Month: February 2018

Morning Rickby digby

Of wheat and chaff
by Tom Sullivan

A frenzy takes over the halls of the Pentagon as the end of the budget year looms. No office wants to end the year with money left in its budget. To not use it this year is to lose it in next year’s budget. This leaves planners wandering the hallways desperate for something, anything, to throw billions at as the clock runs out.

The budget bill the sitting president signed Friday will ensure more of the same. The Associated Press reports that at $700 billion it is “the biggest budget the Pentagon has ever seen,” a 15.5 percent increase and well beyond what the president requested. Next year’s budget rises to $716 billion.

To use up budget, the military might resort to “hovering aircrafts at the end of runways just to burn off fuel and soldiers sent to the shooting range sometimes for an entire day just to expend ammunition.” If the Pentagon blows billions in tax dollars on the military equivalent of lobster, Fox News is okay with that. It’s only a civilian SNAP recipient spending a few bucks on it that ignites a right-wing hissy fit.

Publicly traded defense contractors are exempt, naturally. The millions of civilians employed by the industry owe their homes, cars, pensions, and kids’ educations to those jobs government never created. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of civilians the Department of Defense hires directly.

Graph from War on the Rocks, Texas National Security Network, University of Texas.

AP reports:

The extra money is not targeted at countering a new enemy or a singular threat like al-Qaida extremists or the former Soviet Union. Instead the infusion is being sold as a fix for a broader set of problems, including a deficit of training, a need for more hi-tech missile defenses, and the start of a complete recapitalization of the nuclear weapons arsenal.

Every secretary of defense since 2011, when the Congress passed a law setting firm limits on military and domestic spending, has complained that spending caps set by the Budget Control Act were squeezing the military so hard that the number of ready-to-fight combat units was dwindling. Aging equipment was stacking up, troops were not getting enough training and the uncertain budget outlook was clouding America’s future.

Chris Hayes mentioned the Budget Control Act on MSNBC’s All In Thursday night.

The biggest winners in the military buildup are the country’s largest defense contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics, that spend millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress.

The legislation that Trump signed Friday is expected to translate to billions more for one of the Pentagon’s highest priorities: missile defense. The appropriations committees still need to finalize exactly what will be in the 2018 defense budget. But they’re likely to follow closely the defense policy bill approved by Congress late last year. That included $12.3 billion for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency and ordered a more rapid buildup of the nation’s missile defenses as North Korea has refused to back away from developing nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States.

Now the defense industry just has to invent new weapons to spend it on.

But given how much of that frenzied week 52 spending goes to building construction and maintenance, one imagines the name TRUMP in gold springing up on buildings at U.S. facilities worldwide, renamed Trumpville, Casa del Trump, Marina del Trump, and so forth. Why spend millions on lobbying when sending snapshots to the Oval Office will do?

As Hayes pointed out on Thursday, the central debate over tax spending in America is not the size of it or the size of the debt or deficits, but over into whose pockets tax dollars flow. It is over why government exists and whom it serves. Over citizens lawmakers think of as wheat and those they treat as chaff.

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

Friday Night Sootherby digby

It’s been a long week. Here are some very good boys and girls to help you relax:

Fun Black History: When Nichelle Nichols Met Martin Luther King Jr.

By Spocko

(Link to Io9 story on this Drunk History clip.)

I’ve heard the story before about how MLK Jr. convinced Nichelle Nichols to stay on Star Trek, but what I didn’t know was she played an important role helping to drive recruitment for NASA in the years after Star Trek, spearheading an outreach program that brought the likes of Sally Ride, the first woman in space, and Guion Bluford, NASA’s first African-American astronaut, to the organization.

Also, Mae Jemison, M.D., the first African American woman in space, was a Star Trek fan

We are always saying if you don’t learn from history you are bound to repeat it. Maybe the reason we don’t learn is it’s told in such a boring way!

I learned something from Drunk History and I’ll remember it.

Now here is a photo two people doing the Vulcan hand sign.

Cops working with White Supremacists against their common enemyby digby

Keep your eye on this. If things start to heat up, it will be a problem:

California Highway Patrol officers collaborated with armed neo-Nazis to investigate a violent 2016 clash outside the state capitol in Sacramento between members of the white supremacist Traditionalist Workers Party and the leftist group Anti-Fascism Action, the Guardian reported Friday.

Several of the antifa counterprotesters in the brawl were stabbed repeatedly by neo-Nazis. But CHP records given to the British paper by attorneys in the resulting criminal case show officers treated the white supremacists as sources and victims, with an investigator named Donovan Ayres going so far as to tell one TWP organizer he wished he could help him identify his enemies.

