This is an open thread for the third presidential debate between major party candidates. It’s open to topics related to the debate topics and questions; let’s avoid other topics like sports or food, etc., unless they relate directly to the candidates.
Debate location: University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada
Time: 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EDT (Nevada, however, is in MDT.)
Debate moderators: Chris Wallace, Fox News
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (Gary Johnson and Jill Stein did not qualify per Commission on Presidential Debates which organizes these events.)
The format for this debate is the same as the first presidential debate. A 15-minute segment will be dedicated to each of six questions posited by the moderator. Each candidate will have two minutes to respond to each question, with a short rebuttal allotted to each candidate. The moderator will use the balance of time to flesh out additional discussion on the topics.
It’s rumored Trump will try another ‘nuclear winter’ move by inviting guests whose presence may ruffle Clinton. His effort last debate — bringing women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a panel before and outside of the debate — didn’t appear as effective as he would like. Will he indulge in other threatening body language as he did during the second debate?
Other rumors suggest Clinton may invite members of the Central Park Five to rattle Trump, but this is probably unnecessary as 1) Trump has doubled down on his stupidity about the CP5’s guilt (they were exonerated by DNA evidence), and 2) he’s easy to rattle without any third parties’ assistance.
I don’t know about you but I think I need to stock up on tequila to get through this last gasp.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/USFlag_KevinMorris-Unsplash_08OCT2016_1500pxw.jpg10001500Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-10-19 19:00:132016-10-19 17:43:55Third Presidential Debate — Open Thread
In this roundup: Disinfowar, fossil fuels’ finale, pipeline problems, and a longish short about evolving hope.
The embedded feature video here, Dust by Ember Lab, won a number of awards last year. It’s a gritty blend of real and fantasy, and the closest thing to a American feature film with an Asian lead (there were no true feature-length films with an Asian/Asian-American lead or co-lead last year). It’s a little exposition dense, but this is integral to the challenge of world-building for a sci-fi/fantasy story. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see this story extended into a true feature or a series.
Disinfowar
If you haven’t already read Marcy’s latest piece today, you should do so soon. We are now deep in disinfo slung by multiple parties.
The one thing that niggles at me about WikiLeaks’ involvement in this latest volley of disinfo: why didn’t WikiLeaks release the Podesta emails when they originally said they were going to do so?
Or was skanky political operative Roger Stone blowing more disinfo out his ass when he tweeted about the impending Wikileaks’ release?
And how does the concurrent “Trump pussy grab” video story interleave with the WikiLeaks’ disinformation? Let’s take a look at the timing.
Early September — WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange claims to have documents damaging to Hillary Clinton which would be released before the election.
30-SEP-2016 Friday — WikiLeaks cancels release of an info dump on Hillary Clinton due to alleged security concerns. The info dump has been framed by some as a potential ‘October surprise’.
04-OCT-2016 Tuesday — Date of canceled WikiLeaks’ info dump.
Midweek (no date/day given) — Access Hollywood’s executive producer Rob Silverstein and team have reviewed the video. A script is prepared for airing of video, but it will not appear Friday evening before the next presidential debate on Sunday.
05-OCT-2016 Wednesday — No WikiLeaks’ info dump.
07-OCT-2016 Friday — First thing in the morning, Access Hollywood was still working on story; an NBC source said the story “wasn’t quite finalized.”
07-OCT-2016 Friday — Noon: Washington Post’s David Farenthold asks NBC for a comment on the Trump/Billy Bush tape which had been leaked to him by unnamed source(s).
A Google Trends snapshot of key words from these two stories also tells the story. To be fair, though ‘pussy’ spiked on Friday, it’s a pretty popular internet search term (in case this had not occurred to some of our readers).
[Source: Google Trends – compare terms:’wikileaks'(blue), ‘hillary'(red), ‘podesta'(yellow), ‘pussy'(green), ‘billy bush'(purple) – click to expand]
Really convenient timing, no matter the validity of the content in the emails.
Wheels
Germany’s upper house of parliament wants combustion engine cars off the roads by 2030 (Reuters) — This is one of the most important stories so far this year: one of the largest single nation economies in the world wants to end use of gasoline- and diesel-fueled vehicles within its borders inside 18 years. How will this impact Volkswagen Group, the largest automaker in EU? At least VW now has impetus to move completely away from its failed passenger diesel engines. Political parties across the Bundesrat, the upper house, support ending sales of combustion engine vehicles. What next steps Germany will take is unclear as is the next possible response by the EC in Brussels.
