Month: October 2018

“Trump’s rhetoric makes the unthinkable seem possible”

by digby

There’s an avalanche of “whataboutism” in response to the bomber. It’s frustrating, to say the least. This was a mass assassination attempt of Trump’s political enemies. It’s hard to imagine anything more serious. So, it seems a little beside the point that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was politely asked to leave a restaurant only having eaten her cheese board. And raucous protesters in the Senate last month or at Obamacare townhalls back in 2010 are a time-honored form of political activism.

This is different and anyone with a brain should see that it is. Unfortunately, my take from the right wingers is that the left has been asking for it and anyway this is no big deal because nobody got killed. They seem not to be thinking about the fact that the bomber is still out there and may think he needs to step up his game. It couldn’t be more irresponsible.

Anyway, this piece by Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post is refreshing in its clarity:

The gesture was small, but it contained multitudes.

At a raucous rally in Montana last week, a Trump supporter — juiced up by the president’s crude praise of a congressman who body-slammed a reporter — looked directly at CNN reporter Jim Acosta.

Then he ran his thumb across his throat. And laughed.

Later, Acosta described “the Trump effect.”

“It has normalized and sanitized nastiness and cruelty in a way that I just never thought I would see,” he said, shortly after that Montana rally.

The Trump effect is a straight line from years of his hateful rhetoric to real-world danger. It’s a line that goes directly from disrespect to pipe bomb.

And — almost inevitably — it will eventually go from failed attempt to spilled blood.

If you can’t see it, you aren’t looking.

But on Wednesday, plenty of people weren’t looking.

The news reports of bombs sent to the most frequent objects of President Trump’s sustained criticism brought a torrent of nonsense. This was a false-flag operation, some charged, instigated by Trump’s enemies to bring sympathy.

Ann Coulter tweeted that bombs have been, throughout history, “a liberal tactic.”

And radio behemoth Rush Limbaugh, as quoted in HuffPost, jumped in with his view that Republicans don’t do this sort of thing, and a Democratic operative was the more likely culprit.

But let’s get real. Everyone targeted by the pipe bombs had been the subject of endless hours of Fox News commentary. The list of targets read like Sean Hannity’s pre-broadcast crib notes: Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and former CIA chief John Brennan — and, as the representative of evil mainstream media — CNN.

As usual, Trump himself projected blame everywhere but where it belongs.

In what Katie Rogers and Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times described as the president’s “rhetorical jujitsu,” he combined swipes at the news media and Democrats with a call to “come together in peace and harmony.”

And in a reprehensible Thursday morning tweet, Trump doubled down: “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. . . . Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”

There is no story now — even one about terrorist acts — that doesn’t devolve into the hyperpartisan blame game, led by the president.

In this case, placing the blame appropriately required nothing but common sense.

CNN boss Jeff Zucker got it right: “There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media. The President, and especially the White House Press Secretary, should understand their words matter. Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that.”

(That Zucker, both at NBC and at CNN, undoubtedly helped create Trump as president doesn’t take away the truth of his statement. )

There’s real danger in these assaults.

There’s danger in “lock her up,” in birtherism, in retaliating against former CIA director Brennan by revoking his security clearance. There’s danger in calling reporters “the enemy of the people” and in celebrating Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte who roughed up Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs.

And the danger only grows. Last week, a Montana Republican official resigned her post after not only cheering Gianforte’s body-slam but, in remarks on a radio show, taking it an ugly step further:

“If that kid had done to me what he did to Greg, I would have shot him,” she said.

When a gunman shot and killed five employees of the Capital Gazette last summer in Annapolis, Md., it seemed wise not to tie the tragedy to Trump’s anti-media assaults. After all, Jarrod Ramos had been harassing journalists at the small daily newspaper for years, carrying a grudge about coverage of him he found unfair.

Now I’m not so sure. Trump’s rhetoric makes the unthinkable seem possible. Worthy of a second thought — or more.

What I am certain of is that the danger that came from the top — from Trump — will worsen unless he does everything in his power to change.

To model, in words and actions, the peace and unity that he tepidly endorsed on Wednesday.

To recognize his own gargantuan role in the problem, to honestly confront “the Trump effect.”

Of course, there’s no reason to think that will happen.

And so — dreadful as it is to say — we know what will.

Yes we do.

