August 7, 2018

Manafort is who we have become. by Juan Cole

(I was once told by a staffer in Congress that a representative’s day is divided into 15-minute segments, in which lobbyists one after another come to her or him to lay out what their clients’ wanted. The implication was that the client would donate to the Congress-person’s campaign. Running for national office is expensive, mainly because of the cost of radio and television ads (which however ought to be nationalized and made free). Representatives have to start fundraising the day they are elected for the election only 2 years away. They have to promise favors to the donors. The US is peculiar among the industrialized democracies in allowing more or less open bribery.

Manafort was the fixer, the go-between.

His alleged role in setting Trump up with Putin and his hackers was not a departure or something unusual. It was what Manafort did. He took money for being an influencer, and for putting the courtesan with her john.

Manafort is not a criminal in the sense of a deviant. He is all too normal in the US political system. He is how the system works.

White collar criminals like Manafort and Trump are no longer even investigated or prosecuted. Manafort had been getting away with it for decades because he was so well connected. Surely the NSA, which tracks contacts with foreign governments and watches money transfers bigger than $10,000, knew about the Manafort problem, but they did nothing.

Trump and Manafort made one big mistake. They became principals in national politics. And principals in national politics are the one kind of figure whose white collar crime really can become an issue, because of adversarial political campaigns and because there are fairly explicit laws against things like bribery or being a Manchurian candidate. If they had stayed behind the scenes, making shadowy deals, they likely would have gone to their graves with their crimes unexamined.

But make no mistake about it. The indictment of Manafort is an indictment of America, a death knoll for US democracy. Manafort is who we have become.


The rest (quite revealing):
https://www.juancole.com/2018/08/manaforts-corruption-deviance.html

August 6, 2018

HELLO? Don Jr's Line Drops After Laura Ingraham Asks About Conflicting Statements on Trump Tower Mtg

President Donald Trump‘s wonderful son Don Jr. called into Laura Ingraham‘s radio show on Monday, and had some well-timed technical difficulties.

Ingraham questioned Don Jr. on the conflicting explanations for the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower held between members of the Trump campaign and a Kremlin-tied lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

In July 2017, in a statement dictated by the president himself, Don Jr. claimed that the meeting was primarily about the adoption of Russian children. President Trump seemed to indicate otherwise in a tweet on Sunday: “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere,” he wrote.

Ingraham asked Don Jr. about that discrepancy when he called into her show on Monday, and she even aired a few clips of Trump and various officials confidently claiming the meeting was about adoptions.

“You want any comment on that, Donny?” the Fox News host asked. “Because they’re hitting you on that for contradictions––I mean, they’re calling it worse than contradictions obviously. Donny what is your reaction to all that?”

“Hello?” Don Jr. could be heard saying, before a long silence.

“We’re going to see if we could reconnect with Donald Trump Jr. on all this, because we can’t seem to hear him,” Ingraham said after a silence. “We don’t know where he went.”

AUDIO & MORE:
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/listen-don-jr-s-line-drops-after-ingraham-asks-about-conflicting-statements-on-trump-tower-meeting/
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1026582872197607424

August 6, 2018

'Go Back To Your Country!' Sikh Man Attacked While Posting Signs For GOPer

A man of the Sikh faith was brutally attacked and told to “go back” to his home country while he was out putting up campaign signs for Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) last week, according to a local CBS affiliate.

The man, Surjit Malhi, had just finished putting up a sign for Denham and was walking back to his truck when two men reportedly approached him, threw sand in his eyes and beat Malhi in the head, shoulders and neck, all while shouting that he should “go back to your country!”

The men also reportedly vandalized Malhi’s truck with hate symbols and the same “go back” message.

