1. Interesting developments on the Russian interference in US elections. Will wait for detailed studies likely after special counsel and Congressional investigations but have noticed a few news items mentioning that Russian trolls were stirring up BOTH sides of the various divisions racking USA (and other Western countries).
This fits with my impression of the liberal media helping foment such culture wars by fanning flames. No doubt the Russians generated far more on the Trumpist side than against it, but they didn’t need to do much of what it seems they HAVE been doing to help stir up the liberal side. The liberals just keep doing it anyway.
This New Yorker item is headlined “How Trump Helps Russian Trolls”, illustrated with an ad attempting to trick Clinton voters into voting by twitter instead of turning up at polls and is naturally oriented on the theme of Trump backed by Russian trolls rather than liberals ALSO helping and being helped by Russian trolls.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-trump-helps-russian-trolls
But it does mentions the following:
much of the material from the Russian social-media campaign was directed at sowing division in general rather than attacking a specific candidate. Senator Susan Collins told a story of how trolls seized on racist comments made by the governor of Maine to set up two phony groups, one of African-Americans protesting the governor’s comments and one of nationalists defending him. Senator Richard Burr described a devious Facebook campaign that organized a real-life duelling protest in Houston last year between supporters of Muslim rights and Texans in favor of secession. Earlier this year, Russian trolls pushed both sides of the N.F.L. debate over kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality toward minorities.
Also has links to other articles and mention of similar Russian stirring up conflict in Europe.
It could be well worthwhile to follow the Congressional hearings and study the material already available on this. I hope somebody does but I won’t have time and will just wait for the eventual reports.
2. Here’s a better analysis of same issue, with more info:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-02/facebook-ads-reveal-the-real-russian-game
3. Things are hotting up in the Democratic party split. Proof now published by Donna Brazile, the DNC chair that replaced Clinton’s flunkey after the email hacks that Democrat National Committee was indeed bought and paid for by Clinton campaign while DNC was supposed to be neutral conducting primaries in which Hilary was running against Bernie Sanders.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
This is the origin of the whole “Russia” story as Clintonite Dems were desperate to deflect attention from the contents of the hacked emails that indicated this onto the fact that they had been hacked and suspicion that it was Russia who did it and Trump who benefited (which he certainly did – lots of Sanders supporters didn’t vote against Trump after learning about the rigged primaries by Clinton).
Not sure if this is just “old news” or dynamite but expect it will not be highlighted by media if they can avoid it. Initial reports angle it as a Trump tweet.
the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.
…
When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.
Elizabeth Warren has agreed that the primary was rigged and emphasized that Sanders supporters must be brought into DNC.
(See link within above).
This is still “breaking news” at the moment. But even if it does get buried it won’t be easy to avoid a major Democrat split before the end of Trump’s first term.
Above was yesterday (Saturday 2017-11-09). Today, Sunday, it looks like media cannot avoid talking about it since they just HAVE to respond to Trump’s tweeting.
That tweet expertly mobilizes Sanders supporters while appearing to be directed at Trumpists. The analysis links to a Trump pollster confirming that polls showed Sanders more likely to have defeated Trump. So anti-Trumpists have a LOT to be angry about, not all of which can be contained into anger at Trump when his Presidency is the direct result of other things they can actually DO something about.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/03/trump-fbi-clinton-russia-donna-brazile
This links to a twitter hashtag:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/NeverSaidHillaryRiggedElection?src=hash
So Donna Brazile has announced she “Never Said Hilary Rigged Election” and responses are highlighting that she DID say Hilary rigged the nomination. Ditto for Warren.
Even if the general readership goes for the line that this is all about Trump and whether he can get the Justice Department to prosecute an internal Democratic party matter, that is not likely to cut much ice with the millions of Sanders supporters or prevent a Democrat party split.
Sanders and Warren are both playing it straight, expressing appropriate partisan indignation against Trump butting in, but that only strengthens them internally in fight with Clinton machine.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/358660-sanders-hits-trump-over-dnc-tweet-do-your-job
NPR is covering it as the equal third most important thing that happened this week. But its conclusion is:
What was revealed only reinforces for the left that there was collusion — against them. It’s only going to harden and deepen the fissures in the party that is trying to oust Republicans in Congress next year and President Trump two years after that.
If the Democratic Party doesn’t shape up, create a message and figure out — most importantly — how to unify its divergent factions, it’s going to be hard to mount a campaign to defeat a sitting president with a locked-in base.
