of “unity,” but he quickly shot that down and went with his top advisers, former Fox News executive Bill Shine, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and long-time GOP henchman David Bossie, who told him what he wanted to hear: give that bloodthirsty base some red meat and go after immigrants twice as hard. There is no word if anyone considered that this tactic might be reprehensible in light of the fact that the synagogue shooter was motivated to kill Jews at worship not just out of his long-standing anti-semitism but because Trump and his fellow travelers at Fox news were pushing the idea that the caravan of refugees walking through Mexico was financed by the "globalist" (i.e. Jewish) George Soros.

Not that it would make a difference. Trump was chuckling at the White House when members of a worshipful crowd yelled out Soros' name and chanted "lock him up" just a day after the horrific massacre took place. As recently as yesterday when asked if he still thinks is being financed by George Soros he said, "I don't know who but I wouldn't be surprised, a lot of people say yes."

He also admitted once again that he is upset about the violence interrupting GOP "momentum" at his rally on Thursday night:

Trump on mail bomb campaign and Pittsburgh massacre: "We did have two maniacs stop a momentum that was incredible." pic.twitter.com/ffn4C5jklW

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 2, 2018

Just as he gave away the game when he declared he was a nationalist  --- adding "we're not supposed to use that word" thereby admitting that he knows exactly why he shouldn't say it --- in his manic quest to rile up his base into a nativist frenzy, he let it slip that he knows exactly why whining about losing "his momentum" over a national tragedy is grotesque. Not that it stopped him in either case.

He knows what he's doing. Since he is so thoroughly entwined with Fox News that it's impossible to know where he begins and it ends, and his rallygoers are enraptured by his every utterance, he believes that there are more than enough people like him in America and that if he can light a fire under them he can win this election. So every day, he's throwing more gasoline on the fire. He's sending troops to the border, first it was 800, then 5,000 and now he's talking about 15,000.

On Thursday he gave his followers another giant thrill by saying that he told those soldiers to shoot any migrants who throw rocks. "Consider them a rifle" he said. He has revived the "birthright citizenship" issue, apparently believing he has the power to interpret the constitution however he chooses and so he plans to end the longstanding bedrock American principle by presidential fiat.  And he has announced that he will build refugee camps on the border and will reinterpret the law which allows asylum seekers to turn themselves over to the authorities for processing anywhere in United States territory, meaning they can do this after having illegally crossed the border. And then there was that despicable racist ad.

He hasn't yet taken up Fox News line that the migrants are carrying disease as yet although it may only be a matter of time. At the moment he is content with portraying this ragtag group of desperate people, many of them mothers and their children, as criminals and terrorists who are invading the country.

Axios interviewed the president for a TV show to be aired this week-end on HBO and posted this excerpt:

Axios: "Tens of thousands of people go into a stadium to listen to you, and then people go on social media and they get themselves so jazzed up. There’s got to be a part of you that's like: 'Dammit, I'm scared that someone is gonna take it too far.'"

Trump: “It’s my only form of fighting back. I wouldn’t be here if I didn't do that.”

This reveals his attitude about his entire presidency. Just because he understands that he's using this inflammatory rhetoric to gin up his base doesn't mean he doesn't believe it himself. He's not a cynic and he isn't just being a "pragmatic strategist." If he were, he would have taken the opportunity to have that "unity" speech and try to bring a few of the Independent and female defectors back into the fold. All presidents benefit from moments they can bring people together and coming this close to an election, it could have made a difference for the Republicans.

He chose not to do it because he doesn't want to. I hope everyone is prepared for the fact that even if the Democrats pull off a big win next Tuesday --- which is far from guaranteed --- he is going to be ratcheting up the hostility and the anger every day for the next two years. This "fight" is all he knows how to do.

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digby 11/02/2018 10:00:00 AM

 
Guns To The Right of Us, Guns To The...

by tristero

Michelle Goldberg this morning:

“These are some trying times, so I do believe more black men and women are arming up,” Maitreya Ahsekh, chairman of the Houston chapter of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, told me. His group, named after the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, started in 2014. In 2016, members faced off against armed anti-Muslim demonstrators outside a Nation of Islam mosque in South Dallas. (One of the group’s founders was later arrested in an F.B.I. campaign against “black identity extremists.” He was imprisoned for five months before the charges against him were dismissed.) 

In addition to Ahsekh’s group and the Socialist Rifle Association, there are the gun-toting anti-fascists of Redneck Revolt, an organization founded in Kansas in 2009 that now has chapters all over the country, and the queer and trans gun group Trigger Warning, started last year. Left-wing gun culture has already grown enough to produce defectors; in March The New Republic published an essay titled, “Confessions of a Former Left-Wing Gun Nut.” 

