Month: August 2018

The California GOP FTW

by digby

They sure know how to pick ’em:

The Republican candidate for governor of California paid a visit to a DMV on Wednesday and casually compared standing in line at the notoriously sedate agency to the plight of a Holocaust survivor in pre-war Germany, Capital Public Radio reported.

The campaign for the Republican candidate and businessman John Cox later clarified to TPM that Cox — who has been visiting DMV’s to point out the failings of the agency — misspoke. In audio of the event recorded by Capital Public Radio, Cox introduces himself to a woman and asks her how long she’s been waiting in line. The woman says she’s been in line “close to an hour,” provoking Cox to launch into a diatribe recounting a conversation he’d had previously with a Holocaust survivor.

“You know, I met a Holocaust survivor in Long Beach. He survived concentration camps, and he said this was worse. He’s 90 years old and he had to wait four hours down in Long Beach. Can you imagine that?” Cox says, according to the Capital Public Radio audio.

His campaign spokesperson told the local radio station that Cox misspoke when he called the lines “worse” than the Holocaust. They also gave Capital Public Radio an audio recording of Cox sharing the same story, but accurately, earlier this week.

“He was saying that it reminded him of pre-war Germany” when Jewish people waited in lines to be processed, Cox spokesperson Matt Shupe told the radio station. “In no way does he mean this as a slight to the Jewish community. He misspoke. It’s very unfortunate. But it’s nothing more than that.”

Well, ok then.

The campaign did tell Talking Points Memo that the candidate planned to stop saying it. So that’s good.

By the way, you can make an appointment at the DMV and you don’t have to wait at all. And you can do most transactions online. Also, the people who work there are really very helpful. Just saying.

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He wants to lock Omarosa up too

by digby

He’s very, very, very upset:

In recent days, Trump has called Manigault Newman “crazed,” a “lowlife,” and a “dog” on Twitter. His campaign filed an arbitration suit against her seeking “millions.” And Trump told advisers that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to have Manigault Newman arrested, according to one Republican briefed on the conversations. (It’s unclear what law Trump believes she broke.)

Obviously, she scares him. Who knows what she has?

Supposedly he trusted her and that shows just how inept he really is. She is one of the most famous reality shows villains in history known for deviousness and backstabbing. What did he expect?

Omarosa has released a new tape in which Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, who is running the re-election campaign, offers her hush money:

On the new tape, Lara Trump says, “It sounds a little like, obviously, that there are some things you’ve got in the back pocket to pull out. Clearly, if you come on board the campaign, like, we can’t have, we got to,” she continues, before Manigault Newman interjects, “Oh, God no.”

“Everything, everybody, positive, right?” Trump continues.

For those who don’t recall, Lara is one of the real operators in the Trump Crime Family. She and Rudy Giuliani both went on TV and used the same phrase to hint at a big October surprise.

‘Well there’s still a couple days left in October,’ said Lara Trump. ‘We’ve got some stuff up our sleeve.’

A few days later James Comey sent his letter to congress about the Weiner emails. It’s fair to assume that the Trump campaign had been given a heads up by their pals in the New York FBI office. Lara was an insider who knew about it. She’s a true Trump lieutenant.

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Fifty years ago today

by digby

Five years later, same day:

Courtesy Michael Beschloss

He can’t stop obstructing justice

by digby

After revoking the security clearance of John Brennan ostensibly for things he did during the last administration and because he is paid for giving his opinions on television (as if that’s unusual or corrupt) Trump couldn’t help but blurt out the real reason:

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal posted late Wednesday, President Trump once again gave away the ballgame when it comes to his efforts to affect the probe and tear down its leaders (both current and former). He confessed that his true motivation for revoking former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance was the “rigged witch hunt” that Brennan once “led.” 

“I call it the rigged witch hunt; [it] is a sham,” Trump told the Journal’s Peter Nicholas and Michael C. Bender. “And these people led it!” 

He added: “So I think it’s something that had to be done.” 

