Month: July 2016

GOP jerk o’ the day

by digby

They just can’t help themselves:

When Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine addressed the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia Wednesday night, the North Carolina GOP thought it quickly spotted something wrong.

“[Tim Kaine] wears a Honduras flag pin on his jacket but no American flag,” the state party tweeted as he was speaking. “Shameful.”

There was one problem: Kaine’s pin, which had a single blue star on a white background bordered with red, wasn’t the flag of Honduras, where he spent a year as a missionary decades ago. It was the symbol for Blue Star Families, or those with members serving in the military.

Typical… Apparently, there was no apology forthcoming when it was pointed out.

What in the world was he talking about? 

by digby

I meant to ask about this yesterday and forgot with all the hoopla. What was he talking about with this comment?

“I was shocked he mentioned the N-word,” Donald Trump told a pool of reporters, before asking them “Do you know what the N-word is? He mentioned it. I was shocked. It’s a total lack of respect for President Obama.” Seconds after criticizing Putin for being such an alleged racist, Trump added “I hope he likes me.”

Some people are wondering  if he’s had some conversation with Putin in the last year that nobody knows about because there’s no record of him saying it.

But there is this tweet from a Breitbart correspondent who describes himself as
“Hollywood Talent Agent-Turned War Correspondent/Filmmaker, Founder SAFE, contributing journalist at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, Big Peace, Big Hollywood.”

The link leads to a blank page now.

Obviously, I have no idea whether this is the national security expert he got this little bit of phony intelligence from but I wouldn’t be surprised.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Paul Manafort shared some personal gossip about him with Trump either. He’s very tight with Putin’s inner circle.

Anyway, it was a very weird thing to say. But what else is new? As Ezra klein argued a few months ago, on of trump’s most important disqualifying characteristics is his childlike gullibility.  It’s one thing for some Tea Partyer from Sand Point Idaho to believe everything he reads on his twitter and Facebook feeds. Presidents need a bit more skepticism.

.

RNC sends out email telling people not to watch DNC #Trump ratings disaster

by digby

It looks like Trump’s convention was kind of a bust:

President Obama’s prime time speech lifted the Democratic convention to its third straight night of ratings wins over the Republican convention last week — and now the Trump campaign is exhorting supporters not to watch the Democrats’ final night.

About 24 million viewers watched Wednesday’s DNC coverage on the six biggest channels (CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News), according to preliminary Nielsen data.

Last Wednesday’s RNC coverage drew 23.4 million viewers across eight channels.

The coverage of Obama’s speech and Hillary Clinton’s appearance on stage spilled into the typically lower-rated 11 p.m. hour, but the ratings results indicate that most viewers kept watching until the very end of the evening.

For the third night in a row, CNN was #1 overall, with 6.17 million viewers between 10 and 11:45 p.m. MSNBC was #2 with 4.92 million. NBC was #3 with 4.17 million.

The Democratic ratings advantage has come as something of a surprise, given Donald Trump’s reputation as a ratings magnet.

Last week he touted the viewership for his Republican convention and predicted that no one would watch the Democrats.

On Thursday morning, Trump’s campaign sent a fund-raising email urging supporters not to tune into Clinton’s acceptance speech on Thursday night.

“Unless you want to be lied to, belittled, and attacked for your beliefs, don’t watch Hillary’s DNC speech tonight,” the email read. “Instead, help Donald Trump hold her accountable, call out her lies and fight back against her nasty attacks.”

Sad!

.

The man who says “Crooked Hillary” has hurt feelings

by digby

He’s whining about all the meanies at the Democratic convention.

“Well, they don’t all hit me, but some of them do. And they try to hit you as hard as possible. And it’s mostly false stuff,” Trump said in an interview with Brian Kilmeade on “Fox & Friends” that was taped Wednesday, before the latest night of the convention that saw high-profile speakers like vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine, Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama going directly after the Republican nominee.

