Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

T R E 4 5 O N

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Not all heroes wear capes.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

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Election 2016

Lordy! There Are Tapes! Bob Woodward’s Rage Has Leaked To CNN & By Leaked I Mean Bob Woodward Gave CNN the Book and the Tapes

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Boizhe Moi!

From CNN (emphasis mine):

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book “Rage.”

This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward on February 7.

In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. “Pretty amazing,” Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times “more deadly” than the flu.

Trump’s admissions are in stark contrast to his frequent public comments at the time insisting that the virus was “going to disappear” and “all work out fine.”

The book, using Trump’s own words, depicts a President who has betrayed the public trust and the most fundamental responsibilities of his office. In “Rage,” Trump says the job of a president is “to keep our country safe.” But in early February, Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, and in March, admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Woodward reveals new details on the early warnings Trump received — and often ignored.

In a January 28 top secret intelligence briefing, national security adviser Robert O’Brien gave Trump a “jarring” warning about the virus, telling the President it would be the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. Trump’s head “popped up,” Woodward writes.

O’Brien’s deputy, Matt Pottinger, concurred, telling Trump it could be as bad as the influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans. Pottinger warned Trump that asymptomatic spread was occurring in China: He had been told 50% of those infected showed no symptoms.

Asked by Woodward in May if he remembered O’Brien’s January 28 warning that the virus would be the biggest national security threat of his presidency, Trump equivocated. “No, I don’t.” Trump said. “I’m sure if he said it — you know, I’m sure he said it. Nice guy.”

He also disclosed a clandestine and highly classified new nuclear weapons program* to Woodward on tape!

And, of course, we’ve got further confirmation of Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting from last Friday too!

Both Secretary Mattis and DNI Coats had serious, significant concerns about the President, his abilities, and his allegiance! (emphasis mine)

Mattis is quoted as calling Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” to be commander in chief. Woodward writes that Coats “continued to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that Putin had something on Trump.” Woodward continues, writing that Coats felt, “How else to explain the president’s behavior? Coats could see no other explanation.”

Woodward also has assessments of the President from Dr. Fauci:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s top infectious disease expert, is quoted telling others Trump’s leadership was “rudderless” and that his “attention span is like a minus number.”

“His sole purpose is to get reelected,” Fauci told an associate, according to Woodward.

Woodward was also able to get his hands on the love letters, or, at least, copies of the love letters between the President and Kim Jong Un.

As many of you know, I’m generally not a big fan of Bob Woodward’s books. He never cites sources and many of us in the nat-sec world that have had to refer to his books in our professional work have speculated that his modus operandi is that if you refuse to talk to him on or off the record, that he’ll just make stuff up to fit and support the narrative he’s creating. In this case, however, he has tapes. 18 hours of tapes of the President from interviews the President chose to sit for. And tapes, which the President in his own, charming fashion, will spend the next two months loudly, repeatedly, and often incoherently, but definitely angrily denying are actually of him. He’ll tell anyone and everyone who’ll listen or give him air time that he doesn’t think that’s actually him on the tapes. Just as he’s done with the Access Hollywood tape.

I expect that between The Lincoln Project, VoteVets, Don Winslow, and several other groups, as well as the Biden campaign, will have all of this teed up and ready to go in advertisement over the next two months. Including, if they can get permission to use them, the audio from Woodward’s tapes of the President.

ETA: Audio at the CNN link.

Open thread!

* Would one of our New Mexican readers please do a welfare check on Cheryl? Thanks, The Management…

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The Real Takeaway From the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence’s Bipartisan Report On Russia’s Active Measures Campaign and Interference In the 2016 Election: They All Knew Before They Voted To Acquit!!!!!

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The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released the fifth and final volume of their multipart report on Russia’s Active Measures Campaign and Interference in the 2016 presidential election yesterday. You can find the first four volumes at this link.

This fifth volume is entitled Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities and despite that title it really ties together all the pieces from the previous four reports.

The real takeaway from this fifth volume of the report, and one that is not found anywhere in the report, is that despite knowing everything I am going to detail below, the 8 Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had read the initial and penultimate drafts of this report, as well as the underlying supporting intelligence and materials by the time the President’s impeachment trial was held at the end of January. All of them knew exactly what was done, who did what, etc. All of them knew that a significant portion of the President’s defense – that Ukraine had really been conspiring with HRC and the Democratic Party and had framed Russia and the President to prevent him from becoming president – was not just a lie, but a lie created by Russian intelligence transmitted by Konstantin Kilimnik, a GRU asset and the handler for Paul Manafort, to Manafort and through him to the President and other Republicans. They knew his defense was Russian misinformation and agitprop. They knew what he had actually done in the campaign and since the campaign vis a vis Putin and Russia. And they still, every last fucking one of them, voted against hearing evidence and witnesses and actually holding a proper trial. And then they, every last fucking one of them, voted to acquit him.

