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Month: October 2019

The server, the server, the server!!!!

Published by digby on October 21, 2019

The server, the server, the server!!!!

by digby

Where is the server, my God we have to find it! He says it 8 times in the course of 20 seconds, almost like he’s got some kind of short in his circuitry.

Guess what?

That is real.

We are so far down the rabbit hole we’ve hit the earth’s molten core.

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Oh look — Trump Tower Pyongyang

Published by digby on October 21, 2019

Oh look — Trump Tower Pyongyang

by digby

Trump Baja at the beach left everyone holding the bag except for the Trumps. 


Speaking of Trump corruption, you knew this was going to happen, right?

US negotiators dangled a Trumpian carrot before North Korean diplomats during nuclear talks two weeks ago: a promise to complete and expand a tourist resort that has been a favorite project of Kim Jong-un.

The American diplomats offered the development help in exchange for denuclearization, according to the South Korean newspaper Hankook Ibo.

The under-construction Kalma tourist area on North Korea’s east coast includes dozens of hotels, a shopping mall, and an indoor water park under a glass pyramid roof.

Trump, who touted the Hermit Kingdom’s “great beaches” after his 2018 summit with Kim in Singapore, said the area “could have the best hotels in the world right here.”

The Oct. 5 talks in Stockholm broke down after eight hours and ended in an impasse, Pyongyang’s top negotiator said — but the White House insisted progress had been made.

Trump literally believes Kim Jong Un will give up his nuclear capability in exchange for a shitty Trump Organization development. Because what could be more wonderful than that, amirite? (And yes, of course that’s what was on the table. Please. Let’s not be naive here.)

Apparently, he’s got the State Department doing his deals for him now. Of course he does.

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The Democrats can no longer avoid adding his blatant corruption to the articles of impeachment

Published by digby on October 21, 2019

The Democrats can no longer avoid adding his blatant corruption to the articles of impeachment

by digby

He claims that running his business from the oval office is fine because George Washington did it. But let’s not kid ourselves. He’s still running his business. If he weren’t he would not be in a position to offer to hold the G& at Doral at cost — or, as he’s said lately, for free (which is a joke.) He hasn’t even attempted to pretend that Don Jr and Eric are the ones making this decision.

Today in his press avail he went to great lengths to talk about how George Washington had one desk for his business and one desk for the presidency apparently believing that such a thing (I don’t know if it’s true) makes his obvious conflicts of interest just fine and dandy.

Of course, he’s always said that it would be perfectly fine for him to run his business as president he just didn’t like “the way it looks.” That obviously no longer bothers him. Of course it never really did.

Trump has admitted that he’s still running his business so let’s be clear about what’s going on with the rest of the family business as well:

They are making money from the presidency, no doubt about it. The fact that they are simultaneously going after Joe Biden and his son for influence peddling is simply awe-inspiring chutzpah.

All of this is impeachable by the way. The  “phony emoluments clause” as Trump put it, isn’t phony at all. It’s right there in the document he was sworn to protect and defend. He’s admitted to running his business while he’s in office. Which means that he’s been knowingly and openly accepting money from foreigners, in contravention of the constitution.

We knew this. It was obvious. But now that he’s no longer even pretending that his sons are running the business and he has nothing to do with it, I don’t think the Democrats can avoid adding it to the list of his crimes as president.

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Pompeo in a cold sweat

Published by digby on October 21, 2019

Pompeo in a cold sweat

by digby

That is the moment when you could almost see Pompeo start to sweat and one could imagine the memes starting to multiply that would include the intro of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” playing in the background as Pompeo went quiet for a prolonged period of time. Then the secretary eventually awoke from his coma and, with a gravelly voice, righted himself and continued to insist that the question was a hypothetical.

As national security editor for the New Republic Adam Weinstein pointed out, the scene was reminiscent of Trump’s former campaign manager and now-jailed felon Paul Manafort’s infamous 2016 viral moment when he was stumped and stuttered through his answer when asked about Trump’s relationships with Russian oligarchs.

