Tuesday, November 22, 2016

It's good to be the king. At least it's good for business.

Another YY Development Group project, Trump Tower Punta del Este, rises in Uruguay. Photo credit to Gentileza El País via  TheBubble.
The story of that November 14 phone congratulations-on-your-election call from Argentine president Mauricio Macri to Donald Trump in which Trump may have asked Macri to help him out in getting a building permit for a Trump Tower Buenos Aires (Macri's office has denied that) is getting a little thicker, thanks at least in part to an intrepid Twitter researcher who reads Spanish:

YY is YY Development Group, principals Felipe Yaryura and Moisés Yellati, the company that's actually developing the project—Trump, as is his usual practice, is simply supplying the brand name and the fabulous standards of excellence that go with it (he's said to have demanded that materials imported from outside Argentina, from bathroom fixtures to paint pigment). Felipe Yaryura, a pal of Eric Trump's, is the person from whom the Pink House (Casa Rosada, Argentina's presidential residence) got the president-elect's number when they placed the call (Macri, who publicly backed Clinton during the campaign, seems to have been pretty anxious to get on the phone with Trump, an old business associate of Macri's real estate magnate father).
(Actually there was an earlier announcement of the project, the day after the election, November 9,  but the announcement of the 15th was the first to lay out a construction timetable.)

Only the weird thing about that is that  all approvals haven't been obtained at all. The Buenos Aires city government knows nothing about it, no paperwork has been submitted; in a news story of the 16th, Argentina's BigBangNews called the project an edificio fantasma, a ghost building. So why did YY announce it, the very day after that phone call from the president to the president-elect, which Felipe Yaryura arranged? It couldn't possibly be that Macri promised Trump he'd take care of the permissions, because staff said he didn't, and I'm sure they would never lie. Wait, I don't know who they are, do I?

Famous populists in Trump Tower (NY) elevator. From Nigel Farage's Twitter feed via Quartz.


And then there's Trump's entirely unconcealed workover of Member of the European Parliament Nigel Farage of the fascistoid UK Independence Party, who paid a congratulatory personal call at Trump Tower (NY) on November 12: Trump asked him to use his influence to oppose wind farms like the one that is, in the Trumpian opinion, going to spoil the view for duffers at the Trump International Golf Links near Balmedie, Aberdeenshire.

And now Farage comes up in a very unexpected conversation, on the Twitter of course,

Prime Minister May is not amused:
The prime minister’s office quickly dismissed the recommendation, telling reporters: “There is no vacancy. We have an excellent ambassador to the U.S.” in Kim Darroch, a former national security adviser.
There'll always be an England! I hope.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.
Posted by Yastreblyansky at 9:45 AM 3 comments

GOODBYE FOR A FEW DAYS

I'm off until Saturday. I'll be with my family trying to be thankful for something. The relief crew will be here while I'm gone, feeling thankful (or not). I'll be back on Saturday.
Posted by Steve M. at 7:00 AM 2 comments

Monday, November 21, 2016

DON'T BE ONE OF THE RUBES WHO BELIEVE TRUMP DRESSED DOWN THE MEDIA TODAY (updated -- or maybe you should?)

A lot of people who should know better are taking this New York Post story at face value:
Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.

“It was like a f--ing firing squad,” one source said of the encounter.

“Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said ‘I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,’ ” the source said.

“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added....

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said.

“Trump didn’t say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate -- which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.”
Amazing! The meeting went exactly the way it would in the masturbatory fantasies of Matt Drudge:



and Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft:



I think Jezebel's Gabrielle Bluestone has a more accurate take on this story:
Source Who May or May Not Be Donald Trump Says He Humiliated the Nation's Top Reporters Today

... According to the Post, who quotes an anonymous source that isn’t not Donald Trump, Trump sat the 30-odd members of the press from ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC in a boardroom and humiliated them like a dog, as certain sources might say.

“Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,” the Post reports the source said. Does this sound like something Donald Trump would say Donald Trump had said? Probably a coincidence.

“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source, who may -- or may not! -- be Donald Trump, said.
The Post has two sources, actually -- both anonymous, of course. One or both of these people may be Trump. Both are almost certainly Trump employees. The Trump-brand language ("dishonest, deceitful liars," "disaster") is the tell. This is what Trump wants his fan base to believe he said today. But remember, that would be the same Donald Trump who choked when he was face to face with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and it was time to discuss payment for the wall.

As Business Insider's Paul Szoldra says:



Yup. From the CNN story:
...a source in the room said there was “real progress” made with regards to media access to Trump and his administration.

A second participant affirmed this and said the journalists spoke with Trump about the importance of the “press pool,” a small group of journalists that traditionally travels with the president.

Conway said the meeting was “very cordial, candid and honest.”

While there was “no need to mend fences,” she said, “from my own perspective, it is great to hit the reset button, it was a long, hard-fought campaign.”
Trump is a phony tough guy. This never happened. Don't fall for it.

****

UPDATE: Oh, okay: According to Politico, he didn't lash out -- he whined:
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday told a group of about 25 television executives and anchors that he wants a “cordial” and “productive” relationship with the media, according to one source in the room, but he still aired some grievances during the off-the-record gathering in Trump Tower.

The source said the meeting started with a typical Trump complaint about the “dishonest media,” and that he specifically singled out CNN and NBC News for example as “the worst.”

He also complained about photos of himself that NBC used that he found unflattering, the source said.

Trump turned to NBC News President Deborah Turness at one point, the source said, and told her the network won’t run a nice picture of him, instead choosing “this picture of me,” as he made a face with a double chin. Turness replied that they had a “very nice” picture of him on their website at the moment.
He's a pathetic sniveler. And why should he use anger when the press rolls over in response to much less?

****

UPDATE: The Washington Post version of the story is closer to the New York Post's:
Instead of striking a harmonious tone to build a rapport after the election, Trump was combative, participants said. In a calm and deliberate voice, he told the group sitting around a conference table that they had failed to provide their viewers with fair and accurate coverage, and he told them that they failed to understand him or his appeal to millions of Americans....

Trump directed particular ire at CNN and several reporters at ­other cable networks whom he sees as unreasonably antagonistic toward him, though he did not mention them by name. He also referenced both NBC News reporter Katy Tur and ABC’s Raddatz without using their names....

The participants variously described Trump as “combative,” “proud,” and “dismissive” toward the news organizations present.
So, according to this report, it was a quiet, self-pitying dressing-down.

More:
One participant asked Trump for his definition of “fair,” noting that part of the news media’s job is to critically examine a candidate’s words and background. Trump replied that his definition was “truth.”
I'm sorry there wasn't a follow up: And what's your definition of "truth"? Is it the facts? Or is it whatever puts you in a good light? Do you recognize that we have a constitutional right to write critical stories about you? Or don't you think we have that right?
Posted by Steve M. at 8:30 PM 4 comments

IS TRUMP TRIANGULATING WITH ALT-RIGHT RACISTS?

