Month: June 2018

The dotard disruption

by digby

This was the thing about Trump’s victory that has always frightened me the most. This eff-ing moron was determined to blow up the global security umbrella without any clue what he was doing and nothing to replace it with. Immature people without any knowledge of history thought that was a great idea because the US had either been “cheated” or was just as bad as the worst dictators anyway so might as well light the fuse and watch the fire.

Dean Acheson, President Truman’s Secretary of State, called his autobiography “Present at the Creation.” The title referred to the task that confronted American leaders at the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War, which was “just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis,” Acheson wrote. “That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process.” A network of institutions and alliances—the United Nations, nato, the international monetary system, and others—became the foundation for “the rules-based international order” that the leaders in Charlevoix saluted. It imposed restraints on the power politics that had nearly destroyed the world. It was a liberal order, based on coöperation among countries and respect for individual rights, and it was created and upheld by the world’s leading liberal democracy. America’s goals weren’t selfless, and we often failed to live up to our stated principles. Power politics didn’t disappear from the planet, but the system endured, flawed and adaptable, for seventy years.

In four days, between Quebec and Singapore, Trump showed that the liberal order is hateful to him, and that he wants out. Its rules are too confining, its web of connections—from trade treaties to security alliances—unfair. And he seems to find his democratic counterparts distasteful, even pathetic. They speak in high-minded rhetoric rather than in Twitter insults, they’re emasculated by parliaments and by the press, and maybe they’re not very funny. Trump prefers the company of dictators who can flatter and be flattered. Part of his unhappiness in Quebec was due to the absence of President Vladimir Putin; before leaving for the summit, Trump had demanded that Russia be unconditionally restored to the G-7, from which it was suspended over the dismemberment of Ukraine. He finds nothing special about democratic values, and nothing objectionable about murderous rulers. “What, you think our country is so innocent?” he once asked.

Kim Jong Un is Trump’s kind of world leader. Instead of condemning Kim’s brutal consolidation of power, Trump admires and identifies with it, as if Kim were the underestimated scion of a family real-estate business who’s quickly learned the ropes. “When you take over a country—a tough country, with tough people—and you take it over from your father,” Trump told Fox News, “if you can do that at twenty-seven years old, I mean, that’s one in ten thousand that could do that. So he’s a very smart guy.”
[…]
Power politics favors regimes accustomed to operating outside the liberal order. Asked about Trump’s desire to see Russia restored to the G-7’s good graces, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was dismissive—“We never asked to be allowed back”—as if Russia were happy not to have to answer to democratic scolds. After Quebec, the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, placed the United States among the rogue regimes: “Donald Trump’s egotistical politics of ‘America First,’ Russia’s attacks on international law and state sovereignty, the expansion of gigantic China: the world order we were used to, it no longer exists.” Europe is rapidly pulling away from the United States, but the European Union is weak and divided. The liberal order always depended on American leadership.

Trump imagines that America unbound, shaking hands or giving the finger, depending upon short-term interests and Presidential whims, will flourish among the other rogues. After his meeting with Kim, he flew home aglow with wonder at his own dealmaking prowess, assuring Americans that they could now sleep in peace. In fact, Trump had secured nothing except the same vague commitment to dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program which the regime has offered and routinely betrayed in the past. Meanwhile, he gave up something real—joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which he called “provocative,” the language of totalitarian and aggressive North Korea. Without allies and treaties, without universal values, American foreign policy largely depends on what goes on inside Trump’s head. Kim, like Putin, already seems to have got there.

Maybe it’s time to change the global order. If people have better ideas about how to keep from blowing up the planet then let’s have it. What’s a better way to try to fix climate change, for instance? Or contain nuclear war? Or deal with global wealth inequality? I’m all ears. But if anyone thinks it was a fine idea to put a corrupt, authoritarian, dotard with the knowledge and learning ability of a 4 year old in charge of doing it, they are nuts. “Disruption” is a darling tech term repurposed for everything these days, but it doesn’t always work out. And the stakes in this inane disruption are very, very high.

The US is now considered a rogue nation. Great. I’m sure I will hear from many people agreeing with Trump that we always have been and others are too so who cares?

Well, that cynical facile attitude has led to some very, very very bad results.

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The girls are missing

by digby

From Nicolle Belle at Crooks and Liars:

It took the publicity brought by Sen. Jeff Merkley, among others, to finally make Americans aware of the horrendous policy of housing children ripped away from their parents who have come through border points to seek asylum.

