Month: December 2016

Forward together now
by Tom Sullivan

Photo via HKonJ People’s Assembly Coalition..

There is a certain kind of activist for whom if you are not giving your full attention to whatever issue they think is most important at whatever time they they think you ought to — no matter whatever else is on your plate or on your mind — no further evidence is required (or desired) to prove you are not a real progressive, hopelessly corrupt, and probably incompetent. Such people cannot be placated and are a time suck. Avoid them.

I thought about that again yesterday minutes before running across Nancy LeTorneau’s post about what it takes to sustain an opposition movement. Part of the problem, I contend, is what I just wrote. Another part is voters pay more attention to anger and opposition than to sustained change. For example, while Donald Trump won North Carolina in 2016, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory lost. Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen credits the Rev. William Barber’s Moral Monday movement for bringing him down. McCrory entered office in January 2013 looking like a moderate. He governed as an extremist:

But the Moral Monday movement pushed back hard. Its constant visibility forced all of these issues to stay in the headlines. Its efforts ensured that voters in the state were educated about what was going on in Raleigh, and as voters became aware of what was going on, they got mad. All those people who had seen McCrory as a moderate, as a different kind of Republican, had those views quickly changed. By July McCrory had a negative approval rating- 40% of voters approving of him to 49% who disapproved. By September it was all the way down to 35/53, and he never did fully recover from the damage the rest of his term.

Moral Mondays became a very rare thing- a popular protest movement. In August 2013 we found 49% of voters had a favorable opinion of the protesters to only 35% with an unfavorable opinion of them. And their message was resonating- 50% of voters in the state felt state government was causing North Carolina national embarrassment to only 34% who disagreed with that notion.

But part of the problem with sustaining such a victory is getting it noticed (and remembered). LeTourneau elaborates:

The truth is that American voters tend to resonate with a message of opposition more than they do to a message of sustained change. That is not necessarily a unique insight. We’ve known for a while that anger mobilizes more effectively than anything else. And Mario Cuomo captured something important when he said, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” The prose of governing doesn’t tend to sell as well to the public as the anger of opposition.

The country is aware (if only vaguely) of the protests surrounding the Dakota access pipeline. LeTorneau continues:

What has gone almost unnoticed are the promises kept by President Obama to Native Americans over his two terms in office. I chronicled them here when he announced that he would restore Mount Denali’s original name. Even before work was completed on the settlement of over 100 claims by various tribes for $3.3 billion, Cherokee Nation Chief Bill John Baker named Obama “the best president for Indian Country in the history of the United States.” For the most part, that story has not been told.

If we are to sustain progress, we had best spend more time broadcasting our victories before grousing about what’s left undone. Trump is not even in office yet and gets credit for the Carrier deal. Whatever its flaws, people will remember it as a success: his. As a friend reminded me, President George W. Bush sent every taxpayer a rebate within months of taking office. Not only that, as I recall, Bush sent mail to the entire country in advance of the actual rebate to tell people a second letter would soon follow with “their money” enclosed. Your “small government” tax dollars at work. At work making sure nobody missed what he had just done. And guess what? I still remember a decade and a half later.

Part of what makes Moral Mondays successful is that it is a nonpartisan, “fusion politics” movement, a populist coalition in which a host of issues move “Forward Together,” as the movement’s name suggests, and no one’s pet issue takes precedence. Don’t expect Moral Mondays to go away because Pat McCrory did. Newer and bluer oranger Meanies have been sighted in the vicinity of the nation’s capitol. Barber’s is a successful template for taking them on.

Barber’s next annual HKonJ rally (Historic Thousands on Jones Street, site of the NC legislature in Raleigh) is scheduled tentatively for February 11, 2017. When last I attended, local papers claimed 80,000 were in the streets. And that was just to protest Pat McCrory. Next year’s march should be yoooge.

All together now …

Update (like I said): North Carolina: A Case Study for Resistance in the Trump Era

The comedians are here to help you

by digby

For those of you who cannot bring yourselves to watch cable news anymore (and I know there are legions, myself included) Seth Myers nightly recap is very useful. Here’s last night’s:

Also too Sam Bee:

I am finding this to be a good way to catch up without bursting into tears or throwing something at the wall. I’m thankful for the funny people right now. They are sorely needed.

Comey is not an honest broker

by digby

Scott Lemieux ably rebuts an article which suggests that Democrats should want to keep James Comey as head of the FBI because he’s been buffeted by both sides which makes him an honest broker. Or something. It’s total nonsense.

