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Month: February 2019

The authenticity BS

The authenticity BS

by digby

Wake me when it’s over. I just can’t take this bullshit coverage again.  We all know about Trump’s successful tarring of Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand being vilified as a phony for the way she eats chicken.  Now this:

It began as a lighthearted moment. Senator Kamala Harris, the California Democrat and former prosecutor who announced her presidential candidacy last month, revealed on a popular radio show this week that she had smoked marijuana during her college years at Howard University in Washington.

But after a viral tweet ignited backlash from marijuana activists and conservatives, Ms. Harris faces accusations that she fabricated parts of her story. In the midst of answering simultaneous questions about what music she listens to, she appeared to some to say she listened to rap artists like Tupac and Snoop Dogg as she smoked in college, though neither released an album until after she graduated.

Conservative news outlets feasted on what they portrayed as an embarrassing gaffe, with the popular morning show “Fox & Friends” even dedicating a segment to it Wednesday morning. Less partisan media outlets also publicized the supposed controversy, with some alleging that it was further proof Ms. Harris, who is likely the most viable black woman ever to run for president, was playing up parts of her identity in order to impress black voters.

The only problem: Ms. Harris’s campaign vehemently denies that she ever claimed to be listening to Tupac and Snoop Dogg while in college, and a video recording of the radio interview provides additional context that may support that account.

Ms. Harris appeared Monday morning on “The Breakfast Club,” the wildly popular and wide-ranging morning radio show that often focuses on hip-hop and black culture. During her appearance, Ms. Harris discussed her support for marijuana legalization, and said she wanted the federal government to loosen restrictions so the drug could be properly researched.

Charlamagne tha God, one of the show’s hosts, asked Ms. Harris if she had ever smoked marijuana herself — a question presidential candidates have long been loath to answer. Ms. Harris confidently said she had, adding, “and I did inhale.”

“It was a long time ago,” Ms. Harris said, laughing.

Later in the interview, Ms. Harris was asked about her taste in music. She has previously named California artists like Tupac and Snoop Dogg among her favorites.

“What does Kamala Harris listen to?” asked D.J. Envy, another one of the show’s hosts.

Before Ms. Harris answered the question, Charlamagne tha God interjected, asking her to say what she listened to while she smoked in college. Everyone laughed, before D.J. Envy appeared to return to his original question.

“Was it Snoop?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, definitely Snoop,” Ms. Harris said. “Tupac for sure.”

Chaos ensued. The viral tweet pointed out that Snoop Dogg and Tupac did not debut until Ms. Harris had left college. Then music blogs and conservative outlets begin to write up the exchange. However, several of them omitted the fact that D.J. Envy had asked Ms. Harris more generally about her music opinions, a key portion in the exchange that makes it unclear whose question Ms. Harris was responding to.

Ms. Harris’s campaign attempted to quell the backlash on Twitter, but “Reefergate,” as her national press secretary, Ian Sams, coined it, had already taken off.

In a crowded and diverse Democratic primary field with no clear front-runner, Ms. Harris has emerged as a top-tier candidate, and the strong rollout of her campaign has increasingly made her a political target. Liberal critics have long had policy differences with Ms. Harris, saying her record on criminal justice and immigrant rights left much to be desired. Others have pointed out how Ms. Harris’s admission that she smoked marijuana in college flies in the face of her record as a prosecutor and the fact that she opposed marijuana legalization during her time as California attorney general.

Conservatives who support President Trump have tried to stoke divisions surrounding her candidacy, branding her as inauthentic and manufactured particularly on issues of race and identity.

This month, a viral meme showed a tweet from Ms. Harris clumsily posting about an online challenge popular among young internet users. The tweet was fake, but it didn’t matter — it garnered thousands of shares online. And in the days after Ms. Harris announced her presidential campaign, another widely spread internet theory claimed she was ineligible to run for president because of her parents’ immigration status. This was also false.

Ms. Harris, whose mother was Tamil Indian and whose father is Jamaican, has rebuffed questions about whether she is “black enough” to appeal to black voters nationally.

