Will Trump Make History As The First President To Go To Prison?

Speaking Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference in Washington, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that Trump, stumbling around like a drunk, is making poorly thought out moves that are backfiring. "Comey," he said, "handing over his notes to former Director Mueller, who is running the investigation, means that Trump is now under investigation. That's the irony-- all he was trying to do was to get the story out that he wasn't, but in pursuit of that, he created a string of events where it's likely, we don't know, he is under investigation."

A new YouGov poll (June 8-9) has Trump down at 37% approval, 52% unfavorable. Asked if they thought Trump did or did not ask James Comey to pledge loyalty to him, only 15% of Americans believe Trump's assertion that he didn't ask. (Not even Republicans believe Trump there-- only 23% said he didn't ask. Later Don-the-Con, Jr. confirmed that the discussion about loyalty his father denies ever happened, did indeed take place.) And then came the killer question: "Who do you think is more honest and trustworthy?" Overall, only 26% think Trump's more honest and trustworthy (to 46% who think Comey is). It's even more disastrous for Trump that among independent voters, only 22% think Trump is more honest and trustworthy.



Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders petrified that a massive and unstoppable anti-Trump tsunami is forming that will sweep away their House majority, are pushing an absurd proposition that Trump is merely naïve and maybe a little ignorant, but not evil, traitorous or criminal. As Greg Sargent pointed out at the Washington Post that isn't believable and doesn't reflect well on Paul Ryan and his co-conspirators in Congress.

This touchingly innocent GOP naivete requires forgetting all the ways that Trump has flouted the rules-- and shown total contempt for our institutions and democratic processes, norms and constraints-- on multiple other fronts for months. All these Republicans have witnessed the White Houses repeated attacks on the news media, which stayed deep into an effort to undermine the fundamental institutional role of the press as a check on lawmakers' excesses or corruption. They know Trump's attacks on the courts have shaded into an effort to undermine their very legitimacy at a time when they are constraining Trump's power to impose an immigration ban, which a senior Trump advisor explicitly described as a test run to demonstrate that his power "will not be questioned."

All these Republicans know that Trump's business arrangement and refusal to release his tax returns are shredding basic norms of transparency (in fact, many Republicans criticized the latter during the GOP presidential primaries, remember?) that presidential candidates in both parties held themselves to for decades. They have witnessed Trump's serial use of important diplomatic business to promote Mar-a-Lago, at an increased cost to taxpayers. All these things are about more than just concealing conflicts or enriching himself and his family. They are functions of Trump's autocratic and authoritarian tendencies-- he does things to demonstrate that he can.

Republicans, of course, have done little to nothing to check all these abuses. But this amounts to more than abdication of oversight. It represents a refusal to acknowledge what all of these things add up to-- a picture of a lawless president who does not believe that rules, norms or constraints should apply to him. In this context, the spin that Trump will behave once he "learns the rules" represents a much broader and deeper abdication of responsibility to admit to, and grapple with, the authoritarian reality in our midst. Even worse, it confirms that their complicity with these abuses will continue. With Trump likely to descend further, to unforeseen depths, we have only begun to grasp the stakes of this enabling exercise, and have no idea where the bottom lies, in the minds of Republicans, or indeed, if there is any bottom at all.

Writing for the Lawfare blog, Paul Rosenzweig, a Heritage Foundation Fellow and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security, asked-- and then answered-- "What's the worst thing that happened to Donald Trump this week?" He wrote that "It was NOT Director Comey's testimony. Rather, it must be the late Friday news that Robert Mueller has hired Michael Dreeben, on a part-time basis, to help with his investigation. Dreeben, a deputy in the Office of the Solicitor General, has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court. His specialty has, for the last 20 years, been criminal matters and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law. I once saw him argue a Supreme Court matter without a single note. In short, he is quite possibly the best criminal appellate lawyer in America (at least on the government's side). That Mueller has sought his assistance attests both to the seriousness of his effort and the depth of the intellectual bench he is building."

Remember a couple of weeks ago when Mueller brought Andrew Weissmann onto his team? Weissman, a top Justice Department official who’s been overseeing corporate fraud and foreign-bribery investigations and managed the Enron task force, is best known as the prosecutor who not only put away Enron CEO Ken Lay but also New York Mafia bosses from the Genovese, Colombo and Gambino crime families including mobster godfathers John Gotti and Vincent Gigante. That was bad news for the Mafia-like jackkass sitting in the Oval Office. After adding Dreeben last week there can no longer be any doubt that Mueller is putting together a team that all about hard-core criminal cases.

The National Law Review put it like this: "Special counsel Robert Mueller III has recruited the Justice Department’s top criminal law expert to help with his investigation of ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials. Deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben, who has argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and oversees the Justice Department’s criminal appellate docket, will be assisting Mueller on a part-time basis, according to sources familiar with the arrangement... The move signals that Mueller is seeking advice on the complexities that have arisen already in the investigations, including what constitutes obstruction of justice."

"Michael Dreeben is to criminal law what Robert Mueller is to investigations,” former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said Thursday night. “Literally the very best. Yet another sign of how serious Mueller is about this matter." Now a partner at Hogan Lovells, Katyal has been a key figure in challenging President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

In 2005, Dreeben argued and lost a case for the government involving obstruction-of-justice charges against the Arthur Andersen accounting firm in the wake of the Enron scandal.

At an event marking Dreeben’s 100th Supreme Court argument in 2016, justices praised his expertise in the area of criminal law. He argued his first case at the court in 1989 against John Roberts Jr., then in private practice, and has worked in the solicitor general’s office under Republicans and Democrats ever since.

Justice Elena Kagan, who worked with Dreeben as solicitor general before joining the high court, said she felt honored "in the company of a magnificent attorney doing a magnificent job."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that when Dreeben approaches the lectern at the Supreme Court, "I know he will tell it straight."

Results I

This morning at 10:30 I walked down the hill to my polling station and there was a line, first I ever saw there, but that was more because of an illiterate poll worker who was non-functional than because of voter enthusiasm per se. The whole process from arming my home alarm to disarming it took 19 minutes-- and that was a tough walk back up in the hill in the hot sun. It's 85 degrees and sunny, different from how I remember November voting days in NY and San Francisco!

Meanwhile Trump was working to disenfranchise American citizens of Hispanic origin in Nevada, while the Republican Party was up to it's old tricks of suppressing the black vote in North Carolina "When the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that North Carolina had intentionally passed a law containing provisions making it harder for Black people to vote, the court probably thought it was sending the state a clear message: Stop discriminating. North Carolina Republicans, however, don’t seem to be getting the point... Since Republicans have been unable to convince meaningful numbers of Black people to vote for them, they resort to underhanded tactics that, as the Fourth Circuit noted, target Black voters with 'almost surgical precision.'" The state GOP's executive director, Dallas Woodhouse, ordered Republicans on county elections boards to cut early voting hours and keep polling sites away from college campuses.