This is the real conclusion and takeaway from reading this fifth volume of the multi-volume report. All 8 of these Republican senators – Burr, Rubio, Risch, Collins, Blunt, Cotton, Cornyn, and Sasse – knew and not only did nothing, they actively aided and abetted the cover up! They made themselves active participants of both furthering and covering up Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war against the United States!

Now that that is out of the way, the Bottom Line Up Front from reading the entire report, is that the report makes it very, very, very clear that Vladimir Putin personally ordered the active measures campaign to bolster the President’s candidacy and damage Secretary Clinton’s candidacy. The active measures campaign was also intended to damage a Hillary Clinton presidency to the point that she would be unable to govern if she were elected or to elect Donald Trump president, which would be an even better outcome for Putin and what he intends to achieve both domestically and globally.

The report also makes it very, very, very, very clear that the President himself, his campaign, his campaign officials, his family members (Don Jr. and Ivanka), and a number of his surrogates were either in regular touch with Russian assets or were in regular touch with those who were like Roger Stone. Or, as in the case of Manafort, is actually a Russian asset being handled by a GRU officer – Konstantin Kilimnik. That all of these people were attempting to either directly or indirectly coordinate, assist, and aid the Russians in what they were doing. That several, like Manafort and Stone, were conspiring directly with Russian assets to coordinate, assist, and aid the Russians in what they were doing.

The findings make it very, very, very, very clear that the President was coordinating at least the Roger Stone part of the op regarding the WikiLeaks’ releases.

The report also makes it clear that Ivanka Trump was coordinating the campaign’s weaponization and use of the WikiLeaks’ releases through social media.

Additionally, the report makes it clear that the President, Don McGahn, Manafort, Stone, Jr, Jared, Bannon, Stone, and the President’s two private lawyers Sekulow and Giuliani were obstructing the Mueller and congressional investigations in a variety of ways.

The report makes it very, very, very clear that the President lied in his answers to Mueller because it delineated that he was personally coordinating with Stone what Stone was doing with Assange and WikiLeaks. The President denied doing this in his written response to Mueller.

The findings are explicit that Russian intelligence created the misinformation and agitprop conspiracy theory that Ukraine actually conspired with HRC and the DNC in 2016 and then framed Russia and the President. And that Russia pushed this to the President, his transition, and Republicans through Kilimnik and Manafort. This demolishes what Senators Johnson and Grassley are trying to do with their hearings into VP Biden and his son Hunter. It also completely derails a significant portion of the President’s defense to the impeachment charges against him.

The findings make it crystal clear that not only was the President, working through Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, trying to make a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, but that Cohen and Sater were in contact with senior Kremlin officials and oligarchs close to Putin. That the President lied repeatedly in his denials of pursuing such a deal. And that the President was kept fully informed by Cohen and Sater.

The findings also make clear that Flynn contacted Kislyak with the express purpose of undermining, derailing, and overturning the actions of the Obama administration. The findings are explicit that under the Constitution the Obama administration was the sole and only presidential administration during the transition and therefore the sole and only wielder of executive authority and power until 20 JAN 2017. This completely undermines what Senator Graham is trying to do with his hearings on the origins of the Mueller investigation. It also completely destroys Flynn’s argument, as well as the DOJ’s supporting argument, that the charges against him should be dropped because there was no legitimate reason – predicate – for charging him in the first place. And despite the fact that he has twice pled guilty to the charges.

The findings are clear that Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI counterintelligence investigation and the Special Counsel investigation, were properly predicated. This completely demolishes what AG Barr is trying to accomplish through the investigation he has assigned to US Attorney Durham.

The findings are also clear that Russian intelligence created the Seth Rich murder conspiracy and then laundered it through Assange and Wikileaks into conservative and right wing news, social, and digital media. So Sean Hannity and Fox News, as well as other conservative news, social, and digital media sources were actively acting as, at least, unwitting assets of Russian intelligence.

The Republican majority appendix, as well as the acting committee chair Marco Rubio’s statements over the past 26 hours or so, have attempted to spin the report to make the claim that there was no collusion between the President, his campaign, his family members working on the campaign, his other campaign officials, his campaign surrogates, his transition, and his transition officials with the Russians. And that the Russians have no compromising material on the President that they could have used to blackmail him during the 2016 campaign. This is a lie and it is immediately contradicted by the report’s delineation and detailing of all the actions the President, his family members working on the campaign, his other campaign officials, his campaign surrogates, his transition, and his transition officials took to coordinate, conspire, facilitate, aid, and assist the Russians in their actions, as well as their still ongoing efforts to obstruct the investigations into their actions. It is also immediately contradicted by the detailing and delineation of the pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow deal, which the President, his family members working on the campaign, his other campaign officials, his campaign surrogates, his transition, and his transition officials repeatedly lied about throughout the campaign and transition. This is, itself, compromising information. Putin and some of his most senior aides, advisors, and trusted agents all knew that the President was pursuing the deal, that he was desperate to make this development deal, and that he and everyone around him were constantly, repeatedly, and consistently lying about pursuing this development deal. This provided Putin with significant leverage over the President during the campaign, the transition, and the first several months of his administration.

