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Month: June 2018

Some juicy gossip to make your day

Published by digby on June 24, 2018
Some juicy gossip to make your day

by digby

I’m just going to throw this out there:

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-Va.) hosted a dinner Friday night for more than 100 guests at his house on Martha’s Vineyard as part of the DSCC’S annual Majority Trust retreat. OVERHEARD: Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, joking to the crowd: “If you get me one more glass of wine, I’ll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you’ve seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It’s going to be a wild couple of months.”

Marcy Wheeler is reading those tea leaves:


The Mueller investigation is, I suspect, coming to a head. 

I don’t claim I know how it will turn out. The president has an enormous amount of power and his flunkies in Congress promise they’re about to end Rod Rosenstein’s bend-don’t-break defense by impeaching him (though Rosenstein and Chris Wray have just thrown more documents out to slow the Republicans). It’s certainly possible that Trump will make a last ditch effort to undercut the Mueller investigation and that effort will be competently executed and none of the secondary fall-back defenses Mueller has put into place will work. For now, though, the Trump team seems intent on a delay and discredit strategy, which won’t stave off any imminent steps. 

So we shall see whether Trump succeeds in undercutting the investigation. I keep thinking, “that’s why they play the game,” but this is no game. 

There are a number of reasons I think Mueller’s investigation is coming to a head. But consider one detail. I’ve long explained that Mueller seems to be building a series of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States indictments that will ultimately incorporate the entire Russian operation (and may integrate the Trumpsters’ international self-dealing as well). As Mueller’s team has itself pointed out, for heavily regulated areas like elections, ConFraudUs indictments don’t need to prove intent for the underlying crimes. They just need to prove,

(1) two or more persons formed an agreement to defraud the United States; 

(2) [each] defendant knowingly participated in the conspiracy with the intent to defraud the United States; and 

(3) at least one overt act was committed in furtherance of the common scheme. 

Let’s see how evidence Mueller has recently shown might apply in the case of Roger Stone, Trump’s lifelong political advisor. 

Go ooooon …

She gives the rundown on how this law might be applied to old Rog. It’s very interesting.

Her conclusion:

This is just one of the people Mueller has publicly focused on in recent days. We could lay out similar arguments for Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and Brad Parscale, at a minimum. Mueller had — and acted on — probable cause warrants covering five AT&T phones in March, all of which probably had close ties to Rick Gates. Assuming those targets are distributed proportionately with the US population, he’s likely to have obtained warrants for as many as 15 phones just in that go-around. 

So if Roger Stone is any indication, the Mueller investigation may soon be moving into a new phase.

Godwin speaks

Published by digby on June 24, 2018

Godwin speaks


by digby


I’m getting very tired of people telling me and others who are screaming as this slow motion neo-fascim unfolds to shut up and don’t make trouble. Liberals love to argue over tactics and strategies endlessly and worry constantly about a “backlash.”  The news this morning is all about how the Trump base is getting riled up because their opponents are getting riled up. 

That is fascism,  my friends.

The man who coined the concept of Godwin’s Law has something to say:

Does Godwin’s Law need to be updated? Suspended? Repealed? I get asked this question from time to time because I’m the guy who came up with it more than a quarter century ago.

In its original simple form, Godwin’s Law goes like this: “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches one.” It’s deliberately pseudo-scientific — meant to evoke the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the inevitable decay of physical systems over time. My goal was to hint that those who escalate a debate into Adolf Hitler or Nazi comparisons may be thinking lazily, not adding clarity or wisdom, and contributing to the decay of an argument over time.

Godwin’s Law doesn’t belong to me, and nobody elected me to be in charge of it. Although I’m sometimes thought to be referee for its use, I’m not. That said, I do have thoughts about how it is being invoked nowadays.

Since it was released into the wilds of the internet in 1991, Godwin’s Law (which I nowadays abbreviate to “GL”) has been frequently reduced to a blurrier notion: that whenever someone compares anything current to Nazis or Hitler it means the discussion is over, or that that person lost the argument. It’s also sometimes used (reflexively, lazily) to suggest that anyone who invokes a comparison to Nazis or Hitler has somehow “broken” the Law, and thus demonstrated their failure to grasp what made the Holocaust uniquely horrific.

