TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalWH Ethics Counsel - Just when you thought the Trump ethics disaster couldnt get worse, it did
Too bad the media is caught up in Trump's latest tweet storm. They are missing how Trump is about to be in breach of his constitutional obligations from Day One. Put another way, Republicans were losing their mind with respect to whether Hillary Clinton would have any connection to a non-profit foundation. Trump is going to continue owning and profiting from his various businesses. Indeed, foreign governments have already made it a point to make sure to stay at Trump branded properties in order to curry favor with Donald Trump.
Here is a nice article written by two former White House Ethics lawyers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/just-when-you-thought-the-trump-ethics-disaster-couldnt-get-worse-it-did/2017/01/16/001db550-dc04-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.bf1e09b538ed
How does the Trump plan fall short? The president-elect asserted that the conflicts laws don’t apply to him but ignored the most fundamental one of all: the constitutional rule that presidents may not accept cash and other benefits — “emoluments” — from foreign governments.
Trump’s lawyer then offered a porous and insufficient plan to address this problem: The Trump Organization will donate profits from foreign governments’ use of his hotels. But why only hotels? What about foreign sovereign payments to buy his condos or apartments, for use of his office buildings or his golf courses, not to mention his massive foreign government bank loans, and other benefits? And why only profits, when the Justice Department has long held that the emoluments clause covers any revenue from foreign governments — not simply profits?
For speaking up about the shortcomings of this plan, Shaub found himself in the Republican crosshairs. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that has jurisdiction over the White House, demanded Shaub appear for a Star Chamber-style recorded inquisition and implicitly threatened to shut down the Office of Government Ethics if Shaub did not submit. Chaffetz ought to have been doing the exact opposite, supporting OGE and demanding documents from Trump about any financial ties to Russia or other foreign governments.
Then, just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. The incoming White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, went on national television to threaten Shaub. In a scene like something out of a gangster B-movie, Priebus warned the director that “he ought to be careful ” and gave his blessing to Chaffetz’s interrogation. Priebus’s glare of menace was unmistakable. The only thing he left out was cracking his knuckles.
HuffPo - Looking For Anti-Trump Protests? Here Are Dozens To Choose From.
While Trump will once again disclaim responsibility for his hateful rhetoric, and conservative trolls will dismiss as folks who have sour grapes about the election (while ignoring the fact that Trump's "victory" was marred by foreign and FBI influence and that Trump loss the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes), this is your chance to do more than just vent online, but to make a visible difference.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/anti-trump-inauguration-protests_us_58750010e4b043ad97e5c58b
A man who bragged about sexually assaulting women, mocked a reporter with a disability and invited a foreign adversary to hack the U.S. government will be sworn in next Friday as the 45th president of the United States. And while it’s a fact that President-elect Donald Trump will be the next leader of the free world ― the first one to refuse to release his taxes since 1976, by the way ― you certainly don’t have to like it.
You can voice your concern at one of the hundreds of demonstrations planned across the country and around the world in the days surrounding the inauguration.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), along with congressional Democrats and health care activists, plans to lead dozens of rallies nationwide in an initiative called Our First Stand: Save Our Health Care. Most of the events are scheduled for this weekend, a few days before the inauguration.
Hundreds of poets are expected to gather on the steps of their local city halls on Sunday, Jan. 15, during the nationwide Poets Protest Against Trump.
Ryan confronted by cancer patient who says ObamaCare saved his life
Source: The Hill
Paul Ryan faced some tough questions from audience members at a CNN town hall Thursday night, starting with a cancer patient who said ObamaCare saved his life.
Jeff Jeans said he was a lifelong Republican and small business owner who had worked on the Reagan and Bush campaigns and was originally opposed to the Affordable Care Act.
But he said at 49 he was diagnosed with cancer and given six weeks to live.
"Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, I’m standing here today alive," he said. "I rely on the Affordable Care Act to be able to purchase my own insurance. Why would you repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement?"
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/314125-ryan-confronted-by-cancer-patient-who-says-obamacare-saved-his-life
Right-Wing Media Are Using The Term Fake News To Attack Credible News Sources
A classic Trump technique of responding to critiques by insisting that the folks who are criticizing him are guilty of the same critiques in order to blue the meaning of what is fake news.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/09/right-wing-media-using-term-fake-news-attack-credible-news-sources/214778
Some right-wing media figures and outlets are attempting to twist and confuse the term “fake news” -- a specific phenomenon in which information is clearly and demonstrably fabricated, then packaged and distributed to appear as a legitimate source of news -- to attack outlets they disagree with. By redefining fake news in their own terms and claiming that reporting by outlets such as The New York Times and CNN constitute fake news, right-wing media figures are bolstering President-elect Donald Trump’s continued efforts to delegitimize mainstream news sources and their reporting, and muddling real concerns about fake news used as a weapon of active disinformation.