In Nevada, Trump lawyers were nearly laughed out of court for whining to a judge the early voting sites in Hispanic neighborhoods were allowed to stay open too late. Although Trump calls it "rigged," it has been generally accepted in every single state that when someone is on line when the polls close they get to vote no matter how long it takes. People who are pro-democracy encourage voters. Authoritarians discourage voters and try to hold down turnout and participation. The Nevada judge threw the suite out. Trump's attorney general pick, Rudy Giuliani, was screaming on MSNBC "If the polls close at 9pm, close 'em at 9pm!" something that never happened in New York City when he was mayor.

Artie Blanco, Director for a group called For Nevada’s Future didn't take well to Trump's clownish lawsuit either. Moments after it was thrown out, he told the media that "For the past three hours, the Trump campaign has wasted the time and tax dollars of the people of Nevada. Their frivolous lawsuit, thrown out just moments ago, was aimed towards doing one thing, and one thing only, disenfranchising voters. Meanwhile, dozens of organizations are helping to remind Nevada’s voters that today is election day and that all Nevada’s citizens should come to the polls in order to have their voices heard as they have already done in record numbers during early vote."

Meanwhile, over at Fox, Charles Krauthammer was on with Bill Hemmer warning about a Republican civil war. He warned that Trump (and his gang) will try to turn the GOP into a populist party-- remember, right-wing populism is usually a precursor to outright fascism-- and that "the country will not have a conservative party." (I guess he hasn't been taking a serious look at Hillary and the people around her, although he did say he thinks she will try to make a Grand Bargain-- cutting entitlements and raising taxes-- as soon as she takes office.)



Pelosi and Ben Ray Lujan, her lame DCCC chair, came out before there were any results to whine that it wasn't the DCCC's fault that they wouldn't win back the House today because it is Jim Comey's fault. Something that's true, on the other hand, was that anyone who predicted that the unfavorables for both Trump and Clinton would hold down turnout. Turnout has been very heavy though-- everywhere.

The first states to close-- at 6pm (which seems odd in 2016)-- were most of Indiana and most of Kentucky. By 7pm AP called Kentucky and Indiana for Trump and Vermont for Clinton. No surprises there. AP also called the Senate races in Kentucky and South Carolina for the GOP and Vermont for the Dems. No surprises there either. And then came West Virginia, also for Trump. Right off the bat, though, Hillary pulled ahead in Florida, while Murphy sunk down below Rubio. We'll update every now and then tonight. But my Twitter page is probably better.

Do The Donald and The Unspeakable Pence and all the others have any glimmering that they're asses?

Last Tango in Halifax's Alan and Celia: Below, normally
soft-spoken Alan shares a striking political insight.

In Series 1 of Last Tango in Halifax, Alan Buttershaw (Derek Jacobi) and Celia Dawson (Anne Reid), both now widowed, had refound each other after 70 years without contact and, discovering that they were both still madly infatuated, and considering their advanced age, hatched a plan to just go ahead and get married. Of course in most ways they hardly knew each other, and in this exchange from Episode 3, which aired originally in December 2012, they fell afoul of each other's politics. (Like all 17 other episodes to date, this one was written by series creator Sally Wainwright.)

CELIA: D'you know, I'd never had you down for red-hot Labour.
ALAN [trying to say something]: Hmm --
CELIA: I thought you had more about you.
ALAN: You know, the good thing about David Cameron is that even he knows he's an ass. You know, every time he opens his mouth, you can see him thinking, "I was born an ass, I'll die an ass, but at least I know I'm an ass."

by Ken

Okay, this post is mostly an excuse to do something with this delicious rant of Alan's -- a soft-spoken rant, of course, because Alan is almost always soft-spoken, but a rant nevertheless. At the same time, I think it has some significant resonance, not just in more recent British politics, but in our own as well.

After all, the condition of having been born an ass and being destined to die an ass isn't exactly unknown on our side of the pond. What's rare -- on both sides -- is this quality that Alan attributes to the now-unlamented David Cameron: knowing that he is one. To pick a random example, do you suppose that The Donald has even a glimmering? Or his anointed running mate, The Unspeakable Pence? Or, for that matter, many of their fellow pols and the pundits who provide sideline chatter?

In The Donald's case, I think there really are moments when he knows he's being a buffoon, sometimes for entertainment purposes and sometimes in the hope of attracting favorable attention from potential voters he thinks are buffoons. Within a certain range, we have to remember, the man knows how to play an audience.

And so, in a season of almost nothing but political insanities, should I really have done a double take upon sight of this item in yesterday's nytimes.com "FirstDraft"?

But seriously now, Donald Trump attracting contributions from small donors sufficient to seriously alter his campaign-finance situation? People giving money to Donald Trump just for being Donald Trump??? Am I missing something here?

Do I have to add that I didn't pursue that link? (And I haven't given it to you as a link. If you really want to find it, you can do that via nytimes.com.) From the same source, I didn't pursue this link either:

Well now, isn't this a surprise?

Of course there's nothing I see that can be done about it, beyond recognizing that this is where the country is in the year 2016 -- something that isn't likely to be magically changed by the election, whatever the outcome. The disaffection that's driving the would-be Trump voters is real, and as Ian Welsh has been pointing out, when people in desperate need of change come to the determination that no hope of change is to be entertained from any of the existing players, it's not surprising that they may grasp at any straw advanced toward them without intensive scrutiny of the source.

And if they've fixed their hopes on The Donald as their "breath of fresh air," are they likely to be persuaded otherwise even by an episode as egregious as their boy's utterly astonishing response to the DNC appearance by the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan? Aren't we already seeing even loonier responses by the Trump faithful: that it's all a plant by anti-Trump Dems, very likely in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood. It's kind of hard to argue rationally against hopes that have no toehold in reason. (And Democrats might be in a better position to address them if they had made any serious attempt to make government work for any segment of the country other than the 1% and their cadres of hangers-on.)

Nevertheless, for those of us who try to dwell in the domain of reason, or at least try to make regular visits, the stuff that's come out of the mouths of many of the political participants is eye-popping. Like that of the aforementioned Unspeakable Pence, who apparently thought he could paper over the problem with his running mate by offering mouth honor to the heroic captain and his family and laying all the blame on (who else?) President Obama. (This was dealt with nicely by Teacherken in a Daily Kos post, "Pence responds on Capt. Khan - if you can stomach it.")

Of course, as all sorts of folks in the reasoning world have pointed out, Captain Khan's killing can't have had anything to do with Obama or Hillary Clinton since it occurred in 2004 -- in other words, during the first term of Chimpy the Prez Bush, amid the insanity created there by his invasion.

