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Month: October 2016

Sure, Milošević, why not?

Sure, Milošević, why not?


by digby

I don’t know what to make of this but … ok:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has issued an apology for his country’s decision to bomb Serbia during Bill Clinton’s tenure at the White House. 

U.S. and NATO allies launched aerial campaigns against the faltering Yugoslav regime, targeting ethnic Serb troops, in 1995 and 1999. The first attack was carried out in support of groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina, seeking independence from Belgrade, while the second was in support of similar forces in Kosovo. 

“The bombing of Serbs, who were our allies in both world wars, was a big mistake,” Trump told the Serbian weekly magazine Nedeljnik for an article published on its website Thursday. “Serbians are very good people. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration caused them a lot of harm, but also throughout the Balkans, which they made a mess out of.” 

The interview was conducted via email correspondence with a Trump campaign senior adviser, Suzanne Ryder Jaworowski, who is also campaign manager for the state of Indiana, Nedeljnik’s managing editor, Marko Prelevic, told Newsweek.

[…]

Eric Gordy, professor in Southeast European Politics at University College London, told Newsweek Trump’s words echo the tactic used by the Russian government to cultivate support among Serbs. 

“The most obvious interpretation of his statement is that it is another sign of alignment with Russia,” he says. “To be honest, this kind of statement is usually more a symbolic attempt for Russian politicians to drum up resentment towards the U.S.,” Gordy explains. 

“I expect this is probably just rhetoric by Trump as U.S. policy in the Balkans has been pretty consistently supportive of Serbia since they waged the aerial campaign in the 1990s,” Gordy adds. “Otherwise it is hard to imagine that the U.S. could be more pro-Serbia at the moment.”

He wasn’t talking about the Serbia of today. He was talking about the Serbia of the 1990s.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Trump would defend the regime of Slobodan Milosovic. He’s certainly his kind of guy.

Update: The Trump camp says this is a hoax. I have no idea if that’s true.

It would serve them right if it was … Live by the phony stories, die by teh phony stories.
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Defend the future by @BloggersRUs

Defend the future
by Tom Sullivan

The media spectacle surrounding the ignominious Republican nominee’s serial sexual assaults carries echoes of the old, Times Square peep-show barkers: “All lewd. All live. All the time.” I need a shower. Two showers.

Now you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but there is actually another major candidate in the 2016 race for president. The Washington Post just endorsed her:

IN THE gloom and ugliness of this political season, one encouraging truth is often overlooked: There is a well-qualified, well-prepared candidate on the ballot. Hillary Clinton has the potential to be an excellent president of the United States, and we endorse her without hesitation.

Furthermore, “No, we are not making this endorsement simply because Ms. Clinton’s chief opponent is dreadful.”

The endorsement itself is the predictable mix of “on the one hand” and “on the other hand,” but concludes Hillary Clinton possesses “seriousness of purpose and relentless commitment, even in the face of great obstacles, to achievements in the public interest.” Her opponent — for those late to the Republican Party — “has shown himself to be bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, contemptuous of democracy and enamored of America’s enemies.”

The Post says that like it’s a bad thing. In fact, that’s just what his most loyal supporters like about him. Especially the misogynistic part: #repealthe19th.

Throughout this election cycle, I have been more focused on the down-ticket races here than on the race for the White House. We have to. President Bernie wasn’t going to solve our Pat McCrory problem. President Hillary wasn’t going to either. North Carolina has to solve its Pat McCrory problem. We have seen since 2010 some of the most cynical and naked attempts to disenfranchise American voters and to bend state government to the will of a party with declining support and a retrograde agenda. Only the intervention of the courts has held back some of the damage. In November, not just 2016 is on the ballot, 2020 is. Control of your state legislature is, and redistricting that will define the character of Congress for the ten years beyond that. Plus, the fate of a young generation whose future is already compromised. Given the threat from climate change, the fate of the planet is on the ballot.

Locally, we sent home an ALEC board member from our state legislature in 2014 and took another local state House seat as well. That, in a year Democrats elsewhere across the country lost and lost big because, as in 2010, Democrats stayed home because the presidency was not on the ballot. The full extent of the damage done here in a few, short years of GOP control is still in question, as is the fate of our businesses, our schools, and the rights of our neighbors. But the damage done is not confined to North Carolina. Ask around. Your state and your representation in Congress is on the block in November, not just because of the federal races on your ballot, but because of the local ones. Control of your state legislature means control of your representation in Washington going forward. Make no mistake. Elections — all of them — are about power and about how it gets shared. Or doesn’t.

