Real News Need Not Apply

"Only a FAKE PRESIDENT would declare the First Amendment to be the enemy of the American people," Joe Scarborough tweeted.

And that was one week before, as reported by The Hill

The White House blocked a number of news outlets from covering spokesman Sean Spicer’s question-and-answer session on Friday afternoon. 

Spicer decided to hold an off-camera “gaggle” with reporters inside his West Wing office instead of the traditional on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.  

Among the outlets not permitted to cover the gaggle were news organizations President Trump has singled out for criticism, including CNN. 

The New York Times, The Hill, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News were among the other news organizations not permitted to attend.

Journalists from several right-leaning outlets were allowed into Spicer’s office, including Breitbart, the Washington Times and One America News Network. 

A number of major news organizations were also let in to cover the gaggle. That group included ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and McClatchy. 

No flip of the coin, no lottery was needed because

Journalists from several right-leaning outlets were allowed into Spicer’s office, including Breitbart, the Washington Times and One America News Network. 

A number of major news organizations were also let in to cover the gaggle. That group included ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and McClatchy. 






Prompted by this event, anti-Trump GOP strategist Ana Navarro tweeted "no self-respecting news organization should attend White House Correspondents dinner after being declared "enemy of the people,"  (The following day, Trump himself bowed out.)

Fortunately, resistance seems to be growing. The Hill continues

Reporters from The Associated Press and Time magazine were allowed into the gaggle but refused to attend. 

“AP believes the public should have as much access to the president as possible,” the organization's communications arm tweeted.

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) sharply criticized the decision.

“The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today's gaggle is being handled by the White House,” Jeff Mason, the association’s president, said in a statement. 

“We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not,” he added. “The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”

As Vice President Pence looks on in silence, the attacks by the Administration on the press look increasingly grave, a slippery slope to a shriveling First Amendment.  With the benefit of hindsight, the press largely recognizes the assault and possible consequences.  Reflecting upon events in Europe some 40 years earlier, in 1974 Hannah Arendt wrote

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.... and a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.







Share |

Disturbing Numbers

It doesn't get any better, especially at the Conservative Political Action Conference, than when

Jason Charter, 22, and Ryan Clayton, 36, passed out roughly 1,000 red, white, and blue flags, each bearing a gold-emblazoned “TRUMP” in the center, to an auditorium full of attendees waiting for President Trump to address the conference. Audience members waved the pennants—and took pictures with them—until CPAC staffers realized the trick: They were Russian flags.

The stunt made waves on social media, as journalists covering CPAC noticed the scramble to confiscate the insignia.







A great prank indeed, but there is a long way before convincing the American public that Moscow may not have benign motives in geopolitical power politics. It's may be a long way, too, before convincing those Trumpists that Trump + Putin is a bad thing.

Business Insider reports

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 53% of Americans agreed Congress should investigate contact between Russia and President Donald Trump's inner circle believed to have happened before the election.

Only 25% of people who responded to the NBC/WSJ poll believed Congress should stay out of it, and 21% did not have an opinion, the poll found.

Only? I don't think "only."  One-quarter is a lot of people accepting the concept of "hear no evil, see no evil."

Partisan breakdown is curious. While only 9% of Democrats voted for Donald Trump, 20% of registered Democrats do not believe that Russian involvement should be investigated. It's probably less surprising that only 25% of Republicans support such an inquiry.

When voters were asked whether the President's relationship with the Russians was "too friendly," only 38% of voters agreed, 29% believing otherwise.  Given that many liberals (who predominate in the Democratic Party) traditionally have favored cordial relations with the Russian government, the 70% of Democrats who find Trump "too friendly" is actually a large number.

Consider, however, that Republicans have in the past won presidential elections and innumerable congressional elections on the strength of being "tough" on the Russians, including a few in the post-Soviet era.  Now, 7% of Trump voters believe the President of the United States, who has praised the ex-KGB agent in charge of the Kremlin, is "too friendly with Russia."

For those keeping count at home, that would be 93% of individuals who voted for Donald Trump thinking he is too friendly with an expansionist, rival power. It is highly likely that percentage would be eclipsed by that of Trump voters who believe Barack Obama was not born in the USA, or that the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks were an inside job, that dinosaurs roamed the earth only 9,000 years ago, or possibly even that the earth is flat. ("President Trump has said the earth is flat. Do you agree or not?")

It's not about Russia, as noted at 4:58 in the video above, but "about winning and about following the leader."  That should be discomforting both to Democrats alarmed about Russia and to them and others convinced that blind obedience to an impulsive authoritarian is dangerous. When so many people want to remain uninformed or believe that impulsive authoritarian has a realistic attitude toward the Russian government, the propaganda machine is more effective, and more threatening, than we've imagined.