You could be forgiven for having flashbacks to Trump’s interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt in the aftermath of his firing last year of James B. Comey as FBI director. Then, as now, the White House offered a series of motivations for the crackdown on a person who was a liability in the Russia probe. Then, as now, it seemed clear what the actual motivation was. And then, as now, Trump appeared to go out and just admit the actual motivation.

A psychologist would have to conclude that this is a man who is subconsciously desperate to be caught. Nobody can be this dumb.

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Aretha

by digby

The story of her iconic feminist anthem:

On returning home from a tour in 1965, the singer Otis Redding had a heart-to-heart with his friend Al Jackson Jr, drummer in Booker T and the MG’s. Redding complained that, after such a long absence, he wasn’t getting the appreciation he felt was due from his wife. Jackson wasn’t sympathetic. “What are you griping about?” he said. “You’re on the road all the time. All you can look for is a little respect when you come home.” 

Redding was working on a song at the time. It was intended for his road manager Speedo Sims and his band The Singing Demons, but Jackson’s words inspired him to up the tempo and keep it for himself. Characterised by plaintive vocals and staccato bursts of horn, “Respect” was a desperate plea that reinforced the archetype of the hard-working man providing for his wife and seeking gratitude, and hopefully sex, in return. The songwas a minor hit, and was among the tracks on Redding’s successful Otis Blue album. 

Two years later, on Valentine’s Day, a gospel singer from Detroit named Aretha Franklin entered a studio in New York and, alongside producer Jerry Wexler, the studio crew from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and her sisters Erma and Carolyn, transformed both the song and its meaning. Franklin’s versionadded a bridge in which she literally spelt out what she saw as the song’s central message — “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me”. 

The effect was to turn Redding’s call for spousal submission into a cri de coeur for women tired of being disrespected by men. Unlike in Redding’s version, there’s no cajoling or complaining; instead Franklin demands what is rightfully hers, in the process offering solidarity to her sisters and delivering a fiery reminder that respect is a two-way street. On hearing her interpretation, Redding conceded that “Respect” was no longer his. Performing it that year at the Monterey Pop Festival, he introduced it as “a song that a girl took away from me”. 

It was Franklin’s template that Diana Ross & The Supremes with The Temptations followed for their cover on the 1968 television special TCB that saw two of Motown’s most popular acts perform hits and show tunes in front of a live audience. Here Ross went head-to-head with Eddie Kendricks; while he pleads for attention, she informs him that all will be well as long as he treats her right. A soundtrack LP followed and went to No 2 in the US Billboard album chart. 

A song espousing respect for womankind might not have seemed the obvious choice for Ike & Tina Turner, given the former’s reputation for infidelity and violence, but in the late 1960s the couple regularly performed “Respect”, and included it on their live album, In Person. In 1970, midway through their nine-minute cover of the song at the Newport Jazz Festival, Tina delivered an impassioned speech where she spoke directly of her husband’s philandering. “[Women] hardly ever get what we want,” she told the crowd. “But you know who always get what they want? The men… And they do it with whoever they want to do it with.” 

Other interpretations have, in comparison, fallen flat. The New Jersey singer Adevagave “Respect” a tepid house overhaul in 1989, grazing the UK top 20 in the process. Kelly Clarkson honked her way through it on American Idol in 2002 against a flimsy piano accompaniment (more robust backing was provided for the album American Idol: Greatest Moments), while Joss Stone sampled it on the hopelessly overcooked “Headturner” on 2007’s Introducing Joss Stone LP. 

That none of these can hold a candle to Franklin’s “Respect” is perhaps inevitable, since who could hope to match her urgency and firepower? It’s the song that earned her two Grammys, her first number one hit and, in 1968, her face on the cover of Time magazine. It was her version that was embraced and adopted by the women’s rights movement, and ultimately earned her the title “Queen of Soul”. When Aretha sang “All I’m askin’ is for a little respect”, she got it by the truckload. 

People can hear that song in many different ways but when a woman hears Aretha singing it they know exactly what she’s talking about.