Most recently GL has been invoked in response to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy that resulted in the traumatic separation of would-be immigrants from their children, many of whom are now warehoused in tent cities or the occasional repurposed Walmart. For example, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden — no squishy bleeding heart — posted a couple of tweets on June 16 that likened that policy to the Nazis’ treatment of children in Germany’s concentration camps. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (a Democrat but also a security hawk) has made the comparison as well.

The response has been predictable: Debate for some people has been derailed by the trivial objection that, even if it is terrible to separate children from their parents (and sometimes lose track of them, or make it impossible for their parents contact them, or even deprive them of the comfort of human touch), it’s not as awful as what the Nazis did. Or as bad as the slave trade. Or as bad as what the expansion of the United States westward did to Native Americans.

My name gets cited in a lot of these discussions. And of course my ears are burning. It hasn’t mattered that I’ve explained GL countless times. Some critics on the left have blamed me for (supposedly) having shut down valid comparisons to the Holocaust or previous atrocities. Some on the right have insisted that I’m “PC” for having tweeted (a bit profanely) that it’s just fine to compare the white nationalists who plagued Charlottesville, Va., last year to Nazis. (I think they were mostly aspirational Nazi cos players.)

I don’t take either strain of criticism too seriously. But I do want to stress that the question of evil, understood historically, is bigger than party politics. GL is about remembering history well enough to draw parallels — sometimes with Hitler or with Nazis, sure — that are deeply considered. That matter. Sometimes those comparisons are going to be appropriate, and on those occasions GL should function less as a conversation ender and more as a conversation starter.

So let me start another conversation here. Take the argument that our treatment of those seeking asylum at our border, including children, is not as monstrous as institutionalized genocide. That may be true, but it’s not what you’d call a compelling defense. Similarly, saying (disingenuously) that the administration is just doing what immigration law demands sounds suspiciously like “we were just following orders.” That argument isn’t a good look on anyone.

The seeds of future horrors are sometimes visible in the first steps a government takes toward institutionalizing cruelty. In his 1957 book “Language of the Third Reich,” Victor Klemperer recounted how, at the beginning of the Nazi regime, he “was still so used to living in a state governed by the rule of law” that he couldn’t imagine the horrors yet to come. “Regardless of how much worse it was going to get,” he added, “everything which was later to emerge in terms of National Socialist attitudes, actions and language was already apparent in embryonic form in these first months.”

So I don’t think GL needs to be updated or amended. It still serves us as a tool to recognize specious comparisons to Nazism — but also, by contrast, to recognize comparisons that aren’t. And sometimes the comparisons can spot the earliest symptoms of horrific “attitudes, actions and language” well before our society falls prey to the full-blown disease.

By all means cite GL if you think some Nazi comparison is baseless, needlessly inflammatory or hyperbolic. But Godwin’s Law was never meant to block us from challenging the institutionalization of cruelty or the callousness of officials who claim to be just following the law. It definitely wasn’t meant to shield our leaders from being slammed for the current fashion of pitching falsehoods as fact. These behaviors, distressing as they are, may not yet add up to a new Reich, but please forgive me for worrying that they’re the “embryonic form” of a horror we hoped we had put behind us.

You can’t eat this red meat by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 24, 2018

You can’t eat this red meat
by Tom Sullivan


SNAP benefits lag behind need, even as the GOP mulls different ways to cut back on food aid (CityLab, 2/23/18)

Schoolyard taunts won’t feed your family. Nor will they heal you when you fall ill. Nor ripping infants and toddlers from vulnerable parents. It might draw international opprobrium. But you can’t pay your bills with that or eat it either. (I’ll spare you the Jonathan Swift references this morning.)

But the behaviors modeled by the White House and congressional majority raise the question: Just what is the president and the party of Trump selling? Fear in greater potency? Cruelty in higher doses? Because their version of American greatness looks a lot like a United States marginalized on the world stage, a world power in decline. Maybe even regressing to a time in history when it wasn’t one.