ICE made detention centers available for the media to tour to show that the children are not being housed in cages, have beds to sleep on and activities to do. They did show that. They also showed that the kids must look at a mural of Donald Trump among other horrifying images. They showed that traumatized children can not get comforted by anyone, including their own siblings. MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff described it as de facto incarceration for minors who did nothing but come with their parents to escape violence and persecution in their home country.

But here’s the thing: I’ve poured over these reports. I’ve scoured the photos. I’ve looked at every publication and every news outlets reporting. Not. One. Covers. Girls. Being. Detained.

Where are the girls?

No tours have been given of a facility housing girls. Are their facilities safe? Have they been sexually assaulted or exploited? What precautions are being taken to keep them protected? Why are we not hearing about them?

She’s not the only one who’s noticed:

FYI: Last year ICE requested this:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently asked the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which instructs federal agencies on how to maintain records, to approve its timetable for retaining or destroying records related to its detention operations. This may seem like a run-of-the-mill government request for record-keeping efficiency. It isn’t. An entire paper trail for a system rife with human rights and constitutional abuses is at stake.

ICE has asked for permission to begin routinely destroying 11 kinds of records, including those related to sexual assaults, solitary confinement and even deaths of people in its custody. Other records subject to destruction include alternatives to detention programs, regular detention monitoring reports, logs about the people detained in ICE facilities, and communications from the public reporting detention abuses. ICE proposed various timelines for the destruction of these records ranging from 20 years for sexual assault and death records to three years for reports about solitary confinement.

It was successfully blocked and so far, ICE has not changed the records policy. But the fact that they wanted to do it says volumes.

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Truth sandwich
by Tom Sullivan

The sitting president leads the press around by the nose. He has since announcing his run for the presidency. Only recently have reporters begun to snap out of their conditioning and begun to openly challenge the president, fact-checking him live (and his team) and publicly pushing back on the lies.

Key to spotting how Trump’s shtick works is understanding that language is not neutral. As Mawuna Remarque Koutonin observed recently in The Guardian, the word “expat,” a person “temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing,” is employed almost exclusively to describe white people. Even the Wall Street Journal admits who is an expat “depends on social class, country of origin and economic status.” Koutonin continues:

Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’.

Hardly any other example better explains how privilege is woven into the culture. There are no expats being processed on the Texas border.

Through sheer force of repetition — the president repeats phrases mid-sentence the way others use “um” — the press has begun adopting Donald Trump’s language and framing. Especially words that convey toughness or strength. At the Plum Line blog, Greg Sargent takes colleagues to task for coverage of the just-released Department of Justice’s inspector general report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Reporters have unconsciously adopted language that supports the Trumpian narrative that the report proves anti-Trump bias in the FBI:

For instance, the New York Times quotes a Trump ally pushing his narrative, and then asserts as fact that “any independent criticism” of Comey “helps” Trump “undermine the credibility of someone who may be a crucial witness against him in any case of obstruction of justice.” The Associated Press claims the report gave Republicans “ample fodder” to “question” the Russia probe. The Post says the report will serve as a GOP “cudgel” against Mueller. CNN asserts that the inspector general gave Trump “fodder” to claim a “deep state” coup.

But here’s the problem: There is no neutral way to make this claim. Either the inspector general’s actual findings legitimately support that Trumpian argument about the significance of those findings, or they do not. To be sure, these accounts sometimes quote an interested party on the other side saying the findings don’t support the Trump/GOP interpretation. Yet this isn’t enough, particularly since these accounts also state as neutral fact, in the voice of the omniscient journalist, that the findings do indeed provide “fodder” for those arguments, effectively conferring legitimacy on the Trump/GOP interpretation of them.

Sargent gives a series of examples of ho bad-faith ref-working by the president and his allies produce results that advance a false picture of reality.

The problem is what to do about it. Cognitive scientist George Lakoff explains to Brian Stelter in the “Reliable Sources” podcast how to stop enabling the sitting president’s lies (emphasis mine):

“Start with the truth that he’s trying to hide. You make that clear, and then you point out that the president is trying to hide this by lying … say a little bit about what the lie is. And go back to the TRUTH.”

So, a “truth sandwich,” Stelter quips.

But the press is trained to repeat what public figures say. They are doing what they were taught to do in journalism school. But language is not neutral, Lakoff insists. He writes in the Guardian:

“Deal” and “winning” are not just words. They are central to his worldview. Those who win deserve to win; those who lose deserve to lose. Those who don’t win are “losers”. This is a version of individual responsibility, a cornerstone of conservative thought. There is a moral hierarchy. Those who win are better than those who lose.

