Not Yummy-- Republican Stew

Recall when Lev and Igor were caught laundering Russian money into the Trump campaign and the campaign of dozens of Republicans in Congress? Yesterday, Christian Berthelson reported that Lev-- one of the Giuliani criminal associates was handed a million bucks from Putin in September "a month before he was charged with conspiring to funnel foreign money into U.S. political campaigns. The DOJ-- though obviously not William Barr-- is asking the courts to withdraw his bail and throw Lev in the clink, technically for understating his income and assets. Their filing with the court: "Parnas failed to disclose, in describing his income to the government and pretrial services, the fact that in September 2019, he received $1 million from a bank account in Russia into Account-1. The payment raises provocative new questions about the nature of the work Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were doing and who they were doing it for. Much about the nature of their work remains unclear."

Greg Olear reminds us that the House has already found William Barr in contempt of Congress. Now he is urging Congress to "take him into custody until he 1) releases the full Mueller documents to the House Intelligence Committee and 2) allows all the president’s accomplices to honor their subpoenas... Trump, with Barr as his first mate, has steered the country into uncharted territory. It’s time for the good guys to take back the helm." From Prevail, Olear's blog, this morning: "He seems so nice. Unlike Paul Manafort, who presents as the mobbed-up asshole he is, or Roger Stone, who arrayed himself like a comic-book villain, or Corey Lewandowski, who comes across as the drunken lout rooting for the other team behind you at the game, Bill Barr doesn’t look like a bad guy. He has a kind face, gentle eyes, a full head of hella-good hair, bookish glasses, and an avuncular manner. His pleasing plumpness is more Kris Kringle than Jabba the Hutt. In a word, he’s cuddly. But make no mistake: the once and current Attorney General is the most dangerous man in America. He may well be the Devil himself."

The third and most effective of Trump’s Attorneys General follows the same pattern. The man who leads the Department of Justice does not believe in justice—at least, not the American version of it. Indeed, Barr does not seem to believe in democracy at all. “Might makes right” is his credo. And he has made it his mission to ensure that the president’s might rivals that of a Saudi king, medieval Pope, or Roman emperor. He is, at best, a monarchist, and at worst, a raging Fascist. He is not just a traitor. He is an apostate, rejecting completely the prevailing faith of his countrymen—our American faith in democracy.

Donald Trump is a monarchist, too, in that he sees himself as some sort of king. But that is a function of his own narcissism and insecurity, not a coherent worldview. Barr is different. In a nation founded by revolutionaries, by patriots, he is a Tory-- a redcoat. It is not difficult to imagine him dolled up in white wig and fancy get-up, grovelling before George III.

His treachery is so obvious as to be indisputable. But Barr is unique among the Trump loyalists for two reasons: First, he’s competent. Second, his motives are more opaque.

OK, now I want you to add something else to a brew you can probably already tell is going to be very toxic. Wednesday deranged Texas Trumpist, Louie Gohmert publicly named the whistleblower during a Judiciary impeachment hearing, illegally endangering his life.

Three faces of today's Republican Party

Next ingredient: As of Friday since his defeat, outgoing-- as in defeated-- Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin granted 428 pardons and commutations to typical Republicans, like one convicted of raping a child, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner and a third who killed his parents. But the big news was how Bevin pardoned Republican Patrick Baker who was convicted of reckless homicide, robbery, impersonating a peace officer and tampering with evidence-- whose family threw a fundraiser for Bevin and raised him $21,500 towards retiring his campaign debt. Commonwealth’s Attorney Jackie Steele, who prosecuted Baker and other defendants for the 2014 death of Donald Mills, noted that "two of Baker’s co-defendants are still in prison. 'What makes Mr. Baker any different than the other two?' he asked. Answering that question, he said he believes Baker was pardoned while the others remain locked up because Baker’s family has given generously to Bevin. State records show that Victoria Baker, who lives at the same Corbin address where the fundraiser was held, donated $1,000 in 2015 and that Kathryn Baker gave another $500 to Bevin’s reelection in March"... Bevin commuted his sentence to time served and gave him a pardon."





Yes, I'm concocting a recipe for today's GOP. And it would be a big mistake to not include Fox in that recipe-- a more than key ingredient. In an e-mail to his supporters, Florida garden variety Democrat Lois Frankel wrote that 47% of residents in her D+9 South Florida district watch Fox News, "more than in any other congressional district in the entire country." She whined that "wth Fox News ramping up their propaganda efforts in our district, we need your help" to reelect her. "Republicans are raising big money to defeat Democrats in Florida, and with the Fox News propaganda machine on their side, it’s going to take a real grassroots effort to fight back."

Wired went much further, noting that Fox News is now a threat to national security. Garrett Graff reported that "the network’s furthering of lies from foreign adversaries and flagrant disregard for the truth have gotten downright dangerous."

Sean Hannity, who had long trumpeted the forthcoming inspector general report and expected a thorough indictment of the behavior of former FBI director James Comey and other members of the “deep state,” had a simple message for his viewers during Fox’s Monday night prime time: “Everything we said, everything we reported, everything we told you was dead-on-center accurate,” he said. “It is all there in black and white, it’s all there.”

Except they weren’t right and it wasn’t there. But Fox News’ viewers evidently were not to be told those hard truths-- they were to be kept thinking that everything in their self-selected filter bubble was just peachy keen.

Over on Fox Business, Lou Dobbs said the mere fact that the IG found no political bias in the FBI’s investigation of Trump and Russia in 2016 was de facto proof of the power of the deep state.

John Harwood, long one of Washington’s most respected conservative voices in journalism, summed up Fox’s approach Monday night simply: “Lunacy.”

