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Month: December 2016

Where’s Jesus?

Published by digby on December 16, 2016

Where’s Jesus?

by digby

I don’t think there are enough Christmas trees on stage myself. And were are the angels toppers?  No crosses? Is this some kind of pagan “Xmas” pageant?

I call bullshit.

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Consensus at last

Published by digby on December 16, 2016

Consensus at last

by digby

Well, better late than never I guess, but really, really late:

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials.

Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion — and officials say that he never changed his position — suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA.

“Earlier this week, I met separately with (Director) FBI James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” CIA Director John Brennan said in a message to the agency’s workforce, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.

“The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing the thorough review of this issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led by the DNI,” Brennan’s message read.

So that’s good.

Recall this from November 1st:

Comey was concerned publicly blaming Russia for hacks of Democrats could appear too political in run-up to elections

By Ellen Nakashima November 1

FBI Director James B. Comey advised against the Obama administration publicly accusing Russia of hacking political organizations on the grounds that it would make the administration appear unduly partisan too close to the Nov. 8 election, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

But he supported the administration’s formal denunciation last month as long as it did not have the FBI’s name on it, they said. Comey was sensitive not only to his agency appearing to influence the election but also to seeming biased while it was conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

At the same time, the bureau works with Russian services on a variety of terrorism and criminal matters.

[U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaigns to interfere in the 2016 election]

The FBI declined to comment.

Nonetheless, Comey’s concern about election timing has some officials scratching their heads in light of his decision last week to notify Congress — 11 days before the election — that the FBI was planning to review newly discovered emails in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

That notification set off an uproar in both parties, as lawmakers demanded to know what was in the emails and whether there was any indication of criminal wrongdoing.

“It’s really hard to square” the two, said one official, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal discussions.

Comey’s reluctance to have the FBI linked to the public attribution was first reported by CNBC.

Other officials familiar with Comey’s thinking say that there is no contradiction in his actions. In the case of the newly found Clinton emails, the official said, he was well aware of the approaching election. But he determined it was more important to inform Congress of the development, given that he had testified that the investigation was completed and that he nonetheless would look at “any new and substantial information.”

In the debate over publicly naming Russia, the FBI has investigative interests to protect, officials said. At the same time, other officials said, the aim of public attribution was to stop Russia from undermining confidence in the integrity of the election.

On Friday, Oct. 7, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint statement, formally blaming Moscow for attempting to interfere in the election, including by hacking the computers of political organizations.

Although the statement did not name victims, it was clearly alluding to the breaches of the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic organizations, and the subsequent leaking of embarrassing emails of Democratic officials on sites such as WikiLeaks.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.

The news of the DNC hack broke in June, with cybersecurity experts who responded to the breach concluding it was the work of Russian government hackers. FBI investigators at the time privately said that was their conclusion, too. A series of other breaches soon came to light, including of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which the FBI privately said were carried out by the Russians.

But the White House, Justice Department, State Department and other agencies debated for months whether to officially blame Moscow.

Comey’s instincts were to go with the public attribution even as late as August, said one participant in the debate. But as the weeks went by and the election drew nearer, “he thought it was too close,” the official said.

When, by early October, the decision was made, the talk shifted to who would make the announcement. In December 2014, it was the FBI that publicly pointed the finger at North Korea for hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment and damaging its computers. That was because the attribution to Pyongyang was based on an FBI investigation, said a senior administration official. In the Russian case, the attribution was based on a fusion of intelligence from intelligence agencies, the bureau and private-sector cyber experts, the official said. “So it made sense that the people who were responsible for integrating all of that information” — the ODNI — should be part of the announcement, he said.

DHS joined the attribution because it is the agency responsible for working with state and local governments in protecting election systems.

The announcement did not mention the White House, which also had been very concerned about appearing to influence the election.

He should be fired. But he won’t be.

The FBI may have come around, bu I’m going to guess they will be happy to assist the Republicans in the cover-up. It’s clear they are complicit.

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Trump’s army

Published by digby on December 16, 2016

Trump’s army

by digby

Krugman talks about useful idiots in his column today:

It’s important to realize that the postelection C.I.A. declaration that Russia had intervened on behalf of the Trump campaign was a confirmation, not a revelation (although we’ve now learned that Mr. Putin was personally involved in the effort).

