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Month: July 2016

Divide and conquer

Published by digby on July 18, 2016

Divide and conquer

by digby

In 1964, in the midst of major concerns about Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, the Democratic campaign ran an ad called “Confessions of a Republican” that gave voice to those worries and fears.

Today, facing Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee this week in Cleveland, Hillary for America is releasing a new web ad, “Confessions of a Republican II,” featuring the same person, Bill Bogert, making the same case.

Echoing concerns of many of his fellow voters (Republicans, Democrats and independents across the country), Bogert makes the case that Trump is unqualified, totally unfit and far too dangerous to be President of the United States. In the video, he again says “This man scares me. […] I think the party is about to make a terrible mistake in Cleveland and I’m going to have to vote against that mistake on the 8th of November.”

There are a few Republicans like this starting to come out of the woodwork. I had a neighbor tell me that he thinks Hillary is much too liberal but he “can’t put that idiot in the White House”. I suspect there are fewer of these sane Republicans than we might hope but there have to be some.

Feel the convention magic

Published by digby on July 18, 2016

Feel the convention magic

by digby

I wrote about the dynamic Trump-Pence duo for Salon this morning:

The GOP convention kicks off today and if it goes as well as Trump’s Vice President roll-out drama it should be exciting in a fiery train wreck sort of way. If there’s one thing Trump does understand it’s the reality TV show formula. His most important decision of the campaign was an exercise in public humiliation for every one of the sad, desperate men who threw their integrity to the wind and prostrated themselves before him. He didn’t even offer them a rose.

By the middle of the week, it seemed to have come down to three, Gingrich, Christie and Pence. Keeping the suspense high, a formula requirement, the campaign leaked like a sieve, each story contradicting the other. Chris Christie who had pretty much become The Donald’s man servant over the last couple of months was probably the most pathetic, appearing to have sold his soul without realizing that Trump’s trusted son-in-law, Jared Kushner would likely put the kibosh on him since he put Kushner’s daddy in jail for a very long time. It’s a pretty big ego that would have believed that wouldn’t be a problem, but this is Chris Christie we’re talking about.

Then there was Newt, the garrulous psuedo-intellectual whose aggressive nasty streak was very appealing to the equally nasty Trump. Kushner was rumored to be in his corner, largely at the behest of Sheldon Adelson, a real multi-billionaire, who actually writes big checks. But the rest of the Trump brood reportedly preferred the midwestern wingnut Mike Pence, likely out of some deluded and desperate belief that they could normalize their father by choosing a standard issue conservative Republican. Unfortunately, after it had leaked that he was chosen, the campaign insisted that a choice hadn’t been made so they could keep the “suspense” alive until the big announcement. When that had to be postponed because of the horrific events in Nice, Newt went on Fox and made a last minute hail Mary play for the job by taking a position on terrorism even more preposterous than Trump’s, by proposing a sort of Inquisition demanding that all Muslims disavow Sharia law and deporting all those who “fail the test.”

It was later reported that Trump was calling his advisers that night to find out if there was any way he could get out of his dull choice. Whether it was because he saw Gingrich’s boldly fascistic performance is unknown but it wouldn’t be surprising if it made him wish he’d gone with his gut. Sadly, the end result is that Gingrich abased himself for nothing and had to backtrack madly the next day while the man who was left waiting in New York for the big announcement looked like a consolation prize. The NY Times reported one wag commenting about the process, “It’s death by humiliation. Slow, twisting and played out in public, like a reality show elimination.”

Trump finally announced his choice via twitter and the campaign released the new Trump Pence logo which featured a weirdly suggestive image of the letter “P” being penetrated by the letter “T.” Coming as it did from a family that is known for being branding experts it seems odd someone wouldn’t have noticed this before.

At the ceremony Trump openly implied that he was reluctantly talked into Pence saying, “I think if you look at one of the big reasons that I chose Mike, and one of the reasons is party unity. I have to be honest. So many people have said ‘party unity,’ because I’m an outsider” and went on to talk about himself for about half an hour. He didn’t even bother to stand on the stage next to Pence as he accepted the honor. There’s only one dominant silverback and he doesn’t share the stage with a lesser males in the clan.

Reports about the haphazard planning and Trump’s interference are everywhere. According to The New York Times, the Republican establishment is very nervous:

Republicans are queasy over the possibility of Mr. Trump going off half-cocked if a convention moment is not to his liking or rebellious delegates go ahead with a plan to try to block his nomination, while some are concerned that he will be heavy-handed in urging speakers to attack the Clintons, immigrants or others with language that alienates undecided voters.