It’s worse than lunacy, though. Fox’s bubble reality creates a situation where it’s impossible to have the conversations and debate necessary to function as a democracy. Facts that are inconvenient to President Trump simply disappear down Fox News’ “memory hole,” as thoroughly as George Orwell could have imagined in 1984.

The idea that Fox News represents a literal threat to our national security, on par with Russia’s Internet Research Agency or China’s Ministry of State Security, may seem like a dramatic overstatement of its own-- and I, a paid contributor to its competitor CNN, may appear a biased voice anyway-- but this week has made clear that, as we get deeper into the impeachment process and as the 2020 election approaches, Fox News is prepared to destroy America’s democratic traditions if it will help its most important and most dedicated daily viewer.

The threat posed to our democracy by Fox News is multifaceted: First and most simply, it’s clearly advancing and giving voice to narratives and smears backed and imagined by our foreign adversaries. Second, its overheated and bombastic rhetoric is undermining America’s foundational ideals and the sense of fair play in politics. Third, its unique combination of lies and half-truths has built a virtual reality so complete that it leaves its viewers too misinformed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities as citizens to make informed choices about the direction of the country.

In the impeachment hearings, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill and other witnesses made clear how those who, like Fox News hosts and the president, advance the false narrative that Ukraine meddled in the US election are serving the Kremlin’s interests. Russia is playing a weak hand geopolitically-- its economy is sputtering along and its population shrinking-- and so its greatest hope is to stoke internal discord in the West. Robert Mueller warned of this; James Clapper has warned of it; and now Fiona Hill has done the same. “Our nation is being torn apart,” she said. “Truth is questioned.” Yet Fox, and the GOP more broadly, has warmly embraced almost every twist of Kremlin propaganda, up to and including the idea that Russia never meddled in the 2016 election to begin with.

Fox’s clear willingness to parry the wingnuttiest ideas in service of the president, long-term implications to the United States be damned, should worry all concerned about the state of the United States. The Ukraine myth is hardly the only example; for years, it has repeated false conspiracies about the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy literally cooked up by Russian intelligence and fed into the US media. (To say nothing of Fox’s long-term commitment to undermining and questioning climate science, leaving the US both behind in mitigating the worst effects of climate change and also ill-equipped to face the myriad security consequences of a warming planet.)

...[A]s the year has unfolded, Fox’s evening talk shows and its presidentially endorsed morning show have proven to be a particularly egregious and odious swamp of fetid, metastasizing lies and bad faith feedback loops that leave its viewers-- and, notably, its Presidential Audience of One-- foaming at the mouth with outrage and bile.

It’s hard not to think that the increasingly odd behavior and untethered-to-reality pronouncements of the president’s two top lawyers-- Attorney General Bill Barr and personal defender Rudy Giuliani-- have not been deeply influenced by the filter bubble on the right created, fostered, and fertilized by Fox News. As Lawfare’s Susan Hennessey tweeted after Barr set out on his Quixotic quest to prove the deep state was behind the FBI’s 2016 investigation, “The Attorney General is a fully-committed Fox News conspiracy theorist.”

The network’s pantheon of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and the rotating couch-cast of Fox & Friends’ morning show dunces-by-choice together represent a level of ill-informed demagoguery that would make Father Coughlin and Huey Long wince.

More than simply embarrassing themselves by spouting obvious falsehoods, though, Fox News’ incendiary, fanatical rants serve to delegitimize to its viewers the very idea of a political opposition. Every Democrat is evil. Every person who disagrees with President Trump is an enemy of the state. Every career federal employee is a member of a deep state opposition.

As writer Gabe Sherman, who authored a history of Fox News, tweeted over the weekend, “Been thinking a lot about why Trump will survive impeachment when Nixon didn’t. For 20+ years Fox News (and rightwing talk radio) has told GOP voters that Democrats are evil. As lawless as Trump is, Republicans believe Dems are worse. That’s the power of propaganda.”

These pronouncements-- uttered around the clock on weekdays and doubled down on weekends by hosts like the president’s favorite, Jeanine Pirro-- are an attack on the very ideals and foundations of the American experiment.

The founders settled on political parties as a mechanism to institutionalize channels for ongoing debate. As historian Joseph Ellis wrote in American Creation, political parties “eventually permitted dissent to be regarded not as a treasonable act, but as a legitimate voice in an endless argument.” It is that willingness to view opponents as legitimate that has long allowed America to hold together even under trying political times and to deal with political disagreements in the political arena, rather than resorting to violence against national leaders. For all of Fox News and President Trump’s daily declaration of coups and attempted coups against the administration, American history has actually been shockingly free of actual coups.

...That tradition and idea of American politics as an ongoing conversation, an endless argument, is key to preserving our democratic experiment. The idea that you will be in power sometimes, and out of power other times, is what preserves norms and traditions, and curbs the worst abuses and impulses; politicians traditionally understand that actions taken in the majority could serve to bite them if and when they return to the minority.

Donald Trump, who rose to prominence trumpeting the very “birther” falsehood that McCain once batted away, seems bent on undermining that tradition; he has proven he’s perfectly willing to burn down political norms for short-term gain. Fox News seems intent on helping him-- and on a daily basis, they’re telling their viewers he’s right and anyone who disagrees with him is less than human. Trump’s lies are the one constant and consistent position of his presidency (13,000 and counting!), and Fox News has gone all in.

We, as a democratic society, cannot survive such consequences-be-damned, winner-take-all, facts-don’t-matter politics. Fox News has upended Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous proclamation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Its daily programming seems driven by the idea that everyone might be entitled to their own facts, but that there is only one correct opinion: President Trump’s.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote his imagined dystopian regime “told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” but Fox News has actually figured out a tactic even more pernicious: Fox News’ own masters of Orwellian doublespeak, its Hannitys, Carlsons, and Doocys, the ones who smugly declare down up and up down, aren’t even bothering to tell their viewers to ignore their eyes and ears, because the truth never even approaches their airtime.