“I’m black, and I’m proud of being black,” Ms. Harris said in the “Breakfast Club” interview. “I was born black. I will die black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.”

Regardless, she’s repeatedly being forced to answer questions about whether she’s pandering for black votes.

It’s fine to question Harris’ commitment to pot legalization, of course. She has to explain her record. But this nonsense about whether she’s lying about listening to Tupac in college and whether she’s black enough is just infuriating. Pulling a “birther” claim on her is simply unbelievable.

This is an “authenticity” test which is just bullshit. All politicians are phonies in one way or another.  It’s a public job that requires public behavior which isn’t ever entirely a representation of their “real selves.”  These little tests of whether or not they’re regular folks just like us are a right wing tactic that should be ignored by the media, but never is.

This article is better than most but I think it would have been better to have just focused on her record on marijuana legalization instead of this shallow nonsense.

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Trump’s bud speaks Trump’s mind

Trump’s bud speaks Trump’s mind

by digby

QOTW: Tom Barrack:

“Whatever happened in Saudi Arabia, the atrocities in America are equal or worse to the atrocities in Saudi Arabia. The atrocities in any autocratic country are dictated by the rule of law. So, for us to dictate what we think is the moral code there — when we have a young man [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] and a regime that’s trying to push themselves into 2030 — I think is a mistake.”

Barrack told this to the crowd at the Milken Institute’s MENA Summit, according to audio provided by Gulf News reporter Ed Clowes.

This is exactly how Trump thinks. Recall his comments about Putin:

O’Reilly pressed on, declaring to the president that “Putin is a killer.”

Unfazed, Trump didn’t back away, but rather compared Putin’s reputation for extrajudicial killings with the United States’.

“There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers,” Trump said. “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”


And this:

“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader,” Trump said, leaving the hosts stunned.

“But again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him,” Joe Scarborough pressed.

“I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe,” Trump replied. “There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on and a lot of stupidity and that’s the way it is.”

There is a lot of killing going on and the US is culpable for wars and all kinds of awful things in its history. No doubt about that.

But killing journalists who criticize leaders isn’t something to which we’ve stooped. At least not yet.

Barrack apologized, FWIW. Whatever.

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How different from Nunes is Richard Burr?

How different from Nunes is Richard Burr?

by digby

Because he hasn’t been out there openly working as an accomplice as Devin Nunes did, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr is being treated as an oracle of truth in the US Senate. This is incorrect. He is a super-partisan Republican from North Carolina who was a big Trump fan going all the way back in the campaign. He served as ne of his foreign policy advisers! In fact, he should have recused himself from the get. Ryan Goodman at Just Security has the goods:

On the same day that Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) officially joined the Trump campaign as a senior national security advisor, the U.S. intelligence community released a statement that the Kremlin was trying to interfere in the election. But the Senator already knew those facts, and much more. Burr had been fully briefed in secret by the U.S. intelligence community a few weeks earlier. Senior U.S. officials told Burr that Russia’s interference was designed to support Donald Trump’s electoral chances. Burr decided to team up with the Trump campaign anyway, and hitch his own electoral fate in North Carolina to Trump’s political fortunes.

More than two years later, Burr now leads the Senate’s flagship investigation into whether fellow members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia’s efforts. As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr’s work with Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) on the investigation is heading toward its final stage. The committee is expected to issue its major findings in the coming months.

Burr has received remarkably favorable press coverage for his stewardship of the investigation. Many mainstream commentators have heralded his committee as a bipartisan effort to follow the facts and tell the American public what it finds. Closer observation, however, raises serious questions whether that’s how this chapter in the 2016 election saga will end.

What’s largely escaped scrutiny is the case of Burr’s own words and deeds during the 2016 campaign. It was impossible to put the pieces together back then. We now have a much clearer picture due to news reports, court filings by the special counsel, and congressional testimony by former administration officials. We have learned a lot about what Russia was doing, what the U.S. intelligence community knew, and what Burr was told. The picture that emerges is neither favorable for Burr personally, nor for what truths Americans can expect to receive from his stewardship of the committee in the months ahead.

