Month: March 2017

What is America for?
by Tom Sullivan

Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom or money? Freedom or money? Freedom or money? You’d think ever-posturing “values” legislators would at least make a good show of caring more about the first. And you would be wrong.

North Carolina joins a growing number of states where extremist legislators are on record putting money first. They may not agree with what you have to say, but if it impedes someone else making money, they’ll defend to the death their right to make it:

House Bill 249, which was filed Thursday, defines the term as committing a crime with the intent to intimidate people or influence public policy and that crime impedes the normal course of a business or a government agency, resulting in the loss of at least $1,000. Such crimes include trespassing or blocking streets.

Under the proposal, anyone found guilty of economic terrorism would face four months to more than two years in prison, could be sued for damages of at least $50,000 and could be held liable for the costs of police and other public safety personnel who respond to the disturbance.

“Trespassing or blocking streets”? The newest dog whistle?

Thom Hartmann reminds readers that the war on drugs arose as a Nixonian tactic for suppressing the antiwar left and black people. Half a century later, Nixon’s heirs are using Arizona’s RICO statutes to suppress dissent in Donald Trump’s America. Arizona’s version of North Carolina’s “economic terrorism” bill, Hartmann writes, “would hyper-criminalize any sort of organized political dissent if any person involved with that dissent (including, presumably, agent provocateurs) were to engage in even minor ‘violence,’ so long as that violence harms the ‘property,’ regardless of value, of any person (including a corporation).” Attend a street protest and you might go to jail and lose everything. Riot is helpfully redefined under the proposed Arizona law to include, “A person commits riot if, with two or more other persons acting together, such person recklessly uses force or violence or threatens to use force or violence, if such threat is accompanied by immediate power of execution, which EITHER disturbs the public peace OR RESULTS IN DAMAGE TO THE PROPERTY OF ANOTHER PERSON.” (Caps in the original.)

Stifle dissent and protect money. These guys never do anything that’s not at least a twofer.

Think Progress has more on the North Carolina legislation:

“No matter what your politics are, everyone should be concerned anytime that lawmakers seek to curb our fundamental constitutional right to not only protest, but to criticize our government,” American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina spokesman Mike Meno said in an interview. “This is one bill in a wave of legislation that we’ve seen across the country designed to criminalize peaceful protest and really have a chilling effect on our First Amendment rights.”

Washington state is weighing a similar “economic terrorism” measure. Arizona lawmakers want to treat protest organizers like mobsters. Minnesota legislators are pushing for the right to sue protesters to recoup the costs of police overtime incurred by demonstrations. At least four states have moved to criminalize roadway protests in recent months.

But the North Carolina law also recasts a longstanding American right as a sinister usurpation of public order. Where the Constitution protects citizens’ rights to group together in public to dissent from its government’s actions, Torbett’s bill targets efforts to “[i]ntimidate the civilian population at large, or an identifiable group…[or i]nfluence, through intimidation, the conduct or activities of the government of the United States, a state, or any unit of local government.”

Extremist legislators cannot stifle the voice of the people. There is no fear. Our movement will not stand down. https://t.co/IpC3YX1Jod— Rev. Dr. Barber (@RevDrBarber) March 3, 2017

It is a shame the headline on the Think Progress Twitter post above did not make it into the web headline: “Protester crackdown in North Carolina would sanctify commerce over free speech.” According to Websters, to sanctify is to set apart to a sacred purpose or to religious use : consecrate. There’s a new golden calf. It has many worshipers. In its service, the cult has reduced many of America’s principles to shibboleths, freedom, liberty, and faith among them.

What is America for if making money comes before freedom of religion, speech, or the press? Candidates from both major parties genuflect before the altar of American exceptionalism, but if America puts making money ahead of its founding values, there is nothing exceptional about it. There are lots of places in this world to make money. Many places to find cheaper labor and lower taxes.

