Thursday Reads
Posted: December 29, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Don Quixote, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton 17 Comments
Good Morning!!
We just have three more days to go before we reach the bitter end of this terrible year, but there’s still plenty of time for things to get even worse.
Another Hollywood Icon Gone
Last night Debbie Reynolds left us, just one day after her daughter Carrie died. It sure seems as if Debbie died of a broken heart.
Variety: Debbie Reynolds, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ Star and Carrie Fisher’s Mother, Dies at 84.
Debbie Reynolds, the Oscar-nominated singer-actress who was the mother of late actress Carrie Fisher, has died at Cedars-Sinai hospital. She was 84.
“She wanted to be with Carrie,” her son Todd Fisher told Variety.
She was taken to the hospital from Carrie Fisher’s Beverly Hills house Wednesday after suffering a stroke, the day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died.
The vivacious blonde, who had a close but sometimes tempestuous relationship with her daughter, was one of MGM’s principal stars of the 1950s and ’60s in such films as the 1952 classic “Singin’ in the Rain” and 1964’s “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” for which she received an Oscar nomination as best actress.
Reynolds received the SAG lifetime achievement award in January 2015; in August of that year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences voted to present the actress with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Nov. 14 Governors Awards, but she was unable to attend the ceremony due to an “unexpectedly long recovery from a recent surgery.”
Reynolds had a wholesome girl-next-door look which was coupled with a no-nonsense attitude in her roles. They ranged from sweet vehicles like “Tammy” to more serious fare such as “The Rat Race” and “How the West Was Won.” But amid all the success, her private life was at the center of one of the decade’s biggest scandals when then-husband, singer Eddie Fisher, left her for Elizabeth Taylor in 1958.
Here’s a nice article at The LA Times with lots of tweets and photos of Debbie and Carrie: Stars on social media react to death of Debbie Reynolds so soon after Carrie Fisher’s passing.‘
Today’s Political News
Bill Sher at Politico: No, Obama Probably Wouldn’t Have Beaten Trump. And it’s bad for the Democratic Party for him to say so.
As a liberal, it pains me to say the following: President Barack Obama believes he would have beaten Donald Trump, but he’s probably wrong.
Many Democrats have reason to resist accepting such a horrifying hypothetical. Obama’s favorable rating trumps Trump’s. Obama has a proven track record of winning Rust Belt white working-class votes, while also sparking record rates of African-American turnout.
But to lean on those arguments risks overlooking the boiling political, economic and cultural forces that bubbled up in reaction to eight years of Obama, and splattered red all over the electoral map.
At minimum, Obama’s own case for why he would have won—made in a podcast interview by his former aide David Axelrod—is weak. Asked “what happened” to his 2004 and 2008 calls to “overcome these differences” among the races once he became president, Obama responded, “A lot of people suggested that somehow, it really was a fantasy. What I would argue is, is that the culture actually did shift, that the majority does buy into the notion of a one America that is tolerant and diverse and open. … I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.”
The comments clearly got under Trump’s thin skin. “President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.” he predictably tweeted on Monday. Refusing to let go, he popped off again the following day, “President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states, and lost. The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
So who is right? Obama is only correct so long as you are talking about a majority of voters, who gave Hillary Clinton and her “Stronger Together” message a ringing endorsement. However, the Electoral College majority recoiled not only from her, but also from Obama’s implementation of his multicultural vision. Trump was able to flip six states Obama won in 2012, driving up white turnout while many of the minorities Clinton needed stayed home.
Read the rest at Politico.
Mediaite: HuffPost’s Sam Stein: Barack Obama Oversaw ‘The Destruction of the Democratic Party.’
Huffington Post senior politics editor Sam Stein argued on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday morning that President Barack Obama shoulders much of the blame for his party’s historic losses during his eight years in the White House.
Stein suggested that Democrats may be overanalyzing the 2016 election loss. “They ended up with 2.8 million more votes for their candidate. It was 80,000 votes in three states that really cost her,” he said.
“But then on the other hand, you look at the destruction of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama’s leadership and you have to wonder; what was the political — what were the electoral benefits that he gave to the party?” he argued.
“He leaves them in a much worse position,” Stein noted. “The states are decimated, they lost control of the House and Senate, the governorships are decimated.”
Too bad Obama got rid of Howard Dean and his fifty-state strategy shortly after Dean helped him take away enough votes from Hillary to win the 2008 nomination.
Matthew Gertz at Media Matters: Post-Mortem: How 2016 Broke Political Journalism.
After a presidential campaign season that seemed unprecedented in its length and ferocity, on Election Day 2016 there were two contenders vying to become the most powerful person in the world.
One was a conventional politician who had spent decades in public service. Her positions, philosophy, and actions were well within the norm for an American presidential candidate.
The other was a racist misogynist who ran a campaign based on hatred and vitriol and was described by leading conservatives as a proto-fascist whose rise was “perilous to the republic.” He openly undermined press freedoms, threatened the nation’s decades-long alliances, lifted up white nationalist elements to new prominence, lied constantly and brazenly, mocked the disability of a reporter, attacked a Gold Star family, was caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women and was accused of doing so by several, showed a frightening lack of familiarity with public policy, promised to imprison his opponent, and drew support from Russian intelligence services. He represented a fundamental break with virtually every norm in American public life.
