December 16, 2016

None Dare Call it Treason - Trump's similarities to Putin are evident, but will we call him out for

what he really is?


In 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson, a man named John A. Stormer self-published a book called None Dare Call It Treason. It accused America’s left-leaning elites of paving the way for a Soviet victory in the Cold War. The book sold 7 million copies, but Johnson crushed Goldwater in the election.

Now that the CIA has determined that the Russians intervened in the presidential election to help Trump win, the Cold War politics of left and right have been flipped. If Stormer rewrote his book for 2016, its thesis might go like this:

Beware of Donald Trump. Witlessly or willfully, he’s doing the Kremlin’s bidding. Anyone who enables him — on his payroll or in the press, by sucking up or by silence, out of good will or cowardice — is Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. This is a national emergency, and treating it like normal is criminally negligent of our duty to American democracy.

Trump as traitor: I can just imagine the reaction from the Tower penthouse. Lying media. Paranoid hyperbole. Partisan libel. Sour grapes. A pathetic bid for clicks. A desperate assault on the will of the people. Sad! (Note to the tweeter-in-chief: You’re welcome.)

As a kid in a New Jersey household where Adlai Stevenson was worshipped, I thought Stormer was a nut job, so I won’t pretend that accepting the modern inverse of his case is a no-brainer. I’m also not trying to recast my political differences with the president-elect as a national security crisis. Trump won. Elections have consequences. I get that.

I may not like it, but I’m not surprised that Trump tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a crusading climate change denier and an advocate of dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, to run the EPA, presumably into the ground. Anyone who interpreted Al Gore’s meeting with Trump as a sign of his open-mindedness on climate change got played, just like Gore got played.

Similarly, I’m cynical but not shocked that Trump’s picks for treasury secretary, National Economic Council and chief adviser – Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn and Steve Bannon – are alumni of Goldman Sachs. A billionaire managed to hijack Bernie Sanders’ indictment of Wall Street and brand Hillary Clinton as the stooge of Goldman Sachs. The success of that impersonation isn’t on Trump, it’s on us.

I’m infuriated, but not startled that Trump refuses to disclose his tax returns, divest his assets, create a credible blind trust, obey the constitutional prohibition of foreign emoluments or eliminate the conflict between fattening his family fortune and advancing American interests. That’s not draining the swamp, it’s drinking it.

It’s abysmal that Democrats didn’t have a good enough jobs message to convince enough Rust Belt voters to choose their economic alternative to Trump’s tax cuts for the rich.

It’s abysmal that Democrats didn’t have a good enough jobs message to convince enough Rust Belt voters to choose their economic alternative to Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. It’s disgraceful that the media normalized Trump, propagated his lies, monetized his notoriety and lapped up his tweet porn. It’s maddening that the Electoral College apportions ballot power inequitably. But as enervating as any of that is, none of it is as dangerous to democracy as the CIA’s finding that Putin hacked the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Without firing a single shot, the Kremlin is weeks away from installing its puppet in the White House.

Within days, Trump is expected to name Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s CEO, as his secretary of state. Putin bestowed the Order of Friendship, one of Russia’s highest civilian honors, on Tillerson after Exxon signed a deal with Rosneft, the Russian government-owned oil company, to jointly explore the Black Sea and Arctic. The plan died when the US and EU sanctioned Russia for annexing Crimea; Tillerson, whose Exxon shares’ value will skyrocket if sanctions are lifted, favors lifting them.

The Tillerson appointment is the latest dot in the pattern of Trump’s Putinophilia. When 17 US intelligence agencies concurred that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic emails, Trump — who’s refused most of his security briefings — rejected their conclusion, claiming at one point that it “could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” at another that “it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.” I knew that Trump is a serial fat-shamer, but I didn’t know until now that being a Newarker puts me in his crosshairs, too.

It’s entirely conceivable that Russia has something on Trump. They may hold hundreds of millions of dollars of Trump debt. They may have spousally unsettling video of him — a KGB specialty, and a plausible Trump susceptibility. Surely the Kremlin has mapped his character disorder. In the third debate, when Trump said Putin had no respect for Clinton, and she shot back, “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president,” Trump’s interruption — “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet, no, you’re the puppet” — sounded like a third-grader. Actually, it was a confession, what clinicians call projective identification. Putin’s psy ops must know every such string on him to play.

Before the election, when both parties’ congressional leaders were secretly informed that Russia had its thumb on the scale for Trump, Republican leader Mitch McConnell torpedoed a bipartisan plan to decry their intervention. Now that the news is out, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the intel “should alarm every American,” and they called for a bipartisan investigation to stop “the grave threats that cyberattacks… pose to our national security.”

