[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2018-February-03, 22:49, said:

Time has an interesting new story about Carter Page's connections to Russia and why he was under scrutiny by the FBI as far back as 2013.

The part I liked was

Quote

At the heart of the debate is the question of who, exactly, is Carter Page. Trump’s defenders argue that he was simply a low-level consultant to the campaign who has overstated his role as an adviser as well as his Russian contacts.

We can start a catalog of phrases for describing Trump aides:

"low-level consultant to the campaign" = "in trouble with the law"
"Really great guy" = "Not (yet) in trouble with the law"

[Winstonm]

hrothgar, on 2018-February-04, 05:00, said:

Carter Page was clearly in the "useful idiot" category

In contrast. it appears as if George Papadopoulos was categorized as a "useless idiot"

"Only the best people"...

I thought the interesting part was simply the contrast between the reality of who Page is and the false construct of him by the Right as some normal, innocent US citizen denied his constitutional rights by the - Oh, My God! - Deep State (as spoken by James Earl Jones using an echo chamber).

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2018-February-04, 09:59, said:

The part I liked was


We can start a catalog of phrases for describing Trump aides:

"low-level consultant to the campaign" = "in trouble with the law"
"Really great guy" = "Not (yet) in trouble with the law"

This is a great idea. We could start a dictionary:

"Inexperienced": probably broke the law
"Politically inexperienced": broke the law multiple times
"No longer with the campaign": broke the law and got caught

[y66]

I think the word for that is newspeak for which Trump and his ilk are hardly the only ones adding to the lexicon even if they are way more effluent.

[kenberg]

y66, on 2018-February-04, 12:30, said:

I think the word for that is newspeak for which Trump and his ilk are hardly the only ones adding to the lexicon even if they are way more effluent.

Ah, an actual dictionary for 1984 newspeak. I read 1984 when I was 17, the night before my math final. I figured it had numbers in the title so how bad could it be. "We are the dead" "You are the dead." I remember that. Not all that much else.

[jjbrr]

You read it in one night?

[kenberg]

jjbrr, on 2018-February-04, 20:01, said:

You read it in one night?

Maybe one day and one night, it was a while back (1956) so I don't much remember the details either of the book or the circumstances. Of course everyone knows the general theme, and I think there was a not very good movie that I probably saw. But I am a believer in studying well before an exam and then doing something calming just before it. As mentioned, I was a prof. There were so many times a student would tell me "I can't understand why I did poorly, I stayed up all night studying for the exam". Besides being dead tired, he then has an unbalanced view, the stuff that he just studied pushing out the other stuff. Or so I think. Anyway I rarely studied just before a final exam.

[awm]

This blog post has a very good summary of the problems with the arguments presented in the "Nunes Memo."

Of course this is from a very left-wing site, but it's also very well sourced with links to mainstream news organizations. The highlights:

1. The memo is solely about the FISA warrant for Carter Page, and does not discuss other aspects of the investigation or other members of the Trump campaign (some of whom have already plead guilty).
2. Republicans are on record saying Carter Page is a "nobody" and not important, and he was out of the campaign before the FISA warrant renewal in question.
3. There is a huge amount of evidence in the public domain indicating that Carter Page was working for Russia -- the Steele Dossier wouldn't have been needed for a warrant on this guy.
4. The entire investigation was run by Republicans, and approved by judges appointed by Republicans.
5. Even people Trump appointed (Christopher Wray, Jeff Sessions) have said the memo is false and misleading.
6. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, FISA judges were informed of the political nature of funding for the Steele Dossier.

Another very salient point is this one:

Suppose you're working for the FBI. You try to be politically neutral; if you have any leanings you may be a conservative Republican. You're ordered to investigate possible links between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. During this investigation, you discover many troubling things indicating that high-profile members of Trump's campaign and administration may be working for Russia. Despite starting the investigation as mildly pro-Trump, you're sufficiently upset by what you've discovered that you become quite uncomfortable with the Trump Administration.

Guess what -- now you're biased against Trump. So all the evidence you've collected must immediately be disregarded as "from a biased source." Obvious problem here?