As public discussions about fake news reach critical mass, right-wing media figures and outlets have attempted to redefine “fake news” completely, downplaying the problem it poses. Rush Limbaugh claimed that fake news is largely “satire and parody that liberals don’t understand because they don’t have a sense of humor.” The Washington Free Beacon’s Bill McMorris described fake news as “whatever people living in the liberal bubble determine to be believed by the right.”
Other conservatives are even using fake news to describe reporting from credible news outlets with which they disagree. Fringe right-wing conspiracy site Infowars.com declared that “The mainstream media is the primary source of the most harmful, most inaccurate news ever,” and included outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, and Politico (and Media Matters, for good measure) on their “full list of fake news outlets.” Fox contributor Newt Gingrich lamented the Times’ reporting on the fake news phenomenon, arguing,“The idea of The New York Times being worried about fake news is really weird. The New York Times is fake news.” Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham -- a contender for Trump’s press secretary -- lashed out at CNN while appearing on Fox News’ Hannity, stating “the folks over at CNN” and “the kind of little games they’re playing are so transparent … they’re the fake news organizations.”
While there isn’t an official, universally accepted definition of fake news, a variety of outlets and experts across the ideological spectrum have identified common themes. BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman, one of the first to report frequently and extensively on the fake news phenomenon, defines fake news as “false … stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs.” The New York Times’ Sabrina Tavernese wrote that, “Narrowly defined, ‘fake news’ means a made-up story with an intention to deceive, often geared toward getting clicks." David Mikkelson, the founder of the fact-checking website Snopes.com, describes fake news as “completely fabricated information that has little or no intersection with real-world events.” Mikkelson goes on to explain, “not all bad news reporting is ‘fake,’ and that distinction should be kept clear.” Slate senior technology writer Will Oremus argues fake news is “fabricated,” “sensational stories” that imitate “the style and appearance of real news articles.” Fox media analyst Howard Kurtz defines fake news as “made-up-stuff being merchandized for clicks and profits,” clarifying that he doesn’t “mean the major media stories that some ... find unfair or exaggerated.” And CNN and Conservative Review’s Amanda Carpenter wrote that “fake news is malicious, false information that somehow becomes credible” often “printed on what appears to be a professional looking website.” Carpenter also distinguished fake news from “commentary that never purported to be straight news in the first place” or “political speech someone doesn’t happen to agree with.”
How a Lurid, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump
Source: MSN/NY Times
The story began in September 2015, when a wealthy Republican donor who strongly opposed Mr. Trump put up the money to hire a Washington research firm run by former journalists, Fusion GPS, to compile a dossier about the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses, according to a person familiar with the effort. The person described the opposition research work on condition of anonymity, citing the volatile nature of the story and the likelihood of future legal disputes. The identity of the donor who funded the effort is unclear.
Fusion GPS, headed by a former Wall Street Journal journalist known for his dogged reporting, Glenn Simpson, most often works for business clients. But in presidential elections, the firm is sometimes hired by candidates, party organizations or donors to do political “oppo” work — shorthand for opposition research — on the side.
* * *
Mr. Simpson hired Mr. Steele, a former British intelligence officer with whom he had worked before. Mr. Steele, in his early 50s, had served undercover in Moscow in the early 1990s and later was the top expert on Russia at the London headquarters of Britain’s spy service, MI6. When he stepped down in 2009, he started his own commercial intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
The former journalist and the former spy, according to people who know them, had a similar dark view of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a former K.G.B. officer, and the varied tactics he and his intelligence operatives used to smear, blackmail or bribe their targets. As a former spy who had carried out espionage inside Russia, Mr. Steele was in no position to travel to Moscow to study Mr. Trump’s connections there. Instead, he hired native Russian speakers to call informants inside Russia and made surreptitious contact with his own connections in the country as well.
Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-a-lurid-unverified-dossier-became-a-crisis-for-donald-trump/ar-AAlMeuH
Interesting story on what lead to the dossier and how the research effort was originally financed by Republicans.
History Repeats Itself - Extremists Turn to a Leader to Protect Western Values: Vladimir
In the 1940s, American Hero Charles Lindbergh urged America to back Hitler's Nazi regine and, in return, Hitler took steps to cultivate Lindbergh's support:
http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/201613/Charles-Lindbergh-Hitler-s-all-American-hero
And in a sickening anti-Semitic outburst, Lindbergh added: “Their [the Jews’] greatest danger in this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” Lindbergh’s supporters – and very probably the man himself – really believed that the Jews were critical of him because of his blond, blue-eyed “Nordic” good looks. These, they claim, were not the kind of looks that Jews favoured. Similar views were held in Hitler’s Germany.
