Month: July 2016

A Perfect Pair

by digby

I really hope Trump picks Gingrich for his VP but at this point he seems to have slipped down the list. It’s too bad. According to this piece at the Huffington Post they have so much in common:

While his skills as a showboater and a debater are well known, there’s another side of Gingrich that has rarely been explored. In the spring of 2012, as Gingrich burned through campaign funds in his ill-fated bid for the presidency, The Huffington Postinvestigated his management record, through interviews and thousands of pages of public records.

The resemblances between Gingrich and Trump are striking. Both have presided over a web of corporate entities, many of which they saddled with debts that were never paid. Both devised legally questionable ventures to disseminate their “secrets” to others in ways that conveniently benefitted themselves. People who’ve worked for them describe Gingrich and Trump in similar terms: as self-absorbed, hot-tempered bosses who view themselves as geniuses who needn’t bother with details.

Below are some relevant passages from our 2012 article. Read the whole story here

Since 1984, Gingrich has launched 12 politically oriented organizations and initiatives based in Washington. Of those, five have been investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and the House Ethics Committee, another five closed down with debts totaling more than $500,000, and two were subject to legal action.

According to former colleagues and subordinates, Gingrich burns through money by repeatedly expanding his plans and ignoring warnings from staff about the finances of his projects. Now, the same pattern is threatening his presidential campaign.

“The best way to say it is that Newt has no brakes and no rear view mirror,” observed one former adviser who still speaks highly of Gingrich, but who requested anonymity because he is forbidden from speaking to the media in his current job. “So he never pulls back, and he never learns from the past.”

Read on. Gingrich  knows Trump can’t win. But he also knows that there’s some money in this grift and he’d like to get in on it. That’s what he does.

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ICYWW, here’s Trump’s entirely unpredictable reaction to the FBI

by digby

Even though James Comey is a Republican who served in the bush administration — he wuz robbed:

“The system is rigged. General Petraeus got in trouble for far less. Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment,” Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, tweeted right after Comey’s press conference.

He added in another tweet: “FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem”

The rest of the GOP followed suit, condemning the GOP FBI chief for failing to dutifully recommend an indictment:

“While I respect the professionals at the FBI, this announcement defies explanation,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump’s most prominent political supporter, said in a statement. “No one should be above the law.”

“Hillary may not be POTUS, but she’ll be on the Winter Olympic team for ice skating, no one has successfully skated on more thin ice than her,” former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee tweeted.

“If Hillary were still Sec State, Pres O would have to fire her. But instead, he travels with her and seeks to promote her. Disgusting,” wrote Ari Fleischer, a press secretary for President George W. Bush.

The prevailing GOP theme is that there was some kind of corrupt deal between Obama, Clinton, Lynch and James Comey that kept her from an indictment. The prevailing coverage from the press is that because Comey took the unprecedented step of holding a press conference to lay out evidence in a case for which he will not recommend a prosecution, it means that the “optics” are so bad that “the narrative” is that she is in real trouble even though she is not legally liable and many other government officials have used exactly the same practices.

Meanwhile, Trump is still dealing with the fallout of his ongoing association with neo-Nazis so both sides do it.

And the horse race is back on! Yeehaw!

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Ok, now these GOP Super PACs are just getting silly

by digby

I wrote about the NRA’s Trump strategy for Salon earlier. They aren’t alone although they are better at it than these guys:

A pro-Donald Trump super PAC—subtly titled Crippled America PAC—is trying its hardest to tie Hillary Clinton to the Ku Klux Klan.

The super PAC’s website, KKKlinton.com, features a photo of Clinton alongside late Sen. Robert Byrd, a member of the KKK in the ’40s who later repented. (However, if you’re in the Klan today, you are far more likely to be a huge Donald Trump fan than you are to be on Team Hillary.)
On Tuesday, The Huffington Post reported that the KKKlinton mastermind is (as the NRA is doing this cycle) now getting in on the pro-Trump, anti-Hillary Benghazi exploitation game.

Late last week, Crippled America sent out a blast email asking for money to help get its new ad on television. “The Clinton Cartel and their Super PACs have raised over $50 million this quarter,” the message reads. “Donald Trump needs our help to match their donations so we can win this November.”

