Month: February 2019

A Neocon zombie

by digby

Elliott Abrams at the Iran Contra hearings

I tend to be somewhat tolerant of Never-Trumpers simply because I figure if any Republicans are using their dark arts for a good cause I’m not going to stand in their way. But there are some who are so unspeakably awful that they really cannot even be allowed to be in polite company. Elliot Abrams is one them.

And it was always inevitable that even though he criticized Trump in the campaign he would end up working for him when the opportunity came along to carry out his mission. This piece by Jon Schwarz tells the ugly tale:

ON DECEMBER 11, 1981 in El Salvador, a Salvadoran military unit created and trained by the U.S. Army began slaughtering everyone they could find in a remote village called El Mozote. Before murdering the women and girls, the soldiers raped them repeatedly, including some as young as 10 years old, and joked that their favorites were the 12-year-olds. One witness described a soldier tossing a 3-year-old child into the air and impaling him with his bayonet. The final death toll was over 800 people.

The next day, December 12, was the first day on the job for Elliott Abrams as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs in the Reagan administration. Abrams snapped into action, helping to lead a cover-up of the massacre. News reports of what had happened, Abrams told the Senate, were “not credible,” and the whole thing was being “significantly misused” as propaganda by anti-government guerillas.

This past Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named Abrams as America’s special envoy for Venezuela. According to Pompeo, Abrams “will have responsibility for all things related to our efforts to restore democracy” in the oil-rich nation.

The choice of Abrams sends a clear message to Venezuela and the world: The Trump administration intends to brutalize Venezuela, while producing a stream of unctuous rhetoric about America’s love for democracy and human rights. Combining these two factors — the brutality and the unctuousness — is Abrams’s core competency.

Abrams previously served in a multitude of positions in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, often with titles declaring their focus on morality. First, he was assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs (in 1981); then the State Department “human rights” position mentioned above (1981-85); assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs (1985-89); senior director for democracy, human rights, and international operations for the National Security Council (2001-05); and finally, Bush’s deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy (2005-09).

In these positions, Abrams participated in many of the most ghastly acts of U.S. foreign policy from the past 40 years, all the while proclaiming how deeply he cared about the foreigners he and his friends were murdering. Looking back, it’s uncanny to see how Abrams has almost always been there when U.S. actions were at their most sordid.

ABRAMS, A GRADUATE of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, joined the Reagan administration in 1981, at age 33. He soon received a promotion due to a stroke of luck: Reagan wanted to name Ernest Lefever as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, but Lefever’s nomination ran aground when two of his own brothers revealed that he believed African-Americans were “inferior, intellectually speaking.” A disappointed Reagan was forced to turn to Abrams as a second choice.

A key Reagan administration concern at the time was Central America — in particular, the four adjoining nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. All had been dominated by tiny, cruel, white elites since their founding, with a century’s worth of help from U.S. interventions. In each country, the ruling families saw their society’s other inhabitants as human-shaped animals, who could be harnessed or killed as needed.

But shortly before Reagan took office, Anastasio Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua and a U.S. ally, had been overthrown by a socialist revolution. The Reaganites rationally saw this as a threat to the governments of Nicaragua’s neighbors. Each country had large populations who similarly did not enjoy being worked to death on coffee plantations or watching their children die of easily treated diseases. Some would take up arms, and some would simply try to keep their heads down, but all, from the perspective of the cold warriors in the White House, were likely “communists” taking orders from Moscow. They needed to be taught a lesson.

Read the whole thing to get an idea of this man’s history if you are unfamiliar with it. It is as bad as it gets.

I don’t doubt that the Maduro government is a disaster. Obviously it is. People are starving. But putting this man in charge of yet another “intervention” says everything about the administration’s underlying agenda, undoubtedly sold to Trump as a chance to swing around his great big hands in a foreign country that has oil.

Seriously, does anyone think that cretin cares about the people in any shithole country? Well, neither does the alleged “democracy” promoting Elliott Abrams. They aren’t the same kind of monster — but they are both monsters.

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A robot apocalypse? Part 1
by Tom Sullivan

Image: “I, Robot” cover, The Alan Parsons Project, 1977.