And in the Unspeakable's official statement, in the sentence "Due to the disastrous decisions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, a once stable Middle East has now been overrun by ISIS," beyond the lesser delusions embodied, there is the one that at some point in the rememberable past there was such a thing as a "stable Middle East." This represents a level of ignorance and dishonesty that seems to cross some sort of line as to what ought to be permissible. It certainly boggles my mind, which is no longer easily boggled. Unfortunately, our system doesn't allow us any way to define "what ought to be permissible" in political discourse.

At the same time, it's possible for the level of political discourse to descend so low that I find myself passing along a Washington Post column by the normally appalling "Chucky the Hammer" Krauthammer. It's called "Donald Trump and the fitness threshold," though I note in this link to the NY Daily News version that to the original title they added, not inappropriately: "He craves not only validation but adoration." I can't believe I'm saying it about anything penned by Chucky, but -- while it's not the whole story about Trump (it doesn't account for the undeniable success he's had carving out that peculiar but undeniable position he's created for himself), but it's worth a read. Here's the basic premise, jumping off from the candidate's seemingly unaccountable blunder in attacking a Gold Star Family.

Why did Trump do it? It wasn’t a mistake. It was a revelation. It’s that he can’t help himself. His governing rule in life is to strike back when attacked, disrespected or even slighted. To understand Trump, you have to grasp the General Theory: He judges every action, every pronouncement, every person by a single criterion — whether or not it/he is “nice” to Trump. . . .

This is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.

Most politicians seek approval. But Trump lives for the adoration. He doesn’t even try to hide it, boasting incessantly about his crowds, his standing ovations, his TV ratings, his poll numbers, his primary victories. The latter are most prized because they offer empirical evidence of how loved and admired he is.

Prized also because, in our politics, success is self-validating. A candidacy that started out as a joke, as a self-aggrandizing exercise in xenophobia, struck a chord in a certain constituency and took off. The joke was on those who believed that he was not a serious man and therefore would not be taken seriously. They — myself emphatically included — were wrong.

POSTSCRIPT: AREN'T WE ALL GONNA MISS CIVILIZATION, WALLY?

DILBERT     by Scott Adams
Drone Defense System

[Click to enlarge.]

#

What Would A Trumpist Foreign Policy Be Like? No One Really Knows... But There Are Some Unfortunate Clues

Trump keeps going on TV and claiming that foreign policy experts have given his maiden foreign policy speech high grades. As with most of what Trump says, that isn't true. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Trump is a guy who doesn't understand the difference between a business negotiation and a negotiation with sovereign powers (watch the video of him up top on ABC's This Week yesterday. "One of the things that worries me," said Gates, "is that he doesn't appear to listen to people. He believes he has all the answers. That he's the smartest man in the room. I've worked with different presidents. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama. One thing they all had in common was a willingness to listen to people who had experience and then make their own independent judgments... I think [foreign leaders have] spoken for themselves. Many have said publicly, how worried they are about the possibility of Mr. Trump becoming president. His unpredictability. His lack of understanding of the complexity of international affairs. His threats. His claims that he's going to make other countries do things when, in fact, the president of the United States does not have the power to make them do things. So, I think-- I think a lot of leaders around the world, both among our friends and potential adversaries, are quite concerned."

Conservative pundits pointed out that the speech was "incoherent and shallow" and "filled with internal contradictions, falsehoods and genuinely crazy assertions." But Ryan Lizza noted that the speech "was hardly a break with current conservative thinking about foreign policy. Anyone who has listened to conservative talk radio or read prominent conservative columnists, such as Charles Krauthammer, condemn President Obama’s foreign policy as weak and feckless would recognize Trump’s speech as a standard list of grievances and proposals on the right. On foreign policy, just as he has done on immigration and crime and race, Trump has been paying attention to the base of the Republican Party. He has simply distilled the base’s grievances into something like a platform." Nonetheless, Krauthammer found it a jumble that offered no clarity.

Fareed Zakaria demolished the speech and called it an embarrasment-- populist pandering masquerading as a strategy... "anti-immigrant and nativist... largely isolationist but if and when engaged abroad militaristic and unilateral. In trade it is protectionist and on all matters deeply suspicious of international alliances and global conventions."

Writing for the Brookings Institute, Thomas Wright found the speech "contradictory in parts and repeated standard Republican criticisms of President Obama, but there was a clear message that is consistent with what Trump has said before. It was not the shift in substance that some predicted. There were several notable takeaways, most of which confirmed what we already knew.

1. Trump will end U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia

2. Trump has an isolationist mindset

3. Trump wants to do a deal with Russia and China

4. Trump’s audience was the Republican political establishment, not its foreign policy elite

5. Trump views foreign policy very personally

"Nothing in this speech will ease widespread international concern at Trump’s foreign policy," he concluded. "If anything, concerns will grow as Trump demonstrates an ability to present an isolationist 'America First' vision as a more mainstream realist foreign policy. We are headed for an election on fundamental questions of America’s role in the world."

Much of what he said, he just pulled out of his ass-- or off the Hate Talk Radio airwaves. USAToday fact-checked his assertions and found many of them just plain false.

In his foreign policy speech, Donald Trump claimed that “now ISIS is making millions and millions of dollars a week selling Libya oil.” But an expert on Libya’s oil operations told us there’s no evidence that the Islamic State is producing or selling oil out of that country.

Trump also repeated false and misleading claims that we have vetted before on the NAFTA pact, Iraq War and the U.S. trade deficit:

• Trump said NAFTA “literally emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs.” Actually, economic studies say NAFTA’s impact on U.S. jobs has been small.

• Trump claimed he was “totally against” the Iraq War and warned “that it would destabilize the Middle East.” There is no public record of him being against the war before it started.

• Trump said President Obama “crippled us” with “a huge trade deficit.” Actually, the trade deficit has gone down under Obama.

Trump also criticized Hillary Clinton’s response to the Benghazi attacks on Sept. 11, 2012. We address one of the Benghazi claims below, and in a separate article-- “Trump on Clinton’s ‘3 a.m. Call’”-- we write about Trump’s claim that Clinton failed to take charge during the Benghazi attacks, and instead “decided to go home and sleep.” The evidence shows Clinton was actively involved in responding to the attacks, and subsequent investigations concluded the government response was appropriate.

Hisham Melhem, one of the most respected Middle Eastern journalists based in America is the Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya and yesterday warned his readers what they should expect were Trump to get into the White House, accurately dubbing the speech "a toxic brew of distrust, ignorance and isolationism" and pointing out that "the America that Trump wants to revive is a power that is unto itself, unwilling to be magnanimous, or benevolent, while at the same time serves and protects its interests as a sovereign nation."

