Month: October 2017

Sure, what could go wrong?by digbyBreitbart News chairman Steve Bannon continued his campaign against the Republican establishment in a speech to the California Republican Party convention on Friday—while also calling for greater unity within the party. His targets included the current party leadership, but also the previous Republican president of the United States.

Bannon, who rarely spoke publicly during his time as White House chief strategist, has made a series of appearances in recent weeks promoting his plan to primary Republican senators in the 2018 election cycle. Boosted by former judge Roy Moore’s Alabama Senate primary win over the establishment’s (and President Trump’s) pick Luther Strange, Bannon is spearheading an intra-party war with the aim of removing Mitch McConnell as majority leader. He has said that he wants to challenge every Republican incumbent apart from Ted Cruz. He personally campaigned for Moore and for Kelli Ward, who is running a primary challenge to Jeff Flake in Arizona. Last week he promised a “season of war” against the establishment in a speech to the Values Voter Summit in Washington.

“Victory begets victory,” Bannon told the crowd at the Anaheim Marriott in a wide-ranging speech that touched on everything from Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance (Bannon’s a fan) to the “Fourth Turning” to Andrew Sullivan’s latest piece (Bannon’s also a fan). And after existing on the political fringes for most of his career, Bannon has finally notched some victories: his speech on Friday lingered on Trump’s election and on Moore’s win. “I was on the opposite side of the football with the president,” Bannon noted. “I think the president got some bad information.”

Though Trump publicly—albeit half-heartedly—asked for Bannon to calm down his campaign against Republican senators last week during a press conference with McConnell, Bannon said he is acting as Trump’s “wingman.” He launched a broadside against George W. Bush, who gave a speech rebuking Trumpian ideology last week. Members of the audience booed at the mention of Bush’s name.

“It’s clear he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about,” Bannon said, “Just like it was when he was president of the United States.”

“There has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush’s,” Bannon said. The reaction to this line was more muted, with only scattered applause. One Republican strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his involvement in some races in California told me that at his table only three of seven people applauded. “This was a populist speech, this was not a Republican Party speech,” the strategist said. “Nobody in this room had ever heard a speech like this before.”

Bannon tailored his speech to the California audience, warning darkly of the power of Silicon Valley, which he cast as the “beating heart” of the resistance to President Trump.

“It is about winning, nothing else matters.”
He even warned that Silicon Valley might engineer a secession attempt, saying that if California Republicans do not roll back the law that has made the state a “sanctuary state” for immigrants, “10 or 15 years from now the folks in Silicon Valley and the progressive left in this state are gonna try to secede from the union.”

“We don’t have a problem with ideas,” Bannon said of Republicans. “We have a problem with understanding how to win. It is about winning, nothing else matters.”
“Nothing else matters”

*And you have to love him saying that Bush was too stupid to know what he was saying. He’s no genius. But my God. Look at the imbecile he created.

..

From the “you cannot make this stuff up” filesby digby

Yup

A classic scam?
by Tom Sullivan

It’s a classic scam. Stores artificially inflate prices in advance of a “sale” so they can brag how much they’ve slashed prices to lure customers. Is that the point of the White House’s concerted efforts to sabotage Obamacare? Drive up premiums so high that any GOPish replacement looks cheaper? That would be in character, although with the sitting president using that term is being generous.

He may not be much for political strategy, but scams? Donald knows scams. But mostly he’s obsessed with undoing any of his predecessor’s accomplishments.

Health insurance is on the brain this morning because of the notice from BlueCross BlueShield that they’re replacing our old, grandfathered policy with a shiny new one with a 377% premium increase.

Premium increases in North Carolina that average 14.1 percent come on the heels of a move by the sitting president to curtail subsidy payments to insurers under Obamacare. Associated Press called the decision “likely to roil insurance markets.” Buyers in the individual market, AP reported, “could face prohibitive increases.” (See previous paragraph.)

