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Month: August 2016

The world is already reacting

The world is already reacting

by digby

I’ve been writing for a while that if Trump wins, the morning after the election we will wake up to a world that is far more unstable than it’s been in over half a century. The system we have, for better or worse, will no longer be operative and what replaces it will be an unknown and frightening. And the man in charge of changing it is a cretinous demagogue. In fact, it’s already happening:

Phillip Lohaus, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says that in his personal experience, as he has traveled abroad over the last year, “every conversation begins and ends with Trump.”

“A lot of these people don’t understand why a candidate would seek to change an international system that was designed by America and benefits America,” Lohaus said. “They don’t understand why we would undermine that when it is in our interest to keep things together.”

Whether it’s his backing away from America’s NATO commitments, his softer posture toward Russia or his more bellicose approach toward nearly everyone else, Trump is unraveling the bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has held sway for decades — and that is not going unnoticed abroad.

“He’s done serious damage to our position abroad because clearly people wonder whether he reflects an underlying sense of isolationism on the part of the United States that even if he doesn’t win the White House is far more serious than anybody thought,” said Dov Zakheim, a foreign policy adviser who has worked with Republicans on foreign policy from the Ronald Reagan administration to the Mitt Romney campaign.

Trump’s worldview– including his insistence over the weekend that Russia would not invade Ukraine (even though it already occupied Crimea) and his declarations that he would “bomb the shit” out of ISIS without much consideration for civilian casualties–has alarmed traditionally hawkish, Republican-aligned foreign policy advisers and operatives and left leaders on both sides nervous that the world is beginning to reexamine the U.S.’s position on the world stage.

Outside of the broad reshaping of America’s role, experts note that Trump is causing countries to begin discussing contingency plans just in case he’s elected.

In Japan, Lohaus said he was stunned to see a reinvigorated discussion of building up of the country’s military. Lohaus said noted serious discussions about amending the country’s Article Nine, which dictates that Japan’s only military force be for essential self defense, a post-World War II policy that has been credited with helping stabilize the region for nearly 75 years.

“They have to start thinking, ‘Maybe we need to start thinking about ourselves,'” Lohaus told TPM.

Many security experts who spoke with TPM emphasized that Trump’s words have introduced a real uncertainty among allies that the U.S. may not be as willing to help in a crisis as its past presidents have been.

“There are a number of places in the world where stability depends heavily on U.S. reliability and U.S. involvement and calling those into question can be destabilizing as other countries decide to look out for themselves,” said Philip Levy, a senior fellow on global economy at the Chicago Council On Global Affairs.

The world knows that one of the two major American parties has lost its mind and nominated an unfit clown for the presidency. It’s already going to take a lot of work to repair the damage that’s been done. It’s terrifying to think of what would happen if he actually won.

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“Why can’t we use nukes?”

“Why can’t we use nukes?”

by digby

That’s the question Trump reportedly asked several times during a national security briefing:

JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked, at one point, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?” 

MIKE BARNICLE: Wow. 

SCARBOROUGH: That’s one of the reasons why he has — he just doesn’t have foreign policy experts around him. 

BARNICLE: Trump? Trump asked three times whether we can use nuclear weapons? 

SCARBOROUGH: Three times in an hour briefing, “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?”

Everyone is asking Scarborough why he didn’t think this was important enough to report months ago when he first heard it and that’s a good question. But it’s not the most important question. The most important question is whether or not it’s sane to allow someone who doesn’t know why we should not use nuclear weapons to become president of the most powerful nation on earth.

This is nuts. But at least we now know what he means when he says he’s going to “take out ISIS so fast your head will spin.”

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A glimpse into the mind of the crazy man

A glimpse into the mind of the crazy man

by digby


This interview with Trump is very, very creepy.  You have to read the whole thing to get a flavor of how nuts he’s becoming.  This is just one chilling excerpt:

RUCKER: You said yesterday that you worried the election might be rigged in some way. 

TRUMP: Yeah. 

RUCKER: What is your worry exactly? 

TRUMP: I don’t like what’s going on with voter ID. 

RUCKER: It would be what’s happening in the states? 

TRUMP: Well, I think its ridiculous. I mean the voter ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair development. We may have people vote 10 times. It’s inconceivable that you don’t have to show identification in order to vote or that that the identification doesn’t have to be somewhat foolproof.