“Everybody’s afraid. Everybody’s scared. They don’t know what to do,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of the One People’s Project, an antifa organization. “They’re looking at this crowd that brags about how they have all the guns and they’re going to start a second civil war and all this nonsense.” Jenkins carried a gun when he went to face off against white-nationalist protesters in Charlottesville, Va., last year. He understands why most on the left still support gun restrictions, but said, “The bigger concern for me is not being protected when a threat comes your way.”

And every gun maker in America is opening up a bottle of their finest whiskey and toasting the opening up of an incredibly lucrative new market: Decent citizens who have been so scared shitless by the antics of the armed bands of Trumpists that they've concluded they too better arm up. Profits will be soaring soon.

So will the bullets. It's only a matter of time. We need to remember Gandhi's great observation:

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

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tristero 11/02/2018 09:00:00 AM

 

Donald Trump's Election Invasion Special

by Tom Sullivan

Drama and conflict and migrants, oh my! It's Donald Trump's Election Invasion Special.

Leaked military planning documents show the sitting president's plan to deploy troops to the southern border to repel refugees is "a waste of time" for which there is no evidence of need, Newsweek reporter James LaPorta told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Thursday night. Pentagon sources agree the move to deploy as many as 15,000 troops is a pre-election political stunt.

Unclassified documents obtained from two Defense Department officials support that conclusion:

The U.S. intelligence community assessed that the “most likely course of action” was a dwindling of migrants as it reached the U.S. southern border, with limited transcontinental criminal organizations exploiting the group and “no terrorist infiltration,” an assessment that runs counter to past statements made by the president.

That stunt is estimated to cost perhaps $50 million, a Pentagon official told Newsweek. Late Wednesday, Trump pledged to erect "a wall of people” to fend off women and children on foot. Needed, of course, because the physical wall he pledged in 2016 Mexico would pay to build does not exist.

The DoD document projects that of the originally estimated 7,000 migrants, "only a small percentage" will reach the border weeks from now.

Trump, of course, disagrees with trained intelligence analysts:

Trump insisted the media is underestimating the caravans. “You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it’s reported actually. I’m pretty good at estimating crowd size. And I’ll tell you they look a lot bigger than people would think,” he told ABC.

The biggest border threat the military anticipates is from armed "patriot" groups claiming to be there in support of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents:

“Estimated 200 unregulated armed militia members currently operating along the southwest border. Reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments. They operate under the guise of citizen patrols supporting CBP [Customs and Border Protection] primarily between POEs [Points of Entry],” according to the documents.

So, while Republican gubernatorial candidates Brian Kemp (GA) and Kris Kobach (KS) are watching like hawks for black and brown people "stealing votes" by voting, the military is more worried about armed crackpots stealing its stuff than women and children stealing into the country.

But Trump thinks with $50 million he could stage quite a show. Is $50 million enough to count as an extravaganza? Or just gross misappropriation of government resources?

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.


Undercover Blue 11/02/2018 06:00:00 AM

Thursday, November 01, 2018

 
"Consider it a rifle"

by digby

Asked if he envisions the US military firing at migrants at the border, President Trump says: "I hope not."

"I will tell you this, anybody throwing stones, rocks ... we will consider that a firearm, because there's not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock." pic.twitter.com/mnsc56EFT7

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 1, 2018

"[If] they want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back," Trump said during a press conference at the White House. "We're going to consider it -- and I told them, 'consider that a rifle.' When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say 'consider it a rifle.'"

His comments raise serious questions about rules of engagement the thousands of troops being sent to operate along the U.S. border are supposed to follow, and it doesn't fall in line with what Pentagon officials have outlined so far.

Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, head of U.S. Northern Command, said this week that "everything that we are doing is in line with and adherence to Posse Comitatus," a congressional act dating back to the 1800s that prohibits the military from participating in domestic law-enforcement activities.

And a Pentagon memo, obtained by the Washington Post, also states that the troops -- who will deploy with their service and non-lethal weapons -- are authorized to use deadly force only when "faced with imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and where lesser means have failed or cannot be reasonably employed," the paper reported.

Earlier this week, a second caravan of Central American migrants heading toward the U.S. border on foot clashed violently with Mexican police and immigration officials outside Guatemala. One person was killed and dozens more injured, the LA Times reported, and "many migrants" were taken into custody.

Trump was asked whether he could see the armed active-duty military personnel on the border firing at anyone if a similar situation occurred in the U.S.