Here’s the ad—which was probably made rather cheaply given how much of it was hoovered from other sources, including a Michael Bay movie:

Much of the audio, serving as ironic narration for Benghazi-related clips, is lifted directly from Hillary Clinton’s famous “3 a.m.” ad from the 2008 Democratic primary. And the opening clip of the Crippled America ad is taken from an action sequence in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Michael Bay’s 2016 film that dramatizes the story of the security team who defended the U.S. compound and CIA annex during the 2012 attack.

Upon its theatrical release, Bay’s movie quickly became a favorite of anti-Hillary Benghazi conspiracy theorists. Trump himself said in January that he would have liked to see the movie in theaters if he had time during the campaign. Furthermore, one of Trump’s sons apparently thinks that Americans should be required to see 13 Hours in order to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

They’ll always have Benghazi …

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The NRA is practicing guerrilla tactics


by digby

I wrote about the NRA’s latest ad campaign for Salon today:

Last week the NRA revealed that they were going to be spending 2 million dollars on ads in swing districts on behalf of  Donald Trump. There’s nothing surprising in this since they very ostentatiously endorsed him last month at their national convention. But their first ad has caused a lot of people to scratch their heads in confusion. With all the controversy over mass shootings and the gun proliferation activists digging in their heels one would expect the NRA to focus on … gun rights. But the ad is about Hillary Clinton an Benghazi. What gives?

If there is one membership group in America with a reputation for in-your-face, take-no-prisoners politics it’s the NRA. After the horrific massacre at Newtown the conventional wisdom, even among members of the NRA executive board, was that the organization was going to have to agree to some compromise after years of total intransigence. Even they were shaken by the cold blooded mass murder of 21 tiny six year olds by a mentally ill young man with an AR-15. But Wayne LaPierre held his ground and went to Washington and gave a stem winding press conference in which he not only refused to compromise he took it a step further and demanded that the gun laws be loosened so that kindergarten teachers could be armed. And it worked. Popular gun background check legislation died along with all those babies.

But there have been many more mass shootings since then from college campuses to Planned Parenthood clinics to lone wolf terrorist attacks culminating in the horrific slaughter last month in Orlando.  The frustrated Democrats finally reached their limits and staged a sit-in on the House floor to just try to get Speaker Paul Ryan to allow a vote on two bills, one for the background checks and one to ban people on the no-fly list from being able to instantly buy weapons. It was a cathartic demonstration of anger and desperation but there is little hope that it will make a difference. The Republicans are not willing to budge even though the legislation has majority support even among NRA members.

Those of us who’ve been watching this battle over guns for a while will remember that the last time the NRA was this unpopular was back in the early 90s. The movement to ban semi-automatic weapons had finally reached critical mass and when Bill Clinton came into office the banning of these guns was a central plank of the 1993 Crime Bill. The gun lobby considered the passage of that bill a massive defeat.

But they didn’t take it lying down. Indeed, they fought back vigorously and were widely acknowledged to have been instrumental in the 1994 Republican takeover of the House for the first time in 42 years, often said to have delivered no fewer than 20 Democratic House seats to the Republicans. President Clinton said at the time, “the NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House” and the new Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote a letter to the NRA congratulating them on their success saying “As long as I am Speaker of this House, no gun control legislation is going to move.”

But how did they do that when they were at a low point in their popularity?  That’s where the weird Benghazi ads come in.

This article by Robert Dreyfuss in The American Prospect in 1995 explained their strategy.  They didn’t run on the gun issue at all.  Instead thy joined forces with the GOP and simply helped them with a massive 70 million dollars worth of ads (in 1994!) amplifying their message. In one case Democratic Oklahoma Senator Dave McCurdy had  voted for the crime bill knowing that we would incur the wrath of the NRA, a group of which he had previously been a member. But he was surprised by how they went about it:

What was crucial about the NRA’s attack on McCurdy was that rarely, if ever, in their onslaught did the NRA mention the issue of guns. Instead, in keeping with the Republican candidate’s strategy, the NRA bankrolled a campaign to paint McCurdy as a “Clinton clone.” An NRA-sponsored television ad began with a closeup of an AIDS ribbon on a lapel, then pulled back to show that the person sporting the ribbon was none other than Dave McCurdy, who was standing behind a podium delivering a speech supporting Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. The NRA also paid for billboards throughout the state reading: “No Clinton Clones. Inhofe for U.S. Senate.”