The pro-Putin tilt of Mr. Trump and his advisers was obvious months before the election — I wrote about it in July. By midsummer the close relationship between WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence was also obvious, as was the site’s growing alignment with white nationalists.

Did Republican politicians, so big on flag waving and impugning their rivals’ patriotism, reject this foreign aid to their cause? No, they didn’t. In fact, as far as I can tell, no major Republican figure was even willing to criticize Mr. Trump when he directly asked Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It has long been obvious — except, apparently, to the news media — that the modern G.O.P. is a radical institution that is ready to violate democratic norms in the pursuit of power. Why should the norm of not accepting foreign assistance be any different?

The bigger surprise was the behavior of the news media, and I don’t mean fake news; I mean big, prestigious organizations. Leaked emails, which everyone knew were probably the product of Russian hacking, were breathlessly reported as shocking revelations, even when they mostly revealed nothing more than the fact that Democrats are people.

Meanwhile, the news media dutifully played up the Clinton server story, which never involved any evidence of wrongdoing, but merged in the public mind into the perception of a vast “email” scandal when there was nothing there.

And then there was the Comey letter. The F.B.I. literally found nothing at all. But the letter dominated front pages and TV coverage, and that coverage — by news organizations that surely knew that they were being used as political weapons — was almost certainly decisive on Election Day.

So as I said, there were a lot of useful idiots this year, and they made the election hack a success.

Yes there were many useful idiots then and the phenomenon continues. I’ve lost interest in internecine battles and policing of hypocrisy, both liberal and conservative. All of that seems completely irrelevant now.

There has never been anyone like Trump, so I recognize that he’s difficult to wrap your mind around. But I truly believe he’s also the greatest threat to world peace and American democracy we’ve seen in many a moon. America is still the most powerful nation on earth and it’s in the hands of a cretinous demagogue with fascist tendencies and he’s surrounding himself with sycophants and lunatics. It will be a miracle if we manage to avoid catastrophe.

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Will the congress hold the cabinet to a higher standard than the American people have held the president?

Published by digby on December 16, 2016

Will the congress hold the cabinet to a higher standard than the American people have held the president?

by digby
I wrote about the upcoming hearings for Salon this morning:

Anyone who is observing this trainwreck of a presidential transition will not be surprised to learn that one of its most important duties is being carried out in slipshod fashion. According to the Wall Street Journal, the interviewing of nominees for the cabinet and other important administration jobs is haphazard at best. Announcements come at the whim of the president-elect, making it very difficult to create what is normally a thematic introduction of the new administration. Donald Trump just throws names out when he feels like it, and nobody has time to prepare the ground with the Senate and gather “sponsors” who will usher the nominees through the hearings and create an orderly process.

The incoming administration is also apparently failing to vet its nominees correctly, which is usually the most important job in the transition. According to the Journal, Trump is announcing his choices “without requiring a review of extensive paperwork about their background and financial records, including tax returns.” This is a vital task to ensure that a new administration is not met with any surprises in the hearings. With so many nominees without previous experience in government and so many potential conflicts due to their business careers, this ought to be of particular importance.

And it’s not just the newbies who aren’t being properly vetted. Even Sen. Jeff Sessions, nominated for attorney general, has raised eyebrows among Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats by refusing to give answers or provide material in response to the standard questionnaire. When the committee followed up, he still failed to provide the information they requested, which may not be surprising, since Sessions was famously denied a federal judgeship due to a troubling racist history turned up by this same committee in the 1980s.

One would assume Sessions might have learned his lesson since then, but committee Democrats and groups like People for the American Way are justifiably concerned that he has failed to provide records of any speeches, Op-Eds or interviews prior to 1998, specifically on touchy subjects like immigration. The senior Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has requested that Sessions’ confirmation be postponed until he provides all the requested material. So far, there is little reason to believe that’s going to happen.

In years past, this lackadaisical vetting process might well have ended with a nominee forced to withdraw, or even a possible rejection. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush nominated John Tower, a longtime Texas senator and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to be his secretary of defense. Being a member of the club, everyone assumed he’d be easily confirmed but it turned out that Tower was known as an excessive drinker and womanizer and he was voted down 53-47.

A few years later, President Bill Clinton nominated lawyer Zoe Baird to be the first female attorney general, and she was forced to withdraw when it was revealed that she had hired an undocumented nanny and failed to pay Social Security taxes for her in a timely manner. His next nominee, Kimba Wood, was also quickly withdrawn when it turned out she had also employed an undocumented nanny, although she’d paid the required taxes. The press was in a frenzy for weeks over all this, even dubbing it “Nannygate.” Clinton finally was able to seat the first female A.G. by finding a nominee who had no children, Janet Reno.