Lemieux writes:

Ah yes, the core of many such arguments: IF YOU’RE CATCHING FLAK FROM BOTH SIDES, YOU MUST BE OVER THE TARGET! The fatal problems with this defense are that 1)Comey engaged in multiple instances of utterly indefensible behavior that had disastrous consequences and 2)Republicans have absolutely nothing to complain about. Let’s summarize the reasons that Republicans criticized Comey: 

• He did not indict Hillary Clinton over EMAILS!
• He issued a letter two days before Election Day indicating that the investigation he had restarted into Hillary Clinton’s EMAILS! very predictably did not yield any relevant new information about the trivial pseudoscandal being investigated. 

This Republican criticisms of Comey, in other words, are utterly frivolous. Comey deserves as much credit for not recommending the indictment of Clinton for her EMAILS! as he does for not recommending indicting her for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Her use of a private server was plainly not illegal, and there is no evidence whatsoever that classified materials were intentionally destroyed. There is nothing there and never was. Republican criticisms for releasing the late letter that further underscored how grossly inappropriate his earlier letter was and that may well have further hurt the Clinton campaign by allowing Trump to suggest that she got away with something are similarly absurd. This is the self-reinforcing beauty of the Clinton rules: Republicans can manufacture the fog of scandal ex nihilo, the political damage can be done, and then a Republican who refuses to act on the feverish conspiracy theory gets called a great statesman. It’s a nice racket! 

Meanwhile, let’s look at the Democratic complaints against Comey, some of which Hennessey and Wittes don’t mention:
When announcing his water-is-wet decision not to indict Hillary Clinton because she did nothing that was even remotely illegal, he engaged in highly prejudicial and grossly inappropriate editorializing that played a major role in the trivial EMAILS! pseudoscandal completely dominating coverage of Clinton.

He engaged in similarly highly prejudicial and grossly inappropriate editorializing about Clinton in testifying before Congress and in report the FBI issued before the debates, inflicting further completely unwarranted political damage and adding an official imprimatur to the chief Republican narrative about Clinton. 

Against the wishes of his superiors and in violation of departmental rules and norms, he issued a highly prejudicial and grossly inappropriate letter indicating that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s EMAILS! was being reopened, based on having found some emails on a computer that did not belong to Hillary Clinton, emails that the FBI did not even have a warrant to search yet. With the current collective margin in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin at less than 100,000 votes it is about as clear as such a counterfactual can be that without this letter the solid winner of the popular vote would also be the president-elect. 

And is if to preemptively confirm that he had not reached a principled (if inappropriate and wrongheaded) determination that the governing rules and norms were wrong but was acting in a self-serving and partisan fashion when he sent the letter that blew up the world, he earlier refused to comment on an investigation that might be damaging to Donald Trump. In summary, where the Republican candidate was concerned, Comey followed the rules against unduly influencing elections. Where the Democratic candidate was involved, his view was “[w]ell, I know the rule is designed to make sure that our investigations don’t influence elections, but I think in this case, we should break that rule, because there’s an election, and we should influence it.” 

As Hennessey and Wittes concede, he horribly mismanaged his rogue New York bureau, and in the kindest construction of his motives compounded the mistake by appeasing them.

The second letter, discussed earlier. It came too close to the election to give us a clear sense of what effect it had, but given that every previous Comey intervention was followed by a drop in Clinton’s numbers and that Trump overachieved on election day, the Clinton campaign’s theory that is also damaged the campaign is plausible. And even it didn’t, it underscored how inappropriate the first letter was — there was never any non-trivial possibility that the Weiner laptop would reveal material information about Clinton, and there was no reason to inform Congress. 

What Democrats are complaining about, in other words, is a pattern of egregious and utterly indefensible misconduct that almost certainly had the effect of putting a unprecedentedly unfit candidate not chosen by the people in the White House. He showed himself to be an incompetent manager who made one catastrophic misjudgment after another, with the cumulative effect of quite literally undermining American democracy himself. The man should be a pariah who bears substantial responsibility for every bad thing Donald Trump does. And yet, astoundingly, Hennessey and Wittes conclude that we must not merely tolerate having this man in charge of the FBI but need him. The fact that he ignored his superiors in the service of personal and/or partisan agendas is being cited as a point in his favor. What can you even say at this point? We need him at the FBI because Bernie Kerik is unavailable?

James Comey interfered in an election and it made a material difference in the outcome! Regardless of whether it was partisan or not (and it almost certainly was — after all, this man got his start in government as the chief counsel for the Senate Whitewater committee) it was an unprecedented, undemocratic act by someone with tremendous police power and authority.