To tie everything together neatly, despite knowing everything that the President, his family members working on the campaign, his other campaign officials, his campaign surrogates, his transition, and his transition officials had done to coordinate with, conspire with, facilitate, aid, and assist the Russians directly or indirectly in conducting their active measures campaign during the 2016 presidential election, which is a hostile attack on the United States, as well as everything the President, his family members working on the campaign, his other campaign officials, his campaign surrogates, his transition, his transition officials, his administration officials, and his personal attorneys had done to obstruct their investigation and Robert Mueller’s investigation, they still voted to not hold a proper trial in the Senate. They did so knowing his defense was rooted in and making wide use of a Russian intelligence created conspiracy theory to shift the blame off of both Russia and the President, which was why the President had tried to squeeze Ukraine’s president for dirt on the Bidens in order to both validate the conspiracy theory and use it to damage VP Biden’s campaign, and they allowed that defense to be presented without so much as a peep of objection. And then, knowing all of this, they voted to acquit him. In doing so Senators Burr, Rubio, Risch, Collins, Blunt, Cotton, Cornyn, and Sasse betrayed their oaths of office and actively aided and abetted the President and Vladimir Putin’s attempts to cover up Putin’s war against the United States. A war that is ongoing. A war that the President, his family members working on the campaign, his other campaign officials, his campaign surrogates, his transition, and his transition officials were all actively involved in; involvement they, as well as a number of administration officials and the President’s private attorneys, have all actively tried to cover up. 

Open thread!

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The Bad Effects of One Man’s Good Intentions: Why The US Postal Service’s Board of Governors Is Packed With Senator McConnell Approved Appointees of the President

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Over the past several days a number of people have begun to ask how, exactly, it was possible that the US Postal Service’s bipartisan Board of Governors could be stacked full of partisan appointees that Senator McConnell recommended to the President and then approved once the President nominated them. Such as one of Senator McConnell’s long time catspaws, who now chairs that board, and appointed Republican fundraiser Louis DeJoy Postmaster General. Appointees whose intention is to destroy the US Postal Service, which is a long standing Republican and conservative goal.

Former Bernie Sanders for president 2020 senior campaign official David Sirota expressed his concerns about this yesterday as well:

In the months before the 2020 election, Donald Trump and Washington lawmakers put the postal service under the control of a former Republican National Committee chairman who has also led the Senate GOP’s major super PAC, according to federal and state documents reviewed by TMI.

In the lead up to those developments, Trump nominee Mike Duncan was appointed to the USPS’s board of governors in 2018, and he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in December 2019 to a full seven-year term. Duncan currently chairs the board.

There’s a simple explanation for how this happened because we have a historical record of how and why these nomination were not filled during the Obama administration. One man, a single US senator, was concerned during the Obama administration that President Obama’s appointees to the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors would cut services and take actions that hurt postal workers. That one man, that one US senator placed a hold on the nominations, nominations which would have left no vacancies on the board for Senator McConnell to manipulate to partisan advantage like he has every other vacancy that he was able to find a way to keep President Obama from filling, to create leverage to ensure that services would not be cut and postal workers not hurt by the actions of the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors. That man, that US senator has a name: Bernie Sanders. (emphasis mine)

And then, there were none.

Not a single member remains of the Postal Board of Governors. The board, which is supposed to have 11 members – nine appointed by the president and approved by Congress, as well as the Postmaster General and Deputy Postmaster General – lost its final outside member, James Bilbray, when his term expired at midnight on Dec. 8.

The governors, who advise the Postal Service on management, approve price changes and can fire the Postmaster General, serve staggered 9-year terms, so one member’s term expires each year on Dec. 8. If no replacement is approved, the law permits a governor to serve for an additional year. The board must have six members to achieve quorum.

President Obama has nominated five people to serve on the board – three Democrats and two Republicans. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Postal Service, has approved all five. But the full Senate has not taken up the matter because a senator – believed to be Bernie Sanders – has placed a hold on their nominations.

Sanders is said to have placed the holds at the request of postal unions, who particularly object to former Postal Board Chairmen Mickey Cochrane and James C. Miller.

Senator Sanders appears to have been acting with the best of intentions. He was leveraging the power he has as a senator to try to extract the assurances and promises that would ensure that postal services would not be cut and actions would bot be taken to harm postal workers. The problem, of course, is that Senator Sanders made two strategic miscalculations. The first is that President Obama would be succeeded in office by another Democratic president, maybe even by Sanders himself, so it wasn’t a really big deal if the nominees to fill the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors got held up a couple of more months until a new administration came into office in January 2017. The second was failing to notice a pattern of behavior, rooted in a long term strategy, by Senator McConnell. The United States government has a lot of independent or semi-independent boards of governors or directors or commissioners. These boards and commissions, such as the Federal Election Commission (FEC), are considered to be bipartisan. Either the president makes nominations with inputs from the majority and minority leaders of both parties in Congress or the positions are filled by nominations made by the president as well as nominations made by the majority and minority leaders of each party in the Senate. Senator McConnell does not like a lot of these boards and commissions, especially when they have oversight, investigatory, regulatory, and/or enforcement powers over whatever it is that Senator McConnell is trying to achieve. The Federal Election Commission is one of these, the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors is another.