Have they met Donald Trump?

Meanwhile, Trump has been working overtime to continue his feud with the #NeverTrump contingent which was defeated in the Rules Committee over the week-end. Always the gracious winner, he tweeted:

The Rules committee meetings were contentious, with accusations of the votes being “rigged” from the #NeverTrump forces. There were even reports of Trump associates strong-arming delegates who attempted to organize against their man, according to the Washington Post:

Kim Taylor Fralick, a delegate from Lousiana, said she received at least three emails from Carl Paladino, a New York delegate and close associate of Trump. He was responding to an email sent by Fralick encouraging convention delegates to join Unruh’s group.

“It’s like pissing up a drain pipe. You get wet. A revolt will never materialize,” Paladino wrote to Fralick.

He was downright threatening to a delegate from Utah.

“You should be hung for treason Stefani. There will not be a Republican Party if you attempt to replace Trump. I’ll be in your face in Cleveland.”

Lest you think Paladino is just some fringe right wing functionary from an upstate dairy farm, he was the Republican nominee for Governor of New York in 2010.

Trump and his followers managed to enrage there #NeverTrump group so much that there are now plans afoot to create chaos on the floor by forcing procedural motions that will bog down the program. And they may attempt a full roll-call in prime time where delegates from each state can call out their preferences for anyone but Trump. Whether that’s a real possibility remains to be seen but feelings are running very high.

And that’s just the drama taking place inside the hall. In the streets of Cleveland, there are groups gathering from around the country to protest and counter-protest, from bikers to anarchists to open-carry zealots. For many reasons, let’s hope that Trump is not spared the spectacle of an angry mob inside the convention hall because of one outside of it.

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Trump treated him like a lowly schoolteacher

Published by digby on July 18, 2016
Trump treated him like a lowly schoolteacher

by digby



Poor Chris Christie.  Now he knows what it’s like to be one of his public employees:

…While minding my own business at the Starbucks inside the Westin hotel this morning, I saw a man engage Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in conversation about the VP selection process. The man, whom I couldn’t identify, suggested that Pence was a smart pick and Gingrich would’ve been a disaster. 

‘Christie was livid, right?’ the man said at one point. ‘Yeah,’ Manafort replied…

He’s speaking at the convention but they’re not calling him a headliner like Rubio and Cruz.  Ofcourse he didn’t get very many votes in the primary either. His main accomplishment was caving early and kissing Trump’s ring. It didn’t work out for him.

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I love the smell of Cleveland in the morning by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 18, 2016

I love the smell of Cleveland in the morning
by Tom Sullivan


Photo by Mike Licht via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

“What you won’t see is any military-style equipment,” Cleveland Police Department deputy chief Ed Tomba told reporters in May in advance of the Republican National Convention. That stuff will be carried by civilian gun-rights advocates — in spite of the Cleveland Police Union’s unheeded plea to Gov. John Kasich to suspend Ohio’s open-carry law during the convention. The gun-rights rally Northeast Ohio Open Carry planned for downtown Cleveland yesterday afternoon attracted just two people.

Except for its new Bat-cycles, Cleveland will keep its fifty million dollars in new federally funded riot gear, steel batons, and tactical armor largely out of sight as the Republican National Convention begins today.

No worries. The city has built in extra buffer times to keep legally armed protesters separated from hippies prohibited from carrying toy guns, umbrellas with sharp tips, tennis balls and canned goods. So, it’s all good.

But the possibility of street disturbances is not the reason so many GOP leaders are staying away from the Republican presidential nominating convention. Donald Trump simply doesn’t smell like victory. Politico reports:

Only 17 percent of GOP insiders said they are more excited about this year’s convention than in past years — though many of their comments were mordant. Numerous insiders compared the convention to a train wreck or car accident.

“Excited in the way one can’t stop staring at a train wreck,” said a Pennsylvania Republican who is “more excited” about Cleveland. “It’s a mixture of disgust and fascination.”

[…]

“Conventions are usually about being excited for your party’s nominee,” an Ohio Republican said. “This one is about how to help the other people you care about while you have the top of the ticket embarrassing you.”

What’s embarrassing is how Trump says out loud what “politically correct” Republicans have known for years to say only in dog whistles. I have said before that the Republican M.O. is this: Find the line. Step over it. Dare someone to push them back. If they don’t get pushed back, they’ve established a new normal. It’s the Overton Window for bullies. Donald Trump has dispensed with lines altogether. And with dog whistles. And with truth.