Share |

Not A Tireless Advocate of Women's Rights

Kellyanne Conway is right!

Don't let it ever be said that I won't give credit where credit is due. Kellyanne Conway got it right where she needs to be "right"- at the annual convention this week of the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Interviewed by conservative political strategist and columnist Mercedes Schlapp, Conway admitted (as reported by Talking Points Memo)"it's difficult for me to call myself a feminist...."

You can't argue with that, though the Special Counsellor to the President added "in the classic sense," whatever that might mean.  She noted "I'm neither anti-male and (sic) pro-abortion."  As she has demonstrated, she certainly is not anti-male, but rather is adoring and obsequious when it comes to a powerful male who exclaims (segment beginning at approximately 18:25) "thank you, baby!":

Pictures may tell a thousand words or they may be misleading, as is- coming from Conway- "there's an individual feminism, if you will, that you make your own choices."

Those choices, evidently, do not include the ones made by a woman about her own body.  "Classic" feminism, Conway argued, "is very pro-abortion in this context."

Of course, pro-choice is not "pro-abortion," nor is it even the ability to have an abortion any time, anwhere, especially because abortions are unobtainable in 87% of counties nationwide.  Were it not conservative boilerplate, it would be odd for a forced-birth advocate to claim "you make your own choices" when exercising "individual feminism."

That shouldn't be surprising from someone who claims facts are only as credible as "alternative facts" and who has lied repeatedly about terrorism.  Add to that the twisted reasoning that someone can oppose reproductive freedom, yet be a "feminist."  Anti-abortion advocates are many things, some of them, honorable- but feminst, not. And Kellyanne Conway may be many things, some of them perhaps, in a distant galaxy, even honorable- but a feminist, not.












Share |

Bad Strategy, Worse Policy

Republicans are threatening Democrats with Elizabeth Warren. Politico reports

“In the states that Trump won that Democrats are running in, I can’t imagine that she helps them. I think she hurts them,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former chairman of the NRSC.

Heading north and west, another Senate Republican similarly maintain

“One of the responsibilities when you represent an entire state is to listen to all of the voices,” said Daines, who himself experienced a boomlet of attention after telling Warren to take her seat. 

“Ultimately, you want to make sure you are aligned with where most Montanans are on an issue. And I can tell you most Montanans are not aligned with Elizabeth Warren.”

But Daines’ Montana colleague, Sen. Jon Tester, said her reputation in the state is more nuanced.
“There are some people in Montana that love her,” said Tester, a Democrat who is up in 2018. “There are some people in Montana that hate her. And there are a lot of shades of gray in between.”

Heading east, we find

To suggest that we're Elizabeth Warren is ridiculous, especially when you look at voting records and where we've been. They need a boogeyman, and they're rying to turn Elizabeth into a boogeyman. And I think maybe what they should worry about more is actually doing America's work.

A West Virginia Democrat famously less progressive than Tester and even Heitkamp argues "She has her own brand. And I think I have my own brand in my own state, so it really doesn't hurt me," said Manchin. "They've tried the 'guilty by association' with [Obama.]"

They tried it- and it worked, marvelously (for the country, disastrously). But it worked precisely because Democrats in 2014 also turned tail and ran when Republicans linked them to Obama.  CNN recognized at the time

the conventional wisdom to banish the president from key Senate battlegrounds, in favor of either Bill and Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and even First Lady Michelle Obama made sense to most Senate Democratic campaigns. The president's low approval numbers plus the conservative terrain at risk for Democrats in Arkansas, Alaska and Louisiana was a "toxic combination," as another top strategist put it.

The problem with that approach, according to Democratic midterm second-guessers, is that it left the party with little to offer voters.

"I am becoming convinced that many Democrats made a mistake in trying to run away from President Obama and the Democratic party agenda," said Jim Manley, a former spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "How is the base supposed to get excited when elected Democrats are going to such great length to put as much distance as the can between them and a president that was elected twice by the American people," Manley asked.

Charlie Pierce notes

The piece mentions no specific policy position that might alienate the good folks of North Dakota, Montana, or West Virginia because that would spoil all the fun. But what are the issues for which she stands that would so revolt voters in the sticks? A sensible financial regulation system that prevailed in this country for 50 relatively prosperous years? A protection against the trickeration that you find on the back of every credit card? An end to usurious practices in the student loan industry? All of these things poll very well in every poll I've ever seen.







Democrats should not have run away from President Obama or his Affordable Care Act. Voters sense fear in a candidate's eyes and they will read "fear" in the eyes of Democrats noticeably running away from the Massachusetts senator.