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Don’t forget about the corruption

by digby

There are a million reasons to oppose Republicans in the upcoming election, not the least of which is to stop the right wing from jamming any more of its extremist policies through while they have the Orange Julius Caesar to hold the pen.
But there needs to be oversight of a whole lot of business that’s been done over the past two years. There has never been such corruption in plain sight:

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Dispense with the “both sides do it” nonsense

by digby

Jeffrey Toobin FTW

Exactly. #BombThreats #MAGABomber #Trump #ViolentRhetoric pic.twitter.com/h12ElVzHAr— CREDO Mobile (@CREDOMobile) October 25, 2018

The right wingers are frantic today, trying to deflect blame for this mad bomber. What Toobin says above is correct. The targets are Trump’s enemies list, fergawdsakes. He blames every problem in America on them. He constantly suggests that any criticism of him is traitorous and he stokes grievance and exalts violence. It’s idiotic to claim that this is a “both sides” issue.

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Will anyone investigate President Blabby?

by digby

Paul Waldman has a great piece up today about Trump’s unsecured iPhone recalling all the garment-rending over Hillary Clinton’s email server. And he notes how ineffectual calling out hypocrisy is in this era:

I realize that it’s too much to ask for Republicans to work themselves up into paroxysms of rage over this the way they did over Hillary Clinton’s email, for the simple reason that information security isn’t something they ever cared much about, so naturally they stopped pretending to care once the 2016 election was over. But you’d think that at the very least they’d muster up some mild disapproval of the fact that the president is allowing foreign governments to listen to his conversations. Can you imagine what they would have said if President Obama had done this?

But no. No Republican members of Congress are calling for an investigation, no conservative pundits are shaking their fist at the cameras and saying this is a national crisis, and there will be no round-the-clock denunciations of the president on Fox News. (One National Review writer did note that “If Trump was a Dem, Fox might try to bend the space/time continuum to put Hannity on for 25 hours a day to chase the story.”)

You could call it “hypocrisy,” but that word doesn’t quite cover it. It’s become so expected that we’ll drop it and move on in by tomorrow; all Republicans will have to do is avoid the cameras for a few hours so they don’t have to answer any uncomfortable questions, and then they can go back to saying how mad they are that Brett Kavanaugh had to answer some uncomfortable questions before getting his lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

So what should our response be to this kind of story? Obviously, the most important thing is that the problem gets fixed. If Trump were capable of embarrassment, I’d say that he might be embarrassed into using only secured phones. But since he isn’t, and White House aides seem incapable of convincing him to do so, the only remaining means to encourage him to change his practices would be some action by Congress, like an oversight hearing or two.

Oversight, however, is something this Congress no longer bothers with. Despite the deluge of Trump administration scandals, they’re not bothering; if you look at the October calendar of the House Oversight Committee, you’ll find it’s completely blank.

I’m not saying that Trump’s appalling phone security practices require a thousand hearings to address. But maybe … one? Would that be too many?

It actually requires a real investigation. It’s a major security breach. And Trump seems to know it.

Early this morning he tweeted this:

Then he came back to it three hours later:

Those tweets confirm it’s true.

Update: They don’t have time because they are busy doing this:

Senate Judiciary committee chair Chuck Grassley has called for an FBI investigation into lawyer Michael Avenatti and Julie Swetnick, one of the many women who have accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, reported John King Thursday on CNN.

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Ted Cruz: Trump’s Mini-me

by digby

This guy:

WATCH: Sen. @TedCruz blames Maxine Waters, Cory Booker for political divide. #MTPDaily #MeetTheMidterms

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tells Chuck that' "too many" Democratic leaders are "actively encouraging" the political divide. pic.twitter.com/PT2ab4wYrl— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) October 24, 2018

That’s right. The Democrats targeted for assassination were asking for it.

The night before this interview:

Pipe bombs and sidearms
by Tom Sullivan

Pipe bombs and sidearms, real or fake, are now features of the 2018 midterm elections.

On a day the F.B.I. investigated seven suspected pipe bombs sent to six people the among the president’s verbal targets, police arrested a man for threatening a Republican electioneer outside a polling station. Both remain developing stories.

As of this writing, the New York Times reports, “Some bomb technicians who studied photos of the device that circulated on social media suggested that the bomb sent to CNN had hallmarks of fake explosives — the kind more typically depicted on television and in movies, rather than devices capable of detonating.”

Derek Partee, a Republican volunteer, Wednesday posted images on Facebook of three people he said issued threats and racial slurs as he stood outside a polling station in the Steele Creek community of Charlotte, NC. Partee is black. In one photo, a man is shown carrying a holstered pistol. Partee, a retired New York homicide detective, called local police. One man is in custody facing charges of ethnic intimidation and communicating threats. The other two had violated no laws.