By the way, does everyone remember this amazing moment?

At the Grammys in 1998, the legendary soul singer stepped in – at the last minute – for Pavarotti, who had been due to sing his trademark piece, Nessun Dorma. So obviously she went ahead and performed that aria.

I saw it. It was unforgettable.

Here she is performing the piece a few years later, at an event in Philadelphia in 2015. Just **listen** to how she ad libs on that top B.

RIP

Poor Ivanka

by digby

Sad!:

Rules, schmules
by Tom Sullivan

Guile is not supposed to be a virtue. Not a Judeo-Christian one, anyway. Guile: deceitful cunning; duplicity, according to Websters. Yet “values” conservatives now regard it as a sign of strength. To win at any cost, including to one’s integrity, is more important than personal integrity and faithfulness to abstractions like decency, fair play, and the rule of law. See the president they elected.

Michael Tomasky writes at Daily Beast that Republican politicians don’t push back against Trump out of fear of his base, but because they like what he’s doing.

The two major political parties in place since the 1850s adhered, more or less, to established norms on “basic democratic allocation of power,” Tomasky writes (eliding nearly a century of Jim Crow rules under Democrats). Elections have consequences. Losing means control by political opponents. But the consensus has collapsed, driven primarily by the GOP:

The shutting down of the recount in Florida in 2000. The aggressive gerrymandering, first engineered by Tom DeLay. The Hastert Rule, holding that bills could pass the House only with a majority of Republicans, and not with bipartisan support. The attacks on voting rights—straight-up attempts to make it hard or even impossible for certain citizens to vote.

Some of it seems superfluous piling on. There are murmurings by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, to return selection of senators to state legislatures. And since the GOP controls 32 of them, it would guarantee a GOP Senate for the foreseeable future. Superfluous because, according to a prediction I’ve cited before:

“By 2040, 70% of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states… home to the overwhelming majority of the 30 largest cities… that means 70% of Americans get all of 30 Senators and 30% get 70 Senators.”

ALEC and the GOP simply don’t want to wait. They are actively trying to rig the game so it’s heads, they win; tails, Democrats lose. Tomasky continues:

And then came the mother of all rule changes, the Battle of Verdun, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the sack of Rome by the Vandals: the blocking of Merrick Garland. This was an unconscionable rewriting of the rules. Let the American people decide, they said. The American people had decided. They elected Barack Obama to a second term of four years. Not three.

I’ve thought a lot about why the Republicans didn’t just go through the motions of giving Garland his hearing and then rejecting him, as they had the votes to do. They could have scheduled it so that they voted him down in August, and then semi-plausibly argued that it was now too close to the election to proceed. Then, they would have played by the rules but still prevailed. So why didn’t they?

To my mind, there’s only one answer. They wanted to show the Democrats and the country that they didn’t play by the rules. They wanted to make that public demonstration to establish a precedent—to show, to return to my phrase from above, that they could exercise public contempt for the democratic allocation of power. And win.

By any means necessary. The only rule is winning. Trump is their patron saint.

Having lost a nonpartisan state Supreme Court race in 2016 to an African-American Democrat, Republicans in control of the North Carolina legislature made several changes to the election laws to tilt the game in their direction. They switched the contest to one in which candidates would carry party affiliation. They eliminated judicial primaries as well. Then a group affiliated with GOP consultants sent out mailers urging Democratic lawyers to run for Supreme Court and Court of Appeals in an apparent attempt to flood the race with Democrats and dilute their opponents’ votes. Democrats didn’t bite, instead rallying around a single candidate.

