Month: February 2016

Normalizing torture one interview at a time

by digby

hazing

Yesterday Chris Matthews interviewed Donald Trump. It was very friendly.He asked him about waterboarding and the following exchange occured:

Chris Matthews: You said you’d go further than waterboarding. Your’re gong to be commander in chief if you. Your going to be responsible for every enisted person in the Army, you’re going to be responsible. They get captured, there’s always been the concern in our government and the reason why we don’t torture prisoners, people in uniform is because our guys are going to be captured and we don’t want them tortured. Now aren’t you worried as commander in chief that you will legitimize torture?

Trump: It came up in thedebate, they asked Ted Cruz about waterboarding. And he was very tentative with that answer. I don’t think he had a good night. He was very tentative tentative with that answer, you saw that. Then they looked to me, what do you think?” I said I’m all in favor and the reason I said I’m all in favor

Matthews: So you’re with Cheney

Trump: I prefaced it with, the reason I’m in favor is because they’re chopping off heads. Not since medieval times. You know when you and I used to …

Matthews: By the way, it’s not since medieval times, the French Revolution they did a lot of guillotining

Trump: All right, I used medieval times

Matthews: They did drawing and quartering in England in the 19th century…

Trump: You’re right. But medieval times made more of an impression on me I guess. I said, not since Medieval times have we seen chopping off heads. I know the parents of James Foley I see what they’ve gone through…

Matthews: let’s talk about that guy. I carry his picture in my wallet and I think we share that.

Trump: Great guy

Matthews: To me he is a man of noble courage

Trump: great parents

Matthews: noble courage right to the end. he saw what was going to happen to him when he reached his end on this earth and he stood his ground and never buckled. What a great man

Trump: Hundred percent

Not to take anything away from James Foley who died a terrifying death at the hands of ISIS psychopaths. All the people face that horror are courageous and he was too. But Matthews seems to have adopted some Hollywood version of what happened to him that isn’t quite right. But that’s him. The world is a western movie as far as he’s concerned.

But what about this idea that the reason the United States doesn’t torture out enemies in uniform (as Matthews carefully detailed) because we don’t want our soldiers tortured in return? It’s true that this is often cited as one concern, but it’s hardly the prevailing reason for not doing it. After all, we tried Japanese soldier for war crimes for torture and yet in Vietnam our prisoners of war were badly tortured. It’s true that the ban on torture was a leverage point to use against the North Vietnamese and many people think it was helpful in keeping it from being any worse (although it’s very hard to say how it could have been. It was very bad.)

But setting all that aside, torture is illegal because it’s the mark of a barbaric society and civilized people have evolved to understand that it is immoral. Trump has no problem with that. He is a barbarian. Over the week-end he didn’t rule out using beheading himself! This is not just a practical choice is a moral choice, exactly like banning drawing and quartering which Matthews brings up in the interview. Does he think that was done because all the blood and guts on the ground was a health hazard?

Torture is a barbaric practice of the past that we have determined is unacceptable and immoral. Or, we had accepted that. Now, it’s just another argument like whether we should have eminent domain or fracking. We know what side Trump is on. Matthews didn’t seem to have a problem with it except that it might cause out troops to be tortured. If he did, he failed to articulate it. Indeed, his main concern seemed to be that trump didn’t realize that beheading is more recent than medieval times.

I[‘m sickened, literally, whenever I hear Trump say this stuff and get huge cheers. but why wouldn’t he? The media doesn’t see it as a problem. At this point I don’t know what depravity Trump could recommend to deal with terrorism that would make the press confront him to his face. It’s true they did get worked up about his making fun of a disabled reporter, which was revolting, so that’s promising. But they have a ways to go.

Update: A proud son weighs in:

Eric Trump defended his billionaire blowhard dad’s Sunday night statement that he would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” if elected president, bizarrely claiming that the banned torture tactic is “no different” from everyday fraternity hazing rituals that have routinely made headlines across the nation over the past year.

“You see these terrorists that are flying planes into buildings, right? You see our cities getting shot up in California. You see Paris getting shot up. And then somebody complains when a terrorist gets waterboarded, which quite frankly is no different than what happens on college campuses and frat houses every day,” said Eric Trump, the executive vice president of The Trump Organization, during an interview with “On the Record” host Greta Van Susteren.

Nixon in New Hampshire

by digby

I’ve been saying that Cruz is the new Nixon — which is scary because Nixon won two presidential elections and came within a hair of winning a third. He was creepy just like Cruz but he had brains and political skills and made it happen.