I realize that it’s just one of many shocking outrages we are dealing with in this bizarre and surreal period, but it’s an important one. And frankly, I’m a little bit surprised to see so few of our usual avatars of civil liberties behave so passively about it. You can hate Hillary Clinton and be secretly thrilled that she got taken down. But it’s really bad that the Director of the FBI, with all its powers, had a hand in it. Really bad.

Update: Here’s where the right is on using the FBI for political purposes:

It’s time for the FBI to conduct a detailed investigation into the violence and political thuggery that continue to mar the presidential election’s aftermath. A thorough probe of the protests—to include possible ties to organizations demanding vote recounts—will give the Bureau’s integrity-challenged director, James Comey, a chance to sandblast his sullied badge.

Director Comey must also include “elector intimidation” on his post-election investigation list. Reports that members of the Electoral College are being harassed and threatened by angry, vicious (and likely Democratic Party) malcontents require Comey’s quick and systematic attention.

Michael Banerian, one of Michigan’s 16 electors, told CNN: “Obviously, this election cycle was pretty divisive. Unfortunately it’s bled over into the weeks following the election and I have been inundated with death threats, death wishes, generally angry messages trying to get me to change my vote to Hillary Clinton or another person, and unfortunately, it’s gotten a little out of control.”

A little out of control? What an understatement. Let me put it to  you straight and personal, Jim. Identifying electors and then attempting to intimidate them into switching their votes is an ipso facto effort to overturn a national election.  Which leads to a question a competent FBI Director would already have his agents asking: Is this elector threat scheme a coordinated operation?

Why, electors live in different states. A mind with a talent for the obvious would see a federal interest. Federal as in Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s the outfit you head, Mr. Comey—at least until the Obama Administration expires.

Which takes us back to the violent protests and political thuggery. Let me introduce you to two vicious Democratic Party operatives FBI agents should have quizzed and collared two months ago: Robert Creamer and The Hideous Scott Foval. These two creeps starred in Project Veritas’ video investigation of violent incitement during the political campaign.

Note this column called Creamer a political terrorist. The charge is legitimate. “Bottles and baseball bats are not Al Qaeda’s high explosives—but they incite fear and when they crack heads they cause casualties. People bleed. Street thuggery as an arm of politics is violent, criminalized politics on an ugly downward slope to much worse, the worse including lynchings and pogroms. If you don’t think street thuggery is terror then consider Kristalnacht.”

* * *

No, it’s not Kristalnacht in America, but since the election Americans have seen a lot of broken glass, witnessed beatings and suffered hours-long traffic and business disruptions within their cities. The hard left’s violent reaction to Donald Trump’s election is vile and dangerous. Peaceful protests? No, the demonstrators vandalize and destroy. They have two goals: intimidating people and sustaining the mainstream media lie that Donald Trump is dangerous.

Jill Stein. Woman’s a bit glamorous, don’t you think?

Red Guards of Austin (Texas) didn’t get a lot of national news attention, in part because mainstream media outlets have coddled and excused the demonstrators the same way they coddle and excuse violence by Black Lives Matter. Did an FBI Texas office pass you a report on the Communist street action in Austin, Director Comey?

The Texas Department of Public Safety says it arrested 6 members of a local communist group, Red Guards Austin, for assaulting pro-Trump members in Sunday’s protest. DPS troopers arrested Jarred Roark, 34, after he allegedly assaulted an individual on South Congress and 11th Street adjacent to the State Capitol… Troopers also arrested five other suspects related to the initial incident:

Taylor Tomas Chase, 21, interference with public duty and resisting arrest

Joseph Wayne George, 36, interference with public duty

Samuel Benjamin Lauber, 21, interference with public duty and resisting arrest

Jason Peterson, 24, interference with public duty and resisting arrest

Jade Tabitha Shackelford, 19, felony assault on public servant.

We have Creamer and Hideous Foval bragging about successfully organizing and coordinating violence against Trump supporters during the election. There are reports of ads soliciting professional protestors and paying them to participate in these demonstrations.

Is there a basis for these allegations?

There’s more

One might assume that if he doesn’t do these things it’s just more proof of what a fair-minded guy he really is, amirite?

That’s published in Jared Kushner’s paper, btw.

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“A full stomach and an empty soul”

by digby

That certainly describes him

In case you still have the idea that Paul Ryan is the antidote to Trump, think again. This speech from a couple of years ago in which Ryan unctuously attempted to sell his draconian cuts to necessary programs as some kind of twisted “compassion” he said that free lunches for poor kids give them “a full stomach — and an empty soul.” He explained further:

She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch — one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.