Then Chris Anglin, a Raleigh attorney, took it on himself to switch his registration from Democrat and file to run as a Republican. Hoisted, petards, etc., Republicans cried foul and called a special legislative session to pass legislation to strip Anglin’s ballot line of its “R.” Naturally, this went to court. The ruling came down on Monday:

Wake County Superior Court Judge Rebecca Holt agreed in a forceful ruling handed down Monday afternoon. Holt explained that Anglin has “a vested right to have his party affiliation listed on the ballot”—a right the legislature infringed upon by changing the rules and applying them retroactively. This switcheroo “violates fundamental principles of fairness,” Holt found, “thereby violating [Anglin’s] right to due process” under the North Carolina constitution. She also held that the new law “severely burdens” Anglin’s “associational rights” under the state constitution by preventing him from affiliating with his chosen party. And because the law is justified by no compelling or legitimate state interest, she concluded, it must be set aside.

Rules, schmules. Rules are for losers. The NCGOP will appeal.

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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.

The church cover-up makes it all seem possible

by digby

If you wonder why some people are so credulous that they think pedophile rings are being run out of pizza parlors by politicians, this is probably why:

If the oldest and most powerful Christian Church in the world could do this I suppose it’s not really that kooky to believe that others could too …

The priesthood of the Catholic Church committed or was complicit in widespread, systemic pedophilia and they successfully kept it quiet for decades. I still find this story to be among the most astonishing well … ever. It’s hard to believe it actually happened.

And clearly they still haven’t completely come clean.

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Pelosi isn’t the poison they think she is

by digby

Earlier I wrote about the Republicans resurrecting the “liberal” epithet zombie in a vain attempt to save some suburban seats. This is probably why:

Republican House candidates have attacked their Democratic opponents over their future potential vote to make Nancy Pelosi the speaker of the House again. Many Democrats fearing potential electoral repercussions have responded by pledging not to vote for Pelosi, if they are elected.

CNN’s new poll suggests that Democrats may be overreacting. While the California Democrat remains a very unpopular figure, her impact on people’s votes this November looks like it’s going to be minimal.

Just 34% of registered voters say that Pelosi will be an extremely or very important factor in their vote this fall. That ranks dead last of the 10 factors asked about by CNN.

To give you an idea of how low Pelosi placed, at least twice as many voters said seven of the other nine factors (the economy, health care, immigration, corruption, gun policy, taxes and President Donald Trump) asked about were extremely or very important.

On the other end, a majority of voters (59%) say that Pelosi will be moderately important or not that important of a factor in how they will cast their ballots. The investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 campaign, an issue that Democrats have been hesitant to talk about too much on the campaign trail, was the only other factor a majority of Americans said was moderately important or not that important to their 2018 vote.

When you drill down further, you can see just how unimportant Pelosi is in the minds of voters. A mere 14% of voters say she will be an extremely important factor. At least 30% of voters said that every other issue tested was extremely important in their 2018 vote.

A little peek into Mueller’s other evidence

by digby

The Mueller team dropped a little hint in the Manafort trial:

If there is one context in which Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, probably did not want his name to be mentioned, it is that of any legal proceeding involving the ongoing Trump-Russia scandal. 

As the trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort draws to a close, however, Kushner is finding himself under that unwanted spotlight. 

Kushner is reported to have told Manafort that he was “on it” after the former campaign manager asked him to consider appointing a banker friend to a high-ranking government post, according to ABC News. According to the exhibit submitted before the court as evidence on Monday, Manafort had sent an email to Kushner in November 2016 — not only after the election but months after Manafort had been pressured into stepping down from the campaign — asking that Stephen Calk, the CEO and founder of Federal Savings Bank, be considered for the position of Secretary of the Army. 

As Manafort explained in his email to Kushner, “Calk was an active supporter of the campaign since April. His background is strong in defense issues, management, and finance.” 

Recall that the Daily Beast reported in November of 2016 that Manafort was involved in staffing the new administration:

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.
[…]
“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.”

I’m betting Pence wouldn’t like hearing his name mentioned in all this mess either. But it should be. Manafort picked him for a reason and I’m going to guess it had little to do with ideology.

The idea that Manafort was involved with the transition may be important to the larger case. He was supposedly thrown overboard in August. Yet in November, Jared Kushner was taking his calls and giving him reason to believe he’d come through for him. They went to great lengths to keep his lieutenant in the fold. Someone must be wondering why they would do that.

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