It was a strange sight to be marveled at and remembered in amazement. Donald Trump addressing the foreign policy establishment in Washington, reading from a prepared but meandering speech, obviously written by a committee of advisors. The man who mocked President Obama for delivering his speeches by reading them with the help of a teleprompter, stood behind a teleprompter, and was ill at ease reading for 40 minutes without wildly gesticulating, or making exaggerated poses, and refraining from hurling insults at large groups of people.

The man who personifies anti-intellectualism was talking to the scholars, journalists, and pundits he usually revels in denigrating them. This was part of a long held tradition in presidential campaigns; every candidate has to deliver a ‘major’ foreign policy address to establish his knowledge of world affairs and his understanding of the complex national security challenges he is likely to face as a president. But the presidential veneer did not hide the real Donald Trump who gave us an incoherent collage of inconsistencies, superficial slogans, dangerous and simplistic solutions to complex issues, misstatements, and downright falsehoods.

The speech betrayed a shocking ignorance of the intricacies of the international system that the U.S created after WWII and the new European dynamics that emerged after the end of the Cold War. In Trump’s world, globalization is seen only as a negative force, and not as the engine of growth that the US ushered in, and mega deals can be struck with Russia and China regardless of their belligerent behavior, and alliances should be based solely on transactional and not value-based considerations, and autocratic regimes can be tolerated if they are good business partners, regardless of what they do to their citizens. He naively believes that the US has already surrendered to the ‘false song of globalism’, as if globalization could have been conceived without America at its core.

Trump chastised America’s allies supposedly because they are not paying enough for American protection, while he showed deference to America’s adversaries. Trump probably did not know that the major theme of his speech ‘America First’ is a slogan with an ominous history. In the 1930’s and early 1940’s, ‘America First’ was the name of an isolationist movement that did not want to help England and the other European countries fighting Nazism and Fascism.

Pity these strange American times, when the presumptive nominee of a major political party after delivering such a hollow speech, is given a cover of legitimacy by the likes of Republican senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who described the speech as ‘very thoughtful’ and praised the candidate for 'challenging the foreign policy establishment.’ Jacob Heilbrunn the editor of the National Interest Magazine which hosted Trump extolled the candidate because he ‘was quite disciplined’ and ‘more retrained’.

Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab version of CNN based in Dubai but broadcasting to millions of people across the Arab world, it's top markets being Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Israel, Bahrain and Qatar.

No Republican Is Going To Win The White House In November, But Which One Will Do The Most Severe Damage Down Ballot?

Some say the presidential push that Paul Ryan is making now is actually to set him up for a 2020 run after this year's GOP Dunkirk (see video above, which I found on Donald Trump's Twitter feed yesterday). After all, Bernie would be 80 when he starts his second term and Hillary would be 74. I suppose Ryan could still be presented as a "fresh face," although I suspect 4 years as Speak will tarnish him unredeemable with his own base-- or make him anathema to independents.

In recent days, we had far right pundit Charles Krauthammer predicting that the Republican Party would disintegrate if Trump is denied the nomination in Cleveland. "A parachute maneuver," a cute way of referring to Ryan's campaign to be this year's nominee, "might be legal, but it would be perceived as illegitimate and, coming amid the most intense anti-establishment sentiment in memory, imprudent to the point of suicide. Yet even without this eventuality, party suicide is a very real possibility. The nominee will be either Trump or Cruz. How do they reconcile in the end? ... And if Trump loses out, a split is guaranteed. In Trump’s mind, he is a winner. Always. If he loses, it can only be because he was cheated. He constantly contends that he’s being treated unfairly. He is certain to declare any convention process that leaves him without the nomination irredeemably unfair. No need to go third party. A simple walkout with perhaps a thousand followers behind will doom the party in November."

Yesterday, Tim Carney, a rightist, asserted outright, no frills attached, that "If Republicans nominate Donald Trump, they nearly cede the White House to Hillary Clinton. Trump wouldn't merely be an underdog in the general election. He would be the worst Republican nominee since Alf Landon 80 years ago.

The polls show Trump would be a disaster. To date, Trump's message control has been a disaster, and it would be a disaster in the general election. His political inexperience, which has hamstrung him in the primary cycle, would be a disaster in the fall.

All indications suggest a Trump versus Hillary battle would be a one-sided affair. [Those same polls show an even worse donnybrook for the GOP if Democrats wake up and nominate Bernie, who kills Hillary among independents.]

...Clinton leads Trump by double digits in most recent polls, with an average of 10.6 percent according to RealClearPolitics. She has led Trump in the RCP average for the entire campaign. That lead grew steadily throughout March, ever since Clinton and Trump became the clear front-runners for their party nominations.

Compare that to past elections. In the first half of April 2012, President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney hovered between 2.3-5.3 percent. Obama's largest lead in the RealClearPolitics average at any point in 2012 was 5.9 percent. Obama held a double-digit lead over Romney in only one poll after March 1, 2012.

Obama's largest lead over John McCain was eight points.

The problem isn't just Clinton's lead. It's Trump's apparent ceiling: His average in head-to-head national polls against Clinton has never climbed above 44 percent, and he's been hovering around 40 percent since Super Tuesday.

No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, and Trump is looking bad in Ohio. Clinton beat Trump in all three Ohio polls conducted in March, by an average of six points.

Any review of the Electoral College looks ugly for Trump. [And they can kiss Rob Portman's Senate seat goodbye. The incompetent DCCC isn't contesting a single House seat in Ohio, but a Trump-led ticket could end in victories for Keith Mundy against Jim Renacci and for Michael Wager against David Joyce.]

The website "270 to Win" looked at polling averages and found Clinton carrying 260 electoral votes to Trump's 115 votes, with 165 up for grabs. Clinton's vote total on the site doesn't include Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio or Florida, all states where Clinton has to be considered the favorite. If Clinton carried Minnesota, Ohio or Florida-- any one of those-- she would win.

Look at every other swing state. In New Hampshire, Trump trails in every poll this year, most recently by eight points. In Florida, Clinton leads by eight in the latest poll and 2.2 percent in the RealClearPolitics average. Clinton beat Trump in the only Iowa poll. Clinton beat Trump by 17 points in the only Virginia poll this year.

Trump says he can expand the electoral map and win in places Republicans haven't won in decades, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. The polls don't concur.

Trump trails Clinton in Michigan by double digits in two polls conducted in late March. Every Michigan poll this year has shown Trump losing to Clinton significantly, and the margin grew after the Michigan GOP Primary, which Trump won.

Clinton led Trump in every Pennsylvania poll in March, most recently by 13 points. Trump hasn't cracked 40 percent in a single Pennsylvania survey this year.