In the New York Times, Bryce Covert critiques Speaker Paul Ryan’s promise to repeal Obamacare. It is a peculiar definition of freedom Ryan uses:

Freedom is the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need. Obamacare is Washington telling you what to buy regardless of your needs.— Paul Ryan (@PRyan) February 21, 2017

Covert writes:

He went on to argue that Obamacare abridges this freedom by telling you what to buy. But his first thought offers a meaningful and powerful definition of freedom. Conservatives are typically proponents of negative liberty: the freedom from constraints and impediments. Mr. Ryan formulated a positive liberty: freedom derived from having what it takes to fulfill one’s needs and therefore to direct one’s own life.

In so doing, Mr. Ryan inadvertently revived an idea that desperately needs to be resuscitated — the idea that freedom requires not just a lack of barriers, but also the conditions that allow people to live their lives fully. Deprivation, then, is a constraint on Americans’ freedom.

Freedom from want is the third of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. Freedom of speech and expression is the first. Ryan’s colleagues in the states want to coinstrain that one. Ryan inadvertently invoked the third in arguing to reduce the insured rate. His colleagues argue instead for “personal liberty.” That is, Covert writes, “A constraint would be lifted. Who cares if uninsured people suffer because they can’t get medical care?”

Covert concludes:

Even though Mr. Ryan says he believes that freedom is “the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need,” he doesn’t want the government to do anything to help people experience that freedom. If he got his way on spending, the programs that allow the poor and struggling to buy food, housing and the other things they need would be utterly debilitated. The rich are the only ones who could be truly free in his vision of the country.

Because all the talk of “freedom and individual responsibility,” hides a corrupted vision of what America is, what it is for, and whom it serves. The emptiness and hollowness deepens. America’s chest-thumping defenders are doing the digging.

Friday Night Soother: cheetah club

by digby

I think we need some cheetah cubs this week. We need them bigly.

Here’s a video of them when they were really little:

Aaaaand, some more cute little guys:

I was at the San Diego zoo one rainy morning very early when it just opened. They were walking two cheetahs and their dog companions down the path just like you see in the video. They walked right next to me. It was thrilling to be that close. They are glorious kitties.

They’re in danger, of course, because humans are fucked.

You can read more about cheetahs at Big Cat Rescue

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Ok, who put the LSD in my latte?

by digby

I have a general rule against tweeting Russia Today footage. But rules are made to be broken pic.twitter.com/ClDkIvPPyn— Daniel Sandford (@BBCDanielS) March 3, 2017

Watch it all the way to the end.

#whatinthehellisgoingon?

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Testing Trumps electoral strength

by digby

There’s a special election in April in Georgia to replace the horrifying Tom Price in the US Congress. This ad is for the Democrat most people I’ve spoken with think has the best chance to flip the seat. Remember it’s a GOP seat. It will be very interested to see if his pitch resonates with voters.

Howie Klein wrote this endorsement for Blue America:

Current polling shows Jon Ossoff with the most support of any of the candidates in the jungle-style primary coming up April 18. He is likely to wind up in a June 20 runoff against one of the very radical right Republicans, either anti-Choice fanatic Karen Handel, former state Senator Judson Hill or crackpot Trump crony Bruce LeVell. Ossoff, a former congressional staffer for civil rights icon John Lewis, who has endorsed him, is benefiting from a wave of enthusiasm from Georgians and other Americans who oppose Tom Price’s and Paul Ryan’s plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and debilitate Medicaid and Medicare.

Howie and John Lewis are good enough for me. You can donate to Ossoff here. 

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Trump’s gettin’ ‘er done


by digby

No matter how much sand we manage to throw into the gears, the damage this wrecking crew is going to do is still immense.

538 has provided a nice summary of Trump’s policy accomplishments this week in their Trumpbeat feature. Have a drink handy:

Civil rights: Undoing the Obama legacy 

Reforming the criminal justice system and both defending and expanding civil rights protections were two top priorities of the Obama administration, as Obama himself argued in an article he wrote for the Harvard Law Review in January. 