Granted, America’s rivals in the world that would welcome that. Some of them are the president’s friends. Some are his financiers and creditors too, as investigations may yet prove (since his unreleased tax returns did not).

So after all the boasting, lies, and taunts, after all the incompetence and corruption, what exactly is the party of Trump delivering for Americans?

Well, a return to a health system in which a preexisting condition can be a death sentence. So there’s that.

An exacerbated level of inequality and poverty in which “contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.” But since that might actually have been a byproduct and not their aim, it’s not clear whether that counts as a failure or accomplishment.

Two Harvard scientists predict rollbacks to environmental regulations under the Trump administration could result in 80,000 extra deaths per decade. More toxic air and drinking water. Higher exposure to toxic chemicals. That’s probably a plus for someone with a Capitol Hill lobbyist, but not likely for you or your kids.

With help from the Freedom Caucus, Republicans in the House advanced the 2018 farm bill without a single Democratic vote and with 20 Republicans dissenting. The bill passed Thursday includes $20 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP:

“It’s shocking that the House would pass this kind of harsh farm bill that betrays the long-standing bipartisan commitment to making sure that people who are struggling have enough to eat,” said Stephen Knight, director of policy and partnerships at the Alameda County Community Food Bank, which estimates that 110,000 Alameda County residents are enrolled in CalFresh, the state’s version of SNAP, 60 percent of them children. “With wages falling and inequality growing in our country, protecting and strengthening SNAP is essential.”

Just not to the party of Trump. Not picking winners and losers doesn’t count when it comes to hunger. The party wants stricter work requirements for the poor even as it eases up on the rich.

A proposal to remove regulation of food safety (for everythying except meat and fish) from the HHS to the USDA:

Right now, the USDA and HHS split the task of regulating food safety. One big difference is that while HHS only has to regulate food safety, the USDA is required by the government to both promote agriculture and regulate it. In the past, this has created an awkward relationship in which powerful meat interest groups have held political sway within the department.

So, placing public food safety under the agency also charged with promoting the financial interests of producers. A very Trump move, to be sure.

Could be it’s not just metaphorical red meat you cannot eat.

* * * * * * * *

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

She’s gotta have it: “Let the Sunshine In” (***½) By Dennis Hartley @denofcinema5

Published by digby on June 24, 2018

Saturday Night at the Movies



She’s gotta have it: Let the Sunshine In (***½)

By Dennis Hartley

In one scene from Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In, several people take a country stroll. One of them stops and says, “What fascinates me is that this landscape is…nothing. Shapes, colors, a sunbeam. Yet it becomes part of us, and does us good. It’s totally intact. It’s rare. Nature that looks like nature.” That may sound like dime store profundity, but if you apply the same observation to acting, it gains depth. After all, the best actors are…nothing; a blank canvas. But give them a character (shapes and colors) and some proper lighting (a sunbeam), and they will give back something that becomes part of us, and does us good: a reflection of our own shared humanity. Nature that looks like nature.

Consider Julilette Binoche, an actress of such subtlety and depth that she could infuse a cold reading of McDonald’s $1 $2 $3 menu with the existential ennui of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 123. Binoche is not required to recite any sonnets in this film (co-written by the director and Christine Angot), but her character does speak copiously about love; love in all its guises: erotic, affectionate, familiar, playful, obsessive, enduring, self, and selfless.

She also makes a lot of love (I don’t judge. I merely observe and report). Her character, a Parisian painter named Isabelle, is a divorcee on the rebound. She’s looking for love in all the usual places, yet not settling for any one suitor. She’s pretty sure she knows what she wants, but she’s not 100% sure she really needs it (or has at least been around the block enough times to remain wary). That said, an inordinate number of her lovers happen to be married; and we know that scenario frequently ends in tears. So-what gives?