...First, we should expect Trump to flop in the debates. Trump had success in GOP primaries, but there was a reason he called them off-- refusing to participate in a post-Florida Fox News debate and ignoring Ted Cruz's calls for one-on-one debates. Trump thrived in crowded debates where all he had to do was rudely put down Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio and where he could get away with always changing the topic.

In the less-crowded debates after South Carolina, Trump looked worse. Rubio exposed Trump's utter shallowness on healthcare policy, and Trump found himself flailing in policy areas where he was way out of his depth. Recent interviews, in which television journalists Anderson Cooper, John Dickerson and Chris Matthews pressed Trump on abortion or nuclear proliferation, exposed his incompetence.

In a one-on-one debate against Clinton, Trump's lack of policy knowledge and critical thinking skills would be glaring.

There's also the boorishness problem.

Despite all the talk about equality and equity, and treating women the same as men, we don't really live that way. Men are still expected to treat women with more courtesy than men treat other men. Put another way: You can be a boorish bully toward men in ways you can't toward women.

Trump probably helped himself by interrupting, insulting and sneering at Bush and Rubio. It may have been deliberate on his part, but it's also his personality. When he behaves that way toward Clinton, he will accomplish the incredible: making Americans feel sympathetic toward her.

...He lacks the political skills, the likability, the public support and the fundraising ability to beat Hillary Clinton. That's why he won't even come close.

Here at DWT we've been warning that neither Trump nor Cruz was the likely nominee but that Ryan would be. No one agreed, until a few weeks ago when Ryan started getting pretty blatant. And now, even the last-on-the-block-for-news, the NYTimes, is-- albeit half a year late-- whispering that it could be Ryan. Why else would be be bothering heads of governments in the Middle East and Europe and trying to demonstrated his presidentialness, discussing two topics he's utterly clueless on, security and intelligence. And then the campaign video puffing him up while "deploring identity politics and promoting a battle of ideas-- set to campaign-style music."

While Mr. Ryan has repeatedly said that he has no intention of becoming his party’s nominee this year, he is already deep into his own parallel national operation to counter Donald J. Trump and help House and Senate candidates navigate the political headwinds that Mr. Trump would generate as the party’s standard-bearer-- or, for that matter, Senator Ted Cruz, who is only slightly more popular.

Mr. Ryan is creating a personality and policy alternative to run alongside the presidential effort-- one that provides a foundation to rebuild if Republicans splinter and lose in the fall. “He is running a parallel policy campaign,” said Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina.

He is shaping an agenda that he plans to roll out right before the convention, a supplement of sorts to the official party platform. He gives regular speeches on politics and policy-- particularly on poverty and economic issues-- then backs them up in the news media.

It is not a move without risks. His policy positions on immigration and trade, which have contributed to his mirage candidacy, are in great tension with the views of many Republican primary voters.

“I’m a big fan of Paul,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and one of the very few Trump supporters in Congress. “He’s a good person and he’s smart, but issues like trade and immigration are going to be important, and I don’t think anybody gets the Republican nomination that’s not in sync with a substantial majority of the American people on those two key issues.”

...“There is no question that Ryan is operating in a very ambitious way,” said Peter Wehner, a former director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under President George W. Bush who has known Mr. Ryan for two decades. “He is trying to set forth a path for the party with ideas and policy proposals and principles,” he said. “That is unusual for a speaker in an election year, but Ryan himself is a very different person, and this is the product of this very unusual presidential year.”

Mr. Ryan’s parallel track is intended largely to counter Mr. Trump, who stands apart from him and many of the party’s policy traditions. While Mr. Ryan is a vocal advocate of trade deals and wrote legislation that gave President Obama expanded authority to negotiate them, Mr. Trump is equally vocal in opposing free trade.

Mr. Ryan is the architect of his party’s plan to rein in spending on entitlement programs, while Mr. Trump has vowed to leave such spending untouched. Mr. Ryan has also been a leader in his party in supporting an overhaul of the immigration system; opposing this is at the center of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

...[W]hile Mr. Ryan’s positions remain popular with many Republicans in Washington, they are out of step with the white-hot populism that has fueled this year’s campaign. He remains a proponent of changes to the immigration system even though some Republican voters have been attracted to Mr. Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the country and force Mexico to pay for a wall at the border.

Even within the House, Mr. Ryan’s ideas have met with resistance. He cannot get a budget passed, largely because he will not support the deep spending cuts favored by conservatives like Mr. Cruz.

Mr. Ryan has long said that he will support the party’s nominee, even as he has taken frequent shots at Mr. Trump’s comments. But many Republicans expect that if Mr. Trump prevails, Mr. Ryan will avoid directly helping him, choosing instead to shore up vulnerable House Republicans, particularly those who may be running away from Mr. Trump.

“I don’t think he would use his position as the stick in the eye of Trump or taunt him,” Mr. Wehner said.“But I don’t think Ryan would be at all shy about laying out the agenda of the Republican Party, because, remember, there are a lot of people voting against Trump out there.”

Little Chucky Schmucky and The Donald

The Democrats will probably win back the Senate in November; the big task is to bank enough seats so that when the GOP has a huge year in 2018, the Dems still hold on. That isn't how Schumer and Tester are gaming this out. A Democratic wave election could mean lost Republican seats not just in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina (the 7 relatively easy ones), but also in Iowa, Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana and even Kentucky, enough states to hold the GOP at bay when the electoral map makes the Republicans competitive in red-leaning states with very weak incumbents-- Indiana (Joe Donnelly), Montana (Jon Tester), North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp), Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Virginia (Tim Kaine)-- and possibly even in Florida (Bill Nelson or his open seat if he retires), Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin), Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), West Virginia (Joe Manchin) and Ohio (Sherrod Brown), not mention the New Jersey seat, which will depend when Robert Menendez's trial happens and if he resigns or goes to prison, etc. That's a lot of risk and the Democrats should be stocking up on Senate seats now, which makes it all the more frustrating that Schumer has blackballed Democrats who can win this year and make a difference rebuilding a tarnished brand-- like Sestak in Pennsylvania, Grayson in Florida and Edwards in Maryland-- in favor of his brand of corrupt conservatives (Schumercrats), Katie McGinty, Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy and Chris Van Hollen. When Obama attacked Trump last week, it was to get hyper-partisan anti-Obama Republicans to rally towards the banner of the weakest Republican candidate in anyone's memory.

Help elect real progressive, values-oriented Democrats to the Senate this year by clicking on the thermometer; no Schumercrats on this list, I guarantee you that:

Ringing sleighbells and roasting chestnuts tell us it's that time of year: Be afraid for the holidays

by Ken

It's Friday, and I realize many of you were probably in such a hurry to get wherever you were going for the weekend -- and possibly beyond, with those two skeletal work weeks coming up surrounding the holidays -- that you missed this news. So as a public service, DWT wants to be sure you've heard the latest from your State Dept., courtesy of the Washington Post "In the Loop" team:

State Department warns travelers about worldwide terror threat

By Colby Itkowitz | December 19 at 5:30 PM

It’s the Friday before Christmas, but the State Department is not spreading holiday cheer.

