Month: October 2017

Yes, John Kelly is a Trumpist, always has beenby digby

Last June, I wrote a column for Salon headlined John Kelly the “grownup”? Forget it — Homeland Security chief turns out to be another Trump zealot . Then he became Chief of Staff and everyone in DC offered hosannas because he was supposedly going to save the nation from Donald Trump. Last week he showed his true colors when he came out and lied blatantly about a Congresswoman and refused to take it back when a tape emerged proving it.
Anyway, I knew it, anyone could have seen it because his history is well-known. Now the press is looking more closely. Here’s the NY Times:

Pitched as Calming Force, John Kelly Instead Mirrors Boss’s Priorities

This past summer, the Trump administration debated lowering the annual cap on refugees admitted to the United States. Should it stay at 110,000, be cut to 50,000 or fall somewhere in between? John F. Kelly offered his opinion. If it were up to him, he said, the number would be between zero and one.

Mr. Kelly’s comment made its way around the White House, according to an administration official, and reinforced what is only now becoming clear to many on the outside. While some officials had predicted Mr. Kelly would be a calming chief of staff for an impulsive president, recent days have made clear that he is more aligned with President Trump than anticipated.

For all of the talk of Mr. Kelly as a moderating force and the so-called grown-up in the room, it turns out that he harbors strong feelings on patriotism, national security and immigration that mirror the hard-line views of his outspoken boss. With his attack on a congresswoman who had criticized Mr. Trump’s condolence call to a slain soldier’s widow last week, Mr. Kelly showed that he was willing to escalate a politically distracting, racially charged public fight even with false assertions.

And in lamenting that the country no longer holds women, religion, military families or the dignity of life “sacred” the way it once did, Mr. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general whose son was killed in Afghanistan, waded deep into the culture wars in a way few chiefs of staff typically do. Conservatives cheered his defense of what they consider traditional American values, while liberals condemned what they deemed an outdated view of a modern, pluralistic society.

“The real issue is understanding really who John Kelly is,” said former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, a Democrat for whom Mr. Kelly worked at the Pentagon during President Barack Obama’s administration. “If you understand what makes him tick, then it all fits together.”

“He is a Marine first and foremost,” Mr. Panetta said. “In addition to being a Marine, he was born and raised in Boston” among blue-collar families with traditional views about God and country. “You combine those two and you realize” that he “shares some of these deep values, some of which Trump himself has tried to talk about.”

As tall and commanding in a suit as he was in a uniform, Mr. Kelly has become a central figure in Mr. Trump’s orbit. After six months in the cabinet as secretary of homeland security, Mr. Kelly took over a turbulent and tribal White House last summer and by most accounts imposed more order on the building and staff, if not the Twitter-obsessed president himself.

Mr. Kelly’s focus on improving information flow and decision making in the West Wing gave the impression of a good soldier mainly concerned with process. But that obscured a player who expresses his own sharp views in selected areas, most notably immigration, where he shares Mr. Trump’s commitment to toughening the border and deporting many in the country illegally. His views were forged in part by his time heading the United States Southern Command, which oversees American military operations and security in Central and South America and in the Caribbean.

Mr. Kelly not only expressed willingness to curb refugees coming into the country — in the end, Mr. Trump lowered the cap to 45,000 — he embraced Mr. Trump’s various attempts to close the border to visitors from a group of predominantly Muslim countries. He aggressively turned up the heat on internal immigration enforcement, stepping up deportation of undocumented immigrants, even those without serious criminal records, reversing an Obama administration policy.

Under Mr. Kelly’s leadership, the Department of Homeland Security also went after undocumented parents who bring their children into the country. He directed immigration officials to lodge smuggling charges against the parents, saying they were putting children in danger.

“Kelly has been an enabler of Trump’s mission,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant homeland security secretary under Mr. Obama. “Judge him that way.”

His image as a steady, nonideological figure trying to restore order in the White House in the face of a radical president, she added, was not true. Mr. Kelly, she said, was not “the savior or the hostage.”

Other Democrats have expressed alarm at Mr. Kelly’s views on immigration. At a dinner including Mr. Trump and the Democratic leaders Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, Mr. Kelly gave an extended critique of Mexico, calling it a third-world country in danger of collapsing the way Venezuela has and arguing that the United States needed to guard itself against that, according to people informed about the conversation.

But Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, who recommended Mr. Kelly to Mr. Trump last winter, said the retired general’s background gave him an understanding of the dangers and drawbacks of unfettered immigration. “He knows a lot of the challenges that we face south of the border,” Mr. Cotton said, adding that the issue is “something that he’s lived on a firsthand basis for years.”

