Month: March 2018

15 years ago today

by digby

Following up Tristero’s post below, from my perch here on this old blog, this was where were were on that day:

Thursday, March 20, 2003

Memo To The Democratic Presidential Candidates:

Do not fall for this bullshit:

While Democrats and Republicans closed ranks last night behind the troops, leaders of both parties have shown a willingness to seize on war issues to score political points. Many Republicans hope to chill criticism of Bush and his Iraq policy by sending a clear and early message that they will come down hard on vocal Democratic dissenters, especially those in positions of national prominence, GOP lawmakers said. These Republicans worry that France, Russia and other critics will seize on comments from high-profile Democrats to buttress their case internationally that a preemptive war is unwise and unwarranted.

[…]

Some Republicans see a longer-term political advantage in such applause. They believe Daschle and other Democrats will suffer in the 2004 elections, which may be dominated by themes of national security and terrorism, if voters view them as unpatriotic or soft on defense.

Most national polls show that about two-thirds of Americans back the war against Iraq. “When you are constantly criticizing the president, you are also criticizing the 70 percent of people supporting him,” DeLay said.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) said Democrats will likely “pay a political price” for feeding the perception they opposed disarming and deposing Hussein. That is why most of the Democrats running for president have backed Bush in the conflict, Reynolds said.

Reynolds warned that politicians, such as Daschle, who hail from states Bush won in 2000 are particularly at risk in 2004 if they criticize the president’s Iraq policy. This proves that attacks on Daschle are “so brazenly political and over the top and politically motivated,” said Daschle’s spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer.

It should be obvious by now that there is no margin in playing Neville Chamberlain to Tom DeLay. Max Cleland proved that nothing will stop them from lying about your record and assassinating your character, no matter what you do. It will gain you nothing to worry about quelling Republican attacks on your patriotism.

If a Democrat wins, he will win despitebeing smeared as an unpatriotic coward by the Republican Party. Whether he supports the President or doesn’t he will be portrayed as having tried to foil him at every turn. It is pointless to pretend otherwise. Put your head down and barrel along on your own terms.

Remember also, that the entire strategy is designed for only two reasons. The first and foremost is to get Bush legitimately elected, if possible (illegitimately, if not.) The second is to use his wartime popularity to pass their radical domestic agenda under threat of retaliation to moderates who stray. I doubt seriously that they have ever really understood that their bullying and hectoring is what drove Jeffords from the party, but they will likely not be quite as obvious about it as they were with him. It is in the Democratic Party’s interest for Daschle and Pelosi to take some heat right now to give the GOP moderates some cover. This administration may very well overplay their hand (they’re not good at sausage making and Frist is a virgin) so it is worth the Party’s while to hang tough, really tough, on this budget. The presidential candidates can help by giving Daschle and Pelosi some cover as well. It’s going to get bumpy and it would be nice if the Democrats could show a little bit of solidarity here. It would certainly be good for the country.

The Republicans have the strange habit of getting manic and agitated just after they win a battle. They become enraged when they find that winning didn’t result in unconditional surrender by the political opposition. On the day the Washington Post revealed that the president had rallied 71% of the American public, George Will wrote:

Speaking of indiscriminate chaos, many elements of the Democratic Party, including most of its base and many of its most conspicuous leaders, seem deranged, unhinged by the toxic fumes of hatred and contempt they emit for the president. From what does this arise? It cannot just be Florida, the grievance that Democrats, assiduous cultivators of victimhood, love to nurse. No, many Democrats’ problem, which threatens to disqualify their party from presidential responsibilities for a generation, is their incontinent love of snobbery and nostalgia — condescension toward a president they consider ignorant, and a longing for the fun of antiwar days of yore.

I don’t know why Republicans have such an overwhelming need for their opponents to cry Uncle and completely capitulate. I suspect it may be from frustration at fighting for an aggressive policy against Soviet communism but never being allowed a final, mano-a-mano battle from which they could derive the masculine satisfaction of dominance and victory. I don’t know. But, it is never enough that they win, they want the Democrats to grovel.

It is more and more clear that those who hated it the most developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome in which they came to admire many facets of Soviet totalitarianism, one of the most obvious being the efficiency and power offered by the one party state. These people do not believe there is such a thing as the loyal opposition. Opposition is, by definition, disloyal.

Rush has been known to say, “I’d like to keep one liberal around in a museum so every body could see what they look like.” Republicans believe we are the enemy. We cannot win unless we understand this.

digby 3/20/2003 02:38:00 PM

I don’t think “we” ever really understood this.  And sadly, I suspect that even the extreme example of Donald Trump won’t be enough to make “us” get that.