Trump’s response? “I think it is ridiculous. It’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it. Every week it’s another excuse. We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”

As we don’t know. Trump’s Electoral College margin will rank 44thamong the 54 presidential elections that have been held since the 12thAmendment was ratified. Nate Silver called Trump’s “landslide” claim “Orwellian.” The Washington Post gave it Four Pinocchios. Why not just call it a lie?

Trump blew off the Kremlin’s intervention in our election the way Putin denied Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Do we call that a lie, too?

Maybe there’s a better word we should dare to use.


http://billmoyers.com/story/none-dare-call-treason/

December 15, 2016

Now Circulating Ivanka Trump will be de facto First Lady - The case for Ivanka Trump as first lady

It’s a measure of just how hilariously awful Donald Trump’s choices to fill his administration have been so far that when the idea began to circulate last week that his daughter Ivanka Trump might end up serving as his de facto first lady, I actually thought, “hey, I don’t hate this.”

It’s not so much that I’m willing to hand-wave the ethical problems with the Trump children’s involvement in their father’s government or that I’ve learned to excuse what the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum described as Ivanka’s “weaponized graciousness,” the beaming dishonesty she uses to moderate her father’s ugly, erratic behavior. It’s that of all the ways Trump wants to disrupt government, the first lady’s position is one that could actually use a good shaking-up.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/article120943288.html#storylink=cpy

December 12, 2016

Trump to inherit state-run TV network with expanded reach

A provision tucked into the defense bill guts the Voice of America board, stoking fears that Trump could wield a powerful propaganda arm.

President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network.

Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent U.S. agency that includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcast Networks.

he move – pushed by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce as a way to streamline the agency – concentrates control into a powerful CEO that is appointed by the president.

That change, combined with a 2013 legislative revision that allows the network to legally reach a U.S. audience, which was once banned, could pave the way for Trump-approved content created by the U.S. diplomacy arm, if he chooses to exploit the opportunity.

Essentially, Trump is finally getting his Trump TV – financed by taxpayers to the tune of $800 million per year. And some of the few people in the know aren’t happy about it.

Entire Article @ link: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-voice-of-america-232442

December 12, 2016

Someone keeps photoshopping Trump's face on the Queen and it's terrifying

https://www.yahoo.com/news/someone-keeps-photoshopping-trumps-face-192452806.html

December 11, 2016

How the Democratic Party Lost Its Way

""During my 20 years in Democratic campaigns, I’ve seen the party operation decline into an insular and myopic letdown. But I also know how it can recover.

I made my first visit to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1998, when I was campaign manager for a longshot candidate running against an entrenched incumbent. By the time we left the building, we felt empowered and connected. We had a campaign roadmap that offered organizational and financial benchmarks, a point of contact with the committee, weekly talking points and an organization behind us that made introductions and offered advice when we needed it.

Fast forward 18 years. This time, I’m the congressional candidate running in a longshot North Carolina district in a year that many people thought might be a Democratic sweep. By now, I’d been to the DCCC numerous times to introduce candidates or meet with staff. Most of those experiences were similar to that first visit. But in 2016, things were different. I didn’t hear from the DCCC during the first six months of my race. After the primaries, I reached out to them. But despite leaving numerous messages on both email and answering machines, I never got any response. When I eventually used my Congressional connections to get an audience, I took my pollster and media consultant to a meeting that lasted all of 15 minutes. We left with little more than a list of reasons why the DCCC wouldn’t be helping our campaign.""

Entire Article: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/how-the-democratic-party-lost-its-way-214514

December 11, 2016

Interview with David Remnick Trump Will Be a 'Severe Disappointment To Millions' Spiegel Online

SPIEGEL speaks to the editor of the New Yorker about the dangers of fascism under Donald Trump, international leaders' reactions to the election and the role of the press in reporting on the next administration.


SPIEGEL: On the night of the election, you published a stunning warning that the election's outcome was "surely the way fascism can begin." It's been three weeks now. Has fascism begun?

I've lived through terrible presidents, we all have. I lived through the Nixon administration, which prolonged a horrific war for years and ran a criminal operation out of the White House, and I lived through the years with George W. Bush. And I lived for years in the Soviet Union and have seen the promise of democratic development turn, with Putin, into an authoritarian state. So yes, I think we should be alarmed, watchful, and, as journalists, rigorous and fearless. I think we should be alert.

SPIEGEL: Similar developments have taken place in other countries as well.