On civil rights, the Obama administration filed lawsuits accusing states like North Carolina and Texas of trying to limit the ability of blacks and Latinos to vote and argued that some police departments unfairly targeted minorities for arrests and citations. The administration also sought to expand civil rights by letting gay people serve openly in the military, issuing guidance in favor of allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with and letting women serve in combat jobs in the military. 

To address the disproportionate number of black men serving in prison, Obama’s administration urged federal prosecutors not to always seek the maximum sentence possible for non-violent drug offenses. It also started phasing out the use of private prisons to house federal inmates and banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons — steps liberals hailed as long-needed reforms to make America’s criminal justice system more humane. 

The Trump administration, particularly Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is signaling that it will seek to overturn many of these Obama policies.
Sessions said in a speech this week that the Justice Department would “pull back” on lawsuits against local police departments for discriminating against minorities. And in the last two weeks, the department has withdrawn the federal government’s opposition to a Texas voter ID law that Obama’s team had argued was unconstitutional, reversed the Obama administration policy that schools should let transgender students choose the restroom they use and said the federal government would continue to send people to private prisons. 

Civil rights groups had sharply opposed the nomination of Sessions, worried that he would reverse Obama’s policies. But — as his “pull back” comments this week make clear — what Sessions opts not to do will be just as important. Obama’s Justice Department was known for launching investigations of shootings of civilians by the police and issuing detailed reports on how police departments treated people of color. Sessions’ moves over the last two weeks suggest that those practices are unlikely to continue in a Trump administration. 

Environment: Cutting jobs at the EPA 

Word on the street this week: Trump’s proposed budget will include a 25 percent cut to the EPA, which would include eliminating at least 3,000 jobs there. None of this has been confirmed by the administration (natch), and some congressional Republicans are already pushing back, but it’s worth taking a look at what those so-far-hypothetical numbers would mean — especially given the president’s shoutout to protecting America’s air and water quality during his address to Congress on Tuesday. 

First off, the EPA’s budget is already tiny in comparison to those of other federal agencies. Its cost of operations in 2016 was about $8.7 billion. In contrast, the estimated 2016 budget for the Department of Agriculture was $164 billion, the State Department got $29.5 billion, and NASA got $19 billion. Put another way, everything the EPA spent last year amounts to about 1.5 percent of the budget for the Department of Defense, the agency President Trump is hoping to further fund through cuts to EPA and other agencies. So giving 25 percent of the EPA’s budget to the Department of Defense would increase the latter’s budget by less than half of 1 percent.
Meanwhile, the largest chunk of EPA spending — 46 percent, or nearly $4 billion — goes to assistance agreements for states and Native American tribes. These are grants that fund locally directed environmental projects — exactly the kind of locals-know-best work that new agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has long talked of supporting. The second-biggest budgetary item for the EPA: 

environmental programs and management, i.e., enforcement, education and other programs that are directly tied to maintaining clean air and water. Those take up another $2.7 billion. Those two categories alone account for more than 75 percent of the money the EPA spends. What’s left over? Mostly, it’s money for Superfund sites, leaking underground storage tank remediation, and the science and technological research that assists the agency in getting all these other jobs done. The EPA has already cut 20 percent from its budget since 2011. “You really want to be sure you are not cutting the meat and muscle with the fat,” Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma told the trade publication Inside EPA on Tuesday. 

Basically, it is going to be hard to target the EPA for significant downsizing and maintain popular anti-pollution programs. And even if those programs do take a big hit, the added cash won’t make much difference to the Pentagon’s budget. This is another example of the administration’s ongoing difficulty with making promises that conflict with other promises. 

Health care: What to do about Medicaid? 

Republicans are in an awkward position when it comes to one of the trickiest aspects of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act: Medicaid. The ACA took what was once a relatively narrow program (serving primarily pregnant women, children and the disabled) and opened it up to a much broader group of low-income Americans. Millions gained health coverage as a result. Now Republicans have to decide what happens to them if the law goes away. 