Let’s hope that Fox News today, unlike in Orwell’s world, doesn’t manage to succeed in transforming our country from a functional democracy into an authoritarian cult.

Trump, The Republicans And Baltimore

Rats by Nancy Ohanian

In 2016, Trump won the Republican primary in Maryland with 236,623 votes. On the same day, Hillary beat Bernie in that state, 63.0% to 33.2%... but Bernie's 281,275 second place finish was still enough to beat Trump. In Baltimore City. It was even funnier. Hillary beat Bernie by a lot-- 81,115 to 38,710, but in the GOP primary that Trump won, he only got a little more than a tenth of what Bernie got, 3,950 votes. and in the general election, Hillary crushed Trump statewide, 60.5% to 35.3% but really eviscerated him in Baltimore-- 85.4% to 10.9%. So, apparently, the feeling is mutual.

Remember when Trump promised he would help cities like Baltimore if he was elected? Maybe someone believed him... but no one I know. Yesterday, John Wagner, reporting for the Washington Post, wrote "Four years ago, in the aftermath of rioting in Baltimore, Donald Trump criticized then-President Obama for not doing enough to address problems in the city and claimed that 'I would fix it fast!' if he were president."

But what does Señor Trumpanzee even know about Baltimore? Anything at all? Well... maybe. It turns out that Kushner-in-law is a slumlord there, reviled for mismanagement. Ellen Cranley reported that Kushner "has continued ownership of several Baltimore-area housing complexes that have been so embroiled in housing violations and mismanagement that Kushner has been called a 'slumlord.'nA 2017 investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times called The Beleaguered Tenants of Kushnerville detailed how a subsidiary of the real-estate firm Kushner Companies functioned and the poor living conditions that plagued residents in complexes bought under Kushner's oversight. The investigation reported decrepit conditions including leaking ceilings, maggots in living-room carpet, and raw human sewage coming from a kitchen sink. The report also includes mention of multiple retaliatory lawsuits against tenants who tried to move out. Residents said in lawsuits they noticed near-constant but largely unexplained fees that would end up aiding their eviction if they weren't paid. The cases are ongoing, as Kushner Companies switched the suit to state court after a federal judge ordered the company to reveal the identity of mysterious company investors."

Whether Trump is aware of the complexes where it seems "no human being would want to live" or not, the housing troubles tied to Kushner haven't gone unnoticed by the city.

Baltimore County officials took notice of Kushner's powerful status while announcing in 2017 that he was to be fined for more than 200 code violations in apartments owned by Kushner Companies.

"We expect all landlords to comply with the code requirements that protect the health and safety of their tenants," county officials said in a statement at the time, "even if the landlord's father-in-law is president of the United States."

The Post Greg Sargent noted that whenever Trumpanzee "unleashes one of his racist attacks, the political world tends to go through a now-predictable cycle. We are first told Republicans think Trump’s latest racist display is brilliant politics, a view often pushed by Trump himself. Then gullible pundits echo that claim. And then persistent digging by reporters shows that Republicans are actually worried that his racism poses a serious problem for the party, unmasking the initial confidence as false bravado." Yesterday two other Post writers, Mike DeBonis and Paul Kane, reported that Republicans might not agree with Trumpanzee's assessment of Baltimore. "House Republicans have scheduled their yearly policy retreat for a downtown Baltimore hotel in September… That could present an uncomfortable situation for Trump, as sitting presidents customarily speak each year at their party’s House retreat." Who will play Winston in the Trump reenactment of Room 101 for the convention. I'm sure he would have loved to have gotten Justin Amash. House Republicans with the lowest Trump adhesion score so far this year are Will Hurd (R-TX), John Katko (R-NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Fred Upton (R-MI)...

How Long Before All TVs Come With Embedded Cameras So Big Bro Can Watch Us-- For Our Own Safety, Of Course?

At one point, a couple decades ago, some of the high-end airlines introduced a privacy feature for first class travelers: enclosed cabins. A flight attendant could stand oh his or her toes and took over the wall, but otherwise you could do whatever you wanted in privacy. Apparently, too many people did and they seem to have abolished them. Now it looks like they're introducing the opposite: tiny cameras that can watch you during the flight. Do you think that's a little intrusive? You're watching a move and "someone" is watching you-- an airline employee? a government entity?

Last month, CNN reported that Singapore admits they have embedded cameras in their newer inflight entertainment systems but claim they're deactivated. "Deactivated?" Why are they there then-- in order to be activated next week or the week after?

The fact that some aircraft seats have built-in cameras is not new knowledge.

Singapore Airlines' inflight entertainment system is manufactured by Panasonic Avionics, a US-based company that supplies IFE for many of the major airlines and French company Thales. Panasonic announced a while back that it's added cameras onto seat backs.

And in 2017, Panasonic Avionics announced a partnership with Tascent-- a biometrics and identity innovation company.

"The companies will combine Tascent's biometric identity devices, software and services with Panasonic Avionic Corporation's in-flight entertainment and communications systems to provide streamlined, easy-to-use identity recognition before departure, during flight and upon arrival," read the corresponding press release.

The idea was seat-back cameras could facilitate onboard immigration, skipping lines when you land. It was also suggested that a seat-back camera could aid payment processing for onboard shopping.

At the 2017 Dubai Airshow, Panasonic Avionics announced the latest incarnation of Emirates' IFE in First Class and Economy-- specifying it featured a camera, plus a microphone and speaker.

In the age of the smartphone, everyone holds a tiny cinema in their hand, so there's certainly an expectation that airlines will have exciting entertainment options-- a screen simply showing movies won't cut it anymore.

But has Emirates ever done anything with its on-board cameras?