It’s a remarkable feat that Burr has held the position of overseeing the Senate’s Russia investigation given what was known at the time he assumed the role. It was well understood that Burr did not remain on the sidelines during the 2016 presidential election. As chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr was a major catch for the Trump campaign when he joined as senior national security advisor on Oct. 7, 2016.

In a race for his own reelection at the time, Burr also tied himself closely to Trump. When the Access Hollywood tapes broke, by happenstance on the same day that Burr joined the campaign, many Republicans took it as an opportunity to flee Trump. Burr instead embraced the beleaguered candidate and said that Trump had sufficiently apologized. Burr brushed off any criticisms of his closeness to Trump in the ensuing weeks. At his own campaign rally in Gastonia, North Carolina in late October, Burr toldthe crowd, “There’s not a separation between me and Donald Trump.”

With these facts alone, Burr might have been compelled to recuse himself from overseeing any Russia investigation if he had taken a position in the administration. Fellow traveler Jeff Sessions found himself barred from overseeing the Russia investigation as Attorney General due to his own participation in the campaign’s national security group. Department of Justice regulations state that no employee can be involved in an investigation if he or she had a “political relationship” with an organization that’s “substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation,” which the regulations go on to specify includes a “close identification with … a campaign organization, arising from service as a principal adviser.”

While Sessions’ hands were tied, Burr’s hands in the Senate were free. Burr’s control over the investigation would be decided essentially by his own conscience and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s discretion.

And yes, he is an accomplice. He’s just smarter.

When Burr assumed the lead of the Russia investigation, it was not widely known that there was something entirely unique about his role on the Trump campaign. Unlike any of the other senior advisers who joined the campaign, when Burr signed up, he was privy to the U.S. intelligence community’s findings that Russian President Vladimir Putin was engaged in an effort to interfere in the election in support of Trump.
[…]
From Aug. 11 to Sept. 6, 2016, the C.I.A. organized “a series of urgent, individual briefings for [the] eight top members of Congress.” The C.I.A. informed Burr and the others that the U.S. intelligence community had discovered the Kremlin was working to help elect Trump and that “unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians.”

With this information in hand, Burr decided not only to join the Trump campaign and tie his political fate to Trump. Burr also took the now difficult-to-explain step of publicly repudiating suggestions that the Russians were acting in support of Trump. In an Oct. 3, 2016 interview, Burr said, “I have yet to see anything that would lead me to believe” Russia was interfering to benefit Trump. It was also a notable exception to Burr’s reputation for avoiding speaking with the press.

Most important, we now know that what Burr said in the interview was inconsistent with what the C.I.A had told him. Former C.I.A. Director John Brennan would latertestify before Congress that he had kept Burr and the others in the Gang of Eight fully informed.

“The full details of what we knew at the time was shared only with these members of Congress,” Brennan said. “The substance of those briefings was entirely consistent with the main judgments contained in the January classified and unclassified assessments—namely, that Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency, and help President Trump’s election chances.”

In summer 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies were tracking an additional threat from Russia, this one directed against the voting systems of different states. Again, Burr made public statements that were at odds with what he had been told by the U.S. intelligence community. In his Oct. 3 interview with Foreign Policy, the news organization wrote that “Burr said ‘actual manipulation of the vote can’t happen’ because the DHS has assured lawmakers that no U.S. ballot machines are connected to the internet.” (Foreign Policy also noted the discrepancy between Burr’s statement and the New York Times reporting days later that DHS was actively trying to protect states’ online voting systems against cyber threats.)

What’s worse, we now know that DHS and the intelligence agencies secretly briefed Burr the previous month about their grave concerns of Russian threats to state voting systems. In early September 2016, President Obama had dispatched three senior U.S. officials including DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security Adviser Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director James Comey to brief the “Gang of Twelve,” a group that includes the Gang of Eight plus the chairs and ranking members of the committees on homeland security.

The White House wanted the congressional leaders to agree to “a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions,” the Washington Post reported. McConnell nixed the idea and remained steadfast despite Paul Ryan’seffort to persuade the Senate Majority Leader to change his mind.

Yet even McConnell’s stance—declining to issue a joint public statement—was far shy of Burr’s tack of making public statements inconsistent with the intelligence information.