Months prior to the fall of Saigon, a little humor book appeared on the new book shelf at school. “The D. C. Dialect: How to Master The New Language of Washington in Ten Easy Lessons” was a send-up of the sort of the obfuscatory euphemisms heard from Vietnam War-era generals and White House aides during congressional hearings. Peel back “counterinsurgency strikes,” for example, and you might find the Nixon administration illegally bombing Cambodia. But deploy it on the D.C. cocktail circuit and you’d sound as if you were someone in the know.

Such expressions are widespread on the Davos circuit. Kevin Roose of the New York Times heard a few fresher euphemisms while covering the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Only it wasn’t a noncombatant nation being targeted, but your job. “They’ll never admit it in public,” Roose begins, “but many of your bosses want machines to replace you as soon as possible.” While showing public concern for the “negative consequences that artificial intelligence and automation” on workers, in private executives are in a rush, Roose believes, to automate to stay ahead of competitors. Workers be damned.

We’re talking “fat profit margins” here. Executives who once dreamed of reducing their work forces by 5 to 10 percent through automation now have visions of doing the same work with 1 percent of current staff. It’s not personal. It’s strictly business:

Few American executives will admit wanting to get rid of human workers, a taboo in today’s age of inequality. So they’ve come up with a long list of buzzwords and euphemisms to disguise their intent. Workers aren’t being replaced by machines, they’re being “released” from onerous, repetitive tasks. Companies aren’t laying off workers, they’re “undergoing digital transformation.”

Remember to take the cannoli.

One former Google executive interviewed by “60 Minutes” predicted artificial intelligence will displace 40 percent of the world’s workers within 15 years.

It’s not as if in a time of anti-elite backlash there is no concern for avoiding an automated future featuring manually operated pitchforks and guillotines. But as is often true, an elite decision that leads to dire consequences for thousands of workers is portrayed as “a natural phenomenon over which they have no control, like hurricanes or heat waves,” Roose continues. Nobody is responsible for firing workers. Workers simply lost their jobs.

Few candidates headed for the Democratic presidential primaries next year seem to be talking about the political upheaval ahead, writes Will Bunch, except one:

New York businessman Andrew Yang says the most critical item on his 2020 agenda is fending off a robot apocalypse such as the loss of 1 million U.S. jobs just attributable to the rise of self-driving trucks, which is enough to cause, in his words. “riots in the street.” His solution is a kind of guaranteed national income that he calls a “Freedom Dividend,” $1,000 a month that would be sent to every citizen aged 18-64, to cushion against the job-loss tsunami.

Other Democratic proposals aimed at raising marginal tax rates on billionaires might help flatten the wealth gap, Bunch adds. That could help fund the “Freedom Dividend” but still leave the problem of what to do with thousands upon thousands of people for whom there simply are no jobs whatever their skill sets. Conservative pundits exercised about “takers” and government handouts will be the only ones with full schedules.

Bunch concludes:

Here’s a suggestion for Wall Street and all those other CEO’s still high on the Alpine air of Davos: Maybe stop obsessing over artificial intelligence and use some emotional intelligence for a change. The short-term sugar rush of quarterly profit margins won’t be worth a warm bucket of spit in an economy with Great Depression levels of unemployment, where the only guaranteed job is building the barricades of a social revolution. That means thinking about stakeholders, including workers, and not just shareholders.

This is not George Jetson’s future, Bunch laments. Or as Faulkner might say, the future is not even the future.

Tomorrow: Part 2

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Happy Birthday Fiona!

Born prematurely and exceptionally small two years ago at the Cincinnati Zoo, Fiona the Hippo celebrated her 2nd birthday on January 24.

Weighing just 29 pounds – about one fifth of what a normal newborn Hippo should weigh – Fiona’s story of against-all-odds survival captured the hearts of animal lovers around the world.

As Fiona’s dedicated care team helped the little Hippo overcome one health challenge after another, fans cheered Fiona’s milestones, from her first swim to her poignant introduction to her mom Bibi and later her father, Henry.

You can read the dramatic story of Fiona’s birth and preemie care here.