If you haven’t seen him as a candidate before, check it out. This is from 1968:

How much do I love Samantha Bee?

by digby

This muuuuuuch:

I only wish it was 5 days a week. But I’ll take it!

And they’re off!
by Tom Sullivan

The New Hampshire primary is underway. They have already hand counted the nine paper ballots in Dixville Notch. And it seems as if Paul Krugman will be tweeting the New Hampshire primary. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but as with significance of the Dixville totals, it escapes me. Bernie Sanders jumped out to an early lead. Surprised?

For Republicans, New Hamphire is a race for second place.

Charles Blow this morning notes a key difference between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns. Sanders has energized younger voters while at a Clinton event Blow attended in New Hampshire there were “more heads of white hair in that room than a jar of cotton balls.” The problem with Clinton and younger voters is, as someone on social media commented, “Clinton is running an I-Have-Half-A-Dream campaign.” Blow writes:

Young folks are facing a warming planet, exploding student debt, stunted mobility, stagnant wages and the increasing corporatization of the country due in part to the increasing consolidation of wealth and the impact of that wealth on American institutions.

Young folks are staring down a barrel and they want to put a flower in it, or conversely, smash it to bits. And they’re angry at those who came before them for doing too little, too late. They want a dramatic correction, and they want it now.

They want their shot at a 1960s social upheaval. The problem is Clinton’s message is, “I have more modest ambitions, but they are more realistic.” The problem with Sanders, writes Blow, is he is better at setting goals than achieving them.

A problem both face, Jamil Smith wrote last week at the New Republic, is that while both largely agree on issues, there is a glaring gap in focus on voting rights. Sanders could win over more minority voters if he worked harder at filling that gap:

While Sanders and Clinton now see eye to eye on abortion and reproductive access, he has effectively ceded that issue to the Democratic frontrunner with his own sluggishness on the call for a Hyde repeal and her endorsements by Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America. But just as Clinton has placed a heat lamp over the issue of environmental racism in this campaign by seizing the Flint water crisis issue (including a planned trip there on Sunday), Sanders can and should do the same for voting rights.

Economic reforms and Wall Street prosecutions mean a great deal to black and Latino Americans, surely, especially to those who have been foreclosed upon or otherwise left behind in the Obama recovery. But Sanders has not shown yet a full grasp that there are issues involving racial and gender inequality that do not hew so closely to economics. Doing so would be a good first step for Sanders towards a more intersectional campaign. He needs to more effectively address issues that are particularly important to communities of color through their lens on American life, not his.

I think that’s right. Otherwise, Sanders cedes ground on minority rights issues as well as on women’s rights. Women’s rights, minority rights, and voting rights are (for me) what are most at stake in this election, especially with Supreme Court picks on the line. Economic inequality matters, but fixing it will go nowhere without the votes to make it happen. If Sanders’ revolution is to be triggered by November voting, a little more focus on voting itself is in order. From Hillary Clinton’s campaign as well.

The beauty of Sanders’ appeal to date is that his message is “pretty darn simple, as a Clinton supporter observed. If only life in America were that simple.

Ted Cruz and the 200 lb psychopath in the foxhole


by digby

I must say that I was very surprised the other night to see all those GOP candidates say they would support drafting women into the military. In fact, I was gobsmacked. After all, one of the main reasons the ERA was defeated was right wing demagoguery about women being forced into uniform. I find it very hard to believe that hardcore conservatives want to see women drafted.

Ted Cruz is pretty sure they don’t and I think he’s probably right:

Ted Cruz said Sunday a proposal to include women in the Selective Service registration was a product of out of control political correctness and warned against putting a woman soldier near a dangerous “psychopath” in a combat situation.

Mr. Cruz’s remark sets him in opposition to rivals Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, all of whom in Saturday night’s debate announced support for registering women in the Selective Service system in case a military draft is ever reinstated.

“As I was sitting there listening to that conversation, my reaction was, ‘Are you guys nuts?’” Mr. Cruz told a town hall audience here on Sunday. “We have had enough with political correctness, especially in the military. Political correctness is dangerous, and the idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in combat, I think is wrong. It is immoral and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.”…

“I’m the father of two little girls. I love those girls with all my heart. They are capable of doing anything in their heart’s desire,” he said. “But the idea that their government would forcibly put them in a foxhole with a 220-pound psychopath trying to kill them doesn’t make any sense at all.”