Note that George Will is now a Never-Trumper.  He obviously didn’t see the writing on the wall either.

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One Million Dead 

by tristero

As awful a president as Donald Trump already is, he hasn’t yet done anything remotely as terrible as George W. Bush:

No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago. Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again. 

To those who will tell you that hindsight is 20/20, I am here to tell you that not only I but nearly everyone on Planet Earth knew back in 2003 that the Bush/Iraq war was a catastrophically insane decision. While many Americans drank the Bush administrations Kool Aid,  millions of people marched all over the world and even in the US itself, begging the US government not to invade. We knew, people, we knew. And we knew then. No one in a position of power listened.

And the war came. Over one million dead. With many more casualties to come from Bush’s senseless, malevolent stupidity.

There is something seriously wrong with a country that would forget the crimes of a man so soaked in the blood of innocents as George Bush. There is something truly twisted in a society that would rehabilitate Bush into some grotesque kind of avuncular presence (wowie zowie, he paints!).

To be sure, Donald Trump is the direct consequence of our moral and cultural derangement.

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What in the hell is the CIA director’s wife doing?

This isn’t the Department of Housing and Urban Development, not that that’s any more acceptable. It’s the fucking CIA. Why in the hell is it ok for the director to bring his wife to work???

These people are just … oy.

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Trump’s character assassination squad convenes at the White House

by digby

I wrote about Trump’s new hit man for Salon this morning:

Twenty years ago last month, Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz, then of the Washington Post, published a flattering profile called “The Power Couple at Scandal’s Vortex” about a couple of DC lawyers who suddenly seemed to be everywhere, making the case against Bill Clinton. The two former prosecutors and conservative activists were Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing and they were not only ubiquitous on television, they had their hands in every scandal and investigation in DC, making them, as Kurtz put it, “players, which gives them access to juicy information, which gets them on television, which generates legal business.”

Then, as now, there were dozens of lawyers on cable news acting as pundits and analysts arguing over the details of the latest scandal news.  But DiGenova and Toensing were unique in that they weren’t just giving opinions, they were often representing clients and even worked on retainer for the one of the House investigations. And from time to time they became personally involved in the scandal themselves as when Toensing claimed that she was contacted by a Secret Service agent with a story to tell about Clinton and Lewinsky and DiGenova going on TV and insisting that the White House was “digging up dirt” on him and his wife. All of these cross connections between media, clients and various investigations often gave the two of them information which they used to promote their legal business and advance their cause which was to help Republicans take down Bill Clinton by any means necessary. They are both very savvy television performers and ruthless political operatives.

I hadn’t heard much about them in the ensuing 20 years beyond some tepid defenses of convicted former Bush official Scooter Libby, but it stands to reason that they would be back in business now that Washington is engulfed in scandal again. And it makes perfect sense that Donald Trump would hire a lawyer with a conspiratorial bent and a strong media presence to defend him for when he decided to go to the mattresses against the Mueller investigation.

Joseph E. diGenova, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, will be joining President Trump’s personal legal team, Jay Sekulow, counsel to the president, tells @kwelkernbc

— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) March 19, 2018

Toensing has been all over the scandal from the beginning representing former Trump adviser Sam Clovis, former Trump legal spokesman Mark Corallo (I wrote about him for Salon, here) and a shadowy alleged whistleblower and former FBI informant  named William Campbell who claimed he had information that Clinton had sold uranium to Russia as Secretary of State in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. The Uranium One story played big on Fox News for a while but it didn’t catch on since Campbell didn’t have any proof and the FBI said he had been an unreliable informant.

Of course that could just have been part of the Big FBI Conspiracy DiGenova has been pushing for several months now and which seems to gotten legs on Fox News. Before the election, DiGenova went on Laura Ingraham’s radio show and claimed that James Comey threw the case against Clinton:

“Comey’s a dirty cop. And if there’s one thing a prosecutor hates worse than a criminal, it’s a dirty cop … He threw this case. He did it for political reasons. He lied publicly about the quality of the case. He lied publicly about the law. He lied publicly about the ability to get documents when he could have used the grand jury and he didn’t.”