Now about to enter her “terrible twos,” which her care team hopes won’t be too terrible, Fiona is just like any other normal Hippo. “Fiona is remarkable for being unremarkable now,” said Cincinnati Zoo Curator of Mammals Christina Gorsuch. “She’s just like most other 2-year-old hippos, except for the fact that she’s a celebrity in Cincinnati and beyond!”

The zoo held a huge celebration for Fiona’s first birthday and a big party last month when Fiona reached 1,000 pounds. This year, due to very cold outdoor temperatures, Fiona’s birthday was held behind the scenes and live-streamed to her many fans. Fiona and Bibi (Henry passed away in late 2017) enjoyed a towering “cake” made of Fiona’s favorite fruits and vegetables embedded in ice.

Fiona has become an ambassador for her species, and her story has inspired many people to care about wildlife and the challenges faced by endangered species.

Hippos are native to Africa, and while they are not officially endangered, wild populations are in decline due to habitat loss, increased incidence of drought, and illegal hunting. With less rainfall, Hippos, who often graze on tender grasses near water, have fewer areas in which to feed. As Hippos travel farther and farther to locate suitable feeding grounds, the risk of conflict with people and wildlife increases.

via Zooborns

QOTD: Helaine Olen

by digby

In the Washington Post today

“The real issue is one that big finance can’t acknowledge: They got to have it all for decades … They don’t want to admit their 40-year run at the tax-cut & deregulation punch bowl will need to end, so the rest of us can once again prosper.”

Click over for the whole piece. She is right. It was clear to me back in the financial crisis that these Masters of Universe were begging for pitchforks with their greed. They had it very, very good for a long time but they had to take more and more and more. They are the ones who killed their golden goose.

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The base must be getting restless

by digby

It’s obvious that the right is feeling a little shaky right now. They’re hitting the anti-abortion button hard. Even Donald “grab ’em by the pussy” Trump is reportedly going to be waving the morality flag at the State of the Union.  This explains the melee on social media over the past few days in which the wingnuts have bee hurling “baby killer!!!!!” at liberals seemingly out of the blue.

Michelle Goldberg explains what’s going on in her latest NY Times column:

Under current law in Virginia, third-trimester abortions are permitted when a woman’s physician and two other doctors certify that continuing a pregnancy would result in a mother’s death, or “substantially and irremediably impair the mental or physical health of the woman.” This week Kathy Tran, a Democrat in Virginia’s House of Delegates, testified in favor of a bill that would end the requirement for two extra doctors to sign off on such abortions, and strike the words “substantially and irremediably” from the existing law. Similar legislation has been introduced in past years. Despite what you might have heard, at no point did Tran try to legalize infanticide.

When Tran appeared before a statehouse subcommittee, the Republican majority leader, Todd Gilbert, presented her with an outré hypothetical. Could a woman about to go into labor request an abortion if her doctor certified that she needed one for mental health reasons? Tran said that the decision would be between a woman and her doctor, but, evidently taken aback by the question, eventually allowed that it would be permitted under her bill.

Tran handled the moment poorly. She might have pointed out that legislation is not generally written with an eye to prohibiting ridiculous and unprecedented scenarios. It is inconceivable that a doctor would certify a need for an abortion while a woman is in labor; some doctors won’t even let a woman turn down a C-section if they think a baby’s health is at risk. But Tran’s impolitic answer to a ludicrous question gave abortion opponents grist for an explosion of self-righteous outrage.

Things only escalated on Wednesday, when Gov. Ralph Northam was asked about the uproar during an appearance on a radio show. Northam, a pediatric neurologist by training, spoke about what actually happens when a woman goes into labor with a fetus that has severe deformities and may not be viable. The infant, he said, would be delivered and kept comfortable, and the family would decide about resuscitation.

Northam appeared to be pointing out the absurdity of Gilbert’s hypothetical, since even in grave circumstances, no one gets an abortion on the delivery table. But as a clip of the interview went viral, conservatives, including the Republican senator Marco Rubio, began accusing Northam of supporting the murder of newborns. It was the right-wing version of an online outrage mob, warping the governor’s innocuous comments into a callous declaration of evil.