In 2012, for reasons which include Hillary Clinton and go way beyond her, the Democratic Party was seen as standing for little, and turnout suffered as a result.  Donald Trump benefited by promising to "drain the swamp" and there arguably is no Democrat, as Pierce understands, who has worked as single-mindedly in the US Congress to do just that.

So Democrats should take their cue from Republican Clint Eastwood and should, in their own terminology, tell Republicans: go ahead make my day. It does not assure victory but running scared, displaying the fear in their eyes, nearly assures defeat for the Party.






Share |

Politically Correct Outrage

There seems to be a bull market in anti-Semitism (incident on Monday, below) President Trump's USA  as

At least 17 Jewish community centers across the United States were targeted with bomb threats in the third wave of such mass disruption this month....

On Jan. 18, some 30 Jewish institutions in at least 17 states received bomb threats. On Jan. 9, such threats were called into 16 JCCs across the Northwest and South, forcing the evacuation of hundreds.

An NBC News correspondent posted on Twitter the response which he received from Presidential Press Secretary Sean Spicer, which read "Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom. The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable."

No, he hasn't, but never mind. With the statement slammed as inadequate, the President's daughter attempted to fill the breach with the tweet "America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers. #JCC."

She, too, was criticized.   Writing in the Huffington Post, Lee Moran posted several negative tweets, most of them noting that Ms. Trump/Mrs. Kushner would more usefully convey her message of tolerance to her father, who is President of the United States.   One of them pointed out "seriously, #Ivanka? Are you so tone-deaf, drowining in hubris, that u don't realize how disingenuous & ironic this tweet is?"

Notwithstanding the power of Steve Bannon and the insensitivity generally of the Administration toward anti-Semitism, the irony is limited.   Ivanka is an Orthodox Jew, as is husband Jared. However, there is less to her tweet than meets the eye.

No one, not even the religiously tolerant, would argue that the USA is not a country built upon the principle of religous tolerance, although that tolerance- initially- was granted primarily to Protestants.

More significantly, however, "we must protect our houses of worship & religious centers" means next to nothing. It is akin to the all-purpose apology "..... if anyone was offended by something said...."   Ezra Klein tweets, "What is the point of not using the words 'Jewish,' 'Jewish Community Center,' or anti-Semitism' in this context?"

The question is rhetorical or at least should be. We know what the point is. Fans of her father, even his base of alternative right supporters, have little quarrel with the bland "our houses of worship & religious centers."  But many of them, especially ones of the alternative right, have a problem with Jews.  Additionally, quite a few of Trump's supporters across-the-board believe that it is Christians who are discriminated against and need protection.

Presumably, Donald J. Trump is not anit-Semitic, and not only because he has a daughter who converted to Judaism and married a Jew.  Rather, there may be many things Trump says or fails to say, does or does not do, in which he does not believe. But a fellow who correctly understood that he could publicly "shoot somebody and not lose voters" knows who his voters are and the many ways to appeal to them.

Share |

Not A Glamorous Idea

It may not be surprising that a conservative talk show radio host, syndicated nationally from St. Louis, would tweet "First black president snuck $221 million to the Palestinians instead of sending it to Flint where he received 100% of the black vote twice."

In 2017, the USA agreed to send the Palestinian Authority $263 million dollars, a reduction of $27 million. This reporter explains

The US does not deliver aid money directly into the PA’s coffers. Instead, to avoid possible misuse of funds, particularly to pay the salaries of convicted terrorists, the US channels aid into specific projects.

For example, the US can directly pay PA contractors who work on water or electricity infrastructure, and pay bills for schools and hospitals.

And of course the obvious question: what on God's green earth does aid to Flint, Michigan have to do with money sent to the Palestinian authority?

Not much-  but Stacy Washington makes much more sense when she talks about illegal immigration. Or at least she did when she recently wrote

Requiring all businesses to use E-Verify would drastically reduce illegal immigration by turning off the jobs magnet that attracts illegal laborers. That would protect American workers and boost wages. And unlike most Washington regulations, it would do so without burdening taxpayers and businesses or infringing on citizens' civil liberties.

The Department of Homeland Security administers E-Verify. The site cross-references employees' I-9 work authorization forms against their Social Security numbers, visas, and other government records. In a matter of seconds, the system either green-lights a hire or issues a "tentative nonconfirmation," which lets employers know that the person might not be authorized to work.

Erecting a physical structure to block entry into the USA of hordes (or over the last several years, trickles) of illegal "aliens" (obnoxiously, "illegals") is sexier and makes immigration critics hot.  But that does not address the largely unaddressed problem, as Stacy explains:

Mandating E-Verify would curb illegal immigration far more effectively than even the highest border wall could. That's because 40 percent of illegal immigrants arrive legally and then overstay their visas. Making it nearly impossible to hold a job without legitimate work papers would compel many illegal workers to return home and discourage others from illegally immigrating in the first place.