RUCKER: Although, there’s a tradition in this country of when somebody loses an election, they concede graciously and try to get their supporters on board like Al Gore did in 2000. Would you? You know if some reason Hillary were to win narrowly, would you contest that in some way?

TRUMP: I don’t want to jump the gun. I don’t want to talk about that. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if the election . . . there’s a lot of dirty pool played at the election, meaning the election is rigged. I would not be surprised. The voter ID, they’re fighting as hard as you can fight so that that they don’t have to show voter ID. So, what’s the purpose of that? How many times is a person going to vote during the day? If you don’t have voter ID . . .

RUCKER: Do you think someone can vote multiple times?

TRUMP: Multiple times. How about like 10 times. Why not? If you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting.

RUCKER: Is there anything else that you think could be going on?

TRUMP: Look, you never know. It started with me in Louisiana when I won Louisiana and I got fewer delegates than Ted Cruz.

RUCKER: I remember that.

TRUMP: I said, “Whoa! Whoa! What happens here?” And then I polled well in Colorado. and instead of voting, the bosses picked it. I said, “What’s going on here?” It took me a little while to get accustomed to the world of politics and then once I did we started running them off. But, who would’ve thought that was going to happen? I win a state, I get fewer votes. Then, I poll great in Colorado and all of a sudden . . . the voters aren’t going to choose. The bosses are going to choose. Anything is possible.

From what I gather on cable news and social media it’s considered a matter of fact among some number of people that the primaries were rigged and the general election will also be rigged. In other words, many people have become convinced that they cannot legitimately lose an election.

This is a problem. And it’s a problem that could lead to a crisis if Trump fails to win the election in the fall.

Here’s the full analysis on non-existent voter fraud. And no, the primaries were not rigged either.

Rallying the wrong people

Rallying the wrong people

by digby

This is what happens when you don’t listen to anyone and refuse to prepare:

Donald Trump really, really wants to win Loudoun County—the absurdly wealthy Northern Virginia county where the rally Rahimyar protested took place. Trump even said so in his speech. And he should; George W. Bush won it in 2000 and 2004, and Barack Obama picked it up in 2008 and 2012. Loudoun voters predict presidents. Trump seems to get that.

“Loudoun County is so important,” he told the crowd at the offset of the rally.

But—evidenced by his speech—he doesn’t understand it. At all. And if he wants to compete there, he’s going to have to learn quick.

Loudoun is the richest county in America. That’s due in part to the enormous amount of money the federal government spent on the War on Terror in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The place is replete with defense contractors, engineers, and rocket scientists. And it’s recession-proof; while the rest of the country struggled through the Great Recession, Loudoun kept sprouting up neighborhoods of McMansions, seemingly with a swimming pool in every backyard.

But Trump seems to think it’s part of the Rust Belt. Toward the end of his speech—to an atypically preppy, professional, clean-cut audience—the candidate bashed the county economy.

“You’re doing lousy over here, by the way, I hate to tell you,” he said.

That is empirically false.

He then listed a number of factory closures, including Ball Corp., which was five hours away in Bristol, as far from Loudoun as you can get without leaving the state. And he mentioned the closure of a Smithfield Foods Inc.

“Anybody used to work for Smithfield?” he asked the crowd.

It’s almost certain none of them did. The Smithfield plant that closed was in Hampton Roads, Virginia—three hours from Ashburn, in the southeast corner of the state.

As Trump was going through this list, a man in the front yelled about sequestration—the defense spending cuts that actually jeopardize Northern Virginia jobs.

“It’s true, it’s true,” Trump replied.

Then he went back to naming factories.

“Stanley Furniture closed its plant,” he continued.

Stanley Furniture did indeed recently close a plant, in 2014. That plant was in North Carolina.

He also mentioned the closure of a plant owned by Invista, a Koch Industries company that produces fabric and carpeting. That plant was two hours from Ashburn, and it closed eight years ago.

Then Trump discussed job losses in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

He wasn’t completely tone-deaf; the mogul also talked about increasing defense spending, particularly on the Air Force. But the bulk of his rally speech felt like it was being delivered in Youngstown, Ohio, or Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—he rambled about currency manipulation, NAFTA, unfair competition with South Korea, the perils of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and on and on. And while factory closures and globalization present very real economic hazard to many families around the country, they simply aren’t an issue in Loudoun.

Oops.