News accounts report the sidearm was a BB gun. From the Charlotte Observer account:

In an interview with the (Raleigh) News & Observer Wednesday night, Partee said he arrived at the polling place around 2:30 p.m. when a fellow volunteer pointed out the three people in the parking lot who had been taking photos that day and previously. Partee, who is a retired homicide detective from New York, said he decided to take down the license plate number of their car — but before he could, the man with the apparent gun jumped out of the car and confronted him.

“He said something about being a Republican, I said I am a Republican, he said ‘Motherf***** you ain’t s***,’” Partee said.

“They didn’t care whether I was a Democrat or a Republican, they just cared that I was black.”

Another account reports the incident with Partee was not the first at the polling location. Larry Shaheen, campaign chief of staff for state Sen. Jeff Tarte, a Mecklenburg County Republican, reported shouting and physical threats aimed at female Republican volunteers and African-Americans.

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest based on their clothes, behavior, and targets, the Charlotte suspect and his pals are voter fraud vigilantes carrying out their leader’s mandate to watch for “VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING.” Violators will be punished!

Videoing poll greeters as an intimidation tactic is pretty standard for overzealous GOP locals. Punisher tee shirts and fake sidearms are not. Or an old camera. Really?

* * * * * * * * *

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

President Blabby’s iPhone

by digby

There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton’s private email server was hacked or any classified information was leaked. Trump said he would put her in jail for it and they are still, as we speak, chanting “lock her up” at his rallies.

Lookee here:

When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said.

Mr. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them.

Mr. Trump’s use of his iPhones was detailed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss classified intelligence and sensitive security arrangements. The officials said they were doing so not to undermine Mr. Trump, but out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.

You have to love this:

Russia is not believed to be running as sophisticated an influence effort as China because of Mr. Trump’s apparent affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin, a former official said.

The man has no discretion. He gave the Russian classified information the morning after he fired James Comey for investigating him. He blaba about everything.

Of course he discusses classified information on the phone. He says whatever he wants to whomever he wants.

The man is indiscreet. That’s why I’ve always thought it was totally believable that the Russians have kompromat on him. He’s that much of a dolt.

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Oh look, another big drop

by digby

Trump blames the Fed Chairman,

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The many are energized to stop the power of the few and the one 

By Spocko

Star Trek often told stories about power.

 The 1960’s weren’t that far away from World War II. Some of the lessons learned about fighting Nazi’s and fascists could to be reinforced, since over time people forget.

They also had stories of how new technology could upset the balance of power. I spotted a Writing Prompt on Reddit that inspired me to write a Star-Trek like story about technology, people and power.  Here’s the prompt:

Researchers have developed a prototype for teleportation but it hasn’t been announced to the public. Being the 53rd tester, you hop in. But as the scientists pull the switch, you feel your body being ripped apart. Before you fade away, you see yourself come out, reassuring everyone it worked.

My science fiction story takes place in the near future:

Yes I am a Star Trek fan. A HUGE one. I’ve written as “Spocko” for over 20 years. When an announcement of the human teleportation trials came out my brother and I volunteered. Of course I had read why teleportation was created in Star Trek. To save money! Gene Roddenberry knew they couldn’t afford to make shuttlecraft sets and flying down to the planets every week slowed down the plot. Thus, the transporter was born. Here’s how they did the special effect for the cameras.

Since Gene had gotten so much right about the future from multiple races and genders working together to the creation of communicators, universal translators and tablet computers, we figured teleportation had to be next. Signing up was a no brainer.

The trial was funded by the United States government, out of the Department of Energy but it was run by a venture capitalist billionaire buddy of Elon Musk. That was cool since, like other Redditors, I’m a huge fan of Elon.

And without Uncle Sam’s red tape slowing things down everything moved incredibly fast. Raytheilion, the company created for the project, said they made more progress in 2 years than all the previous government efforts had in the past 20.

The day of the test I was reminded of something John Glenn said when asked how he felt before his first rocket flight.

‘I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.’

I was nervous, but excited, no lowest bid government contract here!  I was number 53, but all of the volunteers were kept separate and we weren’t told how the other trials had gone. It was all standard double-blind study stuff.

When I went into the lab I saw two pods, lots of cameras and some VIPs that I assumed were investors.

The pods looked a bit like they were from the movie The Fly with a big glass door in the front.

When I got in the pod closest to me I found the inside was much smaller than the outside, it was like a reverse Tardis from Dr. Who.