Some seemed almost gleeful at the prospect of seizing the moral high ground denied them over two years of rationalizing a depraved administration. “You people keep saying to look at Trump getting elected to see how Hitler could be possible,” tweeted the conservative pundit Erick Erickson. “I’m thinking look at the sudden embrace of infanticide to see how Nazism could be possible.”

In some ways the issue of Tran’s bill is moot, since it was never going to pass in Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature, and certainly has no chance now. But the debate over late-term abortion has been rekindled. For Donald Trump, who tweeted about the procedure on Thursday, it’s a culture war issue he can exploit. Others on the right are genuinely sickened by what they imagine liberals want to allow, even if they also appear to be enjoying the chance to once again scold the left for its purported immorality.

“Under the bill’s actual text, virtually any claim of impairment would suffice to meet the act’s requirements,” wrote National Review’s David French. “Anxiety? Depression? The conventional physical challenges of postpartum recovery? Any of those things could justify taking the life of a fully formed, completely viable, living infant.”

French appears to be worried that women will seek, and doctors will perform, late-term abortions for trivial reasons. But there’s contempt for women embedded in the idea that, absent legal prohibition, someone on the verge of giving birth might instead terminate her pregnancy to avoid the brutalities of labor.

“No matter what the law were, in real life, these things don’t happen,” said Frances Kissling, president of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy and the former head of Catholics for a Free Choice. “I am not saying that there would not be one woman out of 20 million who decided at the 33rd week of pregnancy that she needed an abortion, and I would suggest that she probably does have mental health problems. However, this woman is not going to find anyone who will do this.”

Kissling is well known in the pro-choice movement for thinking deeply about the ethical gray areas surrounding abortion. As she points out, there are only about a dozen doctors in the country who perform third-trimester abortions at all, and she’s spoken to several of them, asking specific questions about patients they’ve turned down. “What I have learned is that all of them have limits and have declined to do abortions in certain circumstances for certain reasons,” she said. (The murderous abortionist Kermit Gosnell, serving a life sentence in prison, is an exception, but he was operating outside the law.)

A person who is ambivalent about abortion might wonder why, if the situations put forward by Gilbert and French are so unthinkable, pro-choice people would object to laws making them illegal. But the law is a blunt instrument for making judgments about extreme and unusual contingencies.

Having extra doctors sign off on each late abortion safeguards against (mythical) cavalier terminations, but it means that women in anguished, urgent situations need to jump through extra hoops. Abortion opponents treat mental health exemptions as easily exploited loopholes, but one instance in which they’re invoked is when a woman learns that her fetus has little chance of surviving outside the womb, and can’t face the prospect of going through labor only to watch her baby die.

If you don’t spend much time on social media you are probably blissfully unaware of this latest nonsense. But get prepared. They are going to be pulling out all the stops.

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Trump’s giveaways in that New York Times interview

by digby

First, there’s this:

Confirmed Andy’s point. Trump first went with subject, but then corrects to target.

At about 11:25 Maggie asks the Rosenstein question:https://t.co/0b8N3Wtuio https://t.co/UHHH5rVBFS

— Lemon Slayer (@LemonSlayerUS) February 1, 2019

Which in turn says his answer is only about alleviating impeachment pressure, but is based on a presumption that envisions he goes from subject of investigation to target of impeachment.

AND says nothing about whether Donald Jr or Trump Org are targets, which both currently are

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) February 1, 2019

I think Emptywheel is right. And recall that Rudy Giuliani has pretty much said that his job is to defend the president against impeachment.

If Mueller is following that DOJ guideline which says that a sitting president can’t be indicted — and everything about him suggests he’s playing it all by the book — then he’s not considering the president a target. He caught himself in the interview and the NY Times mischaracterized it.

Remember when Trump denied that he knew anything about the Stormy payment?

Note the tone of voice. Well, in that NY Times interview he adopts exactly the same tone when he says this:

HABERMAN: “Did you ever talked to him about Wikileaks?

TRUMP: “No. No. I didn’t. I never did.”

HABERMAN: “Did you ever tell him or other people to get in touch with him?”

TRUMP: “Never did.”