Over the course of September, other members of the Gang of Twelve publicly referred, in broad terms, to what they had been told in the intelligence briefings. Burr then cast doubt on their presentation of the facts.

On Sept 9, in a move perceived to break with Trump, Speaker Ryan called Putin an “aggressor,” and said, “It certainly appears that he is conducting state-sponsored cyberattacks on what appears to be our political system.”

On Sept. 14, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told CNN: “I have been briefed at a very high-level classified briefing on these Russian allegations. They are very disturbing. The idea of a foreign power, particular one like Russia, a foreign adversary, attempting to mess with our elections — and Director Comey basically told us that the motivation was to undermine the integrity of the American political electoral process.”

The following week, the ranking member of Burr’s committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), issued a statement saying, “Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election.”

Burr’s reaction? Like his spokeswoman’s statement that summer, he deflected attention away from Russia. He said that his fellow congressional members’ warnings were “probably incorrect,” and that “they give the impression there’s one cyber-problem in the world: Russia and the elections, and that’s a huge understatement.” It is not clear specifically which of his congressional colleagues’ warnings Burr was referencing at the time.

There’s more. Much more. I urge you to read it. I didn’t know the half of it and I rea a LOT about this stuff.

Goodman winds up with this:

Here are 10 data points to consider:

1. Burr tried to kill the collusion inquiry from the start.

Burr announced that the committee would exclude possible collusion from the scope of the investigation, a move he made with no advance notice to Ranking Member Warner.

2. Burr reversed under pressure.

Burr reportedly backed down only after Democrats threatened to boycott the investigation if the question of collusion was not included as a topic.

3. Caught in the act — working secretly on behalf of the White House.

The Washington Post revealed that the White House secretly enlisted Devin Nunesand Burr to contact news organizations to challenge the New York Times’ reporting on contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. The Post notably wrote, “Unlike the others, Nunes spoke on the record.” That was better than what Burr had done. (Also of note, CNN and Reuters independently confirmed the New York Times’ reporting.)

Burr’s conduct was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Burr had been put “on notice,” and that Burr’s conduct “certainly gives the appearance, if not the reality, of a lack of impartiality.” Warner said he had “grave concerns” about Burr’s conduct. Republican Senators Susan Collins (R-Me.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), both members of the intelligence committee, also issued critical statements.

4. Credit where credit is not due.

Burr has been credited with not appearing at functions with President Trump and limiting any trips to the White House, but he took this step only after being chastenedby the Post report on his and Nunes’ conduct.

5. A painfully slow start. No subpoenas and lack of requests for evidence.

In April 2017, Michael Isikoff reported, “The committee has yet to issue a single subpoena for documents or interview any key witnesses who are central… It also hasn’t requested potentially crucial evidence — such as the emails, memos and phone records of the Trump campaign — in part because the panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has so far failed to respond to requests from the panel’s Democrats to sign letters doing so, the sources said.”

6. Understaffed.

“The [Senate Intelligence Committee] investigation does not have a single staffer dedicated to it full-time, and those staff members working on it part-time do not have significant investigative experience,” the Daily Beast reported in April 2017. In a Feb. 2019 interview, Burr defended never hiring outside full-time professional investigators. Outside investigators, he said, “would’ve never had access to some of the documents that we were able to access from the intelligence community.” But it’s unclear why the committee could not use outside professional investigators or attorneys who have the required security clearances.

7. Statement on assessing the success of Russian interference.

In a widely watched November 2017 hearing, Burr used his opening remarks to claim that Russian influence operations could not be shown to have affected the election, and that a contrary view was biased. Burr said: “I want to use this forum to push back on some narratives that have sprung up around the subject. A lot of folks, including many in the media, have tried to reduce this entire conversation to one premise; foreign actors conducted a surgical, executed covert operation to help elect a United States president. I’m here to tell you this story does not simplify that easily.”

Burr continued, “What we cannot do … is calculate the impact that foreign meddling had on this election. It’s human nature to make the complex manageable and determine things that fit your conclusions. That’s bias.”