Like Mr. Panetta, he pointed to Mr. Kelly’s upbringing.

“I think he appreciates the struggles of America’s working class — the blue-collar workers over the last 30, 40 years, the kind of people who have to take a shower after they get off work, not before they go to work — and the impact that mass unskilled and low-skilled immigration has had on working-class wages in our society,” Mr. Cotton said.

As a cabinet officer, Mr. Kelly frequently lashed out at critics. In March, during a meeting with members of Arab and Muslim communities in Dearborn, Mich., Mr. Kelly threatened to walk out after being posed hard questions about the travel ban and what participants saw as the targeting of Muslim Americans at ports of entry, according to people in attendance.

During a speech in April, Mr. Kelly rebuked members of Congress who complained about what they called overly aggressive immigration enforcement.

“If lawmakers do not like the laws they’ve passed and we are charged to enforce, then they should have the courage and skill to change the laws,” Mr. Kelly said defiantly. “Otherwise, they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.”
[…]
Mr. Kelly has also engaged in testy public debates with Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California. During a June meeting, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kelly engaged in a contentious back-and-forth as she questioned him about Trump administration threats to cut off funding for so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

All of that foreshadowed his attack last week on Representative Frederica S. Wilson, Democrat of Florida, who publicly accused Mr. Trump of insensitivity when he called the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was killed this month in Niger. Mr. Kelly called her an “empty barrel” and told an unflattering story about her that was proved untrue by videotape of the event he mentioned.

Mr. Kelly decided himself to head out to the White House briefing room to defend the president, colleagues said, and most of his remarks reflected on his own experience as the father of a slain Marine and the nature of military service. He brought tears to the eyes of other White House aides, who afterward traded emails expressing admiration for Mr. Kelly’s passionate defense of Mr. Trump. It was only afterward that they began to see how the attack on Ms. Wilson came to overshadow the emotion of the first part of his speech.

Mr. Kelly was surprised by the criticism of his speech, colleagues said, but he has not apologized to Ms. Wilson for making false statements about her. White House officials said they opted against it to avoid extending the story.

Mr. Panetta said Mr. Kelly’s attack on a congresswoman reflected his lack of experience in high-level politics. “He knows where the land mines are in the Marines, but he doesn’t know where the land mines are in politics,” Mr. Panetta said. “And he’ll make mistakes as a result, and he certainly made mistakes last week in going after people in that news conference.”

But, he said, it was authentic: “As somebody who worked with this guy, a lot of what he got up to say is a reflection of who John Kelly is.”

Don’t count on John Kelly to save us from Trump. He’s helping him.

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Shameless is as shameless does
by Tom Sullivan

Three days after the Washington Free Beacon reported that Democrats hired Fusion GPS in 2016 to further the opposition research begun “by an unknown GOP client” against presidential candidate Donald Trump, the publication disclosed to the House Intelligence Committee the Free Beacon was the GOP client.

The research compiled by the former British MI6 intelligence officer led to the famous Christopher Steele dossier outlining Russian attempts to influence the American presidential election and, subsequently, to the FBI investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Clinton Campaign and DNC Paid for Research Behind Russia Dossier https://t.co/yWHKPszMAj @cb0321— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) October 25, 2017

The sitting president and his allies have “sought to cast Fusion GPS as a shadowy, illegitimate outfit that produced a ‘fake’ dossier,” the Washington Post reports, noting that the Beacon, which published such allegations was itself a Fusion GPS client.

CNN reported last night that a federal grand jury in Washington has approved the first charges levied by Mueller’s team in its Russia investigation:

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are.

The White House would have been on notice the charges were coming, CNN adds:

Under the regulations governing special counsel investigations, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has oversight over the Russia investigation, would have been made aware of any charges before they were taken before the grand jury for approval, according to people familiar with the matter.

The imminent filing of charges against, potentially, one of the president’s campaign team, drove the presidents’s supporters this week into overdrive to discredit Mueller and to find anyone else to whom they could divert the public’s attention. Their strategy: offense. Their tactic, schoolyard: “I know you are but what am I?”

Jonathan Chait writes at New York magazine that Republicans have decided the real Russia colluders are the Democrats:

The Republicans have developed a theory of alt-collusion, centering on elements of these same facts. Their version of the story uses Steele’s research in Russia as evidence that Steele is a tool of the Russian government. Steele’s report, charges the The Wall Street Journal editorial page, is “based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.” Ergo, “Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say ‘collusion’?” Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer has circulated the same bizarre theory.