One thing Trump does well is marketing. More conservatives study this than liberals. “He’s been selling for fifty years.” By now how he deploys language is reflexive. (It’s obviously not deeply thought out.)

Trump’s tweets are not random, they are strategic. There are four types: 1) Pre-emptive framing, to get a framing advantage. 2) Diversion, to divert attention when news could embarrass him. 3) Deflection: Shift the blame to others. And 4) trial balloon – test how much you can get away with. Reporting, and therefore repeating, Trump’s tweets just gives him more power. There is an alternative. Report the true frames that he is trying to pre-empt. Report the truth that he is trying to divert attention from. Put the blame where it belongs. Bust the trial balloon. Report what the strategies are trying to hide.

Cornered by the Russia investigation, Trump is working overtime to twist the facts, the law, and reality in general, to benefit himself. As the indictments and the evidence pile up in favor of a case for Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election, he’s made it clear that he considers himself above both the law and the truth. As president of the United States, anything he says – true or false – is faithfully parroted by the press. This needs to change.

Democracy is under attack. Journalists need to realize, Lakoff says, simply quoting him at face value is destructive.

But Lakoff has been putting out this message for some time, Stelter notes. Does he think journalists learned anything?

Lakoff replied, “No, I don’t.”

“We want to be able to say, just tell people the facts and they will reason to the right conclusion. That’s what Descartes said in 1650, and he was wrong.”

* * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Saturday Night at the Movies



’68 was ’68, pt. deux: 10 essential films

By Dennis Hartley

Have you had it up to “here” yet with all the 1968 retrospectives? Yes, I know. Hang in there; we’re halfway through the year, so you should not have to weather too many more.

It can’t be helped…there’s something sexy about “50th” anniversaries And, there was something special about 1968. As Jon Meacham noted in a Time article earlier this year:

The watershed of 1968 was that kind of year: one of surprises and reversals, of blasted hopes and rising fears, of scuttled plans and unexpected new realities. We have embarked on the 50th anniversary of a year that stands with 1776, 1861 and 1941 as points in time when everything in American history changed. As with the Declaration of Independence, the firing on Fort Sumter and the attack on Pearl Harbor, the events of ’68 were intensely dramatic and lastingly consequential. From the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April and of Robert F. Kennedy in June to the violence at the Democratic National Convention in August to the election of Richard Nixon in November, we live even now in the long shadow of the cascading crises of that year.

It was also a year when cinema came face-to-face with “scuttled plans and unexpected new realities.” The eclecticism of 1968’s top 10 grossing films indicates a medium (and an audience) in cultural flux; from cerebral arthouse (2001: A Space Odyssey, Rosemary’s Baby), low-budget horror (Night of the Living Dead), and star-powered adult drama (Bullitt, Planet of the Apes), to traditional stage-to-screen adaptations (The Odd Couple, Romeo and Juliet, Funny Girl) and standard family fare (The Love Bug, Oliver!).

Just for perspective, here were the top 10 domestic grossing films of 2017: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Guardians of the Galaxy (Vol. 2), Spiderman: Homecoming, It, Thor: Ragnarok, Despicable Me 3, and Justice League. Is it me-or is there a depressing, mind-numbing homogeneity to that list?

Oh, well…I’ll leave it to whomever is writing a retrospective in 2067 to sort that mess. If you will indulge me one more 1968 retrospective, here are my personal picks for the 10 best films of that year (plus 10 more I heartily recommend, if you want to delve deeper!).

If…. . – In this bold, anarchic 1968 class struggle allegory, director Lindsay Anderson uses his depiction of the British public-school system as a microcosm of England’s sociopolitical upheaval at the time. In his breakout performance, Malcolm McDowall plays Mick Travis, a “lower sixth form” student at a boarding school (McDowall would reprise his “Travis” persona in Anderson’s (loose) sequels O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital). Travis leads a trio of agitators (revolutionaries) who foment insurrection against abusive upperclassmen and oppressive headmasters (i.e., the draconian System).

Some reappraisals have drawn parallels with Columbine, but the film has little to do with that and nearly everything to do with the revolutionary zeitgeist of 1968 (uprisings in Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, etc.). Politics aside, Anderson’s film could also be a pre-cursor to films like Massacre at Central High, Rock ’n’ Roll High School, The Chocolate War, and Heathers. David Sherwin and John Howlett co-wrote the screenplay.