In the case of the former, Senator McConnell appointed his long time catspaw, white shoe Republican law firm partner Don McGahn, to serve on the Federal Election Commission. McGahn’s job – not the official one he was supposed to do as an FEC commissioner, but the one that McConnell actually sent him there to do – was to blow up the FEC and make it impossible to function. McGahn, leading McConnell’s other appointees and working with and through them, accomplished this assignment and the FEC has been somewhere between dysfunctional and non-functional ever since. McGahn did not wind up as the President’s 2016 campaign counsel and then White House Counsel by accident, he was placed there by Senator McConnell based on his successes doing McConnell’s bidding in previous assignments, such as his service on the FEC. McGahn never really worked for the President – not his campaign, not his administration – because he works for McConnell. McGahn’s insertion into the President’s 2016 campaign and then the White House was McConnell’s way of exerting power within both and ensuring that McConnell’s objectives would be achieved. Unlike Speaker Ryan, Senator McConnell was, and still is, actually effective at utilizing the official power he has and the unofficial powers he’s accumulated by manipulating the Senate’s and the US government’s rules and norms. It is why Senator McConnell is the Senate Majority leader and achieving his strategic objectives and goals and Paul Ryan is out of the game after being a spectacular failure as the Speaker of the House, though raking in a lot of money on NewsCorp’s board.

Senator Sanders made two strategic miscalculations. The first was incorrectly assuming how the future would play out, the second was not realizing that the reason that Senator McConnell, as the Senate Majority Leader, was actually recognizing and allowing Senator Sanders’ holds on President Obama’s nominees to the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors because those holds suited McConell’s objectives, not Sanders’. Senator Sanders placed the holds on these nominations at a time when Senator McConnell was refusing to recognize holds and blue slip responses on nominees by Democratic senators. The fact that McConnell was willing to recognize the holds that Sanders had placed, should have clued Senator Sanders into the fact that something strange was going on. Apparently this recognition by Senator Sanders or his senior staff did not happen. To the point that the holds were STILL NOT LIFTED even after the President managed to eke out a narrow Electoral College victory to succeed President Obama in office. The date on the article I quoted from above is from 20 December 2016. That last member of the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors term ended by statute on 8 December 2016. Given that the reality of who would be president come 20 January 2017 was very clear by December of 2016, the holds should have been dropped at that point, which would have been strategically smart as it would have prevented the incoming president, guided by Senator McConnell’s recommendations, from filling a majority of the open seats on the US Postal Service Board of Governors. We do not have to conduct a mental exercise and create a counterfactual, we know just how bad the President’s appointments to the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors are and just how damaging they are to both the US Postal Service – a long standing Republican and conservative goal – and to actual Americans. And this all could have been prevented if one man was a better strategist. had better senior advisors and staffers, and was better at his job.

Open thread!

 

 

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The Black PSYOP X: The Senate Becomes An Information Laundry

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Since the President’s acquittal in the Senate back in January, several key senators have been working to turn their committee’s oversight functions into both an information laundry as part of the Black PSYOP against Vice President Biden and an oppo research and distribution arm of the President’s reelection campaign. These efforts are being led by Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee; Senator Charles Grassley, who chairs the Finance Committee; and Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and are intended to do one thing and one thing only: dirty up Vice President Biden ahead of his election, as well as a number of his senior advisors who would be expect to have senior appointments in a Biden administration should he win in November. Should he indeed win, expect the Senate Republicans to use these hearings to either deny, should they hold their majority, or try to derail and deny, should they be in the minority, the Senate confirmation for these senior Biden aides and advisors. In this way the Black PSYOP campaign against VP Biden has metastasized in a new ugly way: to not just try to make him unelectable, but to damage many of his most senior and trusted aides and advisors so that they would be unconfirmable should he be elected and appoint them to the most senior positions in his administration.

Senator Graham kicked off the next phase of the Black PSYOP today with hearings into how the counterintelligence investigation into the connections between the President’s 2016 campaign and a variety of Russian nationals who all link back to Vladimir Putin, which is being referred to by Republicans and conservatives as Obamagate, was started and conducted. The focus of today’s hearing was on former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. You can see this whole hearing at the video below:

As you can imagine, Senator Graham, as well as the other Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee were functioning in the closed epistemological bubble of conspiracies about the 2016 election.