This is a tell. It’s the tone of voice you hear from a five-year-old with chocolate all over his face denying that he ate the candy.  All innocence, brief and breezy as if he hasn’t a care in the world.

Listen here at 12:10. It’s uncanny.

He told him.

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Howard’s freaked out

by digby

It looks like the coffee boy is having second thoughts:

Howard Schultz on opposition to his potential presidential bid: Democrats need a little less caffeine
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says that if he launches an independent White House run it is more likely that lifelong Republicans would vote for him than Democrats.
Howard Schultz is getting burned, like a bad cup of Starbucks coffee and it may force him to rethink his presidential aspirations.

The billionaire and former Starbucks CEO Opens a New Window. has told advisors that he was shocked by the stridency of the attacks made by Democrats Opens a New Window. following the announcement he was seriously considering running for president as an independent in the 2020 election Opens a New Window. , and is now said to be looking more closely at whether he wants to go through with the effort, the FOX Business Network has learned.

Schultz has been the recipient in recent days of an angry backlash by leading Democrats after he announced he was exploring running as an independent last Sunday during a 60 Minutes interview. Schultz once described himself as a lifelong Democrat but said he now may break with his old party because he feels it has moved too far to the left on spending and taxes Opens a New Window. , while promoting programs that will saddle future generations with enormous debt.

The reason for the rapid, and at times, nasty Democratic response is less about what Schultz stands for, and more about how he might impact the 2020 election: If he runs for president as an independent, Schultz is expected to draw votes from the Democratic nominee because of his progressive social positions, thus aiding Republican President Donald Trump’s re-election effort when the president suffers from chronically abysmal approval ratings.

Among Schultz’s most prominent critics has been fellow billionaire and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg, who also once considered an independent presidential bid, issued a statement that said if Schultz goes that route it will “just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president.”

The intense nature of the criticism stunned Schultz, people close to him tell FOX Business. While he expected some carping, he did not foresee the ferocity of some of the vitriol, particularly from the party’s top officials and operatives. In addition to the barrage of criticism from leading Democrats, Schultz was also blindsided by the grass roots blowback, including being heckled during an event in New York City to promote his new book.

One person with knowledge of Schultz’s reaction to the attacks said he is “freaking out” about the criticism; another person described Schultz as being “surprised” by the severity of the Democratic Party backlash.

Schultz advisor Steve Schmidt didn’t return telephone calls or messages for comments.

What people who have spoken with Schultz agree on is that he is now readjusting his message about the likelihood of an independent presidential campaign. During the 60 Minutes interview, Schultz seemed to be leaning in the direction of entering the race, stating the he is “seriously thinking of running for president…as a centrist independent.”

But a senior advisor to Schultz told FOX Business on Thursday that Schultz’s decision is far from final—and he won’t make up his mind until at least the summer. This person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Schultz is weighing several factors including how people outside the “Washington to New York Amtrak corridor” react to his ideas during events as he sells his new book, “From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America Opens a New Window. .” Schultz’s memoir describes his working-class upbringing, business career, and the philosophy that underpins his beef with the political extremes he believes control both parties to the detriment of the country and may prod him to run for president.

The advisor added that Schultz has studied one of the barriers to entry for any independent candidate: The laborious process of getting on all the state ballots and he said Schultz believes that won’t present a significant obstacle. The bigger issues for Schultz is whether his message will resonate and whether he will win.

“What Howard needs to figure out still is whether there’s a need for him to be in the political process,” the advisor said. “Then he needs to figure out if he can win.”

Schultz, 65, is a New York City native who grew up in subsidized housing in the borough of Brooklyn. He went to college on a football scholarship, joined Starbucks in the early-1980s and was soon named its marketing chief, before rising to the position of chief executive. As CEO, he transformed the coffeehouse chain into one of the country’s fastest growing companies.

He left Starbucks for good in 2018, but was already commenting on political issues before then—in 2016 he endorsed Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 presidential election—foreshadowing a career in politics.

Schultz has been a vocal critic of Trump, mainly of his fiscal policies as they relate to the ballooning budget deficit, but he has made his biggest headlines recently opposing the Democratic Party’s embrace of progressive causes, such as universal health care and efforts to ramp up taxes on the rich.