The “left” he explained cared too much about “comfort” and not enough about “dignity.”

We’re talking about kids here. Hungry kids who don’t have money for lunch.

This is the moderate center now.

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Suh-weeeet deal

by digby

Trump Tower

The Trump brand has a new amenity:

The U.S. Secret Service is the hot, new “amenity” in the Trump Tower, where desperate brokers are trying to lure well-heeled clients into the building on Fifth Avenue that has served as President-elect Donald Trump’s home as well as his campaign and transition headquarters.

Less than a week after Trump was elected, prominent New York real estate agency Douglas Elliman blasted out an e-mail with the subject: “Fifth Avenue Buyers Interested in Secret Service Protection?” to advertise a $2.1 million, 1,052-square-foot condo in the tower on 721 Fifth Avenue.

“The New Aminity [sic] – The United States Secret Service,” screamed the flier sent in an e-mail on Nov. 13 for a one-bedroom apartment on the 31st floor, represented by brokers Ariel Sassoon and Devin Leahy.

“The Best Value in the Most Secure Building in Manhattan,” it stated.

While there’s been a great deal of attention to how Trump plans to divest himself from his conflicts of interest, less attention has been applied to how business associates — including owners and marketers of his properties — may seek to profit from his new job in the White House.

As hard as Trump works to distance himself from his businesses, there may be no way of getting around other business associates using his brand for their own opportunity.

Trump was the developer and sponsor of the Trump Tower when it was built 33 years ago, but most of the 263 units are individually owned. Trump Tower does not retain a portion of the sales but since the building is managed by Trump Corporation, they retain a processing fee for unit sales which is about $2,000 per application plus $250 per additional adult dweller, as part of their service as managers of the building.

By the way, Politico? He’s not “working hard” to distance himself from his businesses. He isn’t distancing himself at all.

Let’s think about all the other Trump properties around the world, current and future? You know, the ones that have his name in 30′ letters? They’re going to have to be protected too, right? Trump’s name is going to be a powerful magnet for “events” and I’m not just talking about weddings and bar mitzvahs. After all, an attack on a Trump building will now be seen as an attack on America. If one gets taken down, you can bet it will be seen as a Casus belli.


And each developer will undoubtedly point out to possible tenents that American security comes with the deal. Because it will.

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Our new climate Czarina

by digby

Yesterday Ivanka met with Al Gore to discuss climate change.  This, and “women’s issues,” are among the top items in her portfolio. When she isn’t running the Trump Organization. She’s going to be very busy.

She knows a lot about it, so it’s all good:

It just gets more and more surreal…

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The Borgias of Pennsylvania Avenue

I wrote about Ivanka and her hubbie for Salon this morning:

A poignant number

by digby

The Hill reports:

A quote from Hillary Clinton’s concession speech was the most retweeted political tweet of the year, the social media site announced on Tuesday.

The tweet from Clinton’s account was retweeted more than 635,000 times as of Tuesday morning.

Twitter also noted that Clinton’s tweet was the third-most-retweeted of the year, and the top retweet in the United States.

Last month, at 630,000 retweets, Clinton’s tweet was the most retweeted of the election.

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Congratulations, it’s a Democrat
by Tom Sullivan

Well, it looks as if Pat McCrory won’t be stealing North Carolina’s governorship from sitting state Attorney General Roy Cooper after all:

Four years after becoming the first Republican to win the North Carolina governor’s office in more than two decades, McCrory made the concession in a video message posted around noon Monday as a recount he requested in Durham County entered its final hours. Durham officials finished the recount later Monday with virtually no change in the vote tally there.

I use after all because McCrory (of HB2 “bathroom bill” fame) conceded yesterday after making multiple allegations of “voting irregularities” in Durham and elsewhere:

McCrory had refused to concede for almost a month, using a flurry of ballot complaints filed by Republicans to decry widespread voter fraud in the state. But the Republican-led state board of elections effectively dismissed all complaints about voter eligibility last week, and the board on Saturday rejected another complaint alleging that absentee ballots were improperly filled out in Balden County.

As in, there was no there there. We covered the unintentional hilarity of the Bladen hearing on Sunday. Now that it appears after all that McCrory won’t be throwing the close election to the Republican legislature to settle. Besides McCrory resurfacing as the Trump administration’s bathroom monitor, all North Carolina has to worry about now is, after the GOP lost the majority on the state Supreme Court on November 8, the legislature using a special session to pack the court. A special session is scheduled for a week from today. It is ostensibly about Hurricane Matthew relief.