Drive up the number of uninsured

A Gallup survey released Friday showed an uptick in the uninsured rate for the first time since the sitting sitting president took office. The rate has jumped 1.4 percent, reversing the record low rates under the Obamacare program. Gallup reports:

The uninsured rate, measured by Gallup and Sharecare since 2008, had fallen to a record low of 10.9% in the third and fourth quarters of 2016. However, the 1.4-point increase in the percentage of adults without health insurance since the end of last year represents nearly 3.5 million Americans who have entered the ranks of the uninsured.

Still, the uninsured rate remains well below its peak of 18.0% measured in the third quarter of 2013, prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) mandated healthcare exchanges and the associated requirement that all adults have health insurance or be subject to a fine.

Two reasons Gallup suggests for the reversal: a decline in competition in some regions and uncertainty about the fate of the health care law itself.

The Los Angeles Times’ Michael Hiltzik writes:

Make no mistake: Those are related phenomena, and they place the blame squarely with Trump and his GOP colleagues on Capitol Hill. One reason that insurance companies have been backing away from the exchanges is that Trump has continually threatened to undermine the law in every way possible. For months he threatened to cancel reimbursements due insurers for cost-sharing reductions they are required by law to offer low-income buyers; he finally followed through on that threat Oct. 12, raising the prospect of billions of dollars in losses for insurers this year.

The GOP’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act this year have failed in Congress but have left a miasma of confusion among consumers. The confusion is about more than merely whether the government would enforce the individual mandate, which requires all households to carry health coverage or pay a penalty; it’s about whether the exchange plans would even continue to exist, and how much they would cost.

Should the uninsured rate and premiums jump up in the short term, the man with the fake university can blame it on the inherent awfulness of Obamacare. Any later move on the sitting president’s part that lowers them again modestly will be spun as a triumph.

We will be shopping, of course. But the sitting president has made that more difficult as well. By cutting the annual enrollment period in half, cutting the budget for ACA navigators almost in half, and by closing the ACA exchanges on Sunday, the administration has added another wrinkle to renewing coverage. The Washington Post explains:

The complication arises when people who already have health plans under the law are automatically re-enrolled in the same plan. In the past, a few million consumers each year have been auto-enrolled and then were sent government notices encouraging them to check whether they could find better or more affordable coverage.

This time, according to a federal document obtained by The Washington Post, the automatic enrollment will take place after it is too late to make any changes. Auto-enrollment will occur immediately after the last day of the ACA sign-up season, which the Trump administration has shortened, leaving the vast majority of such consumers stranded without any way to switch to a plan they might prefer.

Unfaithful stewardship

Abbe Gluck from the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School believes these moves by the administration violate the law, or at least his duty to “take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The sitting president’s “intentional, multi-pronged sabotage of the ACA” is not merely permissible exercise of executive prerogative:

Trump’s strangulation of broad parts of the ACA does not stem from his decision to prioritize what he views as other, more important sections of the law. No budgetary or policy justification has been offered by the White House for canceling enrollment support; nor has anyone claimed taxpayers will be saved money. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the president’s efforts to shut down cost-sharing reduction payments to insurance companies will cost the federal government almost $200 billion.

[…]

Motive matters, with respect to whether the president exercises his power legally. If the president exercises his discretion to further the purpose of a statute, he complies with the take care clause. If he uses his power pretextually or unreasonably, he violates the Constitution. President Trump’s motives are unambiguous.

Like he cares?

* * * * * * * *

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

Friday Night Sootherby digbyA sweet story about a girl and the birds she feeds:

Lots of people love the birds in their garden, but it’s rare for that affection to be reciprocated. One young girl in Seattle is luckier than most. She feeds the crows in her garden – and they bring her gifts in return.Eight-year-old Gabi Mann sets a bead storage container on the dining room table, and clicks the lid open. This is her most precious collection. “You may take a few close looks,” she says, “but don’t touch.” It’s a warning she’s most likely practised on her younger brother. She laughs after saying it though. She is happy for the audience.
Inside the box are rows of small objects in clear plastic bags. One label reads: “Black table by feeder. 2:30 p.m. 09 Nov 2014.” Inside is a broken light bulb. Another bag contains small pieces of brown glass worn smooth by the sea. “Beer coloured glass,” as Gabi describes it.
Each item is individually wrapped and categorised. Gabi pulls a black zip out of a labelled bag and holds it up. “We keep it in as good condition as we can,” she says, before explaining this object is one of her favourites.