8. Encouraging Trump’s attempts to discredit former senior intelligence officials.

When President Trump decided to revoke the security clearances of former senior intelligence officials, Burr quickly and strongly supported the president. (Notably, Burr issued a statement saying a New York Times op-ed that John Brennan wrote justified the President’s revoking the former CIA Director’s clearances. This was unusual reasoning since Brennan wrote the op-ed following the President’s deciding to revoke Brennan’s clearances.)

9. Vetoing public hearings.

Burr categorically rejects any public hearings with Trump campaign associates, despite Warner’s requests and despite the fact that the committee has held several public hearings, including on Russia’s manipulation of social media platforms.

10. Defying his own rules on speaking to the press about the committee’s work.

Burr has now repeatedly told media outlets that he has seen no evidence of collusion. The first occasion was in an Associated Press interview in September 2018. In the same article, the Associated Press reported that Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.)“says Burr started every meeting at the beginning of the probe by asking senators not to talk to the media ‘until we get additional facts and we put things out together.’” In 2014, Burr said, “I personally don’t believe that anything that goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly.”

In Watergate Howard Baker got credit for being the guy who said “what did the president know and when did he know it?” as if he was
tracking down the truth. He was atually trying to cover for Nixon and was feeding him information about the investigation on the sly.

It’s likely Burr is playing a similar role here.

The media needs to be a little less credulous about his alleged integrity.

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Loser teachers

Loser teachers

by digby

There was a time in this country that people didn’t cheer for ignorance.

Once again, I think these people are living their own 60s nostalgia. They’re all “counter-culture rebels” now. (Don’t tell Donnie about this song…he might sing it.)

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You say collusion, I say conspiracy — let’s call the whole thing off?

You say collusion, I say conspiracy — let’s call the whole thing off?


by digby





My Salon column this morning:

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican and former Trump campaign adviser, told CBS News last week: “If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia.” That comment didn’t garner much notice on its own, since Burr said exactly the same thing last September. But yesterday NBC News reported that the committee as a whole had concluded that there was no evidence of collusion and that Democrats on the panel were in agreement.

This sent the right wing into a tizzy, likely because the shutdown strategy had been a total bust. Trump and the GOP appear to have ended up with less than if they’d taken the deal that was hammered out last December rather than listening to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. No one was more thrilled with the distraction than the president:

Unfortunately for him, the NBC report is being strongly disputed by members of the committee. The Democratic ranking member, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, said the investigation isn’t finished. He added: “What we do know, and it’s part of the public record, there’s never been a campaign in American history that during the campaign and its aftermath that the campaign folks affiliated with the campaign had as many ties with Russia as the Trump campaign did.

Another member, Sen. Angus King of Maine — an independent who caucuses with Democrats — took issue with the NBC report as well. He told Mother Jones, “That’s not true. I think it’s misleading. The intelligence committee hasn’t discussed the matter, let alone released a committee report.” A Democratic committee aide backed up Warner’s point, saying that there was plenty of circumstantial evidence of collusion. He said, “None of those facts are in dispute, only what they mean.”

This is an important point. The term “collusion” has no legal definition so it ends up being one of those “I know it when I see it” concepts. (To coin a phrase, it depends on what the meaning of collusion is.) To me, it’s obvious that if representatives of a presidential campaign enthusiastically take a meeting with foreign persons who are presented as being “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” and who promise to deliver “official documents and information,” they are colluding with a foreign government. Likewise, the fact that Trump lied for months or years about the big real estate deal he had cooking in Moscow, which required Russian government approval, is also evidence of improper collusion. And these are just a couple of the many instances during the campaign of weird interactions with Russian officials or agents.