It’s not going to be easy for Republicans to find common ground. Peeling back the expansion and reforming how the program is funded, as some Republican plans have proposed doing, would leave millions of the nation’s poorest without coverage. Keeping the expansion, however, goes against conservative ideals of small government and personal responsibility. Adding to the challenge: 19 states chose not to expand Medicaid as the law allows. The ones that did expand don’t want to lose the billions of dollars in federal assistance expected to be paid out over the first decade of the program; states that rejected the expansion want to find a way to recoup some of the federal dollars they are missing out on by not expanding. 

Republican governors have been particularly vocal about their concern over draft bills that would gut funding and insurance coverage. This week they offered their own solution, calling for a complicated set of rules. States that expanded Medicaid could keep the expansion, but with less federal reimbursement. States that didn’t expand would be given the chance to do so, but for a more limited group of people. But the plan is likely to get a cool reception from the most conservative wing of the party, which has said it won’t support a replacement plan that involves anything less than a full repeal. It’s no wonder House Republicans have opted to keep the newest draft of the bill locked away in a reading room in the hopes that it won’t be leaked to the public. 

Hiring: Going from normal to not so normal 

Trump has been accused of taking a lackadaisical approach to nominating people to fill positions in his administration. Hundreds of spots still are without nominees — a wide-ranging list that includes ambassadors; key members of leadership in the State Department and other offices; the directors of law enforcement organizations such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the heads of advisory groups such as the Office of Science and Technology Policy. 

But if you look at the numbers, Trump hasn’t been wildly out of pace with previous presidents. There are roughly 1,200 presidentially appointed positions that require Senate approval (and many other appointments that don’t). Getting them all named, vetted and OK’d has always taken time. The Partnership for Public Service — a nonprofit agency that studies and works to improve government functioning, including presidential transitions — recommends that administrations have 400 of these positions in place by the August of a president’s first year in office, The Wall Street Journal reported. But that’s a reach goal — nobody has ever achieved it. 

In his first month in office, Trump has been a little slower to send nominations to the Senate than Obama was — nominating 34 people by Feb. 21, to Obama’s 39, according to a CNN report based on numbers from the Partnership for Public Service. But Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush were all slower than that, averaging 23 nominations in their first month in office. Trump has had a more difficult time getting his nominations confirmed than some of those other presidents did. As of Feb. 21, 14 of Trump’s nominees had been OK’d by the Senate — the fewest since George H.W. Bush, who had just 11 confirmations at the same point.
So far, so normal. But then, this week, Trump turned the situation upside down, telling Fox News that he has no intention of filling some of those positions. 

“A lot of those jobs, I don’t want to appoint, because they’re unnecessary to have,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday. “I look at some of the jobs, and it’s people over people over people. I say, ‘What do all these people do?’ You don’t need all those jobs.”
Trump has not yet said which positions he plans to leave empty, and without knowing that, it’s hard to say whether this idea would be disastrous or useful. It’s not entirely abnormal for positions to go empty for long periods, either through lack of prioritization or because the Senate won’t confirm nominees. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for instance, went without a Senate-confirmed administrator between 2006 and 2013. And that can cause administrative chaos in the organizations that are running rudderless. On the other hand, James Pfiffner, professor of public policy at George Mason University, has written that the number of presidential political appointees has ballooned in recent decades, contributing to a slowdown in the nomination process. Reducing the number of those appointments, according to Pfiffner, could improve the functioning of the executive branch.

Bannon’s dream

by digby

Rachel Maddow had a big scoop last night which you should watch if you missed it. Greg Sargent gives a rundown here:

Maddow obtained a new internal Department of Homeland Security document that reached this key judgment:

We assess that most foreign-born, US-based violent extremists likely radicalized several years after their entry to the United States, limiting the ability of screening and vetting officials to prevent their entry because of national security concerns.

This new document is separate from another DHS document that was leaked to the press last week. That one also undercut the case for the ban, concluding that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.”