VW’s CEO Matthias Mueller knew nothing about passenger diesel vehicle scandal (Reuters) — Might be plausible that Mueller didn’t know anything about VW and Bosch tweaking engine control units to defeat emissions standards since Mueller was the head of Porsche before VW Group appointed him to replace Martin Winterkorn. And we all know Porsche isn’t the first brand you’d seek when shopping for either passenger diesel vehicles or fuel efficiency.
Fiat Chrysler and Canadian union Unifor avoid a strike (Detroit Free Press) — The deal includes updates to two plants and a restructuring of workers’ wage scale while working around the impending demise of the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart car models. No mention of self-driving/autonomous cars in FCA’s future lineup, if any.
Facial recognition app failed when used at pipeline protest (Indian Country) — A Crow Creek Tribe activist found he had been ‘identified’ as a pipeline protester by facial recognition software though he had been at a family event elsewhere during the time he was alleged to participate in the protest.
Pipeline construction work resumes after appeals court ruling against tribes (ABC News) — In a stunningly callous move, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a decision Sunday evening — before Columbus Day, the observation which offends Native Americans — denying Native American tribes’ request for an injunction to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Work on the pipeline picked up again today, though the tribes vow to continue their protests. Protesters were arrested yesterday for trespassing, including actor Shailene Woodley. Woodley may have been selected in particular because of her high media profile and because she was streaming the protest online.
Longread: Asymmetry’s role in Trump’s rise
Worth reading NYU’s Jay Rosen on media’s inability to deal with asymmetry in the U.S. political system, and how this permitted Trump’s elevation as a presidential candidate. Personally I take issue with the concept that the “GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics.” In a two-party system where nearly half the population identifies with either one of these parties, neither of the two parties can be insurgent or an outlier.
Instead, this asymmetry — the departure from the past equivalency of either of these two major parties — results from the application of the Overton Window over decades to move nearly half the population toward a more conservative consensus. Applied too much, too often, and nearly half the population has adopted an ideology which is incompatible with the values espoused by a critical mass of this nation before the Overton Window was applied.
And the media, like meteorologists focusing on the day’s weather — is it cloudy or sunny? rain or shine? — missed the entire shift of the political climate toward fascism. Rather like the financial crisis of 2008, for that matter, when they failed to adequately look at the big picture before the entire economy went over the cliff.
That’s a wrap. Make sure you’re registered to vote as many states have deadlines today. Check in with housebound and with college students to see if they are registered and encourage use of absentee ballots where appropriate. Absentee voting has begun in some states.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Fast_ThaddeusLim-Unsplash_11OCT2016_mod-1500pxw.jpg10021500Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-10-11 15:27:532016-10-11 16:20:44Tuesday: Disinfowar Dust Up
This is an open thread for the second presidential debate between major party candidates. It’s open to topics related to the debate topics and questions; let’s avoid other topics like sports or food, etc., unless they relate directly to the candidates.
Debate location: Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
Time: 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EDT (Missouri, however, is in CDT.)
Debate moderators: Martha Raddatz, ABC News, and Anderson Cooper, CNN
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (Gary Johnson and Jill Stein did not qualify per Commission on Presidential Debates which organizes these events.)
The format for this debate is a town hall. I have no idea as I type this what questions will be put to the candidates.
Or I should say I can only imagine a couple questions the moderators may ask based on the release of a certain audiotape on Friday.
ADDER: Looks like Trump has gone nuclear winter on Clinton, having a panel in advance of the debate with Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/USFlag_KevinMorris-Unsplash_08OCT2016_1500pxw.jpg10001500Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-10-09 20:00:562016-10-09 20:12:02Second Presidential Debate — Open Thread
The political hills are alive with the sound of ever more stories of racism, bigotry and misogyny on the part of Donald Trump. What started with his amazing campaign announcement that Mexico was sending drugs, crimes and rapists as immigrants to the US has morphed into an ever expanding portfolio of hatred and otherism with his racism and misogyny pointed at former Miss Universe Alicia Machado as only the latest sick example.
But not that long ago, back in the spring of 2014, it was another Billionaire Donald, Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, displaying his racism, bigotry and misogyny towards his girlfriend. From New York Magazine:
The tape is of an April 9 argument between Sterling and his girlfriend, V. Stiviano, who had apparently angered the octogenarian charmer by posting a photo of Magic Johnson and herself on Instagram. “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?” says Sterling to Stiviano, who just happens to be black and Mexican. “You can sleep with [black people],” he explains. “You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”
Other highlights from the recording include Sterling advising Stiviano that “In your lousy fucking Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people” and requesting that she “not bring [Johnson] to my games.”