There’s a miniature silver ball, a black button, a blue paper clip, a yellow bead, a faded black piece of foam, a blue Lego piece, and the list goes on. Many of them are scuffed and dirty. It is an odd assortment of objects for a little girl to treasure, but to Gabi these things are more valuable than gold.

She didn’t gather this collection. Each item was a gift – given to her by crows.

She holds up a pearl coloured heart. It is her most-prized present. “It’s showing me how much they love me.”

Gabi’s relationship with the neighbourhood crows began accidentally in 2011. She was four years old, and prone to dropping food. She’d get out of the car, and a chicken nugget would tumble off her lap. A crow would rush in to recover it. Soon, the crows were watching for her, hoping for another bite.

As she got older, she rewarded their attention, by sharing her packed lunch on the way to the bus stop. Her brother joined in. Soon, crows were lining up in the afternoon to greet Gabi’s bus, hoping for another feeding session.

Gabi’s mother Lisa didn’t mind that crows consumed most of the school lunches she packed. “I like that they love the animals and are willing to share,” she says, while admitting she never noticed crows until her daughter took an interest in them. “It was a kind of transformation. I never thought about birds.”

In 2013, Gabi and Lisa started offering food as a daily ritual, rather than dropping scraps from time to time.

Each morning, they fill the backyard birdbath with fresh water and cover bird-feeder platforms with peanuts. Gabi throws handfuls of dog food into the grass. As they work, crows assemble on the telephone lines, calling loudly to them.

It was after they adopted this routine that the gifts started appearing.

The crows would clear the feeder of peanuts, and leave shiny trinkets on the empty tray; an earring, a hinge, a polished rock. There wasn’t a pattern. Gifts showed up sporadically – anything shiny and small enough to fit in a crow’s mouth.

One time it was a tiny piece of metal with the word “best” printed on it. “I don’t know if they still have the part that says ‘friend’,” Gabi laughs, amused by the thought of a crow wearing a matching necklace.

When you see Gabi’s collection, it’s hard not to wish for gift-giving crows of your own.

“If you want to form a bond with a crow, be consistent in rewarding them,” advises John Marzluff, professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington. He specialises in birds, particularly crows and ravens.

More at the link.

Have a good week-end, folks.

You want an “Empty Barrel”?

I’ve got the biggest barrel in the whole wide world. In fact, it’s the size of the fucking Grand Canyon: Trump at the CIA, standing in front of the wall of the fallen:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I want to thank everybody. Very, very special people. And it is true, this is my first stop, officially. We’re not talking about the balls, or we’re not talking about even the speeches — although they did treat me nicely on that speech yesterday. (Laughter.) I always call them the dishonest media, but they treated me nicely. (Laughter.)

But I want to say that there is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump. There’s nobody. (Applause.)

The wall behind me is very, very special. We’ve been touring for quite a while, and I’ll tell you what — 29? I can’t believe it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Twenty-eight.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, 28. We got to reduce it. That’s amazing. And we really appreciate what you’ve done in terms of showing us something very special. And your whole group, these are really special, amazing people. Very, very few people could do the job you people do. And I want to just let you know, I am so behind you. And I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted, and you’re going to get so much backing. Maybe you’re going to say, please don’t give us so much backing. (Laughter.) Mr. President, please, we don’t need that much backing. (Laughter.) But you’re going to have that. And I think everybody in this room knows it.

You know, the military and the law enforcement, generally speaking, but all of it — but the military gave us tremendous percentages of votes. We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military. And probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did. (Laughter.) But I would guarantee a big portion, because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks. (Applause.) We’re all on the same wavelength, right? He knows. It took Brian about 30 seconds to figure that one out, right, because we know we’re on the same wavelength.