You may think you know how this is all going to turn out, but Denis’ film, like love itself, is at once seductive and flighty. It’s also quite amusing at times; with a casual eroticism that reminded me of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 1986 film Betty Blue. Granted, Isabelle isn’t quite as off the rails as poor Betty, but she has issues (perhaps she is closer to Cate Blanchett’s character in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine). There is even an echo of Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge in an extraordinary (and unexpected) denouement featuring Gerard Depardieu (I won’t spoil it for you). One thing I will tell you is that you won’t be able to take your eyes off Binoche; she gives it her all in a bravura performance.

Previous posts with related themes:
Heartbreakers
2 Days in New York
Certified Copy
A Summer’s Tale

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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–Dennis Hartley

Klaatu barada nikto

Published by digby on June 23, 2018

Klaatu barada nikto

by digby

Nobody tells the baby president he can’t have his toys:

President Trump’s surprise decision to order the creation of a U.S. “Space Force” came because he was frustrated with Pentagon officials for not taking up his initial suggestion, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Trump directed the Defense Department on Monday to create the country’s sixth military service branch, a move that shocked Pentagon officials and lawmakers.

People familiar with the decision told the Journal that Trump often throws out ideas in public but then expects his aides and Cabinet officials to create follow-through plans.
Trump gets frustrated and make demands when he feels like his appointees haven’t jumped into action, the newspaper reported.

“He doesn’t forget, and ultimately erupts when he feels slighted,” a former high-level industry and government official said.

The White House did not respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.

Trump first tossed out the idea of a Space Force in March.

“You know, I was saying it the other day — because we’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space — I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force.’ And I was not really serious, and then I said, ‘What a great idea, maybe we’ll have to do that. That could happen,’ ” Trump said during a speech to military personnel in San Diego

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, Air Force Chief of Staff David Golden and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Kaleth Wright all opposed the idea of a separate space branch when the issue was proposed by the House Armed Services Committee last year.

“I oppose the creation of a new military service and additional organizational layers at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting functions,” Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote in 2017.

Wilson and other senior Air Force commanders reportedly had no idea Trump’s announcement was coming when they met for a strategy session last week.

A new military branch has not been created since the Air Force in 1947.

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Oh look, the border isn’t crime ridden

Published by digby on June 23, 2018

Oh look, the border isn’t crime ridden

by digby

I know the president would like Americans to believe that the border is “infested” with crime but he’s lying as usual. This article about the most violent Texas cities tells the tale:

Border cities get a bad rap as violent, but the Rio Grande Valley is extremely safe. Of the 24 Texas metro areas ranked by the FBI, Brownsville comes in dead last, with 240 incidents of violent crime per 100,000 people. Nearby McAllen comes in at #18, with 286 per 100,000.

This tracks with what many of the residents are saying all over TV too. They say there is no crisis and that things were pretty placid, at least until Trump and Sessions decided to divide the country once again.

There are, of course, total fascists who are getting on TV and praising the “gung ho” border patrol types who have “taken off the gloves.” But they’re liars too.

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Gitmo was supposed to be temporary too

Published by digby on June 23, 2018

Gitmo was supposed to be temporary too

by digby

In case you missed this one:

The U.S. Navy is preparing plans to construct sprawling detention centers for tens of thousands of immigrants on remote bases in California, Alabama and Arizona, escalating the military’s task in implementing President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy for people caught crossing the Southern border, according to a copy of a draft memo obtained by TIME.

The internal document, drafted for the Navy Secretary’s approval, signals how the military is anticipating its role in Trump’s immigration crackdown. The planning document indicates a potential growing military responsibility in an administration caught flat-footed in having to house waves of migrants awaiting civilian criminal proceedings.

The Navy memo outlines plans to build “temporary and austere” tent cities to house 25,000 migrants at abandoned airfields just outside the Florida panhandle near Mobile, Alabama, at Navy Outlying Field Wolf in Orange Beach, Alabama, and nearby Navy Outlying Field Silverhill.

The memo also proposes a camp for as many as 47,000 people at former Naval Weapons Station Concord, near San Francisco; and another facility that could house as many as 47,000 people at Camp Pendleton, the Marines’ largest training facility located along the Southern California coast. The planning memo proposes further study of housing an undetermined number of migrants at the Marine Corps Air Station near Yuma, Arizona.