Hell in the Pacific – This 1968 offering from the eclectic John Boorman (Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, Hope and Glory) is essentially a chamber drama, set on a small uninhabited Pacific Island in the closing days of WW2. It’s a two-character tale about a pair of stranded soldiers; one Japanese (Toshiro Mifune) and the other American (Lee Marvin). The first third, a virtually dialog-free cat-and-mouse game between the sworn enemies, is a master class in physical acting by Mifune and Marvin. Eventually, necessity precipitates an uneasy truce, and the film becomes a fascinating study of the human need to connect (the adage “no man is an island” is figuratively and literally in play). The final act suggests an anti-war sentiment. It’s interesting that a film with such minimal dialog needed three screenwriters (Reuben Bercovitch, Alexander Jacobs, and Eric Bercovici).

The Lion in Winter – Anyone who has delved into the history of royal family dynasties in the Middle Ages will attest that if you take away the dragons, witches, zombies and trolls…the rather nasty behavior on display in Game of Thrones isn’t that far removed from reality. After all, as Eleanor of Aquitane (Katherine Hepburn) deadpans in director Anthony Harvey’s historical drama, “What family doesn’t have its ups and downs?” Adapted for the screen by James Goldman from his own 1966 stage play, the story centers on a tempestuous family Christmas gathering in 1183, at the chateau of King Henry II (Peter O’Toole). All the scheming members of this family want for Christmas is each other’s head on a platter (ho ho ho!). Joining the merry festivities are Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton, John Castle, Nigel Terry, and Jane Merrow. Goldman’s beautifully crafted dialog sings (and stings) and the acting is superb. The film was nominated for 7 Oscars and earned 3 (for Hepburn, Goldman, and composer John Barry).

No Way To Treat A Lady– Directed by Jack Smight (Harper, Kaleidoscope, The Illustrated Man) and adapted from William Goldman’s eponymous novel by John Gay, this terrific black comedy pits a neurotic NYC homicide detective (George Segal) against an evil genius serial killer (Rod Steiger). While there is nothing inherently “funny” about a killer on the loose who targets middle-age women, there’s a surprising number of laughs; thanks to an overall New Yorker “attitude” and Segal’s harried interactions with his leading ladies-Eileen Heckart (as his doting Jewish mother), and Lee Remick (as his love interest). Steiger is typically over the top, but this is one of his roles where the water finds its own level…he was perfectly cast for this part. Comedy elements aside, the film is genuinely creepy and suspenseful; in some ways a forerunner to Silence of the Lambs.

Once Upon a Time in the West – This is a textbook “movie for movie lovers” …cinema at its purest level, distilled to a perfect crystalline cocktail of mood, atmosphere and narrative. Although it is chockablock with “western” tropes, director Sergio Leone manages to honor, parody, and transcend the genre all at once with this 1968 masterpiece.

At its heart, it’s a simple revenge tale, involving a headstrong widow (Claudia Cardinale) and an enigmatic “harmonica man” (Charles Bronson) who both have a bone to pick with a gun for hire (Henry Fonda, cast against type as one of the most execrable villains in film). But big doings are afoot-like building a railroad and winning the (mythic) American West. Also with Jason Robards, Jack Elam, Woody Strode and Keenan Wynn.

Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci helped develop the story, and it wouldn’t be classic Leone without a rousing soundtrack by his longtime musical collaborator, Ennio Morricone (you won’t be able to get that “Harmonica Man Theme” out of your head).

Petulia – An underappreciated, uncharacteristically “serious” character study/social commentary from director Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Three Musketeers). On the surface, it’s about a star-crossed affair between a young, flighty newlywed (Julie Christie) and a middle-aged physician with a crumbling marriage (George C. Scott). In hindsight, one can also enjoy it as a “trapped in amber” wallow in the counter-cultural zeitgeist of the late 60s (filmed in San Francisco at the height of the Summer of Love, no less). Look for cameos from Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Grateful Dead, and comedy troupe The Committee. Beautifully acted and directed. One caveat: Lester’s non-linear approach is challenging (but rewarding). The screenplay was adapted by Lawrence B. Marcus and Barbara Turner from John Haase’s novel. Nicholas Roeg did the lovely cinematography.


Planet Of The Apes – The original 1968 version of The Planet of the Apes had a lot going for it. It was based on an acclaimed sci-fi novel by Pierre Boulle (whose semi-autobiographical debut, The Bridge on the River Kwai, had been adapted into a blockbuster film). It was helmed by Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton, Papillon , The Boys from Brazil). It had an intelligent script by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling. And, of course, it had Charlton Heston, at his hammy apex (“God DAMN you ALL to HELL!!”).