But we’re going to do great things. We’re going to do great things. We’ve been fighting these wars for longer than any wars we’ve ever fought. We have not used the real abilities that we have. We’ve been restrained. We have to get rid of ISIS. Have to get rid of ISIS. We have no choice. (Applause.) Radical Islamic terrorism. And I said it yesterday — it has to be eradicated just off the face of the Earth. This is evil. This is evil. And you know, I can understand the other side. We can all understand the other side. There can be wars between countries, there can be wars. You can understand what happened. This is something nobody can even understand. This is a level of evil that we haven’t seen. And you’re going to go to it, and you’re going to do a phenomenal job. But we’re going to end it. It’s time. It’s time right now to end it.

You have somebody coming on who is extraordinary. For the different positions of “Secretary of This” and “Secretary of That” and all of these great positions, I’d see five, six, seven, eight people. And we had a great transition. We had an amazing team of talent. And, by the way, General Flynn is right over here. Put up your hand. What a good guy. (Applause.) And Reince and my whole group. Reince — you know — they don’t care about Reince. He’s like this political guy that turned out to be a superstar, right? We don’t have to talk about Reince.

But we did — we had such a tremendous, tremendous success. So when I’m interviewing all of these candidates that Reince and his whole group is putting in front, it went very, very quickly, and, in this case, went so quickly — because I would see six or seven or eight for Secretary of Agriculture, who we just named the other day, Sonny Perdue, former governor of Georgia. Fantastic guy. But I’d see six, seven, eight people for a certain position. Everybody wanted it.

But I met Mike Pompeo, and it was the only guy I met. I didn’t want to meet anybody else. I said, cancel everybody else. Cancel. Now, he was approved, essentially, but they’re doing little political games with me. He was one of the three. Now, last night, as you know, General Mattis, fantastic guy, and General Kelly got approved. (Applause.) And Mike Pompeo was supposed to be in that group. It was going to be the three of them. Can you imagine all of these guys? People respect — you know, they respect that military sense. All my political people, they’re not doing so well. The political people aren’t doing so well but you. We’re going to get them all through, but some will take a little bit longer than others.

But Mike was literally — I had a group of — what, we had nine different people? Now, I must say, I didn’t mind cancelling eight appointments. That wasn’t the worst thing in the world. But I met him and I said, he is so good. Number one in his class at West Point.

Now, I know a lot about West Point. I’m a person that very strongly believes in academics. In fact, every time I say I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for 35 years who did a fantastic job in so many different ways, academically — was an academic genius — and then they say, is Donald Trump an intellectual? Trust me, I’m like a smart person. (Laughter.) And I recognized immediately. So he was number one at West Point, and he was also essentially number one at Harvard Law School. And then he decided to go into the military. And he ran for Congress. And everything he’s done has been a homerun. People like him, but much more importantly to me, everybody respects him. And when I told Paul Ryan that I wanted to do this, I would say he may be the only person that was not totally thrilled — right, Mike? Because he said, I don’t want to lose this guy.

But you will be getting a total star. You’re going to be getting a total gem. He’s a gem. (Applause.) You’ll see. You’ll see. And many of you know him anyway. But you’re going to see. And again, we have some great people going in. But this one is something — is going to be very special, because this is one, if I had to name the most important, this would certainly be perhaps — you know, in certain ways, you could say my most important. You do the job like everybody in this room is capable of doing. And the generals are wonderful, and the fighting is wonderful. But if you give them the right direction, boy, does the fighting become easier. And, boy, do we lose so fewer lives, and win so quickly. And that’s what we have to do. We have to start winning again.

You know, when I was young and when I was — of course, I feel young. I feel like I’m 30, 35, 39. (Laughter.) Somebody said, are you young? I said, I think I’m young. You know, I was stopping — when we were in the final month of that campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops. Speeches, speeches, in front of 25,000, 30,000 people, 15,000, 19,000 from stop to stop. I feel young.

When I was young — and I think we’re all sort of young. When I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade. We’d win with wars. At a certain age, I remember hearing from one of my instructors, “The United States has never lost a war.” And then, after that, it’s like we haven’t won anything. We don’t win anymore. The old expression, “to the victor belong the spoils” — you remember. I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that, keep the oil. Now, I said it for economic reasons. But if you think about it, Mike, if we kept the oil you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay. (Laughter.) Maybe you’ll have another chance. But the fact is, should have kept the oil.