I find it unsettling to read this New York Times description of a speech given over the weekend by alt-right leader Richard Spencer is obviously alarming in the wake of Donald Trump's victory:
Earlier in the day, Mr. Spencer himself had urged the group to start acting less like an underground organization and more like the establishment.

But now his tone changed as he began to tell the audience of more than 200 people, mostly young men, what they had been waiting to hear. He railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.”

As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. When Mr. Spencer, or perhaps another person standing near him at the front of the room -- it was not clear who -- shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back....

Mr. Spencer’s after-dinner speech began with a polemic against the “mainstream media,” before he briefly paused. “Perhaps we should refer to them in the original German?” he said.

The audience immediately screamed back, “Lügenpresse,” reviving a Nazi-era word that means “lying press.”
There are good reasons to be extremely alarmed about the fact that Trump's campaign brought these people in from the fringes. But I'm also thinking about this Dara Lind post at Vox, which argues that being alarmist about Trump could backfire:
But what if the reality of the Trump administration turns out to be not quite the worst-case scenario? What if it is simply very bad in less unprecedented ways? Won’t that seem, by comparison, normal?

This is the real danger of a fight against “normalization” that assumes that the country is being drawn inevitably down the road to authoritarianism: The Trump administration could take another path and go unnoticed.

Donald Trump probably won’t cancel elections, but he could -- and is relatively likely to -- oversee a sweeping rollback of voting rights. His administration may not throw journalists in jail, but it could easily step up surveillance of domestic protesters. His appointees may not entrench a permanent oligarchy, but it could still -- for millions of people in America -- reduce the willingness and ability to participate in public life to zero.

These wouldn’t flout the law; they’d be under color of it and even in concert with it. But they would, nonetheless, be a tragedy for democracy.
Is that what might happen with the white nationalists? We're accusing Trump of opening the door to the Nazification of America, but what we might get from his White House is "merely" an increased crackdown on non-white voting, a much greater tolerance for stop-and-frisk and other police abuses, a very hard line on undocumented immigrants, a registry for people from majority-Muslim countries that will resemble one instituted after 9/11, and so on In other words, it will be awful, but because Jews and non-whites won't be subjected to laws that are literally Nazi-like, we'll be accused of crying wolf.

Is that what Steve Bannon and possibly other Trump strategists are counting on? That flirting with the alt-right is win-win, because Trump wins racist support while Trump's failure to embrace the entire alt-right agenda makes critics seem like alarmists?

I absolutely don't think that's reason enough to stop making noise about this. But I wonder whether this is the Trump camp's thinking.
Posted by Steve M. at 1:13 PM 3 comments

THE NORMALIZING: FUN WITH NUMBERS

Headline at Politico right now:
Poll: Trump's popularity soars after election
"Soars"?
Donald Trump’s popularity is rising in the days since his election, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll of registered voters.

Forty-six percent of voters now have a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of the president-elect. Twelve percent have a somewhat unfavorable opinion and 34 percent have a very unfavorable opinion of him.

It’s a dramatic uptick since the election. Trump’s favorability has grown 9 points, 37 percent to 46 percent, compared to a Morning Consult poll right before the election -- while his unfavorability has dropped 15 points, from 61 percent to 46 percent.
So in "a dramatic uptick," Trump's favorability "soars" to mere parity, 46%-46%.

How does this compare? The implication is that it's right in line with what happened to previous presidents:
"Trump’s favorability among voters has reached new highs since he became president-elect,” said Morning Consult cofounder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. "This honeymoon phase in common for new presidents. For example, Obama saw about a 20 point swing in his favor following the 2008 election."
Let's check Polling Report. What were Barack Obama's favorable/unfavorable numbers in polls taken in the five weeks after Election Day 2008?
CNN : 75%-22%
Fox: 68%-24%
Quinnipiac: 67%-19%
CBS: 55%-12%
NBC: 45%-22%
No parity here.

We've already seen this comparison:



But the Politico headline is right-wing clickbait -- and will probably become mainstream-media conventional wisdom.

Although if we're lucky, this, from Pew, will influence the narrative:



But the Politico headline is probably the story the media likes, so I'm not optimistic.
Posted by Steve M. at 9:17 AM 4 comments

Sunday, November 20, 2016

A "POTTERY BARN RULE" FOR TRUMP AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS? ARE YOU JOKING?

James Hohmann of The Washington Post is so naive he believes Republicans will be held accountable for what they do starting in January:
Colin Powell ... warned George W. Bush about the consequences of invading Iraq: "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all." As Bob Woodward recounted in a 2004 book, “Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.”

-- Trump and the congressional Republicans who have chosen to make their bed with him are responsible for what happens from now on. There is now no one to blame if they can't pass budgets, avoid shutdowns, deal with sequestration, replace Obamacare, destroy ISIS or reverse the continuing loss of manufacturing jobs. If climate change gets worse, it’s on them. If Syria continues its downward spiral, it’s on them. If more countries acquire nuclear weapons, it’s on them. It may be totally unfair, but that’s the way our system works.
This is a joke, right?

Republicans are the masters of messaging. They're going to shift blame skillfully and relentlessly once Donald Trump is president -- nothing is going to be his fault, or Paul Ryan's fault, or Mitch McConnell's. They've been laying the groundwork for eight years, telling us that the Obama presidency was the greatest calamity in American history, on every conceivable level. They may not have persuaded a majority of Americans -- Obama's approval rating is the highest it's been in years -- but they persuaded enough voters in enough swing states to swipe the election, and they've probably persuaded a very large percentage of the likely voters in the 2018 midterms.

And if they can't blame problems on Obama, they have a lot of practice demonizing Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. If Pelosi somehow loses her leadership position to Tim Ryan, he'll become the new right-wing Antichrist. Republicans are in campaign mode every day of every year; I bet they're already amassing oppo to use against him.

Sluggish economy? Wahhh, Obama left us the worst economy ever! Difficulties in the fight against ISIS? Wahhh, Obama weakened the American military and called ISIS the JV team! North Korea nukes Los Angeles! Wahhh, Obama led from behind! They'll use these excuses for years.

Hohmann writes:
The last time Republicans had unified control of the government, the American people were so happy with how it went that they made San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the House and a community activist turned law professor named Barack Hussein Obama the first black president.
Yes, but that took years. Republicans started Bush's presidency controlling all of Congress; they lost control of the Senate early in Bush's first term, then regained it after the 2002 midterms. It took botched Katrina relief, a failed effort to privatize Social Security, an attempt to force the effectively brain-dead Terri Schiavo to stay on life support against her stated wishes, and three and a half years of utter failure in Iraq for voters to finally give Republicans the boot. That was after nearly six years of the Bush presidency.