He has said the major reason for his possible third-party candidacy is that most Americans don’t agree with the extremes of both parties that currently control the political debate.

That was the message he presented when he announced his possible candidacy as an independent. The message he got back from his old friends in the Democratic Party was swift and direct: Don’t do it because you will be messing with our best chance to win in 2020.

Looks like the coffee boy can’t stand the heat.

Seriously, did he think Democrats would be happy about this? It’s insane. Did they think nobody remembers what happened in 2000?

I guess they just assumed that running as a “centrist” would be such an exciting prospect, and so unlike Green Party candidates like Nader, that everyone would say “may the best billionaire who can buy himself onto the ballot in all 50 states win!”

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Trump’s favorite attack dog


by digby

My Salon column this morning:

Two new Trumpworld books were released this week, one by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the other by an unknown former staffer by the name of Cliff Simms. The only interesting parts of Christie’s book concern his thirst for revenge against Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, a beef that goes back years to when Christie jailed Kushner’s father for a sordid blackmail and fraud scheme. The other, however, is a bit more revealing. Sims was on the campaign and then spent 15 months in the White House as a trusted Trump confidente. He took notes.

Sims appeared on the Late Show with Steven Colbert and made a comment that struck me as particularly observant:

“One of the things I try to do in this book is help people understand what makes Donald Trump tick. And one thing that never goes out of style in the Trump White House is someone who’s willing to go on TV and just fight it out with somebody. He knows [Kellyanne Conway] will go out there on any show and defend him.”

“So private loyalty doesn’t matter, but public loyalty on television is more important?” Colbert asked.

Sims replied, “I think there’s no doubt that public loyalty to the president is of utmost importance to him.”

The comment made me think about the weird dynamic between Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of Trump’s fiercest defenders these days.
Everyone knows it wasn’t always so. Back during the campaign when Graham was running against Trump and for some time afterwards, he was scathing in his assessment.

He called him a kook and a race-baiting bigot among other things. According to this New York magazine profile by Lisa Miller, during the transition, he and his mentor, the late Senator John McCain, plotted to lead a “brave Republican resistance.” But McCain got sick and Graham opportunistically shifted his loyalty to the president. Miller writes that it all happened over lunch one day when “Graham and Trump discovered their mutual love for bro-ish trash talk and golf.” She quotes a friend saying that Graham sees himself as the adult in the room and that “there’s something about, I’m not going to say innocence, but the president’s affability as well as his naïveté that Lindsey is drawn to.”

In other words, Graham thinks he’s able to manipulate Trump into doing his bidding. Indeed, according to a friend who knew Graham’s thinking, he literally made that cynical calculation:

Graham understood that “all Trump really cares about is being celebrated,” this person said. By genuflecting to Trump, Graham could seem to be in collaboration with him — the impression probably most important to the president — and “move mountains behind closed doors.”

Whether he “moves mountains” is debatable but I think that strategy has been obvious for a while. What’s interesting to me is how he’s going about it. Someone who has the president’s ear is in a powerful position and today he’s closer to Trump than any other Senator. This scene was memorialized on twitter just this week:

Had dinner next to President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin & his COS.
Their table had a lively conversation.
Lindsey spoke on his flip phone a lot.
Trump had shrimp, French fries & steak (well-done) & Diet Coke
🥩 🍟 🥤 pic.twitter.com/tETlDLoxg7

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) January 29, 2019

He has betrayed his alleged principles and maverick reputation across the board even as he makes half-hearted efforts to present himself to the press as an independent thinker who breaks with the president when he disagrees with him. He often falls back on his traditional conservative hawk credentials on foreign policy, coming before the cameras and sighing deeply when Trump makes one of his impulsive, ill-informed, national security decisions the GOP establishment sees as a bridge too far. He’ll say he thinks it’s a mistake and promises to talk to the president about it. Once in a while he’ll feel compelled to weakly criticize Trump’s crude behavior or blatant racism.

