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Month: July 2016

“She deserves the death penalty”

Published by digby on July 20, 2016

“She deserves the death penalty”

by digby

Last night Chris Christie led a show trial for a slavering mob that apparently thinks it’s normal to put their political opponents in jail. He got them screaming “guilty!” on cue and shrieking “lock her up! lock her up!” like a mantra. It was barely checked mass hysteria and the only time in the whole evening the crowd seemed to come alive. Which is just creepy.

Mother Jones picks up the story this morning:

The next morning, it seemed, the ante was raised, when news broke that Al Baldasaro, a prominent Trump supporter who advises the campaign on veterans’ issues, had said on a radio show that Clinton deserves to “be put in the firing line and shot for treason.” Baldasaro spoke at numerous Trump rallies during the primary campaign, and Trump once praised him as “my favorite vet.” (Trump’s onetime butler recently called for killing President Barack Obama.) 

I wanted to find out how deep the sentiment to jail Hillary—or do worse—ran among die-hard Trump supporters gathering at events outside the convention hall. So I took to the streets to produce the video above. 

For some, execution was on the table. “She’s extremely corrupt, she’s extremely dangerous,” said Rhonda Welsch, a 55-year-old food and beverage worker at a Hawaii resort. “I think that’s what she deserves: the death penalty.”

Now it must be said that average partisans on all sides often say dumb things like that. But you don’t often see mainstream politicians inciting it directly at the national convention.

The thuggish Christie was so wound up that afterwards when “the prosecutor” was asked if he was passed over for VP because of his own legal exposure with Bridgegate, he seemed to further threaten Hillary Clinton if her campaign tries to defend her.

Just for he record, no petraeus did something much worse than Clinton. He hid clssified information at his home and gave it to a journalist who happened to be his mistress for a book she was was writing. And, by the way, he didn’t go to jail.

Clinton committed no crime and even the accusations of “carelessness” are overblown and stupid. But even if it were all true, it’s not a capital crime and the fact that GOP leaders are both tacitly and explicitly encouraging their followers to see it that way is a very dangerous precedent. Their beef with Clinton is political not legal and they know it. They are irresponsibly conflating the two in an overheated environment and they are just asking for trouble.


This piece by Dylan Matthews delves into the Christie speech and the broader problem of criminalizing politics in this ugly way.  it’s worth reading. What Christie “prosecuted” Clinton for was policy, not crimes, many of which weren’t even true or things she was responsible for. And people want to jail or kill her for them. It’s primal witch hunt hysteria — one of the women in that video even explicitly calls Clinton a witch.

This isn’t normal, folks. Or at least it hasn’t been normal in America for a good long while.

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He’ll be too busy making America great again

Published by digby on July 20, 2016

He’ll be too busy making America great again

by digby

You may have noticed that the Trump family seems to be obsessed with John Kasich. This may be why:

One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history? 

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. 

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of? 

“Making America great again” was the casual reply.

Paul Manafort has been openly feuing with Kasich for refusing to attend the convention in his own state. Yesterday Don junior was visibly upset that the Ohio delegation gave all their votes to Kasich in the roll call. And last night Trump himself weirdly interject, apropos of nothing, “we’re gonna win Ohio!” in his video at the RNC.

They are definitely nursing a grudge. If they understand how bad this anecdote sounds (and it’s not clear that they would) this will only add fuel to the fire.

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The witch burning convention

Published by digby on July 20, 2016

The witch burning convention


by digby

I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

After a day of tummult over the Melania Trump plagiarism scandal combined with the startling news that Roger Ailes was out at Fox News due to his habit of sexually harassing the women who work for him, the convention finally got back to the business of putting on their big show. It didn’t go very well.
The theme had been billed as  “Make America Work Again” which had seemed to indicate it would be about the economy but they evidently just said “oh to hell with it, let’s just bash Hillary again” because nobody mentioned it.

Paul Ryan opened the convention to explain the rules for the roll call and introduced Jeff Sessions to place Trump in nomination. Sessions set the mood with this dystopian image:

“We have gotten off course. And the people know it. We operate like the trench warfare battles of World War I where hundreds of thousands die while no ground is gained!” 