Republicans were undone by the war, which had been Bush's proudest achievement. The system didn't have to force him to take ownership of it -- he reveled in being a war president. That turned sour for the GOP, but it hadn't been a problem even in 2004, despite the fact that weapons of mass destruction never turned up and Abu Ghraib torture photos did.

So trust me, the Trump and the GOP are going to avoid blame for a lot longer than they should.
Posted by Steve M. at 6:07 PM 7 comments

NO NORM VIOLATIONS, PLEASE -- IT'S THE TRUMP ERA

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama might take an active role in anti-Trump politics after he leaves office:
President Obama is rethinking his plans to withdraw from the political arena after he leaves office next year, hinting to friends and supporters that he wants to add his voice to the shellshocked Democratic activists and elected officials who are now angrily vowing to oppose Donald J. Trump’s presidency.

White House aides say they expect the president to try to refrain from criticism during the transition because of his belief in the importance of a courteous and dignified transfer of power. But while the president holds out hope that he might influence Mr. Trump, he has made it clear that once out of office he will not remain silent if Mr. Trump goes too far in undoing his legacy.

“I’m going to be constrained in what I do with all of you until I am again a private citizen,” Mr. Obama, who will be living a few miles from the White House next year, told a meeting this past week of Organizing for Action, the group that maintains his political movement. “But that’s not so far off.”
A few days ago, when Jonathan Chait suggested that this might happen, I wrote:
Chait correctly notes that "the political-cultural norm of former presidents’ steering clear of politics is not rooted in any particular public interest" -- but a violation of this norm will horrify mainstream political insiders, as well as the right-wing noise machine. If Obama tosses this custom aside, the big news in any statement he makes will be decision to make the statement.... Whatever he's upset about will be a secondary consideration.
That's already happening. Here's part of the response to the Times story from Chris White at the Mediaite offshoot Law Newz:
There is a sort of unofficial tradition in this country that ex-Presidents of the United States generally remain silent on major legal and policy matters pushed by their successors. For example, George W. Bush has been widely praised for essentially saying next to nothing about his successor after leaving office in 2009. However, a new report published Sunday morning suggests the soon to be former-President Obama may not give his successor the same courtesy.
And here's an angrier response from Jay Caruso at RedState:
An unwritten rule in the world of Presidential politics is former Presidents do not criticize the current President. It’s almost like the mindset of a fraternity. Granted, not all Presidents uphold this tradition. Jimmy Carter is a notable exception. He never shied away from offering his stupid opinions about Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W. Bush. Bill Clinton upheld the tradition when GWB was President. George W. Bush despite always being blamed by President Obama for his troubles, even five to six years into his presidency, has remained gracious throughout Obama’s term, saying little about Obama’s lousy performance during his tenure.

Now comes word Barack Obama won’t try all that hard to keep his nose out of presidential politics once he leaves office....

What kind of mindset does a person have that they telegraph they’re going to break protocol and criticize a sitting President?
That's right: Barack Obama is going to be attacked for daring to violate political norms, months after the election of Donald Trump. Trump will continue to get away with violating every political norm that stands between him and what he wants, while Obama will be excoriated, by conservatives and (inevitably) by mandarins of the Beltway mainstream, for violating one norm, even though he'll be doing so at a moment of genuine crisis in America.

I hope he tries anyway, and I hope his efforts matter. But I still think the political world will argue that it's Just Not Done.
Posted by Steve M. at 1:07 PM 8 comments

Saturday, November 19, 2016

CAN'T WE ALL GET ALONG? (Presidential Appointments Edition)

Well, this is silly:
President-elect Donald Trump should appoint Hillary Clinton to be his ambassador to the United Nations, a Democratic lawmaker says.

"President-elect Trump should consider her for the position," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), whose district includes Trump Tower in Manhattan. She added that Clinton "would make an excellent Ambassador to the United Nations."

Clinton "will never stop working," Maloney said. "She will always make a difference and will always be a part of the dialogue in a positive way to advance the values of America."
This couldn't possibly happen, and there would be a complete clash of worldviews if it did happen. No one else is going to second Maloney's recommendation. And yet I guarantee you that if Clinton had won, especially in anything short of a landslide, there'd be widespread talk among Very Serious Pundits that Clinton should offer a Cabinet position to Trump. Secretary of commerce? HUD, because he's a builder (or at least he used to be, before he switched over to slapping his name on stuff made by other people)? Trump should definitely get something, we'd be told, because it would be a healing gesture. In fact, it would be deemed churlish of Clinton not to lard her Cabinet with two or three Republicans, Trump included.

Apart from General Jack D. Ripper Mike Flynn, who's a right-wing maniac, Trump is unlikely to have any Democrats in prominent positions in his administration, and I can't imagine him selecting even a Republican centrist. (I don't believe he'll pick Mitt Romney as secretary of state. From The New York Times: "A senior adviser described the meeting, in part, as Mr. Romney simply coming to pay his respects to the president-elect and 'kiss his ring.'" I think that's the only reason Trump is meeting with Mitt.) That'll be fine with the Beltway -- having an ideologically pure Cabinet and inner circle will be seen as "bold" and an attempt to (as the headline of this Times story puts it) "bulldoze the status quo."

Clinton would have been chastised for not making a gesture of reconciliation (probably by same the folks who thought she should pick John Kasich as a running mate). But no one will chastise Trump, trust me.

Posted by Steve M. at 6:16 PM 4 comments

DISRESPECT: IT'S FOR CONSERVATIVES ONLY, PLEASE

So this happened last night:
Vice-president elect Mike Pence went to see the hip-hop musical “Hamilton” on Broadway Friday night, and the performance was disrupted when the audience wouldn’t stop booing him....

Upon arrival at the Richard Rodgers Theater, he was loudly booed — although some audience members also cheered him on....

Rod Dreher is beside himself:
This makes me angrier than it should....

The man was elected vice president of the United States, and this is how they treat him.

Don’t think people outside your cultural bubble aren’t noticing all this, taking note, and learning. You think your emotions and your passion entitles you to crap on everybody else, and not even to show them basic respect. You people saw about ten days ago where that gets you, but you won’t stop and can’t stop politicizing everything, filling it with your spite, even a night out at the theater.

You are taking America to the brink.
Funny, I don't recall Dreher reacting this way two months ago:
With the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks coinciding with the first Sunday of the NFL season, the league commemorated the day with pregame ceremonies involving field-size flags and a non-partisan video tribute featuring Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama....

Several social media users who attended NFL games across the country on Sunday reported hearing boos when the video started playing. According to someone who attended Sunday’s Jets game at MetLife Stadium, the scattered boos intensified when Obama appeared on the big screen.
Or in November 2013:
The mention of the U.S. president elicited booing during a halftime ceremony at the Missouri-Tennessee game.

During halftime, new members of the Missouri National Guard were being sworn in on the field of Memorial Stadium, said team spokesman Chad Moller.