What can you do for your country? Defend its future.

He’s right but he doesn’t know it

He’s right but he doesn’t know it

by digby

Rush seems to think what he’s saying is some kind of indictment of “the left.”

Yeah, all those liberals insisting on “consent” is what’s wrong with this world.

I think he means this. So, apparently, does Donald Trump.

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Mr Magoosolini has some memory problems

Mr Magoosolini has some memory problems

by digby

Well, she was in Washington on the day and returned to the city with the entire New York delegation immediately:

Rudy Giuliani should be shunned by decent people everywhere after the garbage he’s spewed in this election. It’s unforgivable.

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Mr Alt-right goes to congress

Mr Alt-right goes to congress

by digby

This is how they mainstream the poison:

Taylor Rose likes to project a fresh-scrubbed, wholesome image to his fellow Montanans while campaigning for a seat in the state’s House of Representatives. It’s easy for the blonde-haired, blue-eyed and clean-shaven 28-year-old from the rural Columbia Falls area to do, flashing a toothy grin and ranting about the need to get the federal government out of workers’ hair and open up the state’s timberlands to lumber operations.

The image, combined with a pleasing message (Rose likes to label himself a “pro-labor Republican”) and a slick campaign, have all raised the prospects that Rose might be able to pull off an upset win over incumbent Rep. Zac Perry, a Democrat, in the race for the House seat in District 3, which historically leans Republican.

What many voters may not realize, however, is Taylor’s long history of deep involvement with the white nationalist movement, and the dangerously bigoted worldview he has promoted since his teenage years –– a history well documented by the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League in the years leading up to his campaign.

But Taylor has now carefully whitewashed his image with the help of the Montana Republican Party. GOP candidates have employed Rose for state campaigns and as a legislative aide. A number of mainstream Republican candidates, including GOP gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte, have contributed to Rose’s campaign. And one leading Montana Republican dismissed concerns about his background, saying “the rest of us think of him as a good conservative.”

Rachel Carroll Rivas, executive director of the Montana Human Rights Network, said the GOP’s embrace of Rose is taking place in the broader context of a national Republican party that has nominated Donald Trump, whose own alliances with the radical right have radically altered the nation’s political landscape.

“In the current climate it’s hard to pick out the most concerning things we see playing out on the ground, but Rose’s candidacy makes the list easily,” she said. “The political environment has clearly shifted when there is mainstream party acceptance and grooming of someone with well-documented white supremacist activity in recent years.”

That’s by Dave Niewert, of SPLC and one of America’s foremost chroniclers of the far right. Click over and read the whole thing. This guy Rose is a full blown white supremacist who has been groomed by the GOP to go to Washington. Unfortunately, he’s not going to be the last. This is the “fresh face” of the new Republican party.

There’s more here.

Update: He running for the state legislature.

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Manmentum!”

Manmentum!”

by digby

Eric Trump sent a fundraising email out to supporters Wednesday morning titled “Momentum,” and included this map.

“As one of the most dedicated grassroots leaders in the country you know, momentum matters,” the email reads. “And right now all the momentum is on our side.” 

Trump called on supporters to donate money to help fund aggressive ad blitzes and “get-out-and-vote operations.” 

“We’re making huge gains against Crooked Hillary that you can see for yourself,” Trump wrote before the image of the above map.

The problem is that map from Nate Silver is this:

Yes, if just men voted, Trump would be winning in a landslide. There are a lot of white guys in this country who love him. But until they manage to repeal the 19th Amendment, that’s not going to be possible.

As you might imagine, the map would look very different if only women were allowed to vote. Let’s just say they don’t love Trump as much as the men do. Even white women.

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This Republican civil war has been going on for a while

This Republican civil war has been going on for a while

by digby

2010
2009
2012
2014

I wrote about the GOP’s dilemma for Salon this morning:

That tweet sent shock waves through the political world yesterday. Democrats understood it to mean that the next four weeks are going to be an ugly mud-wrestling contest the likes of which this country has never seen. They donned their hazmat suits and ventured into the mire. The Republicans, on the other hand, understood that Donald Trump had just declared war on their party.