As Cliff Sims pointed out in that interview, that’s obviously not something Trump ever wants to hear. He wants people to publicly defend him no matter what. So Graham is walking a fine line and has to go beyond flattery to stay in the president’s good graces. It appears he’s discovered the best way to do that is to become a vicious, conspiracy mongering, attack dog. Trump will forgive almost anything if someone goes after his enemies with the same fervor he does.

We all watched Graham turn into a feral animal during the Kavanaugh hearings and he has frequently been on Trump’s favorite shows, Fox and Friends and Sean Hannity, performing for the audience of one, warning the Democrats that he’s coming for them:

You know, to my Democratic friends, if you want to look backwards, we are all going to look backwards. I want to know why the FBI reached to the conclusion along with the Department of Justice that Hillary Clinton didn’t commit a crime. Was it because of political bias? […] I intend to look at it. I’m going to look at it. If you are going to keep plowing everything up in 2016, count me in. If you want to look for it, I will look for it.

And from his position as the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he’s going to be able to deliver some real red meat to the president and his followers. Last week Igor Derysh reported on Graham’s plans to investigate Hillary Clinton, something I’ve been predicting for well over a year. All you have to do is watch Fox for any ten minute interval and you’ll see that their Clinton obsession burns even hotter than it did in 2016. And Graham is prepared to fan the flames.

This week in the latest episode of phony handwringing from the newly anointed civil libertarians of the Republican party, they are all bellowing about the FBI treating the self-aggrandizing, dirty trickster Roger Stone the way they would treat any other accused criminal.  Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said “the FBI stages what was, in effect, a military assault on Roger Stone.” Judge Andrew Napolitano lamented “this is jackboots in America and there is no place for that in American life!”

Here’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio, rending his garments over the inhumanity of it all, being schooled by journalist Radley Balko, an expert on militarized law enforcement excesses:

Arpaio once sent 40 SWAT cops, a bomb robot, K9 units, and Steven Seagal to arrest a man suspected of cockfighting. Seagal drove an APC into the man’s living room. They destroyed the guy’s house with explosives, then filmed it all for a reality TV show. https://t.co/AjW2Lm7jSV

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) January 29, 2019

Yes, the people who gleefully shout “lock her up!” are suddenly very concerned about due process.

And Graham, the man who has previously argued that the government should be able to imprison people for life without a trial, dutifully joined the chorus, using his position as the Judiciary Committee chairman to demand that the FBI explain itself.

Donald Trump is no doubt very pleased to see Lindsey Graham sticking up for his friend and going after his enemies publicly on TV. But a word of caution: Graham’s ego is getting pretty inflated and he might just slip up and forget who’s the president who’s the sycophant. There is a long line of discarded toadies in Trump’s wake.

Of course, if that happens Graham can always write a book.

Subverting democracy for fun and profit
by Tom Sullivan

Architectural rendering of the proposed Trump Tower Moscow provided to BuzzFeed News.

From papa Fred Trump’s “All County” boiler deals and the family’s other tax-avoidance schemes, it is clear the Trump Organization, as well as a flair for self-promotion, has a talent, let’s say, for wringing more money out of real estate through less scrupulous means than rents and licensing agreements. The New York Times and the New York Attorney General‘s office have only begun to uncover how financially clever, if not criminal, the Trumps have been. Money laundering, tax evasion, and fraud are suspected of being significant contributors to the Trump Organization’s coffers.

Underlying the evidence Special Counsel Robert Muller is examining in the Russia investigation are two key motives: money and fame. Power, like that which comes with the presidency, is not only an aphrodisiac for a man obsessed with Himself, but also an accelerant for making him even richer.

Having tasted real power for the first time as president, Trump may find it, too, is now something he wants more of. But it is not likely what first drove him to seek the presidency or the friendship of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was money and fame. He wanted the tallest skyscraper in Europe to bear his name and make him piles of money.

Masha Gessen reminds readers of The New Yorker that money — Russian Mafia money — is more likely behind Trump World’s connections to Russia than politics. As for Putin masterminding a sophisticated scheme for undermining NATO and western democracy by installing a puppet American president, Russian-born Gessen is skeptical. Putin’s Russia deserves less credit than Americans give it. She finds the idea that Russian Ethan Hunts pulled off a coup for Putin laughable. “[T]he Kremlin was even more surprised by Trump’s election than was the candidate himself,” Gessen writes.