Having Kremlin-connected sources is the point of such research, obviously. Otherwise, Republicans would simply claim the anonymous sources had zero credibility. Chait continues:

There are some important confounding facts that the theory of alt-collusion avoids. For one, Trump’s apparent collusion with Russia involved a crime: stealing Democratic emails. Steele’s “collusion” involves no crime at all. Second, while the Russian propaganda apparatus publicly amplified political messages generated by its email theft, it has done nothing of the sort with the Steele dossier. Indeed, Russia fervently denied the charges in the dossier and called them an attempt to smear Trump.

Nevertheless, Fox News, the Journal, other conservative outlets and the sitting president himself are throwing anything at hand against the wall to see what they can get to stick to anyone except the sitting president. (Did you notice he’s had another famously bad week?)

They even resurrected their July 2016 Uranium One narrative about Hillary Clinton (someone ask Fox News how much has been exported to Russia). The Daily Beast reports that “top Trump sycophant Sean Hannity” demands Clinton be indicted for charges arising in his own mind. It’s what desperation smells like.

On top of all that, more dots connected in the investigation into the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between the no-president’s campaign team and Russian attorney Natalia V. Veselnitskaya. The attorney promised the Trump team information damaging to the Clinton campaign, but has claimed she was operating as an independent actor.

The New York Times reported last night:

But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.

The coordination between the Trump Tower visitor and the Russian prosecutor general undercuts Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that she was a purely independent actor when she sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman. It also suggests that emails from an intermediary to the younger Mr. Trump promising that Ms. Veselnitskaya would arrive with information from Russian prosecutors were rooted at least partly in fact — not mere “puffery,” as the president’s son later said.

The Trump team met with Veselnitskaya because she offered opposition research on Clinton. One thing lost in tales of Fusion GPS and the dark art of opposition research is that it is pretty standard practice in large campaigns. What’s more, prospective candidates often pay for opposition research on themselves before entering the race. They want to know what sort of dirt an opponent might unearth to smear them before committing, and to prepare responses in advance.

Finally, Rachel Maddow reported last night on a Wall Street Journal story that billionaire Trump-backer Rebecca Mercer directed Cambridge Analytica to offer to help Wikileaks disseminate stolen DNC emails after it was publicly known in mid-June the emails were the product of criminal activity by the Russian government.

Yet now, everything Fusion GPS, email, and dossier-related is somehow in fevered minds of the still-undrained swamp tied not to Trump-Russia collusion, but Clinton-Russia collusion. “This method can work if you have enough mouthpieces who are sufficiently devoid of skepticism or intellectual self-respect to be willing to spread your obviously absurd message,” Chait writes. The implied question answers itself.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Friday Night Sootherby digby

Just some cute little Joeys:

so cute…. pic.twitter.com/0R7VAkMkKe

— COMMON GIRL (@_common_girls) September 3, 2017

Have a nice week-end folks.

Some good news in a bad weekby Dennis Hartley

Note: Brad Upton is a Seattle-based comedian with whom I had the pleasure of working with during my stint in stand-up. He has just wrapped up a tour in Pakistan with several other comics, and has been posting on Facebook about his experience. As we all know, there’s no crying in baseball…or comedy. Nonetheless, Brad wrote a post today that I found incredibly moving and inspiring; and in light of all the bellicose nationalist rhetoric coming from the top these days, it is a much-needed reminder that people are people, wherever you go. With his permission, I am re-publishing Brad’s thoughts here. – Dennis Hartley
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World

by Brad Upton

Please allow me to ramble.

Karachi, Pakistan…

Last Wednesday night I went back in time and was able to relive what it was like when I started doing stand up. That feeling of excitement, anticipation, feeling the collective energy of the room, of the possibility….of the future. It felt like my beginning in 1984.

After a day of promotion, meals and being ferried throughout Karachi in traffic that can’t adequately be described other than a mass of scooters, motorcycles, 3-wheeled motorized rickshaws, buses, donkey carts, horseback and cars….none of them following any observable rules, we pulled up in front of a 5-story building on a side street. Everywhere we pull up in Karachi: a restaurant, studio, or hotel, a man or men, stand up and emerge from the shadows carrying highly modified automatic weapons. Blue slacks and blue polo shirts, this is security.