Paranoia? It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you. Say, after all the surgically precise gerrymandering and voter suppression legislation. Oh, and Republicans in the U.S. Senate flagrantly stealing a sitting Democratic president’s U.S. Supreme Court pick.

David Waldman (KagroX on Twitter) suggests a way Democrats in the U.S. Senate can show the country they’re tired of having sand kicked in their faces. Karoli at Crooks and Liars explains:

On January 3, 2017, Democrats will hold the majority in the Senate for a few minutes, until the newly-elected Senators are sworn in. Biden could convene the Senate in those few minutes and call for a vote. The majority could then suspend the rules and vote in Merrick Garland.

The key here is that VP Biden would have to be willing to convene the Senate and recognize Senator Dick Durbin instead of Mitch McConnell. Durbin moves to re-nominate Garland, and Senate Democrats then vote to confirm him. They will have a quorum for those few minutes.

It’s bold. Garland would be confirmed by 34 Democrats and no Republicans. It will certainly enrage Republicans, but they’re already enraged and full of hubris about how they’re going to screw Democrats anyway, so what do they really have to lose?

Not much. It takes courage. It takes a resolve to do what’s right for this country, to reclaim the Supreme Court nomination Republicans think they stole from us. It takes backbone.

There’s the rub, Hamlet said.

Send Biden to the Senate on Jan. 3 w Garland's renomination & instructions to recognize Durbin before swearing in. https://t.co/KUNbf8qF8a— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 25, 2016

@CatrionaMDW On 1/3, before new Sens. are sworn, 67 seated Sens. & Biden are in the chamber. Biden turns to Durbin instead of McConnell. Go.— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 22, 2016

@CatrionaMDW 67 Senators are seated. 34 is a quorum. Rs walk out & it's unanimous instead of 34-30.— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 22, 2016

Here’s Samantha Bee lampooning McCrory in May:

More white supremacy in the tower


by digby

Flynn Jr. in blue tie at Trump tower as part of the transition team

I have written before about what a piece of work Trump National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, is. He’s way out on the fringe. His son, who is working on the transition with his father and serves as his chief of staff, is even worse.

Last night he was tweeting like a madman about this #Pizzagate conspiracy theory saying he believes it’s true that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta are running a pedophile ring out of the back of a pizza place. (As you’ve undoubtedly heard, a wingnut with a gun went into the pizza place to “investigate” and fired his weapon yesterday, luckily no one was hurt.) Flynn Sr has been saying that Hillary Clinton was involved with a child sex ring for weeks although it is a slightly different conspiracy than this particular one. It doesn’t specify that they are raping the children in this particular pizza parlor. (That’s right, the new National Security Adviser believes Hillary Clinton is a pedophile. For all we know the whole administration is that insane.)

Anyway, Flynn junior isn’t just a conspiracy wacko. He’s a full blown white supremacist. Think Progress has the rest of the story:

As Twitter has cracked down on white nationalist accounts in recent weeks, many adherents of the movement have instead started using the social platform Gab, which bans users from engaging in illegal activity but nothing else. As the New York Times recently detailed, the platform — which uses a frog for its logo — “has emerged as a digital safe space for the far right, where white nationalists, conspiracy-theorist YouTubers, and minivan majority moms can gather without liberal interference.” Several white nationalists who have been banned from Twitter — including Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard B. Spencer, and Ricky Vaughn — have resurfaced there.

Flynn Jr.’s Twitter bio actually includes a link to his Gab page. On Gab, Flynn Jr. follows white nationalists and posted that he hopes to convince his dad to switch to the new platform.

On Sunday — the same day he was tweeting about PizzaGate — Flynn Jr. used Gab to praise a racist collage, created by a user to deride Obama’s “so called legacy,” linking Obama to African American criminals and Muslim terrorists.

Flynn Jr.’s bigoted message echoes sentiments that his dad has also expressed on social media.

During an interview with the New York Times late last month, Trump attempted to distance himself from white nationalists, saying, “I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group… I disavow and condemn.”

But with Flynn Sr. poised to become his top adviser on security issues and Flynn Jr. serving in an official role as well — not to mention that Trump’s top strategist is set to be Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart boss who a former colleague said “occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners” — it’s easy to see why Trump’s disavowal rings hollow.

So, for the 6,395th time since November 8th: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE???

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