The press plays an essential agenda-setting role in American politics. Every day of the campaign, news executives, editors, TV newscasters and bookers, reporters, and pundits made thousands of independent decisions which, collectively, determined both the stories included in the nation’s papers, websites, and broadcasts, and how those stories were covered. Those journalists could, through the volume and tone of coverage, turn a story into a major scandal for a politician, treat it as a witch hunt against that politician, or let it languish and be forgotten as new stories replace it in the public consciousness. Over and over during the 2016 campaign, the political press chose wrong.
The campaign broke political journalism. Despite the vast differences between the two candidates, the message media consumers heard from journalists was that to an equal extent, both candidates were flawed.
In fact, according to Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy, which reviewed an analysis of news reports in major newspapers and cable and broadcast networks from January 1, 2015, through November 7, 2016, the conventional candidate actually received a higher proportion of negative coverage over the course of the campaign.
The study also reveals that during the general election, “on topics relating to the candidates’ fitness for office, Clinton and Trump’s coverage was virtually identical in terms of its negative tone” — 87 percent negative for both. “Were the allegations surrounding Clinton of the same order of magnitude as those surrounding Trump?” asks the study’s author, Professor Thomas Patterson. “It’s a question that political reporters made no serious effort to answer during the 2016 campaign.”
Read the rest at Media Matters.
Reporters who weren’t white and male had their own problems during the long 2016 campaign. Here’s Sabrina Saddiqui on her experiences: Reporting while Muslim: how I covered the US presidential election. I hope you’ll read the whole thing, but here are a couple of excerpts:
“We should exterminate them.”
The words rolled off the voter’s tongue as though he was merely discussing a pest invasion in his home. He was talking about Muslims.
I froze as I became suddenly aware of my own Muslim identity, my long hair just barely covering my necklace that bears the name of Allah in Arabic scripture.
The conversation had begun just as any interaction with a voter does. The man had come to see Rand Paul speak at a luncheon in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and I approached him to gauge his thoughts on the Kentucky senator’s candidacy.
It was when the topic turned to national security, which he listed as his top priority, that he expressed his desire to purge Muslims from the United States.
When you say exterminate, do you mean we should kill Muslims living in America? I followed up, masking my incredulity as I’ve been trained to do as a journalist.
Yes, he confirmed. If they don’t leave, we start killing them.
A “somewhat humorous” incident in New Hampshire:
There were many more chilling conversations with those who, like the man in South Carolina, wished aloud for violence and concentration camps.
Others were somewhat humorous, like the sweet old lady who pulled me aside at a New Hampshire diner. She warned me that Isis was looking for brides and was genuinely concerned I might be kidnapped. Tell your editors to get you some security, she lectured.
The LA Review of books has an interesting essay on the relevance of Cervantes’s Don Quixote to the 2016 campaign. An excerpt:
Given the presence of Don Quixote in US culture from its beginnings to the present — both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were admirers, and kept prized copies of Cervantes’s novel — you probably know the basics even if you haven’t read the book. Quixote is a middling man leading a mundane life, from which he escapes by immersing himself in antiquated chivalric romance fiction, stories about knights rescuing princesses from giants and dragons. He becomes so enmeshed in these fictions that he believes his uninteresting reality is actually a romance plot, such that peasant women are princesses, donkeys are glistening white steeds, criminals are persecuted heroes, and windmills are fearsome giants.
In other words, because of the story Quixote tells himself about the significance of his own life, he witnesses the same events as everyone else, but comes away with a completely different set of facts. He reasons soundly from what he sees, but his perception is radically different from how everyone else perceives.
When, for example, a local man named Carrasco decides to dress up like a knight and challenge Quixote as part of plot to subdue him, Quixote gives him a severe beating, leaving Carrasco wondering whether he’s as mad as Quixote for attempting the trick. Indeed, as characters like Carrasco attempt to imitate the norms of chivalric romance, either to ridicule Quixote or to rein him in, this behavior only reinforces Quixote’s impression that he lives a romance plot.
This mismatch between Quixote’s perception and everyone else’s renders him something like delusional, but not quite. Those who witness his behavior regularly acknowledge his capacities for justice, rational thought, and reasoned speech. Thus, Quixote has a way of severing rationality from fact. He represents a failure of empiricism — an unreliability arising not from the absence of rationality, but from the stubborn complexity of perception.
This, I would argue, is precisely how the 2016 election went down. Due largely to Trump’s loose relationship with the truth, fact-checking held an outsized presence in the 2016 campaign season, reducing political discourse to arguments about whose facts were more factual. Meanwhile, our most trusted polls and poll aggregators were putting the chances of a Hillary Clinton victory at 70 percent or higher.
Much more at the link.
So . . . what stores are you following today?
Thursday Reads: News with Portraits of Stress
Posted: December 22, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump 28 Comments
Picasso: Weeping Woman
Good Afternoon!!
So . . . another chapter in my life crisis: My mother twisted her ankle a couple of days ago. She went to the doctor, but he sent her home with no treatment to speak of. She spent the night with a friend because she couldn’t really walk. Yesterday morning she was unable to put any weight on it. Now she is staying with my niece, but I’ve been having to deal with my many siblings while trying to figure out what to do when she comes home. Luckily, she is going to my brother’s house over Xmas. Of course this is on top of my current mountain of stress over my living situation. Not to mention the coming apocalypse on January 20.
Anyway, I feel–and probably look like–the Picasso painting above; so please forgive me if this post is incoherent.
