Hispanic Voters Could Be A Strong Part Of The Democratic Coalition... With Some Real Work

Latino Decisions surveyed Latino registered voters in Florida, Arizona and Nevada for a new memo released by Priorities USA this week. They will likely be an Anti-Trump bulwark in all three states, but could provide the Democrats with a much bigger share of the votes, if the Democratic Party were to magically come alive and start acting something like a political party. As Bob Dylan said, decades ago when he looked into the future and saw the way Pelosi, Hoyer and Schumer would be running the Democratic Party: "He not busy being born is busy dying." In many places the Democrats haven't done enough to bring Hispanics into the party. There're still, for example, congressional districts with huge Hispanic pluralities-- even majorities-- with Republican congress members. Republican Will Hurd represents a huge south Texas district where 70% of the population is Hispanic. Last year the Democrats nominated a non-Hispanic candidate (with a Hispanic name) and she lost, so the DCCC is trying to fix the primary so they can run her again this cycle. The DCCC has never run a serious campaign against Mario Diaz Balart, whose south Florida district is 71% Latinx, Devin Nunes (CA- 47% Latinx), Paul Cook (CA-39% Latinx) or Dan Newhouse (WA-38% Latinx). Last year none of them had serious candidates with serious DCCC support. So far this year, it looks like mastermind Cheri Bustos is planning a redux. Diaz-Balart has no announced opponent. The DCCC recruited another sure loser, Phil Arballo, against Nunes. They are ignoring Cook's and Newhouse's districts again. Newhouse has no opponent at all and Cook's opponent, Chris Bubser, is running on a cut and paste DCCC platform that won't, move any needles for anyone.

Diaz-Balart con Don the Con-- shouldn't this be a kiss of death?

The report begins with a ritual statement about how "Latino voters will make up an increasing share of the electorate in 2020" and then warns that "while they predominantly support Democrats over Trump, there is a significant amount of work to be done. Health care and immigration are the top issues for Latino voters in Florida, Arizona and Nevada, but Democrats must conduct significant outreach to engage voters on the specifics of Trump’s policies to fully take advantage of the salience of the messages available to us, particularly on economic issues. While views on the strength of the economy are generally positive, a majority of voters surveyed in all three states said they do not believe they benefit personally from Trump’s economic policies. Trump’s immigration policies are deeply unpopular with the Latino communities in these states, and can be seen as emblematic of his larger racist and divisive message that, not surprisingly, is toxic with Latino voters." In other words Democratic Party "support is somewhat soft, with one-third falling into the lean or undecided categories... [M]ost are hesitant to say they would consider supporting Trump [but] those that do feel that protecting jobs and the economy are the top reasons they might consider voting for him." 


While the effectiveness of health care and other economic messages are similarly strong among Latino voters as across all battleground voters, it is a strategic imperative to make the messaging and creative culturally competent and relatable to the diversity of experiences within the Latino community.

...Cuban origin voters in Florida are a consistent outlier, the only Trump-friendly segment: 43% certain Trump, and 11% lean Trump. Still, 41% of Cubans in Florida are planning to vote for the Democrat in 2020, and another 5% are undecided.

...Message testing [across all 3 states] found that protecting Medicare and Social Security were especially important and motivating across all states and population segments, as were other messages that focused on economic issues.

...It is imperative that Democrats do not allow Trump to continue to define his record on economic issues without holding him accountable for policies that have hurt many working and middle-class Latinos financially. Even among these Democratic-leaning voters, there is a perception that the economy is moving in the right direction (60% in Florida, 50% in Nevada, and 41% in Arizona), and Trump gets stronger approval on his handling of the economy (58% approve in Florida, 43% in Nevada, and 35% in Arizona) relative to his overall approval.

Those favorable impressions are important to note because protecting American jobs and overseeing a successful economy are the most compelling reason these voters would consider supporting Trump. This is especially true for Latinos in Florida (50%), Nevada (40%), and persuasion voters (50% in Florida, and 43% in Arizona and Nevada).

Despite these openings for Trump, the majority do not believe his economic or tax policies provide any personal benefit: 59% in Florida, 67% in Arizona, 60% in Nevada, and 61% of persuasion voters in all three states said they did not benefit at all from Trump’s economic policies.

They sense they are left out of the economic growth taking place in the country. They’ve heard that Trump’s tax cuts benefited the already wealthy and corporations (52% Florida, 63% Arizona, 61% Nevada) and that he uses his office to enrich himself and his friends.

It is also true that generic economic performance measures have little traction relative to more day-to-day personal finance/economic realities. At rates of 70% and above, Latino voters tell us that wages not keeping up with the cost of living is more important to them than stock market performance or job indicators.