The short version of these conspiracies are that it was not Russia interfering in the election, nor was it the President’s campaign, campaign officials, members of the President’s family, and official and unofficial surrogates all either conspiring to and working with various elements of Russian intelligence or trying to, but being so inept they failed to actually do so. Rather, the Clinton campaign successfully conspired with both the Obama administration, especially senior Department of Justice and FBI officials like Director Comey, and the Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko to subvert the will of the American people and rig the 2016 election and by creating a false flag that Russia was in fact interfering in the election on behalf of the President’s campaign.

The key logical flaw in all of this, not that there aren’t several of them, is that Secretary Clinton did in fact lose the election in the only way that mattered: the Electoral College. And that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has definitively concluded that not only did Russia through a variety of actors, at the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, interfere in the 2016 US election, but that these Russian or Russian backed actors tried to conspire with the President’s campaign, campaign officials, family members, and surrogates. And that the President’s campaign, campaign officials, family members, and surrogates failed to make it work because the President’s campaign, campaign officials, family members, and surrogates were, with the exception of Roger Stone’s conspiring with Wikileakes, too inept to actually conspire with Russia. The logical flaw also ignores that Vladimir Putin had a clear preference for the President and did everything he could to see him elected in 2016, including acting to harm the candidacies of the other Republican primary candidates like Senators Graham and Cruz.

The origin of the conspiracy theory that the Senate Republicans, the President, other Republicans, and conservatives are pushing was actually created by Konstantin Kilimnik and pushed to Paul Manafort who then laundered it through his criminal defense. It was also laundered through Politico by a discredited Ukrainian junior foreign service officer. And before you ask, yes the Politico reporter was Ken Vogel who has continued to try to peddle this made up garbage at The New York Times.

Former Acting Attorney General Yates did a very effective job of pushing back and knocking down the conspiracies that the Republican senators on the committee kept asking her about or suggesting happened.

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The Federal Police Operations Will Not Stay In Portland

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Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw. — Richard M. Nixon attributed to Vladimir Lenin.

I have been tracking the social media reporting of Federal law enforcement officers in sterile uniforms – no badges, crests, insignia, or name tags other than a strip stating “Police” – operating in Portland since the earliest tweets about it. It took almost a week before local news in Portland started covering it. Which largely seems to have occurred because Oregon’s governor and Portland’s mayor responded publicly and negatively to the Federal law enforcement actions. This local coverage finally pushed it into the national outlets this morning.

I have been worried about something like this happening for over a month now since the beginning of the protests in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. That teams of Federal law enforcement, with the majority coming from the Bureau of Prisons Disturbance Response Units (they’re trained to go in one on top of each other into cells or areas of Federal prisons and use maximum force to achieve compliance) and C&BP’s equivalents of Rapid Response Units would be deployed to all the major urban areas, especially those with majority or plurality minority populations (African American, Latinx, or a combination of the two). Specifically, that they will be used in an increasingly visible manner over the next 100 days or so culminating in widespread visible use of them during early voting periods and on election day in or near voting precincts, as well as near mail in ballot drop boxes at municipal facilities. A program of voter suppression under color of law. While the mayors and governors of these states who are Democrats will push back, and the Democratic governors won’t allow their National Guard to be pulled into these operations, the states that have Republican governors aligned with the President like Florida, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, etc, even if the cities being targeted have Democratic leadership (Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Cincinnati, etc), will play ball with the President, the Attorney General, and the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security.

The goal of such operations would be to increase the fear and stress levels in big cities with significant minority populations that overwhelmingly vote Democratic to depress turnout. Voter suppression under color of law. I expect that whatever executive order (EO) the President issues next week will be declaring some sort of national emergency regarding the degradation of law and order in US cities that authorizes the Attorney General and the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security to utilize Federal law enforcement to respond. For those not following it, as it did not get a lot of coverage, the President telegraphed the signing of such an executive order on Wednesday regarding restoring order while flanked by the Attorney General.

And, of course, the beauty of issuing a national emergency declaration is it gives the President broad and sweeping powers to do a lot of things that aren’t directly referenced in the declaration. The Atlantic published the definitive rundown of what the President is allowed to do under a declaration of national emergency back in January 2019.

A second major concern has to be the Customs & Border Protection goons. C&BP asserts that they have jurisdiction to operate anywhere within 100 miles of the border, which includes all of the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coastlines, as well as a 100 mile radius of all international ports of entry into the US, which is every airport that receives international arrivals or the direct shipment of international goods into the US. This puts around 2/3rd to 3/4s of the US citizenry, based on where they live, under C&BP jurisdiction. The ACLU has the details about what Customs and Border Protection asserts is its jurisdiction. And, of course, the Acting DHS Secretary, when asked about the operations in Portland, stated that DHS had jurisdiction everywhere to protect Federal facilities. Which is also most of the metropolitan/urban US.

Trying to formulate a response to the ongoing Federal law enforcement operations in Portland, as well as the potential for them to be undertaken elsewhere in the US,  is made more complicated because some of the most extreme right, neo-fascist, racist groups in the US have already been trying to do this.