[kenberg]

A number of Republicans appear to agree that the Nunes memo is less than conclusive of much of anything. John MCain was very clear. But not just him. WaPo [Yes, I know that some will not read it but the same is easily found elsewhere] offers:

Quote

Gowdy, who helped draft the memo, said Trump should not fire Rosenstein, and he rejected the idea that the document has a bearing on the investigation.

"I actually don't think it has any impact on the Russia probe," Gowdy, who also chairs the House Oversight Committee, said on CBS's "Face the Nation." Stewart, arguing that the two are "very separate" issues, said Mueller should be allowed to finish his work. "This memo, frankly, has nothing at all to do with the special counsel," he told "Fox News Sunday."

The four Republicans walked a careful line on the GOP document, which alleges that the Justice Department abused its powers by obtaining a warrant for surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page using information from a source who was biased against Trump. Their comments echoed those of Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who supported the memo's release but insists that its findings do not impugn Mueller or Rosenstein.

It is possible to have some issues with the exact procedure and still support Mueller, the investigation, etc. I doubt the criticism of the procedures holds up all that well either but at any rate, we shall see where the facts lead.

Nunes is going to regret this, I think. He has acknowledged he did not read much of the material that he is talking about, Gowdy "helped draft the memo" which seems necessary because Nunes didn't bother to check into the subject matter himself. Maybe Nunes should be asked if he has read the Nunes memo. He is looking extremely irresponsible on a matter of great importance.

If the Dems were to ask my advice, which inexplicably they have not, I would tell them to scrap the idea of a Dem rebuttal memo and stick to the main point: Dueling partisan memos about classified information is one hell of a way to approach a serious problem. The Nunes memo stinks, the effort to discredit the investigation is rotten and ineffective, and you do not have to be a raving ideologue to see this.

[jjbrr]

awm, on 2018-February-05, 04:37, said:

This blog post has a very good summary of the problems with the arguments presented in the "Nunes Memo."

Of course this is from a very left-wing site, but it's also very well sourced with links to mainstream news organizations. The highlights:

1. The memo is solely about the FISA warrant for Carter Page, and does not discuss other aspects of the investigation or other members of the Trump campaign (some of whom have already plead guilty).
2. Republicans are on record saying Carter Page is a "nobody" and not important, and he was out of the campaign before the FISA warrant renewal in question.
3. There is a huge amount of evidence in the public domain indicating that Carter Page was working for Russia -- the Steele Dossier wouldn't have been needed for a warrant on this guy.
4. The entire investigation was run by Republicans, and approved by judges appointed by Republicans.
5. Even people Trump appointed (Christopher Wray, Jeff Sessions) have said the memo is false and misleading.
6. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, FISA judges were informed of the political nature of funding for the Steele Dossier.

Another very salient point is this one:

Suppose you're working for the FBI. You try to be politically neutral; if you have any leanings you may be a conservative Republican. You're ordered to investigate possible links between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. During this investigation, you discover many troubling things indicating that high-profile members of Trump's campaign and administration may be working for Russia. Despite starting the investigation as mildly pro-Trump, you're sufficiently upset by what you've discovered that you become quite uncomfortable with the Trump Administration.

Guess what -- now you're biased against Trump. So all the evidence you've collected must immediately be disregarded as "from a biased source." Obvious problem here?

Right. Anyone capable of independent thought who has followed the news already knew this. This summary fails to mention that, while the investigation was run by republicans, a hyper-partisan trump stooge was at the helm and a democratic rebuttal was not allowed to be published. It's pure propaganda, and it's been thoroughly debunked.

[Winstonm]

A word on Trumpism and its proponents.

In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx wrote an argument that man must solve his own problems that included this: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people," meaning that in his view religion acted as a mask to subvert reality.

I would submit that today, Trumpism, and more precisely, Republican Party Trumpism, is our modern equivalent to Marx's religion, the new opium of the people that acts to mask reality. The basis for the religion of Trumpism is deniability - not deniability by Trump and his family about his and their actions, but deniability of Republican voters who, with faith in Trumpism, can convince themselves that their party, and thus their personal ideas and faith, are not wrong, that the real problem is the deep state, or fake news, or any myriad of Trumpism excuses that masks the reality that the Republican Party under Trumpism is no longer simply government-skeptical but is now anti-democracy.