Concerns about health care are largely tied to economic concerns. The top cited personal economic concern that Latino voters “worry about a lot” is out-of-pocket health care costs. In Florida and Arizona, 45% worry a lot about prescription drug costs too. The rising costs of health care have made other personal expenses more difficult to manage (saving for retirement, paying for education, etc).

Other health care-adjacent issues also pose significant worry, including ability to handle an emergency expense and keeping up with basic expenses. And, as noted at the outset, the most motivating message was the appeal to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Democrats must ensure that Latino voters are hearing about Trump’s disastrous health care record, especially through paid media. Only 49% in Florida (51% among Florida persuadables) have heard that the changes to the health care system Trump will advance could cause millions to lose coverage and end protections for preexisting conditions. The rates are higher in Arizona (59%) and Nevada (56%), and with persuasion voters in the West (56% Arizona and Nevada persuadables). More awareness on this issue could pay off significantly given the importance of health care costs, and their responsiveness to messaging on it. 


Among Latino registered voters in Arizona, 77% are certain or leaning towards voting Democratic. That number is 71% in Nevada. But just 57% in electoral vote-rich Florida, primarily because of weak numbers among Cuban-Americans (41% certain or lean Democratic and 54% certain or lean Trump). This ad that started running today looks like it would be helpful:




Older Hispanic voters tend to be among the most patriotic voters in America. The survey shows they respond strongly-- negatively-- to Trump's authoritarian nature. The OpEd yesterday by John Podesta in the Washington Post, The Mueller Report Paints The Most Unpatriotic Portrayal Of A Presidential Candidate-- Ever might be a good one to translate and circulate widely in Latinx communities.

The raw partisan divide cleaving America and constantly worsened by President Trump is almost certain to be on full display Wednesday, when Robert S. Mueller III appears on Capitol Hill. The House Judiciary Committee, followed by the House Intelligence Committee, will hear Mueller’s testimony about the findings in his special counsel report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Committee members on both sides of the aisle will have to contend with an inescapable conclusion from a fair reading of the report: The Russian attack would not have worked-- and perhaps would have been over before it really got started-- if not for Donald Trump’s enthusiastic encouragement and amplification of it.

While much will be made about the legal standard to prove specific conspiracies beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s clear that every step of the way, Russia was looking for green lights, and at every step of the way, the Trump campaign provided them. An unequivocal bipartisan rejection of Russian outreach and attacks in 2016 might have left Russian President Vladimir Putin with no incentive to go forward. But, as the Mueller report shows, Trump encouraged the interference: The Trump campaign “welcomed” it and “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

Even beyond that, had both candidates and both parties agreed to banish from the campaign trail material illegally hacked by a foreign adversary, especially after its Russian origins were confirmed, coverage of and interest in the hacked material certainly would have taken on a different tenor. Instead, Trump himself mentioned “WikiLeaks” 164 times in the last month of the campaign, even after the U.S. intelligence community publicly identified the hacks and leaks as a Russian active-measures operation. All along, Trump deflected blame from Russia and excused the hacking, making a unified American response all but impossible.

The Mueller report represents the most damning portrayal of unpatriotic behavior ever compiled about an American candidate for president-- and only then does it go on to detail a shocking pattern of obstruction of justice that more than a thousand former prosecutors say would have led to the indictment of anybody not holding the office of the president.

While this full accounting of the past is important, the most profound urgency of the Mueller report and his testimony concerns the present and the future.

Just a few weeks ago, at the Group of 20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, the world watched as Trump joked about Putin’s attack on American democracy, mock-scolding the Russian leader not to do it again. It was the sort of display that has become familiar, going back to 2015, when Trump appeared to excuse the murder of journalists critical of the Putin regime (“Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too”). Then there was Trump’s humiliating joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki in 2018 that left even his most reliable defenders disgusted. When Trump said last month that if a foreign government offered dirt on his 2020 opponent he would “take it,” that was a green light for Putin and other potential malefactors.

Yet only weeks earlier, the president’s own Pentagon leadership had approved for public release a sobering report, “Russian Strategic Intentions,” that amounts to a postscript to the Mueller report.

In what can only be read as a scathing indictment of Trump’s behavior over the past three years, the report condemns “the unwillingness of Western experts and governments to confront the ideological-- as well as political and military-- aspects of our rivalry with Putinism.” The report also says that “Putin’s worldview is zero-sum, so it’s hard to imagine a win-win scenario. For Putin to win-- to look ‘great,’ the U.S. has to lose.”