So, what happened when the current Billionaire Donald, Donald Trump, was asked about Sterling’s deplorable statements? Did he decry them and say how improper and unacceptable they were? No. Of course not. Trump went off on a rant cravenly attacking the woman in the situation. Again, from New York Magazine:
Meanwhile, as calls for Sterling to leave the league continue to mount, Donald Trump sees the whole thing as the result of Sterling being “set up by a very, very bad girlfriend.”
“She’s called the ‘girlfriend from hell,’” said Trump while talking about Stiviano on Monday’s Fox & Friends. “She was baiting him and she’s a terrible human being. The way she led him along, I mean — he should know if he were there, if he was with it, he would know after one or two of those questions that she was asking that there’s something going on here.”
That seems to be the pattern and life view for Trump. Billionaire racists can do no wrong, and women are terrible humans to be ogled and disposed of as chattel at will. Once the Donald, always the Donald. It is just who he is.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/zazopQy-e1475545360194.jpg281300bmazhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngbmaz2016-10-03 21:44:002016-10-04 10:59:28When Donald Trump Doubled Down on Donald Sterling’s Racism, Bigotry and Misogyny
Colin Kaepernick started something when he sat, and then kneeled, for the Star Spangled Banner. Not sure he knew or fully intended the scope of reaction he generated, but generate it he did. It has led to much consternation and discussion across sports, media and the nation’s conscience. Not yet to the significance of the #BlackLivesMatter effort, but remarkably substantial.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick said of his decision to kneel during a pregame performance of the national anthem.
The action, which Kaepernick said was intended to draw attention to the way law enforcement, and American society in general, treats minorities, has since been adopted by other athletes, professional and otherwise, around the country.
Critics, like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, have upbraided Kaepernick and others for an action that they say is disrespectful and unpatriotic. Kaepernick recently shot back, saying “there’s a lot of racism in this country disguised as patriotism.”
I always had some doubts about Kaepernick as an upper tier QB in the NFL, but nobody who has listened to him talk about his basis for doing what he has, and read about his backstory, can doubt his sincerity and motivation in what he is doing as to seeking social commentary, action and remediation.
Oh, and before you get too wrapped up in your flag, patriotism and the holier than thou national anthem, take a gander at the third verse Francis Scott Key wrote, and that is now oh so conveniently omitted from the hallowed singing of it:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Yeah. Our precious national anthem, from the conveniently omitted third verse, to other descriptions of only “free men”, was really a racist ode to slavery and oppression. Go figure. How dare Colin Kaepernick, or any other citizen possibly object??
Now there is a distinction, often poorly understood, between free speech, and free speech that is protected by the Constitution. The former is what we pretend to ascribe to, the latter is that which the Constitution, mostly, protects from from impingement from government law and/or censorship. There is a difference. And, no, please, do not even think about netsplaining to me that there are limits because “fire in the theater”, lest I have to reach through the inner tubes and strangle the last ounce of life out of you.
Even the craven cop unions which have predictably displayed their belligerence and ignorance over national anthem protests are likely not government actors per se impinging on Kaepernick and others free speech. Unamerican jerks who have no clue what the founding principles (including life other than those in blue) stand for, sure, but that is it.
Before this morning, I might have ended there with a few more words about the dubious antics of jacked up militarized police unions. But then Hall of Fame coach and player Mike Ditka went off in full ignorant racist bigot mode:
Anybody who disrespects this country and the flag, if they don’t like our flag then get the hell out,” he said on Dallas’ 105.3 The Fan. “That’s what I think. So if you’re asking me, I have no respect for Colin Kaepernick.
Yikes. That is not the lovable, if cantankerous, “Da Bears” guy Ditka has made a living existing on. Not to be impolitic or anything, but Mike Ditka can go fuck himself. And, since we are all entitled to our opinion without having to leave the country of our birth and residence, there will be no call here for him to go elsewhere. But I’d sure rather have a thoughtful human like Colin Kaepernick, concerned about racism and fundamental rights, than a blowhard fat jackass like Mike Ditka if it came down to a choice for a neighbor.
And then I saw the story of Coach Preston Brown and the Woodrow Wilson Tigers of Camden, New Jersey. The Tigers don’t play on Sunday like the oh so important NFL, nor even on Saturday with the NCAA elite. They play on Friday nights (okay, sometimes Saturdays), and make it through the week to get there through grit, determination, character and the love of their coaches, led by Preston Brown.
As the head coach of the Woodrow Wilson High School Tigers, he took on the 24-hour-a-day job of being a mentor and a father figure to 68 young men and boys who are growing up in one of the poorest cities in the US. The 31-year-old spends his own money to feed them when they’re hungry. He gives them a place to stay when they have nowhere to go.
So why do so many strangers want him out of a job?
“You are a disgrace to your high school and a coward.”