When President Obama named former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2009, his nomination was derailed when it was found that Daschle hadn’t reported income on one of the required forms, and had failed to pay some taxes on a car and driver that had been provided for him. He paid them late, but the Republicans called for the fainting couch and Daschle was forced to withdraw as well.

The upshot is that cabinet nominees are supposed to be squeaky clean, and under normal circumstances any slight problem with their financial records or their personal behavior can be lethal. So far there have been some grumblings among Republican senators about Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO Trump has chosen to be secretary of state, largely because of Tillerson’s business ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin. So members of the media are breathlessly anticipating grueling hearings.

But why? We just elected a president who insulted POWs and Gold Star parents, who talked about his penis on national television and was heard on tape bragging about grabbing women by the crotch. He is an admitted fraud who refuses to divulge his taxes. His conflicts of interest, and those of his family, are unprecedented. It is clear that the FBI stepped into the election in the final days on his behalf, and we are now embroiled in a global scandal and potential national security crisis due to evidence that Vladimir Putin himself intervened in the election to help Trump win the election.

Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that the GOP Congress, and by extension their voters, will find something disqualifying about Trump’s cabinet choices? Sure, there are conflict-of-interest laws that apply to people who aren’t the president. Even so, how can anyone demand that a cabinet official release his financial information when the president, a billionaire with potential conflicts all over the world, has refused to? What personal misdeeds could possibly top what we know about Donald Trump’s predatory activities? The idea that hiring an undocumented nanny could be disqualifying when Trump has employed thousands of undocumented immigrants as construction workers or hotel staff is laughable. Sure the Democrats will bring these matters up, but it’s highly doubtful that the GOP majority will deny any appointment. They only apply such double standards to Democrats.

Yesterday it was reported that Trump has decided not to divest himself of his business, and that his team has found a “loophole” in the nepotism laws that make it illegal for his family to be directly involved in his administration. So let’s not kid ourselves. We have crossed into new territory in which there are no rules, and barely any laws, constraining the presidency. Whatever fireworks may happen at the confirmation hearings will all be for the reality show we now call politics.

NCGOP: Ruthless is as ruthless does

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 16, 2016

NCGOP: Ruthless is as ruthless does
by Tom Sullivan

A former state lawmaker tells me Republican colleagues encountered in the halls of the North Carolina state legislature yesterday tried to avoid discussing the rolling coup the NCGOP is conducting. Their brush-off? “I’m not in leadership.” No, they are in followership. Evil really is banal.

Having lost the governor’s mansion to Democrat Roy Cooper, Republicans in special session have introduced measures to cut Cooper off at the knees before he takes office. The efforts are as devious as they are clumsy. The New York Times Editorial Board calls it a brazen power grab:

… Republican lawmakers introduced bills to, among other things, require State Senate confirmation of cabinet appointments; slash the number of employees who report to the governor to 300 from 1,500; and give Republicans greater clout on the Board of Elections, the body that sets the rules for North Carolina’s notoriously burdensome balloting.

[…]

This legislative power grab is the latest underhanded step by a state Republican Party desperate to stay in power in a state where demographic changes would normally benefit Democrats. Republicans in North Carolina, a presidential battleground state, have used aggressive redistricting and voting suppression measures that are among the most brazen in the nation to win elections. The courts have blocked some of these efforts, but Republicans have found workarounds, for instance, by limiting voting hours and sites.

“I think they’re doing this because they think they can get away with it,” said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina.

Cooper, the sitting state attorney general, has threatened to sue.

Jamelle Bouie calls the effort “a new nullification crisis,” something the South and North Carolina have seen before:

The Republican Party of North Carolina in 2016 isn’t avowedly white supremacist or openly opposed to the participation of black Americans and other disfavored groups. It isn’t a replica of that older iteration of the Democratic Party. But in this age of backlash, it has been captured by a similar spirit of reaction and illiberalism. And while the aims are different—partisan control for right wing, ideological reasons—the means are very familiar: disenfranchisement of blacks, attacks on the machinery of elections, insinuations of fraud, attempts to usurp the voters themselves.