SPIEGEL: Donald Trump sends mixed messages. He claims to want to unite the country but he appointed a person like Steve Bannon, a white supremacist, as his chief strategist. What does all this mean in terms of the direction the Trump administration might take?

Remnick: There are inconsistencies in his ideology. It's worth remembering that this is very different than the Reagan experience. Ronald Reagan came to office and had already been an experienced politician as governor of California, whose ideology and ideas, no matter how simplistic or no matter how much you may disagree with them, were fairly well-developed and fairly consistent. Donald Trump is a real-estate branding operator and a reality-show television star whose entrance into big-time politics, as a victor, as someone who will now wield tremendous power, was as shocking to him as it was to everybody else. I think that he got into the race thinking that it would be good for his brand, that he would surprise some people by doing better than expected, and then lose, and then come out of it with a certain amount of embellishment of his celebrity and, therefore, his business. He expected to gain, both financially and in prestige, by losing. But now he has won.

SPIEGEL: Trump put the economy at the center of his campaign and promised to bring jobs back to the United States. What's wrong with that?

Remnick: There's nothing wrong with creating jobs. What's wrong is to seed the illusion that you will magically bring back the economy of 1970, that you will reopen coal mines. The notion that somehow through a trade war or protectionism or magical thinking that we're going to return to a romanticized economic past is, in the end, going to be an illusion. And a severe disappointment to millions of decent, hard-working people.

SPIEGEL: He combines antidemocratic policies with unconventional proposals. Reaching out to Putin might open new opportunities in foreign policy ...

Remnick: ... and maybe Santa Claus is real. Here's the problem: reality. I would love to have a stable, productive relationship with Russia. I would also like to see Russia not interfere in our elections. I would like to see Russia not invade Ukraine or put pressure on and threaten Baltic states. But we live in the real and existing world. And now, despite the long election campaign, Donald Trump is going to have to live in the real world in which Vladimir Putin is exactly who he presents himself to be, and Putin is extremely skilled. He's not going to make it very easy for the United States or Germany. And he's going to test Trump.

SPIEGEL: Who knows how they will handle each other. Maybe Putin will find his match in Donald Trump.

Remnick: I don't know that Donald Trump is anything more to Putin than what Lenin called a poleznye durak, a useful idiot. I want to make something clear. By the laws of the United States, Trump won the election. And unless some sensational story is discovered about manipulation or vote counts, we're going to have to live with that. And I know, too, that millions and millions of people voted for Trump not because they are cartoon racists, but because they did not like Hillary Clinton for a variety of reasons, because they had real economic and social grievances. I think the hacking of the DNC, the FBI's behavior, and, above all, the idea of Russian interference, are outrageous, but there is the law. And I think the Electoral College is an absurd 18th-century construct. But that is the law. Yet I say all these critical things not out of a sense of anti-patriotism but out of a sense of patriotism, out of a sense of alarmed and informed concern for my country.


Rest of the Interview @ the link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-david-remnick-about-donald-trump-a-1124151.html

December 11, 2016

Fearful of the future under Trump, more minorities are buying guns

Following Donald Trump’s victory, minorities are increasingly buying guns to protect themselves. Alex Brandon AP

Post-election fears, again, are driving gun purchases – this time less by those worried about losing their gun rights than losing their lives.

Since Donald Trump’s win last month, hate crimes nationwide have surged, and so has the number of people of color buying guns for protection. According to an NBC News report, some gun store owners have seen a four-fold increase in minorities inquiring about and purchasing firearms in recent weeks.

Earl Curtis, an African-American and owner of Blue Ridge Arsenal in Virginia, told a reporter that many people of color believe “that racists now feel like they can attack . . . just because [Trump] is doing it.”

Philip Smith, founder of the National African American Gun Association, told the Philadelphia Tribune, “There’s a lot of fear out there on both sides that is divided racially. It’s the unfortunate reality right now.”

Here’s what’s also unfortunate: More people of color with guns will likely result in more people of color dead or in prison. Minnesota’s open carry law did not save Philando Castile. He informed the officer who stopped his car that he was carrying a licensed gun, but was still shot to death in front of his girlfriend and her young daughter in July. In 2014, Ohio’s open-carry law did not spare the life of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot dead by a cop while playing with a toy gun. This past week, officials declined to charge a police officer in the shooting death of Keith Scott who may have had a gun in his possession but was not holding it when he was killed in Charlotte earlier this year. North Carolina is also an open-carry state.