“I will help them fire you … I hate you with all my heart.”
“Get the f*ck out of this country if you don’t like it you anti-American asshole.”
Brown – a married father of three – wakes up every morning to emails, Facebook messages and voicemails questioning his intellect, his humanity, his patriotism.
For the past two weeks, the Camden City School District has received dozens of calls from across the country, calling for Brown’s dismissal. A local radio personality denounced his “ignorance, shame and stupidity” on the air.
The sin that Brown committed: on 10 September, at the Woodrow Wilson Tigers’ first game of the season, Brown refused to stand for the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner. Instead, he took a knee in a silent protest.
With the exception of two players, the entire Tiger football team joined him. A local sports reporter captured the incident on video – a row of players kneeling in their black and orange uniforms – and posted it online. By evening, the story had gone viral.
Ain’t that America? It is not all little pink houses and white picket fences. The American ethos will not succeed from the top down. Decades of income inequality, land barons, corporate depravity and arrogant Trumpism have proven that. It will come, if at all, from the streets and ground up.
Read the full story. I implore you, read the thing. It is long, but oh so worth it. Preston Brown is a man, a teacher, a leader, and everything that is America. At least that we are supposed to cherish and that we deign to claim with the drumbeat of “American exceptionalism”.
Colin Kaepernick and Preston Brown clearly don’t know each other in the least. but while Kaepernick started a valuable conversation, let the story of the Preston Browns, and the students he is shaping, be the bigger story. And that is the thing, a single man like Brown or Kaepernick can start a fire, even tend it somewhat, but it is up to those it touches to absorb the heat and take it further. So, for all the focus on Preston Brown, let the admiration also be for the students and players at Woodrow Wilson High who are buying into the message and taking it to heart. This is how a difference is made, both small and large.
Okay, moving along to the games, there are a few good choices in the NCAA. The best of the lot is probably Wisconsin at Michigan State. Sparty, despite their 2-0 record looks off this year, and the Badgers look on. But the game is in East Lansing, so I rate it a pick em. Georgia is at Ole Miss, and I will take the home team in an upset. Jim White’s Gators are at Neyland stadium to take on the Vols. Shaky on this, but will take another home team for the upset. And then there is the Stanford Trees at UCLA. There is an old joke that goes “what happens when the smog lifts in Southern California”? The answer is “UCLA”. Okay, lame joke, can’t pick against a McCaffrey, but this has trouble for the Trees written on it.
In the pros, Jacoby Brissett and the unstoppable Patriots have already dispatched Houstonians. But Brissett injured his thumb, and I am calling for the signing of Tebow to play and win the next game. That would truly cement the Belichick legacy. Broncos at Bengals and Lions at Green Bay will be critical games. The Cheese has looked Swiss with holes early on this season. The Kittehs look dangerous. We shall see. The really exciting matchup is the Steelers versus the Eagles in Philly. Carson Wentz and the revamped Iggles under Doug Peterson have been great so far. But Big Ben, Antonio Brown and D’Angelo Williams are rolling. This should be a great game, but have to take the Stillers. Lastly, Honey Badger and Pat Peterson are coming for these two clowns.
Music this week by John Mellancamp. That is it. Go, set forth, and make America great again (by voting against Trump).
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/91332625_091716-woodrowwilsonhighschoolfootballteam-ss14.jpg549976bmazhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngbmaz2016-09-23 22:59:132016-09-25 13:51:49America, Friday Night Lights and Ditka Is An Ass Trash
As Eli Lake wrote the other day, there are three men angling to be CIA Director under President Hillary: John Brennan, Mike Morell, and Mike Vickers.
I’ve already explained what is terrifying about Vickers’ audition to be CIA Director: after laying out the Hillary as Commander-in-Chief case (which appears to be mandatory for these things), Vickers then talks about how we need to escalate our wars and belligerence.
To be sure, we will need more aggressive counterterrorism strategies, stronger support for the Syrian opposition as the only plausible counterweight to authoritarianism and extremism within Syria, more effective counters to Iranian and Russian expansion, and better strategies for deterring and competing with China over the long term.
Henceforth, I will refer to Vickers as The Escalationist.
Today, Mike Morell submitted his audition to be CIA Director.
As Vickers did (these do seem to be formulaic), Morell lays out his extensive bipartisan past (Vickers claims service under 4 Republican and 2 Democratic Presidents, Morell claims 3 of each), then talks about how serving with Hillary convinced him she has the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief.
I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.
Like Vickers, Morell lauds Hillary’s courage in pushing for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important colleagues on the National Security Council.
[snip]
I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, I saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, “Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner.”