He then said Trump is a “warrior and a winner” and nominated him for president. After some minor procedural skirmishes among the delegates they held the roll call and the New York delegation, led by Donald Jr, put Trump over the top. After all the #NeverTrump sturm und drang it was strangely anti-climactic.

Then came the speeches.  They didn’t have another superstar line-up of entertainers like Scott Baio and Antonio Sabato Jr, but they managed to bring in some sports heroes like the Ultimate Fighter Dana White, and  a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who used to have her own reality show on the Golf channel. That was it for the showbiz celebrities.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson gave a rather dull speech, undoubtedly disappointing the planners who were looking for a little of that good old southern gothic whitewater magic. Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas’ Attorney General,  a self-described “Christian-pro-life, gun carryin’ Republican woman,” came a little bit closer by making fun of Clinton’s accent.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey then droned on about Clinton’s alleged email criminality for a while without mentioning Trump, likely because he signed on to the National Review “Never Trump” issue saying Trump had homicidal fantasies and his policies would get him prosecuted for war crimes.  He must be voting third party.

A man who runs a weatherproofing company said something boring and then The Donald himself was beamed in from New York to give a video address in which he said everything was incredible and promised to do unbelievable things when he comes to the incredible, unbelievable convention tomorrow.

Mitch McConnell took the stage to insult Clinton by saying “not since Bagdad Bob has there been a public figure with such a tortured relationship with the truth.” (Actually, there’s someone else in the race whose record of dishonesty is truly epic.) Paul Ryan was next with a speech he seemed to be giving to a GOP that doesn’t exist. He said Republicans don’t believe in division based on class and race, boring the heck out of the Trump crowd which waved their placards in desultory fashion. Kevin McCarthy said something dull and forgettable which, for him, counts as a big success.

Twenty two year old Tiffany Trump then delivered the first family testimonial. Surprisingly, it was one of the better speeches of the night because her description of her relationship with her father as one of nurturing and interest actually made him sound like a decent person. It stood out for the fact that it was one of the only speeches in the whole convention so far that portrayed Trump as a normal human being. It’s uniqueness just points to the fact that there has been so little of the kind of “intimate portrait” of regular life that we usually see in presidential campaigns. One can guess that’s because there really isn’t much of it.

Unfortunately that’s not what this convention is about. By this time the crowd was clamoring for a big hunk of Trump red meat and Chris Christie was just the man to deliver it. He didn’t actually give a speech, it was more of a show trial in front of a slavering mob shieking “guilty!” and “lock her up” as Christie smugly delivered the “evidence.”

This tweet by Rebecca Traister  accurately captures the mood:

Republican Steve Schmidt complained on MSNBC that this endless chanting of “lock her up” is a disturbing  banana republic form of politics that is reminiscent of Pat Buchanan’s infamous 1992 speech that was ecstatically received in the hall but repelled swing voters out in the country. Let’s hope so. It was chilling.

Just as I noted that Melania Trump’s speech sounded very professional in my notes on Monday night, my notes on the big Donald Trump Jr keynote said “better check and see that his speech wasn’t plagiarized too because it was pretty good.”  It turns out that his speechwriter did recycle some of his previously published prose for the speech, which seems incredibly stupid under the circumstances but the Trumps don’t seem to think that double checking these things is worth their time.

There were some clunkers in the speech such as his eye-rolling insistence that he and his siblings got their training from people with “doctorates in common sense” and inexplicably spent their childhoods driving tractors. His promise that “we are going to put Americans first, all Americans, not a special class of crony elites at the top of the heap” shows that he’s well on the way to achieving the colossal lack of self-awareness that characterizes his father.

Nonetheless,  he is much better at relaying the familiar Donald Trump message by teleprompter than his father is.  He made it clear that the world is going to hell in a handbasket in every possible way because the people in charge of everything are stupid and inept. But instead of the usual Trump asides and verbal tics the speech was coherent and delivered with real passion and energy. Fortunately, hearing that message from a normal speaker shows how banal it actually is when it doesn’t come from the man himself. It’s never been more clear that it’s the man not the message that’s responsible for this phenomenon and it’s a relief to know this nightmare isn’t likely to be replicated. Trumpism will die with The Donald.