Putin himself confirmed that outlook in his own words last month, crowing in an interview with the Financial Times that Western democracy has become “obsolete” and “outlived its purpose.”

Putin’s actions in 2016, exposed in great detail by the Mueller report and the indictments of Russian operatives, were an attack on American democracy-- and not just in the sense that Russia’s illegal hacking of Trump’s opponents and social media disinformation campaign were meant to alter the outcome. They were an attack on democracy as a concept, an attempt to destroy the American public’s faith in fair elections that had served, on the world stage, as an implicit rebuke to Putin’s autocratic rule.

That attack is not over. In April, Trump’s FBI director, Christopher A. Wray , described Russian cyber-aggression as “not just in an election cycle threat. It is pretty much a 365 day a year threat.”

That’s why Mueller’s testimony is so vital. He can provide guidance on how Russia operates and how to prevent further attacks. But Americans must face the truth: Trump, in broad daylight, has encouraged the destruction of the nation’s fundamental democratic institutions, and he continues to do so.

EXTRA: Another Republican Congressman Bites The Dust

Pete Olson announced his retirement this afternoon. His district-- TX-22-- was an already targeted seat. Although the DCCC foolishly ignored it in 2018, Hillary had improved on Obama's performance by almost 8 points. Trump beat her 52.1% to 44.2%. Last year, the Houston suburbs were unexpectedly unfriendly towards Trump and the GOP and Olson's share of the vote fell, especially in Fort Bend and Harris counties. The R+10 district had been consistently delivering him wins in the mid- to high 60s. And then 2018 and the anti-Trump wave appeared. Olson still won but with just 51.4% of the vote.

This used to be a very white district. When Olson was first elected, the population was a bit over 60% white and about 20% of the residents were Latino. Now the district is much more diverse-- and the kind of majority minority district Republicans are finding it harder and harder to win in:

• White- 42.9%
• Latino- 24.8%
• Asian- 17.2%
• Black- 13.0%

So, suddenly Olson's 97% Trump adhesion score was an albatross around his neck. He was forced to spend $1,921,992 (more than he raised) to hold onto his seat as newcomer Sri Kulkarni (D) threw $1,539,576 into his campaign. Neither the DCCC nor the NRCC spent any money in the district. This year it looked like a lot of money is being set aside for this district (by both party committees), which starts the suburbs south of Houston, includes Pearland and Alvin and then twists west to Sugar Land, Brazos Bend State Park, past Rosenberg and almost as far as East Bernard in Wharton County.

Olson had already raised $635,183 and spent $221,320 this year and Kulkarni had raised $415,249 and spent nearly $100,000. Both Olson and Kulkarni have primary opponents.

The Viciously Anti-Bernie Center For American Progress May Be Better Than The Heritage Foundation But It's No Friend Of Working Families

Podesta, Tanden, Clinton-- How We Got Stuck With Trump

If you've been reading DWT for more than a few days, you've probably noticed how pissed off I get when someone refers to a conservative Democrat as a "moderate." I get at least just as pissed off when someone uses the word "liberal" or "progressive" to describe someone or something that is notably neither liberal nor progressive. Sunday, Ken Vogel and Sydney Ember (a repeat offender) did exactly that in a NY Times piece about the Center for American Progress, Bernie Sanders Accuses Liberal Think Tank of Smearing Progressive Candidates. There may have been a time-- when dinosaurs walked the earth, or at least before people understood what a DINO is-- that the Center for American Progress (CAP) was considered "liberal." But that was well over a decade ago.

CAP is a garden variety, corporately-funded centrist-Democrat Inside-the-Beltway outfit. It was founded in 2003 by lobbyist and Clinton factotum John Podesta. Lobbyist Tom Daschle is the chairman of the board and Clinton operative Neera Tanden is the president. They take millions of dollars from corporate special interests-- Walmart, CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, Northrop Grumman, etc-- and push corporate special interest policies. CAP, for example, has rabidly opposed to single-payer healthcare while sucking up money from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Eli Lilly, Health Care Service Corporation and the health insurance trade organization, America's Health Insurance Plans. CAP also carries water for the Saudis and Emeratis. Liberal? Not even close. Totally centrist, totally establishment, totally corporate, totally-money-obsessed (to the point of corruption), totally anti-progressive. They have been at the center of anti-Bernie poison inside the Democratic Party. And that brings us to the letter Bernie sent to their board last week:

Dear members of the Board of the Center for American Progress and CAP Action Fund:

I write to express my deep concern and disappointment with the destructive role that the Center for American Progress and its affiliated Action Fund arm are playing in the critical mission to defeat Donald Trump.