“I wish they had come directly on gun issues,” says McCurdy. “I think I could have won on the assault weapon ban with reasonable people.”… But rather than give McCurdy and other Democrats around the country a chance to fight back, they simply ran ads thematically coordinated with Republican campaigns.

This lesson came about from a previous Oklahoma race in 1992 when they became involved in the race against Congressman Mike Synar, a very outspoken liberal Democrat and enemy of the NRA and other GOP affiliated special interests.They worked with other organizations to run ads against him about flag burning and other issues but also ran against him on guns. It backfired on them when Synar fought back against the NRA as an extremist organization and won. They came after his again in 1994 by recruiting a Democratic primary opponent and helping him win with a whisper campaign that said Synar supported the banning of hunting rifles. A Synar aid is quoted in the piece saying “They were smart. It was like boxing ghosts.” That primary election was an earthquake that foreshadowed the electoral rout that was to follow in the fall.

The kicker is that they didn’t support that pro NRA Democrat in the general election and a hardcore pro-gun Republican by the name of Tom Coburn won the seat. They have played this kind of hardball ever since.

So if you are wondering what’s going on when you see NRA ads over the past few months that have nothing to do with guns, keep in mind what PR exec Victor Kamber told the American Prospect back in ’95:  “Unlike purists, they want to be effective. What they say is, ‘We are using whatever the polling data show makes them vulnerable in their district.'”

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Fear and loathing in Trumpmerica
by Tom Sullivan

George Saunders has a lengthy piece in the New Yorker based on months of up-close observation of the Trump phenomenon. Rally after rally of interviewing Trump supporters and Trump protesters. It’s a fascinating series of vignettes telling a tale of the simmering anger gripping much of America:

Where is all this anger coming from? It’s viral, and Trump is Typhoid Mary. Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently; they draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems. You and I approach a castle. One of us has watched only “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the other only “Game of Thrones.” What is the meaning, to the collective “we,” of yon castle? We have no common basis from which to discuss it. You, the other knight, strike me as bafflingly ignorant, a little unmoored. In the old days, a liberal and a conservative (a “dove” and a “hawk,” say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper, and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional. (As a proud knight of LeftLand, I was interested to find that, in RightLand, Vince Foster has still been murdered, Dick Morris is a reliable source, kids are brainwashed “way to the left” by going to college, and Obama may yet be Muslim. I expect that my interviewees found some of my core beliefs equally jaw-dropping.)

Saunders documents the rallies he attended so we didn’t have to. Out of this, a fuller picture emerges of Trump supporters:

The Trump supporter comes out of the conservative tradition but is not a traditional conservative. He is less patient: something is bothering him and he wants it stopped now, by any means necessary. He seems less influenced by Goldwater and Reagan than by Fox News and reality TV, his understanding of history recent and selective; he is less religiously grounded and more willing, in his acceptance of Trump’s racist and misogynist excesses, to (let’s say) forgo the niceties.

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In the broadest sense, the Trump supporter might be best understood as a guy who wakes up one day in a lively, crowded house full of people, from a dream in which he was the only one living there, and then mistakes the dream for the past: a better time, manageable and orderly, during which privilege and respect came to him naturally, and he had the whole place to himself.

It’s discouraging and creepy. But it’s the slow-motion train wreck you can’t look away from. Excerpts cannot do it justice.

Saunders explores the tendency of both left and right to argue by “partisan zinger.” When a Trump supporter tells him there are more people on public assistance under Obama than Bush, he is taken aback and skeptical. But no, after researching, it seems the factoid is accurate, just not particularly meaningful. The Trumpster was not right as much as “rightish.” But it’s the sort of talking point that throws you — well-known in opponents’ circles but unknown in yours. Don’t we all do this?

I should have gotten a degree in psychology.

QOTD: Krugman

by digby

Paul Krugman, who knows just a bit about international trade, concludes his column today about Trump’s alleged “pro-worker” anti-trade agenda with this:

Sorry, but adding a bit of China-bashing to a fundamentally anti-labor agenda does no more to make you a friend of workers than eating a taco bowl does to make you a friend of Latinos.