"I hope not, I hope not," the president replied. "... But I will tell you this: Anybody throwing stones, rocks like they did to Mexico and the Mexican military and Mexican police, where they badly hurt police and soldiers, we will consider that a firearm because there's not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock."

Trump on caravan: They've overrun and hurt badly Mexican soldiers.

Just got off the phone with Mexico @SEGOB_mx. They tell me two federal police officers were struck by rocks during a confrontation at border. Injuries were "not serious or life threatening."

— Leyla Santiago (@leylasantiago) November 1, 2018

By the way, right wing Militia are going to the border to "help." Even if professional soldiers know they cannot do this since they would be violating laws of war, these Militia members may not. Or they may just assume (probably correctly) that Trump will pardon them if they do it.

Oh, and this:



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digby 11/01/2018 06:30:00 PM

 
Rush is soooo happy

by digby

Limbaugh is ecstatic about Trump's new racist ad and says, "this is what pushing back looks like."

Anyway, this ad that is running on Trump’s Twitter feed, the Democrats are fit to be tied, ’cause everything in their playbook is old. Everything they relate to is old. They say, “It’s the Willie Horton ad all over again!” The reason they’re worried about it is the Willie Horton was effective, and so is this Trump ad. Murderers are coming into the country. This caravan is not made up of a bunch of innocent young women and children and illegal immigrants in general. It includes gang members and coyotes for the drug cartels and so forth.

We all know what’s going on here.

It’s just one person has the ability and the audacity to call it all out.

Trump is the racist asshole they've been waiting for.

By the way, he defends the Willie Horton ad too:

RUSH: That’s Don Lemon there. “Oh, my gosh!” Oh, my gosh. There aren’t any white terrorists in this ad, though, Don. Sorry.

So many of you ask, “What was the Willie Horton ad? What was that?” Let me tell you about Willie Horton was a murdering rapist. He was a prisoner in Massachusetts. The then governor — The Loser, Michael Dukakis — was running for president in 1988, the year this program debuted, and he had a prisoner furlough program.

Dukakis, The Loser, oversaw the prison plan that let Willie Horton out of jail. When he’s out of jail he went in and created mayhem and murder and rape or whatever at a gas station. So the Republicans put together an ad explaining what happened here. It was “the infamous Willie Horton ad.” This is the ad they still can’t get over 30 years later, and they’re still blaming Ailes. Ailes did not make the ad! Roger Ailes did not make it.

He had nothing to do with the Willie Horton ad! Talk about the long shadow. (interruption) The Democrats… (interruption) that’s exactly right! The Democrats brought Willie Horton in a Democrat candidate debate during the primaries! It was some other Democrat that accused Dukakis of being soft on crime by leading these guys out like Willie Horton! The Republicans were not the first to bring Willie Horton up! But they did a commercial.

And it was just right on the money. I mean, it’s exactly what happened. There was nothing made up about it. But they had the mug shot of Willie Horton in the ad, and so that allowed the Democrats to run around and start accusing the Republicans of racism. “How dare you show a picture of Willie Horton?” Well, what are we supposed to do? That’s who he is. “Yeah. But using the mug shot,” as though they don’t do that. “The mug shot? That’s horrible! That’s so racist.”

He' right about it not being Ailes. I don't know why people are saying that all over TV today. He also claims he doesn't remember who really made that ad which is undoubtedly bullshit. It was a Lee Atwater strategy and Floyd Abrams made the ad. (Abrams was behind a whole bunch of Clinton lies during the 90s which Rush eagerly passed on to his rabid Clinton hating audience.)

The first person to mention the Massachusetts furlough program in the 1988 presidential campaign was Al Gore. During a debate before the New York primary, Gore took issue with the furlough program. However, he did not specifically mention the Horton incident or even his name, instead asking a general question about the Massachusetts furlough program.

Republicans eagerly picked up the Horton issue after Dukakis won Democratic nomination. In June 1988, Republican candidate George H. W. Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches. Bush's campaign manager Lee Atwater said, "By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis' running mate."

Campaign staffer James Pinkerton returned with reams of material that Atwater told him to reduce to a 3×5 index card, telling him "I'm giving you one thing: You can use both sides of the 3×5 card." Pinkerton discovered the furlough issue by watching the Felt Forum debate. On May 25, 1988, Republican consultants met in Paramus, New Jersey, holding a focus group of Democrats who had voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984. These focus groups convinced Atwater and the other Republican consultants that they should 'go negative' against Dukakis. Further information regarding the furlough came from aide Andrew Card, a Massachusetts native whom President George W. Bush later named as his Chief of Staff.