Last week, you published an article on ThinkProgress criticizing me for my appearance and for the income I earned from writing a book. Then, a day later, you published a video that dishonestly attacked me for hypocrisy in my effort to address income inequality in America-- a video that was excitedly discussed on many conservative websites.

Sadly, I’m not the only candidate in the 2020 field who has experienced personal attacks from your institution. My friend and colleague Elizabeth Warren was unfairly targeted by a November 2017 article on ThinkProgress that echoed Donald Trump’s bad faith claims that she was being a hypocrite about her ancestry. That attack that was linked on the Drudge Report and immediately immersed her into a rather unhelpful debate. Again in October 2018, you published an article stating that she was hurting Native American people.

That’s not all. In February of this year, an article on ThinkProgress attacked another friend and colleague of mine, Cory Booker, for moving in a progressive direction and joining with me on a prescription drug importation bill.

Center for American Progress leader Neera Tanden repeatedly calls for unity while simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas. I worry that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement.

I and other Democratic candidates are running campaigns based on principles and ideas and not engaging in mudslinging or personal attacks on each other. Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress is using its resources to smear Senator Booker, Senator Warren, and myself, among others. This is hardly the way to build unity, or to win the general election.

I will be informing my grassroots supporters of the foregoing concerns that I have about the role CAP is playing. Should your actions evolve in the coming months, I am happy to reconsider what kind of partnership we can have.

This counterproductive negative campaigning needs to stop. The Democratic primary must be a campaign of ideas, not of bad faith smears. Please help play a constructive role in the effort to defeat Donald Trump.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter, and I await your reply.

Sincerely,

Bernie Sanders

This is who CAP is, who they serve, how they operate

Podesta and Tanden have done enough damage to this country already. It's unlikely Trump would be in the White House now without them and people just like them playing their neoliberal games for their own profit. Watch who they back this cycle-- and run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Bernie's campaign addressed his own followers in a very different kind of letter yesterday, pointing out that he "is under attack from the corporate establishment. This week, an organization that is the epitome of the political establishment-- the Center for American Progress (CAP)-- unleashed and promoted an online attack video against Bernie."

And behind the scenes on the day Bernie introduced his Medicare for All bill, they held a conference call with reporters attacking the bill.

That is the Center for American Progress’ real goal. Trying to stop Medicare for All and our progressive agenda.

CAP's leadership has been pretty upfront about their disdain for Bernie-- and for all of us. They see our political revolution as a threat to their privilege and influence.

...The Center for American Progress is an organization whose massive annual budget is bankrolled by billionaires and corporate executives that profit from finance, pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuels, and sending American jobs overseas.

Last year alone, they took funding from financial giants like Bank of America and Blackstone, whose CEO was chair of Trump's business council and is a leading Republican donor.

Before that, they cashed checks from companies like BlueCross Blue Shield, Pfizer, WalMart, and defense contractors like General Dynamics and BAE Systems.

They also took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel pumping United Arab Emirates while the country was bombing innocent civilians in Yemen-- a war Bernie has led the fight to end.

The Center for American Progress has deep connections to the economic and political elites who have done so much damage to working families in every zip code. And what we must do today is send a message that we are prepared to fight back against those who are working day and night to defeat our movement.

...The establishment is panicked because together we are building a campaign that is on its way to winning the Democratic nomination, beating Trump and transforming America.

​The Liberal Meritocracy at Work

Liberal meritocracy in action. Slick new buses like these ferry high tech workers to and from Bay Area jobs, using city bus stops as pickup points. The city gets "a pittance" for each "stop event" while the city's less-connected citizens get no right at all to ride them (source).

by Gaius Publius

Thomas Frank has made the point many times that the modern Democratic Party has abandoned the working class, and indeed most of the middle class, and that today its true constituency is really just the "professional" class, the upper 10%, more or less.

That makes a kind of sense if, cynical electoral financing decisions aside, people who actually run the Democratic Party inhabit a culture that considers only the "smart" and "accomplished" truly deserving. Consider the constant praise from mainstream Democrats, for example, of the "entrepreneurial" or "creative" class and how these wannabe billionaires — riders of Google Buses in San Francisco, a kind of alt-transportation system to which only high tech workers have access — can be counted on to lift the rest of the country out of the depths and into a new age of job creation (in China).