"Some of our 777 aircraft have cameras that came pre-installed with the inflight entertainment hardware that we had purchased from the manufacturer (Panasonic)," a spokeperson for the Dubai-based airline told CNN Travel. "It was originally meant for seat-to-seat video calls, however Emirates has never activated it."

This echoes Singapore Airlines' comment on the issue.

"These cameras have been intended by the manufacturers for future developments," the airline says. "These cameras are permanently disabled on our aircraft and cannot be activated on board. We have no plans to enable or develop any features using the cameras."

Meanwhile, American Airlines told CNN Travel that cameras are "a standard feature," but are not activated and the carrier has no plans to use them.

A spokesperson for Aussie carrier Qantas also told CNN Travel that IFE manufacturers include inbuilt cameras as standard-- and said the airline couldn't activate the cameras, even if they wanted to.

"The feature would require software in order to be activated, which Qantas doesn't have and doesn't plan to install."

Air New Zealand and British Airways told CNN Travel there were no cameras on board any of their aircraft.

Two images obtained by CNN Travel of an IFE system on a British Airways airplane depict what looks like a lens of some kind. BA describes it as an infrared environmental sensor rather than a camera.

But are airplane seat cameras a bad idea? Some aviation experts think they could improve the onboard, inflight experience.

Joe Leader, CEO of aviation trade body Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) think there's several handy usages for these cameras.

As well as facilitating video chat between passengers, the cameras could look out for passengers becoming unwell or monitor cabins for suspicious behavior.

The cameras could also be used to spot human trafficking or assault-- acting as an extension of the air steward's eyes.

As for the privacy concern, APEX points out the ubiquity of cameras in 21st century society.

"Today, airline passengers are typically tracked outside the aircraft dozens of times on a typical journey through stores, security, roadways, and airports by cameras without any permission," APEX says in a statement.

"In contrast, airlines only want to use cameras in the future with permission when technology has advanced to offer personalized service improvements that passengers desire."

Hacking fears, suggests APEX, are "misplaced."

"The greatest risk to airline passenger privacy breaches come from their own smartphones, tablets, cameras, computers, and smart devices used in private settings, " says APEX.

The concern for some fliers is that even if the existence of these seat-back cameras aren't a secret-- and even if they could facilitate some cool features-- it feels disingenuous that their presence isn't advertised.

When contacted by CNN Travel, Panasonic Avionics stressed that it was committed to the privacy of passengers.

"Panasonic Avionics will never activate any feature or functionality within an IFE system without explicit direction from an airline customer," the company said in a statement to CNN.

"Prior to the use of any camera on a Panasonic Avionics' system that would affect passenger privacy, Panasonic Avionics would work closely with its airline customer to educate passengers about how the system works and to certify compliance with all appropriate privacy laws and regulations, such as [The EU's data privacy regulation] GDPR."

But although Panasonic Avionics and the airlines say the cameras are currently deactivated-- they're not physically covered up and passengers remain worried about hacking.

These systems are expensive and they're not just there so they could be not used. The airlines should stop bullshitting their customers for a change. One consumer advocacy group pointed out that "Air travel is already fraught with ineffective and invasive breaches of our personal privacy. But now the airlines themselves have gone even further with cameras and microphones pointed at passengers as they watch movies, eat snacks, or just sleep. And the implications of in-flight cameras are even bigger than the discomfort of the airline watching you sleep on a red-eye. It’s still unknown to what extent the federal government could be able to acquire that data, without a warrant or probable cause, or process the camera footage through faulty facial recognition programs that misidentify women and people of color."

I'm old enough to remember when flying was a treat. That was a long, long, long time ago. Are you thinking I'm being too alarmist here? If so, take a look at this. "German Chancellor Angela Merkel has introduced a bill that would allow German spy agencies to hack into nearly any computer and conduct espionage on a wide swath of citizens and foreigners. Drawn up by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, the bill greatly expands the espionage powers of Germany’s intelligence service, the bnd. Although Seehofer has been notorious for opposing the chancellor on many occasions, he seems to have persuaded her to support this latest bill. This time, opposition is coming from Merkel’s coalition ally, the Social Democratic Party (spd). The spd justice minister has expressed outrage at one clause in particular, which would allow spies to collect information on children under 14 years old. The justification for this clause rests on the 2016 case of a 12-year-old who was involved in a plot to bomb a Christmas market.

Many Germans are critical of the bill. “This amounts to a massive extension of intrusive surveillance,” said Sven Herpig, a researcher from the New Responsibility Foundation. Germany’s Left Party also condemned the bill, calling it a “catalogue of Orwellian fantasies.”

In the recent past, however, many similar “fantasies” have become reality.

In 2017, Germany proposed an “unprecedented spate of new surveillance and security laws.” Most of these were passed and are in force today, yet they are rarely discussed.

The biggest concern is currently the government’s State Trojan spyware law. This allows government spyware to be covertly installed on a target’s mobile phone. The spyware can lie dormant for a set period of time, remaining undetected for years, before being activated to collect data on the user’s calls, chats and Internet activity. And this isn’t limited to phones; the spyware can also be used to spy on people through smart devices, like speakers or fridges that can connect to the Internet, greatly infringing upon privacy rights.

Before the State Trojan law was passed, only the federal Criminal Office had the power to employ this method of espionage. Now this power is in the hands of the state itself.

The new law also grants permission for the bnd to use this spyware against foreigners. Both the Criminal Office and bnd have expressed a desire to “cooperate more effectively against ‘transnational’ threats, such as terrorism and organized crime.”

Airlines in Germany are bound to collect and retain the contact details of their passengers, means of booking, payment, and even seat choice, for up to five years. Although presented as an EU requirement, critics have said that this law goes well beyond what is required by Brussels.