Over the Fourth of July weekend in 1988, Atwater attended a motorcyclists' convention in Luray, Virginia. Two couples were talking about the Horton story as featured in the July issue of Reader's Digest. Atwater joined them without mentioning who he was. Later that night, a focus group in Alabama had turned completely against Dukakis when presented the information about Horton's furlough. Atwater used this occurrence to argue the necessity of pounding Dukakis about the furlough issue.

Beginning on September 21, 1988, the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC), under the auspices of Floyd Brown,began running a campaign ad entitled "Weekend Passes", using the Horton case to attack Dukakis. The ad was run as an independent expenditure, separate from the Bush campaign, which claimed not to have had any role in its production. The ad referred to Horton as "Willie", although he later said he had always gone by William.

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digby 11/01/2018 05:00:00 PM

 
The white college-educated women vs the white non-college educated men

by digby

by digby



The Wall Street Journal: The Yawning Divide That Explains American Politics

Two groups of voters—white women with college degrees and white men without—have moved drastically in opposite directions, the WSJ/NBC poll shows

To understand how American voters are being driven apart, look no further than two powerful demographic forces: gender and education.

Once, the political outlooks of white men without a college degree and white women with one were similar. In recent years, the groups, which represent about 40% of voters, have moved sharply apart. Analysis of the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey shows the division to be at its widest since the poll began measuring it in 1994.

The gap is something new in American politics, and it has fundamentally changed how campaigns are waged. Once, white voters as a whole were “persuadable’’—they might have leaned toward one party or the other, but no big bloc within the group was out of reach. Today, as the chart below shows, a campaign for Congress in many places starts with 60% of college-educated white women favoring the Democratic nominee. An even larger share of white men without degrees favor the Republican—making both essentially unreachable by the opposing candidate.



Among the women, the share who want Democrats to lead the next Congress is 33 percentage points larger than the share favoring GOP control. The men, by contrast, favor Republicans by a net 42 points.

Facing a polarized electorate, many candidates aren’t spending time trying to win over the resistant group. This often happens in midterm elections but is happening now to an extreme. The divergence helps explain the issues at the top of each party’s agenda, and why some districts that were held securely by one party have competitive races this year.

A gender gap has been a durable feature of American politics, most easily seen in presidential election results. Since 1980, American women have consistently backed Democratic candidates for president at higher rates than have men, while men have favored Republicans—a gender split not seen in the earliest national exit polls, conducted in the 1970s.



Now, educational attainment has supercharged that split among white voters, who account for more than 70% of the electorate. Those with bachelor’s degrees have shifted toward the Democratic Party, while the Republican Party has gained among voters who don’t have four-year college degrees.

The educational divide isn’t strong among nonwhite voters, who lean heavily toward the Democrats. In fact, minority voters with and without bachelor’s degrees have become more politically aligned in recent years.

These two divisions—gender and education—have radically changed the political orientation of white voters. The economy and cultural differences are two main causes. The recession hit people without college degrees hard, and many felt left out of the recovery that followed. As the chart below shows, the income of men with only a high-school diploma actually fell in the decade from 2008 to 2017.

Differences in cultural values and views of government widened during President Obama’s time in office, when he promised to build an activist government that would increase spending on education and social programs. Among white voter groups, women with college degrees were by far the most supportive of Mr. Obama’s governing philosophy, while men without degrees have grown more skeptical of it, especially in the past three years.

President Trump promised an “America first’’ government aimed largely at helping the “forgotten men and women’’ in blue-collar communities. Under his tenure, the two white groups have moved further apart. The men without bachelor’s degrees have grown warmer toward Mr. Trump since his inauguration, while the views of the women with degrees have grown more negative.
Net positive or negative view of President Trump since inaugurationSource: WSJ/NBC News telephone polls

The differences between the two groups are stark on many of the issues dominating the midterm campaign: immigration, gun control and health care. In each case, white men without college degrees support Mr. Trump’s policy stance, while white women with degrees are opposed.

Democratic candidates have campaigned heavily this year on calls to ban assault weapons and preserve the Affordable Care Act, aligning with the views of college-educated white women and reversing their reluctance to embrace those issues four years ago. Republican candidates have campaigned more extensively than in the past on measures to stop illegal immigration, a stance strongly adopted by white men without bachelor’s degrees.