“There is something very belligerent about the way he presents facts, as if he thinks nobody will have the balls to stand up to him,”
said Richard C. Seltzer, an attorney who faced Trump in several real estate lawsuits. So far, nobody in Republican leadership has had the “balls” Sen. Elizabeth Warren has had for counter-punching Trump. He had best thank his lucky stars Warren doesn’t show up in Cleveland.

What is scarier than a Trump nomination is a Trump win in November (as unlikely as that now seems). And it’s not just what Trump might do as president. A friend observed over the weekend at the Netroots Nation conference, the conservative takeaway from a Trump win will be that there is no longer any need to be polite about hiding the animating passions of the base. They will feel free to unleash the Furies.

QOTD: The Orange Julius Caesar

Published by digby on July 18, 2016
QOTD: The Orange Julius Caesar

by digby

There’s always something. This one’s especially juvenile:

“I don’t care,” he said during an joint interview with his running mate that aired Sunday night on “60 Minutes.” 

“It’s a long time ago. And he voted that way and they were also misled. A lot of information was given to people.” 

Trump reiterated that he was against the Iraq War from the beginning and said the war was “handled so badly.” 

But the presumptive GOP nominee has attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote for the war — often calling it an example of her “bad judgment.” was also pressed on why he attacks presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for voting for the Iraq war, 

When pressed about his attacks on her for it, he said: “Many people have [attacked her for her vote], and frankly, I’m one of the few that was right on Iraq,” Trump said. 

“He’s entitled to make a mistake every once in a while,” Trump said of Pence. 

“She’s not?” Lesley Stahl asked. “No. She’s not,” Trump said.

Well ok then.

Jesus H. Christ …

Update:  Oy

Stahl: Do you think John McCain is not a hero because he was captured? 

Pence: I have a great deal of respect for John McCain and — 

Stahl: Do you think he went too far? 

Trump: You could say yes I — that’s ok. That one you could say yes … I mean you’re not — it’s fine – hey look. I like John McCain. But we have to take care of our vets. 

He actually gave his Vice President “permission” to say what he believes. Just this once though.

On national television.

What kind of a sycophantic wimp do you have to be to allow this Orange Julius Caesar to humiliate you like this in front of the whole country?

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And now a word from the Deep Bench

Published by digby on July 17, 2016
And now a word from the Deep Bench

by digby

Schmaaht as a whip:

When Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence was a talk radio show host in Indiana, he wrote an op-ed declaring the film Mulan was an attempt by some “mischievous liberal” at Disney to influence the debate over women in the military.

The 1999 op-ed ran on a website for Pence’s radio program that was uncovered by BuzzFeed News.
“Despite her delicate features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis with her cloddish cohorts,” wrote Pence. “Obviously, this is Walt Disney’s attempt to add childhood expectation to the cultural debate over the role of women in the military.”

“I suspect that some mischievous liberal at Disney assumes that Mulan’s story will cause a quiet change in the next generation’s attitude about women in combat and they just might be right,” Pence continued. “(Just think about how often we think of Bambi every time the subject of deer hunting comes into the mainstream media debate.)”

Disney’s film is based on the 6th century Ballad of Mulan. 

Pence argues Mulan’s romance with a superior officer proved women cannot serve in the military.

Don’t tell him about Boadicea. Or Joan of Arc. He’ll get all confused.

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Which side are you on Johnny?

Published by digby on July 17, 2016

Which side are you on Johnny?

by digby

Trump: “We grieve for the officers killed in Baton Rouge today. How many law enforcement and people have to die because of a lack of leadership in our country?” Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee posted on Facebook. “We demand law and order.”

The NRA official policy:

“The National Rifle Association unapologetically and unflinchingly supports the right of self-defense and what that means is that our members and our supporters have a right to carry a firearm in any place they have a legal right to be. If that means open carry, we support open carry. If it means concealed carry, it means concealed carry. So unequivocally we support open carry, we’ve been the leader of open carry efforts across this country, the leader in opposing efforts to curtail the ability to carry firearms, and that’s something we’re proud of and we do every day for our members.”

Can you see the problem his gun fetish is presenting to that nice John Kasich fellow? I knew that you could.

This fault line has always fascinated me. Police do not want open carry, for obvious reasons. They don’t want concealed carry either for that matter. They tend to believe that people should be allowed to have guns in their homes and businesses for personal protection but not be allowed to carry them on the streets because well… it’s fucking dangerous. The NRA and it’s paid minions disagree.

Trump is all about “law and order” but he’s endorsed by the NRA.  It should be interesting to see where this goes

Update: Johnny says no go. Remember, Republicans believe that the Bill of Rights is just a suggestion — except for the 2nd Amendment which is sacred in 2016 because the founders believed everyone should be packing heat on the streets to repel the King. Or something.

Case in point:

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Time for a little reminder of what Citizens United was all about

Published by digby on July 17, 2016

Time for a little reminder of what Citizens United was all about

by digby

Reading Tom’s piece below about Hillary Clinton “coming out” against Citizens United via video at Netroots Nation, I thought maybe I’d re-run a piece I wrote for Salon a couple of years ago that might sway some of the skeptics who seem to think she’s lying outright or simply doing it as a pander to Bernie Sanders. Apparently people don’t know anything about the history of the case or the group that took it all the way to the Supreme Court. If they did they’d understand that Hillary Clinton being anything but actively hostile to the ruling is a bit of a stretch:

You have to wonder how many people in America, even those who are well informed, make the connection between the notorious Supreme Court decision that unleashed unprecedented campaign spending and the slimy political assassination outfit called Citizens United that brought the case? It’s not that people of low character have never succeeded in winning Supreme Court cases before. But it’s difficult to find a group with less integrity than this one.

You probably don’t recall that the case itself was about a film called “Hillary: the Movie,” which was produced by Citizens United in anticipation of the 2008 election and which the FEC ruled was not a movie at all but rather a 90-minute campaign commercial that was “susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.” This designation as an advertisement ran afoul of elements of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation and Theodore Olson, Citizens United’s attorney, filed a case against the FEC claiming its First Amendment rights had been violated. And the rest is history.

What many people may not know, however, is the history of Citizens United. It goes all the way back to the 1980s when it was created by the notorious hatchet man from Arkansas, Floyd Brown of Willie Horton fame. In 1992, in anticipation of a flood of juicy opportunities for character assassination of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, he brought on David Bossie, a young and ambitious GOP operative. Their joint effort was a massive and instant success with the media, which used it as a major “source” for years. As early as 1994 some media critics were concerned about the group’s allure among the press corps. Trudy Lieberman wrote an exposé of the group called “Churning Whitewater” for the Columbia Journalism Review, although nobody in the mainstream media seemed particularly concerned.

Lieberman described the scene this way:

In a cluttered office tucked away in one of the many red-brick office condominiums that ring Washington, D.C., David Bossie, source par excellence to journalists dredging the Whitewater swamp, handles one of the eighteen calls he says he gets each hour. This one is from Bruce Ingersoll, a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The discussion centers on bonds. “I have a whole file on bond transactions,” Bossie tells Ingersoll. “I will get a report on what I find. I know you are trying to move quickly on this. You want to come out before they come out.” A few minutes later Bossie says, “I don’t know what I have to give you,” but promises to spend the next couple of hours going through materials. “You’re on deadline, I understand that.” He then points Ingersoll in another direction. “Have you done anything on Beverly? [Presumably that is Beverly Bassett Schaffer, former Arkansas Securities Commissioner.] You guys ought to look into that. There will be lawsuits against the Rose law firm,” he adds.

“Lot 7,” Bossie tells me between calls, is the next big story. “ABC and U.S. News & World Report are looking at Lot 7. We’re the only ones that have the abstract. Wade [Chris Wade, a real estate agent who sold some of the Whitewater lots] dumped the property and got something from the Clintons.”

The phone rings again. Bossie addresses the caller as “Judge.” “That judge who called,” Bossie explains later, “called me in August and said he had a friend, [another judge named] David Hale, who was in trouble because of Bill Clinton.” It was this phone call and the charges that Hale later made through Bossie’s organization, Citizens United, that fueled David Bossie’s zealous investigation into Whitewater. Bossie’s efforts have, in turn, generated daily page-one headlines and another chapter in the saga of American pack journalism. “I’m the information bank,” he says.