The NBC report’s headline said that the committee had found no “direct evidence” of conspiracy, which is a more specific legal term. Former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg pointed out on MSNBC on Tuesday that it’s very rare to find “direct evidence” of conspiracy. He said, “In fact, in the dozens and dozens of cases I tried to a jury, only once ever did I have direct evidence of a conspiracy. You almost never see that.” He added that circumstantial evidence is just as important as direct evidence and “to say that there’s no direct evidence of a conspiracy is really not all that damning on the facts of the case.”This past week we learned that there may definitely be evidence of conspiracy that we haven’t heard about before — and it’s big. This report in Tuesday’s Washington Post compellingly lays out a narrative suggesting that former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort may have “directly” conspired with his former employee and suspected FSB officer Konstantin Kilimnik, who was likely working on behalf of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close associate and ally of President Vladimir Putin.We’ve seen previous hints pointing in this direction. But this latest information, gleaned from a redacted transcript of a court hearing about Manafort’s cooperation agreement, makes it appear as if Manafort met with Kilimnik during the heat of the campaign and may have given him some valuable polling data which Kilimnik presumably passed on to Deripaska. What they would or could have done with that information, we do not know.

Manafort had personal reasons for wanting to do this. He was in debt and also had money owed to him. The information may have been so valuable that it could help him with those problems. But as independent journalist Marcy Wheeler points out, if this is so it’s odd that Republicans haven’t seized on it:

Ultimately, Burr’s retreat to that word “collusion” is a tell. Because, given the public facts in this case, Republicans should be outraged that Trump’s campaign manager was so disloyal he shared highly sensitive data with potentially malign actors. Republicans should be outraged that Trump’s campaign manager was putting his own financial imperatives ahead of sound campaign practice.

Instead, Trump acts as though Manafort is a brave soldier holding out against all odds. That doesn’t make much sense — unless the president was personally involved.

We still don’t know whether special counsel Robert Mueller can to make a conspiracy case involving the president, but it’s not difficult to see what Trump might have hoped to get out of accepting Russian help in the election. The quid pro quo was that if the Russians helped him win he got to be president, obviously, and if he lost, he got a big real estate deal in Moscow. On the other side of the coin, the Russians expected sanctions relief and a pullback from NATO, both of which Trump has attempted to do with only partial success.

There has always been a question, amid all the speculation, about what the Russians would have wanted from Trump had he lost the election. I suspect that since one of the major goals of their interference in the election was to sow chaos, they expected him to contest the election results. When debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump during the general election campaign whether he’d accept the outcome, Trump responded, “I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time.” On the stump he said — in one of those Trumpian “jokes” that’s not funny — that he would accept the results only if he won.

Trump hasn’t had a lot of luck rolling back the sanctions but it appears he’s already preparing to deliver his end of the bargain in 2020 by undermining voters’ confidence in the outcome of the next election. He recently tweeted, “The Dems are trying to win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win!”

This may be the one deal of Trump’s checkered career where he’s determined to fulfill his end of the bargain.
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Bridges not walls by @BloggersRUs

Bridges not walls
by Tom Sullivan


Tornillo-Guadalupe Port of Entry and International Bridge. Photo DHS.

Those Make America Great Again hats were supposed to represent a restoration of the dominant culture white Trump supporters feel slipping away. Lately, the slogan conveys the challenge this country will face once Trump is gone.

Getting to that point will require undercutting the Trump rally both as an ego boost for The Donald and for the press attention he craves. El Paso’s counter rally this week got under Trump’s skin and pointed the way forward for Trump opponents.

Amanda Marcotte analyzed the dynamics at work for Salon. “Racist trolling” is Trump’s go-to tactic for whipping up his base. Too often, the first instinct among progressive activists is to stage a protest of Trump’s appearance. If things go his way, clashes between the red caps and Trump protesters will give right-wing news outlets days’ worth of images to inflame their audience’s sense of being victims under assault by non-white and non-real Americans.

Monday night’s counter rally stung Trump much deeper than shouted epithets and posterboard smears. Beto O’Rourke stole Trump’s thunder, albeit with significant home-field advantage. Marcotte writes:

Dubbed the “March for Truth” and organized by more than 50 local groups, the counter-rally did much more than protest the hate fest being held by Trump a few blocks away. It uplifted the city with heartening images showcasing the community of El Paso, and rejecting Trump’s efforts to demean border residents with racist stereotypes.

“El Paso has been the safest city in the United States of America not in spite of the fact that we’re a city of immigrants but because we are a city of immigrants,” O’Rourke said during his speech at the rally.