The changes help explain why Democrats are nominating so many women for Congress, and why the fight for control of the House has shifted to districts with higher levels of education. One other big shift in the electorate further shows how the Republican appeal among college-educated voters is weakening: White men with bachelor’s degrees, once the most reliable Republican voters, now swing between parties and in the past year have consistently polled in favor of Democrats.
Women nominated for House seatsSource: Rutgers University Center for American Women and

In July 2006, about half of the most vulnerable GOP-held districts exceeded the national average for bachelor’s degrees. This year, about 70% of the GOP’s at-risk districts exceed the national average.

Virginia’s 7th District, outside Richmond, is an example of the splintering of the white electorate. The district has elected Republicans to the House since 1970. This year, analysts rate the race there a tossup.

In 2014 the Democratic nominee campaigned as a nonideological centrist. This year, Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger is taking up issues that energize the Democratic base. She calls for an assault weapon ban, a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and for allowing all Americans to buy into a public health-insurance plan akin to Medicare.

The Republican candidate, two-term Rep. David Brat, is also trying to motivate his base. He wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, opposes “amnesty’’ for illegal immigrants and promises to fight restrictions on gun rights.

Polling shows that Mr. Brat is winning among white men without college degrees, while Ms. Spanberger leads among white college-educated women. Sample sizes aren’t big enough to put precise numbers on those leads, but they are large enough to say that college-educated white voters of both genders favor the Democrat by a net 10 percentage points, while whites without degrees favor the Republican by 30 points

I don't know if white college-educated women will come out to vote in greater numbers than white non-college educated men.
But the ones I know hate Donald Trump with the heat of a thousand suns and are very motivated to put a check on him in this election. If everyone else in the coalition is half as motivated, the Democrats will take the house.


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digby 11/01/2018 02:30:00 PM

 
They aren't just running on racism. Misogyny is on the menu too.

by digby



The whole Kavanaugh mess was a slam on feminism. The way they behaved with feral, macho anger showed that in living color. Rape victims were portrayed as an "angry mob." Having the temerity to stand up against a man who would set back women's rights a hundre years if he had the chance made them act crazy.

That over-the-top response to women's anger is the way abusers manipulate women.

That's not all. Here we have Heidi Heitcamp's opponent scolding Democratic congressional women for wearing white to Trump's State of the Union --- because associating with the suffragists is very bad.



This is, of course, part and parcel of the campaign against Heitkamp for voting against Kavanaugh and, let's face it, having the temerity to be a feminist. That's just not ok.

Republicans are fine with women in politics as long as they don't advocate for women's rights. Good girls who will uphold the status quo are welcome.

Here's how it's supposed to be done ladies:



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digby 11/01/2018 01:00:00 PM

 
"The president is self-destructing"

by digby



Vanity Fair reports on the expected exodus from the White House after the midterm election. Many of them will go to the campaign. But this piece about how Trump decided on his closing arguments"

Fabrizio has leveled with the president’s advisers that Democrats will take the House, the source briefed on the polling told me. Trump has responded to this worsening political environment with extreme frustration. “He was really upset the momentum had been killed by the pipe bombs,” one Republican close to the White House told me. Another former White House official in touch with colleagues said that Trump’s mood has been grim. “The president is self-destructing,” the official said.

To forestall electoral disaster on Tuesday, advisers have been debating strategies for regaining momentum. One idea being discussed, according to a Republican briefed on the conversation, would be for Trump to deliver a prime-time Oval Office address on the topic of “unity.” Trump, however, shot down the notion and instead is lurching in the other direction: turning out his die-hard base with hard-core anti-media and anti-immigration rhetoric. The base messaging strategy is being driven by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine and outside advisers Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie, a person familiar with the situation told me. Bossie and Lewandowski did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump has followed their advice by ramping up his “enemy of the people”-style attacks on the media, and whipping up right-wing hysteria about the migrant caravan slowly wending its way through Mexico to the U.S. border. “That’s why he sent [more than] 5,000 troops down there. It’s obviously political,” an outside adviser said. This week, Trump told Axios’s Jonathan Swan that he’s considering ending birthright citizenship by executive order, a dubious maneuver that legal experts from both parties—including Kellyanne Conway’sown husband, George Conway—have reiterated would be rendered unconstitutional. “All of this feels like Hail Mary passes—throw red meat to drive turnout,” a former West Wing official said. “In a way, the Kavanaugh bump peaked too early.”

Can you believe the cynicism of this "strategy?" I know it's obvious and we're all aware of what a psycho he is. But seriously, this shows that he knew what the options were, how he could behave in a different way in the afermath of a national tragedy and he rejected it. He wants to be a racist pig because it makes him happy and he believes it makes his voters happy.