It is using the wrong lens to view Russian interference in the 2016 election as the act of a hostile geopolitical power, Gessen believes. Rather, Russian actions are “an attempt at state capture by an international crime syndicate.”

Gessen observes:

When members of the American media cover the story of Russian meddling, they implicitly portray Russia as a normal state, and the influence operation as an undertaking of the state aimed at furthering Russia’s national interests. This strikes Russians as absurd. By the measure of national interest, the Trump Presidency has been disappointing for Russia…

By the metrics of a Mafia state, though, the Trump Presidency has yielded great results for Russia. A Mafia boss craves respect, loyalty, and perceived power. Trump’s deference to Putin and the widespread public perception of Putin’s influence over Trump have lifted Putin’s stature beyond what I suspect could have been his wildest dreams. As happens in a Mafia state, most of the benefit accrues to the patron personally. But some of the profit goes to the clan. Over the weekend, we learned that the Treasury Department has lifted sanctions on companies that belong to Oleg Deripaska, a member of Putin’s “court” who once lent millions of dollars to Manafort. If a ragtag team employed by or otherwise connected to the Russian Mafia state tried to aid a similar collection of crooks and frauds to elect Trump—as it increasingly looks like they did—then the Deripaska news helps explain their motivations. The story is not that Putin is masterminding a vast and brilliant attack on Western democracy. The story, it appears, is that the Russian Mafia state is cultivating profit-yielding relationships with the aspiring Mafia boss of the U.S. and his band of crooks, subverting democratic institutions in the process.

That view is not likely to catch the public’s imagination. “Your mission … should you decide to accept it” makes a catchier tag line these days than “Follow the money.” News organizations selling sizzle will find geopolitical intrigue easier to package than bank transfers and intricate deals involving characters not likely to sit for interviews.

Bálint Magyar, the Hungarian sociologist behind the concept of the “post-Communist mafia state,” tells Gessen that Trump is “like a Mafia boss without a Mafia,” whereas Putin “is a Mafia boss with a real Mafia, which has turned the whole state into a criminal state.”

Magyar finishes, “the behavior at the top is the same.” Just harder to make into an action film starring Tom Cruise.

A small circle of friends

by digby

This is nuts:

Jeff Bezos’ top personal security consultant has questioned his mistress’ brother as part of the probe into how the couple’s text messages wound up in the hands of the National Enquirer.

Gavin de Becker, the Amazon chief’s longtime personal security consultant and the point person for the investigation, confirmed to The Daily Beast on Wednesday that his probe has scrutinized Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos mistress Lauren Sanchez and a personal and business associate of Trumpworld figures including Roger Stone, Carter Page, and Scottie Nell Hughes.

On Wednesday, The Daily Beast first reported the existence of that investigation, which is taking place independent of Amazon and being funded by Bezos personally. Three sources familiar with the inquiry said it was increasingly probable that whoever leaked the text messages to the Enquirer, which ran a conspicuously large 12-page spread on Bezos’ affair, harbored political animosity towards Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

Michael Sanchez’s name bubbled up on the British celebrity news and gossip website Popbitch last week in the context of the Enquirer story. Stone also mentioned Sanchez in an interview with conspiracy theory site Infowars on Wednesday that sought to preempt The Daily Beast’s reporting by falsely claiming that it would accuse him of conspiring with the Trump administration to hack Bezos’ phone.

Asked about Sanchez, de Becker, a former Reagan administration appointee and Justice Department adviser, told The Daily Beast, “Michael Sanchez has been among the people we’ve been speaking with and looking at.” De Becker would not elaborate on their conversations, and stressed that the investigation is ongoing. But he confirmed that “strong leads point to political motives.”

According to two sources familiar with de Becker’s investigation, Sanchez has suggested that the “deep state,” and specifically the National Security Agency, may have been responsible for obtaining text messages from Bezos’ phone. Investigators have not taken that possibility seriously.

Every person in politics and media for the past 40 years is no more than 3 degrees of separation from Roger Stone.

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