Most notably, it opened the same month as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both Kubrick’s and Schaffner’s films not only blew minds but raised the bar on film-goers’ expectations for science-fiction movies; each was groundbreaking in its own way.

*SPOILER AHEAD* The 1968 film also ended with a classic Big Reveal (drenched in Serling’s signature irony) that still delivers chills. “They” could have left it there. Granted, the end also had Charlton Heston riding off into the proverbial sunset with a hot brunette, implying it wasn’t over yet, but lots of films end with the hero riding into the sunset; not all beg for a sequel. But Planet of the Apes turned out to be a surprise box office smash, and once Hollywood studio execs smell the money…I needn’t tell you that “they” are still churning out sequels to this day. But the progenitor remains the best entry.

Rosemary’s Baby – “He has his father’s eyes!” Roman Polanski put the “goth” back in “gothic” in this truly unsettling metropolitan horror classic. A New York actor (John Cassavetes) and his young, socially phobic wife Rosemary (Mia Farrow) move into a somewhat dark and foreboding Manhattan apartment building (the famed Dakota, John Lennon’s final residence), hoping to start a family. A busybody neighbor (Ruth Gordon) quickly gloms onto Rosemary with an unhealthy zest (to her chagrin). Rosemary’s nightmare is only beginning. No axe murders, no gore, and barely a drop of blood…but thanks to Polanski’s impeccable craft, this will scare the bejesus out of you and continue to creep you out after credits roll. Polanski adapted the screenplay from Ira Levin’s novel.

The Swimmer – A riveting performance from Burt Lancaster fuels this 1968 drama from Frank Perry (and a non-credited Sydney Pollack, who took over direction after Perry dropped out of the project). It was adapted for the screen by Eleanor Perry, from a typically dark and satirical John Cheever story. Lancaster’s character is on a Homeric journey; working his way home via a network of backyard swimming pools. Each encounter with friends and neighbors (who apparently have not seen him in some time) fits another piece into the puzzle of a troubled, troubled man. It’s an existential suburban nightmare that can count American Beauty and The Ice Storm among its descendants.

2001: A Space Odyssey – The mathematician/cryptologist I.J. Good (an Alan Turing associate) once famously postulated:

Let an ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man…however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion’, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus, the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.

Good raised this warning in 1965, about the same time director Stanley Kubrick and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke were formulating the narrative that would evolve into both the novel and film versions of 2001: a Space Odyssey. And it’s no coincidence that the “heavy” in 2001 was an ultra-intelligent machine that wreaks havoc once its human overseers lose “control” …Good was a consultant on the film.

Good was but one of the experts that Kubrick consulted, before and during production of this meticulously constructed masterpiece. Not only did he pick the brains of top futurists and NASA engineers, but enlisted some of the best primatologists, anthropologists, and uh, mimes of his day, to ensure that every detail, from the physicality of pre-historic humans living on the plains of Africa to the design of a moon base, passed with veracity.

Transcendent, mind-blowing, and timeless doesn’t begin to do justice. I don’t personally know too many people who haven’t seen this film…but I know there’s a few of you out there, in the dark (you know who you are). I envy you, because you may have a rare chance to see it on the big screen. Earlier this year, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the film’s first run, Christopher Nolan supervised a 70mm re-release of the “unrestored” version that presents it as audiences originally experienced it in 1968 (fussy collectors needn’t worry, Warner Brothers is readying a sparkling 4K restoration for later this year).

Encore! Here’s 10 more recommendations:

The Battle of Algiers
The Bride Wore Black
Bullitt
Candy
Charly
The Monkees
One Plus One
The Party
Targets
Yellow Submarine

Previous posts with related themes:
’68 was ’68: 10 Essential Rock Albums

More reviews at Den of Cinema

—Dennis Hartley

And some, I’m sure, are good people

by digby

NBC/WSJ poll:

White men without college degrees approve Trump by 68%-29% margin. The rest of the country disapproves by 60%-38%.

To be precise, 29% are good people.

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Will George Stephanopopulos ask Steve Bannon about Trump and money laundering?

by digby

Steve Bannon is beginning his comeback tour having already turned up on Fareed Zakaria’s show to flog his immigrant scapegoat strategy (with Zakaria calling it “clever.”) Tomorrow he’s going to be on Stephanopoulos. It would be very interesting if George asked him about what he told Michael Wolff, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if he does:

You realize where this is going. This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f***ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner. . . . It’s as plain as a hair on your face. It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those . . . guys up and say play me or trade me.