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Voting Worries, Real and Otherwise by tristero

Voting Worries, Real and Otherwise

by tristero

I’m less worried about the what’s going on now – which doesn’t mean I’m at all sanguine, this is a very scary election season – than I am about what could happen during and after the voting. There is a very real danger that voting machines could be hacked. Micah Sifry, one of the co-founders of Civic Hall explains in an email blast to members today what the problems could entail:

Rigging

  • Tech and politics: Brian Barrett has a must-read piece in Wired about how America’s electronic voting machines could be hacked this November. Three-quarters of the country votes via paper ballots, he notes and only five (DE, GA, LA, SC and NJ) rely exclusively on “direct recording electronic” machines, while others do so partially, like Pennsylvania. Not every state has a provision for conducting a post-election audit to insure confidence in the results, though three that could be swing states—FL, OH and PA—do have relatively strong audit rules on the books.
  • As security analyst Bruce Schneier pointed out last week in the Washington Post, Russian hackers could disrupt the election not only by interfering with electronic voting machines, but also by deleting voter records, among other tactics.
  • Given that a national voter file with 191 million individual records on it appeared online last December, security experts worry that it would not be difficult for hackers to target state-level voter records to selectively purge people.
  • So, while Republican ignominee Donald Trump has started at Sao that the November election might be “rigged” against him, an unprecedented charge that may undermine confidence in the results, there’s also reason to fear that it might be disrupted from abroad.

Gary Legum in Salon expands on this last point, the danger that Trump and his (often armed) followers are unlikely to accept the results of even a perfectly fair election. He has a lot of information on Trump’s prior paranoid history of claiming rigged results. He reminds us that Roger Stone, an unofficial advisor to Trump, was involved in the infamous Brooks Brothers riot during the 2000 recount that resulted in 8 years of Bush, Jr.

Jamelle Bouie in Slate shares Legum’s concerns and has more on Stone’s comments.

Stopping the bleed by @BloggersRUs

Stopping the bleed
Tom Sullivan

The sagacious Bill Scher presents New Republic readers with a puzzler for lefties dissatisfied that the Democratic Party’s nominee for president is not populist enough:

This dynamic—denouncing Trump on one hand, but saving your most poignant criticism for Clinton—presents a potentially treacherous problem for the left. The Bernie Sanders campaign allowed progressive populists to make big inroads within the Democratic Party, demonstrating their influence by drafting much of the party platform. And with the Trump campaign copying some of Sanders’s positions and rhetoric, progressive populists can further make the case that their vision has the political resonance to expand the Democratic Party’s reach. But if Trump is more associated with populism than Clinton, and then loses decisively in November, populism could be tainted by Trumpism, weakening the left’s leverage over Clinton.

It’s a paradox: Trump’s rise buoys the progressive populists today, yet his defeat could damage them tomorrow.

Specifically, Trump’s defeat could green-light a vote in the “lame duck” congress to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership, populism having failed at the polls and all. That’s not a message the left wants to reinforce.

Clinton is already sending signals that she’s looking to build a broad governing coalition, Scher writes, one that modulates her dependence on the Sanders faction that influenced so heavily the Democratic platform and her own campaign narratives. But “don’t expect her to shout that her victory is a mandate for progressive populism at its purest,” if she wins. The trick this fall is to defeat Trump without defeating populism itself. That means the left defocusing its criticisms of Clinton’s progressive bona fides during the campaign and portraying Trump “as an ideological grifter, seeking to poach economic populism to serve his bigoted ends.”

For the Sanders revolution to sink roots, it must itself broaden its coalition and not lean too heavily on too narrow a message:

Remember, it was Sanders’s inability to build a robustly diverse coalition—not the DNC, not the media, not voting machines—that doomed his presidential insurgency. Eight years ago, Barack Obama took down the vaunted Clinton machine by building a coalition of white liberals, young voters, and African-Americans. Sanders missed a key piece of the progressive puzzle (though he was competitive with African-Americans under 30 years of age).

There are various theories why he struggled, one of which is that his insistence on prioritizing income inequality was, in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s words, a “class first” strategy that didn’t sufficiently emphasize systemic racism. Clinton exploited the opening, declaring just before her string of Deep South victories, which gave her a pledged delegate lead she never relinquished, that the economic populism agenda was “not enough. We also have to break through the barriers of bigotry.” The Sandernistas can’t remain stuck in the “class first” mindset. Touting Trump’s white working class appeal, instead of challenging his populist bona fides, is falling back into the trap.