I’m not sure who the psychopath would be but I’m guessing it’s … a marine? That’s a very odd thing to say.

As a matter of fact, it’s on the table right now and secretary Ash Carter says the military will make a recommendation to congress soon where I will bet it will languish for a very long time. The polls say that a majority are for it:

A 2013 Quinnipiac University poll showed Americans strongly oppose the draft, 65 percent to 28 percent. But if there had to be conscription, both genders were for equal draft registration mandates — although less so for female respondents.

Men said women should be drafted by a 59-36 margin while women were OK with females in the draft at a 48-45 clip.

There’s a bit of a gender gap there. As it turns out many more Democrats favor this than Republicans. However, I’m going to guess that Cruz’s conservative movement constituency is not among those who favor this.

.

Multi-Culti-Trumpie

by digby

His new ad:

All the ethnic and racial minorities love him! Of course they do!

McCain schools Trump


by digby

John Amato caught that phony soldier (“the kind who gets captured”) John McCain on The Five this morning:

Sen. John McCain joined the ladies of Fox News’ Outnumbered TV show this morning and offered up a devastating rebuke of Trump’s call for legalizing waterboarding and much worse, and former Bush officials who said we got actionable intelligence from torture.

Do we want a President who will violate the law?”

Andrea Tantaros, played the torture loving Conservative, viewed anyone against torture as the “Stephanopoulos view,” constantly asked if the Bush officials were liars.

McCain unequivocally said “yes,” they were lying about the results they received from torturing prisoners and then explained why Abu Ghraib was a horrible moment and an extremist recruitment story.

McCain then invoked the Most Admired Man in Conservative Circles, Gen. Petraeus, who also has issued a powerful rebuke of torture.

McCain was attacked by Trump weeks ago as not being a war hero because the AZ Senator was a Lindsey Graham supporter, but he had all the facts on his side when discussing this issue.

According to McCain, the information gathered by subjecting suspects to simulated drowning is often flat-out inaccurate.

“They got a whole lot of information that was totally false,” the Arizona senator said of the use of waterboarding during George W. Bush’s administration.

“Do we want to resort to doing things that our enemies do? Do we want to be on the same plane as those people chopping off heads?” he continued.

Asked about waterboarding…McCain said:

“Well, if you believe the Geneva convention, which prohibits it, if you believe the 93-3 vote we took in the Senate, which prohibiting waterboarding and other forms of torture…all of us admire general David Petraeus. Let me give you his quote — “our nation has paid a high price in recent decades for the information gained by the use of techniques beyond those in the field manual which prohibits it and in my view the price paid fair outweighed the value of the information gained through the use of techniques beyond those in the manual.”

Watch the whole exchange. It’s quite stunning.

Like this:

Question about Michael Mukasey…is he a liar?

McCain said: “Yes, I know that he is. Even if we had gotten useful information, the propaganda and the image and the behavior of the greatest nation on earth from torturing people is not what we want and it helps the enemy.”

Wow.

And yet, keep in mind that the only one of those who were asked about waterboarding who said they would not do it was Jeb Bush and only because it’s been expressly deemed illegal not because he thinks there’s anything wrong with it.

The frontrunner Trump wants to get the US into the beheading business.

.

Dispatch from Wingnut nation

by digby

In case you were wondering, here’s what the Cruz loving movement conservatives are saying about New Hampshire:

Theodoric Mayer of Politico reports, “Trump commands 30 percent support from likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, the poll found. John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz were virtually tied for second place, with 14 percent support for Kasich, 13 percent each for Rubio and Bush and 12 percent for Cruz.

“Other candidates were far behind. Chris Christie had 6 percent support, Carly Fiorina had 5 percent and Ben Carson had 4 percent.”

The margin of error for the poll was plus or minus 4.4 points, so there’s little doubt that any of the second place contenders could actually be holding down that coveted position, especially since most of the interviews for the survey were conducted prior to Saturday night’s debate.

Further, only about half of likely GOP voters indicated they were set on their candidate of choice.

There appears to be plenty of room for some last minute surprises, all of which makes the ground game of paramount importance in New Hampshire.

And just like in Iowa, the Cruz GOTV operation is in full swing. Kerry Pickett of the Daily Caller reports, “Former New Hampshire Republican Sen. Bob Smith, a Cruz campaign ally, expressed full confidence about the campaign’s ground game overcoming present poll expectations.