Yep:

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DC Donald is giving Baghdad Bob a run for his money

Published by digby on October 21, 2019

DC Donald is giving Baghdad Bob a run for his money


by digby

My Salon column this morning:

President Trump is an inveterate, possibly pathological liar. He lies about everything from his wealth to his IQ to the size of his inauguration crowd. He lies about things he doesn’t need to lie about and he lies about things that are easily proven to be untrue. He just lies all the time about everything.

Often he will lie and then when caught at it simply deny he ever said it, even if it’s on tape or on his Twitter feed. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney adopted his boss’s signature style when he confirmed on national television that Trump had withheld aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on his political rivals and then claimed that he had never said it. Trump does it with more confidence, perhaps because he’s had so much practice.

But in the past few days, some of Trump’s lies have taken a more traditional turn. Since he made his abrupt decision to withdraw protection from the Kurds in northern Syria, he’s been tweeting and talking about the operation in terms that can only be compared to war propagandists like Tokyo Rose or Baghdad Bob of Iraq war infamy.

Most of the famous disseminators of disinformation during wartime, like Tokyo Rose or the English-speaking Nazi announcers known as Lord Haw-Haw, were people who had betrayed their own countries and gone over to the other side. Those flacks served a variety of purposes, from spreading misleading information about enemy war plans to discouraging enemy troops and the folks back home with lies about defeats on the battlefield.

But there are also homegrown propagandists who sell upbeat stories to their own folks to keep up their spirits when the war is going badly by telling tall tales of victory and success. Iraq’s Baghdad Bob would be the most famous example of that. His dispatches during the invasion were so far from reality that they earned him a second nickname, “Comical Ali.”

One of his most famous dispatches as U.S troops were taking Baghdad was “Americans are not even [within] 100 miles of Baghdad. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion … they are trying to sell to the others an illusion.” He would frequently say that Iraqi forces were overwhelming the invaders and Americans were running away or committing mass suicide even as the world was watching the invasion unfold on live TV. It was Saddam Hussein’s version of “You can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes.”

It’s unprecedented for a U.S. president to personally assume this role — these things are usually left to two-bit actors and low-level press people. But Trump as taken to it with relish. He is telling Americans that everyone is pleased with the operation in Syria, the Kurds are fine with it and there is no bloodshed or any unpleasantness at all. Here are a couple of examples from the past few days:

That last tweet originally gave the defense secretary’s last name as “Esperanto,” sparking no end of humor on social media. More importantly, Trump simply made up the quote:

Trump seems to have some grandiose delusion that the U.S. military will seize oil wells in eastern Syria and broker a partnership with the Kurds to split the profits. There is no word on how this is to be done without any American troops in the area, or whether the Syrians are on board with this. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has now backed off his criticism of the U.S. withdrawal called the president’s plan “thinking outside the box.” That’s one way of putting it.

Trump has also made crude comments about how the Kurds and the Turks just “like to fight” and how you have to “let ’em do it for a while” like kids in a parking lot. He has said the Kurds are “not angels” and suggested that they bear responsibility for their plight. But ever since brief ceasefire was announced, he’s been spouting absurd happy talk, clearly trying to spin his epic foreign policy blunder — which may lead to ethnic cleansing and massive casualties — into some kind of historic agreement that will win him his coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

Let’s just say that looks unlikely. This withdrawal operation is still in the early stages and it’s hard to know exactly what’s happening on the ground. But there are journalists and expert analysts on the region who are reporting every day, and the situation seems dire. The Syrian Kurds are being driven out of the area where they’ve been fighting ISIS militants so Turkey can move non-Kurdish Syrian refugees into their homes and cities. There are reports of Syrian militias joining the Turks in the fight who are pursuing murderous retribution against Kurdish leaders.

The New York Times Rukmini Callimachi tweeted about one such incident:

There are reports of white phosphorus or napalm being used against Kurdish civilians. NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel reports that some people are starting to wonder whether Americans could be held liable for crimes against humanity “for knowing about atrocities, failing to stop them, and potentially aiding and abetting.”

According to the New York Times, Trump is not only lying about “bringing the troops home” (most will be redeployed to Iraq to fight the resurgent ISIS) but has apparently decided to keep a few hundred special forces troops in Syria as well. None of them will be coming home any time soon.