Part of the oath the service members took reads, "I will obey the orders of the president of the United States." During a pause after that line was read, members of the crowd could clearly be heard booing and jeering, said LeMari Porter, an MU student present at the game.

MU student Julia Bosley was sitting in the general admission section on the hill during the game. She said she thinks the man standing behind her, who appeared to be a Missouri fan was the first to boo.

"He started booing, and then it just sort of spread around the stadium," Bosley said. "I was sitting with my boyfriend's family, and we all just turned around and looked at him in disbelief."

Bosley said no one said anything to stop the man, and several people nearby joined in.
Or in October 2012:
The president of Clemson University reprimanded the school's football fans Tuesday for booing President Barack Obama during a military ceremony last weekend, saying there is only one president, "and he is president of us all."

The display came as students were taking their oath upon being inducted into the university's Reserve Officer Training Corps on Military Appreciation Day during Clemson's 38-17 victory over Virginia Tech at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, S.C. The booing began as the members recited their pledge to "obey the orders of the president of the United States."
Or in November 2011:
First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's wife, were booed by some NASCAR fans as they served as the grand marshals for the racing circuit's final event Sunday.

Obama and Biden were at the Homestead-Miami Speedway to promote Joining Forces, an organization that promotes the hiring and training of veterans. They were joined by Army Sgt. Andrew Barry, a veteran of the Afghan and Iraqi wars who now volunteers at an Orlando, Fla., veterans center, and his family. The clip shows that people cheer for the soldier, but boo when the two women's names are announced.
Or in March 2012:



Or in June 2009:
On a charm offensive in support of his health care reform efforts, Obama addressed the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest physician lobby. The doctors in the audience booed him for revealing that he didn’t support the group’s pet cause—caps on damages in medical malpractice lawsuits.
I'm not even going to mention "You lie!"

Here's an interesting theory about why Pence attended:



My favorite Twitter responses? This:



And this:



Rod Dreher was also upset about this:
At the end of the show, the cast addressed his presence, with Brandon Victor Dixon saying “Vice President Elect Pence, welcome. Thank you for joining us at Hamilton-An American Musical. We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of ALL of us.”
But imagine if President-Elect Hillary Clinton or Vice President-Elect Tim Kaine had gone into a white working-class neighborhood this week and heard a lecture like this from one of the locals -- a lecture saying, "You must pay attention to us." Commentators across the spectrum -- from Sandersites on the left to centrist pundits to the entire conservative movement -- would agree that Attention Must Be Paid. And any boos would be deemed more Clinton or Kaine's fault than the booers'.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:34 AM 14 comments

Friday, November 18, 2016

THE TRUMP THEORY OF RACISM: GO BIG OR GO HOME

Jonathan Chait writes:
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign bludgeoned modern norms about the acceptability of racism. The candidate proposed a religious test for immigrants, and called a federal judge unfit on the grounds of his heritage. Trump could have decided to put the racial demagoguery of the campaign behind him, and it could have been remembered as a divisive ploy to win that did not define his administration, like George Bush’s manipulation of white racial panic to defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988. But Trump, perhaps predictably, is making a different choice. His early staffing choices are redefining the boundaries of acceptable racial discourse in Republican politics.
Chait lists Steve Bannon, of course:
That Bannon’s ex-wife has testified to his hatred of Jews has attracted a great deal of attention, but this fact both over- and understates the racial nature of his beliefs. Bannon’s journalistic work is centrally dedicated to the task of refashioning conservatism along white-identity lines. His publication, Breitbart News, has promoted the “alt-right.” Breitbart itself defines the alt-right as a more intelligent version of skinheads...
He also lists General Mike Flynn, who'll be Trump's national security adviser, and attorney general-designate Jeff Sessions. He's certainly right about Sessions:
When he was a U.S. Attorney, Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general declared that “I wish I could decline on all” civil rights cases. Sessions called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “communist-inspired” organizations. He joked that used to think the Ku Klux Klan were “ok” until he found out they were “pot smokers.” He once called a black former assistant U.S. Attorney “boy.”

And his actual record is arguably even worse. “Jeff Sessions got his start prosecuting voting rights activists in Alabama on bogus voter fraud charges,” notes Sam Bagnestos, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the number two official in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Holder. “Throughout his career, he has shown hostility to the historically important work of the Civil Rights Division. The damage he can do to civil rights enforcement as attorney general is incalculable.” Nothing about his subsequent history suggests that he’s changed.
And Flynn is a piece of work:
On three occasions, Flynn tagged in his tweets Jared Wyland, an alt-right, anti-Semitic commentator who has tweeted about the "Liberal Jewish media." ...

In February, Flynn made waves when he tweeted it was rational to fear Muslims.

"Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL: please forward this to others: the truth fears no questions," Flynn said with a link to a video claiming Islamophobia was rational and that Islam wanted 80% of humanity enslaved or exterminated.
More:
Flynn said in August that Islam is "a political ideology" rather than a religion. He also previously called Islam "sick" and described it as a “malignant cancer.”
And:
The former general ... was responding to accusations by the Clinton campaign that Russia was behind a hack of the Democratic National Committee, and a subsequent leak of e-mails, in order to help Trump's candidacy.

Flynn wrote that "the corrupt Democratic machine will do and say anything" to get Clinton elected. "This is a new low," he said, retweeting a message that read: "Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore."
Chait writes that "Trump’s presidential campaign bludgeoned modern norms about the acceptability of racism." But I'm not sure those norms are gone exactly. Since Trump announced his presidential candidacy, quite a few minor officials, mostly in state and local politics, have made racist statements or written (or retransmitted) racist online postings. Those people continue to get in trouble for doing this sort of thing. For instance, just this week a mayor and a director of a county development corporation in West Virginia left office under pressure after the public learned about a jolly online exchange in which they agreed that First Lady Michelle Obama is an "ape in heels."

But what Trump proved in his campaign is that it's easier to survive if you make dozens of offensive remarks than if you make one. One (justifiably) puts a target on your back. A multitude ought to rally the public against you in a big way, but instead you're marked as someone so brazen that the public and the political world respond with paralysis.

That's what Trump appears to be counting on in filling his administration: that there'll be so many appointees giving so much offense that no one will quite know where to start in attacking them. Obviously it worked in the campaign. It'll probably work in the presidency, too.
Posted by Steve M. at 1:59 PM 8 comments

IF WE EVER HAVE NORMAL ELECTIONS AGAIN, REPUBLICANS MIGHT BE LULLED BY THEIR TRUMP TURNOUT BUMP

I believe America's electoral system will be unrecognizable in a few years -- suppression of Democratic voting will worsen and there'll be an even freer flow of fat-cat money -- but if I'm being alarmist and democracy manages to proceed more or less as usual, I think Republicans might be lulled into believing that the Trump-driven increase in turnout they experienced this year will be theirs forever, even when Donald Trump isn't at the top of the ticket. In other words, they may mistake his personal popularity for party popularity, just the way Democrats did with regard to Barack Obama.