It looks like we’ll have to put up with Kellyanne Conway for the foreseeable future. The Guardian reports: Kellyanne Conway chosen as Donald Trump’s counselor.
Donald Trump has named his former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, to serve as counselor to the president, making her the most influential woman in the White House….
Conway, a pollster and political strategist, has been serving as a key member of Trump’s transition team since his victory on 8 November. She came on board as campaign manager in August shortly after Trump had secured the Republican nomination, and after two others – Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort – had been fired from the position….
Trump has touted Conway as an example of his support and promotion of women. The president-elect’s victory on 8 November “also shattered the glass ceiling for women”, Trump’s statement announcing her appointment read. Conway was the first female campaign manager for either major party to win a presidential general election….
The role of counselor to the president is not a position all presidents appoint. It is usually an influential adviser role with a focus on communications. The last person to hold that title was John Podesta, who served under Barack Obama before leaving to run Hillary Clinton’s campaign in February 2015.
Yeah, whatever. If you want to read a bunch more bullshit about Kellyanne, you can click on the link above.
A Fork in the Road, Michael Tolleson
The New Republic’s Jeet Heer: Trump’s Tweets Are a Threat to Our National Security.
TheWashington Post has created a nifty tool designed to address one of the novel problems of our political era: a president-elect who persistently uses Twitter to spread lies. A web-browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, RealDonaldContext annotates some of Trump’s tweets with fact-checking from the Post. For instance, last month Trump tweeted, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Below that, if you use the extension, is a note saying, “This is incorrect or false,” with this explication: “Trump didn’t win in a landslide in any sense—but more importantly there is absolutely no evidence that there were a significant number of votes cast illegally, much less ‘millions’ of them.”
RealDonaldContext meets a genuine need, given the importance tweeting plays in Trump’s media strategy and the frequency with which he lies. Trump’s authoritarianism is manifest in his attempt to impose a false reality on the world, which will become all the more dangerous when he assumes power. Thus, fact-checking his tweets is not only essential journalism, but an act of resistance—a reminder that Trump can’t make a lie come true by fiat alone.
Yet fact-checking, while necessary, is also only a partial solution. Trump’s core supporters, and the Republican Party that has decided to appease them, have proven willing to swallow his lies wholesale; they are immune to fact-checkers. Moreover, the problem with Trump’s tweets isn’t just that they often contain falsehoods, but that they are deliberate provocations with the potential to cause real conflict….
Trump will soon be president, and every tweet and other utterance will matter greatly. “The president’s words, as uttered in speeches and other official statements, literally shape American foreign policy,” Shamila N. Chaudhary, a senior fellow at New America, wrote at Politico. “In turn, State Department bureaucrats rely on the commander in chief to articulate clear, thoughtful and consistent views, based on facts and a knowledge of history. Only then can the entire weight of the large State Department bureaucracy follow seamlessly behind him—and carry out his goals.” In other words, the problem with Trump’s tweets isn’t just that they contain lies and speculation; it’s that a steady, sober foreign policy is made impossible by those tweets. If other nations take Trump’s tweets literally, as China did, there is a real possibility of military conflict.
Read the rest at the link. I think this is a very serious problem, but Trump will probably be just as belligerent in speeches and in person. It’s a fucking nightmare.
PTSD, Marcel Flisiuk
Philip Rucker and Karen Tumulty at the WaPo: Donald Trump is holding a government casting call. He’s seeking ‘the look.’
Donald Trump believes that those who aspire to the most visible spots in his administration should not just be able to do the job, but also look the part.
Given Trump’s own background as a master brander and showman who ran beauty pageants as a sideline, it was probably inevitable that he would be looking beyond their résumés for a certain aesthetic in his supporting players.
“Presentation is very important because you’re representing America not only on the national stage but also the international stage, depending on the position,” said Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller.
To lead the Pentagon, Trump chose a rugged combat general, whom he compares to a historic one. At the United Nations, his ambassador will be a poised and elegant Indian American with a compelling immigrant backstory. As secretary of state, Trump tapped a neophyte to international diplomacy, but one whose silvery hair and boardroom bearing project authority.
“He likes people who present themselves very well, and he’s very impressed when somebody has a background of being good on television because he thinks it’s a very important medium for public policy,” said Chris Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media and a longtime friend of Trump. “Don’t forget, he’s a showbiz guy. He was at the pinnacle of showbiz, and he thinks about showbiz. He sees this as a business that relates to the public.”
“The look might not necessarily be somebody who should be on the cover of GQ magazine or Vanity Fair,” Ruddy said. “It’s more about the look and the demeanor and the swagger.”
For example:
As Trump formally announced his vice presidential pick in July, he said that Mike Pence’s economic record as Indiana governor was “the primary reason I wanted Mike, other than he looks very good, other than he’s got an incredible family, incredible wife and family.”
And in picking retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as his nominee for defense, Trump lauded him as “the closest thing to General George Patton that we have.”
Mattis has a passing physical resemblance to the legendary World War II commander, as well as to the late actor George C. Scott, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Patton in the 1970 biopic. Trump also seems particularly enamored with a nickname that Mattis is said to privately dislike.
“You know he’s known as ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, right? ‘Mad Dog’ for a reason,” Trump said in a recent interview with the New York Times.
I’m sorry, but isn’t there anyone in a position (and willing) to prevent this insane monster from destroying our country?