The problems of America are not caused by illegal aliens, NAFTA, the religion of Islam, or discrimination against whites; the problems of America were created by an apathetic electorate who allowed the present situation to exist. Solutions can only come from action by an active and informed electorate.

Marx argued that religion should be cast aside in order to see and deal with reality; obviously, that approach failed. A call to Trumpist-acolytes to abandon their religion will also fail. Instead, the only hope to change this anti-reality movement is to marginalize it into non-importance, and that can only be done through massive and prolonged victories at the ballot box, a total rejection of Trumpism as a governing philosophy.

This cannot occur by Democrats' votes alone. A rejection of this magnitude requires a total rejection of a single party, which would normally be the antithesis of democratic governance; however, when one party is engaged in a coordinated attempt to overthrow the rule of law and democratic norms, drastic measures are called for in order to guarantee that party either changes or dies.

It seems I am not alone in this idea. Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes in The Atlantic also respond:

Quote

This, then, is the article we thought we would never write: a frank statement that a certain form of partisanship is now a moral necessity. The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).

[hrothgar]

Interesting article

https://www.theatlan...the-gop/550907/

[kenberg]

So the recommendation is that to counter those who mindlessly vote for republicans we should, the rest of us, all mindlessly vote against republicans? I voted for Larry Hogan, our republican governor. The assumption by the democratic leadership that we in blue state Maryland would of course mindlessly vote for anyone with a D after his name is part of the reason Hogan is governor. So the dems might want to think twice about where this advice leads them. Our previous republican governor, Bob Ehrlich, won on pretty much the same basis in 2002. If the party relies on mindless support to win, I think they will lose a lot of elections.

To put it another way: I would not vote for Trump if he switched to the democratic party.

[jjbrr]

hrothgar, on 2018-February-05, 10:06, said:

Interesting article

https://www.theatlan...the-gop/550907/

A "random Virginia man" had that to say? bullshit.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2018-February-05, 10:24, said:

So the recommendation is that to counter those who mindlessly vote for republicans we should, the rest of us, all mindlessly vote against republicans? I voted for Larry Hogan, our republican governor. The assumption by the democratic leadership that we in blue state Maryland would of course mindlessly vote for anyone with a D after his name is part of the reason Hogan is governor. So the dems might want to think twice about where this advice leads them. Our previous republican governor, Bob Ehrlich, won on pretty much the same basis in 2002. If the party relies on mindless support to win, I think they will lose a lot of elections.

To put it another way: I would not vote for Trump if he switched to the democratic party.

Ken, if you looked more closely at the article from The Atlantic you would see this:

Quote

We have both spent our professional careers strenuously avoiding partisanship in our writing and thinking. We have both done work that is, in different ways, ideologically eclectic, and that has—over a long period of time—cast us as not merely nonpartisans but antipartisans. Temperamentally, we agree with the late Christopher Hitchens: Partisanship makes you stupid. We are the kind of voters who political scientists say barely exist—true independents who scour candidates’ records in order to base our votes on individual merit, not party brand.

This, then, is the article we thought we would never write: a frank statement that a certain form of partisanship is now a moral necessity.

This not a call for Democrats to vote Democratic but a call for Independents and what is left of moderate Republicans to repudiate Trumpism.

[hrothgar]

Winstonm, on 2018-February-05, 12:39, said:

Ken, if you looked more closely at the article from The Atlantic you would see this:



This not a call for Democrats to vote Democratic but a call for Independents and what is left of moderate Republicans to repudiate Trumpism.

The other useful quote is

Quote

Nor is our oppositional partisanship motivated by the belief that Republican policies are wrongheaded. Republicans are a variegated bunch, and we agree with many traditional GOP positions. One of us has spent the past several years arguing that counterterrorism authorities should be granted robust powers, defending detentions at Guantánamo Bay, and supporting the confirmations of any number of conservative judges and justices whose nominations enraged liberals. The other is a Burkean conservative with libertarian tendencies and a long history of activism against left-wing intolerance.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2018-February-05, 12:39, said:

Ken, if you looked more closely at the article from The Atlantic you would see this:



This not a call for Democrats to vote Democratic but a call for Independents and what is left of moderate Republicans to repudiate Trumpism.