Meanwhile, the rumored departures:

There was always bound to be West Wing turnover after the midterms, but the increasing likelihood that Democrats will take the House—and with it, usher in an era of perpetual investigations and hearings—could drive more senior officials to the exits. “There’s going to be a lot of departures,” the former West Wing official said. Earlier this week, a rumor swirled through Washington that Conway could be leaving, fueled in part by her husband’s op-ed about the unconstitutionality of ending birthright citizenship and Conway’s own removal of her White House title from her Twitter bio. (A person close to Conway called the speculation “silly.”) Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is also said to be looking for an off-ramp, a former West Wing official said. According to the source, Mnuchin is getting pressure from his wife, Louise Linton, who has been unhappy about her coverage in the media. “She’s been poorly treated in Washington and she’s like, ‘I want the fuck out,’” the source said. (Through a Treasury spokesperson, Mnuchin said, “That is a ridiculous comment.”) Already, there have been discussions about who would replace Mnuchin. Trump is said to like Jonathan Gray, who was recently elevated to president and C.O.O. of the private-equity behemoth Blackstone, and appears to be the heir apparent to Stephen Schwarzman. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The fate of Chief of Staff John Kelly is still the longest-running West Wing subplot. While many Trump advisers have expected Kelly to leave after the midterms, there’s a growing sense among others I spoke with that Kelly’s position is secure. Ivanka Trump recently told a friend that her father won’t fire Kelly, a source familiar with the conversation said. And on a phone call with a former West Wing official earlier this month, Trump said he worried that Kelly would campaign against him if he was fired. Bill Shine recently told a friend, “This guy isn’t going anywhere.”

Why would Trump care if Kelly campaigned against him? That suggests a more unusual relationship than we know. Maybe Kelly has given him a preview of what that would be like and Trump is afraid of it? Interesting...


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digby 11/01/2018 11:30:00 AM

 
QOTD: Trump

by digby




It's not from today. But it's relevant. It's the quote that titled Bob Woodward's book:

“Earlier generations … knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility restraint,” Woodward quoted Obama as saying.

Trump replied, “Real power is fear.”

An authoritarian imbecile is in the White House. And he's ginning up his authoritarian imbecile followers to commit violence.

Why?

Do politicians’ words, the president’s especially, matter?

Since he has been in office, President Trump has relentlessly demonized his political opponents as evil and belittled them as stupid. He has called undocumented immigrants animals. His rhetoric has been a powerful contributor to our climate of hate, which is amplified by the right-wing media and virulent online culture.

Of course, it’s difficult to prove that incendiary speech is a direct cause of violent acts. But humans are social creatures — including and perhaps especially the unhinged and misfits among us — who are easily influenced by the rage that is everywhere these days. Could that explain why just in the past two weeks we have seen the horrifying slaughter of 11 Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, with the man arrested described as a rabid anti-Semite, as well as what the authorities say was the attempted bombing of prominent Trump critics by an ardent Trump supporter?

You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to understand that the kind of hate and fear-mongering that is the stock-in-trade of Mr. Trump and his enablers can goad deranged people to action. But psychology and neuroscience can give us some important insights into the power of powerful people’s words.

We know that repeated exposure to hate speech can increase prejudice, as a series of Polish studies confirmed last year. It can also desensitize individuals to verbal aggression, in part because it normalizes what is usually socially condemned behavior.

At the same time, politicians like Mr. Trump who stoke anger and fear in their supporters provoke a surge of stress hormones, like cortisol and norepinephrine, and engage the amygdala, the brain center for threat. One study, for example, that focused on “the processing of danger” showed that threatening language can directly activate the amygdala. This makes it hard for people to dial down their emotions and think before they act.

Mr. Trump has managed to convince his supporters that America is the victim and that we face an existential threat from imagined dangers like the migrant caravan and the “fake, fake disgusting news.”

Were the men arrested in the synagogue shootings and bombing attacks listening? Robert Bowers, for example, apparently blamed Jews for helping transport members of the Central American migrant caravan. It seems he did not think the president was going far enough in protecting the country from invaders. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he wrote online before the murderous rampage. And Cesar Sayoc Jr., accused of mailing bombs to CNN, echoed the president in a tweet: “More lies con job Propaganda bye failing failing CNN garbage.”

But you don’t have to be this unhinged to be moved to violence by incendiary rhetoric. Just about any of us could be susceptible under the right conditions.

Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton, and colleagues have shown that distrust of an out-group is linked to anger and impulses toward violence. This is particularly true when a society faces economic hardship and people are led to see outsiders as competitors for their jobs.

Mina Cikara, a psychologist at Harvard and a co-author of that study, told me that “when a group is put on the defensive and made to feel threatened, they begin to believe that anything, including violence, is justified.”