Disrupting White House Correspondents Dinner to kill someone would count as politics? Really?
Also like Vickers, Morell then lays out Trump’s lack of qualification for the job, both in terms of background and temperament.
But Morell’s gimmick — the brand that sets him apart on this quest to be CIA Director — is not an explicit call for escalation, but instead the specific gloss he puts on Trump’s soft spot for Putin. After portraying Trump’s careless claims as full endorsements of Putin, Morell claims Trump has been recruited by the old KGB officer, albeit unwittingly.
Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor in making political hay out of Trump’s call on Putin to hack Hillary, especially coming as it does from someone (unlike Jake Sullivan and Leon Panetta) without a known history of mishandling classified information.
But that line? “recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation”? That’s all about the clicks, and it has been serving splendidly. Just like “Slam Dunk” was a nifty line.
In a piece auditioning to be CIA Director, I’d prefer someone stick more rigorously to the truth. Trump is an apologist for Putin, undoubtedly, but there’s no more evidence Putin has recruited Trump (unwittingly) than there is, say, the Saudis have recruited Hillary. They’re all just picking the assholes they champion, with Hillary picking the assholes we’ve long championed.
So there you have it: The Escalationist versus The Fabulist, your first two contestants on the Price is Right CIA nomination competition.
Sadly, we probably won’t see something quite so explicit from Brennan (though it would be amusing to see if a third endorsement hewed so closely to the same script as the other two), so we’ll just have to accept Lake’s “drone warrior” brand for him.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2016-08-05 08:39:222016-08-05 08:49:56CIA Director Entry Number 2: Mike Morell, Fabulist
Virtually the entire political class has now united to defeat Donald Trump, with Morning Joe today staging a Michael Hayden appearance that served largely to allow Scarborough to tell the story of Trump asking three times in a foreign policy briefing why the US couldn’t use its nukes. As Dan Drezner pointed out on Twitter, Scarborough says the event happened months ago — when the primary was still going on — but has just now staged its telling.
Beating Donald Trump is important. He’s a racist who aims to win by promising white working class people they can resume persecuting people of color again, and he is dangerously inconsistent. That said, he does want to spend lots on infrastructure and protect workers from the ravages of globalization, something often forgotten in depictions of him as entirely policy free.
But the transpartisan obsession with beating Trump has largely applauded two developments that, for liberals, for democrats, for those who believe in peace, for progressives, should be a worry.
First, the Neocon establishment has come out in enthusiastic support for Clinton, with ideologue Eliot Cohen orchestrating serialefforts (one that even includes John Yoo!!) to oppose Trump. They point to Trump’s erratic nature and more recently the theories of Putin’s influence. They do so even in the face of a report that Paul Manafort, through whom any Putin influence would be managed, is checking out.
I exchanged messages Tuesday evening with a longtime ally of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, whom I asked about who was calling the shots in the campaign. The response indicated that Manafort, a veteran of Republican politics brought in this spring for the transition from primaries to the general election, has lost control over his candidate.
“Manafort not challenging (Trump) anymore,” Manafort’s ally wrote. “Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.”
I’m getting whiplash following the Manchurian Trump stories. Maybe the ones suggesting Bill Clinton was behind the Trump run are the true ones after all.
And even while the focus has been on Russia’s alleged influence with Trump, there has been no focus on Hillary’s unquestioning support of Saudi Arabia (the country that had ties to 9/11) and Israel. Or on Hillary’s equally troubling policy proposals, such as starting a No Fly Zone over Russian planes. As Will Bunch noted in a great column, Democrats have become the party that shuns people who chant No More War.
The delegates didn’t hear from an Andrew Bacevich or the equivalent of James Madison, but they did get Panetta, who — as noted in this excellent analysis — has supported expanded war powers for the White House, failed to push for real accountability on Bush-era torture, and once suggested that “a 30-year war” will be needed against terrorism. Was it really rude for some of the DNC delegates to chant “no more war!” during Panetta’s speech? Or were some citizens desperately trying to be heard with a different point of view, in a nation so eager to squelch any public debate?
It should be a scandal that the United States drops bombs from flying death robots or our obscenely expensive military jets over countries like Libya, swaths of Africa, or Syria based only on a 15-year-old congressional resolution passed after an attack carried out mostly by Saudi Arabians loyal to a terrorist group that barely exists in 2016. But we’re afraid of any frank discussion of that, or the recent admission by the Obama administration that U.S. military actions in nations with which we’re not technically at war have killed 116 innocent civilians. That’s a number that experts find ridiculously low, by the way, and doesn’t as include as many as 85 Syrian civilians who were killed in late July by a U.S. airstrike — a story that was all but ignored in the media. Even if you strongly believe that such collateral damage is necessary to defeat international terrorism, chanting “USA! USA!” to support militarism is both jingoistic and crudely callous toward the dead.