I was just basing it on what you said, the link to the Atlantic article came up while I was writing, I guess. The part you included suggested:

Quote

We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).

I do not plan on voting mechanically and mindlessly for any one. That's just me of course. But beyond that I think there is a danger that democrats think that they do not have to run a decent candidate since people will be so repulsed by the republican one. Thinking that way is an excellent way to lose an election.

I mentioned our republican governor. He is still pretty popular, now in his fourth year. Can he be beaten? Oh probably, it's a blue state. But it will depend on who is running against him.

And of course there is the 2016 election. I recall Y66, or maybe it was PassedOut, saying that Clinton was likable enough and I agreed. But it's sort of the kiss of death. "Likable enough" translates into "I will vote for her unless something important comes up such as needing to go to the store".

I really am hoping for a better plan than advising voters, whether they are democrats, independents or groundhogs, to vote mechanically and mindlessly. Political leaders sometimes get some very weird ideas about how to win elections.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2018-February-05, 15:23, said:

I was just basing it on what you said, the link to the Atlantic article came up while I was writing, I guess. The part you included suggested:



I do not plan on voting mechanically and mindlessly for any one. That's just me of course. But beyond that I think there is a danger that democrats think that they do not have to run a decent candidate since people will be so repulsed by the republican one. Thinking that way is an excellent way to lose an election.

I mentioned our republican governor. He is still pretty popular, now in his fourth year. Can he be beaten? Oh probably, it's a blue state. But it will depend on who is running against him.

And of course there is the 2016 election. I recall Y66, or maybe it was PassedOut, saying that Clinton was likable enough and I agreed. But it's sort of the kiss of death. "Likable enough" translates into "I will vote for her unless something important comes up such as needing to go to the store".

I really am hoping for a better plan than advising voters, whether they are democrats, independents or groundhogs, to vote mechanically and mindlessly. Political leaders sometimes get some very weird ideas about how to win elections.

I think you are still missing the point: these are not Democrats calling for defeat of Trump Fredo, the person, but these are normally middle-of-the-road types issuing a warning about Fredo-ism, the ideology, that has taken over the Republican party.

There is no doubt Democrats need to find their very best candidates, simply because we need good people in Washington. That the religion-like ideology of Fredo-ism needs to be rooted out of the Republican party for the good of all, for Democrats and for Republicans alike, is the key takeaway of the article.

In a two-party system, both parties must self-adhere to certain societal rules, such as the rule of law. When one party refuses to do so in order to gain and retain power, that party has become an outlaw and must be halted before permanent damage can be done.

Just today, this is the reporting about the President of the United States:

Quote

President Donald Trump Fredp Corleone accused Democrats on Monday of being “un-American” and “treasonous” in a campaign-style speech in Cincinnati that was actually meant to tout the recent GOP tax bill and the economy.

“Can we call that treason?” Trump Fredo said, referring to Democrats who did not clap for him during his State of the Union address last week. “Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

This is not simply Fredo being Fredo - because of the office, this is the president making a direct assault on American institutions, norms, and suggesting criminal liability for being a member of an opposition party.

His actions and words are no longer funny or unimportant.

[Winstonm]

The plot thickens:

Quote

The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously Monday to release a Democratic rebuttal to GOP accusations that the FBI misled a secret surveillance court — but whether the information actually becomes public will depend on President Trump, who has heaped scorn on the effort.

[jjbrr]

Another point about Fredo-ism that I think bears mentioning is the brainwashing that Trump is doing to his base.

Today he called democrats "treasonous" for not applauding him, or some other such nonsense. This has the effect of mitigating the severity of actual treason among his base, so that when, after months of investigation, he might be accused of actual treason, his base will hand-wave it away as more political rhetoric.

Same with collusion. Fusion colluded with Hillary. FBI colluded with Hillary. Comey colluded with Hillary.
Same with fake news.

Same for "memos", which Comey wrote to himself and bore weight in his testimony about loyalty. Now the GOP is coming out with memos of their own which serve to discredit real work being done by competent investigators. Memos are, among his base, now political tools. Memos. Seriously.

This is how democracy dies.