In a flurry of tweets, he characterized House speaker Paul Ryan as “weak and ineffective” and claimed he provided “zero support.” He then accused Sen. John McCain of being foul-mouthed and begging for his support in the past. And he said the GOP was harder to deal with than his Democratic rival declaring, “Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win — I will teach them!” Trump wasn’t just unshackled, he had staged a prison break and was running screaming through the streets as his many millions of fans cheered him on.

All this evidently came as a surprise to the GOP establishment, which apparently assumed it could abandon all pretense of supporting its own presidential nominee with no repercussions. Apparently leading Republicans still don’t understand what is happening to their party. They seem to be under the impression that their only problem is a strange interloper by the name of Donald Trump, and they couldn’t be more wrong. Their problem is that they have a large and powerful faction of voters who despise them as much as they despise the Democrats.

When President Obama was elected, the Republican base of the party, demoralized and defeated after the mess of the Bush administration, the Great Recession and the euphoria of the Obama campaign, quickly gathered its wits and reformed itself into a new entity they called the Tea Party. At first it simply existed to oppose President Obama’s agenda, the health care reforms in particular. Backed by big special interests and right-wing media, they became a force to reckon with and in 2010, with the economy still mired in recession and people still feeling desperate, they helped the Republicans win back a congressional majority, along the way unseating some long-term Republican incumbents like Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah and Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, both taken down by primary challenges from the Tea Party right. They marched into Washington with a mandate to confront the establishment.

The new insurrectionists also wanted to blow some things up just to show they could, which led to government shutdowns and “hostage taking” and sequestration. It proved they had power to gum up the works but it didn’t result in taking back the White House in 2012, even with Rep. Paul Ryan, every Republican’s dreamboat, on the ticket. That defeat didn’t change their strategy one bit. In fact they redoubled their efforts to turn Washington into a combat zone and whatever small amount of comity was left fell completely apart.

In 2010 and 2012, Tea Party candidates repeatedly won primaries against GOP incumbents or more qualified politicians, often leading to bad results in the general election. They tended to nominate extremists and fringe characters like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Richard Mourdock in Indiana who couldn’t win. To some extent the Tea Party base didn’t care whether the GOP won the seat or not. They were happy to flex their muscles against the establishment and put all officeholders on notice that if they didn’t toe the line, they could be next.

Then came the earthquake of 2014, when the Tea Party and talk radio joined together to help an obscure college professor named Dave Brat take down a very powerful member of Congress. That was, of course, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, who had been touted just a couple of years earlier as one of the conservative Republican “young guns,” the future of the party. Pundits and analysts insisted at the time that the reasons were all local in nature and had nothing to do with broader trends. They were wrong. Brat won because of one issue: immigration, which was stimulating the right in a way they hadn’t seen since the early days of the Obamacare town halls. The primary defeat of Cantor showed the GOP leadership they had targets on their backs too.

A year later, fellow Young Gun Paul Ryan reluctantly took the speakership after John Boehner sacrificed himself in order to get a budget agreement that would hold through the election. Predictably, Ryan soon became an object of mistrust and disappointment. The base, you see, doesn’t understand how our government works, and truly believed that if they sent representatives to Congress they could successfully roll back every liberal achievement of the past 60 years. They’ve been angry at the GOP for failing to do the impossible for quite some time.

This is the same base that today is supporting Donald Trump, the man who reportedly paid someone to listen to talk radio, read right-wing news sites and brief him on them regularly, going all the way back to 2011. He sensed the potency of the racism Barack Obama evoked among that crowd, which was why he based his aborted 2012 run on birtherism. He understood before anyone else that these people were fundamentally xenophobic white nationalists who were looking for someone to articulate their rage about what they saw as the loss of their rightful social status at the hands of nonwhite non-Christians. He also shared their outrage at what they see as threats to American global dominance from immigrants, Muslim extremists and Asian economic competition. Trump understood the Republican base better than the Republican Party itself did back in 2011 and he understands them better today.

Just as the congressional leadership has been caught between a rock and a hard place in the House and Senate these past few years, with the normal workings of our governmental system clashing with the angry base’s demand that they unilaterally disable the executive branch, they are caught now between the moderate Republicans and independents they need to keep their congressional majority and their angry base, who love Trump and will once more rebel if those they send to Washington fail to fulfill their wishes.

This then is just the latest iteration of a dynamic that’s been going on for years. Trump is simply the first opportunist to take it to the presidential level. That dynamic dictates that when he loses, leading figures of the GOP establishment will be blamed whether they stick with Trump or not, so they might as well do what they think is right. The question after all this time is whether they even remember what that is.

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