Not only has Hillary gotten the support of the people who brought us into Iraq based on a lie (she told her own little stretchers to get us into Libya), but we’re now drowning out any voice for peace.
Then there’s the parade of heinous billionaires Hillary has rolled out, with Mark Cuban, Mike Bloomberg, and now Meg Whitman. NYT’s coverage of Whitman’s announcement emphasizes that Hillary has been courting Republican billionaires since before she finalized the nomination and that Hillary’s pick of the pro-TPP pro-Wall Street Tim Kaine is what sealed the deal for Whitman.
Whitman, who said she would remain a Republican, brings with her a considerable network of contributors, some of whom she said were open to giving to Mrs. Clinton. She said she was willing to campaign for Mrs. Clinton, said she would do her best to gather checks for her campaign and indicated she would personally give to both Mrs. Clinton and her affiliated “super PACs.” An aide to Ms. Whitman said she would personally give at least an amount in the “mid-six figures” to the Clinton effort.
While Democrats openly appealed at their convention last week to Republicans uneasy with Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her top supporters have been making a similar cross-party pitch in private since before the Democratic nomination fight even came to its conclusion.
[snip]
She said she had told Mrs. Clinton that she wanted to see the two parties’ conventions and assess the running mates that each nominee chose before making her decision. When Mrs. Clinton selected Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a consensus-oriented figure, “that was a positive for me,” Ms. Whitman said.
Whitman’s nod to Kaine is of particular concern to me, as Democrats downplayed his anti-choice and pro-business policies, at least in public, until after the convention. Now, if anything happens to Hillary (who has some dangerously unhinged enemies), we’ll basically have a moderate Republican running the country.
It’s not just that Hillary has secretly been courting oligarchs since before she cemented the nomination. It’s that her post-convention politicking has focused on it, as if the approval of oligarchs is what it will take to win in midwest swing states.
The guy who will likely become Majority Leader is even more aggressively pursuing typical Republican voters (though this view — admittedly filtered through the potentially inaccurate National Review — has some huge logical contradictions, not to mention an odd idea of what it would take for Democrats to continue to win Illinois).
“No guarantees, there never are, but the odds are more like than not that we will take back the Senate,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said at a forum sponsored by the Washington Post Thursday afternoon. Schumer will be the next majority or minority leader of the Senate Democrats, depending upon how November unfolds. He suggested that the electorate’s sense of economic gloom was actually working to his party’s advantage: “The electorate is moving in a more Democratic direction. When middle class incomes decline, people tend to move in a more progressive direction.”
Schumer’s optimism is driven more by national demographics than by the specific traits of his candidates. He contends that Millennials, or voters aged 18 to 35, will be the largest age group voting in this year’s electorate, even if they don’t turn out in massive numbers.
“The number one factor in whether we retake the Senate is whether Hillary Clinton does well, and I think she’s going to do really well,” Schumer says of his former fellow New York senator. He notes that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged Senate Republicans in difficult races to localize their elections, rather than get too tied to Trump’s positions and comments and scoffs, “Sorry, Mitch, this is a national election if there ever was one.”
At least publicly, Schumer has no worries about his party’s dwindling fortunes among working-class white voters. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
Democrats, it appears, want to become the party of the Republican soccer mom, which may work well with the bellicose warmongering, but which seems to view economic malaise as an opportunity rather than a problem.
So yeah, by all means, let’s beat the orange crazy man.
But let’s also be cognizant of the more politically palatable craziness that gets embraced in the process.
I waved my pocket copy of the Constitution at Nancy Pelosi on July 19,2008. Khizr Khan waved his at Donald Trump on July 28,2016.
In real time Thursday night, I caught only the final few seconds of Khizer Khan’s powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Through the rest of Thursday and Friday, more and more of the details of the speech flitted through my Twitter stream and then my heart was warmed when I saw photos of Khan pulling out his pocket copy of the Constitution and waving it at Donald Trump. Almost exactly eight years ago, I had done the same thing, waving my pocket copy at Nancy Pelosi, who then was Speaker of the House and appearing at Netroots Nation in Austin.
Khan was confronting Trump about his campaign in which he had noted that “Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country.” (Quotes come from this copy of Khan’s transcript.) Khan then continued, presumably in reference to banning Muslims from the US: “Donald Trump, you are asking Americans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the U.S. Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.”