Rage, Christine Hamilton
Oh wait, James Comey (with help from Loretta Lynch) already made sure tRump could turn the US into a reality TV show except with real nuclear weapons.
Sari Horwitz at the WaPo: The attorney general could have ordered FBI Director James Comey not to send his bombshell letter on Clinton emails. Here’s why she didn’t.
Twelve days before the presidential election, FBI Director James B. Comey dispatched a senior aide to deliver a startling message to the Justice Department. Comey wanted to send a letter to Congress alerting them that his agents had discovered more emails potentially relevant to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
The official in Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates’s office who received the FBI call immediately understood the explosive potential of Comey’s message, coming so close to the presidential election. Federal attorneys scrambled into offices on the fourth and fifth floors of Justice Department headquarters, where they huddled to figure out how to stop what they viewed as a ticking time bomb.
“It was DEFCON 1,” said an official familiar with the deliberations. “We were incredibly concerned this could have an impact on the election.”
Aides at Justice and the FBI — located in offices directly across the street from each other on Pennsylvania Avenue — began exchanging increasingly tense and heated phone calls, nearly a half-dozen throughout the afternoon and evening of Oct. 27 and into the next morning.
Justice officials laid out a number of arguments against releasing the letter. It violated two long-standing policies. Never publicly discuss an ongoing investigation. And never take an action affecting a candidate for office close to Election Day. Besides, they said, the FBI did not know yet what was in the emails or if they had anything to do with the Clinton case.
Remarkably, the country’s two top law enforcement officials never spoke. As Comey’s boss, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch could have given the FBI director an order to not send the letter. But Lynch and her advisers feared that Comey would not listen. He seemed to feel strongly about updating Congress on his sworn testimony about the Clinton investigation. Instead, they tried to relay their concerns through the Justice official whom the FBI had called.
Their efforts failed. Within 24 hours of the first FBI call, Comey’s letter was out.
Read the rest at the link. Why does James Comey still have a job?
What stories are you following today?
Tuesday Reads
Posted: December 20, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: conflicts of interest, corruption, Donald Trump, terrorism 30 Comments
AP photo of Assassination of russian ambassador in Turkey
So . . . It’s Tuesday
As usual these days, the news is not good. tRump will be POTUS in one month, and it’s very hard to imagine how our country survives as a democratic republic. All I can do is cling to hope that something will prevent this monster from becoming Hitler 2.0. It also looks like instability is going to keep rising around the world, and that too is a reaction to tRump–either directly or indirectly.
I’m also dealing with my housing situation and I’m basically paralyzed with fear and anxiety. I can’t recall the last time I felt so overwhelmed. It was probably back when I was at the worst of my drinking. I’m trying my best to focus on one day at a time, but it’s not easy. I am going to move into the apartment I told you about, but the money I will have to live on is going to be more limited than it was for me where I am now. I’m feeling a lot of shame about being so poor. But I really have no choice about doing this. I will have to be very careful about what I spend on food. I’m feeling so emotional right now; I keep crying out of the blue. I guess it is the shock of having to move after all these years and not really knowing how I’m going to manage it.
Anyway, sorry to burden you all with my problems. Since I already shared what is happening, I felt I had to provide an update. I hope in time, I’ll be feeling a lot better about all this. This will be mostly a link dump, because I have to go sign my lease and deal with other stuff today.
The events that took place yesterday in Turkey and Germany are incredibly disturbing, because we will have an insane POTUS dealing with these kinds of attacks. And that follows on the incident with China a few days ago which was very likely a response to tRump’s foolish phone call with Taiwan and his ridiculous twitter comments. Here’s the latest.
The Washington Post: An assassination and a gunman’s final words put Turkey on edge.
MOSCOW — A team of Russian detectives arrived in Turkey on Tuesday to join the investigation into the slaying of Moscow’s ambassador by a Turkish police officer — an act portrayed by both countries as an effort to rupture a rapprochement between the two regional powers backing opposite sides in Syria’s civil war.
The attack Monday also touched off sweeps across Turkey as authorities hunted for clues in the life of the 22-year-old gunman, who decried the violence in Syria after pumping several bullets into the ambassador at a photo exhibit.
Russia is a key ally of Syria’s government while Turkey has been a stalwart backer of rebel factions, although both nations have worked together on a plan to evacuate civilians and opposition fighters from their last enclave in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo.
Officer Mevlut Mert Altintas gunned down Ambassador Andrei Karlov as the diplomat spoke before an exhibition of Russian photos at an art gallery in the Turkish capital of Ankara.
After killing the ambassador, Altintas, an officer with the riot police, denounced Russia’s role in the Syrian war, screaming: “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!” He was later killed in a gun battle with the police.
Truck plows into crowded Christmas market in Berlin
NBC News: Berlin Truck Attack: Pakistan Migrant Is Christmas Market Suspect.
BERLIN — A migrant from Pakistan was identified Tuesday as a suspect in a truck attack on a crowded Christmas market in Germany’s capital, but police said it was still unclear if he was the main perpetrator.
The man was arrested not far from the scene of Monday night’s carnage, which left 12 people dead and wounded nearly 50 others.
He entered the country last year and had applied for asylum, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said, adding that other people may be involved.
The suspect in custody has denied responsibility.
Berlin police chief Klaus Kandt told reporters: “We are not sure if the suspect in custody is the right man … in fact, in my view it is still not certain whether he really was the driver.”