This was a huge deal in the right wing fever swamps during the election and DiGenova undoubtedly knew the Clinton scandal machine was oiled up and he was just testing the gears in anticipation of four years of steady work. Long before Comey and Trump had their confrontation, the right was readying the attack on Comey and the FBI. DiGenova laid out the Bizarro World case:

[Comey] has destroyed his credibility. He has done horrific damage to the FBI as an institution…If this were a Republican, the press would be going crazy about obstruction of injustice…[Clinton] will preside over the most corrupt administration since the Teapot Dome scandal. This is about the future of the country.

DiGenova  promised legal representation to any FBI agent who wanted to come forward and testify against James Comey.  As far as we know there were no takers.

All that was before the election. Since then the conspiracy, out of necessity, has gotten more sensational and convoluted. He now claims that  “a group of FBI and DOJ people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime…they were going to exonerate Hillary and they were going to frame Donald Trump.”

So, the original sin in all this was letting Crooked Hillary off the hook for her heinous email crimes. Then apparently, the leaders of the global intelligence community joined with the nefarious Hillary lovers at the FBI to wreak their vengeance on the man who took down their chosen leader.  As DiGenova put it, “Comey sold his soul to the devil.”

According to reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post, DiGenova is expected to do what he does best: appear on television and give colorful quotes to the press. But he is also a clever lawyer and former prosecutor with right wing contacts throughout the government. His wife and law partner Toensing has access to information about the investigation as the attorney for Clovis and Corallo. He will be a valuable addition to the team as they go about the ongoing smear campaign against their own government.

According to press reports this week, Mueller’s team is particularly interested in Trump’s behavior around the Comey and Flynn firings which indicates he’s definitely looking at obstruction of justice by the president in the White House. If DiGenova is telling his new client that the president can’t be indicted while in office he’s undoubtedly glad that Trump doesn’t use a computer or he might come across DiGenova’s legal opinion on the matter from 20 years ago:

Nobody should underestimate the upheaval that a prosecution of the president would cause. But we went through it once before, in Watergate, and survived. The nation, in fact, could conceivably benefit from the indictment of a president. It would teach the valuable civics lesson that no one is above the law. As an appeals court told Mr. Clinton in the Paula Jones case, the Founders created a presidency, not a monarchy.

When he’s right he’s right. 

Oy vey: There’s more. Ted Olson is possibly being added to the team. Those of you who have been around a while remember that Oldson was in the middle of the Arkansas Project that went after Clinton in the 1990s.

They’re putting the band back together to protect Trump. These guys were ultimately unsuccessful back in the day and they’ are 20 years older now. If the president of the United States is reduced to calling on these guys he’s in big trouble.

Update II: Oh sorry Trumpie. Looks like the band will be missing a lead guitar player…

I can confirm that @gibsondunn and Theodore B. Olson will not be representing @realDonaldTrump— Ted Boutrous (@BoutrousTed) March 20, 2018

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Data Have Many Uses 

by tristero

So far, news reports re: Cambridge Analytica have focused on their efforts to identify, profile, and target supporters of Donald Trump for the purpose of aiming propaganda at them. But data have many uses. And nothing says they only identified Trump supporters.

Recall that Cambridge Analytica and that professor had access to Facebook up until very recently. A huge treasure trove of data could very well have have been gathered to identify, profile, and target enemies of Donald Trump for the purpose of neutralizing them through harassment, intimidation, or worse.

While we can’t see the full extent of the efforts that Trump and the GOP have been undermining democracy – and probably never will –  the infrastructure is clearly in place to make life very bad for those of us who are doing whatever little we can to thwart him and his Republican enablers.

And btw, Republicans are all but unanimous in their approval of Trump – 82% this week. They’ll be very happy to have nasty things happen to us.

Film at six
by Tom Sullivan

The Cambridge Analytica expose by Britain’s Channel 4 News will either kill the data firm or drive its business through the roof. That is, once the dust and lawsuits settle. The first parts of the expose on the firm’s seamy tactics hit over the weekend and there is more to come, says Channel 4, later today.

Bribes, women, a lie floated on the Internet that “doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be believed.” Karl Rove’s reputation just shank to the vanishing point.

The BBC reports:

The UK’s Information Commissioner is to apply to court for a warrant to search the offices of London-based political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica.

The company is accused of using the personal data of 50 million Facebook members to influence the US presidential election in 2016.

Its executives have also been filmed by Channel 4 News suggesting it could use honey traps and potentially bribery to discredit politicians.

The company denies any wrongdoing.

In Trumpian fashion, the firm’s chief executive Alexander Nix denies saying what he is caught on camera saying.