Other laws passed in 2017 regulate increased video surveillance of public areas and more detailed research into the background of migrants, both of which came in the aftermath of the 2016 Christmas market terrorist attacks.

Last month, Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and John Kennedy (R-LA) sent a joint letter to Delta, Southwest, Frontier, United, Spirit, American, JetBlue, and Alaska, noting their concern about a possible "serious breach of privacy."

While Americans have an expectation that they are monitored in airports as a necessary security measure, the notion that in-flight cameras may monitor passengers while they sleep, eat, or have private conversations is troubling. Further, in light of data breaches that have impacted many major airlines, we have misgivings that cameras or sensors may not employ the necessary security measures to prevent them from being targeted by cybercriminals

For these reasons, we respectfully request that the following information be provided regarding the cameras on in-flight entertainment systems:

1- Does your airline currently use, or has ever used, cameras or sensors to monitor passengers;

2- If yes, what purpose do the cameras serve and in what circumstances may the cameras be activated;

3- If you have or currently do utilize cameras or sensors to monitor passengers, please provide details on how passengers are informed of this practice;

4- Please provide comprehensive data on the number of cameras and sensors used by your fleet, and the type of information that is collected or recorded, how it is stored, and who within your airline is responsible for the review and safekeeping of this information;

5- Further to the above, please confirm what security measures you have in place to prevent data breaches of this information, or hacking of the cameras themselves; and

6- Are the cameras used in any biometric identity capacity, and if so, under what authority?

We look forward to learning more about these practices and request a response within 30 days.

Why Don't People Like Trump Personally?

The new Quinnipiac poll asked people if they "like" Señor Trumpanzee as a... um, person. Only 31% do. (59% do not.) Let's break that number down among various demographic groups. They reported on how much each of these groups like him as a person:

• Republicans- 66%
• Democrats- 8%
• Independents- 24%
• Men- 36%
• Women- 27%
• Whites with college degree- 28%
• Whites- 34%
• Blacks- 24%
• Hispanics 19%
• 18-34 year olds- 28%
• 35-49 year olds- 30%
• 50-64 year olds- 36%
• people over 65 years old- 31%

"There's a lot of corrupt that went on both in the campaign and in the White House," said Omarosa. "And I'm going to blow the whistle on all of it." That may be a reason when people don't like him. She also asserted that he knew the content of the stolen (hacked) e-mails before wikileaks released them. That's stunning.



There are lots of reasons for Americans to dislike Trump. The Daily Beast came up with another one yesterday, an Orwellian situation straight out of 1984: Chinese Cops Now Spying on American Soil. And that's more than icky. Start with as many as a million Uighursand other ethnic minorities-- maybe more-- held in concentration camps in northwest China.

As part of a massive campaign to monitor and intimidate its ethnic minorities no matter where they are, Chinese authorities are creating a global registry of Uighurs who live outside of China, threatening to detain their relatives if they do not provide personal and identifying information to Chinese police. This campaign is now reaching even Uighurs who live in the United States.

...At the same time, Beijing has been constructing an experimental high-tech totalitarian regime in Xinjiang. They’ve lined the streets with security cameras equipped with facial-recognition software, created a region-wide DNA database of all residents, and implemented a rating system encoded in every person’s ID card, categorizing the individual as “safe” or “not safe” based on criteria including how often the person prays.

These technologies, first tested on Uighurs and other ethnic minority groups, are now being exported to countries like Pakistan as part of China’s “safe cities” project.

As a result of the growing oppression, many Uighurs have tried to flee abroad. But Beijing has launched an unprecedented global campaign to get them back, or to monitor them where there are. China has used its geopolitical clout to repatriate, forcibly if necessary, Uighurs living or studying in countries from Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, and even the United States. Of those who returned to China, many immediately disappeared, presumably into one of the camps. China also recruits Uighurs living abroad, as detailed in a Buzzfeed report in July.

Now, Beijing is seeking to create a detailed database of those who haven’t returned.

“The reason that Uighurs are a canary in a coal mine,” explained Millward, “the reason that everyone should pay attention to this, even if they aren’t concerned about the fate of this ethnic group, is that these are tools of control that are now being employed by the CCP and are easily applied to other individuals as well.”

“The totalization and securitization of information in China, and then the globalization of that reach, is most apparent with regard to the Uighurs but is by no means limited to Uighurs,” he said.

The growing human rights crisis in Xinjiang, and China’s expanding campaign of control and harassment abroad, has attracted growing attention from U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups. On July 26, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing on the crisis there, and lawyers and activists are pushing for the U.S. government to levy sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act on the Chinese officials directly responsible for the concentration camps.

For Uighurs living in the United States, demands from Chinese police thousands of miles away serve as an unwelcome reminder that nowhere, not even the United States, is free from the long arm of the Chinese state.

Fear Keeps Us All In Line

I haven’t heard Roger Waters’ new album— his first in 25 years, released last week— Is This The Life We Really Want?, yet, just the title track… which I urge you to listen to too. Sonically, the resemblance to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, will make you feel comfortable— and make the austere, even chilling, message, easier to digest and grapple with. I’ve been reading an anthology of essays, edited by Lori Perkins, 1984 In The 21st Century, which put me right in the proper head space for Waters’ music.

In his essay, How 1984 Can Decode Trump’s First 100 Days, attorney and self-described hacker with a Dali mustache, Alexander Urbelis, wrote of “the linguistic assault on, and blatant disregard for, the truth and rational thought by senior Trump administration officials and the President himself.”

We are now fighting a battle over who controls the very notion of what is real and fake, true and false. We cannot afford to mince words: President Trump and his staff have used and will use lies and deceit to create a false perception of reality that suits their political agenda.

They have espoused as truth unsupportable and untenable falsehoods on a daily basis, and it has become the near-full time responsibility of the media to call out the fictions of the administration. If we do not continue the struggle for basic honesty, we are warned by Orwell that uncorrected lies will be "passed into history and [become] truth."