Perhaps it is the anti-establishment component of populism that has caused the left-right “bleed” this election cycle. That blurring of lines has me worried for some of the same reasons Scher frets about the survival of populism as a political force if we don’t play our cards right.

A string of defeats in the last two weeks for Republican voter disenfranchisement efforts comes just at a time when “third degree Berners”
— claiming disenfranchisement — are veering into Alex Jones territory with a dark narrative about vote suppression, stolen elections, rigged machines, etc. This is exactly the false narrative the right used over decades to build popular support for passing voter disenfranchisement measures in the first place.

At a time the courts have just thrown out the very premise (rather, pretext) for their passage, it is disturbing to see some on the left adopting the same baseless rhetoric Donald Trump is using already to undermine a peaceful transfer of power in January if he loses in November. True the Vote must welcome their support.

He loves the poorly educated

He loves the poorly educated

by digby

Who else?

“You look at The New York Times, I mean, the fail — I call it ‘The Failing New York Times’ because it won’t be in business for another, probably more than a few years unless somebody goes in and buys it and wants to lose a lot of money,” Trump said. “But The New York Times is so unfair. I mean they write three, four articles about me a day. No matter how good I do on something, they’ll never write good.”

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Right wing fears

Right wing fears

by digby

It’s been a while since I checked in with the right wing fever swamp. Here’s the latest:

Dear Digby,

Your answers are urgently needed on our National Citizen Opinion Survey about the growing foothold Islamic supremacists and their agenda for dominating the world known as Sharia are achieving in America.

Alarmingly, those who believe Islam and its repressive anti-Constitutional Sharia must rule the whole world are making serious inroads in towns and cities right here in America – sometimes with our own tax dollars!

What makes matters worse is that Sharia-adherent Muslims are presenting themselves as followers of “religion” and, thereby, entitled to First Amendment protections under our Constitution. In fact, they are waging jihad (holy war) – in one form or another – to force this country and the rest of the world, Muslim and non-Muslims like, to submit to their anti-constitutional legal and political Sharia code.

And with illegal and legal Muslim immigration in America growing at record rates, Sharia’s adherents are seeking to change not only the make-up of our population – as they are doing so dramatically in Europe at the moment. They are also intent on challenging the Judeo-Christian foundation of our U.S. Constitution, our democratic form of government and our culture and values, often in ways unknown to most Americans.

One of those ways is by asserting that their mosques and so-called “Islamic Societies” in this country must be treated like churches and synagogues. In practice, though, such Sharia-adherent facilities serve as infrastructure the jihadists can use to advance their assault against America.

Some provide safe-haven for terrorist recruitment and indoctrination in their quest for world dominance and power. If their counterparts in Europe are any guide, some are also stockpiling weapons for the jihad.

That’s why it’s so vital for you to sign your National Citizen Opinion Survey in support of keeping U.S. courts and government agencies from enabling Sharia law to take hold here. Whether or not this problem has affected your area yet, just think about this. An undercover investigation found that a staggering 80% of the 100 randomly selected American mosques it surveyed conform to Sharia. And each of those 80 mosques promoted “jihad” – violence, terrorism and “holy war” against “non-believers.”
[…]
How can this be happening in our country? Much of it is being orchestrated by a particularly dangerous Islamic supremacist group, the Muslim Brotherhood. In a secret plan that fell into law enforcement’s hands in 2004, the Brotherhood calls its work “civilization jihad,” a stealthy and seditious effort aimed at, in their words, “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”

Here are some of the ways the civilization jihadist leaders are stealthily trying to take us down:

The Islamic supremacists are placing Muslim Brothers into positions as advisors to and, in some cases as employees of, our government – placements that facilitate their insidious influence operations.

The Islamists seek to prevent our free speech – particularly the kind that might allow us to understand and effectively counteract their secretive assaults on our country and its institutions.

Muslim Brotherhood operatives and their enablers are trying to use the “Common Core” curriculum – our children’s textbooks – to promote Islamic supremacism in our academic institutions.

The Islamists are working to insinuate Sharia into U.S. courts and establish their own parallel “Islamic tribunals” to subvert our rule of law and Constitution.

The Islamic supremacists are using our immigration system – especially our refugee resettlement program – to engage in what they call hijra, Muslim colonization, in America.