“I’m gonna suggest that we hold that or redact your name or something until this gets resolved,” Ayres told TWP member Doug McCormack, referring to a public records request for the organization’s rally permit that contained McCormack’s name. The Guardian says Ayres also told McCormack he didn’t know who was behind the request, but “If I did, I would tell you.”

In arrest reports, the same cop argued that a black anti-fascist counterprotester who had been stabbed three times in the altercation should be charged with 11 crimes. “As evidence, Ayres provided Facebook photos of the man holding up his fist” and said that “‘Black Power salute’ and his ‘support for anti-racist activism’ demonstrated his ‘intent and motivation to violate the civil rights’ of the neo-Nazi group,” the Guardian notes. Prosecutors did not take up Ayres’ charging recommendations against that man and set aside the vast majority of Highway Patrol recommendations, but are still bringing felony cases against three counterdemonstrators from the melee.

The brawl took place roughly 18 months ago when a few dozen TWP members marched “to make a statement about the precarious situation our race is in.” The planning post cited harassment of Trump supporters at events in California during the election as cause to hit back at “orchestrated pogroms by Zionist agitated colored people.” The neo-Nazi marchers were greeted by hundreds of anti-fascist counterdemonstrators.

Luckily the prosecutors didn’t take the cops word for it. Well actually:

Three people from the anti-fascist group currently face charges stemming from the brawl. One, a teacher named Yvette Felarca, told the Guardian she was stabbed that day by McCormack’s crew. Prosecutors noted they have also charged one person from the TWP bloc, and the chief deputy district attorney on the case “vehemently denied” that his office has been biased in its work on the case. CHP wanted at least 106 people charged, suggesting a significant disagreement between cops and prosecutors on how to proceed.

The documents reported Friday help illustrate where that disconnect between armed law enforcement and their suit-and-tie colleagues might arise. Ayres and other cops relied heavily on McCormack and fellow TWP neo-Nazi Derik Punneo for help identifying anti-fascist demonstrators. An audio recording of officers’ jailhouse conversation with Punneo captures one telling him “We’re pretty much going after them” and “We’re looking at you as a victim,” the paper notes.

Fourteen were wounded in the end, including five people taken to hospitals for stab wounds. Several of the neo-Nazis, including the ones CHP officers directly collaborated with to identify antifa members, had knives on them when they were arrested. Neither McCormack nor Punneo were charged.

This is dangerous.

Trump’s pet name for Bannon was “Bam-Bam”by digby

I hadn’t heard this one:

Politico’s Eliana Johnson reported an unsettling statement from President Trump, when he reacted to a disturbing story about former chief strategist Steve Bannon’s past.

When Bannon became CEO of the Trump campaign back in 2016, there were a lot of reports and profiles about his strange, nomadic lifestyle before he took the helm at Breitbart. One aspect of Bannon’s past that received attention was a lawsuit his ex-wife filed against him for domestic violence and battery.

Here’s how Politico previously reported on the charges:

The Santa Monica, Calif., police report says that Bannon’s then-wife claimed he pulled at her neck and wrist during an altercation over their finances, and an officer reported witnessing red marks on her neck and wrist to bolster her account. Bannon also reportedly smashed the phone when she tried to call the police.

The case against Bannon was dropped when his ex-wife didn’t show up to court, and the controversial chapter had no impact on his position within the Trump campaign.

I keep saying this but I don’t think it’s getting through: it’s not that they don’t believe the women. They do. They just don’t give a damn.

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He’s got serious executive tweeting to do. He’s busy.by digby

He won’t read:

For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.

Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned.

Soon after Trump took office, analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, who is known for taking in much of his information from conservative Fox News Channel hosts. The oral briefings were augmented with photos, videos and graphics.

After several months, Trump made clear he was not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events, according to people with knowledge of the situation. 

Administration officials defended Trump’s reliance on oral sessions and said he gets full intelligence briefings, noting that presidents have historically sought to receive the information in different ways.

Maybe they could hire Steve Doocey to deliver it in the form of an interpretive dance on the Fox and Friends set via closed circuit TV — in between “stories” of Trump’s 98% approval rating and his dominance on the world stage.

It wouldn’t be that different from his “executive time” right now.

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There are a few apostates. But most Republicans agree with him.by digby

Ben Shapiro and Allahpundit are right wingers.They are not my allies in anything but this. But still, they see him. And regardless of their motives of philosophy I’m grateful:

(The right wing will tolerate a lot but they won’t tolerate anyone suggesting that the old hag doesn’t deserve to die behind bars. Or worse.)

The polls still show that the vast majority of Republicans are still with Trump. What kind of people are they?

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Trump’s innocence projectby digby

It is concerned solely with accusations again Nazis and wife beaters:

He’s very sad for the man accused of beating up women. He “absolutely” wishes him well and hopes he has a wonderful career.