In The New York Times, David Leonhardt writes:
Barack Obama’s two victories created the impression of a strong wind at the back of the Democratic Party. Its constituencies -- the young, the nonwhite, the college educated -- were not only growing but were also voting in increasing numbers....

The longer view is starting to look quite different, however. None of the other three most recent Democratic presidential nominees -- Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore -- inspired great turnout.... In off-year elections, Democratic turnout is even spottier....

In the simplest terms, Republican turnout seems to have surged this year, while Democratic turnout stagnated....

In [swing-state] counties where Trump won at least 70 percent of the vote, the number of votes cast rose 2.9 percent versus 2012. Trump’s pugnacious message evidently stirred people who hadn’t voted in the past. By comparison, in counties where Clinton won at least 70 percent, the vote count was 1.7 percent lower this year....

For every one voter nationwide who reported having voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, at least five people voted for Trump after not having voted four years ago. Clinton attracted substantially fewer 2012 nonvoters, the data show. On net, Trump’s gains among nonvoters mattered more than his gains from vote switchers....
Throughout the Obama years, many Democrats assumed that the country was becoming more Democratic, as a matter of demographic inevitability. They believed this even as Democrats got shellacked in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Wait till 2016, they said. Victory is a lock, because Democrats will have their "presidential electorate."

Much of that "presidential electorate" didn't turn out, because what was called a "presidential electorate" proved to be just an Obama electorate. Republicans might make the same mistake, especially if Trump wins reelection four years from now. (I hate to say it, but I think that's very likely. America hasn't voted out a sitting president in 24 years, and controversial Republican governors -- Scott Walker, Sam Brownback, Paul LePage, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder -- routinely win reelection.) Republicans might think their turnout advantage will persist if Mike Pence or Paul Ryan is the nominee in 2024. But it will turn out that the Trump bump was all about Trump, not the GOP.

Of course, the GOP has an advantage over the Democrats in elections that don't involve a charismatic candidate. The advantage isn't just white solidarity -- it's the fact that Republican media outlets relentlessly reinforce the sense of Republicanism (and conservatism) as a brand. Republican conservatism may not have a firm ideological foundation -- I agree with Cleek's Law ("Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily") -- but the GOP base eagerly tunes in to right-wing media to have its anger at Democrats and liberals reinforced on a daily basis. A large percentage of Democratic voters don't do this. Most Democrats aren't reading lefty websites every day or watching Rachel Maddow every night, and we barely have any talk radio. So the brand isn't reinforced. And the GOP/conservative brand is reinforced by the NRA, the evangelical movement, and other anti-liberal forces.

Trump may fool Republicans into thinking they'll run the country forever. They won't -- unless they change the institutions of democracy to ensure that they do, which could very well happen.
Posted by Steve M. at 9:06 AM 7 comments

Thursday, November 17, 2016

SOMEONE ON TEAM TRUMP KNOWS HOW TO MANUFACTURE CONSENT

The Trump team is stumbling through the transition -- I wonder, for instance, if what we're seeing is really an effort to pick a Cabinet or just the president-elect wallowing in the opportunity to get as many A-listers as possible to kiss his ring (Romney! Cruz! Petraeus!). But in the midst of all this chaos, someone in Trump World is applying traditional Republican narrative-creation skills to the situation at hand:
President-elect Donald Trump will host a new round of rallies in the coming weeks to celebrate his 2016 election win, according to one of his top aides.

George Gigicos, the head of the Trump advance team, spoke to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City Thursday, where he said their team is working on "the victory tour now."

He asked Trump's former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, who was behind him, to ask when the tour would be happening.

She came forward to reporters and said, "'Thank you tour.' It's not a 'victory tour,'" to which Gigicos repeated, "Thank you tour."

"Thank America tour," Conway said.

Gigicos said the tour would be happening in "the next couple of weeks -- after Thanksgiving" and would focus on "the swing states we flipped over."
I know this is happening in large part because Donald Trump has a desperate need for adulation. And yet it's brilliant, in a horrible way.

Trump is going to stand before those crowds of giddy white proletarians and the press is going to conclude that he really was the people's choice, even though he probably lost the popular vote by 2 million and has by far the lowest favorable rating of any recent president-elect.



The press is skeptical of Trump, but the press is not skeptical of white proles. The press agrees that they're the real Americans.

And the Democratic Party, to judge from its post-election hand-wringing, agrees as well, which is why concentrating the tour on swing states is a nastily brilliant idea. It will set off yet another round of counterproductive Democratic self-criticism.

Trump will probably do this throughout his term, and the press will continue to assume that crowd size equals popularity. Let me say it again: Trump lost the popular vote. To judge from the Gallup poll quoted above, at least 5% of the public voted for him but doesn't approve of him. But the press will fall for Trump rallies for the foreseeable future.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:25 PM 5 comments

BUT YOU TOLD ME TRUMP HATED THE IRAQ WAR WITH THE FURY OF A THOUSAND SUNS

Donald Trump who swore on a stack of Bibles that he loathed the Iraq War with every fiber of his being, may be about to appoint this guy as CIA director:
Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, an ex-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that he would accept the job of CIA director if it were offered to him by President-elect Donald Trump....

Hoekstra said he has been in communication with Trump’s transition team “on a regular basis” to discuss “a number of different things,” but declined to detail any specifics of those conversations. He said he is currently an informal adviser to the transition team and that he was “working through the details” as to what more formal role he might play.
As Martin Longman (BooMan) reminds us, years after the Bush administration's case for the Iraq War had been thoroughly discredited, Hoekstra was a Saddam-had-WMDs dead-ender:
Back in 2005, Hoekstra was obsessed with proving that we had not gone to war in Iraq under false pretenses or even under the mistaken impression that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He pressured the Bush administration to release online troves of sensitive documents that had been seized in Iraq so that right-wing bloggers could comb through them for supporting evidence.

... Hoekstra won his argument and {Director of National Intelligence John] Negroponte posted the cache of documents on the internet.

... The result was predictable. They found no evidence of WMD stockpiles in Iraq.
"But," Longman adds, "they did publish a handy-dandy guide to building a nuclear weapon."

More:
... In the midst of all this nonsense about the “real unexamined evidence” that Saddam Hussein had WMD, Hoekstra held a press conference in June 2006 where he asserted that the case had been proven, at least as far as chemical weapons were concerned. But, he was wrong.
At issue is a classified overview of chemical munitions found in Iraq since 2003 that was completed in April by the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center. One of the report’s key findings was that since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, coalition forces have recovered about 500 shells, canisters or other munitions that contain degraded mustard gas or sarin nerve agent.

That finding was seized on by Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence....