“’I’m not knocking polls. They were wrong in my case in 1996, when they said that I lost. I think what we’ve been doing is knocking on doors,’ Smith told The Daily Caller. ‘We’ve been ID’ing voters who are leaners, people who are not sure, and we’ve been knocking on thousands and thousands of doors for literally months and I’ll tell you it feels good out there.’”

Pickett’s article also details the data operation fueling the Cruz effort where the campaign micro-targets individual voters based on information gathered from extensive telephone and in-person interviews.

Most of the campaigns would probably claim they’re doing similar things, but Cruz has already demonstrated that his operation is capable of squeezing every possible vote out of a state.

For his part, Donald Trump also appears to have ditched the “big rally” strategy he unsuccessfully used in Iowa in favor of smaller, more retail-politics type events in The Granite State.

But some are skeptical of Trump’s motives for the switch to more intimate rallies. New Hampshire native Steve Berman of The Resurgent explains, “Could the smaller venues be a result of falling attendance at his super-rallies? Trump claimed 11,500 in Little Rock, but the embarrassing tale of the tape pegs the number in the more dismal neighborhood of 4,000 or less. What’s clear is that the Trump band is no longer as new and shiny as it was a few months ago. Now, he’s just another candidate…

“Trump’s failure to invest in technology and shoe leather, along with his missed targets in Iowa lead me to believe, along with people on the ground in New Hampshire, that Trump will underperform his polls there. By how much? We don’t know yet, but it’s likely Ted Cruz knows.”

Berman’s article was written before Saturday night’s Rubio crash-and-burn, so his conclusions may have changed some over the weekend. But the gist is he believes Trump will underperform and Cruz will do better – perhaps significantly so – than his poll numbers would suggest.

There’s even more evidence that this may be the case. Just because Trump is holding smaller campaign events doesn’t mean his ground game is new and improved. Reid J. Epstein and Heather Haddon of the Wall Street Journal write, “Rival campaigns have spent months identifying supporters and persuadable voters to target and turn out in the closing days before the primary. Mr. Trump’s volunteers spent the weekend working from a list of all registered Republicans…

“At the same time, a group working against the billionaire businessman’s candidacy, Our Principles PAC, is targeting specific New Hampshire audiences in trying to depress the Trump numbers.”

Epstein’s and Haddon’s story prominently notes not only does Trump fail to employ a serious data-driven ground game, he’s not sending out mail either.

The Donald certainly continues to excel in the polls, but there’s also a strong inference he’s going to have a much harder time getting his people to actually vote.

Factoring in Marco Rubio’s debate blunders and Trump’s disappointing second place showing in Iowa without a professional ground game, I’m still predicting Trump will win in New Hampshire. But I’m also thinking the margin of victory will be much smaller than that reflected in the polls — and other candidates, such as Ted Cruz, will do better than most people think.

If the final numbers are close it will be interesting to see how the networks spin this one. Pundits were gushing in praise for Rubio’s third-place finish in Iowa. Would they be as outwardly giddy about a surprisingly strong Cruz second place showing in New Hampshire?

I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

I wouldn’t bet anything on it.

This is the kind of thing partisans tell each other the night before the New Hampshire primary. Anything’s possible. Polling in primaries is not much more reliable than going to a fortune teller. And the Republicans really are in a big pile up for second so maybe field will make the difference there especially since Rubio has probably stalled out from his hilariously weird debate performance.

Still, it’s now in the “what would I do if I won the lottery” phase where everyone’s indulging in a little fantasy since it’s really out of their hands. Human nature.

.

The most potent solidarity


by digby

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ response to one of his critics, Cedric Johnson, on the issue of reparations is excellent. Johnson sees the world through a Marxist lens (as we all do to some extent, even conservatives) and attributes all problems of race, indeed, every sort of social marginalization, as an effect of economics. Coates believes otherwise, and is very persuasive. This gets to the nub of it. He quotes Johnson writing this:

Social exclusion and labor exploitation are different problems, but they are never disconnected under capitalism. And both processes work to the advantage of capital. Segmented labor markets, ethnic rivalry, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and informalization all work against solidarity. Whether we are talking about antebellum slaves, immigrant strikebreakers, or undocumented migrant workers, it is clear that exclusion is often deployed to advance exploitation on terms that are most favorable to investor class interests.