I believe that this group is going to be one of the most important groups in this country toward making us safe, toward making us winners again, toward ending all of the problems. We have so many problems that are interrelated that we don’t even think of, but interrelated to the kind of havoc and fear that this sick group of people has caused. So I can only say that I am with you 1,000 percent.

And the reason you’re my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. (Laughter and applause.) And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite — exactly. And they understand that, too.

And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech? (Applause.) I’ve been given good reviews. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field. I say, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, the field was — it looked like a million, million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.

In fact, when I first started, I said, oh, no. The first line, I got hit by a couple of drops. And I said, oh, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it. But the truth is that it stopped immediately. It was amazing. And then it became really sunny. And then I walked off and it poured right after I left. It poured. But, you know, we have something that’s amazing because we had — it looked — honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument. And I turn on — and by mistake I get this network, and it showed an empty field. And it said we drew 250,000 people. Now, that’s not bad, but it’s a lie. We had 250,000 people literally around — you know, in the little bowl that we constructed. That was 250,000 people. The rest of the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed. So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price.

We had another one yesterday, which was interesting. In the Oval Office there’s a beautiful statue of Dr. Martin Luther King. And I also happen to like Churchill, Winston Churchill. I think most of us like Churchill. He doesn’t come from our country, but had a lot to do with it. Helped us; real ally. And, as you know, the Churchill statue was taken out — the bust. And as you also probably have read, the Prime Minister is coming over to our country very shortly. And they wanted to know whether or not I’d like it back. I say, absolutely, but in the meantime we have a bust of Churchill.

So a reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on there cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time Magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? (Laughter.) I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?

But I will say that they said — it was very interesting — that Donald Trump took down the bust, the statue, of Dr. Martin Luther King. And it was right there. But there was a cameraman that was in front of it. (Laughter.) So Zeke — Zeke from Time Magazine writes a story about I took down. I would never do that because I have great respect for Dr. Martin Luther King. But this is how dishonest the media is.

Now, the big story — the retraction was, like, where? Was it a line? Or do they even bother putting it in? So I only like to say that because I love honesty. I like honest reporting.

I will tell you, final time — although I will say it, when you let in your thousands of other people that have been trying to come in — because I am coming back — we’re going to have to get you a larger room. (Applause.) We may have to get you a larger room. You know? And maybe, maybe, it will be built by somebody that knows how to build, and we won’t have columns. (Laughter.) You understand that? (Applause.) We get rid of the columns.

No, I just wanted to really say that I love you, I respect you. There’s nobody I respect more. You’re going to do a fantastic job. And we’re going to start winning again, and you’re going to be leading the charge.

So thank you all very much. (Applause.) Thank you — you’re beautiful. Thank you all very much. Have a good time. I’ll be back. I’ll be back. Thank you

.

The president thinks the DOJ works for himby digbyYou’d think he would have learned after firing Comey that interfering with the Department of Justice is a Very Bad Idea. But noooo:

The number of inappropriate contacts & requests from Trump to DOJ is staggering. Since his election, he has: interviewed @PreetBharara, called @PreetBharara repeatedly to try and curry favor; privately asked the FBI director for a loyalty pledge; asked the FBI director to drop a case; publicly told the AG what to probe; railed to the AG about recusing from a probe INTO HIM; asked the AG to drop a case into a political supporter (Arpaio), & now interviewed US attorneys in districts where he has exposure.

Any of these alone is a huge scandal. Together, they’re a total indictment of his attempt to undermine an independent DOJ & the rule of law

Yes, it does seem just a little bit … suspicious.

To think that the Attorney General under Bush was forced to resign because he fired some Us Attorneys for failing to make some desired political prosecutions. Under trump that wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow. After all, he’s actually fired the FBI director for looking into his relationship with a foreign government and is still carrying on interviewing US Attorneys who might have jurisdiction over his own suspected criminal activity. And it’s just … happening. I’m going to guess from now on that Republicans will be free to do whatever they want with the DOJ. (Democrats won’t, of course, because Republicans would show up at the White House with tiki torches chanting “Impeach! Impeach!” and everyone would run for cover.)