Considering that Manafort is now in jail for witness tampering, I would think this would be newly relevant.

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Why did Trump keep talking to Manafort?

by digby

As only one of two people left who could become President, why wouldn’t the FBI or Department of “Justice” have told me that they were secretly investigating Paul Manafort (on charges that were 10 years old and had been previously dropped) during my campaign? Should have told me!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2018

Uhm ok. But he certainly knew by this time:

Paul Manafort Is Back and Advising Donald Trump on Cabinet Picks

Paul Manafort left the Trump campaign back in August, or did he? Sources confirm to The Daily Beast that he’s back advising the president-elect.

ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
OLIVIA NUZZI

11.30.16 9:35 PM ET

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts—Paul Manafort stood in the foyer of the third-floor ballroom of the Charles Hotel, across the street from the Taubman Building of the Harvard Kennedy School, on Wednesday. Having left his mafioso uniform of gleaming pinstripe suit and tie at home in favor of a half-zip sweater and casual slacks, he went mostly unnoticed, even at an event for political operatives and junkies, where a man of his status should be a star. And Harvard, it turns out, is not the only place the ex-chairman of the Donald Trump presidential campaign and former lobbyist for some of the worst dictators and killers of the 20th century is operating in the shadows these days.

According to two sources with knowledge of the Trump presidential transition process, Manafort—whose formal association with the president-elect ended in August—is heavily involved with the staffing of the nascent administration.
[…]
But now, a few months and an election night victory later, it seems Manafort is back, and in a position he surely finds more comfortable: one shrouded in almost total mystery.

“When they’re picking a cabinet, unless he contacts me, I don’t bother him,” one former campaign official who worked closely with Manafort told The Daily Beast. “It’s a heady time for everyone.”

“I think he’s weighing in on everything,” the former official said, “I think he still talks to Trump every day. I mean, Pence? That was all Manafort. Pence is on the phone with Manafort regularly.”

As a lobbyist, Manafort is particularly concerned with decisions the president-elect might make that will affect his industry, the former official explained. “A guy like Manafort tries to make sure that the government is as comfortable for business as possible. He wants names he knows on every door.”

“He’s not worried as much about who’s the secretary of HHS,” the former official added, “as he is about who’s the secretary of HUD.”

Another Trump campaign source who worked alongside Manafort confirmed to The Daily Beast that he is heavily involved in selecting the incoming administration’s “personnel picks.”

When The Daily Beast caught up with Manafort sometime later, he would neither confirm nor deny his presence on the Trump transition team.

“I don’t want to get into that,” he said. “I’m here to talk about the campaign, I don’t want to talk about transition.”

When pressed on the issue, he reemphasized, “no comment,” before continuing a conversation with several other people.

Meanwhile in Cambridge, Conway, who now acts as a senior adviser to the president-elect, was making her way through the hotel lobby for check-in.

She told The Daily Beast she had “no comment” on the Manafort matter. “But I can research that and get back to you,” she added.

She winked and continued walking with her roller bag.

More here:

Ousted campaign chief Paul Manafort seeks to shape Trump transition

By Gregory Krieg and Jamie Gangel, CNN

Updated 4:32 PM ET, Thu December 1, 2016

Sources: former Trump campaign chairman involved in transition

Spokeswoman denies that Manafort is ‘in communication’ with Trump

(CNN)Paul Manafort has reemerged as a player in the fight to shape the new administration, senior Republicans with knowledge of the transition tell CNN on Thursday, after resigning under pressure as the chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign this summer.

Manafort solidified his ties to the incoming White House when Trump selected Vice President-elect Mike Pence as his running mate in mid-July. Both men are Capitol Hill veterans: Manafort as a lobbyist and Pence from his time as an Indiana congressman, with strong ties to the Republican establishment.

And with Pence firmly entrenched in Trump’s inner circle alongside top strategist Steve Bannon, incoming Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and influential son-in-law Jared Kushner, Manafort — who keeps a home in Trump Tower — has a direct line to top decision-makers.

The image of an empowered Manafort, a longtime Washington operator with a murky slate of interests at home and abroad, would undercut Trump’s pledge, already under fire given his early staffing choices, to “drain the swamp.”

Trump spokesman Hope Hicks told CNN on Thursday that while staff contact with Manafort is “certainly not forbidden,” he is “not involved in the transition team and is not in communication with the President-elect” and “definitively not involved in anything the President-elect is involved in.”