1984 is a menacing tale about the fictional state of Oceania. It exists in a state of continuous and seemingly never-ending war, its institutions are notoriously revisionist and manipulative of public perception with no regard for historical facts or truth. Overseeing law and order and guarding against even minor rebellion is overt and omnipresent government surveillance; and in the seat of power directing all functions of state is Big Brother, a cult of personality demanding of the most intense personal and political loyalty.

Orwell's lessons, cautions and predictions have in my life never been more real and more serious than they are now. Those lessons and parallels merit serious consideration.

Much has been written about newspeak, the fictional language of Oceania, with its deliberately limited and constantly diminishing vocabulary, and how its assaults on truth and reason parallel Trump administration practices. The idea behind newspeak is that by reducing vocabulary it is also possible to constrict personal thought and the freedom of expression.

In Orwell's world, there is no such thing as the word "bad," it is instead "ungood." But could this very surface-level comparison between newspeak and Conway's characterization of Spicer's blatant lies as "alternative facts" really be spurring such a resurgence in interest in the 1984? Of course not. There is more.

In everything from his Cabinet appointments to the rationale for destabilizing executive orders, President Trump appears to have taken a cue directly from 1984’s fictional ministries, whose purposes are diametrically opposed to their names. Orwell's Ministry of Truth ("Minitrue" in newspeak), for example, had nothing to do with truth but was responsible for the fabrication of historical facts.

In that vein, President Trump has provided us, in the name of security, with a travel ban on immigrants and refugees from countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of no Americans, while leaving out countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of thousands of Americans.

He has provided us with Betsy DeVos, a secretary of education nominee who is widely believed to oppose public education, and who promotes the truly Orwellian-sounding concept of "school choice," a plan that seems well-intentioned but which critics complain actually siphons much-needed funds from public to private education institutions.

Andy Pudzer-- named to head the Labor Department, which is charged with promoting and protecting the welfare of wage earners-- has a checkered past with workers' rights and has actually praised the efficiency of robots over humans on account of automatons' inability to take vacation and file discrimination complaints.

And we cannot fail to mention that Scott Pruitt-- nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency, which has responsibility to protect health and the environment-- as Oklahoma attorney general devoted his office to battling the EPA, actively sought deregulation of air pollution requirements, and spearheaded the attack on Obama's efforts to reduce global warming, the Clean Power Plan.

What is truly terrifying is that President Trump and his people refuse to recognize the contradictory nature of their positions, which is the condition perfectly described in 1984 as doublethink. "[T]o hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing both of them," is doublethink. And most germane: "To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed," is doublethink.

Going hand-in-hand with the concept of doublethink was the notion of blackwhite: "a loyal willingness to say that black is white when party discipline demands." Blackwhite, however, is more sinister, in that it "means also the ability to believe that black is white ... to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed to the contrary."

We saw this firsthand when President Trump addressed staff members at the CIA. As he recalled his mental impressions of the inauguration crowd, he said, "I looked out, the field was-- it looked like a million, million and a half people." And I do not think he was lying. I believe that President Trump believed this because he had to believe it: The revision of events one day prior to his speech was necessary because it was the only way he could assert legitimacy to control the present moment. The worst, however, is not that Conway and Spicer so easily and willingly followed suit with their own acts of blackwhite, but that they really believed that we-- the media and the people-- would in turn do the same.

Perkins chose to lead off her anthology with David Brin’s George Orwell And The Self-Preventing Prophecy. “One of the most powerful novels of all time, published fifty years ago, foresaw a dark future that never came to pass,” he wrote. “That we escaped the destiny portrayed in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four may be owed in part to the way his chilling tale affected millions, who then girded themselves to fight ‘Big Brother’ to their last breath. In other words, Orwell may have helped make his own scenario not come true.”

[In] Big Brother — Orwell showed us the pit awaiting any civilization that combines panic with technology and the dark, cynical tradition of tyranny. In so doing, he armed us against that horrible fate. In contrast to the sheep-like compliance displayed by subject peoples in Nineteen Eighty-Four, it seems that a ‘rebel’ image has taken charge of our shared imaginations. Every conceivable power center, from governments and corporations to criminal and techno-elites, has been repeatedly targeted by Hollywood’s most relentless theme... suspicion of authority.

…History is a long and dreary litany of ruinous decisions made by rulers in all centuries and on all continents. No convoluted social theory is needed to explain this. A common thread weaves through most of these disasters; a flaw in human character— self-deception— eventually enticed even great leaders into taking fatal mis-steps, ignoring the warnings of others.

The problem is devastatingly simple, as the late physicist-author Richard Feynman put it. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself— and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Many authors have railed against the cruelty and oppression of despots. But George Orwell focused also on the essential stupidity of tyranny, by portraying how the ferocious yet delusional oligarchs of Oceania were grinding their nation into a state of brutalized poverty. Their tools had been updated, but their rationalizations were essentially the same ones prescribed by oppressors for ages. By keeping the masses ill-educated, by whipping up hatred of scapegoats and by quashing free speech, elites in nearly all cultures strove to eliminate criticism and preserve their short-term status... thus guaranteeing long-term disaster for the nations they led.

This tragic and ubiquitous defect may have been the biggest factor chaining us far below our potential as a species. That is, till we stumbled onto a solution.

The solution of many voices.

Each of us may be too stubbornly self-involved to catch our own mistakes. But in an open society, we can often count on others to notice them for us. Though we all hate irksome criticism and accountability, they are tools that work. The four great secular institutions that fostered our unprecedented wealth and freedom— science, justice, democracy and market— function best when all players get to see, hear, speak, know, argue, compete and create without fear. One result is that the “pie” we are all dividing up keeps getting larger.