Trump is not really an anti-free trader or a populist or a protectionist. He’s a nationalist. His antipathy to China has to do with its emerging as a competitor for  global dominance. “Trade” is just the rhetorical tool he’s using to illustrate that.  However many of his followers who really are worried about jobs lost to foreign trade are suckers if they think he’s the guy who will fix their problems.

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The other border

by digby

Susan Stewart, an artist, is a sponsor of Eman Mohammad and her family. DAMON WINTER / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Across Canada, ordinary citizens, distressed by news reports of drowning children and the shunning of desperate migrants, are intervening in one of the world’s most pressing problems. Their country allows them a rare power and responsibility: They can band together in small groups and personally resettle — essentially adopt — a refugee family. In Toronto alone, hockey moms, dog-walking friends, book club members, poker buddies and lawyers have formed circles to take in Syrian families. The Canadian government says sponsors officially number in the thousands, but the groups have many more extended members.

When Ms. McLorg walked into the hotel lobby to meet Mr. Mohammad and his wife, Eman, she had a letter to explain how sponsorship worked: For one year, Ms. McLorg and her group would provide financial and practical support, from subsidizing food and rent to supplying clothes to helping them learn English and find work. She and her partners had already raised more than 40,000 Canadian dollars (about $30,700), selected an apartment, talked to the local school and found a nearby mosque.

Ms. McLorg, the mother of two teenagers, made her way through the crowded lobby, a kind of purgatory for newly arrived Syrians. Another member of the group clutched a welcome sign she had written in Arabic but then realized she could not tell if the words faced up or down. When the Mohammads appeared, Ms. McLorg asked their permission to shake hands and took in the people standing before her, no longer just names on a form. Mr. Mohammad looked older than his 35 years. His wife was unreadable, wearing a flowing niqab that obscured her face except for a narrow slot for her eyes. Their four children, all under 10, wore donated parkas with the tags still on.

GOP politicians are trying to shut down sanctuary cities and ban all Muslims from immigrating. Trump wants to deport all the Syrian refugees we already have here.

Trump has said he doesn’t anticipate building a wall along the Canadian border, mostly because it would be a logistical challenge:

”With Canada, you’re talking about a massively long piece. You’re talking about a border that would be about four times longer. 

”It would be very, very hard to do — and it is not our biggest problem. I don’t care what anyone says. It is not our big problem.” 

Our biggest problem, as we know, is with the vast numbers of Mxican rapists who are flooding the southern border. But Trump has also said that we have to be strong and we have to vigilant and we have to be smart about Syrian refugees. Canada is generously welcoming them into their country. Is Trump not worried about that?  Why not?

Just to be clear, I’m not worried about it. These refugees are obviously fleeing a horrifying, chaotic situation and they are looking for some kind of shelter. But Trump’s concerns about borders and Mexicans and refugees and Muslims is all mixed because h doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But even though he hasn’t been elected to anything, his idiotic ideas are driving policy just by the way he’s articulating them. It’s daft.

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Rich kids are joining up too

by digby

I am no expert on what motives these people to do what they do but it does seem clear that they are not motivated by poverty or social alienation:

The police declined to name the young men because nobody had shown up as of Sunday night to identify their bodies, but friends and relatives recognized photographs that were posted on a messaging app by the Islamic State, along with praise for the violence.

The men, all in their late teens or early 20s, were products of Bangladesh’s elite, several having attended one of the country’s top English-medium private schools as well as universities both in the country and abroad.

Among them was the son of a former city leader in the prime minister’s own Awami League, the governing party.

“That’s what we’re absolutely riveted by,” said Kazi Anis Ahmed, a writer and publisher of the daily newspaper The Dhaka Tribune. “That these kids from very affluent families with no material want can still be turned to this kind of ideology, motivated not just to the point of killing but also want to be killed.”

That children of the country’s upper classes appear to have joined militant Islamists in an act of such brutality highlighted the radicalization among the largely moderate Muslim population here, a process that has accelerated in recent years.

The attackers intended to kill foreigners, whom they shot and then hacked with sharp weapons, blaming them for hampering the progress of Islam, one of the hostages later said.