There are offices on the first floor. Five of us enter a hot, humid elevator that should probably only hold three. We emerge on the top floor. It certainly isn’t a bar, or a restaurant, or banquet room, or any kind of theater. It is an empty office space and this is where you find Karachi’s two-year-old, open mic comedy scene. There is a logo on the wall behind the comics proudly calling this place the Thot Spot. As we emerge from the elevator we can hear laughter as we slip quietly into the back of the room. The audience sits in rows of folding chairs. The room holds about 70 and is packed.

The room is electric with energy, each comic is getting big laughs. What takes me back in time is how the comics and audience are enthralled with what is happening. This vibe doesn’t exist at an open mic in the US; stand up is part of our culture and some of the comics have been going up for years.

This is different. This is new. This is fun. We’ve never done this. We’ve never had this. People are standing in front of their peers and talking about life in Karachi, their awkwardness, sex, politics, traffic, social media, dating, school, family, etc. Young Muslim men and women speaking their minds in ways that make their peers laugh.

Wait, I haven’t mentioned something VERY important. I THINK these are the topics. This entire show is being performed in Urdu. Many Pakistanis are bilingual but it seems Urdu is usually the first option.

I. Am. Mesmerized.

To hear stand up performed in a language I don’t understand is fascinating. I love the rhythm of the words and can quickly recognize an approaching punchline just by the pacing and nuances. I can hear the beats. I find myself laughing at jokes I don’t understand, verifying that laughter is contagious.

The audience and comics are aware that this night is different. The international professionals that have just arrived from Great Britain and the US will go up at the end and do 7-10 minutes each.

Our host, our organizer, our MC, Umar Rana, takes over the hosting duties at the conclusion of the Urdu sets and quickly converts the audience over to English. Keep in mind that myself, Dwight Slade and Shazia Mirza aren’t quite sure what we’re in for. We are almost sick with jet lag. We are confident, veteran professionals….but this is Pakistan. Will they like us? Have I chosen the right material? Will this joke make sense?

Suddenly I have the open mic feeling that I haven’t felt in over 30 years. I go first, followed by Dwight and Shazia. For all three of us, everything works. Every joke, every expression, every nuance. All three of us destroy and delight in the experience. The show wraps up and we stand around laughing and smiling and talking with our Pakistani cohorts. I suddenly have new friends!

This audience has given these pros a taste of what the weekend is going to be like. It is humbling. I witness what has happened at this open mic in Karachi and am proud of my profession. I got more out of this evening than they did. These people want to laugh and be entertained. These kids are Pakistan’s future. Inshallah.

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Yes, these people are utterly deplorable. And depraved.by digby

This story about the followers of Donald Trump’s favorite conspiracy theorist Alex Jones attacking the victims of the Las Vegas massacre makes me believe this country is doomed. It is so, so awful that it’s hard to believe we’ll come through this without something catastrophic happening:
Via The Guardian:

Braden Matejka survived a bullet to the head in the Las Vegas massacre. Then, the death threats started coming.

“You are a lying piece of shit and I hope someone truly shoots you in the head,” a commenter wrote to Matejka on Facebook, one week after a gunman killed 58 people and injured hundreds more. “Your soul is disgusting and dark! You will pay for the consequences!” said another. A Facebook meme quickly spread with a photo of him after the shooting, captioned: “I’m a lying cunt!”

The 30-year-old victim – who narrowly escaped death in the worst mass shooting in modern US history – has faced a torrent of online abuse and harassment, forcing him to shut down his social media accounts and disappear from the internet. The bullying, taunting and graphic threats have also spread to his family and friends.

“There are all these families dealing with likely the most horrific thing they’ll ever experience, and they are also met with hate and anger and are being attacked online about being a part of some conspiracy,” said Taylor Matejka, Braden’s brother, who shared with the Guardian dozens of screenshots of the abuse. “It’s madness. I can’t imagine the thought process of these people. Do they know that we are actual people?”

Conspiracy theorists – some of whom claim that the government staged the shooting on 1 October or that the tragedy was a hoax – have targeted survivors and victims’ loved ones, spamming every social media platform with misinformation and abuse. On Facebook and YouTube in particular, users have published viral posts and videos calling people like Braden “crisis actors”, alleging they were hired to pose as victims.

While fringe conspiracies have often emerged after national tragedies and major historical events, social media has dramatically expanded the scope and scale of the problem, making it easy for false claims to reach massive audiences and giving trolls easy access to targets online.

“It makes you angry,” said Rob McIntosh, 52, who was shot in the chest and arm in Las Vegas and has since been accused of being an actor who faked his injuries. “You’ve already been through something that’s traumatic and terrible, and you have someone who is attacking your honesty. You don’t even have the opportunity to respond.”