The dreadful performance of the press in that era was fully exposed in the book “The Hunting of the President” by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons and Lyons’ earlier “Fools for Scandal.” (If you are a young person who is unfamiliar with the moldy details, these are the books you’ll need to read to get up to speed before the next election.) The media claque was dazzled by the gothic and byzantine world of small state politics and there were, as usual, plenty of con artists and grifters ready to feed them exactly the kind of lurid tales that would appeal to their big city imaginations. Citizens United became a clearinghouse for all this shady material, alternating between spoon feeding enticing tidbits to the press and dumping vast amounts of incomprehensible material that sounded bad but ended up being misleading at best when the facts were untangled. This was the essence of ’90s-style “smell test” politics in which many people observed the sheer volume of complicated accusations, threw up their hands and assumed that where there’s this much smoke there must be a fire somewhere.

But David Bossie didn’t stop there. He was a major player in a later scandal of his own when he moved up the conservative ladder to serve as the chief investigator for congressman Dan “watermelon man” Burton and was eventually forced to resign in disgrace. The Washington Post reported on his sordid denouement in May of 1998:

The chairman of the House investigation into Clinton-Gore campaign financing abuses apologized to fellow Republicans yesterday for the uproar over his release of transcripts of Webster L. Hubbell’s prison conversations and removed his chief investigator under pressure from House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The move came as Gingrich sought to contain the damage, condemning “the circus” that took place within Indiana Republican Dan Burton’s Government Oversight and Reform Committee and scolding Burton at a closed Republican Conference meeting for refusing to say that he was embarrassed by the episode…

His hard-driving chief investigator, David Bossie, submitted a letter of resignation later in the day, saying that he wanted to blunt the “unjustified attacks” coming from House Democrats and the White House.

The editing and release of the Hubbell tapes, subpoenaed by the committee last year, was described by one insider as a “Dave Bossie project,” opposed by the panel’s chief counsel and other committee staffers but ultimately approved by Burton.

In meetings this week, Gingrich and other leaders have voiced their concerns over Burton’s staff. While Burton defended his senior investigator publicly and said Bossie was leaving of his own accord, Gingrich told the conference yesterday that Bossie, who had survived repeated previous attempts, had been fired.

When even Newt Gingrich thinks you’re beyond the pale, you are beyond the pale. But this is the GOP we’re talking about and its practitioners of the dark art of character assassination have more lives than a feral cat. Within a year Bossie was given the Ronald Reagan Award by the Conservative Political Action Conference for his “outstanding achievements and selfless contributions to the conservative movement” and was soon after merrily pimping conspiracy stories and cultivating his fan base in the press corps. By 2004 he was all over television talking about his lawsuit against Michael Moore, with the Federal Election commission claiming that Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 451″ violated campaign finance laws. Yes, that was the same David Bossie whose organization Citizens United just four years later made “Hillary: the Movie” into a crusade that ended up leaving the campaign finance system in tatters. You can’t make this stuff up.

Charles Pierce caught up with him at the 2012 Republican convention where he was the toast of the hall and described Bossie’s new state of grace: He “has had his life’s work blessed through the incredible naivete of Justice Anthony Kennedy by the highest court in this land. He is sanctified by it. His entire career has been made pure.” It was the highlight of a long, illustrious career of dirty tricks and hatchet jobs.

So what’s Bossie up to these days, you wonder? Well, he’s turned up in Colorado with a new film made in tandem with another longtime conservative operative Michelle Malkin about the leftist billionaires who have turned the state into a dystopian hellhole crawling with gun-grabbing potheads who are trying to destroy the energy industry. And, needless to say, once more Citizens United stands accused of selectively editing interviews to deceive the audience and give the opposite impression of what the subject actually meant.

David Bossie told Charles Pierce back in 2012:

“I think your career has different chapters. Before the Supreme Court was a chapter. Just leading Citizens United. Post-the Supreme Court decision is a different chapter. My time on Capitol Hill as an investigator was a chapter. My time as a fireman living in a firehouse was a chapter. So, you know, everybody has a chapters in their lives.

The book on David Bossie is actually a pretty unlikely tale. He’s a standard-issue Republican dirty trickster whose mundane wet work has somehow managed to have a profound effect on the American political system for more than 20 years. In the world of partisan hit men he may be the best there ever was. And he isn’t done yet.

Bossie is now running one of Trump’s super pacs.

Here’s the right wing hit job trailer for Hillary: the Movie

Propaganda is powerful isn’t it? It permeates the national culture until people don’t even know where it comes from and they just thinks of it as being “true”. In this case the idea that Hillary Clinton is some how in favor of Citizens United — or doesn’t care about it — is proof of just how well it works.

Seriously folks, if you don’t know about this stuff read this e-book book by Lyons and Conason. It’s free.