Economic determinism simply cannot explain this. People are complicated and are motivated by more than money. This extremist religious ideology is obviously appealing to these young men on some kind of sociological/psychological basis. I’m sure there are many theories out there. But I’ve always believed that attributing this to a purely economic motivation or even political grievance was inadequate. Humans are complicated creatures.

This article is well worth reading. What is it that’s attracting these kids to what’s basically a homicidal suicide cult?


Update: This is an interesting piece about ISIS strategy, which would seem to offer ideas about some sort of counter-strategy.

Update II: ISIS seems to be waging war against everyone at the moment, particularly other Muslims. The talking heads all seem to think it’s because they are losing their conquered territory so they’re lashing out. This is getting more and more complicated by the day. You have to wonder if there’s really any strategy at all …

Update III: A conversation between an ISIS scholar and an ISIS supporter lends credence to the idea that this is a death cult special:

Nothing to see here

by digby

He doubles down:

Donald Trump brushed off concerns Monday about possible anti-Semitic imagery in a tweet posted from his account.

The tweet, which was posted and deleted Saturday, featured a picture of Hillary Clinton on a backdrop of money next to a six-sided star that read “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” It drew widespread backlash almost immediately for resembling the Star of David, an important Jewish symbol.

After the tweet was deleted, a revised graphic was posted to Trump’s Twitter account, this time with a circle subbed in for the star.

“Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” the presumptive Republican nominee tweeted Monday.

The fact that it was originally produced by a neo-Nazi web site is irrelevant apparently. And the fact that the “sheriff’s star” was on top of a big pile of money is also irrelevant. Especially since Trump has nevertrafficked in Jewish stereotypes. Oh wait:

“I’m a negotiator like you folks, we are negotiators,” Trump said, drawing laughter before pivoting to how he would renegotiate the Iran deal. “Is there anybody that doesn’t renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates them — perhaps more than any other room I’ve ever spoken in.”
[…]
“You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money. You want to control your politicians, that’s fine. Five months ago I was with you,” Trump said, pointing to his recent past as a much sought-after political donor who filled the campaign coffers of both Republicans and Democrats. “I do want your support, but I don’t want your money.”

At the time he said the last thing, the ADL said they didn’t see it as anti-semitic. I wonder if they would like to rethink their position after this flap.

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Why do we hate America so much?

by digby

I am not what you would call a flag-waver but I do have an affection for my country and admiration for many of its ideals (if not it’s ongoing inability to live up to them.) But according to the right wing I am not a patriot. Direct from a right wing email list on the 4th of July:

We conservatives often bemoan the commercialization and secularization of our traditional holidays. Christmas – or should we say the Winter Holiday – now begins around November 15, Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day are occasions for mattress sales, not solemn commemorations of the sacrifices made to preserve our way of life.

Declaration of IndependenceNow comes news from researchers at Harvard University that the July 4th holiday commemorating the announcement of the Declaration of Independence may still be serving its intended purpose – promoting patriotism.

The good news is it only seems to work on Republicans.

According to the study by Andreas Madestam and David Yanagizawa-Drott, “There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization.”

The three key findings of those attending July 4th celebrations:

*When done before the age of 18, it increases the likelihood of a youth identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent.

*Celebrating Independence Day raises the likelihood that parade watchers will vote for a Republican candidate by 4 percent.

*Celebrating the 4th of July boosts the likelihood a reveler will vote by about 1 percent and increases the chances they’ll make a political contribution by 3 percent.

*What’s more, the impact isn’t fleeting. “Surprisingly, the estimates show that the impact on political preferences is permanent, with no evidence of the effects depreciating as individuals become older,” said the Harvard report.

It is worth noting that many of the grievances the Founders outlined in the Declaration of Independence had to do with taxes and big government, charges we regularly level at Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, so perhaps it is understandable that the sentiments commemorated on July 4th don’t resonate with establishment Democrats as much as they do with conservatives.

However, we are not sure that turning children into establishment Republicans is a good thing; they might find themselves, like Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, drawn to doubling the national debt, pork barrel spending, endless and inconclusive wars and bringing vast numbers of anti-constitutional immigrants to our country.

Given that movement conservatives are the last remaining American political movement to fully embrace the values and guidance of the Declaration of Independence, it seems to us that if there was ever a time for Americans to recall exactly why we declared our independence it is this Fourth of July.

Movement Conservatives are the only Real Americans, remember that.

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