‘I hope someone comes after you’

Braden Matejka, from British Columbia, Canada, traveled to Las Vegas with his girlfriend, Amanda Homulos, to celebrate his 30th birthday at a country music festival. Police say the gunman, Stephen Paddock, whose motives remain unknown, fired into the crowd of people at the outdoor concert from a 32nd-floor room of the Mandalay Bay hotel.

As the couple was fleeing, Braden was knocked down by a bullet in the back of his head, landing on his face. He was covered in blood, but remained responsive, and he and his girlfriend, who was not hit, quickly made it inside the car of another concertgoer, who drove them to a hospital.

The wound to his skull was not life-threatening, and days later, the couple gave an emotional interview on camera to the Associated Press about their escape.

“I’m just so grateful that we’re still here, and I can’t even express how sorry I am for people that didn’t make it out,” Homulos said through sobs. In another video interview, published by the Guardian and other news organizations, Braden explained that the bullet was very close to killing him: “If it was an inch over … it would’ve been in my brain, and I would’ve been gone.”

His brother Taylor and others began promoting on Facebook a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money for Braden, who was suffering from bleeding and swelling in his brain and blurred vision. The heavy-duty mechanic and welder also had to take time off work.

Friends and relatives posted messages of love and support in response. But soon, the nasty messages began to arrive, with strangers sending comments at such a rapid rate that it was hard for the family to keep up.

“Obviously a TERRIBLE CRISIS ACTOR,” wrote a Facebook user named Samantha. “HE’S SCAMMING THE PUBLIC … This was a government set up.”

“YOUR A LIAR AND THEFT PIECE OF CRAP [sic],” wrote Karen.

“You’ll pay on the other side,” said a user named Mach. Others called Braden a “LYING BASTARD”, “scumbag govt actor” and “fuckin FRAUD”, while one user named Josh wrote: “I hope someone comes after you and literally beats the living fuck outa you.”

Taylor, 28, recalled: “I was just blown away by what these people were saying.”

One woman posted 26 consecutive messages under Taylor’s request for donations for his brother, saying she had been a nurse for more than two decades and that she was certain Braden was a liar and con artist.
Braden tried to defend himself, but eventually gave up and deleted his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Some said the decision was further evidence that he was part of a government-organized hoax – a staged fake shooting meant to help push gun control policies.

Taylor said he tried to respond to the conspiracy theorists, but nothing seemed to work: “I’d be happy to talk to these people, but it seems there’s no reasoning. A really sad part of this is that a lot of these people think they’re fighting the good fight and exposing truth.”

Read the whole thing if you can get through it. There’s more like this.

This is about the NRA, by the way. This “crisis actor” conspiracy theory is based upon the idea that all mass shootings are staged by anti-gun rights activists to confiscate guns. They are completely unhinged.

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“It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased”by digby
Sure, Republicans erasing all the data on their winning election after it was subpoenaed is perfectly normal. Why would anyone ever want to know if “someone” meddled with the vote? Nothing to see here…

It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.

The Kennesaw elections center answers to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, a Republican running for governor in 2018 and the suit’s main defendant. His spokeswoman issued a statement Thursday saying his office had neither involvement nor advanced warning of the decision. It blamed “the undeniable ineptitude” at the Kennesaw State elections center.

After declining comment for more than 24 hours, Kennesaw State’s media office issued a statement late Thursday attributing the server wiping to “standard operating procedure.” It did not respond to the AP’s question on who ordered the action.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, mostly Georgia voters, want to scrap the state’s 15-year-old vote-management system — particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines, hackable devices that don’t use paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of voter intent. The plaintiffs were counting on an independent security review of the Kennesaw server, which held elections staging data for counties, to demonstrate the system’s unreliability.

Wiping the server “forestalls any forensic investigation at all,” said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist following the case. “People who have nothing to hide don’t behave this way.”

No they don’t.

This is one of the big issues facing our democracy and nobody can face doing anything about it for some reason.

All elections should go to paper ballot, right now. We can wait for a human count overseen by both parties and neutral observers, with a paper trail to be audited. Even if it takes days it’s not the end of the world. At this point unless they do this I’m not sure Americans will ever have another election that will be considered legitimate.

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He’s such a suckerby digby

I’ve been watching this Tom Steyer ad for weeks now. It’s on at least once an hour on the news channels where I am. Truthfully, it probably the only ad I watch from beginning to end every time I see it. I quite enjoy it.

Anyway, somebody else finally saw it on Fox and Friends this morning and he’s not happy, not one bit.

Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda from beginning, never wins elections!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2017

The poor booboo got his feelings hurt.

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How Sexual Harassers Quash Storiesby SpockoThis piece by Lloyd Grove in the Daily Beast gave me the chills. It describes the attack strategy attorney Lisa Bloom used during her time as Harvey Weinstein’s paid defender.  The example given is how Bloom went about discrediting Rose McGowan. This story explains how even when women do speak out, they can still have their story suppressed.
Clients Turn on ‘Champion for Women’ Lisa Bloom After Her Scorched Earth Crusade for Harvey Weinstein

When you go up against a person who has money and power they aren’t just going to roll over. They will fight back. Sometimes viciously. They will use multiple intimidation tactics, including hiring lawyers to make subtle and not so subtle threats to control the narrative.

They will use carrots and sticks to achieve their goals. Big sticks. These threats are designed to scare the crap out of most people. At least if there is the possibility of a payout, some people can get the kind of lawyers who will take the case.

We often don’t see details about many harassment cases because of the intimidation of journalists and their publishers.

Hiring lawyers and PR fixers to intimidate people is the method used by the rich and powerful. Harassers who don’t have money use other methods to intimidate before and after the fact. It is helpful to be prepared for these actions. People often ask what they can do to help when they see someone being harassed. Keeping track of details you witnessed, and helping with hard evidence to support claims later, is one way to help.

I’m not an expert, but I’ve seen things…

It also helps to think like a prosecutor or an investigative journalist when trying to help. “How good is the evidence?” “How many sources can we get on the record?”

If you have good sources, you still need to understand how they will be attacked, discredited or dismissed. This is another reason why you don’t read more of these stories. To defeat people at this level you need to think like a defense lawyer and a security professional. “How will they respond to my source? What will the rational attacks be? What will the irrational attacks look like?”

If you are prepared for them, you might be able to use the attacks against them. But most people aren’t prepared to gather evidence and also think three steps ahead. People don’t want to live that way, they just want it to stop.

Following these latest revelations of men doing horrible things, and the people helping them, you will start to see stories of people who have been falsely accused. Yes, these actually happen. But what you won’t see is a sense of proportion of real stories to false accusations. This is because of the media’s idea of a 50/50 “balance” to all stories.  The fixers for guilty parties will take advantage of this “balance” format. Watch for it.

Who will run these “balanced” stories the most? The mainstream media.  Right now the media is actively seeking out these stories so they can claim balance. Here’s the twisted part–they will get experts and survivors to provide them.

I can almost hear an NPR reporter asking the expert, “Are there false accusations? What about women harassing men?”

The reporter is doing what they see as their job, getting “both sides” of the story. The expert might have 100 stories of  convicted male harassers and one false accusation story. I can guaran-damn-tee they will be asked for the false accusation example. The interview or story will then include two male harassment stories and one story of a false accusation harasser. We might get a story of a female harasser thrown in for good measure. (“Hey wasn’t Jennifer Aniston a harasser in that movie about bad bosses? Let’s see if we can interview her!”)

Experts need to anticipate this and flip it back on its head when talking to the media. Give a ratio, emphasise the majority stories but know what the media will ask for. It’s part of their due diligence process that they have internalized. It’s also part of their need for novel stories and the exception proves the rule mindset. As a sophisticated reader of news you will notice this pattern, but others won’t.

So what’s the excuse for people who aren’t in the news business, why will they bring up the false accusation stories and reversed gender harassment stories?

Men don’t want to be lumped in with harassers.  Some might start bringing up false accusation stories or stories of female harassers they hear. They will say, “Not all men!” “Sometimes women lie! It’s true! Look at this data!”  They will want to be heard. How do you respond? Let me mansplain my response.

One time, decades ago, I found one mistake a female co-worker had made while keying in 10’s of thousands of numbers. I was excited to find it and point it out because I had been the source of multiple mistakes.  When I brought the print out up to her she acknowledged the error and said,  “My one to your one hundred, Spocko. My one to your one hundred.”

She acknowledged the fact, pointed out the ratio and reminded me again who was the main source of the problem. Me. I was the one who needed to do better, not her.

The “Real Russia Scandal”by digby
I wrote about the latest right wing plan to lock up Hillary Clinton for Salon this morning. They’ve thrown three different pseudo-scandals at the wall. Let’s see if they can make one stick!

On Tuesday I happened to write about the brewing hysteria I saw in the right-wing media over what they’re calling the “real Russia scandal.” Lo and behold, later that very morning, House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., came before the cameras to announce a new investigation into a 2010 sale of uranium to Russia, which was approved by the Obama administration’s State Department — then headed by Hillary Clinton — along with eight other departments.