Shrugging off criticism, Trump remarked, “I get it. It’s the way it goes. It’s called politics.”

He added, “They’re doing their thing, trying to win, justify eight years of horror.” 

“You’re not taking it personally?” Kilmeade asked.

“I guess I take it a little bit personally,” Trump responded. “You can’t let it get you down. You have to go out.”

The poor little boo-boo.

.

Trump is Uniquely Dangerous? Hardly


by tristero

Josh Marshall yesterday:

But if you’re choosing this venue to boo when we’re in the middle of a battle simply to make sure a dangerous – uniquely dangerous – figure like Donald Trump doesn’t become president…

As if Cruz would be any better? Or Christie? Or Carson? Or Ryan? Or Rubio? Or Santorum? Or – God help us – the spineless, hot-headed J. Bush? Have we all forgotten already how really bad these candidates were?

Nope. Trump is nothing unique. This delusion that he is is one that Cruz and the rest of the Whole Sick Crew have a vested interest in propagating – in the hopes that they look sensible by comparison. (Spoiler alert: they’re not.)

Don’t get me wrong: Trump is extremely dangerous, but characterizing him as uniquely dangerous minimizes the ongoing threat from the far right.  Things do not go back to normal if Trump is defeated. Unless and until a new crop of actually sane Republicans emerge, American political discourse will remain alarmingly broken.

Of course, I agree with Josh that “The damage that this man has done simply through his campaign is far more than I think we understand. What would come after his election is unthinkable.” But the problem is, in fact, not beyond Democrats and Republicans. It is a systemic problem within the Republican party. The damage that a Cruz, Ryan, Rubio, or Christie candidacy could inflict would be different from Trump’s only in kind, not in catastrophic quality. And let’s not forget: Cruz and Co. are going nowhere.

To provide Trump the narcissistic thrill he so clearly craves, to call him uniquely dangerous in his odious-ity , is to play a game the right wing wants us to play. It’s  a game where Trump is perceived as some kind of bizarre visitation on an otherwise sober-minded Republican party.

And in both the short and long term, it’s a game we’ll lose.

Come over from the dark side into the light

by digby

I wrote about last night for Salon:

Last night we saw Barack Obama give his last DNC speech as president and it was one of his best speeches ever, which is saying something. It’s very unusual for a president to pass the baton with such enthusiasm to his successor. In the past the president either had no respect for the person running to replace him or the new candidate felt he needed to run against the president’s record. There was nothing like the full-throated endorsement from Barack Obama last night with Eisenhower-Nixon, Johnson-Humphrey, Reagan-Bush, Clinton-Gore or Bush-McCain. There is no doubt that President Obama is happily entrusting Clinton to carry on his legacy and Clinton is warmly embracing it. For better or worse, these two believe their legacies are entwined.

The real work ahead

by Tom Sullivan

Secretary Hillary Clinton has some tough acts to follow tonight when she accepts her party’s nomination for president. There were too many “moments” to count at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia last night.

Vice President Joe Biden’s celebration of the American spirit:

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of Americans. And God willing, Hillary Clinton will write the next chapter in that journey.

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line! Don’t forget it! God bless you all and God protect our troops.

There was former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (of all people), a self-made billionaire unloading on “dangerous demagogue” Donald Trump, several times Bloomberg’s lesser in net worth (that had to sting):

I’m a New Yorker, and New Yorkers know a con when we see one! Trump says he’ll punish manufacturers that move to Mexico or China, but the clothes he sells are made overseas in low-wage factories. He says he wants to put Americans back to work, but he games the US visa system so he can hire temporary foreign workers at low wages. He says he wants to deport 11 million undocumented people, but he seems to have no problem in hiring them. What’d I miss here?!

Democratic nominee for Vice President, Sen. Tim Kaine, made a case for why voters can trust Hillary Clinton, and then took down Trump with his own words:

And as he’s serving our nation abroad, I trust Hillary with our son’s life.