Step away from the keyboard

UK Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is not simply investigating Cambridge Analytica, but Facebook as well:

She told BBC on Tuesday she is also investigating Facebook and has asked the company not to pursue its own audit of Cambridge Analytica’s data use. She says Facebook has agreed.

“Our advice to Facebook is to back away and let us go in and do our work,” she said.

Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires platforms like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.

Chris Wylie, who once worked for Cambridge Analytica, was quoted as saying the company used the data to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.

The controversy will turn up the heat on Facebook. The Washington Post reports that Cambridge Analytica was not the only outfit interested in mining the social media platform for personal data:

Facebook last week suspended the Trump campaign’s data consultant, Cambridge Analytica, for scraping the data of potentially millions of users without their consent. But thousands of other developers, including the makers of games such as FarmVille and the dating app Tinder, as well as political consultants from President Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, also siphoned huge amounts of data about users and their friends, developing deep understandings of people’s relationships and preferences.

Cambridge Analytica — unlike other firms that access Facebook’s user data — broke Facebook’s rules by obtaining the data under the pretense of academic use. But experts familiar with Facebook’s systems and policies say that the greater problem was that the rules for accessing the social network’s information trove were so loose in the first place.

Despite the Post’s claim, it is not clear that Cambridge Analytica was the only violator. But with Facebook, isn’t this, in part, a case of “You fucked up… you trusted us!“? No wait, that was Animal House. This was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in college:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Slate’s Tiffany C. Li cautions that, digitally, we have led ourselves like lambs to the slaughter:

Ultimately, some responsibility should also fall to us, as consumers. We have created the privacy environment that allows for these violations to happen. We freely give up our data to various apps, websites, and companies. In return, we reap the benefits of many new technologies, including technologies that rely on use of personal data. You can blame Cambridge Analytica for using your data, or Facebook for collecting your data, or the government for not regulating either. But if the public really cares about preventing this kind of privacy violation, we need to change our social understanding of privacy and how data should be collected and used. Otherwise, we should stop being surprised when our most personal information is inevitably misused.

Let the buyer beware. We need to learn that when the apps are “free” we need to be even more skeptical.

* * * * * * * *

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

A good bet

by digby

Rick Tyler, formerly of the Ted Cruz campaign, has a prediction:

“Here’s what’s going to happen, I’m going to go out on a limb,” Tyler began. “The president has calculated now — and I think it’s true — is the reaction from the Republicans. He is going to fire Robert Mueller. And you know what’s going to happen? Nothing. That’s what’s going to happen. There will be no response from Republican leadership, from Congress.”

Tyler continued as the other guests looked on in amazement.

“He is now going about — the reason to fire [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe], the reason to deny him his retirement is he has to discredit him,” Tyler said. “And he has to systematically discredit everybody who’s involved in this Russia investigation. And he has now seen that he can do these things without any recourse. The Congress is not going to reign him in.”

The GOP strategist predicted Mueller’s firing would come “sooner rather than later, before he can get any further… on money laundering or other tangential issues.”

“Wow,” Ruhle said at the conclusion of the segment. “It is not even 9:30 on a Monday morning and Rick Tyler just knocked my socks off. I wasn’t ready for that.”

Get ready.

I don’t know if this will happen. Some of this just suits Trump’s desire for drama and chaos. And he might think that he’s scaring Mueller into going easy. But if he’s going to do it, he’ll do it before November when the congress might very well change over and try to pass a law to stop him from firing Mueller. (I don’t know how that would work unless the wave is so huge they could override Trump’s veto …)

But just in case he does flip the switch, here are some links you might want to bookmarks just in case:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/18/1749958/-It-is-down-to-the-wire-on-Mueller-Investigation-Resistance-gearing-up-for-massive-rallies

Move On

https://act.moveon.org/event/mueller-firing-rapid-response/search/?source=MFT

Yet another Russia connection…

by digby

Following up on the Cambridge Analytica story here’s just a tiny little bit of further information regarding the top scientist behind the use of the app Cambridge Analytica Facebook app:

“But while he was helping turn Facebook profiles into a political tool he was also an associate professor at St Petersburg State University, taking Russian government grants to fund other research into social media. “Stress, health, and psychological wellbeing in social networks: cross-cultural investigation” was the title of one piece of research. Online posts showed Kogan lecturing in Russian. One talk was called: “New methods of communication as an effective political instrument”.