The agency sent a downright dreary travel advisory warning Americans that the threat of terrorism is everywhere.

In light of the “lone wolf attack” at a cafe in Sydney, Australia this week, State said Americans need to be “extra cautious.”

“An analysis of past attacks and threat reporting strongly suggests a focus by terrorists not only on the targeting of U.S. government facilities but also on hotels, shopping areas, places of worship and schools, among other targets during or coinciding with this holiday period,” State warns. “U.S. citizens abroad should be mindful that terrorists groups and those inspired by them can pose unpredictable threats in public venues.”

So be alert for “signs of danger,” State says.

Well, happy holidays.

SPEAKING OF THE HORROR IN SYDNEY, WE
HEAR NOW FROM "MR. CRAZY," aka "DR. EVIL"


The caption from the website "Totally Looks Alike" reads: "Charles Krauthammer / Leprechaun (movie monster)." But I think that that's backwards, that the really hideous and terrifying image on the right is the real Chucky "The Hammer." (Anyone know for sure?)

As if the events themselves weren't horrible enough, we have to listen now to media bloviators digest them for us. And I can't think of many things creepier than the Washington Post's own "Mr. Crazy," aka "Dr. Evil," Chucky "The Hammer" Krauthammer, sounding off on "How to fight the lone wolf." I don't know about you, but I've always figured that if Chucky hadn't figured out how to make such a posh career out of spreading The Crazy, he'd be a prime candidate to turn up in a tower or a school library armed to the teeth with automatic weapons.

No, I haven't read the piece. Isn't it enough that I've provided you with a link if you feel you must? I will tell you, though, that the basic premise is: "There are two kinds of lone wolves -- the crazy and the evil -- and the distinction is important." I suppose you could argue that if anybody knows about the crazy and the evil, it's "Mr. Crazy," aka "Dr. Evil." On the whole, though, I'd rather be having the State Dept. scaring the stuffing out of me.

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Anne Applebaum may give Krazy Krauty more credit than he's due, but she still demolishes him

Are crackpot American right-wingers like Krazy Krauty and No-Brain Bolton capable of grasping that Libyans, like other Middle Easterners, learned from our fun in Iraq that we are the last people they want "helping" them?

"I'm listening hard, but I just can't hear the 'voices around the world' that my colleague Charles Krauthammer said last week are 'calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi.' It's true that John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador and present Fox News employee, has declared that 'strong American words (and actions) were amply warranted' in Libya. It's also true that a clutch of American politicians and writers have come out in favor of a similarly muscular response as well.

"But outside America's borders, all is silent. . . ."

-- Anne Applebaum, in her Washington Post column
today, "The Arab world isn't clamoring for our help"

by Ken

Applebaum is British, which is why I can't help thinking that a translation of what she's written above might include something like: "Jeez, that Krauthammer turd is cracked, and don't get me started on No-Brain Bolton." What's surprising is that Krazy Krauty left himself open to this particular pasting by claiming to represent international opinion, when the correct stance of people who get their marching orders from Right-Wing Pyschotic American Delusion Central is that anyone who listens to furriners is a God-hating socialist who was probably born in Kenya.

Let's pick up where we left off, or rather interrupted Anne:

Certainly nobody in the Arab world is clamoring for American military intervention, or indeed any American intervention: Egyptian democrats are even wary of taking our development money. ("Help from America can be misunderstood," one would-be Egyptian politician delicately explained to The Post a few days ago.)

Nobody in Asia and nobody in Europe is calling for the Marines to be sent back to the shores of Tripoli either. The French, feeling guilty for having failed to support (or even foresee) the revolution in Tunisia, have sent humanitarian aid to Benghazi - but have simultaneously argued against military involvement. The British have already bungled their first solo attempt to see what could be done. On Saturday, a British special forces team and an MI6 intelligence officer touched down near Benghazi, intending simply to make contact with the rebels. They were promptly arrested, handcuffed, interrogated and sent out of the country. The last thing the rebels want, apparently, is the stigma of contact with foreigners.

Since at this point the American Right is so wholly detached from reality, or even functioning intelligence of any kind, the chances are slim that anyone over there on the crackpot side has either the capacity or the willingness to grasp that "what we want" doesn't count for much among people who aren't, you know, us.

Why the Arab anxiety about American and Western help? Why the reluctance among our allies? The answer can be summed up in a single word: Iraq. Far from setting "an example for the entire region," as Krauthammer put it, Iraq serves as a dire warning: Beware, for this could be the fate of your country. When the U.S. Army entered Iraq, we knew nothing about the Iraqi opposition, except what we'd heard from a couple of exiles. Our soldiers didn't speak Arabic and hadn't been told what to do once they got to Baghdad. Chaos followed incompetence, which begat violence: Tens of thousands of people died in an eight-year civil war. Although a fragile democracy has emerged, this isn't an example anyone, anywhere, wants to follow.

And so, Anne writes, "It's not hard to understand why Libyans and others might fear a repeat performance."

Then she comes up with a radical notion:

In truth, the time to contact the Libyan opposition was a year ago - or five years ago - back when Tony Blair was shaking hands with Moammar Gaddafi inside desert tents and Western oil companies were going in to do business. But the British didn't. We didn't either. Now we don't even know who they are. Various colonels have emerged as "spokesmen" for the rebels - but for all of the rebels? Or just some of the rebels? News reports cite "secondhand reports through rebel networks" as sources; in other words, somebody told somebody else what's going on. As the failed British escapade shows, the spies don't know any better.

I note from her WaPo bio that Anne -- despite what seem like reasonably solid journalistic credentials covering international politics and finance -- spent a bunch of years writing editorials for the paper, and it may well be that no mind ever really bounces back from all that time spent internalizing the Voice of Village Orthodoxy, which may be why she so often sounds like such a dementedly determined centrist. In this case, you don't have to be all that smart to grasp the limits of American influence in Libya, or most any of the fermenting tyrannies of the Middle East. (You do, however, have to be smarter than Crazy Krauty -- or thug colleague Marc Thiessen, not to mention No-Brain Bolton. But that's not saying much.

Here's how Anne puts it:

We should enforce sanctions in Libya, offer humanitarian aid and put in place a no-fly zone, to be activated if the rebels really begin to lose. But at the moment, even if our military had unlimited funding - which it doesn't - the Pentagon is not equipped to launch democracy in Libya. That is a job for our underfunded international radio networks, especially the ones that broadcast in Arabic; for independent institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy; for groups that train judges and journalists. Unfortunately, we don't have the contacts such groups need. We should start making them now.