Malhi, a Republican and longtime active member of the Turlock, California community, who has reportedly raised thousands of dollars for people who are homeless or victims of California wildfires, told the local CBS that he was surprised by the attacks.


https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sikh-man-attacked-posting-campaign-signs

August 6, 2018

Goebbels is shedding Nazi tears....

what Nazis THINK they look like



v what Nazis ACTUALLY look like


https://twitter.com/wuerker/status/1026492486242451456
https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1025822729998483456

August 6, 2018

Cowardly Trump's WH shuts down press availability after Trump tweet admits collusion

The White House announced on Monday that President Donald Trump would not take any questions after he admitted on Twitter that his son may have colluded with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

In a tweet over the weekend, Trump reversed course on his explanation of a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower. The president had originally claimed that the meeting had been about adoptions. But in his Sunday tweet, Trump admitted that the purpose of the meeting had been to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders also had not scheduled a Monday briefing by the time of publication.




https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/white-house-shuts-press-availability-says-trump-wont-leave-white-house-tweet-admits-collusion/
https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1026475937938976769
https://twitter.com/fran_chambers/status/1026495446762631170
https://twitter.com/fran_chambers/status/1026476183406485510

August 6, 2018

The Stupidverse -By Tom Tomorrow

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August 6, 2018

CA to potus: We hate you back.

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August 6, 2018

The Day Trump Told Us There Was Attempted Collusion with Russia

On August 5, 2018, precisely forty-four years after the collapse of the Nixon Presidency, another President, Donald Trump, made his own public admission. In one of a series of early-morning tweets, Trump addressed a meeting that his son Donald, Jr., held with a Russian lawyer affiliated with the Russian government. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere,” he wrote. “I did not know about it!”

The tweet contains several crucial pieces of information. First, it is a clear admission that Donald Trump, Jr.,’s original statement about the case was inaccurate enough to be considered a lie. He had said the meeting was with an unknown person who “might have information helpful to the campaign,” and that this person “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” This false statement was, according to his legal team, dictated by the President himself. There was good reason to mislead the American people about that meeting. Based on reporting—at the time and now—of the President’s admission, it was a conscious effort by the President’s son and two of his closest advisers to work with affiliates of the Russian government to obtain information that might sway the U.S. election in Trump’s favor. In short, it was, at minimum, a case of attempted collusion. The tweet indicates that Trump’s defense will continue to be that this attempt at collusion failed—“it went nowhere”—and that, even if it had succeeded, it would have been “totally legal and done all the time.” It is unclear why, if the meeting was entirely proper, it was important for the President to declare “I did not know about it!” or to tell the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to “stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.”

The President’s Sunday-morning tweet should be seen as a turning point. It doesn’t teach us anything new—most students of the case already understand what Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner knew about that Trump Tower meeting. But it ends any possibility of an alternative explanation.

We can all move forward understanding that there is a clear fact pattern about which there is no dispute:

The President’s son and top advisers knowingly met with individuals connected to the Russian government, hoping to obtain dirt on their political opponent.

Documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and members of the Clinton campaign were later used in an overt effort to sway the election.

When the Trump Tower meeting was uncovered, the President instructed his son and staff to lie about the meeting, and told them precisely which lies to use.

The President is attempting to end the investigation into this meeting and other instances of attempted collusion between his campaign staff and representatives of the Russian government.

It was possible, just days ago, to believe—with an abundance of generosity toward the President and his team—that the meeting was about adoption, went nowhere, and was overblown by the Administration’s enemies. No longer. The open questions are now far more narrow: Was this a case of successful or only attempted collusion? Is attempted collusion a crime? What legal and moral responsibilities did the President and his team have when they realized that the proposed collusion was underway when the D.N.C. e-mails were leaked and published? And, crucially, what did the President know before the election, after it, and when he instructed his son to lie?



the rest:
https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/the-day-trump-told-us-there-was-attempted-collusion-with-russia

August 6, 2018

C-SPAN Caller Threatens 'To Shoot' CNN Hosts Brian Stelter & Don Lemon "They started the war..."

C-SPAN Caller Threatens ‘To Shoot’ CNN Hosts Brian Stelter And Don Lemon
“They started the war. If I see ’em, I’m going to shoot ’em.”

.........
The caller, identified by C-SPAN host Greta Brawner as “Don from State College, Pennsylvania,” had phoned into her show Friday to express support for Trump’s criticism of the media.

