Be Not Distracted

Slate's television critic, Willa Paskin, was not impressed with what clearly was hype (admittedly, itself a hyped term) coming from Rachel Maddow's Twitter feed and MSNBC before Maddow revealed two pages of one of Donald Trump's income tax return on Tuesday evening.  Paskin observed

As the show went on, it became clear that Maddow knew she didn't quite have the scoop that had been promised. “What would we have to see, what would we hope to get in mail,” she asked Johnston, “if we were going to get to the real meat of Donald Trump’s foreign ties?”—i.e., what would be more meaningful than the tax form that we have? Speaking to Chris Hayes and Johnston, she said, “The story here to me is, a) we have obtained this [tax form], b) that this stuff is obtainable.” “BREAKING: Trump’s tax returns theoretically obtainable. Tonight, 9 p.m. ET. MSNBC. (Seriously)” does make for a less rousing tweet.

Acknowledging that "whatever information they happen to contain," the tax returns "constitute a major scoop," Paskin nonetheless adds

Maddow’s social media team ensured the highest possible ratings for that scoop. But if ever a story should have been delivered in a stentorian, fuddy-duddy, nonpartisan manner, this was it. In positioning it as a grand revelation, a vital step in comprehending Trump’s corruption, MSNBC created an exceedingly cynical spectacle. By playing into the network’s loyal liberal audience’s fantasy that there exists a Trump silver bullet, it instead delivered Trump a positive news cycle—the guy pays taxes! Who knew!—amidst the debacle of the American Health Care Act, along with more evidence that the media is aligned against him. 

Also maintaining the tax returns constituted a feint, Joe Scarborough tweeted "the Trump camp released one positive tax retun to distract from Russia hearings and the Trumpcare meltdown. That's painfully obvious." He followed a few minutes later with "this one tax return is not bad for him because he cherry picked one return from over a decade ago and had it leaked to the press."

While at first glance the Paskin and the Scarborough analyses closely track with one another, there is a significant- albeit not glaring- difference. Scarborough cites "one tax return (which) is not bad for him," which dates to more than a decade ago. However Paskin, perhaps fantasizing about sheep, argues Maddow was "playing into the network's loyal liberal audience's fantasy that there exists a Trump silver bullet."

There are two problems with this. There is no consensus among those reality-based liberals that there is a "silver bullet" because we recognize the possibility of several bullets. Additionally, without the tax returns, no one knows whether there is any bullet at all, and it is unclear whether Trump's returns are being audited.   We do know, however, that every President and every GOP nominee since Richard M. Nixon had released his income tax returns. (The sole exception, Gerald Ford released summary data about his returns from 1966 through 1974.)

But not this President.  Certainly, Donald Trump is hiding one thing and/or another, whether something as minor as giving little to charity or something criminal and endangering national security.






Charlie Pierce, recounting the events that preceded and followed edited transcripts released by President Nixon as a distraction, explains

If the Trump administration did arrange the leak of these documents, what they're doing can be seen as the equivalent of Nixon's release of the edited transcripts—the revelation of something bad to prevent to revelation of something worse.

It is up to the country to decide whether that ploy will work. If you're "distracted" by this, it's not because the White House wants you to be, it's because you decided to be.






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A Question Of Whose Ox Is Gored

If you could ask President Donald Trump one question, what would it be?

DailyKos contributor SemDem notes that Trump is "obsessed with conspiracy theories," did not as President-elect mention the Sandy Hook terrorist attack on its fourth anniversary, and dismissed the open letter of the daughter of a Sandy Hook victim in which the President-elect was asked to denounce the rampage and false-flag conspiratorialist Alex Jones.  SemDem would ask "Do you believe the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax?"

That's a very good effort at an event past, but there should be also be one pertaining to a possible future event.  Blue Nation Review's Melissa McEwan explains

Trump overtly talks and talks and talks about himself – and when he talks about other people, he’s still talking about himself. It’s just that he’s projecting his own flaws and failures onto them.

When he calls Hillary a “bigot,” he is really talking about himself. When he says that Hillary gives speeches that are devoid of policy, he is really talking about himself. When he accuses her of asserting that she has claimed to be able to solve systemic injustice, he is projecting onto her the claims he’s made.

From the man whose modus operandi is frightening people and primary goal to accumulate as much profit as possible leveraging his public office, there was this classic tweet in August: "Just watched recap of #CrookedHillary's speech. Very short and lies. She is the one fear-mongering!"