The trouble is that if this spirit of nullification and white tribalism—this spirit of Confederacy—has captured the former party of Lincoln, then history suggests its hold may last for decades. Jim Crow government held sway until the 1960s, when it fell in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and our second Reconstruction. If unchallenged, disenfranchisement works. And under President Donald Trump, there’s little chance of challenge; soon the federal office tasked with protecting voters will be held by a man who supports the effort to suppress the vote.

Gov. Pat McCrory’s overreach on the anti-LGBT HB2 cost him his job, but only by 10,000 votes. Still, not an insignificant achievement in a state that went for Trump for president. But had the courts not intervened to strike down much of the state’s 2013 vote suppression law last summer, McCrory might have squeaked by, as his colleagues well know.

To Bouie’s point (“if unchallenged”), as I wrote yesterday, massive resistance is about the only play North Carolina progressives have left. Democrats don’t have the votes. Next year they won’t have the U.S. Supreme Court or the Department of Justice either. If Republicans get their way, they will dominate state and county Boards of Elections as well. But the Moral Monday/Forward Together fusion movement the NC-NAACP led successfully to defeat McCrory is not going anywhere. They were there last night being arrested again for civil disobedience:

Saturday February 11, 2017 (10 a.m.) is the tentative date for HKonJ (Historic Thousands on Jones Street), an annual march and rally in Raleigh led by NC-NAACP president Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II. There were at least 30,000 people when I attended last in 2014 (local media reported 80,000) to protest Pat McCroy and the NCGOP’s voter suppression efforts. Weather permitting post-Trump inauguration, it could be massive enough in 2017 to draw national press that ignored it then.

Forward Together will be at the legislature on Jones Street again today at 10 a.m. EST this morning. The way to successfully challenge the ruthless? Be relentless.

End the scourge of food dependency

Published by digby on December 16, 2016

End the scourge of food dependency

 by digby

Larry Kudlow has been named as head of Trump’s Council of Economic advisers:

Update: Yet another Fox TV celebrity named to his National Security staff:

Yeah, walls work — to keep people in. If you’re willing to shoot them if they try to get out.

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If you’re honest about your corruption can you call it unethical?

Published by digby on December 15, 2016

If you’re honest about your corruption can you call it unethical?

by digby

Greg Sargent caught Sean Spicer explaining why Trump’s blatant conflicts of interest aren’t unethical:

“You tell everyone, here’s what’s going on, here’s the process, here are the people that are playing a role, that’s being transparent. Conflicts of interest arise when you’re not — when you’re sneaky about it, when you’re shady about it, when you’re not transparent about it.”

See? Trump is openly selling the “presidential brand” and using his position for personal profit which makes him honest. Or something. Since the only remedy for a criminal president is impeachment and the Republican congress is either in thrall or intimidated, Trump knows he can do whatever he chooses and there’s nothing anyone will do to stop him. It’s a waste of time to try to hide his corruption and they’ve figured out that being “transparent” about their criminal behavior perversely offers them a public defense.

When you elect a thoroughly shameless person to be president, you shouldn’t expect them to have any shame.

Sadly, I actually think this will work for many Americans and most of the Republican Party until there is some evidence that it resulted in those voters being personally harmed.  (It’s not as if he had a consensual affair, ran a global charity for poor people or used a private email server fergawdsakes!) It almost certainly will have to be an economic crisis or a war for his supporters to hold him responsible for his criminality. Short of that I think his supporters are fine with him and his family stealing the country blind — just as long as no benefits flow to people they believe don’t deserve it.

Trump said it himself many times, in different contexts: “to the victor belongs the spoils”

Trump didn’t keep his intentions secret. His voters knew what he was planning. They didn’t mind.

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The one person Trump doesn’t try to dominate

Published by digby on December 15, 2016

The one person Trump doesn’t try to dominate


by digby

I wrote about Trump’s odd submissiveness toward Vladimir Putin for Salon today:

One of the most memorable moments of the 2016 presidential campaign was the GOP debate in which our president elect felt the need to reassure the American people about the size of his penis:

It didn’t end there. After the debate there was this:

Trump could not laugh off the jibe and had no shame in openly discussing his manly attributes in the most public forum imaginable. It was clear in that moment that he was simultaneously insecure and shameless. That’s an odd combination.