It’s maddening.

.

The NRA making the case for armed revolution, one video at a timeby digbyDana Loesch’s latest. I don’t know how anyone can see this message coming from a group that advocates for people to be armed at all times can be seen as anything but incitement. We have free speech and they have a right to say it. But let’s not kid ourselves about what they are saying. It’s not as if their rights are in danger at the moment. The Republicans have it all and the court is well-packed. This is about fun owners destroying the opposition to Donald Trump and the Republicans.You do the math.

.

Give him a 10 out of 10. Those paper towels were awesomeby digbyYesterday, Trump met with the Governor of Puerto Rico, whom he treated as his personal lapdog essentially daring him to complain or he’d make things even worse for the people there. He repeatedly compared the “fantastic” recovery in Florida and Texas to Puerto Rico constantly referring to its bad infrastructure and how it was a mess and how the people didn’t go to work, which he claimed he understood because they had families without homes, all the while barely repressing a sneer at their lack of gumption. It was sickening. When asked to rate his response to the disaster he instantly said “I give myself a 10 out of 10.” Uhm, no:

In contrast with Texas after Hurricane Harvey and Florida after Irma, where thousands of repair workers rushed in to restring power lines, only a few hundred electrical workers from outside the island have arrived to help. It was not until Saturday that the Puerto Rican government said it had the federal funding needed to bring in more workers.And until a week ago, the small Montana company hired to get the lights back on had only 165 workers on the ground; it now has about 300. In comparison, 5,300 workers from outside the region converged on coastal Texas in the days after Hurricane Harvey to restore a power loss that was about a tenth the size, said Larry Jones, a spokesman for AEP Texas. Electricity was back on for almost everyone within two weeks.
In Florida, 18,000 outside workers went in after Hurricane Irma knocked out electricity to most of the state last month, according to FPL, Florida’s largest power company.

In Puerto Rico, the brunt of the work has been left to the 900 members of local crews.

Industry experts said poor planning, a slow response by power officials and Puerto Rico’s dire financial straits had led to a situation that would be unfathomable in the continental United States. Logistical challenges — like where to house the thousands of extra workers needed to get the lights back on — still have not been resolved.

“Thirty days after the storm, I see very little progress,” said Eduardo Bhatia, an opposition senator who in 2014 wrote an energy reform law. He added, “I don’t see the boots on the field doing the work, and that is a tragedy.”

At the White House on Thursday, President Trump said the administration deserved a 10 for its response to the hurricanes that struck Puerto Rico and other parts of the United States.

“Slam Dunk” Reduxby digbyOh look, another CIA director misstating conclusions of the Intelligence community to further the president’s agenda.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo declared Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia’s interference in the 2016 American presidential election did not alter the outcome, a statement that distorted spy agency findings.“The intelligence community’s assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election,” Pompeo said at a security conference in Washington.His comment suggested — falsely — that a report released by U.S. intelligence agencies in January had ruled out any impact that could be attributed to a covert Russian interference campaign that involved leaks of tens of thousands of stolen emails, the flooding of social media sites with false claims and the purchase of ads on Facebook.
A report compiled by the CIA and other agencies described that Russian operation as unprecedented in its scale and concluded that Moscow’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process and help elect Donald Trump.

But the report reached no conclusions about whether that interference had altered the outcome — an issue that U.S. intelligence officials made clear was considered beyond the scope of their inquiry.

Isn’t that special? This is the guy who’s feeding Trump his classified briefing every morning.

.

John Kelly, macho hatchet manby digby

I wrote about the “grown-up” General Kelly’s Trumpian performance yesterday for Salon this morning:Ever since Donald Trump was asked about his curious delay in commenting on the deaths of four servicemen in Niger and, instead of answering, began to brag about how he was the only president to call all the families of fallen soldiers, this ugly story has been festering. Once again, Trump’s reflexive self-aggrandizement to cover up for his failures has gotten him into trouble.
First of all, other presidents have of course called families of the fallen and have made many other gestures of sympathy and care. It was a low blow to try to tar his predecessors as failing to honor the war dead. Needless to say, the moment he made the claim that he alone called all the families, reporters went out and started asking and it turned out he hadn’t done that either.

after making that ignoble boast, Trump went on a radio show and said that someone should ask John Kelly, the former Marine general who is now his chief of staff, whether President Obama had called him after his son was killed in Afghanistan, which obviously meant that was where he’d heard that Obama fell down on the job. The White House later confirmed this.