There could not be a more striking example of this kind of meritocracy than the following email from the Podesta Wikileaks archives (h/t commenter John Wright in this Naked Capitalism thread). It was sent from Clinton supporter and UC Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong during the primary season to Clinton supporter and Center for American Progress chief Neera Tanden:

From:brad.delong@gmail.com
To: ntanden@americanprogress.org
CC: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2015-07-31 15:42

Subject: So my 25-year-old Michael DeLong has applied for a Firearms Safety Policy job at CAP…

Dear Neera (and John)—

So my 25-year-old Michael DeLong has applied for a Firearms Safety Policy job at CAP…

I think he is a very, very strong candidate on the merits, given what he has been doing in Portland at Ceasefire Oregon in the three years since he graduated from Reed College, and how effective he has been there. But I find myself somewhat anxious [that] somebody already in Washington and with better connections might crowd him out…

May I beg you to reassure me?

Yours,

Brad DeLong

When the working class does this, of course, it's called nepotism. I'm sure at Neera Tanden's level it's called "networking."

There were several notes about DeLong's son's job availability sprinkled among the Podesta emails that involved Professor DeLong, and it's certainly true that fathers and mothers everywhere have attempted to ease their children's entry into the job market by asking for a boost from friends. I don't fault the act.

What makes this stand out, though, is not DeLong's interest in seeing his son hired, but his stated fear that his son would be lose his slot at CAP, not to someone better qualified, but to someone better connected.

Thus the "meritorious" competition seems recognized as not between the talented and connected; just between the connected. "I find myself somewhat anxious [that] somebody already in Washington and with better connections might crowd him out… May I beg you to reassure me?"

A small thing perhaps, and certainly not a strike against DeLong for asking. Every father should love his children, and DeLong's son does sound accomplished.

Nevertheless, this is a striking reminder of what concepts like "democracy" and "rights" mean to mainstream (Clinton wing and Obama wing) Democrats as a group, as they struggle with the problem of offering to the rest of us — or working to deny it — the same "rights" that the Party elite and its servicing ecosystem already enjoy as privileges of class, like access to affordable, quality medical care.

Schedule note: I'll be reading but not writing for about two weeks, restarting after Labor Day.

GP
 

Leaked Emails: UFOs, Crushing Bernie...

No, not just worse choice, WORST CHOICE EVER

I've been trying to avoid the wikileaks e-mails, primarily evacuees I don't think there's any to know what's real, what's fake, what's doctored... The whole batch was released as a Russian propaganda effort to help elect Putin's candidate, Donald Trump. But I couldn't resist taking about the Mike Honda-Ro Khanna congressional race in terms of a leaked letter from Khanna's sleaze-bag campaign chairman, Steve Spinner, nor, earlier, about Blink 182 and John Podesta wanting to go for an interterrestial magic carpet ride. So the door's down.

Speaking of UFO's-- I'm more than a believer-- the Daily Mail has been following Podesta's... openness to extraterrestrial life-- from innocently exchanging e-mails with former astronaut Edgar Mitchell to Podesta admirably urging Hillary to declassify UFO info and Area 51 files. Mitchell, apparently, is aware that the government has been covering up extraterrestrial presence in America for half a century. He asked Podesta to set up a meeting between himself and Obama to talk about extraterrestrials.

Podesta's assistant replied to the email saying: 'John would likely take this meeting alone first before involving the President.'

'Our government is still operating from outdated beliefs and policies' Mitchell wrote in the 2014 email.

He asked for 'a conversation with you and President Obama regarding the next steps in extraterrestrial disclosure for the benefit of our country and our planet.'

The meeting would be an opportunity for Mitchell to discuss how humans can achieve 'planet sustainability generation energies.'

The email also allegedly discussed how to explore space without colonialism and destruction. It described the U.S. government having respect for 'the wisdom and intellect of its citizens as we move into space.'

Mitchell wrote of an impending space war and that the Vatican had knowledge of aliens, RT reported.

Podesta has urged Clinton in the past to declassify information about UFOs if she becomes president.

He has advocated for documents about Area 51 to be released as well.

In 2015, Robert Fish, curator of the Apollo museum, asked Podesta how he could obtain scientific data about UFOs, one email reportedly says.

'Based on significant personal experience, I can attest that UFO hunters are looking in the wrong places.' Fish told Podesta, according to RT.

  

I saw more buzz online about a Podesta leaked e-mail about his ability to get face value Hamilton tickets than about Martians. Let alone this:

This is exactly the kind of crap I don't want to get involved with... those horrible establishment types around Hillary. Yes, we know, we know... she's not a good choice, just an infinitely better choice than the alternative. After she's in office we'll have to do what we can about minimizing the horrors of the garbage she plans to bring into government-- like hideous Blue Dog and lobbyist Blanche Lincoln, who's being talking about as a possible Attorney General.