Fortunately local law enforcement in Richmond arrested the alleged Klansmen who were impersonating law enforcement officers before anyone was hurt or killed. But it raises a real problem vis a vis what we are seeing with the Federal law enforcement operations in Portland: are you being scarfed up by real law enforcement in sterile uniforms or by the Klan or the Proud Boys or the III% militia or Ammon Bundy’s crew who are trying to overthrow the Republican governor of Idaho or any of a dozen other white supremacist, neo-NAZI, neo-fascist, militia, and/or patriot cosplay groups impersonating law enforcement in sterile uniforms?

Now that the Republican National Committee is out from under the Federal court imposed requirement not to use paid election monitors, I have long predicted that they would hire off duty law enforcement to work as election monitors while in uniform. While this is what got them in trouble to begin with in the 1980s and resulted in the Federal court order that was finally lifted last year, the RNC knows it works and paired with an escalating use of Federal law enforcement within urban areas between now and the election in November would go along way to suppressing the vote under the color of law.

My final concern, and it is a major one, is the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). OLC’s job is to provide the executive branch with interpretations of the US Constitution and Federal law, delineating what is constitutional and lawful in regard to executive branch actions and activities. OLC’s guidance, however, is largely secret. Until or unless the DOJ or the White House or a specific executive branch department, agency, bureau, or office needs to make public OLC’s guidance to justify an action taken or not taken, no one outside of the OLC and select others in the executive branch even know that OLC has provided guidance on a specific matter, issue, or action. The OLC functions as producer of secret law for the executive branch. Attorney General Barr’s first senior appointed position at the Department of Justice was as the Assistant Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel. If you don’t think that AG Barr hasn’t had the OLC churning out opinions over the past two years or so in support of both AG Barr’s ultimate political objectives, as well as in support of the President, then I have a bridge to sell you! I guarantee that whatever DHS, C&BP, the Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals rapid response personnel, and other Federal law enforcement are doing in these operations, or may do if they are expanded, has already been justified by OLC guidance. Before anyone asks whether this is really something to be concerned about, I’ve already asked a very senior subject matter expert on this whose response was: “that is a very good question, I don’t know, but I know who to ask.” When he got back to me with the responses of the people he asked, the response was: “they don’t know either.” That is not reassuring.

While people are right to be concerned about this being done in Portland in regard to that it is being done in Portland, the real concern needs to be whether this is a trial run for other cities in the run up to election day. The President is desperate. If it wasn’t clear to him before last week’s Supreme Court ruling that allows the Manhattan DA, and ultimately other state and local prosecutors, to get materials about him from third parties for investigations into whether he has committed state and local crimes that he is in serious jeopardy, it is now. And that will harden the realization that he is either reelected and remains in office or he will be prosecuted. He is basically in the same position that Bibi Netanyahu is in: reelection or prosecution and most likely prison. And given the criminality by those around him, both those taken by those around him to protect him and to enrich and empower themselves, senior and intermediate members of his administration all have the same concerns. The only way they stay out of criminal jeopardy is if the President is reelected and they stay in his good graces. That’s a lot of motivation to do anything and everything, even use the tactics that Putin, Erdogan, Xi, and Bibi use (both less lethal on domestic Israeli Jewish opposition and more lethal on the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs) both day to day and, especially, in the run up to elections.

I’m glad that there are several well connected protect democracy groups trying to ensure the integrity of the election and its results. And that Marc Elias, the go to election attorney for Democrats, is spooled up and running. I’m glad they’re building a large team of lawyers for election day. I’m glad they know it is going to be a fight. However, I’m not particularly enthused that they can’t seem to grasp that this fight isn’t going to happen just in courtrooms and through the filing of motions or be resolved on the ground by thousands of lawyers at the polls as part of get out the vote programs. Those lawyers aren’t going to do anyone any good when a BOP knuckle dragger in a sterile uniform decides to scarf them up on election day, drive them around in an unmarked, rented van for twelve hours, then stand them up against a wall face in and bark questions at them for another six hours, and ultimately release them after eighteen or twenty-four hours with no paperwork.

We are now in the world of the irregular, the asymmetric, and the unconventional. And the people who have stepped up to lead the response understand the world as conventional. As someone who has held senior supervisory civilian appointments as a senior civilian advisor I’m a huge fan of process for how the US government is supposed to work. But my work for the US government as a mobilized civilian and as a contractor, both the conceptual and operational work, is within the world of the irregular, asymmetric, and the unconventional. And that is the world that we are now in. The President, Attorney General Barr, Senator McConnell, the Acting DHS Secretary, the DNI, and a whole host of other senior and intermediate level appointees, as well as the President’s surrogates within the Republican Party, and his enablers within the conservative movement have no interest in the conventional world of American politics based on norms, rules, traditions, institutions, systems, and processes except for how they can use and manipulate them to achieve their specific objectives.