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Reality show trial by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 20, 2016

Reality show trial
by Tom Sullivan

Soon after Republicans nominated reality TV star Donald J. Trump for president last night, New Jersey governor and failed Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie conducted a reality show trial for Hillary Clinton in prime time. It might have been less creepy if some faux cardinals burst onto the stage armed with soft cushions. But no, there was only one, soft Chris Christie repeating debunked allegations against Cinton and asking the mob(?) in the coliseum, “Guilty or not guilty?”

The theme for last night was Make America Work Again. Nobody seemed to speak to it. They were too busy attacking Hillary Clinton.

I wondered when someone would call for her head. I didn’t have to wait long.

Yeah, that was just a matter of time. All that was missing was the Red Queen. It was at once comic and horrifying. Except for the “staggering” number of RNC delegates and dignitaries who stayed away because Donald Trump is that toxic in his own party.

Show trials are just for starters:

If he wins the presidency, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and could ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers, Trump ally, Chris Christie, said on Tuesday.

Christie, who is governor of New Jersey and leads Trump’s White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Just think of what great reality television that would be. It’s just that reality has little to do with this convention. The Republicans’ 2016 platform claims, “The president has been regulating to death a free-market economy he doesn’t like and doesn’t understand.” Politico asked delegates just how bad the economy is:

“Actually, we’re doing great,” says Donna Gottschall, a human resources consultant in Greenville, S.C. “Employment’s up. Housing’s up. Everything’s green in Greenville!”

“Oh, yeah, unemployment is way down,” says Al Baldasaro, a state legislator and retired Marine from Londonderry, N.H. “Obviously, it’s gotten better.”

“Things are wonderful in our town,” says Ranae Lentz, a Republican county chair from Bellefontaine, Ohio. “We can’t fill all the job openings.”

Yup. That bad.

But just how bad were last night’s RNC convention festivities? On NPR this morning, National Review Senior Editor Jonah Goldberg quipped that if you watched House Speaker Paul Ryan closely during his address, he was blinking T-O-R-T-U-R-E. Conservative New York Times pundit Ross Douthat also weighed in:

Wednesday night perhaps there will be togas and lions. Picture Chris Christie.

When Ailes Is Out Will Murdoch’s Sons Clean the Fox House? @spockosbrain

Published by Spocko on July 20, 2016

When Ailes Is Out, Will Murdoch’s Sons Clean the Fox House?
by Spocko

One of the things that I’ve learned is that corporations don’t like to associate their brands with certain repugnant behaviors and activities.

When these behaviors are brought to the attention of the public, the corporation needs to distance themselves from the person or persons engaged in them.

How a corporation goes about showing their investors they are “taking actions” varies depending on how little they believe they can get away with.

“Alies is out. No more sexual harassing here! Problem solved. Let’s talk about Bill Clinton and the woman who stood by him while he was in the White House! What does that say about her?”

And the show in show business goes on. As in “show me the money.” If the NewsCorp shareholders believe that canning Ailes is enough to stop the bad PR they won’t demand more action.

So how do we convince the shareholders it’s not enough?  By encouraging more stories from the survivors, and then not attacking them for failing to speak up sooner.
 
We could also ask other media outlets to do some research, Gawker has nothing more to lose. But maybe they won’t. Then we should look for stories of repugnant activities, since that door is now cracked open. I suggest that we also look for people engaging in criminal acts at Fox News.

Because dollars to doughnuts, when you turn over the rock of Fox News you will find illegal acts.

Let the dirt digging begin!

Guess who said he planned to edit Melania’s speech?

Published by digby on July 20, 2016

Guess who said he planned to edit Melania’s speech?

by digby

That’s right:

Trump told the New York Times, he’s going to deal with this head-on by having Melania talk about “women’s issues” and Ivanka about “her passion for gender equality.” He also says he’s planning to edit their remarks himself and add “ideas, jokes, points about Trump.” 