You know who I don’t trust? Donald Trump. The guy promises a lot. But you might have noticed, he has a habit of saying the same two words right after he makes his biggest promises. You know the words I mean? “Believe me.”

It’s gonna be great — believe me. We’re gonna build a wall and make Mexico pay for it — believe me! We’re gonna destroy ISIS so fast — believe me! There’s nothing suspicious in my tax returns — believe me.

And finally, President Barack Obama’s remarkable valedictory speech and his full-throated endorsement of Hillary Clinton: “[T]here has never been a man or a woman — not me, not Bill, nobody — more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.” Obama stunned the audience when he referenced Donald Trump (not by name) in the same sentence with fascists, communists, jihadists and “homegrown demagogues.”

But there was something else Obama and several other speakers mentioned last night. Obama said (emphasis mine):

So if you agree that there’s too much inequality in our economy, and too much money in our politics, we all need to be as vocal and as organized and as persistent as Bernie Sanders’ supporters have been. We all need to get out and vote for Democrats up and down the ticket, and then hold them accountable until they get the job done.

If you want more justice in the justice system, then we’ve all got to vote – not just for a President, but for mayors, and sheriffs, and state’s attorneys, and state legislators. And we’ve got to work with police and protesters until laws and practices are changed.

Nick Rathod, an Obama White House veteran, echoes what speakers reminded us last night, that there is much more to this election than the marquee race at the top of the ticket. “Trump and Hillary are taking up all the oxygen [but] really where policy making is getting done is the states.” Democrats’ 2010 losses were catastrophic:

In Rathod’s opinion, Democrats have only themselves to blame. Even though both President Obama and outgoing Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz started out as state legislators, “The Democratic Party has effectively ignored down-ballot races,” he says. The situation has become so dire that Politico reports the president will campaign for state legislative candidates this fall. He has a lot of catching up to do. Republicans “have made smart and large investments in both state races and infrastructure building that has allowed them this historic control of state legislative chambers and policymaking at the state level,” Rathod says.

This is why (other than Supreme Court picks) our fixation on the top of the ticket – on a savior from the left or the right – is misplaced. Ask me. I live in North Carolina. Ask friends in Michigan, Wisconsin, or Kansas, or those fighting noxious, revanchist legislation in other states.

Mad at the DNC? Fine. Since they abandoned the 50 State strategy they don’t exist out here. Take Obama’s advice and get out and help Democrats win those down-ticket races. The only way you’ll save your state and reform the DNC is from the ground up, not from the White House down.

by digby

This was what Trump believed was the problem. From 1987:

”There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” 

”For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States” and that it has been costing this nation in terms of the economy, deficit and taxes, the ad said. ”The saga continues unabated as we defend the Persian Gulf.” 

Trump described the Gulf as ”an area of only marginal significance to the United States for its oil supplies, but one upon which Japan and others are almost totally dependent.” 

”Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests? … The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

He has literally not evolved in his thinking on this for more than three decades. He’s been making the same trivial argument since he was a young man, complaining about the US being “laughed at” for paying money to ensure the world doesn’t blow up as if that’s more important than the fact that we haven’t had a major war in Europe for half a century — and no nuclear war ever. He never understood the point of any of it.

*I’m not saying that nothing should ever change about NATO. But Trump’s argument of decades is stupid, myopic and irrelevant. It was stupid in 1987 and it’s stupid now.

.

Would Trump use the NSA for political purposes?

by digby

Of course he would. To all those who insist that Clinton is worse on issues of civil liberties and privacy than the authoritarian, strongman demagogue, wake up. His calling for the Russians to release Clinton’s “missing emails” shows that he’s even more Nixonian than Nixon and his buddies were when they broke into the Watergate — and did a whole lot more with the powers of the presidency to punish his political opponents.