Dominant masculinity was a central theme of Trump’s campaign and apparently intrinsic to his appeal. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo developed a thesis some time ago about what he called “dominance politics” and described Trump’s particular version of it as being “largely about getting inside other people’s heads with over-the-top aggression that knocks them on their heels and leaves them unprepared to fight back.” It’s as apt a description of Trump’s pugilistic style as I’ve seen.

The idea was well illustrated by Paul Waldman in this piece for the The Week:

When Trump decides to go after you, he considers carefully both your weak points and the audience for his attack. So when he decided to pummel Jeb Bush — apparently for his own amusement, as much as out of any real political concerns — he hit upon the idea that Bush was “low energy,” something Bush had a hard time countering without sounding like a whiny grade-schooler saying, “Am not!” More than anything else it was a dominance display, a way of showing voters he could push Jeb around and there was nothing Jeb could do about it. With a primary electorate primed by years of watching their candidates fetishize manliness and aggression, the attack touched a nerve.

Marshall pointed out that the Republican party has been practicing this form of politics for a long time, but that Trump is something of a savant:

Trump doesn’t apologize. He hurts people and they go away. He says things that would kill a political mortal (ban members of an entire religion from entering the country) and yet he doesn’t get hurt. Virtually everything Trump has done over the last six months, whether it’s a policy proposal or personal attack, has driven home this basic point: Trump is strong. He does things other people can’t.

For months he bragged, strutted and insulted every rival and when they finally conceded defeat he would welcome them back into his good graces as long as they publicly submitted to him. Who can forget the picture of Chris Christie standing behind Trump at a press conference as if he were Carson, the butler from “Downton Abbey.” Trump’s recent behavior toward his formerly harsh critic, Mitt Romney, in which he dangled the secretary of state job and demanded an apology, before ultimately giving the post to someone else, is another example.

And we know all too well what Trump did to Hillary Clinton. By the time the campaign came to an end he was snarling to her face that if he became president he planned to throw her in jail, something he later recanted but which hovers over her like a sword of Damocles if she ever steps out of line.

Foreign leaders came in for similar insults. When Time named German chancellor Angela Merkel person of the year for 2015, Trump tweeted “I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite. They picked person who is ruining Germany.” (Since he won it this year, he’s been complaining to his cheering crowds that TIME no longer calls it “Man of the Year,” apparently feeling that being a mere “person” is less impressive.)

Interestingly, we haven’t heard him complain about the latest Forbes rankings of the most powerful people in the world. Trump makes the list, but he’s in the No. 2 spot. No. 1 is Russian president Vladimir Putin. But then, for some reason, Trump has never seemed to feel the same sense of macho competitiveness with Putin that he’s shown toward other people. In fact, Trump has been defensive of him, almost submissive. Considering his usual aggressive, macho behavior, that is very much out of character.

Throughout this campaign and since the election, Trump has extolled the virtues of Putin, showing none of his usual bellicose bravado or nationalist fervor. He didn’t seem to know that Russia had invaded Ukraine and when corrected said that he believed it was a welcome invasion. When confronted with the fact that Putin stands accused of killing reporters and and political rivals he responded by saying, “Our country does plenty of killing also.” He later joked on the campaign trail about following Putin’s lead and killing journalists himself. He goes out of his way to call the Russian leader “strong,” Trump’s highest compliment.

Today Trump says that he and Putin have never met, but in this TV interview taped in Moscow in November 2013, Trump said he has a relationship with the Russian president and that he assumed Putin would be watching. Trump often compliments Putin for his “popularity”and throughout the campaign he has insisted, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary, that there is no reason to believe that the Russian government is responsible for the infiltration of Democratic Party and Clinton staffers’ computers. Indeed, Trump is so adamant about this that he’s pretty much accused his own government of lying about it. That is an extreme reaction and one that seems inexplicable for an incoming president.

Trump’s attitude toward Putin has always been at odds with his usual style and tone. Because of that and the strange circumstances surrounding Trump’s hiring of Paul Manafort, a man with deep connections to Russian allies, the strange behavior of “Trump surrogates” at the Republican platform committee drafting sanctions policy toward Russia and Trump’s dismissive and often cavalier attitude toward evidence that Russia tried to interfere in the presidential election, serious questions are now being raised.

Yesterday it was reported that United States intelligence officials now have a high level of confidence that Vladimir Putin himself was involved in the operation aimed at disrupting the election. Trump’s behavior toward the Russian president has been so out of character that it was only a matter of time before people began to ask, “What did the president-elect know, and when did he know it?”

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