Another source, who was considered for a cabinet position, also downplayed Manafort’s role.
“Bannon, Reince, Pence and Jared are in the meetings,” the source said. “Manafort and others offer opinions, but have little weight.”

Still, the longtime K Street lobbyist and former Ronald Reagan operative has insinuated himself into the transition process through other channels, with allies like Rick Gates, who briefly served as the campaign’s liaison to the Republican National Committee before leaving with Manafort in August, working behind the scenes on inauguration activities.

Aaaand:

Manafort advised Trump team on Russia scandal

Former campaign chief remained in contact with the president and his aides after the FBI launched its Russia probe.

By KENNETH P. VOGEL 05/25/2017 05:22 AM EDT

Months after the FBI began examining Paul Manafort as part of a probe into ties between President Donald Trump’s team and Russia, Manafort called Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to push back against the mounting controversy, according to four people familiar with the call.

It was about a week before Trump’s inauguration, and Manafort wanted to brief Trump’s team on alleged inaccuracies in a recently released dossier of memos written by a former British spy for Trump’s opponents that alleged compromising ties among Russia, Trump and Trump’s associates, including Manafort.

“On the day that the dossier came out in the press, Paul called Reince, as a responsible ally of the president would do, and said this story about me is garbage, and a bunch of the other stuff in there seems implausible,” said a person close to Manafort.

Manafort had been forced to resign as Trump’s campaign chairman five months earlier amid scrutiny of his work for Kremlin-aligned politicians and businessmen in Eastern Europe. But he had continued talking to various members of Trump’s team and had even had at least two conversations with Trump, according to people close to Manafort or Trump.

Also:

Trump’s former campaign chairman is under FBI investigation, but some say he is touting access to the president to prospective business partners.

By KENNETH P. VOGEL 06/15/2017 05:08 AM EDT

Paul Manafort is at the center of an FBI investigation into ties between President Donald Trump’s team and the Russians, but that hasn’t stopped him from doing business with international figures and companies, partly by claiming continued access to Trump, according to people familiar with his dealings.

AP March 22, 2017:

Manafort and his associates remain in Trump’s orbit. Manafort told a colleague this year that he continues to speak with Trump by telephone. Manafort’s former business partner in eastern Europe, Rick Gates, has been seen inside the White House on a number of occasions, helped plan Trump’s inauguration and now runs a nonprofit organization, America First Policies, to back the White House agenda.

Trump knew. He may have known the whole time. In fact, it may be why he he hired him.

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Nunes on the “good” Deep State

by digby

The one that serves the right masters:

In light of IG's failure to look at leaking/anti-Clinton bias among agents in NYC field office, this seems quite relevant. Nunes says "good FBI agents" told him about Weiner laptop in late September 2016. pic.twitter.com/BU6ysY7Xwn— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 15, 2018

He is admitting that FBI agents who were out to sabotage Clinton were linking information to him. Information, by the way, that proved to be nothing but ended up moving an election.

That would be government agents acting on behalf of Trump,sharing investigative information with their political allies. There’s no evidence that the DOJ lovers did anything at all to affect the election on behalf of Hillary Clinton. If they had acted like these FBI pals on Nunes, the Russia investigation would have been exposed.

Instead, the FBI told the NY Times this in the days leading up to the election:

They sure had a funny way of helping Clinton and hurting Trump…

This Daily Beast article about the NY FBI office remains the gold standard for understanding what happened there. It was supposed to be investigated along with the Clinton case by the Inspector General but was inexplicably left out of it. I don’t think anyone has determined why. Maybe the “good” Deep State stepped in an put a stop to it. If it’s still ongoing, Nunes’ little comment last night will likely be evidence. If anyone dares….

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Advanced citizenship assignment
by Tom Sullivan

Willacy County Detention Center before being burned in 2015. via Texas Observer/ACLU.

America is advanced citizenship — Pres. Andrew Shepherd, The American President, 1995

For reasons Hullabaloo readers don’t need explained, I’ve often thought of the sitting president as a walking atrocity. But that was rhetorical, mostly. Now Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Donald J. Trump are planning internment camps for 2,000 immigrant children — some toddlers and babies — snatched from their parents under Sessions’s orders over the last six weeks and justified in the language of domestic abusers. And they’re just getting warmed up.

We learned this week where 1,400 of the boys are. The whereabouts of the girls and toddlers is unclear.