Yesterday, however, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the study contained “nothing new” ...

That assertion was backed up by representatives of three intelligence agencies who told reporters that the study differed little from a 2004 report of a team of American weapons inspectors led by Charles A. Duelfer....

The intelligence officials ... said that the munitions referred to in the report were produced before the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and that they had degraded and could not be used as designed. “There is no evidence today of any post-1991 WMD munitions,” said the official....
Some supposedly intelligent people will tell you that, while Donald Trump initially supported the Iraq War, his eventual opposition to it is a sign that he has convincingly broken with Republican orthodoxy on the use of force. And yet Pete Hoekstra could be his CIA director.

Trump dislikes wars that his Russian buddies disapprove of, and he dislikes wars that give him a vicarious sense of loserhood. Otherwise, Trump's vaunted war skepticism is a fraud.
Posted by Steve M. at 2:25 PM 11 comments

PARTY OF NO: IT'S ONLY OK IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN

I know I'm supposed to hate this plan, but I understand it:
On infrastructure spending, child tax credits, paid maternity leave and dismantling trade agreements, Democrats are looking for ways they can work with Mr. Trump and force Republican leaders to choose between their new president and their small-government, free-market principles....

Democrats ... face a profound decision after last week’s stunning defeat: Make common cause where they can with Mr. Trump to try to win back the white, working-class voters he took from them, or resist at every turn, trying to rally their disparate coalition in hopes that discontent with an ineffectual new president will benefit them in 2018.

Mr. Trump campaigned on some issues that Democrats have long championed and Republicans resisted: spending more on roads, bridges and rail, punishing American companies that move jobs overseas, ending a lucrative tax break for hedge fund and private equity titans, and making paid maternity leave mandatory....

Still, there will be areas of bright-line disagreement. Democrats are speaking out against Mr. Trump’s appointment of Stephen K. Bannon as his chief strategist, and will oppose his promised tax cuts for the wealthy and his vow to deport millions of illegal immigrants.
I know the arguments against this, which have been articulated most passionately by Jonathan Chait: Republicans regained power after their 2006 and 2008 shellackings by opposing everything President Obama wanted, because they knew Democrats would get the credit if his policies were enacted and worked well. Trump is a dangerous man, so Democrats' primary goal should be to obstruct him in nearly everything. That will make him a failed president, and voters will embrace Democrats again.

The biggest problem with this argument is the fact that Republicans have a noise machine and Democrats don't. There's a large and engaged audience in heartland America that has absorbed the Republican narrative and eagerly imbibes Republican propaganda. In the GOP narrative, Democrats are cartoon villains who've set out to destroy America, and who hate ordinary (read: heartland white) Americans. When Republicans fought Obama, they could spread this narrative in order to justify what they were doing. Heartland America bought it.

Democrats will have enough trouble trying to block the truly awful aspects of the Trump/Ryan/McConnell agenda -- not just conservative media outlets but the mainstream media will scold them endlessly for being the Party of No. Because the right's propagandists will hammer away at this message, and the MSM will pick up on it (no more blaming "Washington" for gridlock), any dysfunction will be the Democrats' fault. By contrast, Democrats could never manage to get blame to stick to the GOP when the GOP was shutting down the government or engaging in other obstructionist stunts. There just isn't a large pool of voters ready to believe that Republicans are inherently evil, and there isn't a large segment of the media devoted to Republican-bashing. (A couple of hours of MSNBC prime-time programming every night doesn't count.)

This isn't reason enough for Democrats to accept the vast majority of the Trump agenda -- they should fight hard against it -- but they'll get no benefit out of fighting policies that seem good for ordinary people. Even a bad infrastructure bill designed to line private developers' pockets rather will put at least some people to work. Paid maternity leave and ending the carried-interest tax provision for hedge-funders would be good things (though I suspect these ideas will disappear into the ether very soon). Do Democrats want to be positioned as against these policies? When Republicans opposed Democrats on popular ideas, there was no noise machine to focus America specifically on Republican intransigence. If Democrats oppose good ideas, or seemingly good ideas, the spotlight will be on Democrats, and it will be glaring.

Democrats' only hope is to either (a) develop a noise machine as powerful as the Republicans', so they'll have a voter base as politicized as the GOP's, or (b) wait for Trumpism to fail on its own. My money is on the latter. Maybe Democrats can rally the base around opposition to Medicare privatization or a similar outrage. But generally speaking, Trump isn't going to be an "ineffectual new president." Republicans in Congress will ram through a lot of legislation without Democratic input. I suspect voters will turn to Democrats when it's clear that Republicans aren't making America great again. But it will probably take years.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:46 AM 12 comments

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

GENERAL FLYNN'S AXIS OF EVIL IS EVEN BIGGER THAN BUSH'S

It's being reported that General Michael Flynn is the favorite to become Donald Trump's national security adviser:
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn has emerged as Donald Trump’s leading candidate for national security adviser, according to people familiar with the president-elect’s transition planning.
That's from National Review. ABC News at one point said this was a done deal, then backtracked a bit:





Much of the discussion of Flynn has focused on his cozy relationship with the Russians and his lobbying for the Turkish government. But let's not lose sight of the fact that he wants America to fight a whole lot of wars, against a global array of enemies he believes are all in cahoots. Here's a New York Post op-ed he wrote this past summer:
We’re in a global war, facing an enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Havana, Cuba, and Caracas, Venezuela. Along the way, the alliance picks up radical Muslim countries and organizations such as Iran, al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State.

That’s a formidable coalition, and nobody should be shocked to discover that we are losing the war.

If our leaders were interested in winning, they would have to design a strategy to destroy this global enemy. But they don’t see the global war. Instead, they timidly nibble around the edges of the battlefields from Africa to the Middle East, and act as if each fight, whether in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya or Afghanistan, can be peacefully resolved by diplomatic effort....

I believe we can and must win. This war must be waged both militarily and politically; we have to destroy the enemy armies and combat enemy doctrines....

As we defeat them on the ground, we must clearly and forcefully attack their crazy doctrines. Defeat on battlefields does great damage to their claim to be acting as agents of divine will. After defeating al Qaeda in Iraq, we should have challenged the Islamic world and asked: “How did we win? Did Allah change sides?”

We need to denounce them as false prophets, as we insist on the superiority of our own political vision.
As Daniel Larison wrote:
To be blunt, a group of states that includes Cuba and Venezuela is the opposite of formidable.... North Korea is a horrible and dangerous regime on its own, but it isn’t part of some “global war” effort. Iran isn’t in league with Al Qaeda or ISIS. On the contrary, Iran actively fights against both in Syria. Flynn’s “analysis” amounts to taking every adversarial state and group around the world and pretending that they are all linked together when the connections between them are either tenuous or non-existent. It is an ideological fantasy substituting for analysis....