It became increasingly apparent that Lindbergh himself was decidedly racist. He maintained everyone of European descent would eventually be replaced with “a pressing sea of yellow, black and brown”. And he openly stated that if it was a matter of choice, he would rather see America allied with Nazi Germany than Soviet Russia.
During the pre-war years Lindbergh was also open about his great admiration for Hitler’s Germany. He travelled several times to the country to report on German aviation and the German air force, all at the request of the US government. But so impressionable was he that the commander in chief of Germany’s air force Hermann Goering was able to convince him that it was far more powerful than it really was.
Sensing that Lindbergh was an admirer of the Nazi regime, he let him become the first American to examine Germany’s newest bomber the secret Junkers JU88 as well as the Messerschmitt 109. Lindbergh was also given an opportunity to pilot the Messerschmitt which he would later praise fulsomely.
So delighted had the Nazi government become with Lindbergh’s lavish praise of their aircraft that at a dinner held in his honour at the American embassy in Berlin in 1938 he was presented by Goering on behalf of Adolf Hitler a decoration – the Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
Today, Russia is using xenophobic sentiment and insecurity among whites to cultivate support and influence in foreign countries for Russia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/americas/alt-right-vladimir-putin.html?_r=0
As the founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party, an American group that aims to preserve the privileged place of whiteness in Western civilization and fight “anti-Christian degeneracy,” Matthew Heimbach knows whom he envisions as the ideal ruler: the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
“Russia is our biggest inspiration,” Mr. Heimbach said. “I see President Putin as the leader of the free world.”
Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump mystified many on the left and in the foreign policy establishment with his praise for Mr. Putin and his criticism of the Obama administration’s efforts to isolate and punish Russia for its actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But what seemed inexplicable when Mr. Trump first expressed his admiration for the Russian leader seems, in retrospect, to have been a shrewd dog whistle to a small but highly motivated part of his base.
For Mr. Heimbach is far from alone in his esteem for Mr. Putin. Throughout the collection of white ethnocentrists, nationalists, populists and neo-Nazis that has taken root on both sides of the Atlantic, Mr. Putin is widely revered as a kind of white knight: a symbol of strength, racial purity and traditional Christian values in a world under threat from Islam, immigrants and rootless cosmopolitan elites.
Trump Attacks "Dishonest Media" For Failing to Report a Deal that Hasnt Happened yet
There a lot of threads on DU attacking the media today, which is odd, because normally the First Amendment is seen as a liberal virtue. The irony, of course, is that attacking the "dishonest media" is a favorite pass time of Donald Trump who used disparagement of the media to insulate himself against fact checks of his numerous lies. Thus, it is odd for folks on the left to repeat Trump's most popular talking points.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/06/donald-trump-wants-the-media-to-report-a-deal-that-hasnt-happened-yet/?utm_term=.996a48438716
Trump's frustration appears to stem from coverage of an effort by congressional Republicans to construct a wall using taxpayer dollars, rather than money from Mexico.
“This is an important tweet because obviously a centerpiece of Donald Trump's successful campaign was, 'I'm going to build the wall and have Mexico pay for it,' " Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Friday on Fox News. “That hasn't changed, but Congress is examining ways . . . to have the wall paid for through their auspices, and then Mr. Trump is making the point — the president-elect is making the point — that he will have Mexico pay it back.”
“I think the tweet was engendered by people in the media — the 'dishonest media,' as Donald Trump calls them — making the suggestion that he's going back on a campaign promise,” Conway added. “That is not true. He is going to build that wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it. That hasn't changed.”
* * *
But, at the moment, payment by Mexico is far from a sure thing. It would make zero sense for the media to report that “any money spent . . . will be paid back” because there is no such agreement in place.
Did Putin help elect Trump to restore $500 billion Exxon oil deal killed by sanctions?
Nice article from Think Progress and story on Rachel Maddow:
https://thinkprogress.org/putin-helped-trump-exxon-oil-deal-sanctions-6f169c4a4cd0#.41nvb5m70
The “Russian hack news … is delegitimizing,” explained former George W. Bush speech writer David Frum in a recent article. The conservative Frum was famous for authoring Bush’s controversial “axis of evil” speech about the danger posed by Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
But it appears our democracy and our children have a new axis to worry about: Putin, Trump, and ExxonMobil, whose CEO Rex Tillerson — an extreme Russophile and long-time director of a US-Russian oil company — is Trump’s puzzling choice for Secretary of State.
I say “puzzling” because the long-serving Exxon employee (from age 23!) has no qualifications to be secretary of state — other than a history negotiating major oil deals with countries like Putin’s Russia, which in any sane world would actually disqualify him or at least force a recusal from all State Department dealings with Russia.