Since the President came down his escalator and announced his campaign in June 2015, he and those working for him both in his campaigns and now in his administration, as well as those like Senator McConnell, have been engaged in an irregular, asymmetric, and unconventional political war against the United States and the American people. The Democratic Party; elected Democrats; party officials at the national and state level; the US news media, especially political reporters, editors, and bookers; and far too many Americans have tried to treat this as just business as usual, though just at the outer bound of what is politically and legally usual. What we call normalization.

Unfortunately, the US political system, beginning with the Constitution, is not built to respond to, handle, and/or deal with an irregular, asymmetric, and unconventional insider threat that recognizes no authority other than that of their own power and sees every law, rule, norm, and tradition solely as a means to obtain power, maintain power, expand power, or direct power to reward allies and punish opponents. The President’s actions; those of his two primary protectors Attorney General Barr and Senator McConnell; those of his other protectors like new DNI Ratcliffe, former Acting DNI Grennell, the Republican caucuses in the Senate and the House, the Republican governors aligned with the President, and his surrogates and supporters in the conservative movement and the conservative news, digital, and social media ecosystem are all part of this irregular, asymmetric, and unconventional political warfare being waged on America and Americans. An unconventional political warfare campaign that has dovetailed nicely with the one being waged against the United States, its allies, and its partners by Putin since at least 2014*. Their ultimate goals are within their grasp. AG Barr’s is establishing the presidency as an elected monarchy. Senator McConnell’s is permanently establishing a Federalist Society majority on the Federal courts, as well as establishing permanent minoritarian control of the Federal government through the Electoral College and a senatorial election map that after 2024 will be weighted more and more towards ensuring a Republican majority in the Senate. The President’s objective, of course, is being reelected.

Whether it is the Biden campaign, the various protect democracy groups, outside PACs and SuperPACs, the Democratic Party – they all need to be screaming about what is happening and what could happen. They need to be all over the political reporters, their editors, the bookers for the broadcast and cable shows about this. The wider the coverage it gets, the more light that is focused on it, the more pushback that can be generated and sustained, the less likely that what every bit of my professional expertise is screaming at me is going to happen and what is keeping me up at night will actually occur. Chuck Todd needs to so paranoid over this that they can observe him vibrating away in terror from the Crab Nebula! The way that Federal law enforcement and the National Guard has been used in DC to respond to the protests over George Floyd’s death to what we’re currently observing in Portland have all been not just responses in and of themselves, they have also been probing actions. The President, AG Barr, the Acting DHS Secretary, the Acting C&BP Director are using these operations to gauge the responses. If and when they don’t get push back, or sufficient push back, they’ll accelerate what they’re doing. The only way to prevent it is to make sure it is getting wide spread coverage to generate sufficient push back to make them stop.

Addendum:

I just want to stipulate that I hope that I am wrong, that I want to be wrong. And I will be very, very, very happy if all of you can come along in November and then, again, in January, and tell me “told you so!”

Open thread!

* My article on the changed nature of the character and characteristics of 21st century warfare is forthcoming from The Cipher Brief.

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Dog Whistles Are So Passé: The President and His Campaign Have Gone To the Bullhorns To Message To His Base

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Over the past several weeks, a number of people have noticed that the President’s campaign, as well as the President, seem to be sending some very unique messages using some very unique imagery. On 18 June, Media Matters caught the President tweeting out this alleged Antifa symbol:

Dog Whistles Are So Passe: The President and His Campaign Have Gone To the Bullhorns To Message To His Base 1

 

This is not an Antifa symbol. It is the symbol the NAZIs made political prisoners wear. Here’s the symbology classification system as explained by the US Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia Holocaust:

Dog Whistles Are So Passe: The President and His Campaign Have Gone To the Bullhorns To Message To His Base 2

Here’s the new America First T-Shirt being offered for sale by the President’s campaign store:

Dog Whistles Are So Passe: The President and His Campaign Have Gone To the Bullhorns To Message To His Base 3

Here’s a better screen grab of the logo:

 

Dog Whistles Are So Passe: The President and His Campaign Have Gone To the Bullhorns To Message To His Base 5

And this is the partieadler, or (NAZI) party eagle and its description from the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) website:

Dog Whistles Are So Passe: The President and His Campaign Have Gone To the Bullhorns To Message To His Base 6

The Nazi Eagle is a symbol developed originally by the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s (also becoming a symbol of the German government after the Nazis took power), based loosely on traditional German coats of arms. Following World War II, the symbol was appropriated by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists worldwide, with many variations. The symbol originally featured an eagle clutching a swastika, but many variations replace the swastika with some other hate symbol, such as SS bolts or a Celtic Cross. Occasionally, extremists will leave the circle blank where the swastika normally would appear; this seems to be more common in countries where the swastika is prohibited.

It should be noted that eagles are a common symbol among nations worldwide, including the United States, and not every image of an eagle is derivative of the Nazi eagle. It is not uncommon, for example, for some Americans to mistake the Blue Eagle logo of the Roosevelt-era National Recovery Administration for a Nazi-derived symbol.