Consider this:

[Lewandowski] also shook his head when asked about a report of dissension within the lean and efficient team, including fears among the staff that some of the campaign’s Trump Tower offices were bugged with listening devices.

“This is media hype,” he said…

As for the reports of people fearing they were targets of bugging, he said, “I think that’s a lot of speculation I don’t think that’s going on at all.”

Mr. Manafort, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” also gave a less-than-definitive denial about the bugging.

“Do I believe it?” he said. “No, I don’t believe it. But I don’t know who said that.”

This:

Earlier this month, following a protracted dispute with Trump and his co-owner, casino billionaire Phil Ruffin, the National Labor Relations Board officially certified a union for over 500 staff at the hotel. Workers argue they have been subjected to surveillance, intimidation, and unlawful dismissal as they have sought to organize.

This:

At Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach resort he runs as a club for paying guests and celebrities, Donald Trump had a telephone console installed in his bedroom that acted like a switchboard, connecting to every phone extension on the estate, according to six former workers. Several of them said he used that console to eavesdrop on calls involving staff.

Trump’s spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded to written questions with one sentence: “This is totally and completely untrue.”

The managing director of Mar-a-Lago, Bernd Lembcke, did not respond to emails. Reached by phone, he said he referred the email query to Trump’s headquarters and said, “I have no knowledge of what you wrote.”

At the 126-room Mar-a-Lago mansion, Trump keeps an apartment set aside for himself and his family, and rents the rest out to guests and members.

BuzzFeed News spoke with six former employees familiar with the phone system at the estate. 

Four of them — speaking on condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements — said that Trump listened in on phone calls at the club during the mid-2000s. They did not know if he eavesdropped more recently.

They said he listened in on calls between club employees or, in some cases, between staff and guests. None of them knew of Trump eavesdropping on guests or members talking on private calls with people who were not employees of Mar-a-Lago. They also said that Trump could eavesdrop only on calls made on the club’s landlines and not on calls made from guests’ cell phones.

Each of these four sources said they personally saw the telephone console, which some referred to as a switchboard, in Trump’s bedroom.

None of the four supports Trump’s bid for president. All said they enjoyed their time working at Mar-a-Lago.

Two other sources — the tycoon’s former butler and Mar-a-Lago’s former security director — said the console in Trump’s private apartment merely made it easier for Trump to call other rooms in the estate. They said their former boss either did not or would not listen in on calls. They both support Trump for president.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is running at a time when Americans are increasingly concerned about surveillance — both by the government and by their employers. Some of his own campaign staff feared that their offices in Trump Tower in New York might be bugged, the New York Times reported last month. 

Trump has backed the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata, telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that “I tend to err on the side of security.” Trump added, “I assume when I pick up my telephone people are listening to my conversations anyway, if you want to know the truth.”

And then there’s this:

On Thursday evening, Trump faced questions from NBC News about creating a database system to track Muslims, which Trump said at the time he “would certainly implement.” On Friday, Trump attempted to distance himself from the comments, saying in a tweet, “I didn’t suggest a database-a reporter did.”

At a campaign rally Saturday at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex, Trump explained that he was originally “referring to the wall [along the Southern U.S. border], but database is OK. And watch list is OK. And surveillance is OK.”

He continued: “If you don’t mind, I want to be, I want to surveil. I want surveillance of these people that are coming in, the Trojan horse, I want to know who the hell they are.”

I can’t find any evidence that Clinton used the powers of the government to spy on her employees or her political enemies. It’s possible that she will do it, of course. But there’s no doubt that if he can do it, he will. Buh-lieve me.

.

by digby

Here it is in all its glory. The GOP nominee for president:

TRUMP: I’m not going to tell Putin what to do. Why should I tell Putin what to do? He already did something today where he said don’t blame them, essentially, for your incompetence. 