4. Resuming dump of old links.
The party Trump took over in November 2016 is now purging itself of its past. It also happens to be the overwhelmingly dominant party in the United States, controlling the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House, as well as 33 governorships and 69 out of 99 state legislatures. It reflects the new American normal far more than the Democratic Party does. And it is increasingly Trump’s party.
Trump did not rise out of nowhere to smash our norms and replace them with new ones. His successful candidacy was a reflection and enshrinement of changes in the American body politic we do not yet understand — nor does he, for that matter. But everyone distressed by the Trump phenomenon will not achieve a greater understanding of it if they continue to comfort themselves by arguing he’s not the new normal.
The question they must find an answer to is this: How can they successfully replace Trump’s new normal with a new new normal?
http://nypost.com/2017/10/25/sorry-sen-flake-trump-is-the-new-normal/
5. Libertarians “Reason” making similar point:
http://reason.com/blog/2017/10/25/anti-flake-anti-trumpers-illustrate-they
Also mentions that liberals (“the left”) have similar problem:
The left has a similar problem: Candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have to pretend to be skeptical of or hostile to free trade to allay their base while nudging and winking to international trade partners. On immigration, Democrats have lost the current debate in large part because they’re unwilling or unable to make the economic case for liberal immigration policies, instead relying on emotional appeals that only contribute to the hyperpartisan divide.
The Trump difference is that Trump has mostly stuck to his rhetoric after the election. Establishment Republicans have long been comfortable cultivating economic ignorance and racial resentment among their base in pursuit of electoral victory and then pursuing other priorities in Washington. But eventually the base clues in to the bait-and-switch and seeks out candidates who seem less likely to compromise. What set Trump apart wasn’t his ideas so much as his perceived authenticity: He seemed like a guy who would actually follow up on that Trumpist rhetoric once in office
Paul Krugman illustrates this “Conscience of a liberal” by arguing that corporate tax cuts would benefit “foreigners” (who own 35%).
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/trumps-700-billion-foreign-aid-program/
6. Bizarre headline saying GOP incumbents should call Bannon’s bluff by not folding attached to article demonstrating that there is no bluff and that they are folding.
7. Same GOP columnist has perceptive article on latest news and Democrat implosion:
http://nypost.com/2017/11/02/did-hillarys-rigging-at-the-dnc-push-biden-out-of-the-race/
8. CNN “analysis” explaining how one of Trump’s opponents giving up and quitting politics once again illustrates Trump’s utterly hopeless lack of any strategy just like the analyst has always said and will always say.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/08/politics/trump-corker-attack/index.html
Similar from NPR, still not getting it that Trump wants a deficit that he will get from Democrats and not from his opponents in the GOP.
9. Australian Trumpist boasting that Trump attack on Green card immigration in response to recent islamo-fascist murders will win him second term. Highlights contrast with liberals twittering about “Russia”. Plausible enough. Instead of actually presenting any principled defense of immigration etc US liberals are indeed opening the way for a second term.
10. Here’s a different example of liberal twittering. Standing applause at women’s resistance conference when recent Mueller indictments announced. It gives them “hope” that there will be a “saviour from on high” and substitutes for having any actual program.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41862976
11. USA today explains the vital differences between the Clinton campaign paying foreign espionage agents to get fake “dirt” against Trump from unamed “Kremlin sources” and Trump campaign hoping to receive dirt against Clinton from Kremlin sources. One would think they would just shut up and write about something else.
(But of course there are indeed legal differences between actually paying and hoping for free gifts…)
Meanwhile Democrat lobbyist who helped Manafort launder his money from Ukraine has resigned…
Why are they so sure Mueller will not do them at least as much damage as he does to Trump? Perhaps just certainty that he is part of the swamp doesn’t actually care about Russian interference but desperately cares about getting rid of Trump. Doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that there is any other possibility.
12. Sign at anti-Trump protest rallies:
“I am sexually attracted to indictments”
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/conspiracies-fizzle-anti-trump-rallies-171104234340659.html
13. Meanwhile readers of the Guardian and the Chicago Tribune are comforted with sheer fantasizing about how dumb Trump is:
and the certainty that if they keep on banging those rocks together they will win:
Is the Russia investigation, probably the most important ever conducted by the justice department, closer to bringing down the Trump presidency than it was a week ago? Sipher noted that his demise has been widely predicted before yet somehow he manages to survive – until the day he doesn’t.
“It’s like hitting a boulder with a hammer 1,000 times and it doesn’t break,” he said. “Then you hit it the 1,001st time and it smashes to pieces. Its hard to predict.”
C21st Left 