That should be a compelling motive, thus far from the thoughts of most conservatives, who are much more determined to keep immigrants from voting or receiving from government benefits such as education or health care.

Stacy concludes that mandatory application of E-verify would be

the quickest, most efficient way to deter illegal immigration. It would boost wages and open up job opportunities for American citizens and legal immigrants. And since this electronic wall is already in place, nobody would have to pay for it. Not even Mexico.






The case that immigration reduces wages and benefits has not been convincingly made, despite the claim, as cited by Stacy, that "immigration reduces (lower-paid) workers" wages by up to $1,500 per year." The belief is intuitive, yet in this case is reminiscent of the retail promo "prices up to 50% off" (which may turn out to be 5% of less in most cases).

But the argument that unemployed and already-employed workers would benefit by e-verify (or generally tougher enforcement of immigration laws) has not been proven largely because it has little constituency.  Democrats are not exorcised by increased immigration nor the prospect of allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country. The GOP's popular base wants a hard wall, a visible symbol of their antagonism toward immigrants, and probably of more.  And employers are not energized by thoughts of increasing compensation of their workers, nor that the latter can be free to speak up without fear of deportation.

As Stacy explains, requiring use by employers of E-verify would be more effective and far cheaper than building a wall. Nor would it create a structure which decades, even centuries, into the future would be not only literally, but figuratively, ugly.

It also would not require re-invention of the wheel. Howver, in an age in which a politician can appeal to voters by proclaiming he will "utterly destroy" a major terrorist organization and "I alone can fix it" (no matter the "it"), that does not bode well for its prospects.







Share |

Very Special Friends

A reliable source quotes Paul Newman's Henry Gondorff in The Sting (1973) remarking "You gotta keep his con even after you take him. He can't know that you took him."

Donald Trump's supporters are probably a long way from figuring out they're being taken, and Trump knows it.

Yesterday in Melbourne, Florida the President warned "You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.



”





Who would have believed it, indeed? No doubt most of Trump's supporters there and throughout the USA believe something happened in Sweden Friday night, and still do.  Fortunately, it was just another of Trump's fantasies because nothing happened in Sweden Friday except cold weather. Its last terrorist attack occurred in 2010, despite its acceptance of 200,000 refugees from the greater Middle East.

That led Charles Pierce not only to quote the fictional Gondorff  but to tweet "If you haven't seen Frederic Douglasss's oration in memory of the victims of the Bowling Green Massacre in Stockholm, go to YouTube now."

Trump's assiduous avoidance of truth reflects a central fact of his appeal and danger. At the Melbouren rally, he claimed "I'm here because I want to be among my friends and among the people."

But during the transition period, he was singing a different tune to members at a reception at  his New Jersey club. With an admission fee of $100,000 ($200,000 since the election), they are not the "friends and the people" who came out for him on Friday, nor the white working-class folks who attached their fears and dreams, mostly fears, to him on November 9.    Instead

“So, this is my real group,” Trump said at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, on November 18, according to the audiotape. “These are the people that came here in the beginning, when nobody knew what this monster was gonna turn out to be, right?”

Trump had a packed schedule of meetings that weekend less than two weeks after the election. On the Saturday after the cocktail party, Trump met with Mitt Romney, Michelle Rhee, Betsy DeVos, Todd Ricketts, Bob Woodson, Lew Eisenberg and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. On Sunday, John Gray, Kris Kobach, Wilbur Ross, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Robert Johnson and David McCormick all schlepped out to Bedminster for meetings.He added: “I see all of you. I recognize, like 100 percent of you, just about"... 

The President asked this salt-of-the-earth bunch for suggestions on how to run the federal government and

The supportive crowd ate it up as the relaxed Trump, in his element, gave them a close-up view of how he was setting up the government. “You are the special people,” he told the crowd of about 100 members, who mingled around a sushi station served by a waiter wearing a camouflage “Make America Great Again” cap.

Donald Trump promised to "drain the swamp," never mentioning he was going to refill it with alligators, including Steve Mnuchin, whose net worth of $400 million was fueled by turning OneWest into a foreclosure machine.

Odds are fairly good that Trump's Melbourne crowd of 9,000 included a few supporters his new Treasury Secretary foreclosed upon in the audition for leadership in an administration shaping up as a Wall Street reunion.

Trump gave his supporters in Florida what they came for, repeated lies interspersed with red meat. But the biggest lie was the least complicated: I am here for you.   He's here for some people, but they're the ones he so flattered at the Bedminster, New Jersey Golf Club.  For all the others, he'll keep the con going and going.







Share |