A temporary accommodation center for migrants was raided overnight by special operations police, but no further arrests were made.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has faced political pressure over open-arms policy for refugees, earlier said it would be “hard for us all to bear” if the perpetrator “was someone who sought protection and asylum.”
Of course tRump will see this as ammunition for his war against immigrants.
On the corruption front, tRump’s conflicts of interest get worse and more frightening by the day.
Think Progress: Under political pressure, Kuwait cancels major event at Four Seasons, switches to Trump’s D.C. hotel.
The Embassy of Kuwait allegedly cancelled a contract with a Washington, D.C. hotel days after the presidential election, citing political pressure to hold its National Day celebration at the Trump International Hotel instead.
A source tells ThinkProgress that the Kuwaiti embassy, which has regularly held the event at the Four Seasons in Georgetown, abruptly canceled its reservation after members of the Trump Organization pressured the ambassador to hold the event at the hotel owned by the president-elect. The source, who has direct knowledge of the arrangements between the hotels and the embassy, spoke to ThinkProgress on the condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak publicly. ThinkProgress was also able to review documentary evidence confirming the source’s account.
In the early fall, the Kuwaiti Embassy signed a contract with the Four Seasons. But after the election, members of the Trump Organization contacted the Ambassador of Kuwait, Salem Al-Sabah, and encouraged him to move his event to Trump’s D.C. hotel, the source said.
Kuwait has now signed a contract with the Trump International Hotel, the source said, adding that a representative with the embassy described the decision as political. Invitations to the event are typically sent out in January….
The apparent move by the Kuwaiti Embassy appears to be an effort to gain favor with president-elect through his business entanglements, and it appears to show Trump’s company leveraging his position as president-elect to extract payments from a foreign government. The latter, according to top legal experts, would be unconstitutional and could ultimately constitute an impeachable offense.
NPR Morning Edition: Trump’s Doral Golf Course Highlights His Conflicts Of Interest.
President-elect Donald Trump has financial stakes in hundreds of companies. But one line of business is particularly important to him: golf courses.
He owns more than a dozen courses, which provide the Trump Organization with major streams of revenue and bolster his “luxury” brand image.
But they also created conflicts of interest. As president, he will be able to steer environmental and labor policies that could boost the income from his golf courses.
Take Trump National Doral. It’s a huge luxury resort near Miami, and it provides a good example of how Trump’s role as president and as businessman will come into conflict….
But at Doral, and for clubs and golf courses around the country, new labor regulations promoted by the Obama administration are having an impact on how they do business. And many course owners aren’t happy.
Brad Steele explains why. He’s the general counsel with the National Club Association, a trade group that represents country clubs and golf courses. Steele says the recession was tough on golf courses, and the recovery hasn’t been easy. “The last eight years have been relatively difficult for… the private club industry,” he says.
Among the labor rules Steele and his members are most concerned about is one that greatly expands the number of workers eligible for overtime pay. It’s been criticized by business groups and Republicans in Congress, and was recently put on hold by a federal judge.
It’s a rule that Steele thinks will be targeted by the new administration. “We are excited that now there’ll be an administration that starts to look a little more … critically at the impact that these kinds of things can have on business,” he says.
Read the rest at the link.
And then there are the gobsmacking cabinet appointments.
Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post: Trump’s OMB pick seems poised to ignite a worldwide financial crisis.
Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump tapped Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) to be his director of the Office of Management and Budget. This Cabinet-level post is responsible for producing the federal budget, overseeing and evaluating executive branch agencies and otherwise advising the president on fiscal matters. It’s a position with tremendous, far-reaching power, even if the public doesn’t pay much attention to it.
Which is why it’s so concerning that Trump chose Mulvaney, who seems poised to help Trump ignite another worldwide financial crisis.
Mulvaney was first elected to Congress in 2010 as part of the anti-government, tea party wave. A founding member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, he is among Congress’s most committed fiscal hawks. He has repeatedly voted against his own party’s budget proposals because they were insufficiently conservative.
All this will presumably put him at odds with Trump’s plans to balloon federal deficits through a $7 trillion cut in individual and corporate income taxes, another half-trillion in infrastructure subsidies and other major spending expansions.
It’s unclear how Trump’s fiscally profligate platform meshes with Mulvaney’s preference for penny-pinching. He might push back on Trump’s most expensive ideas. Maybe he’ll employ accounting gimmicks and magic asterisks to force Trump’s numbers to add up. Trump’s campaign advisers have already been doing this, disingenuously claiming that his policies will pay for themselves through unrealistic economic growth.
Or maybe Mulvaney’s job will simply be to convince the rest of the Freedom Caucus to stay mum when deficits explode.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
More news, links only:
Mother Jones: Trump’s Budget Director Pick Spoke at a John Birch Society Event.
Politico: Gingrich: Congress should change ethics laws for Trump.
The Hill: Gingrich suggests Trump pardon advisers who break the law.
Media Matters: Alex Jones Warns Trump That The CIA Is Trying To “Assassinate” The President-Elect.
Talking Points Memo: GOP Rep’s Vision Of Post-ACA World: You Wait To Treat Your Kid’s Broken Arm.
Center for Public Integrity: Donald Trump’s sons behind nonprofit selling access to president-elect.
Haaretz: With Donald Trump, Netanyahu Sees Opportunity for ‘Historic Changes’ for Israel.