So consider that the President accused Barack Obama of ordering a wiretap on Trump Tower when on March 4 he tweeted "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"; "Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!"; "I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!"; "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

The following Monday, March 6, 2017, Chris Matthews charged Trump with failing to consider "the fact that evidence might be relevant when you're accusing an American President of a felony- a felony."  Shepard Smith, the most reasonable voice Fox News anchorperson, questioned whether the President had "tweeted it out — accused the former president of felonious activity, accused him of a crime with zero evidence."  Even a lawyer, whom one could expect would carefully choose his words, wrote that Mr. Obama has "been described as 'livid' over the accusation that he committed a felony."







But President Trump did not use the word "felony" and should not be accused of claiming the former President committed a "felony." Rather, Trump alleged that Obama had done something which most experts would consider a felony.

The distinction is not mere semantics. After Trump was asked in a New York Times interview on November 22, 2016 about his business conflicts, Maggie Haberman tweeted that Trump responded "the law's totally on my side, the president-elect can't have a conflict of interest."

Trump's response neatly combines his corrupt intentions, ignorance about the law, and arrogance toward his prerogatives as president.  He may not be aware that the sort of action of which he accuses Barack Obama probably would constitute felonius behavior.  If he is, it is unlikely that he would find it beyond his purview.

Trump may have had no contact with Russians, believes his contact(s) was insignificant, or has convinced himself that the significant contact was immaterial.  In any of those cases, it could be expected that he would regard any intrusion on his privacy as an outrage. That does not mean that he would onsider it illegal or even improper if he himself would order without cause a tap of a citizen.

He might need to convince himself that his action was necessitated for national security or public safety. Or he may simply believe that when he does anything "the law's totally on my side."Either way, President Trump should be asked "Do you believe you would as a President ever be justified in ordering the wiretapping of an American citizen?"







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The Fear Card

There are in Trump's November victory many lessons, of which a major one is: never underestimate the power of fear.

A lot of the variations of fear were present. Among them were the fear of coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia losing their jobs upon election of a president from the party committed to environmentalism and combatting climate change; of crime running rampant because of blacks and immigrants; of terrorism committed by refugees fleeing a civil war; of immigrants who might want the chance to vote, benefit from the social safety net, and even (Lord forbid!) become Americans; and of a female president succeeding a black president and gosh, when are we ever going to get another white male president?

And thus I believe it is more than a standard Kellyanne Conway lie when

In a wide-ranging interview Sunday at her home in Alpine, where she lives with her husband and their four children, Conway, who managed Trump’s presidential campaign before taking the job as one of the president's closest advisers, suggested that the alleged monitoring of activities at Trump’s campaign headquarters at Trump Tower in Manhattan may have involved far more than wiretapping.

“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway said as the Trump presidency marked its 50th day in office during the weekend. “You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets — any number of ways.”

Conway went on to say that the monitoring could be done with “microwaves that turn into cameras,” adding: “We know this is a fact of modern life.”

Steve M. points out that when on Monday's "Good Morning America" Conway stated "Of course I don't have any evidence for those allegations, and that answer has nothing to do with what the president said last week,"  her "faux-offended response" was meant for general consumption, not for consumption by the fan base." He adds

The fan base now believes that one or more of the surveillance techniques mentioned by Conway was actually used to surveil Trump. If Conway were to tell an interviewer that a person of Valerie Jarrett's approximate height, weight, age and physical condition could have rappelled into Donald Trump's office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower and personally placed a monitoring device in Trump's taco bowl, the deplorables would believe that literally happened. Conway would then go on a national news program and huffily insist that she was merely suggesting that such a thing could have happened to a random person somewhere in the world in theory.

But there was an additional purpose, revealed by Conway's remark "we know this is a fact of modern life" that "you can surveil someone... any number of ways." When she adds "I wasn't making a suggestion about Trump Tower. Those are two separate things," she wants to make sure that as many people as possible believe it could happen to them and their loved ones. "It was about surveillance generally," she told CNN's Chris Cuomo Monday morning.







It's about fear. In an otherwise disappointing episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver on Sunday addresed this claim (beginning at approximately 4:15 of the video below).   He noted

But if you read the document, you'll find this program applies to Samsung TVs from 2012 to 2013 and the malware was installed by USB, so presumably the CIA needed to stick that physically into your TV and even if that happened, experts advise there is a  way of circumventing it.  It's a little complicated so I will walk your way through it. Step 1: Unplug the TV and that is it, end of steps; you're off the grid.