The new document obtained by Maddow weakens the central rationale for the ban, which is to put a temporary delay on entry into the United States for the express purpose of tightening up our vetting procedures. DHS’s conclusion appears to be that vetting procedures in particular are not that useful in screening out people who radicalize later, and that most foreign-born emigrants to the United States who become violent extremists fall into that category.

“The national security justification for this whole ban — this setting up of extreme vetting — is bull-pucky,” Maddow said. “There’s nothing they can set up at the border to tell you years down the road who might become … a radical and violent person years from now.”

This complements the conclusion of the other leaked memo. Taken together, they appear to mean that DHS’s analysts believe that singling out those countries makes little sense and that the problem in preventing terrorism by immigrants does not lie in our vetting procedures as they are, which already screen out the immediate threats.

The first report you’ll recall was dismissed by the Trump administration because they said it was “political.” They will probably say the same about this other one. This White House doesn’t need no stinkin’ analysis. Everything they need to know resides in President Trump’s pants.

Recall that we hve been told by every counter-terrorist official in the country for years that the real threat is “lone wolf” homegrown terrorists. And that’s been shown. The Islamist terrorists in recent years who’ve shot up Christmas parties and gay nightclubs and Army bases Marathon races were born here or were radicalized long after they came. (I won’t even bring up the other “lone wolves” who shoot up elementary schools and college campuses and workplaces all over the country because they’re not Muslim so or some reason Republicans don’t give a shit.)

In other words, this DHS report is in keeping with everything we’ve heard publicly for a very long time. Trump’s Muslim ban isn’t about terrorism. It’s about Muslims, period. He doesn’t like them.

Greg discusses this other, even more ominous, dimension to this whole argument:

Now, an important caveat is necessary here — one that sheds more light on the Trump administration’s actual rationale for the ban, which is crying out for more debate. The ban’s main architects — Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller — would probably argue that these new documents don’t undercut their larger arguments for it.

As I have reported, the evidence is mounting that Bannon and Miller view the ban as part of a much broader, long-term demographic-reshaping project. Miller let slip in a recent interview that the ban isn’t just about national security, but also about protecting U.S. workers from foreign competition. And the Los Angeles Times reports that Bannon and Miller have privately argued that the ban is in keeping with the need to combat immigration by people who “will not assimilate”:

Inside the West Wing, the two men have pushed an ominous view of refugee and immigration flows, telling other policymakers that if large numbers of Muslims are allowed to enter the U.S., parts of American cities will begin to replicate marginalized immigrant neighborhoods in France, Germany and Belgium that have been home to plotters of terrorist attacks in recent years, according to a White House aide familiar with the discussions.

It’s not just about protecting “American’s jobs” or keeping out terrorists. It’s about protecting American “culture” as they define it.

Read this piece about Bannon’s beliefs. These fascist comments are things he’s said just in the last couple of years. He is a white ethno-nationalist at his core. He wants to pretty it up by saying that he just cares about the working folks who need a break and worries about terrorism. It goes way, way beyond that.

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Cultural Revolution for dummies

by digby

This will work out just great:

Advisers to President Donald Trump are urging him to purge the government of former President Barack Obama’s political appointees and quickly install more people who are loyal to him, amid a cascade of damaging stories that have put his nascent administration in seemingly constant crisis-control mode.

A number of his advisers believe Obama officials are behind the leaks and are seeking to undermine his presidency, with just the latest example coming from reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice last year with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and apparently misled senators about the interactions during his confirmation hearing.

That was coupled with a New York Times story that Obama appointees spread information about the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia in an attempt to create a paper trail about the probe. Trump’s aides have also blamed Obama appointees for other damaging leaks, like Trump’s erratic phone calls with foreign leaders.

Inside the White House, the chatter about Obama officials in the government has heightened in recent weeks, one administration official said. And advisers are saying it is time to take action.

“His playbook should be to get rid of the Obama appointees immediately,” said Newt Gingrich, a top surrogate. “There are an amazing number of decisions that are being made by appointees that are totally opposed to Trump and everything he stands for. Who do you think those people are responding to?”