Which means ORR has not, until now, been running a massive childcare system for tender age children. But now, babies and toddlers are being taken from their parents and put…where? Who is caring for them and how? We need to see inside those facilities. Now.— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 14, 2018

Activists tell the BBC no other country separates families seeking asylum:

In the European Union, which faced its worst migrant crisis in decades three years ago, most asylum seekers are held in reception centres while their requests are processed – under the bloc’s Dublin Regulation, people must be registered in their first country of arrival.

Measures may vary in different member states but families are mostly kept together.

To make the Trump administration’s unconscionable policy worse, it proposes housing the separated children in tents … in Texas … in the summer.

They may not be open-sided tents a-la Sheriff Joe Arpaio, as if that makes it better. Nor are tents new. Housing immigrant families in “tent cities” began under George W. Bush and continued under Barack Obama, many run by the for-profit prison-industrial complex. They were characterized at the time as un-American. But families stayed together.

what part of It Is An Evil Bad Policy That Is The Fault Of Democrats But Also It Is A Good Policy That God Explicitly Wants Us To Obey seems inconsistent to you— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) June 15, 2018

The Texas Observer adds:

There’s also precedent for warehousing immigrant children at military bases. In 2014, Obama temporarily held kids at an emergency shelter at Lackland AFB in San Antonio — a development that Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott were appalled by at the time. The photo at the top of this story — of Central American kids at a Border Patrol processing center — has been repeatedly mistaken as a recent, Trump-era image. In fact, it’s from 2014, during the Central American refugee surge.

Perhaps the dingiest outpost in the Bush and Obama eras was the Willacy County Correctional Center, aka “Tent City,” in Raymondville. Composed of 10 Kevlar-covered steel-frame buildings, the project was a $60 million no-bid affair that offered a little bit of government cheese to a number of prison industry rats. From the get-go, Tent City was a disaster. There were sexual abuses, maggots in the food, a tawdry corruption scandal that sent local officials to prison and an appalling lack of access to medical care and attorneys. In 2015, after years of turmoil, the immigrants literally burned the place to the ground — definitive confirmation that the construction work was subpar.

BREAKING: According to internal CBO documents obtained by @allinwithchris, from June 3-11, fully ***91%*** of parents being prosecuted at the border and forcibly separated from their children are being prosecuted for a *misdemeanor.*— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 16, 2018

Dahlia Lithwick and Margo Schlanger explain in brief what’s going on and provide a list of groups to support to fight back, be heard and felt. “Please call your elected officials, stay tuned for demonstrations, hug your children,” they write, “and be grateful if you are not currently dependent on the basic humanity of U.S. policy.”

Here is their list of contacts:

• The ACLU is litigating this policy in California.

• If you’re an immigration lawyer, the American Immigration Lawyers Association will be sending around a volunteer list for you to help represent the women and men with their asylum screening, bond hearings, ongoing asylum representation, etc. Please sign up.

• Al Otro Lado is a binational organization that works to offer legal services to deportees and migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, including deportee parents whose children remain in the U.S.

• CARA—a consortium of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association—provides legal services at family detention centers.

• The Florence Project is an Arizona project offering free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.

• Human Rights First is a national organization with roots in Houston that needs help from lawyers too.

• Kids in Need of Defense works to ensure that kids do not appear in immigration court without representation, and to lobby for policies that advocate for children’s legal interests. Donate here.

• The Legal Aid Justice Center is a Virginia-based center providing unaccompanied minors legal services and representation.

• Pueblo Sin Fronteras is an organization that provides humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants on their way to the U.S.

• RAICES is the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas offering free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children and families. Donate here and sign up as a volunteer here.

• The Texas Civil Rights Project is seeking “volunteers who speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’ and have paralegal or legal assistant experience.”

• Together Rising is another Virginia-based organization that’s helping provide legal assistance for 60 migrant children who were separated from their parents and are currently detained in Arizona.

• The Urban Justice Center’s Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project is working to keep families together.

• Women’s Refugee Commission advocates for the rights and protection of women, children, and youth fleeing violence and persecution.

• Finally, ActBlue has aggregated many of these groups under a single button.

Besides donating, I prefer sending e-faxes to my congresscritters via a free service (faxzero.com, for example). I like the idea that staffers have to handle, categorize, file, and respond to physical documents that spit out in their offices rather than just log for/against phone calls. But that’s me.

Lithwick writes that numbness is not an option:

It’s unfair in the extreme, weary friends, but the fact of the matter is that every time we say we are tired, or giving up, or tuning it all out in the name of self-care, somewhere a Steve Bannon gets a new pair of wings. Or as [Rev. William] Barber put it to me, “We lose only when we get quiet.”

Please, get loud. Be best.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.