Be very afraid.  Republican strategist Rick Wilson, a Never-Trumper who ran Evan McMullin's presidential campaign last fall, told Molly Ball "When people are under stress, the hind brain takes over... Fear of Mexicans, fear of the Chinese, fear of African Americans- Donald Trump has very deliberately stoked it and inflamed it and made it a centerpiece of his campaign."

That was in late summer but Trump has governed as he campaigned, and Conway's lies- such as her three references to the legendary "Bowling Green massacre"- neatly fit the narative.  "You’ve seen what happened in Paris, and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening," the boss stated on February 6. Two weeks later he would continue the theme with "We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?”

Probably quite a few people, but that is probably unnecessary.  Repeat, frighten, repeat: after a while, any action by Daddy Trump in the name of "safety" or "security" may be accepted by the American people.







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An Odd View Of Mercy

Strategically substituting "patient-centered" for "insurance company-controlled," House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday claimed "we are doing an act of mercy by repealing this law and replacing it with patient-centered health care reform..." This did not go down well with a member of the House delegation from Massachusetts:

“I was struck last night by a comment that I heard made by Speaker Ryan, where he called this repeal bill ‘an act of mercy.’ With all due respect to our speaker, he and I must have read different Scripture Kennedy said as the House Energy and Commerce Committee dove into the details of the GOP effort.

“The one I read calls on us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, and to comfort the sick.

“It reminds us that we are judged not by how we treat the powerful, but by how we care for the least among us,” said the Brookline Democrat and scion of the most famous Massachusetts political dynasty.

“There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering. There is no mercy in a cold shoulder to the mentally ill,” he said, appearing to read from notes.

“This is not an act of mercy. It is an act of malice,” he said.







To the  contrary, congressman. It is an act of mercy for some well-placed people as

Wealthy Americans — especially those households with incomes above $200,000 — would be better off under the bill primarily because they would no longer pay two major taxes levied as part of the Affordable Care Act.

One is 0.9 percent on taxpayers earning more than $200,000 in wages and salaries a year, or $250,000 for married couples. Those households must also pay a surcharge of 3.8 percent on income from several kinds of investments. Together, these taxes are projected to raise $346 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

It may not qualify as an act of mercy for the hungry, homeless, and the sick, but it promises to be a boon for the pale, or the color-deprived. Unintimdated by the risk of melanoma reportedly increasing by 75% for individuals who begin tanning before the age of 35.

The replacement health care plan proposed by Republicans would eliminate a 10% tax on indoor tanning services. The tax was introduced in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act. If the Republican plan becomes law, the tax will be phased out at the end of this year.

If "mercy" is the act of God in "not punishing us as our sins deserve," there will be no act of mercy bestowed by Speaker Ryan, reportedly an observant Catholic, and his fellow Republicans upon those 6 to 10 million undeserving Americans who will lose their health insurance.  Citizens of those 32 other countries with universal health care, most of them with single-payer, face no such threat from the biggest. fake. ever.

Poet Wendell Berry once wrote "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy."  Not if Paul Ryan has his way.

Please return for scintillating commentary, following my brief hiatus, on March 13.


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Precedent, Of A Sort

A few days ago Jon Schwarz of The Intercept noted if

Trump Tower was wiretapped during the 2016 presidential campaign, as President Trump claimed in several tweets Saturday morning, he can do much more than say so on twitter: Presidents have the power to declassify anything at any time, so Trump could immediately make public any government records of such surveillance.

Schwarz reminds us that in at least one instance, a President has "used wiretaps to track the actions of their political adversaries," which may be the first time in recorded history Barack Obama has been compared to the man who complained "Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg."  Forty-eight years ealier, there was

significant government surveillance involving a presidential campaign in the past, although it’s unlikely Trump will want to remind America of it.

During the 1968 contest between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, President Lyndon Johnson was attempting to negotiate a peace deal to end the Vietnam War.

Nixon was worried that if this happened just before the election it would help Humphrey, who was Johnson’s vice president. Recently discovered notes by one of Nixon’s top campaign aides show that Nixon asked him to “monkey wrench” the peace talks. Via Anna Chennault, a top Republican fundraiser, the Nixon campaign sent messages to the government of South Vietnam not to go along with Johnson’s plans.

Johnson knew that this was happening at the time, and believed that it constituted “treason.” He ordered the FBI to wiretap the embassy of South Vietnam in Washington, which picked up Ambassador Bui Diem communicating with Chennault. (Presidents could and did directly order wiretaps prior to the establishment of the FISA court in 1978 to prevent executive branch abuses of its surveillance power.) The FBI also began conducting general surveillance of Chennault.