The planning document estimates that the Navy would spend about $233 million to construct and operate a facility for 25,000 people for a six-month time period. The proposal suggests these tent cities be built to last between six months and one year.

There’s money for all this bullshit along with Ivanka’s tax cuts. But that’s it. Everything else is on the chopping block.

Don’t get complacent people. His rabid followers number in the tens of millions and they believe every lie he tells (or at least appreciate the fact that he lies just like they do) and they will walk on hot coals for him. They aren’t depressed. They are energized by this.

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For Clinton they called it “fatigue”. For Trump “bonding”

Published by digby on June 23, 2018

For Clinton they called it “fatigue”. For Trump “bonding”

by digby

This exact phenomenon was presented and defined very differently when it came to Clinton:

Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now. President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.

But Ms. Anders, 46, a Republican from suburban Loudoun County, Va., with a law degree, a business career, and not a stitch of “Make America Great Again” gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.

“All nuance and all complexity — and these are complex issues — are completely lost,” she said, describing “overblown” reactions from the president’s critics, some of whom equated the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children and parents to history’s greatest atrocities.

“It makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more,” Ms. Anders said.

In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: “How can you possibly still support this man?” Their resilience suggests a level of unity among Republicans that could help mitigate Mr. Trump’s low overall approval ratings and aid his party’s chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives in November.

“He’s not a perfect guy; he does some stupid stuff,” said Tony Schrantz, 50, of Lino Lakes, Minn., the owner of a water systems leak detection business. “But when they’re hounding him all the time it just gets old. Give the guy a little.”

Yeah, I remember that feeling back in the 1990s. I don’t remember even one member of the press saying it was good for Clinton.

Update:

“Not a stitch of Make America Great Again” wardrobe my ass.

It turns out that this woman Gina Anders isn’t just some nice Republican lady they found randomly:

[Republican candidate] Tabb said she has become alarmed by the rightward drift of the Republican Party in Jefferson County. She said its alignment with the tea party’s anti-government, anti-tax agenda and the party’s affiliation with far-right activist groups that have sprung up over the last decade – such as We the People of West Virginia-Jefferson County, started by now-state Sen. Patricia Rucker, and the Liberty Political Action Committee begun by Stephen C. Anders and Gina Anders, formerly of Maryland, then of Shepherdstown and now living in Loudoun County, Va., have made the party almost unrecognizable to her.

This happens over and over again — stories about supposedly Average Joe Real American turn out to be right wing extremist activists. It wouldn’t have taken much to find that out.

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Kids for decency

Published by digby on June 23, 2018

Kids for decency

by digby


This is a Move-on initiative:

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

TAKE A STAND: JOIN FAMILIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY THIS WEEKEND BY HOSTING YOUR OWN LEMONADE STAND.

Parents everywhere are grappling with how to talk about this with their kids—and how, together, we can make a difference in solidarity with immigrant families at our borders. You can collect funds at your lemonade stand and then make an online payment to a coalition of 14 groups protecting immigrant kids being taken from their families.

Groups include Al Otro Lado, The Florence Project, Neta, Innovation Law Lab, Fuerza Del Valle, The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, We Belong Together, United We Dream, The Women’s Refugee Commission, The ACLU, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Human Rights First, and La Union de Pueblo Entero.

Give away a free cookie or lemonade to your neighbors who:

Write a postcard or letter to an immigrant kid being detained without their parents at the border. National Domestic Workers Alliance will help deliver them.

Sign up to participate in an event as part of the June 30th Families Belong Together National Day of Action. (If you can, have a phone, laptop or tablet available with the website pulled up and ready to go so you can sign up your customers right then and there!)

WHEN ARE WE DOING THIS?

HOST YOUR LEMONADE STAND THIS WEEKEND, 
ANYTIME SATURDAY, JUNE 23RD OR SUNDAY, JUNE 24TH.
In the run up to the Families Belong Together National Day of Action on June 30th, host your lemonade stand this weekend, anytime Saturday, June 23rd or Sunday, June 24th.