“If you employ people who aren’t loyal to you, you can’t be surprised when they leak,” said Roger Stone, another longtime adviser. A third person close to Trump said: “He should have gotten these people who are out to get him out a long time ago, a long, long time ago. I think they know that now.”

The reality, however, is more complicated: The White House has thousands of open jobs across the agencies, many nonpolitical civilian employees are critical of the administration, and some Cabinet secretaries say they need the Obama people during a rocky transition.

Only a few dozen Obama political appointees remain in the federal government apparatus, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Many of them are in crucial positions, including Robert Work, a top official at the Department of Defense, and Thomas Shannon, the acting deputy at the State Department.

Even if Trump were to ax those remaining senior political appointees, he would still have to reckon with the hundreds of thousands of civilian employees, who stay with every administration. Many of them are skeptical of Trump because they resent his assault on Washington and its culture, his impulsive decisions and his seeming lack of intellectual curiosity about their agencies and work.

They have spent the past six weeks on edge. Many are quietly on the job market, but others have been clashing with Trump appointees, either in the open or privately among colleagues, according to officials across agencies. From Homeland Security to Defense and beyond, it’s become a regular conversation among employees about what lines they will not cross before quitting, and how best to slow-walk orders from above to frustrate implementation.

Amid those conversations is a running thread: how long they’d be willing to hold out to bear witness, and try to improve a climate they increasingly hate, or whether to leak information about changes they see in order to try and stop them. “I want to be able to tell people what’s happening here,” one State Department official said.

Trump’s base is non-college educated white people. I doubt there are many of those working in federal agencies. If they purge everyone who isn’t “loyal” the government will have very few people working. That’s what the Republicans think they want. But they won’t like it when the country completely stops working.

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What did Paul Ryan know and when did he know it?

by digby

I wrote about Ryan’s own Russian hacking scandal for Salon today:

If there’s one thing you can say about the Donald Trump presidency so far, it isn’t boring. From horror stories at the border to Trump’s semi-triumphant teleprompter speech and Attorney General Jeff Sessions being personally connected to the growing Russia scandal, this week has been a doozy.

I was not surprised that Sessions finally recused himself from the campaign scandal. It was absurd that he was not required to do so before he was confirmed. What finally forced him to take the step was the report that he had met with the Russian ambassador twice during the summer and fall, after having told the Judiciary Committee that he had not had contact with any Russian officials during the campaign. Top Democrats are now calling for Sessions’ resignation, and the story of his contacts with the Russian ambassador is still unfolding with new details about whether he discussed the Trump campaign.

The upshot is that at the very least Sessions showed appalling judgment in agreeing to meet the Russian ambassador the day after The Wall Street Journal reported that the director of national intelligence had declared that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. It’s very hard to believe that this didn’t come up in the conversation. Even if the two men were unaware of that comment, they must have been aware of the discussion the previous night in a presidential town hall forum with Matt Lauer, in which Trump praised Vladimir Putin in such florid terms that The New York Times story that morning began this way:

Donald J. Trump’s campaign on Thursday reaffirmed its extraordinary embrace of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, signaling a preference for the leadership of an authoritarian adversary over that of America’s own president, despite a cascade of criticism from Democrats and expressions of discomfort among Republicans.

One of those discomfited was House Speaker Paul Ryan who was quoted in the article saying, “Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests,” and accusing the Russian leader of “conducting state-sponsored cyberattacks” on our political system.

This was just one of the many times Ryan zigged and zagged during the campaign, constantly calibrating how far he could go in criticizing Trump while keeping Trump’s passionate voters off his back. This particular issue was a tough one, since until quite recently the Republicans had been inveterate Russia hawks and the abrupt switch to dovish goodwill was undeniably disorienting.

Prior to Sessions’ recusal on Thursday morning, Ryan held a press conference in which he blamed the Democrats for “setting their hair on fire” to prompt the press to cover the story. That was ridiculous. The press needs no prodding to cover this scandal; it’s as juicy as they get. Ryan also pooh-poohed the idea that Sessions had any obligation to remove himself from the investigation unless he was personally implicated and robotically repeated the contention that nobody had seen any evidence that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

That may be true, and presumably we’ll find out sooner or later. But it’s important to remember that DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, were not the only targets of hacking. Russian agents also allegedly hacked the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That story has been scandalously undercovered, something for which Paul Ryan is no doubt very grateful.

On Dec. 13 The New York Times published an article that laid out how the hacked material was used in various House races. At first the hackers just released a lot of personal information, which was used by hostile individuals to harass and threaten the candidates. Then the hacks and dumps by the person or group known as Guccifer 2.0 became more sophisticated and targeted certain close races, releasing politically valuable tactical information:

The seats that Guccifer 2.0 targeted in the document dumps were hardly random: They were some of the most competitive House races in the country. In [Annette] Taddeo’s district [in Florida], the House seat is held by a Republican, even though the district leans Democratic and Mrs. Clinton won it this year by a large majority.

To prepare for the race, the D.C.C.C. had done candid evaluations of the two candidates vying in the primary for the nomination. Those inside documents, bluntly describing each candidate’s weaknesses, are considered routine research inside political campaigns. But suddenly they were being aired in public.

Taddeo lost her primary race to another Democrat named Joe Garcia who used the hacked material against her. And then this happened:

After Mr. Garcia defeated Ms. Taddeo in the primary using the material unearthed in the hacking, the National Republican Campaign Committee and a second Republican group with ties to the House speaker, Paul Ryan, turned to the hacked material to attack him.

In Florida, Guccifer 2.0’s most important partner was an obscure political website run by an anonymous blogger called HelloFLA!, run by a former Florida legislative aide turned Republican lobbyist. The blogger sent direct messages via Twitter to Guccifer 2.0 asking for copies of any additional Florida documents.

By September, the hacker had released documents in close House races in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina, working with Republican bloggers who disseminated the information for them. They also posted information on Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair, even though he was effectively running unopposed.

Both Luján and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote letters to Ryan asking him not to use the material and received no response. His spokeswoman told the Times that Ryan had no control over how the stolen information was used. Nonetheless, there were some Republicans who refused to do so, saying it was inappropriate. They were rare.

I don’t think anyone believes it’s likely that Paul Ryan personally colluded with the Russians in this operation. The fact that many Republicans, some affiliated with the National Republican Congressional Committee and a group closely affiliated with Ryan, eagerly used it to win their campaigns is not surprising. But it is highly unlikely that Republican strategists or party officials with strong knowledge of the House campaigns didn’t collude with the hackers at some point, because it’s difficult to believe that Russians would have which House races to target without some help from people with expertise concerning the 2016 map.

Republican congressional leaders must be thanking their lucky stars daily that the Trump administration is such a scandal-ridden Dumpster fire. If things ever calm down in the White House, somebody might just turn his or her attention to the question of what Paul Ryan knew and when.

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Bested by the lizard brain
by Tom Sullivan

Media bashing over the gushing that occurred during and after President Trump’s speech to a joint session of congress on Tuesday has been good sport all week. Stories declaring Stephen Bannon Trump’s Rasputin pop up like weeds too. The problem with all the stories is they convey an underlying sense of grand strategy at work in the Trump White House. Okay, Bannon may have one, but Trump?

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters writes that the fawning praise for the Trump speech as at-long-last presidential shows how Trump has bested the media. Will Oremus wrote at Slate”[I]t’s in their nature, and the nature of the form, to get caught up in the moment — and to elevate perception over reality.” Boehlert responds:

But I think there’s more to it than that. You have to take into account Trump’s ongoing war on the press and his daily denunciations of journalism to understand the media’s submissive behavior.

Observe what was noticeably absent from Trump’s speech to Congress. “He avoided any criticism of the media, a hobby horse he has ridden hard over his first weeks in office,” Politico pointed out.

Indeed, Trump’s defining criticism was quietly set aside for the night. The result? The press corps that Trump claims to hate so much rallied to his cause and elevated him to new heights.

Mission accomplished.

We’re seeing something akin to a Stockholm syndrome situation unfold: Trump doesn’t viciously attack the press in public, so the press sings his praises.

Recall the warning from Bret Stephens, the deputy editorial page director for The Wall Street Journal, in the wake of the “gaggle” banning last week: “This is an attempt to bully the press by using access as a weapon to manipulate coverage.”

Guess what? The bullying worked.

It’s bullying, sure. But what’s bothersome about many lefty critiques is the implication that underlying the media bashing is a reasoned calculation. That behind the curtain of Trump’s getting into people’s faces is a mastermind using clever manipulation to achieve strategic goals. Branded “working the refs” or whatever, it’s a thinking person’s rationalization for being bested by someone else’s lizard brain. It’s that look we saw on Al Gore’s face in 2000 that said, “I’m losing to this guy?“

The truth is more base. Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s “Breitbart propagandist and Hungarian ultranationalist” told Sean Hannity, “The era of the Pajama Boy is over January 20th and the alpha males are back.” This quote on “alphas” headed a Forbes post a year ago:

“My point is the following. Behavioral scientists from another planet would notice immediately the semiotic resemblance between animal submissive behavior on the one hand and human obeisance to religious and civil authority on the other … And they would conclude, correctly, that in baseline social behavior, not just in anatomy, Homo sapiens has only recently diverged in evolution from nonhuman primate stock.”

–E. O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

We flatter ourselves that that only applies to our conservative counterparts. Plus, let’s not kid ourselves that there’s more going on than Trump’s instinct for getting what he wants. It’s only a strategy insofar as bullying is a strategy for obtaining submission from weaker animals. Trying to rationalize it as something deeper is failing to come to terms with how this works on a gut level. Trying to think your way around it is trying to reason through the irrational. Thinking has very little to do with it.

Crimea River, Donald


by digby

One of the most curious Russian connections was the bizarre interference in the GOP platform by the Trump campaign.

Today, one of the people who was identified as appearing at the meeting and insisting that it be changed was also said to have met with the Russian ambassador at the convention. His name is JD Gordon and he spoke with CNN:

You’ll notice that he said Trump himself wanted the language in the platform.

Well:

While the original version of the Republican Party platform is not public and unavailable, news outlets reported that it contained language that included arming Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The version that passed, however, softened the language, saying America will provide “appropriate assistance” to Ukraine and “greater coordination with NATO defense planning.”

When Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort about how much influence Trump in changing the platform, Manafort denied any involvement. (Read about Manafort’s connections to pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians here).

Todd then asked where the idea came from, and added, “Everybody on the platform committee had said it came from the Trump campaign. If not you, who?”

Finally, Todd pressed the matter, asking if anyone on the Trump campaign wanted that change, to which Manafort answered: “No one, zero.”

George Stephanopoulos: “Then why did you soften the GOP platform on Ukraine?” 

Trump: “I wasn’t involved in that. Honestly, I was not involved.”
Stephanopoulos: “Your people were.” 

Trump: “Yeah. I was not involved in that. I’d like to — I’d have to take a look at it. But I was not involved in that.” 

Stephanopoulos: “Do you know what they did?” 

Trump: “They softened it, I heard, but I was not involved.” 

As you can see, Trump says, “Yeah,” in response to a query that his campaign was involved. But it’s not clear if that’s the answer to a question, or just Trump filling space. 

After these questions, Trump hints at why the platform may have changed . 

“The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,” Trump said.

So, what’s up Don?

We don’t know what it was all about but it’s not a stretch to at least wonder if it might have been a signal of reassurance to someone with a stake in the matter. It’as awfully strange that this was the only time the Trump campaign interfered so specifically with the platform.

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