The Islamists enlist leaders of other religions through so-called “interfaith dialogue” to obscure and enable what is fundamentally a subversive political, not a true religious, agenda. And, Islamic supremacists use what is known as “Sharia-Compliant Finance” to penetrate and coopt our capitalist system. While the Europeans are further down the tubes than we are at the moment, I think you’ll agree there is reason to believe we are catching up. For example:

Many national food chains are now selling unmarked Sharia-compliant “Halal” meat (the animal is ritually-slaughtered by a Muslim who sacrifices it to Allah), unbeknownst to most Americans who are buying and consuming it.

Our own U.S. Treasury Dept. has hosted in its headquarters a course called “Islamic Finance 101” to promote Sharia-compliant financial activities. And today, most of our major banks and financial institutions – including one-time government-owned and taxpayer-funded AIG – offer “Sharia-Compliant” products that are overseen by Muslim “scholars” to ensure they comply with Islamic law.

Some public and taxpayer-funded university gyms are now providing separate hours for male and female swimming – to comply with Sharia laws for Islamic followers.

Several years ago, at a Tyson’s chicken processing plant in Tennessee, the American Labor Day holiday was REPLACED with an Islamic religious holiday. A public outcry forced the company to reverse that decision, but it did so by making accommodations for both holidays.

A New Jersey judge denied a protective order to a Moroccan-American woman being systematically beaten and tortured by her Muslim husband on the grounds that he was just practicing his faith according to Sharia. And in Virginia, an Islamic school operating under Sharia not only ignored the reports by a little girl that she was being molested by her father, but the principal sent her home for him to “handle it”.

My name is Frank Gaffney. I am the founder and President of Secure Freedom (also known as the Center for Security Policy). For twenty-eight years, we have forged partnerships between elected and other government officials, present and former military leaders, experts and citizens like you to safeguard our U.S. national security against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Since well before the attacks by jihadists on 9/11, we have been investigating and challenging Islamic supremacism, and the growing influence of Sharia in America. Perhaps you’ve seen me as a guest on Fox News and other media outlets warning about Sharia. They call me or a member of my staff when they need an expert on how Islamic supremacism, its Sharia program and jihad are becoming problems for Americans – not just somewhere else, but here at home, as well.

Make no mistake. These threats will destroy America from within – unless we stop them. That’s why we’ve launched a major national educational campaign to expose millions of Americans to the truth and mobilize them to turn this crisis around now . . . before it’s too late.
[…]
Simply put, Sharia is fundamentally incompatible with the rule of law in a republic such as ours. That’s because our Constitution’s Article I explicitly makes it the “supreme law of the land.” Sharia law cannot be allowed to supplant that founding document – especially since it guarantees that every individual citizen is “endowed by our Creator” with an identical set of rights, no matter their gender or religion. That’s not the case under Sharia. Muslims have different rights than non-Muslims. Men have different rights than women. And some – like homosexuals, apostates and those who offend Muslims – have no rights at all and are eligible to be killed.

But if the Islamic supremacists succeed in hiding their true agenda and the progress they are making towards realizing it, they will continue to erode our freedom of speech and other rights and continue to subvert our country. By engaging our legislators, enlisting our community leaders and educating millions of concerned Americans around the county with information kits and critical alerts, I believe this is a battle we can win. But not without help like yours and others who we are asking to give us a hand. And our first and most critical step is to get my email and this National Citizen Opinion Survey to at least 3 million like-minded citizens starting within the next 60 days. And that’s where your assistance is sorely needed…

Perhaps this problem has not directly affected you or your community, yet. But I can assure you, with Muslim immigration at record rates and the success of the Islamists’ civilization jihad, it soon will.

So please join us in working to counter jihad and secure freedom by completing the National Citizen Opinion Survey – a critical first step in helping us protect our Constitution and our country in these difficult and increasingly dangerous times.

With heartfelt thanks for your help,

Frank Gaffney
Founder and President
Secure Freedom

And people wonder how Donald Trump came to win the GOP nomination? The GOP has put up with people like this for decades. And now the wingnuts have come home to roost.

Also too:

“The level of self-deception necessary to misunderstand the Muslim Brotherhood verges on a psychosis,” said Newt Gingrich. Yet time and again Senator John McCain has risen to publicly, and on very personal terms, defend Muslim Brotherhood connected individuals from scrutiny of their association with the largest and most dangerous jihadi organization.

So, there you go.

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