But according to the president, he’s ending the “forever wars,” terrorism has been defeated, the Kurds are happy and the world is at peace — and millions of people take him at his word. The question for manyAmericans may be, if Fox News doesn’t show the carnage, did it happen at all?

Update:

He was as nuts this morning as I’ve ever seen him.

Trump’s going to let Erdogan have his own nukes isn’t he?

Published by digby on October 21, 2019

Trump’s going to let Erdogan have his own nukes isn’t he?

by digby


Oh sure, this is fine:

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wants more than control over a wide swath of Syria along his country’s border. He says he wants the Bomb.

In the weeks leading up to his order to launch the military across the border to clear Kurdish areas, Mr. Erdogan made no secret of his larger ambition. “Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads,” he told a meeting of his governing party in September. But the West insists “we can’t have them,” he said. “This, I cannot accept.”

With Turkey now in open confrontation with its NATO allies, having gambled and won a bet that it could conduct a military incursion into Syria and get away with it, Mr. Erdogan’s threat takes on new meaning. If the United States could not prevent the Turkish leader from routing its Kurdish allies, how can it stop him from building a nuclear weapon or following Iran in gathering the technology to do so?

It was not the first time Mr. Erdogan has spoken about breaking free of the restrictions on countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and no one is quite sure of his true intentions. The Turkish autocrat is a master of keeping allies and adversaries off balance, as President Trump discovered in the past two weeks.

“The Turks have said for years that they will follow what Iran does,” said John J. Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense who now runs the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “But this time is different. Erdogan has just facilitated America’s retreat from the region.”

In case you are wondering what Trump might say to this, I’ll remind you of what he said during the campaign:

CNN’s WOLF BLITZER: But — but you’re ready to let Japan and South Korea become nuclear powers?

TRUMP: I am prepared to — if they’re not going to take care of us properly, we cannot afford to be the military and the police for the world. We are, right now, the police for the entire world. We are policing the entire world. You know, when people look at our military and they say, “Oh, wow, that’s fantastic,” they have many, many times — you know, we spend many times what any other country spends on the military. But it’s not really for us. We’re defending other countries. So all I’m saying is this: They have to pay. And you know what? I’m prepared to walk, and if they have to defend themselves against North Korea, where you have a maniac over there, in my opinion, if they don’t — if they don’t take care of us properly, if they don’t respect us enough to take care of us properly, then you know what’s going to have to happen, Wolf? It’s very simple. They’re going to have to defend themselves.
— Interview on CNN, May, 4, 2016

CNN’s ANDERSON COOPER: So you have no problem with Japan and South Korea having nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself, we have …

COOPER: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.

COOPER: You would be fine with them having nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: No, not nuclear weapons, but they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.Here’s the thing, with Japan, they have to pay us or we have to let them protect themselves.

COOPER: So if you said, Japan, yes, it’s fine, you get nuclear weapons, South Korea, you as well, and Saudi Arabia says we want them, too?

TRUMP: Can I be honest with you? It’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely. But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them.

Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? And they do have them. They absolutely have them. They can’t — they have no carrier system yet but they will very soon. Wouldn’t you rather have Japan, perhaps, they’re over there, they’re very close, they’re very fearful of North Korea, and we’re supposed to protect.
— CNN Town Hall, March 29, 2016

By the way, Erdogan doesn’t really have to build the bomb. There are 50 US nuclear missiles sitting right there in Turkey today.
He just has to “take care of us.” If you know what I mean. I’m guessing Trump would happy to sell him a few for the right price.

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… if you can keep it by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 21, 2019

… if you can keep it
by Tom Sullivan


“Rising Sun” chair, Assembly Room of Independence Hall, Philadelphia. NPS photo.

Hearings and scandals and polls make it seem the fight for control of Washington, D.C. is the main event in 2020. “Breaking news” crawls announce the latest Donald Trump outrage or Democratic presidential campaign developments. But discretely, behind the scenes, groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) still work deliberately to gain and maintain control at the state level.

ALEC boasts it is “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators.” But its agenda is conservative and corporate. Its purpose is to pass “model bills” to “benefit the corporations’ bottom line,” and often at public expense, explains the Center for Media and Democracy.

“ALEC knows the key to power is at the state level,” Kira Lerner writes in a Talking Points Memo report published this morning. So its efforts have expanded to maintaining Republican control of state legislatures that advance its main agenda.

At ALEC’s August meeting in Austin, Texas, leaked audio includes attorney Tom Farr of Raleigh, North Carolina advising members not just on how to get control of the 2021 redistricting process, but on how to armor their efforts from day one against inevitable lawsuits. Panelists advised attendees to avoid the word gerrymander, to be sure to throw away any notes, and to avoid putting anything in writing they would not want a judge to see:

“You’re going to be sued,” [Farr] said, per the transcript. “And I know the lawyers that are going to handle the cases, I know the expert witnesses they’re going to use, and I’m kind of here as a doctor telling you that you might have cancer, and you better get some chemotherapy because if you don’t things aren’t going to turn out real well for you.”

Because of the threat of litigation, the panelists told lawmakers to be especially cautious and to appoint people to redistricting committees who are “studious,” “sharp” and prepared for court. They also suggested state lawmakers avoid rushing redistricting legislation or holding special sessions to jam through the approval of state lines.

These lessons Farr learned in North Carolina over the last decade, trust me.

The strategy includes making sure Republicans in the legislature have control of defending their maps in court in states with Democratic attorneys general — another lesson learned in North Carolina.

“Be sure that your redistricting bill has a provision in it that says that you, the legislature, have the ability to defend any lawsuits filed against your redistricting plan and that you will have control of that over and above the state attorney general,” said voter-fraud frightener, Hans von Spakovsky.

In August 2018, Lerner explains, ALEC first passed a resolution declaring state legislatures should keep control of the redistricting process.

Lerner continues:

Kathay Feng, national redistricting director for Washington, D.C.-based watchdog organization Common Cause said ALEC is likely scared of independent commissions or bipartisan processes, given that the reforms are spreading to states that aren’t traditionally Democratic, like Missouri, Michigan, Utah and Ohio.

“This sudden sharp right turn is in response to the five states in 2018, many of which were red and purple states, to adopt strong redistricting reforms,” she said.

In Texas, where almost one-third of the legislature are members of ALEC and where lawmakers have a history of drawing districts that disadvantage minority voters, advocates fear that if Republicans do well in 2020, the state could see redistricting reform that would help them maintain power for another decade.

Keeping a low profile allowed the late Thomas Hofeller to direct the GOP’s successful 2011 redistricting scheming as Democrats snoozed. Since the last census, partisan gerrymandering in multiple states has given the GOP control of state legislatures and presence in Congress disproportionate to the number of votes their candidates receive in elections. Republicans mean to keep it that way.

ALEC means to help them, right under our noses as we tie ourselves in knots over the presidential race. President [your favorite Democrat here] can’t fix this for you from the White House. This is your responsibility. Get involved in and donate to your state legislative races. Un-rig your state legislatures if you expect to keep your republic.

Who knows what might happen if Republican officials decided to lead?

Published by digby on October 21, 2019
Who knows what might happen if Republican officials decided to lead?

by digby

Reporters and pundits are constantly saying that in private most elected Republicans are appalled by Trump’s unfitness, corruption and ignorance but they are too afraid of his supporters to challenge him.

Maybe they should consider this from 538:

[T]here’s a fair amount of political science research suggesting that voters are more tied to their parties than to their issue positions. For example, when Democratic Party leaders decided to support same-sex marriage, many Democratic voters who opposed gay marriage simply changed their position, rather than leave the party. The rise of Trump displayed the same dynamic, as many Republican voters who used to be wary of Russia and care deeply about the moral values of politicians abandoned those views to align with their party’s leader. So the increase in Democratic support for impeachment after Pelosi and more moderate Democrats got on board fits that broader pattern. 

Why does it matter what exactly caused this shift in public opinion? Well, if people change their minds about something largely because of new facts, that’s fairly intuitive and not particularly surprising. Perhaps impeachment became more popular largely because Trump did something that was clearly bad and, unlike special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, fairly easy to understand. 

But if impeachment got more popular largely because Democratic voters, and some independents, are taking cues from party leaders, that’s more interesting. 

I would guess that it’s a little bit of both. However, it seems obvious to me that plenty of rank and file Democrats look to the party leadership to decide what is possible and what isn’t. When they were saying they didn’t want impeachment, these trusting voters believed that they knew what they were doing and therefore supported their decision.

The parties may be different in many ways but I would guess that there are a fair number of Republicans who feel the same way about their party leadership. They trust their judgment.  Normally that trust would accrue to the president but there’s a fair chance that a significant minority of Republicans — the suburban college-educated types — who would change their support if the GOP decided to lead instead of follow. (538 took a look at some of these folks in this piece addressing this issue.)

They don’t want to take a chance, of course, because they might lose their seats and that is apparently a fate worse than nuclear war to these people. But in the last week we’ve seen some pushback to the president on Syria especially but also some clear discomfort with the Ukraine story and especially Doral. It will be interesting to see if there is even a slight movement in the polls.

By the way:

Fox’s Chris Wallace said a “well-connected” Washington Republican told him that there’s a 20 percent chance enough Republicans will vote to remove President Trump from office in an impeachment trial in the Senate.

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GOP Affirmative Action

Published by digby on October 20, 2019

GOP Affirmative Action

by digby

I saw this segment this morning and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Via Crooks and Liars:

CNN viewers lashed out on Sunday after the network announced it had hired former Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy (R), who quit his previous job in Congress to take care of his nine children. 

During a Sunday appearance on CNN’s State of the Union program, Duffy defended President Donald Trump by repeating a conspiracy theory about a Democratic Party server that he claimed is controlled by Ukrainians.

When Trump calls CNN fake news this isn’t what he’s talking about. But it is fake news.

But Duffy is a media professional so I suppose he does bring that experience to bear:

He first entered public life as a cast member on The Real World: Boston, 1998’s Road Rules: All Stars, and 2002’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Seasons, before going on to serve as district attorney of Ashland County, Wisconsin, and the U.S. Representative for Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district. He is a member of the Republican Party and supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid. On August 26, 2019, Duffy announced he would resign from Congress effective September 23, 2019.

Duffy has been an ESPN color commentator for televised competitions and in 2003 appeared as both a competitor and commentator on ESPN’s Great Outdoor Games. 

He’s a reality show professional. So of course he’s back on TV as a Trump defender.

But Duffy is a very, very dumb person so I’m not sure what harm he’ll really do.

Click over to C&L to see the outraged reactions. Oh my.

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No, billionaires are not victims

Published by digby on October 20, 2019

No, billionaires are not victims

by digby

Here’s one who isn’t buying into their whining:

Billionaire and former Goldman Sachs partner Michael Novogratz urged his rich friends to “lighten up” about Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her plans to impose a wealth tax if she’s elected president.

“You’re not victims; you’re the richest people in the world,” Novogratz said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg. “How in God’s name do you feel like a victim?”

“It’s insanity,” he said. ”‘They’re going to come and get us.’ No! You’re going to get taxed a little more. Lighten up!”

Novogratz, who is now invested in cryptocurrency, said it makes sense to tax the wealthy to help those who are struggling in the nation.

“The way the country is functioning today, the bottom 60% aren’t doing well,” Novogratz noted. Warren is “speaking to that group. She wants to redistribute.”

He said that 97% of the “people in my world are really, really fearful of her.”

They “don’t like her, they’re worried about her, they think she’s anti-rich,” he added. “It’s a little carried away.”

Novogratz said he’d prefer a more “centrist” Democratic candidate but isn’t yet convinced anyone else can win. He called Warren a “good politician” as well as “smart” and “witty.”

Yeah, it’s a little carried away alright. It’s as delusional as the Trump voters who think the Mexicans are coming to take over the country.

These people also opposed Obama’s reforms. And they voted against Clinton despite the fact that she was running against an ignoramus conman. They are Republicans who only care about their tax rates. They actually aren’t all that bright because they don’t understand just how angry and frustrated the masses are becoming with this selfishness and greed and they are putting their futures at grave risk just so that they can collect every last penny. It’s another indictment of elite higher education that they don’t realize this.

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