Evidently, this spurred Trump to finally call Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the soldiers killed in Niger, while she was on the way to meet the coffin at the airport. He behaved like a boor because he doesn’t know how to act any other way. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., who was accompanying the family to carry out this terrible duty, complained publicly about Trump’s insensitive comments which the fallen soldier’s mother confirmed. Instead of taking the mature and dignified course and simply apologizing for being inartful with his words, President Trump called everyone a liar and sent out one of “his generals” to clean up his mess.

Kelly has a distinguished record in the Marine Corps and is himself a Gold Star father who lost a son in Afghanistan. I don’t think anyone in the country disrespects either of those things. But he is no longer in uniform and has willingly become a partisan political player working for a contemptible leader. When he decided to use his stature and experience to bail out his boss for making a hash of what he calls a sacred issue on Thursday, he sold his own reputation cheaply.

He went before the press and confirmed that Obama hadn’t called him, but said he didn’t see this as a negative thing. He wondered how any president can properly express himself if he’s never been through the ordeal of losing a child, trying to elicit sympathy for poor Donald Trump and the burden he bears. But most presidents read a book or two about former administrations, they reach out to the living ex-presidents for insight or they just generally give a damn about aspects of the job other than holding rallies and watching “Fox & Friends.” But this is Trump: He doesn’t read and he doesn’t ask for or take advice. He’s not like any other president in our history.

After delivering what seemed to be a sincere disquisition on the way members of the military and their families face this tragedy, Kelly abruptly went on the attack, accusing everyone but his boss of lowering the discourse and destroying everything that’s traditionally sacred in our society.

Kelly said that women were formerly considered sacred and implied that Khizr and Ghazala Khan and his wife had degraded the sacredness of the Gold Star family by appearing at the Democratic convention, conveniently ignoring the fact that the man he’s working for is an admitted sexual predator who mercilessly attacked that Gold Star family. (He didn’t mention that POWs used to be held sacred as well, or that his boss says he “prefers people who aren’t captured.”) He angrily decried the politicization of the war dead, although it was his own boss who politicized a simple question about a military mission that nobody wants to talk about by attacking his predecessors’ approach to dealing with this sacred duty.

Then Kelly went for the jugular and brutally attacked Rep. Wilson for “eavesdropping” on the conversation between the president and Sgt. Johnson’s wife. Apparently he hadn’t bothered to read anything about the incident or he would have known that the call was on a speakerphone in the car and the exchange was confirmed by others who heard it. Had he looked into it, he would also have found out that Wilson, a former educator, is a good friend of the family and ran a program Johnson attended called the 5,000 Role Models of Excellence Project, for youths pursuing military careers.

Not that any of that matters. It was apparently decided in the White House ahead of time that the best way to protect the boss was to smear Rep. Wilson. Kelly carried out the order with relish, even though its premise was a lie.

Just like his boss, the president, Kelly never once uttered the name of Sgt. La David Johnson or his pregnant widow, Myeshia.

Much of the mainstream press was predictably breathless over Kelly’s forceful performance. Interestingly, many of the military commentators were not as impressed, correctly observing that it was Trump and Kelly who were politicizing the fallen. And the president just kept going:

Follow
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!
7:53 PM – Oct 19, 2017
36,70336,703 Replies
15,02315,023 Retweets
61,66761,667 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy

Chuck Todd said on “Meet the Press Daily” that people heard what they wanted to hear from the reports of Trump’s calls, suggesting that if you liked Trump you understood his reported comment, “He knew what he signed up for,” as a sign of empathy and caring. I have no doubt that’s true. His fans always give him the benefit of the doubt. For the rest of us it’s not that simple, since Trump is a compulsive liar who has never shown empathy toward anyone but himself. As George W. Bush famously said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me … won’t get fooled again.”

.