There is something else that Mr. Trump does to facilitate violence against those he dislikes: He dehumanizes them. “These aren't people,” he once said about undocumented immigrants suspected of gang ties. “These are animals.”

Research by Dr. Cikara and others shows that when one group feels threatened, it makes it much easier to think about people in another group as less than human and to have little empathy for them — two psychological conditions that are conducive to violence.

A 2011 study by Dr. Fiske and a colleague looked at “social cognition” — the ability to put oneself in someone else’s place and recognize “the other as a human being subject to moral treatment.” Subjects in the study were found to be so unempathetic toward drug addicts and homeless people that they found it difficult to imagine how those people thought or felt. Using brain M.R.I., researchers showed that images of members of dehumanized groups failed to activate brain regions implicated in normal social cognition and instead activated the subjects’ insula, a region implicated in feelings of disgust.

As Dr. Fiske has written, “Both science and history suggest that people will nurture and act on their prejudices in the worst ways when these people are put under stress, pressured by peers, or receive approval from authority figures to do so.”

So when someone like President Trump dehumanizes his adversaries, he could be putting them beyond the reach of empathy, stripping them of moral protection and making it easier to harm them.

If you still have any doubt about the power of political speech to foment physical violence, consider the classic experiment by the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, who in the early 1960s studied the willingness of a group of men to obey an authority figure.

Subjects were told to administer electrical shocks to another participant, without knowing that the shocks were fake. Sixty-five percent of the subjects did what they were told and delivered the maximum shock, which if real could have been fatal. The implication is that we can easily be influenced by authority to do terrible harm to others — just by receiving an order.

Now imagine what would happen if President Trump actually issued a call to arms to his supporters. Scared? You should be.

Richard A. Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College, and a contributing opinion writer.

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digby 11/01/2018 10:00:00 AM

 
The most grotesque racist ad since WillieHorton

by digby

It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

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digby 11/01/2018 07:30:00 AM

 

Brave Sir Donald

by Tom Sullivan

In the brave state of Trumpistan, patriotism means peeing yourself when Dear Leader says, "Boo!" Thus, the sitting president's closing argument for voting Republican is invaders a thousand miles away are coming to slit our throats in our beds using flip-flops. Lest his fear-mongering to this point was too subtle, the sitting president threw down a Willie Hortonesque ad yesterday as grotesque as the rest of his presidency.

But the fear you smell may be his own.

Just days now from the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats are poised to gain 25-40 seats in the U.S. House. That means subpoena power and an end to Trump's legislative agenda this term, plus, potentially, "sweeping changes to future campaign and ethics laws, requiring the disclosure of shadowy political donors, outlawing the gerrymandering of congressional districts and restoring key enforcement provisions to the Voting Rights Act." Democrats need 23 seats to win a House majority. But Nate Silver projects it will take a "systemic polling error" for Democrats to win control of the U.S. Senate. And Trump will still sit in the Oval Office.

Still, the Hill reports this morning House Democrats have growing confidence they will win big on Tuesday night. While Donald Trump ring-masters circuses of fear, Democrats are driving home the message that they intend to protect and expand health care coverage:

A Fox News poll this month found health care is the top issue for voters, with 58 percent saying it is “extremely” important to their vote; within that group, Democrats have a 24-point lead over Republicans.

And they’re getting that message across through campaign ads.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is now running a new round of ads calling out vulnerable House Republicans for voting in favor of repealing ObamaCare last year.

One ad attacking Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), in the quintessential suburban district being targeted by Democrats, shows a sick child as a voiceover cites Roskam’s repeated votes to nix ObamaCare and its pre-existing condition protections. “Imagine watching him go without life-saving treatment because it’s been denied by your insurance,” the ad says. “That’s what Peter Roskam voted for. Not just once, but over and over again.”

Trump's attempt to distract attention from pipe bombs mailed by the MAGAbomber and the synagogue mass shooting apparently inspired by Trump's whipping up fear of an immigrant caravan in Mexico are a sign of Republican desperation, Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist, told The Hill. “You don’t throw a Hail Mary pass if you’re up by a few touchdowns,” he said.

If you live in a state with some form of early voting, now would be a good time to run up the score. Even with some states poised to surpass 2014 totals in the early voting period, remember, Republicans bat last.

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.


Undercover Blue 11/01/2018 06:00:00 AM

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

 

Halloween Scenario: Trump Launches A Drone Strike On The Caravan
By Spocko

It's Halloween so I wanted to use my knowledge of military drones, rules of engagement by the military on US soil and Donald Trump's executive power as Commander In Chief. I'll call this Scenario: Operation Cucaracha Crush 

1) Trump launches surveillance drones to report on "the invaders" in the caravan while they are in Mexico. 