As a determined centrist, Anne is even willing to credit the right-wing crackpots with the cover of honorable intentions. (Not me, no way.)

It's nice to be on the right side of history, and I'm not surprised that George W. Bush's remaining supporters now feel good about the "freedom agenda" he sometimes advocated and sometimes forgot while in office.

Well, not even the most committed centrist can give Chimpy a free pass. I"m pretty stunned that she goes as far as this: "But being right, even morally right, isn't everything." Morally right? Among all the sociopathic lying imbecile scumbags of the right I don't think you could piece together a chromosome of actual morality. Still -

It is also important to be competent, to be consistent, and to be knowledgeable. It's important for your soldiers and diplomats to speak the language of the people you want to influence. It's important to understand the ethnic and tribal divisions of the place you hope to assist. Let's not repeat past mistakes: Before sending in the 101st Airborne, we should find out what people on the ground want and need.

Right, like any of that's going to happen if people like Krazy Krauty and No-Brain Bolton have anything to say about it. Their best solution for anyone who has the effrontery not to speak American is to nuke the bejezus out of the scum. And of course they've rendered themselves too brain-deficient to grasp Anne's final point:

[R]ight now, I don't hear them clamoring for us to come. They are afraid of what American "assistance" might do to their country.

I might add that at least some of those furriners, being substantially much better informed about reality than the most "knowledgeable" American right-wingers, know what American right-wingers have done and now are trying to do to their own country.

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Of course Chucky K doesn't want us talking about the "climate of hate" -- his livelihood depends on it

"Climate of hate"? "Climate of hate"? No "climate of 
hate" here, thanks. (A "culture of paranoia," maybe?)

by Ken

Today the Out-Front Stooge for the Compulsive Liars of the Right is Chucky "I'm Lying As Hard As I Can" Krauthammer, who's in a frenzy -- say, is he armed? -- over crazed socialist linkages, which he declares a "libel," between the Lone Tucson Crackpot and some mythical "climate of hate." Well, of course, Chucky doesn't want us talking about the Right-Wing Climate of Hate. It's directly responsible for every penny he's ever earned, and probably every penny he's ever capable of earning. If anything happens to it, and he's forced to fall back on his demonstrated skill set, he'll be lucky to glom onto a gig with a crew picking up roadside trash.

It would be funny if it weren't so tragic to hear the Compulsive Liars of the Right gibbering about their Lone Crackpot when they've done so much to marginalize understanding and treatment of mental illness, doing their best to make sure that no treatment is available and that the afflicted are dumped helpless into the general population -- along with all those sad suckers they've warped into functioning as if they are, insane, people so far gone that they not only have no clue what's going on in the world around them, they have no idea what's going on inside their own heads. They don't even seem aware that they've had all that unfocused rage inside them churned up and channeled into overtly threatening behavior that at least since 2008 has been itching to explode into violence.

Meanwhile Digby reports that in the comments section of her blog, "I’m mostly getting demands that I apologize for my violent rhetoric against the right." Think about it. Digby! "Violent rhetoric"??? Digby!

For days now I've been trying to think how to explain that the problem isn't "rhetoric," although of course rhetoric is used as a tool, but the creation of a pervasive way of thinking, or rather not thinking, that has been cultivated painstakingly at all levels of the Far Right, most importantly as a mechanism for keeping those unfortunate people available and useful to further the interests of the megacorporate superrich in their crusade for total control of the country.

It's more than just a climate, it's, well . . . "a culture of paranoia" is Harold Meyerson's phrase in his Washington Post column today, "Dangerous outcomes from a culture of paranoia." A culture of paranoia -- yes, I like that.

The New Yorker's current cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, a 30-year contributor to the magazine, recalls -- in a current blogpost on the subject of New Yorker cartoonists and the Constitution -- this cartoon he himself drew almost 20 years ago, when he thought it was "an exaggeration." Now, he says, "I'm worried it may be an understatement."


IF YOU WONDERED WHY PEOPLE IN POWER WANT
THEIR "DELIBERATIVE PROCESSES" KEPT SECRET . . .

I think maybe we need to keep repeating periodically these crucial paragraphs from Glenn Greenwald's July post, "The motive behind whistle-blower prosecutions":

Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance -- literally -- occurs behind a vast wall of secrecy, completely unknown to the citizenry. While a small portion of that is legitimately classified, these whistle blower prosecutions and other disclosure controversies demonstrate that the vast majority of this secrecy is devoted to avoiding embarrassment and accountability. It has nothing to do with "national security" -- one of the all-justifying terms (along with Terrorism) for what the Government does. . . .

[T]here is a perfect inverse relationship between the secrecy powers of the Government (which rapidly increase) and the privacy rights of citizens (which erode just as rapidly). The citizenry meekly acquiesces to the notion that it must sacrifice more and more privacy to the Government in order to deter and expose criminality, corruption and other dangerous acts of private citizens, yet refuses to apply that same rationale to demand greater transparency from the Government itself. The Government (and its private corporate partners) know more and more about citizens, while citizens know less and less about the actions of the government-corporate axis which governs them.

Today's entry in the Keep Yer Grubby Mitts Offa My Deliberative Processes comes from -- who else? -- our pal Al Kamen in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column. This item really and truly requires no additional comment, I think.

That's why it's a secret!

One of the favorite ploys used by government bureaucrats to thwart freedom-of-information requests (aside from just stalling) is the old B5 dodge. That refers to a section of the Freedom of Information Act that exempts from disclosure any information that the agency deems might be a sensitive part of the internal "deliberative processes" of government, such as inter- or intra-agency communications and such.

The National Security Archive recently won an appeal from the State Department over a B5 classification of something written by a department official on a proposed House resolution. The January 2000 resolution, sponsored by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives that Pakistan should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism."

A State Department official had written something on the proposed resolution that the department decided was exempt from disclosure. The Archive went through the department's appeals process and two years later won the right to see the hidden writing on the resolution.

It said: "What a bunch of crap!!"

Ah, the old deliberative process ain't what it used to be.

It makes you proud, or something. Now if the Teabaggers were mad as hell about stuff like this, and determined to do something about it . . . well, then they wouldn't be the Teabaggers we know and love, would they?

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But seriously, it's another Tom Tomorrow Friday. No, seriously, Tom wants us to be SERIOUS -- about Afghanistan

by Ken

Thanks, Tom. Somebody's gotta get, you know, serious about, you know, stuff. And I'm afraid just now it's not me. Most of the things I might want to write about today bring me smack up against the epidemic of ignorance, dishonesty, and hatred that has overtaken the country -- all shaded from the sun, of course, by an umbrella of plutocratic opportunism.