In other words, elites actually do better— in terms of absolute wealth— when they cannot conspire to keep the relative differences of wealth too great. And yet, this ironic truth escaped notice by nearly all past aristocracies, obsessed as they were with staying as far above the riffraff as possible.

Orwell saw this pattern, perhaps more clearly than anyone, portraying it in the banal and witless justifications given by Oceania apparachniks.

How have we done with his warning? Today, in the modern neo-west, even elites cannot escape being pilloried by spotlights and scrutiny. They may not like it, but it does them (and especially us) worlds of good. Moreover, this openness has helped prevent the worst misuses of technology that Orwell feared. Though video cameras are now smaller, cheaper and even more pervasive than he ever imagined, their arrival in numberless swarms has not had the totalitarian effect he prophesied, perhaps because— forewarned— we act to ensure that the lenses point both ways.

This knack of holding the mighty accountable, possibly our culture’s most unique achievement, is owed largely to those who gazed at human history and saw the central paradox of power— what’s good for the leader and what’s good for the commonwealth only partly overlap, and can often skew at right angles. In throwing out some of the rigid old command structures— the kings, priests and demagogues who claimed to rule by inherent right— we seem to be gambling instead on an innovative combination: blending rambunctious individualism with mutual-accountability.

Those two traits may sound incompatible at first. But any sensible person knows that one cannot thrive without the other.

…Criticism is the best antidote to error. Yet most humans, especially the mighty, try to avoid it. Leaders of past cultures crushed free speech and public access to information, a trend Orwell showed being enhanced by technology in a future when elites control all the cameras. In part thanks to Orwell's warning, ours may be the first civilization to systematically avoid this cycle, whose roots lie in human nature. We have learned that few people are mature enough to hold themselves accountable, but in an open society, adversaries eagerly pounce on each others' errors. To preserve our freedom, we must not try to limit the cameras— they are coming anyway and no law will ever prevent the elites from seeing. Instead, we must make sure all citizens share the boon— and burden— of sight. This is already the world we live in. One where the people look hard at the mighty, and look harder the mightier they are.

Orwell's dark future can’t come true if confident citizens have a habit of protecting themselves by seeing and knowing… Despite repeated efforts by our own hierarchs to justify one-way information flows, the true record of the last generation has been an indisputable and overwhelming dispersal of knowledge and the power to see. People are becoming addicted to knowing.

A new poll from the Associated Press shows that most Americans think Señor Trumpanzee “has little to no respect for the country’s democratic traditions.” 65% of Americans think he doesn’t have much respect for the country’s democratic institutions and traditions or has none at all. “Nearly a third of Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican party think Trump has little to no respect for the country’s democratic institutions, and a quarter disapprove of the job he’s doing as president. Nine in 10 Democrats and 6 in 10 independents say the same.”

I’ll just leave you with a paragraph from Marc Polite’s essay, Controlling The Present: How “1984” Predicted “Alternative Facts And “Fake News.” He reminded his readers that “In our political discourse soon after the inauguration of Donald Trump, a very curious term slipped into the lexicon. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, in defense of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer giving out false statements about the size of the crowds at the inauguration, said that he was giving out ‘alternative facts.’ Not lies, but ‘alternative facts.’ The term Orwellian applies her aptly.”

Remember the Ingsoc Party slogan: “Who controls the past, controls the future… who controls the present, controls the past.” Why not listen to Roger Waters’ song again?

Treason Is A Very Serious Crime-- Way Too Serious For Devin Nunes

Yesterday James Fallows wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's credibility crisis is now front-and-center. He worries about the inevitability of the moment a crisis causes Trump to say "Trust me," and no one can and that's why so many veteran officials have warned about his habit of incessantly telling instantly disprovable lies. "If an administration will lie about facts where the contradictory evidence is in plain sight, how can we possibly believe them on anything else? And that anything else could well involve the most bizarre charges ever lodged against an American president. Soon the whole country will want to know who in the Trump Regime is literally guilty of treason-- and has this particular stinking fish rotted from the head.

Did you watch Spicy Spice on TV claiming authoritatively that "General Flynn was a volunteer of the campaign" and that Paul Manafort "played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time?" We're talking about, respectively, Trump's now-fired National Security Advisor and his former campaign manager, the one who probably cut the deal with Putin that in all likelihood won him the election. Oh, you thought Bannon was the top guy at the campaign. Well, after Manafort's relationship with Putin started leaking out, the ghastly Mercer clan put their man Bannon in place but Bannon was in charge for just 83 days... Manafort 144 days. Anyway, watch Spicy trying to weasel out from under the importance of two of the Putinistas inside TrumpWorld. Very Ministry of Truth:



How did Trump even come into contact with Paul Manafort? Well longtime Trump crony Roger Stone-- the Julian Assange and Guccifer2 (GRU) contact person-- had been Manafort’s business partner, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to figure the introduction came from there. Trump would have taken right to Manafort, a ruthless and corrupt suck-up to power, just like Trump himself. Right now Trump and Manafort are both still claiming that neither of them was behind the only change the Trump campaign made to the GOP platform at the Republican National Convention, namely to let Putin write the position on Ukraine. Manafort, the scumbag who laundered payments from Putin's Ukrainian puppet into offshore accounts. This morning, the Associated Press blew the Manafort-Putin story sky high. Even Republicans are going to find it harder and harder to keep denying this with a straight face. "Manafort," reported AP, "secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics...The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests."

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse. Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

"We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success," Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, "will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government."

Manafort's plans were laid out in documents obtained by the AP that included strategy memoranda and records showing international wire transfers for millions of dollars. How much work Manafort performed under the contract was unclear.