The rally, held outdoors with the lovely desert sky of West Texas as a backdrop, created a compelling counterpoint to the ugliness inside the arena where Trump held his rally. Photos of the handsome, charismatic O’Rourke standing with a diverse crowd of cheerful, determined progressives competed successfully in the news cycle with photos of the Trump rally.

And it looked a lot more fun, Marcotte adds.

Trump’s repeated patent lies about the relative crowd sizes showed how much of a fail his rally was for him.

Citing the Southern Poverty Law Center, Marcotte adds:

Progressives need to pay close attention to this success story. There’s little doubt that the backbone of Trump’s campaign for 2020 will be his big rallies, which are always meant to be culturally divisive and racially provocative. Trump thrives on sowing distrust and racial animus, winning over voters who may not like him but are vulnerable to propaganda attacks that frame white people as victims of “political correctness.” Any images of direct conflict between protesters and the MAGA-hat faithful will be repurposed for this cause.

Counter-rallies, on the other hand, help send a message of rejecting hate and embracing diversity without feeding the Trump propaganda machine.

Watch how Beto O’Rourke does it, speaking of bridges and not walls:

Update: A timely tweet (above) from Julia Ioffe.

Trump’s big parade

Trump’s big parade

by digby

President Donald Trump wasn’t able to cut a deal for a grandiose Veterans Day military parade, but this year, he says he aims to start a new 4th of July tradition.

The only hitch? The “tradition” he says he wants to start in the nation’s capital already exists.
Trump offered few concrete details Tuesday when he mused to reporters that it could take place in Washington and it could include a parade.
“We’re thinking about doing, on the 4th of July or thereabouts, a parade, a ‘Salute to America’ parade. I guess it’d be really more of a gathering than a parade. Perhaps at the Lincoln Memorial. We’re looking at sites. But we’re thinking about doing something that would, perhaps, become a tradition,” Trump said. A spokesperson for the Interior Department told CNN: “Salute to America is a great idea. We are working diligently to present the best options to the White House.”

Fabulous! They’ll get right on that.

However:

Washington, of course, already hosts major 4th of July parade. Called America’s National Independence Day Parade, it goes through the heart of downtown Washington, consisting “of invited bands, fife and drum corps, floats, military and specialty units, giant balloons, equestrian, drill teams, VIP’s, national dignitaries and celebrity participants,” according to the parade’s website. Other smaller parades take place across Washington’s neighborhoods.

It’s also unclear exactly how the “Salute to America” event would work alongside — or in place of? — Washington’s annually televised Fourth of July concert and fireworks near the Capitol building.

This is his new thing. Just call something that already exists by a new name and tell all his gullible rubes that he fulfilled one of his promises.

I guess that’s better than actually doing what he promised.

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Most Americans think Mueller has more credibility that Trump. Imagine that.

Most Americans think Mueller has more credibility that Trump. Imagine that.

by digby

A new poll about the public’s opinion of the Mueller probe shows that most people have more faith in the Special Counsel than the President but at the same time they are withholding judgment until they see all the facts.

Huh. It almost sounds as if a majority of the American public still has a grip on reality.

Just as a reminder, the public also had a good grip on reality back in the 90s when the last special prosecutor was investigating a president:

The Post-Schar School poll finds positive overall marks for Mueller’s handling of the investigation, with 51 percent of Americans approving, 34 percent disapproving and 15 percent holding no opinion. More than 7 in 10 Democrats approve of Mueller, while about 7 in 10 Republicans disapprove. Independents approve of his efforts by a 52 percent to 29 percent margin. 

Americans give Trump parallel negative marks for his response to the investigation, with 35 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving. Ratings of Trump’s response are similarly partisan, with independents tilting toward disapproving by a 51 percent to 33 percent margin. Trump has relentlessly attacked Mueller’s probe as a partisan “witch hunt.” 