Drone footage shows caravan of migrants in southern Mexico.
Thousands of Central American migrants arrived in southern Mexico on Oct. 21, on their journey to the United States --Washington Post footage from October 21

2) Trump says the surveillance drone footage shows there are some really "bad hombres" in the caravan who are using the women and children as cover.

Here are Trump's real October 31st tweets. 

3) Trump tells "the invaders" to disband and stop coming. If they don't stop he will launch an airstrike. (This will bring up comparisons to Obama ordering airstrikes in foreign countries and allow a flurry of "both sides do it" stories in the media. Trump will take advantage of the executive power granted to Obama by congress to launch drone strikes in foreign countries, so questions about its use in Mexico will only be about breaking "norms" not breaking laws.

3) Mexico will see this as an unwarranted attack on their sovereignty and respond, saying that they will shoot down any drones in their airspace.

4) Trump will claim that he has a responsibility to protect America and---since he doesn't have a wall yet---he has to act. The caravan doesn't disband after his warning, so Trump sends a drone.

5) The drone will kill some people who Trump says are "bad hombres" He will claim to use intelligence about the "bad hombres" gathered in the same fashion Obama did. The use of this method is suggested by John Bolton.  Any criticism about the process will end with, "Obama did it."  Women and children will be accidentally killed, but so did strikes run by Obama.

Alternative 5a) Drone is shot down by Mexico before the strike.

6) Trump declares war on Mexico for their response in aiding and abetting invaders.

7) Trump tells the Mexico that they either stop the invaders or he will send in his own troops that are already massed at the border. (Trump can't order military action on US soil, but if they move to Mexican soil they can attack to retaliation for shooting down a US drone and to take out the invading caravan.

8) Because Mexico doesn't want to have a war with Trump, they are forced to act, which is what Trump wanted. Mexico sends in local troops to break up the caravan.

9) Trump "wins" showing he is tough on illegal immigration. This escalation all happens before midterms while the GOP still controls the House and Senate.

Scary enough for ya? Happy Halloween!

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Spocko 10/31/2018 08:36:00 PM

 

Bannon in focus

by digby

I don't know what this is really all about but it's interesting considering that Bannon has escaped most of the Russia collusion talk and I've always wondered why. He was a principal in Cambridge Analytica. Anyway, it appears that someone is looking at him at long last:

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee is pursuing a wide-ranging examination of former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s activities during the 2016 presidential campaign, three sources familiar with the inquiry told Reuters.

The committee is looking into what Bannon might know about any contacts during the campaign between Moscow and two advisers to the campaign, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, they said. 

William Burck, a lawyer for Bannon, told Reuters: “The Senate Intelligence Committee has expressed an interest in interviewing Mr. Bannon as a witness, just as they have many other people involved in the Trump Campaign. But the Committee has never suggested that he’s under investigation himself and to claim otherwise is recklessly false.” 

Papadopoulos, a consultant, initially advised the presidential campaign of Republican hopeful Ben Carson before joining the Trump campaign. Page is also a consultant, who had business contacts in Russia. 

On Sept. 7, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison. He had pleaded guilty last year to lying to FBI agents about the timing and significance of his contacts with Russians, including a professor who told him the Russians had “dirt” on Trump’s Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. 

The panel also will examine Bannon’s role with Cambridge Analytica, a former data analysis company that the Trump campaign hired to help identify and target messages to potentially sympathetic voters, the sources said. 

The Senate committee is working with Bannon’s advisers to set a date for him to be interviewed by staff investigators in late November, two of the sources said.
Bannon recently met for the second time with investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating allegations of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 presidential election, one of the sources said.

Meanwhile, Bannon is setting the conservative world on fire:

These four ladies say they are among Bannon's biggest fans. They were extremely polite, but prefer to get news from conservative commentators who tell them what mainstream media isn't reporting #ksleg pic.twitter.com/ivIut6k7LO

— Sherman Smith (@sherman_news) October 30, 2018

He's here #ksleg pic.twitter.com/1kffgnHZS0

— Sherman Smith (@sherman_news) October 30, 2018

He got 38 people in Staten Island last week:

Steve Bannon on Staten Island. pic.twitter.com/y33qusIoGS

— Josh Robin (@joshrobin) October 23, 2018

The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation could be the best thing that's ever happened to him. Being martyred for the cause is a sure-fire winner. 

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digby 10/31/2018 06:00:00 PM