“It all started when Trump got elected,” the caller said before falsely accusing the reporters of labeling all Trump supporters as racist. “[Stelter and Lemon) don’t even know us. They don’t even know these Americans out here and they’re calling us racist because we voted for Trump.”

..........

Stelter discussed the threat Sunday on CNN, pointing out that neither Lemon nor he has ever described all Trump supporters as “racist.” Stelter said he didn’t know why the caller felt this way, but noted that Fox News’ Sean Hannity played a clip during his show Thursday of Stelter asking whether racial anxiety played a factor in Trump’s rise.

“Obviously, researchers have proven that ― yes ― racial anxiety and resentment was a factor. But that’s not the same as calling all Trump supporters racist,” Stelter said on Sunday. “I don’t know if the C-SPAN caller watched Hannity. I’m not blaming Hannity. I just thought the timing was odd.”



VIDEO & MORE:
https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1026139446075260931?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1026139446075260931&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fentry%2Fc-span-cnn-brian-stelter-don-lemon_us_5b674492e4b0fd5c73dacf89
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/c-span-cnn-brian-stelter-don-lemon_us_5b674492e4b0fd5c73dacf89?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067

August 6, 2018

In 2008, America Stopped Believing in the American Dream - By Frank Rich

We Are Still Living in the Ruins of the 2008 Crash


If you were standing in the smoldering ashes of 9/11 trying to peer into the future, you might have been overjoyed to discover this happy snapshot of 2018: There has been no subsequent major terrorist attack on America from Al Qaeda or its heirs. American troops are not committed en masse to any ground war. American workers are enjoying a blissful 4 percent unemployment rate. The investment class and humble 401(k) holders alike are beneficiaries of a rising GDP and booming stock market that, as measured by the Dow, is up some 250 percent since its September 10, 2001, close. The most admired person in America, according to Gallup, is the nation’s first African-American president, a man no one had heard of and a phenomenon no one could have imagined at the century’s dawn. Comedy, the one art whose currency is laughter, is the culture’s greatest growth industry. What’s not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out. The mood in America is arguably as dark as it has ever been in the modern era. The birthrate is at a record low, and the suicide rate is at a 30-year high; mass shootings and opioid overdoses are ubiquitous. In the aftermath of 9/11, the initial shock and horror soon gave way to a semblance of national unity in support of a president whose electoral legitimacy had been bitterly contested only a year earlier. Today’s America is instead marked by fear and despair more akin to what followed the crash of 1929, when unprecedented millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes after the implosion of businesses ranging in scale from big banks to family farms.

It’s not hard to pinpoint the dawn of this deep gloom: It arrived in September 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers kicked off the Great Recession that proved to be a more lasting existential threat to America than the terrorist attack of seven Septembers earlier. The shadow it would cast is so dark that a decade later, even our current run of ostensible prosperity and peace does not mitigate the one conviction that still unites all Americans: Everything in the country is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done little to protect us from the next, but also race relations, health care, education, institutional religion, law enforcement, the physical infrastructure, the news media, the bedrock virtues of civility and community. Nearly everything has turned to crap, it seems, except Peak TV (for those who can afford it).

That loose civic concept known as the American Dream — initially popularized during the Great Depression by the historian James Truslow Adams in his Epic of America — has been shattered. No longer is lip service paid to the credo, however sentimental, that a vast country, for all its racial and sectarian divides, might somewhere in its DNA have a shared core of values that could pull it out of any mess. Dead and buried as well is the companion assumption that over the long term a rising economic tide would lift all Americans in equal measure. When that tide pulled back in 2008 to reveal the ruins underneath, the country got an indelible picture of just how much inequality had been banked by the top one percent over decades, how many false promises to the other 99 percent had been broken, and how many central American institutions, whether governmental, financial, or corporate, had betrayed the trust the public had placed in them. And when we went down, we took much of the West with us. The American Kool-Aid we’d exported since the Marshall Plan, that limitless faith in progress and profits, had been exposed as a cruel illusion.


the rest (LOTS):
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/frank-rich-2008-financial-crisis-end-of-american-dream.html?utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1