Despite the pictures and the testimony of two ex-wives and a recent girlfriend that he is an abuser, he says he’s innocent it’s clear the president believes he should be allowed to continue to work in one of the most sensitive jobs in the White House.

BREAKING: Trump wishes Porter well, points to his denials. "He says he's innocent. I think you have to remember that." pic.twitter.com/t3PfTVtld0— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) February 9, 2018

No mention of the women. Because they’re all liars, just like almost two dozen who came forward to accuse him of assault. And pigs. And dogs.

Young, clean cut white men deserve the presumption of innocence, unlike all those Mexican immigrants and black teen-agers:

In 1989, after these black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were accused of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park, Mr. Trump spent $85,000 placing full-page ads in the four daily papers in New York City, calling for the return of the death penalty.

“Muggers and murderers,” he wrote, “should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.” Though he didn’t refer to the teenagers by name, it was clear to anyone in the city that he was referring to them.

Incredibly, 14 years after their sentences were vacated based on DNA evidence and the detailed and accurate confession of a serial rapist named Matias Reyes, Mr. Trump has doubled down.

“They admitted they were guilty,” he said in a statement to CNN this month. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous.”

Mr. Trump is apparently ignorant of our country’s epidemic of wrongful convictions, which disproportionately affect minorities, and the prevalence of false confessions in those convictions.

He isn’t alone. There has been a persistent drumbeat since the sentences were vacated that the Central Park Five were guilty either of rape or of some other crime that night. A 2003 New York Police Department review reached the conclusion that the boys were “likely guilty” of an initial assault on the jogger, even if they didn’t commit the rape. Linda Fairstein, who oversaw the sex crime unit in the Manhattan district attorney’s office at the time, maintains that the jury reached the correct verdict.

Online, the case against the Central Park Five has become a meme about liberal disregard for law and order, or as the conservative columnist Ann Coulter argued, “liberals are opposed to rape in the abstract, but when it comes to actual rapists, they’re all for them.”

Why the continued belief in the guilt of the Central Park Five, despite all the evidence to the contrary? Race and racism surely play their role. So does the cognitive trap that psychologists call anchoring and what we call first impressions: Mr. Trump quickly jumped to conclusions about their guilt, as did many in New York City.

And, as Mr. Trump pointed out, four of the five teenagers did confess to being at the scene of the rape. But false confessions are surprisingly common in criminal cases. In the hundreds of post-conviction DNA exonerations that the Innocence Project has studied, at least one in four of the wrongly convicted had given a confession.

In the case of the Central Park attack, the confessions were the only real evidence. DNA testing, a nascent technology in 1989, was used to compare a single sample found on the victim with the profiles of not only the Central Park Five, but also of many of the other kids they had been with in the park. There were no matches. The victim, when she awoke from a coma, had no memory of the attack.

That left only the statements from four of the teenagers: Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise and Antron McCray. The fifth, Yusef Salaam, might have confessed, but his mother interrupted the interrogation before he signed anything. A detective was nonetheless allowed to testify that Mr. Salaam had admitted to participating, though he’d given no formal statement.

From the relative comfort of the jury box or Trump Tower, it may be hard to imagine why anyone would admit to a crime he didn’t commit. The power imbalance in an interrogation room is extreme, especially when the suspects are young teenagers, afraid of the police and unfamiliar with the justice system or their rights.

The teenagers faced hours of intense interrogations with no lawyers present and often with no parent or guardian, even though they were just 14, 15 and 16 years old. They were denied food, drink and sleep over many hours. And they were terrified.

The young men were all led to believe that they would be allowed to go home only if they said what the police wanted to hear. The four who gave statements admitted to having been present but blamed others for the rape, which they naïvely thought would not incriminate them.

The “confessions” were riddled with problems. As the district attorney’s office later found, the statements “differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime — who initiated the attack, who knocked the victim down, who undressed her, who struck her, who held her, who raped her, what weapons were used in the course of the assault and when in the sequence of events the attack took place.”

Mr. Trump has also suggested that the teenagers were guilty of something that night because, as he wrote in an editorial for The New York Daily News in 2014, “these young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”

None of the Central Park Five had ever been arrested before, so Mr. Trump’s reference to their pasts has no basis in truth. The five were in the park that night, but they maintain that they did not participate in other attacks, and there is no evidence that they did.

So we are left with Mr. Trump’s presumption that because they were black and brown teenagers from Harlem, they must have committed a crime. The idea that teenagers who were in a park while crimes were being committed by others deserved to be labeled rapists and sent to prison for between 8 and 13 years is an affront to our Constitution.

Mr. Trump owes many people overdue apologies. At the top of his growing list should be Mr. McCray, Mr. Wise, Mr. Salaam, Mr. Santana and Mr. Richardson. They were victims of a rush to judgment 27 years ago. They shouldn’t still be.

ICE to the “Deep State”