Rep. Trey Gowdy of the House Oversight Committee also announced a new investigation into the Clinton email probe — yes, that would be an investigation of an investigation –and the Washington Post published a reported that lawyers for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had picked up the tab for the infamous “Steele dossier” after the original Republican clients had decided to drop it. (Not news. It was reported as early as October 2016 that Democrats had paid for it.)

Republicans have been desperate to figure out a way to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller and at the same time muddy the waters with some parallel scandal implicating Hillary Clinton. They understand perfectly well that pursuing her is something of a compulsive neurosis among the political media. They seem to have decided that their best bet is to throw several different Russia-related threads out at the same time to try to overwhelm the system.

Paul Waldman at the Washington Post, David Corn at Mother Jones (who first broke the story about Democratic funding a year ago) and Jonathan Chait at New York magazine have all written excellent pieces deconstructing the ridiculous pseudo-scandal of the Steele dossier and what the Republicans are trying to accomplish.

The most important piece of evidence comes from the Wall Street Journal, which laid it all out in an editorial entitled Democrats, Russians and the FBI. Did the bureau use disinformation to trigger its Trump probe? They assert that since Steele had Russian sources and was working for the Clinton campaign, that proves it was she and not Donald Trump who colluded with a foreign power. Furthermore, the fact that the FBI treated Steele’s information seriously means it too was in on the collusion; that implicates James Comey along with Robert Mueller, because they know each other. Therefore, Mueller must resign to “prevent further political turmoil over that conflict of interest.”

There are a dozen flaws in this argument but the most important is the one set forth by Robert Litt, former general counsel to the office of the director of national intelligence under the Obama administration:

The dossier itself played absolutely no role in the coordinated intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in our election. That assessment, which was released in unclassified form in January but which contained much more detail in the classified version that has been briefed to Congress, was based entirely on other sources and analysis.

Other than that, they have an airtight case.

As for Gowdy’s snipe hunt into the Justice Department’s handling of Clinton’s emails, well, what can you say? It’s an obsession. Unfortunately, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, is also joining the hunt. Let’s just say that it won’t be surprising to see a full-fledged show trial on Capitol Hill featuring Clinton, Loretta Lynch and James Comey at some point in the next few months.

Finally, we have the Russia uranium story, which reaches back more than seven years into the Obama administration. This one was originally flogged in the book “Clinton Cash” by right-wing journalist Peter Schweizer, a co-founder of Steve Bannon’s Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit funded by Robert and Rebekah Mercer whose name seems designed to create confusion. (For instance, with the Government Accountability Project, a well-respected whistleblower advocacy group that’s been around for 40 years.)

This tale was thoroughly debunked during the campaign. There is no evidence that Clinton took a particular interest in the uranium sale or that it was an unusual transaction in any way. Nonetheless, Fox News, led by Sean Hannity, has pushed this story hard, based on a repackaging of the old story by a right wing journalist named John Solomon in the Hill alleging that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow.” (Eric Wemple of the Washington Post unravels the entire convoluted tale here.)

There’s no evidence that the Clintons were aware any of this was happening, and the underlying conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton personally pushed the uranium deal through is still nonsense. But the Fox talking heads have found a way to imply that the FBI and the Justice Department have been covering up for Clinton and Obama, which once again leads to Comey, Mueller and even Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller investigation.

Right-wing operative David Bossie, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager and the man tasked with heading Trump’s Russia “war room” has been taking credit for “uncovering the documents” that Solomon relied on. Bossie has been appearing on Fox News shows and writing op-ed pieces demanding that Attorney General Jeff Sessions appoint a new special counsel to investigate “Hillary Clinton’s Russia scandal.”

Here’s a little taste of what the Fox folks have been saying, in this case coming from someone who was a White House adviser just two months ago:

Sebastian Gorka: Hillary Clinton should be convicted of treason like the Rosenbergs; "Those people got the chair" https://t.co/uokALPZCfH pic.twitter.com/ULborxcbBH— Media Matters (@mmfa) October 27, 2017

Donald Trump told the press on Wednesday: “Well, I think the uranium sale to Russia and the way it was done, so underhanded, with tremendous amounts of money being passed, I actually think that’s Watergate, modern age.”

On Thursday night CNN reported that the president personally instructed his White House counsel to tell the Justice Department to “lift the gag order on an undercover informant who played a critical role in an FBI investigation into Russian efforts to gain influence in the uranium industry in the United States during the Obama administration.” Apparently, he’s upset that Sessions hasn’t been following up on Sean Hannity’s big scoop.