According to MSNBC, the draft the speechwriter Matthew Scull turned in did not contain the Michelle Obama remarks.

Occam’s razor folks.

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The movement puts their best face on the trainwreck

Published by digby on July 19, 2016

The movement puts their best face on the trainwreck

by digby

This is from Viguerie’s shop. Clearly, the prime directive is to keep the rubes as angry with the establishment as they can throughout this debacle so they can keep the dollars flowing after November:

Day One of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention – and make no mistake about it this is Donald Trump’s convention – was notable in many ways large and small, but the most important was its minimal airtime for politicians, especially establishment Republican politicians.

And this is exactly how Trump’s people wanted it.

Donald and Melania TrumpHaving a bevy of establishment Republican politicians like the Senate’s Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush would have stepped on Donald Trump’s message that he’s the anti-establishment candidate.

So instead of establishment Republican politicians that millions of Americans hate, Trump got his message out – verbally and non-verbally – through a host of decidedly non-establishment speakers and advocates.

And it worked.

But can you imagine the buttoned-down uptight Romney crowd putting the hirsuite Willie Robertson, star of the hit TV series “Duck Dynasty,” on stage?

Or Calvin Klein male fashion model and actor – and legal immigrant – Antonio Sabato Jr. on national TV to sell their candidate?

Never happen.

But the Trump people and Donald Trump understand marketing and communications on a completely different level than your typical establishment Republican politician, and so they understand that not only is “the medium is the message,” as media genius Marshall McLuhan insightfully put it, but that sometimes “the messenger is the message.”

And so Trump’s message of “I’m not one of them” came through loud and clear last night, even as the establishment media talking heads keep wanting to make a big deal out of the fact that certain politicians weren’t on the stage.

That doesn’t mean there were absolutely no politicians; freshman Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa spoke, Congressman Michael McCaul, Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee was perhaps the most notable Capitol Hill establishment figure to speak and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, revered among populists and believers in American exceptionalism, also spoke.

But the strongest messages – indeed the core messages of the Trump campaign – were delivered for the most part by non-politicians, such as Benghazi heroes Mark Geist (OZ) and John Tiegen (TIG), Milwaukee Country Sheriff David A. Clarke and Patricia Smith, whose son Foreign Service computer specialist Sean Smith was also killed in Benghazi.

Law and order, the truth that Hillary Clinton is a liar and directly responsible for the deaths of brave Americans, and the dangers of her policies on Islam and the Middle East were delivered not by Henry Kissinger or some other striped pants diplomat or scholar, but by a mother, a county sheriff and two brave Americans who fought an epic stand worthy of the Chosin Reservoir, The Lost Battalion or Landing Zone X-Ray, and became through their book and movie “13 hours” heroes that to this day remain unacknowledged by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In an evening program of strong messages and unconventional messengers two stood out to me; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump’s wife Melania.

There is probably no one at the national level of Republican politics who has known Donald Trump longer, and knows him better than Rudy Giuliani.

And there’s probably no Republican politician who does not share the conservative social agenda and yet retains tremendous respect and credibility with the conservative grassroots than Rudy Giuliani.

Until Donald Trump came along, for conservatives west of the Henry Hudson Parkway Rudy Giuliani was the only New Yorker who actually resonated – and especially after 911 – came to represent the spirit, the pride, the greatness, the vast economic success of New York.

So when Giuliani said:

I have known Donald Trump for almost 30 years. And he has created and accomplished great things. But beyond that this is a man with a big heart.

Every time New York City suffered a tragedy, Donald Trump was there to help.

And he did it anonymously. (I bet that’s a surprise)

You deserve to know this personal side about our next President. He has been a great father, father-in-law, grandfather and friend to me and my family.

He will keep us safe and help us achieve and embrace our greatness.

Even conservatives who most assuredly disagree with Giuliani’s position on many items on the conservative agenda found his message about Trump pursuasive and credible.