Here’s the National Recover Administration’s crest so you can see for yourself that it looks nothing like the parteiadler or the logo on the America First T-shirts.

Dog Whistles Are So Passe: The President and His Campaign Have Gone To the Bullhorns To Message To His Base 8

But it isn’t just the imagery. The Trump Make America Great Committee purchased 88 Facebook ads that used the NAZI symbols for political prisoners in the screen grab at the top of the post. 88 is the code that neo-NAZIs and white supremacists use for Heil Hitler. Recently the President, in defending monuments and statues to Confederate military leaders and personnel, tweeted out this 14 word tweet, which included two words with capitalized “H”s right next to each other:

The 14 words is the most popular white supremacist slogan and statement. From the ADL:

“14 Words” is a reference to the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The slogan was coined by David Lane, a member of the white supremacist terrorist group known as The Order (Lane died in prison in 2007). The term reflects the primary white supremacist worldview in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: that unless immediate action is taken, the white race is doomed to extinction by an alleged “rising tide of color” purportedly controlled and manipulated by Jews.

Because of its widespread popularity, white supremacists reference this slogan constantly, in its full form as well as in abbreviated versions such as “14 Words”, “Fourteen Words,” or simply the number “14.”

A sober person would say that this is just a coincidence. That argument would have more validity if the President and his campaign and his administration did not have a history of using this type of symbolism. One of the President’s 2016 campaign ads, in July of 2016, was a picture of Secretary Clinton’s face and a Star of David (six pointed star/Jewish star) imposed over piles of cash. Which he tweeted! Another of his campaign’s final ads during the 2016 election included the faces of then Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Holocaust survivor, billionaire, philanthropist George Soros as exemplars of corruption.

The use of this imagery is not an accident. Without having to actually go looking for them, including the T-shirt the President’s campaign just made available for purchase, I was able to come up with a number of examples using clearly anti-Semitic imagery and language. But it goes beyond these campaign ads, merchandise, and tweets by the President. For instance, the initial number of children that HHS was reporting had been lost in the system after being separated at the border was 1,488. This amount of coincidence takes a lot of work!

The dog whistle is clearly passé. Why whisper when you can scream!

Obligatory!

Open thread!

 

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The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

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The President, Republican members of the House and the Senate, Fox News personalities and talking heads, the President’s surrogates on other broadcast and cable news shows, the conservative social, digital, and news media, and the President’s campaign officials and surrogates have been calling for the release of the email that former Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (AP-NSA) Susan Rice sent to herself in January 2017 as a memorialization of the meeting about what the FBI’s counterintelligence officials had been discovering about LTG (ret) Flynn and his activities before he joined the President’s 2016 campaign, during the campaign, and during the transition.

This was purposefully conflated with unmasking by Congressman Nunes as part of his agitprop that President  Obama and his senior officials spied on the President’s campaign, including seeking to unmask LTG (ret) Flynn in signals intelligence collected on foreign targets. When the Trump administration declassified and released Rice’s email to herself, they only declassified and released part of it. Which, of course, led to screaming and yelling about coverups and conspiracies. Dr. Rice has long requested they declassify the whole email, as well as the transcripts of LTG (ret) Flynn’s calls with Ambassador Kislyak, as well as other Russian officials, and officials from other countries. Earlier today the Trump administration declassified and released the remainder of Dr. Rice’s email and no surprises at all, there’s nothing untoward at all in it.

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

As can be clearly seen from reading the email, no one involved did anything untoward, unethical, and/or illegal. As was the case with the unmasking conspiracy theory, there is no there there.

Here is Dr. Rice’s statement from this afternoon:

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 1 The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 2

And while Republican elected officials* and their surrogates are trying to spin this as evidence of illegality, it isn’t. And the most amusing part of today is that Senator Graham hung his tuchas way, way, way, way out over the edge this morning expecting to turn this into a scandal that he could weaponize on behalf of the President’s, as well as his own, reelection chances.

Ooopsie!!!!!

To quickly summarize:

  1. Dr. Rice’s email to herself memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting with President Obama, VP Biden, FBI Director Comey, herself, and several others clearly indicates that nothing untoward, unethical, and/or illegal took place. Rather, President Obama made it very clear that everything was to be done by the book.
  2. The release of the entire email further undercuts the Congressman Devin Nunes created agitprop and conspiracy theory that President Obama ordered the FBI to spy on the President’s 2016 campaign and he knows this because the evidence is being covered up in Dr. Rice’s email to herself, which is classified.
  3. That email is now declassified and released and once again Congressman Nunes is unmasked as a none too bright, conspiracy mongering fabulist.
  4. The declassification and release of Dr. Rice’s entire email memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting undercuts Senator Graham’s plans for a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation to get to the bottom of these allegations, because the declassified email shows those allegations to be complete bullshit.

Open thread

* Obligatory:

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