What stories are you following today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: December 15, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, Jack Dorsey, James Comey, Russia hacking election, Twitter, Vladimir Putin 50 Comments
Photoshop by John Flynn
https://twitter.com/bryne
Good Afternoon!!
I’m getting a late start today. Yesterday was super-stressful, but I got through it and I’m feeling much better now. A lawyer and two real estate agents came to view the house yesterday. My brother came to support me and he filmed the whole thing. My sister-in-law was also here and she gave the lawyer an earful. I have the sense now that the powers-that-be may let me stay here for awhile to see if I can get senior housing. At least I’m safe until January 9 when I have to go to court again. My brother and sister-in-law will be there also as well as a friend who is an attorney.
Thank you Sky Dancers for the support you gave me on Tuesday and beyond. I love you all!
tRump was tweeting again this morning. The latest meltdown came after read (or had read to him?) a piece in Vanity Fair: Trump Grill Could Be The Worse Restaurant in America, and it reveals everything you need to know about our next president, by Tina Nguyen.
Donald Trump is “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” Fran Lebowitz recently observed at The Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. “They see him. They think, ‘If I were rich, I’d have a fabulous tie like that.’” Nowhere, perhaps, does this reflection appear more accurate than at Trump Grill (which is occasionally spelled Grille on various pieces of signage). On one level, the Grill (or Grille), suggests the heights of plutocratic splendor—a steakhouse built into the basement of one’s own skyscraper.
Uday and Qusay dining at Trump Grill
On another level, Trump Grill falls somewhat short of that lofty goal. The restaurant features a stingy number of French-ish paintings that look as though they were bought from Home Goods. Wall-sized mirrors serve to make the place look much bigger than it actually is. The bathrooms transport diners to the experience of desperately searching for toilet paper at a Venezuelan grocery store. And like all exclusive bastions of haute cuisine, there is a sandwich board in front advertising two great prix fixe deals.
The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich. The inconsistent menus—literally, my menu was missing dishes that I found on my dining partners’—were chock-full of steakhouse classics doused with unnecessarily high-end ingredients. The dumplings, for instance, come with soy sauce topped with truffle oil, and the crostini is served with both hummus and ricotta, two exotic ingredients that should still never be combined. The menu itself would like to impress diners with how important it is, randomly capitalizing fancy words like “Prosciutto” and “Julienned” (and, strangely, ”House Salad”).
Hahahahahaha! Please go read the whole thing. You won’t be sorry.
tRump was not amused.
Of course Graydon Carter is the man who famously started the meme about tRump as “the short-fingered vulgarian.” I had a subscription to Spy Magazine in those days–if only that great publication were still with us.
Poor tRump, no matter how hard he tries he will never fit in with the “classy” rich folks he has always dreamed of fitting in with. Yesterday he called a meeting with a bunch of tech executives, and every single one of them should be embarrassed for participating in the meeting. The funny part is the major tech company that was left out.
Politico: Source: Twitter cut out of Trump tech meeting over failed emoji deal.
Twitter was told it was “bounced” from Wednesday’s meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation.
Trump adviser Sean Spicer later denied the report, telling MSNBC that “the conference table was only so big.”
Oddly though, there was room for three of tRumps kids: Uday, Qusay, and future First Lady Ivanka.
But POLITICO’s source said the social media company’s exclusion from the much-publicized, feel-good confab in Trump Tower stemmed from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s role in rejecting the anti-Clinton emoji — a rejection that brought public complaints from the president-elect’s campaign.
Twitter was one of the few major U.S. tech companies not represented at Wednesday afternoon’s Trump Tower meeting attended by, among others, Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and Tesla’s Elon Musk — an omission all the more striking because of Trump’s heavy dependence on the Twitter platform. With some 17.3 million followers of his account, the president-elect has made Twitter into the de facto press channel of his transition operation.
Trump’s campaign also made a $5 million deal with Twitter before the election, in which the campaign committed “to spending a certain amount on advertising and in exchange receive discounts, perks, and custom solutions,” the campaign’s director of digital advertising and fund raising, Gary Coby, wrote in a Medium post last month. So the campaign objected when the company refused to allow the anti-Clinton emoji.
Hahahahaha! What a bratty loser tRump is.
On a more serious note, NBC News reported last night that Vladimir Putin was “personally involved” in the hacking and leaking of emails designed to hurt Clinton and help tRump in the 2016 election: U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack.
U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the
officials said.
Putin’s objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” the official said.
More at the link.
Meanwhile, right win sources are reporting that James Comey personally told tRump that there is “no credible evidence” that Russia interfered with our election. I won’t link to this, but you can google it at The Blaze:
According to sources who were briefed on conversations that FBI Director James Comey had with President-elect Donald Trump, Comey told Trump that there was no credible evidence to suggest that the Russian government played any part in the outcome of the 2016 election.
Townhall reported late Wednesday that during the same phone conversation, Comey told Trump that National Intelligence Director James Clapper agreed with the FBI’s stance that there was no evidence to suggest Russian influence in the election.
Comey allegedly told Trump that there was only one U.S. intelligence official who was convinced the Russians were behind the hacked emails, and that was CIA Director John Brennan. Comey also added, “And Brennan takes his marching orders from President Obama.”
The sources also stated that Comey told Trump he saw the recent leaks to the Washington Post and New York Times as an attempt by the Democratic party to diminish Trump’s victory in the election by alleging he had outside help from the Russian government.
residential election, or the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
If this is true, it’s time to indict Comey for treason.