Let me tell you, it’s not even about Russia or China or whoever it is that’s doing the hacking. It was about the things that were said in those e-mails. They were terrible things, talking about Jewish, talking about race, talking about atheist, trying to pin labels on people — what was said was a disgrace, and it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and believe me, as sure as you’re sitting there, Hillary Clinton knew about it. She knew everything.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz could not breathe without speaking and getting approval from Hillary Clinton. Couldn’t breathe. And you saw that. It also showed that it was a fixed race, but I’ve been saying that long before I saw the e-mails. It was a rigged race. It was totally rigged. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz rigged it for Hillary Clinton, and the sad part is, Bernie Sanders has, to use an old word that I use on occasion, he’s lost his energy. He wants to go home and go to sleep. But he’s got a lot of people that walked out last night. Now, hundreds of people walked out of the Democrat Convention last night. I didn’t even hear about it. Nobody showed it. I didn’t see it on television. You people don’t talk about it. 

The Republican Convention was incredible. I hear I had one of the biggest bounces in decades. Like, some people are saying nine points. In fact, a poll just came out ten minutes ago, “Los Angeles Times”, Trump 47, Clinton 40. And the reason is that people are sick and tired of Hillary Clinton. 

QUESTION: (inaudible) Putin (ph) say stay out? Why not say that?
TRUMP: Why do I have to (ph) get involved with Putin? I have nothing to do with Putin. I’ve never spoken to him. I don’t know anything about him other than he will respect me. He doesn’t respect our president. And if it is Russia — which it’s probably not, nobody knows who it is — but if it is Russia, it’s really bad for a different reason, because it shows how little respect they have for our country, when they would hack into a major party and get everything. But it would be interesting to see — I will tell you this — Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That’ll be next. 

Because he invited Russia to release Hillary Clinton’s private emails to the press, which some people might consider an invitation to a foreign country to help him win the election, it’s gotten the most attention. And for good reason.

But also note that he, and most Republicans along with many members of the press, are claiming that the DNC emails are the real scandal because they show one email where someone suggested that they use Bernie Sanders religious beliefs against him, which is indeed very wrong. There is also evidence of hostility within the DNC toward the Sanders campaign, also very wrong. The DNC apologized, Wasserman-Shultz was run out of the convention and that was the right thing to do. But there isn’t any evidence that their hostility translated into any action that caused Sanders to lose the election. Really folks, that did not happen.

But what about the rest of what he said?  Donald “they’re rapists and criminals” Trump is seriously clutching his pearls over some DNC official  “talking about Jewish, talking about race, talking about atheist, trying to pin labels on people?” The man who has inspired the white supremacist movement in this country to heights it hasn’t seen for decades? The man who personally tweets bogus racist statistics and antisemitic symbols? The king of the fucking birthers? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Just as there’s no evidence that Trump himself directed the hack against the DNC there’s no evidence that Hillary Clinton directed the DNC to try to thwart Sanders’ election. But let’s just say that if the former were proven to be true, there would be some issues that go far beyond hardball party politics.

Indeed, if “someone” outside the US, for reasons that are obscure, is trying to tilt the election on behalf of this lunatic that strikes me as substantially more interesting and important.  Seriously, there is just no equivalence to the alleged “crimes.”

*And by the way, how times has Trump asserted positively that some woman “knew” what was going on? This is the basis of his call for “the families” to be tortured and “taken out” because he’s always saying the wives, the mothers and the sisters  were in on it. He said it about the 9/11 hijackers (who weren’t married) and the San Bernardino killers and the Orlando shooter. 

On CBS’ Face the Nation, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said his administration would target the wives and families of known and suspected terrorists.

Trump compared the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center to Wednesday’s San Bernardino shooting, saying that he would have gone after the wives of the 9/11 terrorist:

“At least I would certainly go after the wives who absolutely knew it was happening, and I guess your definition of what I’d do, I’m going to leave that to your imagination.”

They weren’t married.

But whatever, bitches be devious liars, amirite?

.