In my case, as I noted here and then in a follow-up a couple of months later here, I was urging Pelosi to act on the clear evidence that the George W. Bush administration had committed war crimes including torture. Sadly, as we now approach the end of two terms with Barrack Obama as President, no significant Bush Administration official has faced any consequences for the torture and other war crimes carried out in our name. Further, despite clear-cut evidence of many crimes by banksters in the massive foreclosure fraud crisis that dispossessed a significant proportion of the US middle class, no significant prosecutions have been undertaken by the Department Formerly Known as Justice.
Khan is so right to wave the Constitution in Trump’s face. Note that a central feature at recent Trump rallies has been endless chanting of “Lock her up”, calling for prosecution of Hillary Clinton for crimes associated with her use of a private email server (and presumably also for Benghazi!!1!) while serving as Secretary of State.
And that is where I see potential huge danger for our dear Constitution. We already have seen failure to prosecute crimes of tremendous impact to the world and to ordinary citizens here at home. Should Trump win, how could a “Justice Department” that already has shown a willingness to ignore the law in response to the desires of two presidents in a row refuse Trump’s insistence that Clinton be incarcerated through massive overcharging of any technical violation (if it even occurred, which is a huge stretch on its own) on the email front and totally fabricated charges on Benghazi.
Thank you, Khizr Khan for reminding our country that we are founded on what should be a sacred document that lays out how we should establish justice. And thank you for the sacrifice of your son Humayun, who was lost while taking part in an ill-advised war in which many of the war crimes discussed above were carried out.
Here is the full video of Khan’s speech. Standing next to him is his wife, Ghazala Khan.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00Jim Whitehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngJim White2016-07-30 13:33:002016-07-30 15:56:07Waving the Constitution at Those Who Ignore It
The Republicans were supposed to talk about how they plan to Make America Work Again last night. And I supposed Paul Ryan — and to a lesser extent Mitch McConnell, when he wasn’t being booed — presented a vision of how they think Republicans run the economy. That vision doesn’t actually resemble the protectionist big government approach Donald Trump has been running on. But given the revelation that Trump offered to let John Kasich run both domestic and foreign policy if he would be his VP candidate (Kasich was still reluctant), perhaps we should focus more on how Mike Pence wants to suffocate the economy.
Instead, as most people have focused, Republicans continued to attack Hillary (Hillary continues to attack Trump, though I suspect she will focus somewhat more on policy next week than Republicans have thus far). Many people have unpacked Chris Christie’s rabble inciting witch hunt last night, but Dan Drezner backs his review of it with some data on the risks to democracy (click through to read all of, which is worth reading).
Gov. Chris Christie’s speech garnered particular attention. It triggered similar reactions from The Weekly Standard and Vox, two outlets not known to agree on all that much.
The climax of Christie’s speech was a call-and-response with the crowd listing Clinton’s various misdeeds.
[snip]
Indeed, political events in both Turkey and the United States makes one somewhat concerned about the future of democracy as a political institution. Francis Fukuyama has banged on in recent years on the problems of political decay in the advanced industrialized democracies. He’s a bit more sanguine about this election cycle than most, but the erosion of accepted norms of political behavior is an extremely disturbing trend. Donald Trump (and his campaign manager) certainlyepitomizes this contempt for such minor things as the Constitution and the rule of law:
As the cherry on the top of this worry sundae, the Journal of Democracy has just published an article by Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk entitled, “The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect.” Foa and Mounck have previewed their findings here and here over the past year, and their thesis is pretty damn sobering:
[snip]
What we find is deeply concerning. Citizens in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and Western Europe have not only grown more critical of their political leaders. Rather, they have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives. The crisis of democratic legitimacy extends across a much wider set of indicators than previously appreciated….
In theory, it is possible that, even in the seemingly consolidated democracies of North America and Western Europe, democracy may one day cease to be the “only game in town”: Citizens who once accepted democracy as the only legitimate form of government could become more open to authoritarian alternatives.
[snip]
By all means, read the whole thing. As an American, I find it particularly troubling that Ronald Inglehart’s rebuttal essay says that Foa and Mounck are exaggerating because this phenomenon is limited to the United States.
Foa and Mounck’s data ends in 2010. One could argue that things have only gotten worse since then, as Christie’s show trial speech suggests. But if I have a sliver of optimism, it is that the Trump campaign is America’s moment of staring into the anti-system abyss and seeing the ugliness that would await.
I will be curious if, after this election cycle, there is a greater appreciation for the democratic institutions that have made America great for more than a century.
I’m sympathetic to the notion that democracy is becoming delegitimized here and elsewhere, and in part blame the elites who have divorced policy outcomes from democratic accountability and therefore from benefits for average voters.