That’s because when Rudy Giuliani took the stage Donald Trump wasn’t being endorsed by a politician – a former Mayor and unsuccessful presidential candidate – he was being endorsed by the Empire State Building, the New World Trade Center and the muscular power that Americans used to associate with New York, before it was abandoned (once again) to the Democrats and to squeegee men, Occupy Wall Street, street thugs and Far Left liberal corruption and craziness about regulating soft drinks and gender pronouns.

Likewise, the key to Mrs. Trump’s effectiveness was not so much what she said, it was how she said it and how she presented herself.

And once again we look to Marshall McLuhan to understand that Mrs. Trump’s role was one of refined and highly targeted communications, which to my mind she executed it with precision as America’s first political spokesmodel.

This is not meant as criticism of Mrs. Trump, quite the opposite.

In the world of commercial and retail mass marketing no one would hire Bill Clinton to sell anything, especially his wife.

It is no different in politics – unless you are a Kool aide-drinking liberal – no one wants to buy anything from the crude, grasping, horndog-in-chief Bill Clinton.

And just by showing up he’s a one-man reminder of the scandals, the avarice, the lies and the two Americas – the lawless elite and the rest of us – that Obama and Clinton have created.

Mrs. Trump, on the other hand, communicated a sophisticated grace, humor and glamour – the essence of the Trump brand for his hotels and office buildings – which is simply another side of Trump’s “Make America Great” political message.

Unlike the other speakers, Mrs. Trump wasn’t on the stage to sell policy or any other ideas, she was there as the embodiment of the Trump brand, a role she played exceedingly well.

In the early days of TV one of the ways consumer products built their brand was to sponsor television variety shows and dramas, such as the General Electric Theatre hosted by Ronald Reagan.

Had Reagan hosted the Children’s Hour or the Howdy Doody Show he would have never been President because there was a symbiotic relationship in those shows; the quality of the content reinforced the brand of the host, just as the host’s polished delivery and informed commentary reinforced the sponsoring brand and its products.

And that really summarizes Day One of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention. Trump’s goal, as we see it, was to build and reinforce his brand, as much through non-verbal as through verbal communications.

By keeping establishment Republicans like Paul Ryan, that millions of Americans hate, off the stage, and by putting Mrs. Trump, the very embodiment of the Trump brand, plus a highly targeted group of political outsiders on the stage, Trump went far in accomplish that goal.

His brand is chaos, dishonesty and fraud so this is really going quite well for him.

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Chachi on the dais by Dennis Hartley

Published by digby on July 19, 2016

Chachi on the dais

by Dennis Hartley

Distinguished thespian and stentorian speaker Scott Baio gave an awesome speech at the RNC last night! He tore Hillary a new one:

“We have a choice in November, we can go for Hillary Clinton, … who wants to continue the same policies that are wrecking this country, policies that make us unsafe, a woman who somehow feels that she’s entitled to the presidency, that she’s somehow owed it, or we can go for Donald Trump.”

Dude! He cut her so low! Speaking of “wrecked”, here’s Baio delivering his finest turn in the best ABC After-school Special ever:

ACT-ing!


 Cross-posted from Den of Cinema

Update from digby:

Here’s Chachi on his misogynist tweet:

Baio told Hall that he wrote his short speech in church in Sunday morning before delivering it on Monday night. The host immediately seized on Baio’s invocation of his religious foundation to call into question a meme he posted on Twitter just over a week ago that appeared to label Hillary Clinton a “cunt.” “Did you think about that in church when you tweeted it out?” she asked.

As he has said in previous interviews, Baio dismissed the idea that there was anything offensive about the tweet, saying he was offering up the tweet “without commentary” and “just put it up there” for people in interpret as they will.

“But you know what it meant when you tweeted it out,” Hall said, asking him where his religious “moral compass” was when he decided to put that message out into the world.

“You can look at it any way you want,” Baio said, disingenuously. “It’s the word ‘count,’ that’s what she’s standing in front of, I just put it up there. There’s no commentary attached to it, I didn’t call her anything, and the fact that you question my faith over putting up a picture is not nice.”

Yeah, it’s not nice to question the “faith” of some washed up sit-com star who tweets that Hillary Clinton is a cunt. Very not nice. She should be ashamed of herself.

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