Evangelicals May Be Abandoning Trump... But Where Do The UFOs Stand?

A member of Trump's "evangelical council," James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel, an Illinois megachurch, emailed the other members of the Trumpist council that Trump's "grab-the-pussy" comments were "truly the kind of misogynistic trash that reveals a man to be lecherous and worthless-- not the guy who gets politely ignored, but the guy who gets a punch in the head from worthy men who hear him talk that way about women... No more defending Mr. Trump as simply foolish or loose lipped."

The Satanic-controlled wing of the American evangelical movement-- hucksters and right-wing prostitutes like Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Robert Jeffress, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell Jr.-- are all firmly in thrall to Trump and 100% in his sulphuric camp. Christianity Today's editors... not so much. The influential magazine is politically neutral but the editorial on Trumpy-the-Clown wasn't. "We are especially not indifferent," executive editor Andy Crouch wrote, "when the gospel is at stake... [W]e recognize that all earthly governments partake, to a greater or lesser extent, in what the Bible calls idolatry: substituting the creation for the Creator and the earthly ruler for the true God."

This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trump’s past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest-- indeed, sexual assault-- might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.

Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and one’s desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.

And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.

...Most Christians who support Trump have done so with reluctant strategic calculation, largely based on the president’s power to appoint members of the Supreme Court. Important issues are indeed at stake, including the right of Christians and adherents of other religions to uphold their vision of sexual integrity and marriage even if they are in the cultural minority.

But there is a point at which strategy becomes its own form of idolatry-- an attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor of the causes we support. Strategy becomes idolatry, for ancient Israel and for us today, when we make alliances with those who seem to offer strength-- the chariots of Egypt, the vassal kings of Rome-- at the expense of our dependence on God who judges all nations, and in defiance of God’s manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. Strategy becomes idolatry when we betray our deepest values in pursuit of earthly influence. And because such strategy requires capitulating to idols and princes and denying the true God, it ultimately always fails.

Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us-- in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.

That's not nearly as odd as a Facebook posting from Glenn Beck this week that said "If the consequence of standing against Trump and for principles is indeed the election of Hillary Clinton, so be it. At least it is a moral, ethical choice." You go, girl!



You must have liked a Blink-182 song some time in the late '90s, no? They're still around, kind of, but not really because lead singer Tom DeLonge left the band. Their big breakthrough third album, Enema of the State had sold over 15 million copies. If the Wikileaks statements are to be believed, DeLonge has some kind of a relationship with Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta (a lobbyist and former Obama chief of staff). Podesta's in a documentary DeLonge produced about UFOs and the two of them emailed about UFOs as well. Hillary's campaign doesn't want to talk about UFOs but blames the Podesta-Blink-182 leak on the Russians.

Taking Bribes From The Russians Cuts Both Ways

Don't ask me why Trump doesn't ever find anyone who isn't part of Team Putin to run his campaign

Trumpist Sean Duffy (R-WI) and anti-Trumpist Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) have both said they are uncomfortable with the way the Trump campaign now appears to be, on some levels at least, an arm of Russia's foreign policy agenda and, worse yet, the political agenda of Vladimir Putin, this man. "Vladimir Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror committed against his own people. The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag... Those who have tried to investigate have been killed off, one by one."

Monday, discussing the charges that Manafort is a Putin agent, Kinzinger told CNN's audience that he thinks "Trump ought to really investigate this and where his chief adviser, what his association with the Russians are. I have concerns for the chief adviser of Donald Trump, you know, having done work for a pro-Russian government in Ukraine, and, then, all of a sudden, there is this real affection for Russia in the campaign."

AP broke the Manafort-Putin story wide open with a story yesterday by Jeff Horwitz, Manafort tied to undisclosed foreign lobbying. He's helping make a complicated and nuanced crucially important story understandable to the average voter, if not the average Trump fan.

"Trump's campaign chairman [since removed from that position] helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012," wrote Horwitz, "and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy." Manafort's decision to not declare that he is an agent of a foreign power in a felony offense that carries a 5 year prison term and a quarter million dollar fine. He was taking a big risk... but for big returns.

Manafort and business associate Rick Gates, another top strategist in Trump's campaign, were working in 2012 on behalf of the political party of Ukraine's then-president, Viktor Yanukovych.

People with direct knowledge of Gates' work said that, during the period when Gates and Manafort were consultants to the Ukraine president's political party, Gates was also helping steer the advocacy work done by a pro-Yanukovych nonprofit that hired a pair of Washington lobbying firms, Podesta Group Inc. and Mercury LLC.