ABC News is independently reporting a similar story to the one from NBC News: Officials: Master Spy Vladimir Putin Now Directly Linked to US Hacking.
Ever the master spy, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, was personally involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and efforts to interfere in the American elections, U.S. and foreign intelligence officials tell ABC News.
A spokesperson for Putin today called the reports “funny nonsense” but American intelligence agencies are failing to see any humor in the bold Russian cyber-attacks and the apparent role of the Russian president.
People in the intelligence community directly involved in uncovering and tracking the Russian hack say a new flow of information has directly connected Putin to what began as a lower-level effort by the Russian military to infiltrate the computers of both Republican and Democratic figures.
Once the hackers were successful in breaching the DNC’s systems, Putin became more directly involved with the effort, they say….
In October, the U.S. Intelligence Community said it “is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions.”
At the time, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security said that “based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
And NPR reports that “Trump disciples” are suddenly showing up in Moscow.”
Donald Trump hasn’t been inaugurated yet, but members of his campaign entourage are already riding the president-elect’s coattails all the way to Moscow.
On Monday, Jack Kingston, a former Trump surrogate, briefed American businesspeople in Russia on what they might expect from the incoming administration.
Lifting Western sanctions that were imposed on Russia because of its armed intervention in Ukraine has become the top priority not only for the Kremlin but for foreign companies working in Moscow….
“Trump can look at sanctions. They’ve been in place long enough,” Kingston told NPR in Moscow. “Has the desired result been reached? He doesn’t have to abide by the Obama foreign policy. That gives him a fresh start.”
Wow. What about Russia’s genocide in Syria?
By chance, Kingston’s Moscow trip coincided with the visit of another Trump disciple, Carter Page, who once claimed to advise the Republican candidate on energy and Russia policy. The Trump campaign later distanced itself from Page after he came under scrutiny for his ties to Russia.
On Monday, Page held a news conference at the headquarters of Sputnik, a Russian state-run news agency, where he complained about the proliferation of fake news.
Page lamented the “Cold War mindset” in the U.S. and sang the praises of Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil CEO who expanded his company’s footprint in Russia and whom Trump now wants to be his secretary of state.
Again, wow. Isn’t it about time that President Obama gave a major Oval Office speech on this situation?
I’ll end there, because it’s getting really late. See you in the comments below.
Tuesday Reads: Winter Is Coming, In More Ways Than One.
Posted: December 13, 2016 Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, Syria 44 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers,
Winter is coming, in more ways than one. Cold and dark is settling in here in New England. As we all know, we face the possibility of terrible times to come in our country as a result of the election of Donald tRump and the global rise of right wing authoritarian leaders.
Personally, I’m going through a tough time right now. I will be evicted from my home sometime soon. I’m not sure when it will happen–it could be a month or it could be a few months. I have applied for senior housing in my town, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay here long enough to get an apartment. If I can’t do that, I’ll have to go back to Indiana and try to find housing there.
As you can imagine, I’m pretty overwhelmed emotionally and physically, and I’m actually feeling situationally depressed for the first time in years. Frankly, I think the depression is more related to the Trump horror than to my personal troubles. My housing situation has been up in the air for years, and I’m actually looking forward to getting out of this place. It’s just the process of doing it that is getting me down.
As you can imagine, I’m having some trouble concentrating and that affects my ability to read and write about the news. Anyway, here’s what I have for you today. It’s a mixed bag.
The New York Times: ‘A Complete Meltdown of Humanity’: Civilians Die in Fight for Eastern Aleppo.
Pro-government forces retaking the eastern neighborhoods of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo killed at least 82 civilians on Monday, the United Nations estimated, in what one official called “a complete meltdown of humanity.”
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, warned that the blood bath in Aleppo, a once-thriving northern metropolis that is close to falling under the government’s complete control after more than four years of fighting, could spread to other cities where rebels are active.
“What is happening with Aleppo could repeat itself in Douma, in Raqqa, in Idlib,” he said on Tuesday. “We cannot let this continue.”
Also on Tuesday, the French government said it was “deeply concerned” about reports of a chemical attack in the eastern suburbs of the city of Hama a day earlier. The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, an international coalition of humanitarian groups, said the attack had killed at least 93 civilians and wounded 300, but those numbers could not be confirmed independently.
The death toll for eastern Aleppo, recorded in four neighborhoods — Bustan al-Qasr, al-Fardous, al-Kallaseh and al-Saleheen — included 11 women and 13 children, some shot in the streets as they tried to flee the fighting, said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. He cited reports the world body had received from reliable contacts inside and outside the city.
Mr. Colville said pro-government forces had also reportedly entered homes and killed those they found inside, including women and children.
I’ll be honest. Maybe deep down I’m a hawk like so many have claimed about Hillary, but I don’t understand why the Obama administration has done so little to oppose the Russians in Syria and Ukraine. I also favored the intervention in Libya and, like Hillary, I still think it was the right thing to do. I admit I’m no expert, but to see the human misery that is coming out of Syria is far beyond heartbreaking. Yet, it appears the U.S. will not act.
Vox: This Trump voter didn’t think Trump was serious about repealing her health insurance.
Debbie Mills is a 53-year-old furniture store owner in Bell County, an area of the state right on the Tennessee border. Earlier this year, doctors discovered that her husband has non-alcoholic cirrhosis. He now needs a transplant if he’s going to survive. Mills and her husband keep a bag packed, waiting for the doctors to call with news that a liver is available.