Cambridge University said academics are allowed to take on outside work but are expected to inform their head of institution, a rule Kogan had complied with. “We understand that Dr Kogan informed his head of department of discussions with St Petersburg University regarding a collaboration; it was understood that this work and any associated grants would be in a private capacity,” a spokesman said.

Apart from that, Kogan appears to have largely kept the work private. Colleagues said they had not heard about the post in St Petersburg. “I am very surprised by that. No one knew,” one academic who asked not to be named told the Observer. Russia is not mentioned in a 10-page CV Kogan posted on a university website in 2015. The CV lists undergraduate prizes and grants of a few thousand dollars and links to dozens of media interviews.”

It doesn’t mean anything in itself. But keep in mind that the famous Russian Troll Farm was located in St. Petersburg. It’s uhm … interesting.

Data nerds and honey traps

by digby

Oh look. Trump’s vaunted data analytics company Cambridge Analytica, with board member Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner’s personal hire Brad Parscale (recently hired as Trump’s 2020 campaign) was allegedly involved in much more nefarious activity than just stealing tens of millions of Facebook profiles:

An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses were filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers.

Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica – the data company that credits itself with Donald Trump’s presidential victory – have been secretly filmed saying they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers.

In an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix said the British firm secretly campaigns in elections across the world. This includes operating through a web of shadowy front companies, or by using sub-contractors.

In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”.

In another he said: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”

Offering bribes to public officials is an offence under both the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Cambridge Analytica operates in the UK and is registered in the United States.

The admissions were filmed at a series of meetings at London hotels over four months, between November 2017 and January 2018. An undercover reporter for Channel 4 News posed as a fixer for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.

Mr Nix told our reporter: “…we’re used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows, and I look forward to building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you.”

Along with Mr Nix, the meetings also included Mark Turnbull, the managing director of CA Political Global, and the company’s chief data officer, Dr Alex Tayler.

Mr Turnbull described how, having obtained damaging material on opponents, Cambridge Analytica can discreetly push it onto social media and the internet.

He said: “… we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda’, the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’.”

Mr Nix also said: “…Many of our clients don’t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company… so often we set up, if we are working then we can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists, there’s so many options we can look at. I have lots of experience in this.”

In the meetings, the executives boasted that Cambridge Analytica and its parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) had worked in more than two hundred elections across the world, including Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic, India and Argentina.

Despite film of executives saying they are doing this, they deny that they are doing it.

This was part two of the Channel IV documentary about Cambridge Analytica which, along with the news from the NY Times over the week-end and stories in the Guardian, are shaking up the Russia scandal. Part one of the Channel IV story featured the whistleblower telling the story of the theft of the Facebook users information.

Highly recommended:

Here is Part 1:

Here is Part 2:

They will be broadcasting their story about Cambridge Analytica and the United States election tomorrow.

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Republicans are all-in with Trump

by digby

That’s what they’re saying anyway:

His approval rating is perpetually underwater, and the pandemonium surrounding his presidency only grows the longer he’s in the job.

But Senate Republicans are nevertheless making a counterintuitive, all-in bet that President Donald Trump will save their 51-49 majority — and perhaps even help them pick up a few seats.

Even as fears grow within the GOP that Trump will cost Republicans the House, Senate Republicans say the president will play a starring role in the closely contested campaigns that will decide control of the chamber. Trump will be front and center in every state that helped elect the president, according to GOP senators and strategists, making the case that Democrats are hindering his agenda.

“If you look at a race in a state like Missouri or North Dakota — or any of these states — he’ll be very involved,” said Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, chairman of the GOP’s campaign arm, who speaks with Trump about political strategy regularly. “He’ll be actively campaigning for a Senate majority. Absolutely.”

Republicans will lean most heavily on Trump in five deeply conservative states where the president remains highly popular and where he crushed Hillary Clinton: West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and Montana. But they say they will also deploy Trump in the next tier of swing states that Trump won more narrowly: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. And they expect him to help preserve GOP seats in Nevada, where he narrowly lost, and in Arizona.

In fact, despite his unpopularity on the national level, Republicans insist there isn’t a state on the Senate map where they are nervous about deploying Trump. Republicans reason that opposition to Trump is already baked into the Democratic electorate. They figure Democrats will be motivated to vote whether Trump shows up or not, so they might as well use him to fire up their base, too.

Republicans have “got to have some intensity in our base,” as Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) put it.

Sure, why not? Ginning up the rabid Trump base is just what the doctor ordered.

Nothing matters. They can’t even contemplate the idea that losing the Senate for two years might just be to their own advantage in the long run.

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