What is there to say when we have Princess Sarah whining to media folk who transcribe her every blithering utterance, joining Dr. Laura in whining about lost First Amendment rights, as if either of them has a clue what's in the First Amendment. Or doody-brained Chuckie "Upchuck" Krauthammer blithering about the "moral myopia" of the "liberal intelligentsia" regarding "Ground Zero" -- this from a creature who knows as much about morality as he does about fact-based reality, which is to say nothing at all. This is a man who debases the notion of human decency every times he slithers into print.

Of course the point is that for slithery creatures like this, Ground Zero isn't an issue, and neither is the First Amendment, it's just a peg to hang more lies on, aimed at further hornswoggling the sad people out there who don't know there being fed nothing but lies, delusions, and general vileness.

I thought Noah made this point splendidly in his post yesterday, "The Real Rainmen" (and Howie did again in his post earlier today, "Roy Blunt Would Like To Change The Subject From Economics to Mosques"). I've written about the Islamic cultural-center issue a couple of times, but realized most of the important stuff was left unsaid, because that's not what this "issue" is about.

I'd just like to call attention to this mammoth paragraph from Noah's post, boldface emphasis added:

Republicans seem to have an almost idiot savant talent for focusing obsessively on certain specific minutia to the exclusion of any other pertinent information that might provide a more complete picture or a clear view of reality. That’s easy to do when you are fighting mightily to see the world only as you want to see it. It’s the key to how they do their messaging so well. If something just doesn’t fit the world as they want it to be, they toss it and throw a fit just like a petulant child would when confronted by a parent or sibling doing something that didn’t fit the child’s plan for the day. This is more than just childish behavior, though, because it is perpetrated by adults who have learned just enough to be able to manipulate those who don’t have the time, inclination, or experience to gain or process enough information that would give them a bigger picture. If you want to see something a certain way, it’s easy as long as you can exclude chunks of reality. You start with a preconceived notion that enables your hate, and you ditch any contradictory evidence. You can even ignore all of the American Muslims that died in the towers as though they didn’t exist or, more likely to Republicans, they didn’t matter. It doesn’t even phase these people that, after 9/11 happened, one of the first things George W. Bush did was urge Americans, even Republican ones, to not blame ALL Muslims for 9/11, reaching out to Imam Rauf for help with communication with the American Islamic community. That’s just an inconvenient truth to be tossed away like so many others. This is not to say that the Bush White House wasn’t guilty of the same thing when they went and leveled Iraq. Remember when the Bush White House used to tell us that they weren’t in the reality-based community; that they would create their reality and tell us what that reality is? Case in point: Iraq is full of WMDs with our names on them. Iraqi mushroom clouds, as Condaliza Rice said. To them, it was “real.” Damn the tons of evidence to the contrary. They were arrogant and delusional enough to actually believe it. How’d that work out?

Sigh.

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With the firing of Dan Froomkin, the Washington Post takes its stand as the house organ of the Village idiots

Ah, of course, as the WaPo "make[s] sure we’re giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources," Dan Froomkin is out and the comedy team of Milbank and Cillizza is in.

"The Washington Post's firing of Dan Froomkin reveals much about the modern establishment media. Froomkin was one of the very few journalists working for an establishment outlet who understood and practiced the function of journalism. That is why he had a history of tension with the Post. Froomkin is everything that a political journalist is supposed to be -- and everything that most of them are not. That's why he was an aberration -- and, to them, an unpleasant one. Just look at the record."

-- Glenn Greenwald, in a Salon.com column yesterday, "The
Washington Post, Dan Froomkin and the establishment media"

by Ken

Is there any doubt that on a daily basis, the best thing in the Washington Post, or at any rate the best coverage of national affairs, for some time now hasn't been in the Washington Post but is Dan Froomkin's resolutely to-the-point and thoroughly researched "White House Watch," which appears only on the paper's washingtonpost.com website? Or, I should say, appeared. Naturally now he's been shoved out the door.

At this point I would really encourage you to click through to the piece of Glenn Greenwald's I've quoted from above. It's Glenn at his very best, starting with a brief see-no-evil, hear-no-evil quote from David Gregory, followed by a long, passionate exposition from Dan Froomkin himself, which Glenn brackets as "The American establishment media in a nutshell." And that's before Glenn himself goes to work on the subject. This is a must-read.

But to back up a little, in case you're just coming into the story, yesterday RawStory's John Byrne offered this convenient summary:

Washington Post Media Communications Director Kris Coratti said the blog wasn’t a good use of Post resources.

“I think the easiest way to put it is that our editors and research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other content to make sure we’re giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources,” Coratti said in a statement to Politico Thursday. “Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com.”

The departure of his blog has raised eyebrows. Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald, also a progressive, said he was vexed because Froomkin was actually an Obama critic who stuck to his values rather than expressing blind fealty to the Democratic party.

“One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush and who now, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama — i.e., someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as “the Left” rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim,” Greenwald wrote. “It just got a lot rarer.”

The original Glenn Greenwald piece, which John quotes from, is still the basic text on the subject. Yesterday, however, Glenn followed up with a delicious piece called "Persecution of the Right and the Washington Post Op-Ed page and with the big piece I've already referred you to.

The "Persecution of the Right" piece, by the way, takes off from a preposterous whine by that toxic pile of sludge Charles Krauthammer that the imaginary lack of opposition to President Obama in the U.S. press "makes us a lot like Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run, with the exception that in Hugo Chavez-land, you go after that one station with machetes. I haven't seen any machetes around here, so I think we are at least safe for now."

Here's just a further taste of Glenn's big piece yesterday, picking up from the opening paragraph quoted at the top (naturally the original is link-laden):

The first public controversy erupted when then-Post Political Editor John Harris -- now, appropriately, the Editor-in-Chief of the consummately wretched Politico -- demanded that the name of Froomkin's column ("White House Briefing") be changed because Froomkin was too liberal to be presented as a real reporter. The Post's Ombudsman Deborah Howell defended that decision, noting that "Political reporters at The Post don't like WPNI columnist Dan Froomkin's 'White House Briefing,' which is highly opinionated and liberal." She quoted Harris as saying that Froomkin's column "dilutes our only asset -- our credibility" and he "writes the kind of column 'that we would never allow a White House reporter to write.'"

Why was Froomkin deemed "liberal," inappropriate and biased? Because he pointed out that the Bush administration's claims were false and their policies radical -- i.e., he wrote what was factually true. But that -- writing what is factually true and pointing out false statements from those in political power -- is the number one sin in establishment journalism. As David Gregory said, that's not their role. In the Bush era, pointing out the lies of Bush officials was all that was necessary to be deemed a leftist. Stephen Colbert explained why: "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

And Glenn is just warming up. As I said, this is a definite must-read.

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