Flynn’s specific recommendations seem to involve endless warfare against what he calls the “the terror armies, above all in the Middle East and Libya,” which would commit the U.S. to an unknown number of conflicts for the foreseeable future that would only be concluded when we “win.” In other words, Flynn offers a recipe for perpetual war in predominantly Muslim countries, and if we take his rhetoric about the “enemy coalition” seriously he may be talking about waging wars in other parts of the world as well. His willingness to blur distinctions between disparate and mutually hostile groups suggests that the U.S. would find itself fighting multiple enemies at the same time.
And after ou r glorious victories, we're supposed to lord it over these countries and tell them that their belief systems are inferior and ours are superior -- because that always goes over well, right?

I'm reading this as I'm being told by Ross Douthat that "Trump campaigned as a critic of the Iraq war and neoconservatism, as a man ... less inclined to unleash wars of choice than his liberal interventionist opponent." No, he didn't. He campaigned as an after-the-fact Iraq War critic who would have expropriated Iraq's oil, and who wants to "bomb the shit out of ISIS" while torturing terrorists and their families. If you ever believed that Trump is a war skeptic, you're an idiot. Trump has never been against war -- he's against wars that make him, as an American, personally feel like a loser.

Now he's probably going to be advised by a guy with an even bigger Axis of Evil than George W. Bush's, and a desire for overlapping wars. There will be blood, folks.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:45 PM 5 comments

IF WE TAKE STEVE BANNON AT HIS WORD, HE HATES ALL OF HIS ALLIES

BuzzFeed just published a transcript of a speech Steve Bannon gave at a 2014 conference conducted at the Vatican by a conservative Catholic organization called the Institute for Human Dignity. I'm particularly struck by one passage in the speech:
... there’s a strand of capitalism today -- two strands of it, that are very disturbing.

One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that’s the capitalism you see in China and Russia. I believe it’s what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it doesn’t spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were seen really in the 20th century.

The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I’m a big believer in a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that’s a very big part of the conservative movement -- whether it’s the UKIP movement in England, it’s many of the underpinnings of the populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States.

However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the “enlightened capitalism” of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people....
I want to say to Bannon: Have you met any of the people you'll be working with in a Trump White House, and in the larger Republican Party that dominates Washington (and is full of people who want to be Trump's allies)?

I've read that Mike Pence, after taking over the Trump transition team, banished the lobbyists; let's just say I'm skeptical. In a way, it doesn't matter: The self-dealing in the Trump administration is going to start at the top, with the president and his kids taking full advantage of their privileged position to make money for themselves. If that's not "state-sponsored capitalism," I don't know what is.

And how many of the Republicans who are going to fill the administration, or run Congress while working hand in glove with Trump, are libertarians who want to "make people commodities"? The majority? Maybe they're not pure libertarians, but they've read the books, or at least imbibed the ideas, and they certainly treat libertarianism as the appropriate economic philosophy -- at least for you and me, while the wealthy get to socialize their losses as they privatize their profits.

Does Bannon really believe any of what he says? I think he may have persuaded himself that he does, just as he's persuaded himself that Trump isn't a crony capitalist, nor are any of his allies.

I'd like to believe there's a slight chance that Bannon will someday look around him at the looting enabled by Trump, Ryan, and McConnell and say, "This is not what I signed up for! I quit!" Ha-ha, just kidding: Bannon will leave Trump World when he loses some internecine struggle, or when Trump's popularity goes south, or when he no longer believes he can leverage the power of Trump for his own personal gain.

But when he does leave, he may describe the departure as based on the principles articulated above. He may tell us that he thought Trump cared about "enlightened" capitalism that helps working people, but, dammit, Trump betrayed him! And maybe he'll go back to Breitbart as a Trump critic. Stranger things have happened -- who thought back in 2009 that Glenn Beck would be a voice of reason the next time we elected a Republican president?

I really don't think Bannon will flip -- not unless Trump is already so wounded that he's an easy target, like George W. Bush after Katrina and the 2006 midterms. But who knows? Bannon has some non-abhorrent theories. Maybe someday he'll act on them.
Posted by Steve M. at 2:24 PM 7 comments

THE TRANSITION IS A MESS -- AND THE TRUMP BASE IS UNFAZED

News organizations are reporting that the Trump transition is a disaster, run by score-settlers who otherwise have no idea what they're doing.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition was in disarray on Tuesday, marked by firings, infighting and revelations that American allies were blindly dialing in to Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be-leader of the free world.
But are Trump voters feeling buyer's remorse? Nahhh. They're 100% certain that Dear Leader knows exactly what he's doing.

At Reddit's The_Donald, all the reassurance the commenters need comes from this tweet:



The Redditors write:
This is why he has to keep his twitter. He has to keep us informed directly.

****

This man knows what he doing. All the Cabinet concern trolls can go smoke a pole.

****

In other words, he is doing dozens of interviews as a good CEO should, and the press doesn't have a clue who he is going to pick.

****

I trust you Mr. President-elect! I may not understand everything you do, but I know you have America and her citizens' best interests at heart!

****

Trump has a history of picking the absolute best people for the job. I trust his judgment 100%.

****

Supreme Chancellor!!
At Free Republic, there's this in response to the New York Times story about the disarray:
Actually, regarding the transition, the only thing in "disarray" is the mayhem, chaos, fear and loathing, of thousands of complicit bureaucRATs, freaking out and running for their lives.

****

Decisive Leadership from Trump immediately clearing out low performers is precisely how the productive sector builds winning teams.

winning

we are going to get so tired of winning

****

No one at the Slimes understands how real-world professional organizations operate; hence they cannot comprehend what Trump is doing. The less they understand, the more Trump will get done.
Conservatives believe in strongmen. Above all, it's about the Supreme Leader. They voted for Trump not because they think he's a good businessman, but because they think he's the best businessman ever. That's what they were told for fourteen seasons on The Apprentice. They think he's in charge of the transition, therefore it must work, by definition.

Conservatives don't believe in government. They don't see the point of the government bureaucracy, although they hope that many domestic-policy agencies will be staffed in a way that thwarts the agencies' stated purposes. Mostly, however, they just believe that it's all a big, unnecessary encumbrance. (Sometimes I think this is because many of them aren't big-city office workers. They've never been part of a large white-collar organization. They distrust such organizations and have no interest in understanding them. That last Freeper claims to know "how real-world professional organizations operate," which tells me he's not speaking from much experience inside a big company or similar large-size bureaucracy.)

Generally speaking, they want government to fail. (They forget sometimes that the military and law enforcement, which they like, are part of government.) For the most part, they probably like the idea that the works are being gummed up. That's what should happen.

So, no, this isn't bothering them a bit.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:38 AM 6 comments

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

THE FICTIONAL HILLARY CLINTON WHO LIVES IN CONSERVATIVES' HEADS

I thought Hillary Clinton conducted her campaign with poise and dignity. Of course, I say that because I was watching the real Hillary. The fake Hillary who dwells in right-wingers' heads was, by contrast, a real mess.