Johnson and several top officials, including Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, struggled with what to do in a fascinating phone call on November 4, 1968, the day before the election.

Johnson speaks of not wanting to be “a McCarthy” and worries about the certainty that “we’ll be charged with trying to interfere with the election.”

Rusk also equivocates, telling Johnson that “I do not believe that any president can make any use of interceptions or telephone taps in any way that would involve politics. The moment we cross over that divide we are in a different kind of society. … We get a lot of information through these special channels that we don’t make public. For example, some of the malfeasances of senators and congressmen and other people. … I think that we must continue to respect the classification of that kind of material.”

Clifford chimes in with another concern: that Americans just couldn’t endure learning how the world actually works. “I think,” Clifford frets, “that some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story, and then possibly to have a certain individual elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubts that I would think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

In the end, Johnson decided not to reveal what he knew about Nixon’s shocking subterfuge.

"The fact that Nixon did ally with a foreign government for advantage in a presidential election," Schwarz observes, "certainly doesn't mean that Trump did the same.

Fair enough, but there is a parallel between the actions of Johnson and those of President Obama, now the second time in recorded history the two have been compared.

"By mid-September of last year," The Washington Post reported in January, "White House officials had decided it was time" to employ a "naming and shaming" approach after being informed by the intelligence community that the Russians had breached cybersecurity in an effort to influence the upcoming elections.  (On October 7- the day the Access Hollywood/Trump sex tape was released- the DNI issued a formal statement accusing the Kremlin.) However

they worried that doing so unilaterally and without bipartisan congressional backing just weeks before the election would make Obama vulnerable to charges that he was using intelligence for political purposes.

Instead, officials devised a plan to seek bipartisan support from top lawmakers and set up a secret meeting with the Gang of 12 — a group that includes House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ committees on intelligence and homeland security.

Obama dispatched Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to make the pitch for a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against Russian interference in the election, according to a senior administration official.

Specifically, the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions.

Though U.S. intelligence agencies were skeptical that hackers would be able to manipulate the election results in a systematic way, the White House feared that Russia would attempt to do so, sowing doubt about the fundamental mechanisms of democracy and potentially forcing a more dangerous confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

he Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

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.

Democratic President learns from wiretap  that GOP presidential candidate is consorting with the enemy to fix an election, and does nothing. Democratic President learns from wiretap that a foreign power is intervening in an election, probably to get GOP presidential candidate elected, and ultimately does nothing.   Both Republicans win.

There is no pattern without a third, which might not be the worst scenario, however. Recalling the 1980s when Francis Fukuyama optimistically forecast that liberal western democracy would be the "final form of human government," historian of Eastern Europe Timothy Snyder states (emphasis his)

What had happened was one story, the story of communism, the teleology of communism had turned out not to be true. The conclusion we should have drawn was, Well, those kinds of grand narratives are not true. The conclusion that we drew instead was our grand narrative is true. It’s just true that capitalism or globalization leads to enlightenment and prosperity and democracy. Therefore, we can fold our hands.

I think we got it exactly wrong. I think that explains, to a great extent, why we are where we are now. It means that we’ve been complacent about watching authoritarianism return elsewhere, and it means we’ve been surprised that authoritarianism is possible here. Of course it is, and of course it always was.











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Keynote Speaker At Next Anti-Trump Rally: Steve Bannon

Lauren-Leader Chivee is an "Independent Senior Advisor" at Deloitte and co-founder and CEO of "All In Together." She may have an excuse but not so Carrie Sheffield, who writes

“There’s no one answer to solve this,” said Leader-Chivée, author of Crossing the Thinnest Line, and co-founder and CEO of All In Together, during a recent conversation at Salon Talks. “I do think that one of the lessons of this election and one of the lessons of basically every time liberal feminism in a sense has lost in a big way — and liberal feminism did lose in a big way in this election, and it lost in a big way in the late 70s with the ERA — it is often because we — and I say we because I am one of them — underestimate the power and the passion and the conviction of conservative women who view the feminist agenda as excluding them” added Leader-Chivée.  “I think there were a lot of women in this election who were . . . not voting for Donald Trump, but who were voting against Hillary Clinton on the abortion issue as one very core, moral question for them. And does that mean we all are gonna ever agree? No. But I do think the future of a whole bunch of other issues that are not abortion. . .rest on our ability to find some common ground”, she concluded.