The nonprofit, the newly created European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, was governed by a board that initially included parliament members from Yanukovych's party. The nonprofit subsequently paid at least $2.2 million to the lobbying firms to advocate positions generally in line with those of Yanukovych's government.

That lobbying included downplaying the necessity of a congressional resolution meant to pressure the Ukrainian leader to release an imprisoned political rival.

The lobbying firms continued the work until shortly after Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014, during a popular revolt prompted in part by his government's crackdown on protesters and close ties to Russia.

Among those who described Manafort's and Gates's relationship with the nonprofit are current and former employees of the Podesta Group. Some of them spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal details about the work and because they remain subject to non-disclosure agreements.

Gates told the AP that he and Manafort introduced the lobbying firms to the European Centre nonprofit and occasionally consulted with the firms on Ukrainian politics. He called the actions lawful, and said there was no attempt to circumvent the reporting requirements of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The heads of both lobbying firms told AP they concluded there was no obligation to disclose their activities to the Justice Department. Manafort did not directly respond to AP's requests to discuss the work, but he was copied on the AP's questions and Gates said he spoke to Manafort before providing answers to them.

Political consultants are generally leery of registering under the foreign agents law, because their reputations can suffer once they are on record as accepting money to advocate the interests of foreign governments-- especially if those interests conflict with America's.

One of the lobbying firms Manafort and Gates worked with has strong Democratic ties.

The founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta, is the brother of longtime Democratic strategist John Podesta, who now is campaign chairman for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The head of Mercury, Vin Weber, is an influential Republican, former congressman and former special policy adviser to Mitt Romney. Weber announced earlier this month that he will not support Trump.

After being introduced to the lobbying firms, the European nonprofit paid the Podesta Group $1.13 million between June 2012 and April 2014 to lobby Congress, the White House National Security Council, the State Department and other federal agencies, according to U.S. lobbying records.

The nonprofit also paid $1.07 million over roughly the same period to Mercury to lobby Congress. Among other issues, Mercury opposed congressional efforts to pressure Ukraine to release one of Yanukovych's political rivals from prison.

One former Podesta employee, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a non-disclosure agreement, said Gates described the nonprofit's role in an April, 2012 meeting as supplying a source of money that could not be traced to the Ukrainian politicians who were paying him and Manafort.

In separate interviews, three current and former Podesta employees said disagreements broke out within the firm over the arrangement, which at least one former employee considered obviously illegal. Podesta, who said the project was vetted by his firm's counsel, said he was unaware of any such disagreements.

A legal opinion drafted for the project for Mercury in May 2012, and obtained by AP, concluded that the European Centre qualified as a "foreign principal" under the Foreign Agents Registration Act but said disclosure to the Justice Department was not required. That determination was based on the nonprofit's assurances that none of its activities was directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized by Ukraine's government or any of the country's political parties.

...Podesta told the AP his firm worked closely with the nonprofit and with Gates simultaneously. But Podesta said Gates was not working for Yanukovych's political party and said Manafort was not involved.

"I was never given any reason to believe Rick was a Party of Regions consultant," said John Ward Anderson, a current Podesta employee who attended the meeting, in a statement provided by his firm. "My assumption was that he was working for the Centre, as we were."

Gates, in contrast, told AP he was working with Manafort and that both he and Manafort were working for Yanukovych's party.

Pointing to Manafort's involvement, Weber told AP that Manafort discussed the project before it began in a conference call with Podesta and himself.

The director of the European Centre, Ina Kirsch, told the AP her group never worked with Manafort or Gates and said the group hired the Washington lobbyists on its own. She said she had met with Manafort twice but said neither Manafort nor Gates played a role in its lobbying activities.

The center has declined for years to reveal specific sources of its funding.

A 2013 Reuters story mentioned that the slimy Podesta worked directly for a pro-Yanukovich group, and received $900,000 in lobbying fees. "Rival political factions facing each other on the streets of Ukraine have also enlisted heavyweight lobbyists in Washington, some with connections at the highest levels of U.S. government, to promote their causes to American policymakers, media and members of Congress. Among the high-profile lobbyists registered to represent organizations backing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's government are prominent Democratic lobbyist Anthony Podesta and former Republican congressional leaders Vin Weber and Billy Tauzin... The sums of money involved are substantial. Over the last two years, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels-based organization sympathetic to Yanukovich and his political party, has paid $560,000 to Weber's firm, Mercury, and another $900,000 to Podesta Group Inc."