But the Chris Christie witch hunt is a special case. After all, this is a former US Attorney, a former top embodiment of America’s criminal justice system (and Christie’s attack was far more irrational than that of another US Attorney, Rudy Giuliani, earlier in the night).
And he’s not just any US Attorney. He’s a US Attorney who got that role largely off his fundraising for George W Bush, even in spite of concerns about his experience. Christie was, in some ways, one of the early test cases for Karl Rove’s theory that US Attorney positions would make great launching pads for further political advancement — and it worked, to some degree. After prosecuting a bunch of Democrats in an equal opportunity political corruption state, Christie won the governorship and started abusing his power, most spectacularly with Bridgegate. He came close to winning the VP nomination with Trump (and if last night is any indication, perhaps he should have). Along the way he pioneered Deferred Prosecution Agreements, making monitor positions another piece of pork for loyal Republicans.
In other words, Christie is the personification of a Republican effort to politicize a position that — while political — had previously been treated with some respect for precedent and neutrality.
No longer. Last night, Christie broke down all remaining barriers between law enforcement and political prosecution. It was the inevitable outcome of Rove’s little project.
Like Drezner, I’m worried generally about the state of our democracy (though unlike him I think the elite have a lot to answer for letting it happen). But the Christie witch hunt is a development above and beyond that general trend.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2016-07-20 13:53:302019-10-08 13:08:40Chris Christie and Karl Rove’s US Attorney Project
Though I agree with the general sentiment that Donald Trump should not be trusted with America’s nuclear codes, there’s a lot I loathed in Hillary’s foreign policy speech yesterday.
Her neat espousal of American exceptionalism, with the specter that another country could make decisions about our lives and jobs and safety, is especially rich coming from a woman who has negotiated several trade deals that give corporations the power to make decisions about our lives and jobs and safety.
I believe with all my heart that America is an exceptional country – that we’re still, in Lincoln’s words, the last, best hope of earth. We are not a country that cowers behind walls. We lead with purpose, and we prevail.
And if America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum – and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then they’ll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety – and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit.
That is not an outcome we can live with.
The rest of her riff on American exceptionalism — with weird claims like, “America’s network of allies is part of what makes us exceptional” and “Allies provide staging areas for our military” — is worth an entirely separate post.
Her cavalier invocation of dead bodies and prolonging depressions exhibits a lack of self-awareness.
I’m frankly baffled by her description of her plan to defeat ISIS, as well as her warnings elsewhere about allowing terrorists in Syria or emboldening ISIS, both of which past Hillary actions have done.
We need to lash up with our allies, and ensure our intelligence services are working hand-in-hand to dismantle the global network that supplies money, arms, propaganda and fighters to the terrorists. We need to win the battle in cyberspace.
[Applause]
And of course we need to strengthen our defenses here at home.
That – in a nutshell – is my plan for defeating ISIS.
Hillary never talks about how she’ll get the Saudis — one of those allies she wants to “lash up with” — to stop fostering terrorism. That seems like a first step.
I’m even more curious what she intends with “strengthening our defenses here at home,” especially coming just lines after she falsely claimed San Bernardino was an ISIS attack? We already arrest scores of people for their support for ISIS, for doing things like RTing ISIS propaganda. To do much more — and to find the San Bernardino couple before they attacked — would have required far more domestic spying. Is that what Hillary has planned?
But here’s the thing that most disturbs me about her hawkish speech. Note how she attacked Trump for his embrace of torture.
He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists – even though those are war crimes.
[snip]
So it really matters that Donald Trump says things that go against our deepest-held values. It matters when he says he’ll order our military to murder the families of suspected terrorists. During the raid to kill bin Laden, when every second counted, our SEALs took the time to move the women and children in the compound to safety. Donald Trump may not get it, but that’s what honor looks like.
Two times in a formal, pre-written speech, delivered with tele-prompters, Hillary claimed Trump had said he’d order our military to carry out torture and murder of civilians. But that’s not what he said. He spoke generally, and when speaking of torture he has talked about “interrogators,” without reference to agency. Sure, that could mean DOD (and some DOD interrogators did torture under George Bush). It could also mean the FBI, the agency which currently leads high value interrogations and which John Brennan has said must have its “own processes and procedures and laws that govern its activities,” separate from the techniques permitted in the Army Field Manual.
While Hillary was Secretary of State, the government killed the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, effectively murdering the family of a suspected (dead) terrorist.
It’s bad enough that she’s lecturing Trump about our deepest-held values. But she’s also not promising to the one thing she appears to be promising: refusing to order the CIA — not the military — not to torture.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2016-06-04 12:55:242016-06-04 12:55:24Hillary Promises Not to Order the Military (!?!) to Torture
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