Attitudes toward Trump and Mueller contrast sharply with views of President Bill Clinton and Ken Starr before the independent counsel released his report 20 years ago. An August 1998 Post-ABC poll found 61 percent of Americans said Starr was mainly interested in hurting Clinton, while 35 percent said he was mainly interesting in finding the truth.
The new poll finds views of Mueller are flipped in the positive direction, with 57 percent saying he is mainly interested in finding the truth, compared with 36 percent who say he is mainly interested in hurting Trump. 

Both polls today and in 1998 show people affiliated with the president’s party overwhelmingly see investigations as politically motivated, but independents lean differently this year. A 57 percent majority of independents think Mueller is mainly interested in finding the truth, compared with 1998, when 59 percent of independents thought Starr was mainly interested in causing political damage to Clinton.

Democrats and Independents were right then and they are right now. The problem in both situations is Republicans.

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He wants to see you be brave

He wants to see you be brave

by digby

Seriously, they sent his out. I don’t think they were being ironic:

He stole “Make American Great Again” from Ronald Reagan. Why not Clinton’s slogan? She won 3 million more voteswith it, after all.

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The president who said some Nazis are “very fine people” now clutches his pearls over antisemitism

The president who said some Nazis are “very fine people” now clutches his pearls over antisemitism

by digby

Ferfucksakes:

President Trump on Tuesday called on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to resign for comments on Israel that were criticized as anti-Semitic.

“I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Trump said of the freshman lawmaker.

Omar apologized on Monday for suggesting that U.S. support for a Jewish state is the result of money flowing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

The comments were quickly condemned by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders.

The president said Omar’s comments are “deep seated in her heart” and called her apology “lame.”

Trump was similarly critical of Omar on Monday night but had stopped short of calling on the congresswoman to step down.

“I think she should be ashamed of herself,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

I haven’t commented on this latest controversy because it strikes me as 1) a case of someone just not understanding certain antisemitic memes 2) a case of phony right-wing pearl clutching  as payback for the criticism of their fascist race-baiting congressman Steve King and 3) a case of poor understanding of twitter which every government official who uses it should learn.

But Trump getting involved is just too much. He is, after all, the guy who said that some of those who marched with torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” were very fine people.

Please.

Yes, Ilhan Omar walked into an anti-semitic trope by quoting a famous rap lyric that has a certain meaning in this context.  It’s an unforced error by a green politician who otherwise has a respectable point of view about AIPAC’s influence on politics.

As Peter Beinart explains:

[L]eaders should understand that their words carry historical baggage. Accusing a largely (though not officially) Jewish organization like AIPAC of buying politicians is different than accusing the NRA or the drug industry of buying politicians because modern history is not replete with murderous conspiracy theories about how gun owners and pharmaceutical executives secretly use their money to control governments.

That doesn’t mean it’s illegitimate to talk about AIPAC’s fundraising, any more than it’s illegitimate to talk about O.J. Simpson killing a white woman. Given the toxic stereotypes that such discussions evoke, however, they must be handled with care.

Omar apologized and it was not lame at all. It was in her words “unequivocal.” Enough.

The big picture is this. In today’s politics you just have to be aware of these cross-currents. You must be thoughtful, not just about the point you are trying to make and what informs it, but how your way of expressing it will be received by the wider audience and those who have historically been stereotyped in a particular way. We are living through a process of reorientation of how we talk to one another — and a process of recognition about how we think of one another.  Some Democratic politicians have a good instinct for how to express this (AOC is a good example) and others have a bit of a learning curve.

You can say anything you want and fight it out on social media if you are an average citizen (or Trump.) But Democrats, who all represent a diverse coalition, must master these rules on social media.
This is one of the main cultural war battle lines of our time and much of what fuels our polarized politics. The right is fighting this reorientation with everything they have. And the liberal coalition is going through an evolution as well, as they discover fault lines they may not have been aware of.

Again, none of that is to suggest that you cannot talk about the fact that AIPAC influences America’s policy toward Israel and Palestine. Of course it does. And even more influential is the vast conservative evangelical bloc which is fanatical in their support for Israel for its own reasons. Opposing these policies is completely legitimate. This is America. But everyone in the Democratic coalition has to be thoughtful about how they talk about these things, especially in the face of the cretinous red-hatted right wingers for whom racism is their organizing principle.

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