One commenter remarked "Why is the left always supposed to cede ground to the right? What, am I in charge or something? My right to choose is the one being systematically decimated in policy. I'm fighting for what I think is right just the same as anyone else. What is the purpose of joining together *as women* if half of the coalition is in favor of removal of basic rights for the group?"

Why, indeed.  But although the left is typically expected to be the adult in the room, it is particularly required of pro-choice advocates. Even neoconservative, never Trumper David Frum, in the otherwise persuasive "What Effective Protest Could Look Like," argues "if Planned Parenthood is on the stage, pro-life women should be there, too."

Frum's comment reflects the misunderstanding of Ms. Chivee and Ms. Sheffield that forced-birth advocates are "pro-life." Not only have they rarely supported efforts to help fetuses after birth, but they have increasingly been determined to shut down Planned Parenthood, whose efforts on the part of women's health and contraception have decreased unwanted births, hence abortions, more than the "pro-life" community ever has.






This effort to find "common ground," however, may start a whole new trend.  Perhaps we can look forward to supporters of the Affordable Care Act inviting to their protests indivduals upset that people have gained health insurance through Obamacare.   Individuals demanding a thorough, independent investigation of alleged ties of the Trump campaign to Russia can welcome people arguing that Barack Obama himself wiretapped Donald Trump.  Gay rights advocates can stand side-by-side with folks terrified at the idea of a transsexual who identifies as a woman using the womens' bathroom.  Immigrant rights protests might include advocates of mass deportation. And gun-safety demonstrations can include gun-toting Second Amendment absolutists.

There is a little bit of ad hominem to the criticism of Sheffield and Chivee as "upper-class Beltway and Wall Street gals" who "have no clue whatsoever, apparently, what anti-choice people are mostly like" and wnat "a smiling, smarmy, 'nice girl feminism.'"  A little. A very little.

"You give yourself away," one comment reads, as "anti-feminist as soon as you use the phrase 'pro-life.'"   The anti-choice movement generally gives itself away when it labels abortion as "murder." Oblivious to facts or detail, activists don't claim that abortion is "killing'- a debatable proposition- but that it is murder, which it most assuredly is not.

Anti-choice advocates, employing the loaded, inaccurate term "murder"  and disregarding science, will not compromise.  Further, denying a basic human right to women, they may be many things, but "feminist" is not among them.






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Deflecting Attention Again

Just in the nick of time for an Administration devoted to diversion

President Donald Trump doubled down Monday on the most divisive action of his young presidency, signing a new executive order temporarily blocking travel to the United States from countries he says pose a high terrorism risk.

The new measure contains some key differences from the one signed in January that prompted nationwide confusion and was suspended in federal court. It bars travel to the U.S. for 90 days from six predominantly Muslim countries — Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, according to a Department of Homeland Security fact sheet. It excludes Iraq, which was on the original list.

The order, which takes effect March 16, does not restrict legal permanent residents, or green card holders, from re-entering the U.S., the DHS said. The first measure initially did, on a case-by-case basis. The order will allow people who had visas by Jan. 27, the date the first order was signed, or earlier to enter the U.S. It also revokes the earlier order.

Now excluding Iraq, the travel ban is out of character for Trump, for he seems to have no business interest in that nation (map preceding recent announcement).

Still, both issuance of the travel ban and Trump's tweet accusing President Obama of wiretapping him will draw further attention away from the very real damage the Administration is doing to the country.  Even before the new order, The New York Times on Sunday reported 

Congress, with Mr. Trump’s approval, has erased three Obama-era rules in the last month, lifting regulations related to coal mining and oil and gas exploration, as well as the sale of guns to the mentally ill. More than 25 more rules could also be erased in the coming weeks; the House has already voted to eliminate nearly half.

Mr. Trump has separately signed executive orders directing agencies to pursue the reversal of other rules, including a requirement that financial advisers act in the interest of their clients, and a rule aimed at protecting drinking water from pollution.

President Trump has demonstrated his concern for- or apathy toward- veterans with another of his executive orderd, the federal hiring freeze.







Political appointees have joined the assault on consumers and the middle class as

New White House appointees at agencies including the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also personally intervened in recent weeks to block, delay or start the process to nullify other rules, such as a requirement that corporations publish tallies comparing chief executive pay with average employee wages.

The budget President Trump is expected to submit would gut spending by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and the damage from kneecapping those agencies alone would be devastating.

The GOP-controlled Congress will have its opportunity to review and decide upon President Trump's proposed budget. However, beyond the lies, race-baiting, and immigrant-bashing, there is a far-right extremist in the White House pursuing the agenda Republicans have dreamt of since the time of Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6).






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