The disclosure comes as Trump campaign advisers are the subject of an FBI probe and two congressional investigations. Investigators are reviewing whether the Trump campaign and its associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign. Manafort has dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and misguided, and said he never worked for Russian interests. The documents obtained by AP show Manafort's ties to Russia were closer than previously revealed.

...Deripaska became one of Russia's wealthiest men under Putin, buying assets abroad in ways widely perceived to benefit the Kremlin's interests. U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 described Deripaska as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis" and "a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin's trips abroad." In response to questions about Manafort's consulting firm, a spokesman for Deripaska in 2008-- at least three years after they began working together-- said Deripaska had never hired the firm. Another Deripaska spokesman in Moscow last week declined to answer AP's questions.

When asked Wednesday about Manafort's work for Deripaska, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "we do not feel it's appropriate to comment on someone who is not an employee at the White House."

Manafort worked as Trump's unpaid campaign chairman last year from March until August. Trump asked Manafort to resign after AP revealed that Manafort had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation until 2014 on behalf of Ukraine's ruling pro-Russian political party.

Unpaid? No. Unpaid by Trump but not unpaid. Putin picked up that tab as surely as Mercer picked up the tab for Bannon and Kellyanne and the rest. AP makes the point that "the newly obtained business records link Manafort more directly to Putin's interests" and that "federal criminal prosecutors became interested in Manafort's activities years ago as part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukraine assets after the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych there in early 2014."

Manafort and his associates remain in Trump's orbit. Manafort told a colleague this year that he continues to speak with Trump by telephone. Manafort's former business partner in eastern Europe, Rick Gates, has been seen inside the White House on a number of occasions. Gates has since helped plan Trump's inauguration and now runs a nonprofit organization, America First Policies, to back the White House agenda.

Gates, whose name does not appear in the documents, told the AP that he joined Manafort's firm in 2006 and was aware Manafort had a relationship with Deripaska, but he was not aware of the work described in the memos. Gates said his work was focused on domestic U.S. lobbying and political consulting in Ukraine at the time. He said he stopped working for Manafort's firm in March 2016 when he joined Trump's presidential campaign.

Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 that he was pushing policies as part of his work in Ukraine "at the highest levels of the U.S. government-- the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department," according to the documents. He also said he had hired a "leading international law firm with close ties to President Bush to support our client's interests," but he did not identify the firm. Manafort also said he was employing unidentified legal experts for the effort at leading universities and think tanks, including Duke University, New York University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Manafort did not disclose details about the lobbying work to the Justice Department during the period the contract was in place.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, people who lobby in the U.S. on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the department. Willfully failing to register is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, though the government rarely files criminal charges.

Deripaska owns Basic Element Co., which employs 200,000 people worldwide in the agriculture, aviation, construction, energy, financial services, insurance and manufacturing industries, and he runs one of the world's largest aluminum companies. Forbes estimated his net worth at $5.2 billion. How much Deripaska paid Manafort in total is not clear, but people familiar with the relationship said money transfers to Manafort amounted to tens of millions of dollars and continued through at least 2009. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret payments publicly.

In strategy memos, Manafort proposed that Deripaska and Putin would benefit from lobbying Western governments, especially the U.S., to allow oligarchs to keep possession of formerly state-owned assets in Ukraine. He proposed building "long term relationships" with Western journalists and a variety of measures to improve recruitment, communications and financial planning by pro-Russian parties in the region.

Trump was notoriously chummy with his campaign volunteers-- and Putin cutouts

Manafort proposed extending his existing work in eastern Europe to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia, where he pledged to bolster the legitimacy of governments friendly to Putin and undercut anti-Russian figures through political campaigns, nonprofit front groups and media operations.

For the $10 million contract, Manafort did not use his public-facing consulting firm, Davis Manafort. Instead, he used a company, LOAV Ltd., that he had registered in Delaware in 1992. He listed LOAV as having the same address of his lobbying and consulting firms in Alexandria, Virginia. In other records, LOAV's address was listed as Manafort's home, also in Alexandria. Manafort sold the home in July 2015 for $1.4 million. He now owns an apartment in Trump Tower in New York, as well as other properties in Florida and New York.

One strategy memo to Deripaska was written by Manafort and Rick Davis, his business partner at the time. In written responses to the AP, Davis said he did not know that his firm had proposed a plan to covertly promote the interests of the Russian government.

Davis said he believes Manafort used his name without his permission on the strategy memo. "My name was on every piece of stationery used by the company and in every memo prior to 2006. It does not mean I had anything to do with the memo described," Davis said. He took a leave of absence from the firm in late 2006 to work on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Manafort's work with Deripaska continued for years, though they had a falling out laid bare in 2014 in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The billionaire gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable, according to legal filings by Deripaska's representatives. It said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.

Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Deripaska's representatives openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him. After Trump earned the nomination, Deripaska's representatives said they would no longer discuss the case.

Are members of Congress paying attention? Some are. This morning, Ted Lieu issued a statement that the report about "Manafort's secret work to benefit Vladimir Putin’s government is a new explosive revelation in the increasingly disturbing story of the Trump Campaign’s connections to Russia. The revelation that Manafort was paid $10 million by a Russian oligarch to influence politics, corporate dealings and media coverage to benefit Putin is scary enough. Even more ominous is the fact that the Trump White House keeps lying about its ties to Russia. For the good of our Republic, there must be a full accounting of any and all ties between Russia, President Trump, his administration and his associates.  Russia waged an unprecedented, robust, covert effort to alter the outcome of our nation's 2016 election. The importance of fully understanding if Team Trump colluded with Russia cannot be overstated. That’s why Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and I have introduced a House resolution of inquiry that could compel the Trump Administration to publicly disclose information to Congress and the American people. The American people have an absolute right to know the truth about Trump and his team's ties to Russia now." OK, now listen to Dave Gahan on this: