Month: May 2017

QOTD: Bizarroworld edition

by digby

Dennis Prager, ladies and gentlemen:

I have concluded that there are a few reasons that explain conservatives who were Never-Trumpers during the election, and who remain anti-Trump today.

The first and, by far, the greatest reason is this: They do not believe that America is engaged in a civil war, with the survival of America as we know it at stake. While they strongly differ with the Left, they do not regard the left–right battle as an existential battle for preserving our nation. On the other hand, I, and other conservative Trump supporters, do.

That is why, after vigorously opposing Trump’s candidacy during the Republican primaries, I vigorously supported him once he won the nomination. I believed then, as I do now, that America was doomed if a Democrat had been elected president. With the Supreme Court and hundreds of additional federal judgeships in the balance; with the Democrats’ relentless push toward European-style socialism — completely undoing the unique American value of limited government; the misuse of the government to suppress conservative speech; the continuing degradation of our universities and high schools; the weakening of the American military; and so much more, America, as envisioned by the Founders, would have been lost, perhaps irreversibly. The “fundamental transformation” that candidate Barack Obama promised in 2008 would have been completed by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

To my amazement, no anti-Trump conservative writer sees it that way. They all thought during the election, and still think, that while it would not have been a good thing if Hillary Clinton had won, it wouldn’t have been a catastrophe either. That’s it, in a nutshell. Many conservatives, including me, believe that it would have been close to over for America as America if the Republican candidate, who happened to be a flawed man named Donald Trump, had not won. Moreover, I am certain that only Donald Trump would have defeated Hillary Clinton. In other words, I believe that Donald Trump may have saved the country. And that, in my book, covers a lot of sins — foolish tweets, included.

He is speaking for millions of conservatives.

Be nice. It’s wrong to criticize them for this because they are people who have lost their jobs and unlike you and I who have never had a moment of economic anxiety in our whole lives. We have to go along with Donald Trump without complaint because to do otherwise would be cruel to the people who believe him.

Apparently, if we admit that we are destroying the country then they might vote for our candidates.

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Trump’s Isolationist Manifesto: “All the world’s a battlefield and we’re going to kick every one of your asses.”

by digby

This is from a WSJ op-ed today by Economic adviser Gary Cohn and national Security adviser H.R. McMaster:

The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a “global community” but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage. We bring to this forum unmatched military, political, economic, cultural and moral strength. Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.

That’s exactly what I meant when I said a zillion times during the campaign that when Trump talked about “America First” he means “We’re number one!” The idea was never that America would withdraw behind its big beautiful border wall. It was that we don’t need no stinking allies, we’re kicking ass and taking names. Our way or the highway. That’s Trump. That’s his voters. And that’s why the rest of the world is rapidly concluding that we have become so dangerous that they have to do something about us.

These are the “grown-ups” by the way. The ones who are supposed to temper his more outrageous ambitions.

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His voice is a trigger

by digby

At least for me. I find myself enraged at the mere sound of it. I know I have a problem. But I suspect I’m not alone:

I doubt Pence would wear very well if people had to listen to him very often either. His furrowed brow sanctimony certainly didn’t wear well in Indiana.

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Whither the hyperpatriots?

by digby

I wrote about Trump’s bffs using his talking points and the GOP hawks’ sudden loss of interest in national security for Salon this morning:

Despite all the testimony from American intelligence and law enforcement officials confirming that the Russian government was behind the hacking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign official John Podesta’s emails, President Donald Trump still insists that the whole controversy is a plot by Democrats to explain away their defeat in the 2016 presidential election. Earlier this month he’s said he still wasn’t convinced. He told John Dickerson of CBS a few weeks ago that it “could’ve been China, could’ve been a lot of different groups.”

On Tuesday, the president tweeted:

Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2017

Trump is not alone in this assessment. That same day, AP reported:

In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, [Vladimir] Putin reaffirmed his strong denial of Russian involvement in the hacking of Democratic emails. The interview was recorded during Putin’s Monday trip to Paris and released Tuesday.

He said the claims of Russian meddling are driven by the “desire of those who lost the U.S. elections to improve their standing by accusing Russia of interfering.”
Putin added that the “people who lost the vote hate to acknowledge that they indeed lost because the person who won was closer to the people and had a better understanding of what people wanted.”

Those comments are so similar to Trump’s it makes you wonder if that covert back-channel wasn’t created after all.

But President Putin isn’t the only politician parroting the Trump party line on this. Talking Points Memo reports that House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told prospective donors at a fundraiser last month that he stepped down from the investigation because “left-wing activist groups” filed ethics complaints against him for his midnight shenanigans coordinating with the Trump White House. He said:

The Democrats don’t want an investigation on Russia. They want an independent commission. Why do they want an independent commission? Because they want to continue the narrative that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are best friends, and that’s the reason that he won, because Hillary Clinton could have never lost on her own; it had to be someone else’s fault. They have tried to destroy this Russia investigation, they’ve never been serious about it.

Considering that they are practically completing each other’s sentences, Trump and Putin certainly sound like besties these days. Nunes too, for that matter.

It’s possible that some Republican voters truly believe the Russia investigation is a Clinton plot to delegitimize Trump’s election victory. Of course, those same people may also believe that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster and ran a pedophile ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, so this is downright benign by comparison. But I’m going to take a wild guess that neither Trump, Putin nor Nunes actually believes any of those things.

Even more cynical than this crude misdirection is the reaction to the Russia probes among other GOP leaders. Their casual dismissal of the hacking during the election campaign and the possibility of collusion between members of the Trump team and the Russian government is a serious abdication of responsibility. It’s certainly possible that this is all essentially innocent on the part of the Trump people. That would make them stupid and inept but not criminal, and they might very well ride out the storm. But if members of Trump’s team did collude with a foreign government or have some kind of blackmail material hanging over their heads, the Republican leadership needs to gird itself and prepare for it to come out because eventually it will. They will be held liable for failing to take it seriously.

Less than a year ago, this is what House Speaker Paul Ryan had to say after FBI Director James Comey held his famous press conference to explain that the bureau was closing the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server:

BREAKING: I formally asked the Director of National Intelligence to deny Sec. Clinton access to classified info. pic.twitter.com/Kk8t00cdJn

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) July 7, 2016

These days he can hardly rouse himself to comment on the ongoing Russia scandals despite the presence of a special counsel, several congressional probes and daily or hourly, breaking news stories indicating that some of Trump’s closest confidantes who currently hold security clearances behaved very suspiciously prior to the inauguration. As of this writing Ryan has had little or nothing to say about the fact that Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser is being investigated for having met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and allegedly requesting a covert back channel to Moscow, using private Russian communications technology.

On the Senate side, John McCain said he didn’t “like it” that Trump transition members might have met with Russians and failed to report it on their security clearance applications. Sen. Bob Corker, on the other hand, praised Trump’s overseas trip as if he were Alexander the Great, fatuously proclaiming that it was “executed to near perfection.”

I spoke with @realDonaldTrump at length this morning and told him that I could not be more pleased with his first international trip. More: pic.twitter.com/sUiaR87qFr

— Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) May 28, 2017

As for the reports about Kushner, Corker could only reply,”He’s been overseas and I’m sure he’ll make clear what his intentions were and what his thoughts were at the time if any.”

Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN said he suspects Kislyak used an open line to spread disinformation that Kushner sought a covert back channel. That might be a reasonable if it weren’t for the fact that the White House hasn’t denied it, suggesting they might be concerned that “someone” has Kushner on tape. And that inevitably raises the question of whether the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law may opened himself up to possible blackmail.

There are numerous strands connecting various actors in Trump’s orbit with Russian mobsters, oligarchs, propagandists and government officials. Republicans who were screaming bloody murder over Hillary Clinton’s private email server are now shrugging off all these connections as if they are a mundane affair or a tainted donation. If it turns out that national security really was put at risk, these officials will not only be exposed as the hypocrites they are, they will also be seen as derelict in their duty to the Constitution and accomplices to the crime. So far there is little sign that they care.

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Explaining the unexplainable

by digby

The job of a career state department official isn’t easy these days. Esquire’s Jack Holmes:

The heavily memed image of President Trump caressing The Orb with King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud was an unsettling reminder of the United States’ deep ties to Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud is our key partner in the Middle East, despite the state’s rampant human rights abuses and subjugation of women, the extended royal family’s documented funding of terrorist groups, and of course the fact that Saudi Arabia is a monarchy. For decades, the answer to this little riddle was easy: oil. But now that the United States is challenging—and at times surpassing—the Saudis as the world’s largest energy producer thanks to the natural gas boom, our dependence on foreign oil is dwindling. That’s part of the reason President Obama was empowered to pursue the nuclear deal with Iran and chill our romance with King Salman’s clique just a bit.

Now there’s a new man in the White House, however, and he’s all in on Saudi. The Trump administration is taking a hardline stance against Iran, whose elected leaders we do not like, in favor of the Saudis, whose kings and princes we do. In a press conference following the president’s Reluctant World Tour, State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones was asked just why this is. His answer is telling:

Watch as Stuart Jones, a high-level acting official in the State Dept, is asked why they criticize Iranian elections but never Saudi Arabia: pic.twitter.com/RLkKGn48Z7

— Alex Emmons (@AlexanderEmmons) May 30, 2017

That long silence is what the honest truth sounds like. There is no longer any moral or strategic reason for our position on Saudi Arabia, a country that employs a broad interpretation of Sharia law to cut off thieves’ hands and drug dealers’ heads. (It has also set up schools in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, to spread its extremist vision of Islam, Wahhabism, there.) Then there’s the fact that the Saudis and Iranians are battling for dominance in the region using Islam’s Sunni and Shia denominations—a split that occurred in the year 632—as uniforms. We are in effect backing one side in a conflict that has raged for more than a millennium in the most consistently war-torn part of the world.

Yeah.

Sometimes the simplest lessons
by Tom Sullivan

Over the weekend, I ran across the fascinating tale from 2014 of the North Pond Hermit. Christopher Thomas Knight had spent 27 years alone in the Maine woods. He survived by raiding unoccupied cabins and summer camps for food and supplies in the middle of the night. When finally captured, he could barely speak. Michael Finkel interviewed him through letters and jail visits trying to get at what mystical insights he might have gleaned from 27 years of isolation.

Knight said, “Get enough sleep.”

Sometimes the simplest lessons are the most profound.

Another of those deep mysteries I learned when Jim Dean and Democracy for America (DFA) brought their campaign school to town in 2006. A bunch of us political junkies settled in for the weekend at the local university’s student union to learn about running political campaigns. Impressive for a liberal enterprise, it was run with almost military precision. It was like drinking from the proverbial fire hose. I learned a lot about campaign-craft. But what I remember most is something they kept drumming into our heads. Something we needed to remember when speaking with voters. “You are not normal people.”

Normal people don’t spend their weekends learning about campaign tactics. We needed to remember that when knocking doors, for example. Our job is not to engage voters in policy debates. Our job is to smile, listen, drop the literature, and most of all leave a good impression. Because if people like you, they will vote for your candidate. That’s it. Sorry.

The title of Michael Tomasky’s “Elitism Is Liberalism’s Biggest Problem” in the New Republic raised a sigh and some caution flags. But in the end, it echoed DFA’s message, one that tends to get as lost as we do in the heat of ideological battle. Out there in stretches of America far from the lights of the bright, blue cities, there are plenty of “liberalish moderates” who are potential allies that we are not reaching. And by constitutional design, such people in heartland red states may be the key to a disproportionate number of U.S. Senate seats, plus a few in the House as well. Not to mention state legislatures. Just because those voters are not coastal liberals does not make them adversaries or people “whose support no self-respecting Democrat would want.”

Tomasky writes:

First of all, middle Americans go to church. Not temple. Church. God and Jesus Christ play important roles in their lives. Elite liberals are fine with expressions of faith among African Americans and Latinos, but we often seem to assume that white people who are religious are conservative. It’s not remotely the case.

Second, politics simply doesn’t consume middle Americans the way it does elites on the coasts. Many of these people have lots of friends—and sometimes even spouses—who are Republicans. They don’t sit around and watch MSNBC and talk politics. They talk kids, and local gossip, and pop culture, and sports. They don’t have a position on every issue, and they think Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame for partisan rancor and congressional gridlock.

Third, their daily lives are pretty different from the lives of elite liberals. Few of them buy fair trade coffee or organic almond milk. Some of them served in the armed forces. Some of them own guns, and like to shoot them and teach their kids how to shoot them. Some of them hold jobs in the service of global capital and feel proud of their work.

Fourth, they’re patriotic in the way that most Americans are patriotic. They don’t feel self-conscious saluting the flag. They don’t like it when people bad-mouth our country. They believe that America is mostly good, and that the rest of the world should look more like America.

I know plenty of those people. Not far outside my little island of blue, it gets red really fast. Out where volunteer firefighters are rock stars, it might as well be another country. Some have as much use for cities and their concerns as the North Pond Hermit. But there are allies out there we are working to empower to win their neighbors’ hearts and minds. In statewide races, winning doesn’t mean winning every county outright. Sometimes it’s enough to shave the margins.

We have been under siege from the state capitol since 2011. (For readers living under Republican-controlled state legislatures, I feel your pain.) Unless we expect urban sprawl to do it for us, the only way to end the siege is to win more legislative seats in the countryside with the help of allies more “normal” than we are. The trick is how to help them do it. We’re learning.

Tomasky concludes:

A person can still be “on the team” even if they think the minimum wage should be raised only to $10, or don’t consider the placement of the crèche on the courthouse square for two weeks in December a constitutional crisis, or haven’t yet figured out how they feel about transgender bathrooms.

It’s a process.

Spending More Time With the Family

by tristero

No one wants to work for Trump. Can’t say I blame them. It’s just about the worst thing you could do for your career:

…as he considers casting off old aides, Mr. Trump is finding it challenging to recruit new ones. 

The disclosures from investigations stemming from Russian meddling in last year’s election — coupled with the president’s habit of undercutting his staff — have driven away candidates for West Wing jobs that normally would be among the most coveted in American politics, according to people involved in the search. 

By the time the first change in what may be a broader shake-up was announced Tuesday, the White House was left without a replacement. Michael Dubke, the White House communications director, said he would step down, but four possible successors contacted by the White House declined to be considered, according to an associate of Mr. Trump who like others asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. 

At the same time, talks with two former advisers, Corey Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, about joining the White House staff grew more complicated. Mr. Bossie, a former deputy campaign manager, signaled that he does not plan to join the staff, citing family concerns…

It’s a two-edged sword, but ultimately I think it’s the right call. No one will be able to stave off the disaster that’s about come, or mitigate it. It’s best to stay out away and not get hurt.

It’s also the morally right thing to do. You cannot appease an autocrat.

What to Read While Waiting for Trump’s Comeuppance

By Spocko

Great piece by Rebecca Solnit. The Loneliness of Donald Trump. On the corrosive privilege of the most mocked man in the world

I have often run across men (and rarely, but not never, women) who have become so powerful in their lives that there is no one to tell them when they are cruel, wrong, foolish, absurd, repugnant.

Solnit talks about not just Trump, but the people like him who live in a world without honest mirrors.

I’ve worked with and trained smart people who have become some of the richest, most powerful people in the world –Brin, Page, Musk, Sandburg, Mayer and many others. One of the reasons they got to where they are is the people around them (usually women, professional communicators) knew these people needed to see how they were coming across to others. Obliviousness could end up hurting them professionally (and often personally) unless they dealt with it.  These women brought me and my training partners in to hold up a mirror to these people and say, ‘This is how you come across to the media, to investors, to employees. Is that really what you want?”

Dave, one of my training partners, used to quote Emerson to them:

“What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”

As people get more and more powerful, it can become harder for them to listen to and accept what others say, especially if they don’t see the person as an equal, someone worth listening too. More from Solnit’s piece.

Equality keeps us honest. Our peers tell us who we are and how we are doing, providing that service in personal life that a free press does in a functioning society. Inequality creates liars and delusion. The powerless need to dissemble—that’s how slaves, servants, and women got the reputation of being liars—and the powerful grow stupid on the lies they require from their subordinates and on the lack of need to know about others who are nobody, who don’t count, who’ve been silenced or trained to please. This is why I always pair privilege with obliviousness; obliviousness is privilege’s form of deprivation. When you don’t hear others, you don’t imagine them, they become unreal, and you are left in the wasteland of a world with only yourself in it, and that surely makes you starving, though you know not for what, if you have ceased to imagine others exist in any true deep way that matters. This is about a need for which we hardly have language or at least not a familiar conversation.

The right wing radio and tv hosts gave an entire group of people a mendacious narrative to internalize and then permission to, as Janeane Garofalo put it, “Bring out their inner asshole.” Tim, one of my best friends back on Vulcan had a response to the phrase, “If you are so smart, why aren’t you rich?” It was, ‘If you are so rich why aren’t you nice?”

I’ve been instrumental in the financial destruction of the right wing media’s advertising revenue stream, which led to the ousting of some of their biggest names. I’ve very proud of that, and while it is satisfying to see them get their comeuppance, during the time prior to their fall they spread hate, envy and anger. This is the right wing strategy and it is a national tragedy. I just wish my friends and I could have made it happen faster.

During this time I’ve learned there is more to the phrase “Speaking truth to power” than most people realize. Power usually doesn’t want to hear your truth. And, contrary to schoolyard wisdom, when you stand up to a powerful bully they don’t just back down. They fight back, often with lawyers, guns and money. So you must persist.

One of the things that I’ve learned is that even powerful people need allies. People who get something in exchange for their help. We focus on Trump because he is the face of this coalition of craven allies. But if those allies see the cost of support is greater than the benefit, they will find an excuse to walk away.

Before we alerted the advertisers that the cost of sponsoring right wing media was greater than the benefit, the RW media distributors made a lot of money. We gave advertisers an excuse to walk away, “The hosts are tainting our brand.” Later, we gave media institutional investors an excuse to push the hosts off radio and TV. “We aren’t making enough money on them this quarter.”

The media should now ask Trump’s allies,”Is the cost of supporting Trump greater than the benefit?” If yes, what are you going to do about it?

Read the whole piece. It’s great.

BTW, Mrs. Spocko spotted Solnit grocery shopping the other day. I wish I had run into her after I had read this piece. I would tell her how spot on it is. I would also ask her if she has tried the bulk curry (which is wonderful) or the chocolate almond milk ice cream, since I like to share the things I love with my fellow Americans, no matter what side of the aisle they are on.

Meanwhile, the wrecking crew just keeps going

by digby

So much for civil rights:

The Trump administration is planning to disband the Labor Department division that has policed discrimination among federal contractors for four decades, according to the White House’s newly proposed budget, part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights.

As outlined in Labor’s fiscal 2018 plan, the move would fold the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, now home to 600 employees, into another government agency in the name of cost-cutting.

The proposal to dismantle the compliance office comes at a time when the Trump administration is reducing the role of the federal government in fighting discrimination and protecting minorities by cutting budgets, dissolving programs and appointing officials unsympathetic to previous practices.

The new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has proposed eliminating its environmental justice program, which addresses pollution that poses health threats specifically concentrated in minority communities. The program, in part, offers money and technical help to residents who are confronted with local hazards such as leaking oil tanks or emissions from chemical plants.

Under President Trump’s proposed budget, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights — which has investigated thousands of complaints of discrimination in school districts across the country and set new standards for how colleges should respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment — would also see significant staffing cuts. Administration officials acknowledge in budget documents that the civil rights office will have to scale back the number of investigations it conducts and limit travel to school districts to carry out its work.

And the administration has reversed several steps taken under President Barack Obama to address LGBT concerns. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, has revoked the guidance to implement a rule ensuring that transgender people can stay at sex-segregated shelters of their choice, and the Department of Health and Human Services has removed a question about sexual orientation from two surveys of elderly Americans about services offered or funded by the government.

The base would be very pleased to know this but it’s even hard for this administration to trumpet this accomplishment to average voters.

Still, even as they are falling apart at the seams they’re gettin’ her done.

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He’s bringing people together

by digby

In other countries anyway:

Remarkable attack on Trump’s treatment of Merkel by her chief rival Martin Schulz. pic.twitter.com/IvK1AVf9Nq

— Richard Chambers (@newschambers) May 29, 2017

Here’s Trump earlier today:

We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2017

He still doesn’t know that the EU countries trade as a bloc. I don’t think anyone can get through to him.

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