The techs closed and sealed the door. It quickly filled with a decontamination mist. I was supposed to breathe it in, but I held my breath. I couldn’t see anything and it felt like I was spinning. There was a loud vacuum pumping sound, which made my skin feel like it was tearing off me. My ears popped and there was a blinding flash of light like in the ending of movie The Prestige.

When I opened my eyes it was dark. All I saw was a sliver of light outlining the door in front of me. I shouted and pounded on the door, but the pod was sound proof. I pushed my face up against the edge of the door and saw the monitor showing the whole room and the two pods.

The video feed from the camera pointed at my pod showed it was empty. The camera pointing at the other pod showed someone inside. It was my twin brother, whom I hadn’t seen since we started the trials. He came out smiling and saying something to the scientists and investors.

SON OF A BITCH! It was all a goddamn trick!

Instead of being teleported I had been spun around and was now standing behind a front-surfaced mirror reflecting the side of the pod making it look empty. It was a text-book “smoke and mirrors” trick.

After hearing some talking and what sounded like celebrating the lab got quiet. The two techs opened the door. They knew I hadn’t teleported, what they didn’t know was that I was conscious and had peered around the edge of the mirror, saw my twin in the other pod and had figured out the trick.

They opened the door and said “Sorry, Spocko, we aborted the test, we’ll try again later. Go get some rest.”  I did my best to look disappointed and headed back to my dorm.

All science fiction fans know the Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” but what most people don’t know is the Randi corollary, attributed to the skeptic and magician James Randi, who noted that laymen and scientists were often tricked by fake psychics like Uri Geller, or con men who sold perpetual energy machines which were really clever magic tricks.

“Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”
    -The Randi Corollary 

I should have known this was a scam. The VC wasn’t an engineer, he was a  money guy and libertarian. Libertarians hate government oversight. With no oversight they just created some tricks to keep the government money flowing. 

As they said on Battlestar Galactica, “All of this had happened before and will happen again.” Like Reagan’s Star Wars program, human teleportation was a scam designed to get money out of the Government.

I’m lying on my bed in my dorm room with my back to the “health monitoring camera” writing this on tiny scraps of paper. Maybe this can be smuggled out to some journalist before the staff figures out what I saw. If they believe me their life will be in danger. But more likely this will be dismissed as an attempt to get back at the funders after what happened to Gawker.

It will be called fake news. After all, I don’t have any evidence of my story. It would be my word against a powerful group of financially successful men.

If I point out all the other people shut up with perfectly legal NDAs who don’t want to talk I will look like a conspiracy theorist.  Nobody is looking out for me, people will say, I knew what I was getting into. But I didn’t know they were lying to everyone! I figured someone would have busted them by now. I didn’t count on all the people getting rich on the deal to keep their mouths shut.

I thought a scientist whistleblower would have come forward by now. But I guess after they have seen how whistleblowers are attacked and destroyed it makes sense they would keep their head down.

I was a tech guy who believed in the “power of the market” to fix things.  I used to joke about “Good enough for government work.”  Right now I WISH there was some kind of government watchdog looking out for me…

—end–

And now here is the “bonk, bonk on the head” moral of the story, Star Trek style, because you can’t be obvious enough sometimes.

The reason that the government is involved in oversight and regulation of businesses and science isn’t to hamper entrepreneurs who want to make progress. It’s to protect us.

Centuries ago, we the people got together and decided to elected some folks to protect us. We accepted the military as protectors, but there are other ways to protect citizens than the military. We need protection from contaminated food, rigged drug tests, dangerous experiments and out of control ego maniacs.

We need regulations, regulators, and inspectors who aren’t beholden to the companies they inspect.

To put it in a classic Star Trek form:

• We need our institutions to serve the needs of the many, not the few or the one.
• We need a free press to show the world what happens when a system is broken, rigged or corrupt.
• We need a justice system that puts the rule of law above the rule of power and money.

In a few Star Trek original series stories there were beings with tremendous power who acted like children and abused their power.

In The Squire of Gothos in the third act “The Adults” came in and stopped Trelane, the powerful being. That scene was the Hollywood ending that we crave. They punished him and apologized to the crew for the damage he had done.  (I love how Trelane whines when his parents take him away. “But why? I didn’t do anything wrong. I was winning, I was winning! You saw!” Sound like anyone you see on TV?)

Yes it’s Deus ex Machina, but the good news is that we can get some of that ending. We need to remember that the Democrats are The Adults, not the Republicans. The Republicans have shown time and time again they fail in their duty to protect the many and instead act to serve the needs of the few and the one–themselves.