BuzzFeed ran a similar story in March of 2013, about how foreign nations spend millions on criminal lobbyists-- whether Clintonistas like the Podestas or Trumpanzees like Manafort and Bannon, pictured above next to Putin. This can only happen because corrupt party bosses from both establishments winter to happen. They want that corrupting flow of money. It should be stopped and politicians who countenance it should never be supported (even if someone calls you a Naderite or whatever the Republican equivalent is). Three years ago Rosie Gray at BuzzFeed reported that "the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, an obscure nonprofit based in Belgium, was founded by a former top official in Ukraine’s governing party and appears to be a proxy for the country’s pro-Russian government. In 2012, the group hired a pair of high-powered American lobbying firms to advocate on its behalf."

But what those lobbyists, who include Obama-era Democratic superlobbyist Tony Podesta, are actually doing is a mystery. Unlike the Washington firms hired directly by foreign governments, Ukraine’s leadership has slipped its American agenda through an increasingly popular loophole in the federal law intended to regulate foreign activity in the United States, allowing it to follow the minimal disclosure practices required of domestic corporate lobbies, not the extensive ones demanded of registered foreign agents. It’s a loophole now used by a range of post-communist governments, in particular, with money to burn and no particular love of transparency. And it offers a path to the end of a disclosure regime put in place in 1938, amid American concern over the effects of Nazi propaganda.

Of all the criminal lobbying firms in DC, Podesta's outfit spends the 4th most of directly bribing members of Congress, $853,530 in the last year alone-- $5,495,595 since it started up in 2012. The dozen biggest recipients of their bribes-- this cycle only-- are all politicians well-known for being on the take. Hillary took the most and Jeb Bush the second most. Rounding out the dirty dozen were 7 Republican bribe vacuums-- Mark Kirk (IL), Roy Blunt (MO), Kevin McCarthy (CA), Kelly Ayotte (NH), John Thune (SD), Jason Chaffetz (UT) and Chris Smith (NJ). In that dirty dozen there were also 3 corrupted Democrats: Chuck Schumer, of course (whenever bribes are being handed out, the pig-like Schumer is at the front of the line), Patty Murray (WA) and Kamala Harris (CA). I know, I know... Trump is worse. Trump is worse. Maybe we need to look at who takes the biggest bribes from the Saudis next. After all, they even managed to help elect and sustain a corrupt little traitor, Patrick Murphy, and get him onto the Intelligence Committee. And now Schumer is pushing him into the U.S. Senate.


UPDATE: And, Of Course... The Russian Mafia

This morning NBC News reported that Manafort has been investigated by the FBI for his connections to the Russian Mafia. "Donald Trump's campaign chairman," wrote Tom Winter, "was a key player in multi-million-dollar business propositions with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs-- one of them a close Putin ally with alleged ties to organized crime-- which foreign policy experts say raises questions about the pro-Russian bent of the Trump candidacy."

In 2008, according to court records, senior Trump aide Paul Manafort's firm was involved with a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmytro Firtash in a plan to redevelop a famous New York hotel, the Drake. The total value of the project was $850 million. Firtash's company planned to invest over $100 million, the records say.

That same year, Firtash acknowledged to the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine that he got his start in business with the permission of a notorious Russian crime lord, according to a classified State Department cable. Other cables say Firtash made part of his fortune through sweetheart natural gas deals between Russia and the Ukraine.

Around the same time, companies controlled by another Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, paid $7.35 million toward management fees for Manafort and his partners in connection with an investment fund, according to a court filing in the Cayman Islands. Deripaska once was denied entry to the United States because of alleged mafia ties, current and former officials told NBC News. Deripaska is considered by U.S. officials to be among Putin's inner circle.

The Drake deal didn't go through, and the Deripaska investment arrangement ended in a dispute. But Manafort's dealings with Firtash and Deripaska, documented in court records obtained by NBC News, are among several the political operative has maintained with wealthy Russian and Ukrainian businessmen going back over eight years. Firtash is a wanted man, indicted by the Justice Department in 2014 over bribery allegations in India. He is living in exile in Austria.

...On the political front, Manafort was paid handsome sums for years to advise a pro-Putin Ukrainian political figure, Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in 2014 after he was ousted as president in a political revolution. U.S. officials say Yanukovych was deeply corrupt and did Putin's bidding in Ukraine. Manafort met regularly with the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev, William Taylor, according to a source familiar with the meetings.

Deripaska was a Yanukovych backer who is considered by U.S. officials to be among Putin's inner circle of billionaire businessmen... Deripaska had been repeatedly denied a visa to enter the United States over his alleged ties to organized crime, current and former officials tell NBC News. However, several officials tell NBC News he now has been given diplomatic status by the Russian government, allowing him to enter the U.S. with immunity.