If you didn’t know better you might just think that the White House, the GOP Congress and the right-wing media were colluding on all of this.

Nobody knows if any of these charges will stick or if Republicans will now be able to engineer the defenestration of Robert Mueller. But they know for a fact that they can convince their base that Hillary Clinton is at the heart of the “real Russia scandal” and anything Mueller may come up with is nothing more than a cover-up for her crimes. After all, those people voted for Donald Trump. They’ll obviously believe anything.

Update: Lulz…

It is now commonly agreed, after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2017

Of opioids and pitchforks
by Tom Sullivan

The opioid addiction epidemic is “a national health emergency,” the sitting president declared in a White House appearance yesterday. The announcement fell short of an earlier promise to declare a national emergency which, the New York Times reports, “would have prompted the rapid allocation of federal funding to address the issue.”

The crisis is man-made. A recent report by “60 Minutes” detailed how lax federal enforcement and corrupt practices by drug manufacturers that profit from opioid sales fueled the crisis. But there are deeper currents behind recent events that don’t show up when the camera lights focus on this story or that.

A few data points:

“Republicans are propping up scammers and cheaters” is the headline on Catherine Rampell’s Washington Post op-ed. Congress just upended the rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau barring mandatory arbitration clauses in financial agreements. “In practice, this means firms can expect to cheat you with relative impunity,” she writes. It is one among a list of regulations delayed or repealed by lawmakers that make it easier for corporate predators to do what they do best.

Axios reports that a backlash is brewing against big tech both from Washington and from consumers:

From the Trump base, Steve Bannon is railing against the “Lords of Silicon Valley,” and advocating the regulation of the big tech companies as public utilities. The appeal resonates with rank-and-file Republicans, who broadly believe that Facebook and Google “have it out for them,” a Bannon ally tells Axios. “They feel Facebook is weaponized against conservatives.”

Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia, tells Axios he sees a “tech-fueled groundswell” growing against the political establishment:

The lessons of globalization: “There is a deep belief that the elites of both parties blew it on globalization,” Perriello said. “They underestimated the downside risk, and overestimated the upside gain. There is a feeling that the elites have never learned that lesson.”

This is not a blue-red issue: At least in Virginia, the dual issues of automation and Amazonization resonate most fully with two groups — rural Trump supporters, and black urban Democrats. “These issues don’t necessarily get raised unprompted,” Perriello said of town halls he convenes. “But when you raise them, the whole room lights up.”

The churn produced a presidential election outcome last fall few thought possible.

Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?

Roger Altman writes at the Washington Post, “the greatest presidential election upset in modern U.S. history” may not have been a fluke never to be repeated. The election, he writes:

… likely signals a new era of extreme voter discontent and improbable national election results. Why? Because the so-called American Dream — that each generation would live better than its predecessor — has ended for most of our citizens. Half of the young adults in this country will earn less over their lifetimes than their parents did. Indeed, the whole idea of rising living standards, which defined this country for so long, is a thing of the past for most Americans. More and more voters realize this and are angry about it.

Adjusted for inflation, wages and purchasing power have been flat for 40 years. Real median household income has been flat since 1999. A quarter of adults cannot pay their monthly bills in full, Altman adds. The share of income going to the lowest 80 percent of earners is at a 100-year low.

There are two Americas, he writes, echoing John Edwards’ famous 2004 stump speech. In 2008, they voted for hope and change, yet saw wrong-doers’ fortunes grow even as their own fortunes sank further. The prosperity gap has widened to a chasm since 2008, and Americans who have run out of hope are self-medicating. And angry.

It’s not simply anxiety over immigrants or the browning of America, although those prejudices run deep. But those are, in part, political misdirection fueled by elites to keep the pitchforks pointed in a safer direction. The result, Altman suggests, is a rebellion against the establishment and the election of our Twitterer-in-chief.

Martin Longman wrote this summer:

If you live in a place where the steel mills and the downtown stores closed twenty years ago, and the malls and the local hospital are closing today, it has been a long time since any national politician besides Trump seemed aware you existed. Indeed, if anyone in blue zone America noticed, whether on the left or the right, they were likely to conclude that it’s your own fault for being a racist or a slob or both.

Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer famously wrote three summers ago it was his ability to see future trends that made him rich. With the massive inequality overtaking the country, he wrote, “I see pitchforks“:

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

Last fall was a kind of national, “Can you hear us now?” It’s still unclear Washington did.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.