And when Marissa Alexander stood her ground in Florida against her abusive husband by firing a warning shot into a wall, she was sentenced to 20 years for aggravated assault, even though the bullet struck no one. (The jury deliberated just 12 minutes.) After public outcry, Alexander accepted a plea bargain and was released in 2015, after three years in prison.

Still, such stories aren’t proving a deterrent. People of color, having witnessed the rancor that the nation’s next president has stirred to a boil, are arming themselves, afraid their government and law enforcement will do nothing to protect them. This recalls an even more virulent era, documented in Nicholas Johnson’s excellent 2014 book, “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms,” which explores the history of African-Americans “committed to the principle of self-defense.” Unable to count on police officers to safeguard their families or property from racist gangs, some of whom had cops as members, black people were forced to fend for themselves.

In 1892, when at least one black person a week was being lynched in America, anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells said, “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”

According to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, gun ownership by blacks is less than half that of whites, 19 percent vs. 41 percent. Yet attitudes are also changing: 54 percent of blacks saw gun ownership as more likely to protect people than put them at risk; two years earlier, it was just 29 percent.

When citizens of color feel the incoming government will do nothing about the hate crimes endangering their lives, they will feel compelled to defend themselves. But in a nation with as many guns as people, we must find other ways of challenging conflict, especially because

African-Americans, Latinos, and Muslims with firearms will always be treated as suspects, not victims.

Like every other citizen, they should exercise their Second Amendment rights as they see fit. Still, even in a time of threat and peril, they must also carry the sobering knowledge that constitutional guarantees tend to fall short when the hand holding a gun is black or brown.


Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/article120158823.html#storylink=cpy

December 10, 2016

Dan Rather on fake news, the power of truth, and our bright future

“If you want to be a journalist worthy of the name, and you want a friend, you better get a dog.”

It’s an old adage, but one that’s stuck with Dan Rather through the nearly seven decades of his career. In the era of fake news, though, the newsman might want to update it: On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a fraud.

The importance of a fierce, independent and adversarial press has been thrown into sharp relief as Silicon Valley and the rest of the country have reckoned with the influence of made-up news online about the presidential election and beyond.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dan-Rather-on-fake-news-the-power-of-truth-and-10786893.php

December 10, 2016

How Mitch McConnell Prevented Stronger Action Against Russian Election Meddling

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was apparently one of the Republican leaders who was most responsible for putting the brakes on a stronger White House pushback against Moscow's efforts at trying to affect the outcome of the U.S. election. At the end of a bombshell Washington Post piece about how the CIA has concluded that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump win the White House, there is word of a secret meeting in Capitol Hill with a group of key lawmakers in September. It was at this meeting that McConnell reportedly expressed serious reservations about the intelligence and threatened to politicize the agency’s findings if they were made public.

The Post explains that the White House was so convinced by the evidence that Russia was trying to affect the outcome of the election that by mid-September it decided that stronger action was needed. But White House officials were afraid that the effort would be seen as an attempt to affect the outcome of the election so the administration wanted both parties to come together and criticize Russian interference as well as urge local governments to accept federal assistance in protecting the voting process.

The Democratic lawmakers all agreed that the threat of Russian interference needed to be taken seriously but at least two Republicans, including McConnell, pushed back. The Post reports:

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.
Trump has selected McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, to be his secretary of transportation, a position that requires congressional approval.

McConnell has refused to comment on the reports about the CIA conclusions on Russia’s meddling in the election. McConnell’s office told BuzzFeed News that it “would not violate federal law by providing classified information.”


From: Slate Plus

December 10, 2016

Fake News: How a Partying Macedonian Teen Earns Thousands Publishing Lies

VELES, Macedonia — Dimitri points to a picture on his Instagram showing a bar table decked with expensive champagne and sparklers.

It's from his 18th birthday just four months ago — a lavish party in his east European hometown that he says wouldn't have been possible without President-elect Donald Trump.

Dimitri — who asked NBC News not to use his real name — is one of dozens of teenagers in the Macedonian town of Veles who got rich during the U.S. presidential election producing fake news for millions on social media.

The articles, sensationalist and often baseless, were posted to Facebook, drawing in armies of readers and earning fake-news writers money from penny-per-click advertising.

Dimitri says he's earned at least $60,000 in the past six months — far outstripping his parents' income and transforming his prospects in a town where the average annual wage is $4,800. He is one of the more successful fake news pushers in the area.

His main source of cash? Supporters of America's president-elect.

Article: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/fake-news-how-a-partying-macedonian-teen-earns-thousands-publishing-lies/ar-AAlmttG?li=BBnb7Kz