Coates points out, correctly, in my view, that this is a cramped view of solidarity that neglects perhaps the most important aspect of social organization:

No. Social exclusion works for solidarity, as often as it works against it. Sexism is not merely, or even primarily, a means of conferring benefits to the investor class. It is also a means of forging solidarity among “men,” much as xenophobia forges solidarity among “citizens,” and homophobia makes for solidarity among “heterosexuals.” What one is is often as important as what one is not, and so strong is the negative act of defining community that one wonders if all of these definitions—man, heterosexual, white—would evaporate in absence of negative definition.

That question is beyond my purview (for now). But what is obvious is that the systemic issues that allowed men as different as Bill Cosby and Daniel Holtzclaw to perpetuate their crimes, the systemic issues which long denied gay people, no matter how wealthy, to marry and protect their families, can not be crudely reduced to the mad plottings of plutocrats. In America, solidarity among laborers is not the only kind of solidarity. In America, it isn’t even the most potent kind.

Coates goes to great lengths to explain his own progressive philosophy which includes all the great political prescriptions of the American left and which I also endorse wholeheartedly. This is not an argument which requires one choose between policies like reparations and universal health care. It’s really just addressing an age old question about what motivates human beings to do what they do and how societies organize themselves. Some of it is class, to be sure. But it’s too easy to leave it there. As Coates points out with ample evidence, even accounting for class, African Americans are far more economically disadvantaged than whites over a vast period of time. Sexism and homophobia are not functions of class at all and yet one must recognize that they exist.

For me it’s simple. My time on this planet has shown me that people are motivated by many things, only one of which is economics. And there is no doubt that economic solidarity (in both the positive and negative sense) are powerful forces. But it’s not everything and never has been. And this country, with its history and at this crossroads, what Coates refers to as “intersectional radicalism” is the natural direction for the left to take.

Read Coates’ piece if you’re interested in this subject. His prose is beautiful as always and he makes the point much better than I ever could.

.

Rubio drives into the ditch, while Trump goes full barbarian. This is your GOP

by digby

I wrote about the GOP debate for Salon today. Of course.

Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Marco does have a water thing,” said one longtime Rubio associate who has been affiliated with his past campaigns. “I don’t know what it is. He says he just gets thirsty, but it’s clear it’s just a nervous tic. It’s something he just has to have around, like a security blanket or something.”

When Rubio addressed CPAC in 2012, event staffers failed to stock the podium with fresh water for his speech. At an early applause line, Rubio — who had been visibly struggling with dry mouth and licking the inside of his mouth and his lips, as he often does during speeches — reached down for his water with his right hand, and coming up empty bent his knees and peered under the podium but did not find what he was looking for.

“I remember standing backstage and cursing out loud because there was nothing we could do,” said a person staffing the event. “It caused him some awkward pauses throughout the speech.” Halting his speech again for another applause line several minutes later, Rubio brought his empty right hand up to his nose, lowered it, brought it up again to his lips and rubbed them.

MUIR: … Mr. Trump, you said not only does it work, but that you’d bring it back.

TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what. In the Middle East, we have people chopping the heads off Christians, we have people chopping the heads off many other people. We have things that we have never seen before — as a group, we have never seen before, what’s happening right now.

The medieval times — I mean, we studied medieval times — not since medieval times have people seen what’s going on. I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The issue of waterboarding front and center last night as (INAUDIBLE). You said, I would bring back waterboarding and I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.

What did you have in mind?

TRUMP: Well, George, you’re not talking about what I said before that. I said we’re living in a world where, in the Middle East, they’re cutting people’s heads off. They’re chopping a Christian’s head off. And many of them, we talk about Foley, James Foley, and you know, what a wonderful young man. Boom, they’re chopping heads.

So then I went into this. I said, yes, I would bring back waterboarding. And I would make it a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes.

What did you have in mind?

TRUMP: I had in mind going worse than waterboarding. It’s enough. We have right now a country that’s under siege. It’s under siege from a people, from — we’re like living in medieval times. If I have it to do and if it’s up to me, I would absolutely bring back waterboarding. And if it’s going to be tougher than waterboarding, I would bring that back, too.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As president, you would authorize torture?

TRUMP: I would absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding. And believe me, it will be effective. If we need information, George, you have our enemy cutting heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the hundreds, by the thousands.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?

TRUMP: Yes. I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil as any time that there has ever been. You know, when I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what we have…

STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads…

TRUMP: We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding perhaps, if that happens to come.

More at the link…

They are CRAZY.