In the show when powerful child-like beings were being stopped, they whined and cried.  The powerful child-like beings didn’t apologize for any damage they have done because they don’t think they did anything wrong.

After the election there will be people on the left and newly elected Democrats who won’t want to punish the GOP for their role in enabling this dangerous child with power. They will let them resign and sail off onto Lobbying World.

They will want to act like Obama and look to the future and move on. But as we have learned, there must be punishment for power abuses and law breaking. And, if something wasn’t a law, but a norm that was ignored, we need to turn that into a law.

We need to include people who knew about the crimes, had the power to stop them, but didn’t.

Failure to act to protect the people, and allowing criminal acts to continue might be difficult to prove, but one of the things that we have learned during this time of widespread corruption is there are many law-breaking avenues to follow.

The right’s projection onto Hillary Clinton and Benghazi tells us a lot about what they are guilty of. Their attacks on George Soros, who and what he funds tells us what to look for on their side.

If we don’t investigate and prosecute the problem will never stop. 

In the episode, Charlie X Kirk wanted to train Charlie to use his power, but the Thasians knew that Charlie couldn’t be trained to use his power wisely, “He will use it and he will destroy you and your kind or you will be forced to destroy him.” So they took Charlie away.

I believe in American’s ability to defeat powerful child-like men. If they can’t use the power given them wisely, they need to go away.

These people won’t give up power easily, they will throw tantrums, lie, bully, point fingers and cry. “I was winning!” and “You’ll reap the whirlwind if you take me out of power!”  But we are The Adults in this story. Time’s up for these children.

LLAP,

Spocko
@spockosbrain

Gotta be the left-wing mob, amirite?

by digby

In the wake of this ongoing bomb threat, here’s how the right wingers are reacting:

Minutes after news broke of “potential explosive devices” being mailed to the homes of former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, along with CNN’s New York City studio, the dark corners of the conservative Internet were declaring it a plot to gin up empathy for Democrats.

Cries that the bomb threats was merely a “false flag” operation were evident on Twitter and pro-Trump forums. Many of the personalities pushing the claim were fringe types. But not all of them.

Popular talk radio host Rush Limbaugh hinted that the attempted bombings were set-up by Democrats, saying they would serve a political “purpose.”

“It’s happening in October,” Limbaugh said. “There’s a reason for this.”

Frank Gaffney, an Islamophobe who has held posts on Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) presidential campaign and in the Ronald Reagan White House, suggested the packages were a “deflection” technique. “None of the leftists ostensibly targeted for pipe-bombs were actually at serious risk, since security details would be screening their mail,” he tweeted. “So let’s determine not only who is responsible for these bombs, but whether they were trying to deflect attention from the Left’s mobs.”

John Cardillo, a former NYPD officer and popular right-wing radio host, initially denounced political violence on both sides of the aisle, but quickly broadcast his skepticism that the threats were legit. “Just too coincidental that two weeks before Election Day, as the ‘blue wave’ has turned into a ripple, and the left is losing ground because of incivility and violent rhetoric, explosive devices show up in the mailboxes of Soros, Clinton, and Obama,” he wrote on Twitter. He later deleted the tweet.

Gab, a social media network that’s popular with alt-right figures who have been kicked off of Twitter, implied that the bomb attacks were a false flag. Devoted Trump supporters on forums like 4Chan and Reddit had similar reactions, claiming the bombs were set up by Democrats—or regretting that the bombs didn’t go off.

The explosive devices sent on Wednesday came on the heels of a similar discovery outside the home of Democratic financier George Soros on Tuesday. And they all follow a weeks-long debate over the absence of civility in politics—a theme heavily pushed by President Donald Trump to portray Democrats as the party of “mobs.” On Wednesday mornings, numerous Republican lawmakers, including the Vice President himself, moved swiftly to condemn the bomb threats and to call for the restoration of calmness and sanity with the midterm elections approaching.

Online, many of the biggest Trump-backing conservative voices refused to concede that the threats were real. Conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter tweeted that the “potential explosive devices” were a “super convenient turn of events.” Michael Flynn Jr., the son of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and a former promoter of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, claimed the bombs were “a total false flag operation.”

“I condemn all political violence but again the timing is bullsh#t,” Flynn tweeted. He, too, later deleted his tweets…

I’m going to guess that even if it turns out to be a right winger, as appears likely, they will simply say the FBI Deep State is lying.

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