This all means that Mills really, really needs her health insurance. And she’s very grateful for the Affordable Care Act, because she couldn’t afford insurance before it was passed.And yet she voted for Donald Trump. Until we spoke, she said she hadn’t taken Trump’s repeal threats seriously. As we talked, she started to process what his election might mean for her family’s future.
Two excerpts from the interview:
On voting for Trump
Sarah Kliff
So how did you decide to vote for him, since he’s one of the people promising to repeal Obamacare?
Debbie Mills
Well … we liked him because he just seemed to be a businessman.
We’re in a small, rural area where there’s not a lot of businesses right now going on, and so we can’t really have anything else shut down, because it affects everybody.
Michele Palazzo, photo of winter storm Jonas in NYC, 2016
We were in an area where there’s lots of coal. And so we don’t work in the coal mines, but … one job affects this job and affects this job. If they’re not working, they’re not grocery shopping, they’re not going and buying furniture, they’re not buying clothes, they’re not doing anything.
We’re more or less sort of a general store. We sell a little bit of everything. But the coal miners are not able to purchase anything.
Christmas is a lot different than what it used to be because they were getting their Christmas bonuses. And they would come and they would buy the TVs and the recliners and they would redo the whole kitchen and do new dining room tables for the family Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever. And now it’s not like that.
On losing their health insurance
Sarah Kliff
Do you think if it does go away, you’ll regret your vote in any way? Thinking, “I voted for this person who took away my health insurance.” Or … it’s like, that’s one of so many things, like you said, jobs, the economy?
Debbie Mills
I don’t know. I guess I thought that, you know, he would not do this. That they would not do this, would not take the insurance away. Knowing that it’s affecting so many people’s lives. I mean, what are you to do then if you cannot … purchase, cannot pay for the insurance?
You know, what are we to do?
So I don’t know. Maybe he’s thinking about, you know, the little people that are not making the big money, like what they make in New York and Washington and all the places that, you know, this is not, you know, something — this is people’s lives that’s being affected.
Honestly, I should feel sorry for people like this, but my financial situation is probably a lot worse than theirs. I guess I’m sorry they are so ignorant and maybe even stupid, but I have a lot more anger than pity toward tRump voters. I guess that makes me nasty. Well I’m OK with being a nasty woman right now.
Last night Chris Hayes and Bernie Sanders had a “town hall” meeting with tRump voters in Wisconsin. There is no way in hell I was going to watch that. I’m sick and tired of the obsession with the so-called “white working class” in the “rust belt.” Meanwhile, the millions and millions of women, African American, Latino, Asian and other Clinton voters are disrespected and ignored.
We tried to save this country. Bernie Sanders did nothing to help and plenty to hurt Clinton’s chances. It’s time for Sanders to either start acting rather than talking. Let him get a Democratic governor elected in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. Then maybe I’ll listen to him.
Meanwhile, a good story for Chris Hayes to cover would be the conflicts of interest at his own network, NBC.
I liked this piece at the Paris Review on women and aging: Becoming Invisible: An Interview with Mary Ruefle.
Well, thematically, aging and death become one in the same for writers, and very often you lose young readership because you’re no longer interested in the things young people are interested in. The time for exuberance, energy, endless curiosity, endless activity within a body of work, that drops away and everything becomes bittersweet. But this becoming invisible—all women talk about it. There’s a period of transition that’s so disorienting that you’re confused and horrified by it, you can’t get a grip on it, but it does pass. You endure it, and you are patient, and it falls away. And then you come into a new kind of autonomy that you simply didn’t have when you were young. You didn’t have it when your parents were alive, you didn’t have it back when you were once a woman to be seen. It’s total autonomy and freedom, and you become a much stronger person. You’re not answerable to anyone anymore. For me, it was a journey of shedding the sense of needing to please someone—parents, children, partners.
Men don’t become invisible in the same way. There’s a difference in power between men and women, and I know I’m using an archaic formula but I do belong to another century. For the longest time, male power was posited in the accumulation of wealth or experience, and experience was something every man could have. And a woman’s power was always posited on physical attractiveness, the ability to have children. So as a man ages, he gains power, and as a woman ages, she loses it, or feels as though she does. If you go back to this paradox, which I understand people may find antiquated, you find there are still shards and shreds of it everywhere.
Read the rest at the link.
More reads, links only:
Summer Brennan at The Literary Hub: Notes from the Resistance, a Column on Language and Power.
The Cipher Brief: Fmr. CIA Acting Dir. Michael Morell: “This Is the Political Equivalent of 9/11.”
The Washington Post: Trump risks war by turning the One China question into a bargaining chip
The New Republic: The Democrats Must Stop Ceding the Security State to Republicans.
Michael Isakoff: Suspected Russian cyberattack waged on Clinton campaign just days before vote.
The Washington Post: Nixon saw Trump coming. But he wouldn’t have supported him.
Mother Jones: A Guide to Donald Trump’s Huge Debts—and the Conflicts They Present.
Vanity Fair: Why Angry White America Fell for Putin.
The Daily Beast: President Obama on Campaign Hacks: ‘Very Clear Relationships’ Between Team Trump and Russia.
Huffington Post: Harry Reid: The Trump Campaign ‘Was In On’ Russia’s Election Hacking.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and enjoy the rest of your Tuesday.
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