At The American Spectator (yes, it's still around), R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. (yes, he's still around, too) writes:
Sources have told The American Spectator that on Tuesday night, after Hillary realized she had lost, she went into a rage. Secret Service officers told at least one source that she began yelling, screaming obscenities, and pounding furniture. She picked up objects and threw them at attendants and staff. She was in an uncontrollable rage. Her aides could not allow her to come out in public. It would take her hours to calm down. As has been reported for years, her violent temper got the best of her. Talk about having a temperament ill-suited for having access to the atomic bomb. So Podesta went out and gave his aimless speech. I wish we could report on Bill’s whereabouts but we cannot. We shall work on that.
Breitbart, naturally, picks up on this, adding:
Bill appeared the following day at Hillary’s belated concession speech wearing a purple tie but, thankfully, no purple marks about his face, suggesting experience dictated avoidance the previous evening.

“People say they’re amazed Bill’s marriage survived,” Tyrrell noted to Breitbart. “I’m amazed Bill survived his marriage.”
But Tyrrell and Breitbart aren't the only ones making this claim. Even before Tyrrell's Spectator post went live, there was this:



Followed by these:





These tweets were posted by Todd Kincannon, who was once the executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party. He's now, it seems, a full-time political provocateur and sometime radio host. He was (temporarily) banned from Twitter for offensive tweets such as these:







Kincannon has been accused of domestic abuse (which, by the way, he blamed on prescription cough medicine), and he's had his law license suspended for sending “multiple emails and facsimile messages” that were said to contain “menacing language and images.”

But he was a reliable enough source for Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, who helped to make this story go viral.

This is the kind of nonsense that's been spread about Hillary Clinton for a quarter century. It's always poorly sourced, but conservatives don't care. Their idea of an excellent news source is anything that reinforces their preconceptions, even if it's full of lies. You want to know why Facebook was flooded was fake news this election season? It's because right-wingers have developed an insatiable craving for phony news over the past twenty-plus years. They'll believe anything that makes them feel good, or makers them feel righteously angry, no matter how credible it is. And that's how we wound up with a fake-news president-elect. Trump became political while immersed in this culture. He's a creature of it. It's effectively mainstream now.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:22 PM 7 comments

JARED KUSHNER WILL NOT BE THE CALMING INFLUENCE WHO SAVES AMERICA

There are some people out there who believe that, yes, Donald Trump is an ill-informed, racist rageoholic with ADHD and no impulse control, but his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are stabilizing influences within Trump World.

Apparently, in the case of Kushner, that's not quite true, at least at this moment. NBC News reports:
The Donald Trump transition, already off to slow start, bogged down further Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of former Congressman Mike Rogers, who had been coordinating its national security efforts.

Two sources close to Rogers said he had been the victim of what one called a "Stalinesque purge," from the transition of people close to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who left Friday....

The purge indicates the emphasis on loyalty -- and significant influence of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka -- that characterized Trump's campaign will carry over into his White House.

Multiple sources indicated that Christie was demoted because he wasn't seen as sufficiently loyal to Trump, failing to vocally defend him at key moments on the campaign trail.

But he has long been in a precarious position with Trump, due in part, multiple sources say, to a longstanding grudge sparked when Christie prosecuted Kushner's father in 2004. Due to Christie's investigation, Charles Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 felony counts, including tax fraud and witness tampering, and was sentenced to two years in federal prison.
I understand why Kushner would have a problem with Christie, but it's not as if this is a new fact about him that suddenly came to light. Kushner learned to live with Christie's presence throughout the campaign. Maybe that was painful -- but if he's going to make a move against Christie, now is not the time. The transition is very important to the future of the country, It needs to go smoothly. Apparently Kushner's act of vengeance could wait until Election Day, but couldn't wait until Inauguration Day. Why?

And why does the purge have to include Christie loyalists? Mike Rogers had nothing to do with prosecuting the elder Kushner. This is a fit of pique that seems rather ... Trumpesque.

Well, we know that Kushner has no idea how the federal government works. We read this L.A. Times report last Friday:
Kushner’s presence at the White House on Thursday drew notice from Obama’s staff when he asked, as they toured the West Wing, how many of the individuals there would remain into the next administration. Nearly all will depart along with the president.
I understand that Trump himself doesn't have the patience to read anything and can't be bothered to learn how the government operates -- but if Kushner intends to be involved in Trump's administration, is anything preventing him from learning how administrations are staffed? Couldn't he at least have read up on the subject or talked to someone knowledgeable before making a fool of himself?

And we shouldn't think Kushner is a nicer guy than Trump -- as I noted yesterday, he schemed with Steve Bannon to give women who've accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault a prominent place in the audience at the second debate this year.
The gambit to give Bill Clinton’s accusers prime seats [at the debate] was devised by Trump campaign chief executive Stephen K. Bannon and Jared Kushner, the candidate’s son-in-law, and approved personally by Trump.
An ignorant, vengeful real estate scion? I guess Ivanka effectively married her dad, didn't she?
Posted by Steve M. at 1:54 PM 7 comments

JUST CLONE THOSE TWO GUYS!

The New York Times reports:
... Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, emerged as a leading candidate to be secretary of state, according to people familiar with the deliberations in the 26th-floor office in Trump Tower where Mr. Trump was ensconced throughout the day.

... Mr. Trump is also considering naming Mr. Giuliani or Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama as the next attorney general, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

... People with knowledge of the process described a series of chaotic discussions and said Mr. Trump might also choose Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Sessions to lead the Department of Homeland Security, though neither has expressed interest in that job.
And Politico adds:
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is the leading contender for Donald Trump's secretary of defense, sources close to the transition say....
Apparently, if Donald Trump had his druthers, he'd give every Cabinet job to Jeff Sessions or Rudy Giuliani. He'd have only two people in his Cabinet.

Trump seems terrified by the prospect of putting people on his team who aren't from his inner circle. I see that as a big reason he (allegedly!) wants security clearances for his kids. Obviously it's an easy (if ethically indefensible) way for them to obtain inside information as they run Trump's businesses -- but I also suspect that Trump feels more secure (or less insecure) around them. His ego won't permit him to acknowledge ignorance around anyone with whom he feels competitive (which means basically any adult male) -- but his kids are his kids, so he feels superior to them by definition. Therefore, it doesn't bruise his delicate ego quite as much that they might grasp something he doesn't.

Apart from the kids, Trump seems comfortable only with people who've kissed his ring. That group includes Giuliani and Sessions, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus. And who else? Even ring-kissers can be on the outs -- Chris Christie seems to have been banished, and I don't know what's up with Newt Gingrich. So who's left? Can Trump staff an entire government with seven or eight people?

Posted by Steve M. at 9:00 AM 4 comments
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