But that puzzle disappears if we follow the famous dictum from the Watergate era for uncovering a tangled web of covert campaign acts: “Follow the money.” And perhaps another puzzle is also solved: Why did Putin take such a “fearful risk,” as Frum put it, to “mount a clandestine espionage and disinformation campaign on behalf” of Trump and against Clinton, “when Putin had every reason to expect that he probably would end up facing a President Clinton,” and a tremendous backlash.
NY Times - An army of well-paid trolls has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet
Kudos to Skinner for His Efforts to Try To Weed Out Such Trolls and Keep DU supportive of Democrats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0
Savchuk’s revelations about the agency have fascinated Russia not because they are shocking but because they confirm what everyone has long suspected: The Russian Internet is awash in trolls. “This troll business becomes more popular year by year,” says Platon Mamatov, who says that he ran his own troll farm in the Ural Mountains from 2008 to 2013. During that time he employed from 20 to 40 people, mostly students and young mothers, to carry out online tasks for Kremlin contacts and local and regional authorities from Putin’s United Russia party. Mamatov says there are scores of operations like his around the country, working for government authorities at every level. Because the industry is secretive, with its funds funneled through a maze of innocuous-sounding contracts and shell businesses, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many people are at work trolling today. But Mamatov claims “there are thousands — I’m not sure about how many, but yes, really, thousands.”
The boom in pro-Kremlin trolling can be traced to the antigovernment protests of 2011, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets after evidence of fraud in the recent Parliamentary election emerged. The protests were organized largely over Facebook and Twitter and spearheaded by leaders, like the anticorruption crusader Alexei Navalny, who used LiveJournal blogs to mobilize support. The following year, when Vyascheslav Volodin, the new deputy head of Putin’s administration and architect of his domestic policy, came into office, one of his main tasks was to rein in the Internet. Volodin, a lawyer who studied engineering in college, approached the problem as if it were a design flaw in a heating system. Forbes Russia reported that Volodin installed in his office a custom-designed computer terminal loaded with a system called Prism, which monitored public sentiment online using 60 million sources. According to the website of its manufacturer, Prism “actively tracks the social media activities that result in increased social tension, disorderly conduct, protest sentiments and extremism.” Or, as Forbes put it, “Prism sees social media as a battlefield.”
The battle was conducted on multiple fronts. Laws were passed requiring bloggers to register with the state. A blacklist allowed the government to censor websites without a court order. Internet platforms like Yandex were subjected to political pressure, while others, like VKontakte, were brought under the control of Kremlin allies. Putin gave ideological cover to the crackdown by calling the entire Internet a “C.I.A. project,” one that Russia needed to be protected from. Restrictions online were paired with a new wave of digital propaganda. The government consulted with the same public relations firms that worked with major corporate brands on social-media strategy. It began paying fashion and fitness bloggers to place pro-Kremlin material among innocuous posts about shoes and diets, according to Yelizaveta Surnacheva, a journalist with the magazine Kommersant Vlast. Surnacheva told me over Skype that the government was even trying to place propaganda with popular gay bloggers — a surprising choice given the notorious new law against “gay propaganda,” which fines anyone who promotes homosexuality to minors.
# # #
“The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” Volkov said, when we met in the office of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. “You have to remember the Internet population of Russia is just over 50 percent. The rest are yet to join, and when they join it’s very important what is their first impression.” The Internet still remains the one medium where the opposition can reliably get its message out. But their message is now surrounded by so much garbage from trolls that readers can become resistant before the message even gets to them. During the protests, a favorite tactic of the opposition was making anti-Putin hashtags trend on Twitter. Today, waves of trolls and bots regularly promote pro-Putin hashtags. What once was an exhilarating act of popular defiance now feels empty. “It kind of discredited the idea of political hashtags,” says Ilya Klishin, the web editor for the independent television station TV Rain who, in 2011, created the Facebook page for the antigovernment protests.
How Samantha Bees Full Frontal Tracked Down Russias Pro-Trump Trolls
The recent intelligence report confirms a segment that was done by Samantha Bee on Russia's use of paid trolls to influence foreign politics.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/07/how-samantha-bee-s-full-frontal-tracked-down-russia-s-pro-trump-trolls.html
When Full Frontal executive producer Miles Kahn decided to travel with host Samantha Bee to Moscow for a series of field piece segments on how America could turn into Russia if Donald Trump becomes president, they had no idea how relevant that story would feel on the eve of Election Day.
This was back in mid-summer when the Trump campaign’s connections to the Russian government, through since-fired manager Paul Manafort and former foreign policy adviser Carter Page, were just starting to bubble up to the surface.
“This was a huge story that a lot of western journalists really hadn’t talked about that much,” Kahn, who also produced Bee’s field pieces at The Daily Show, tells The Daily Beast. “It wasn’t by design but it seems it has now come to a boiling point so, for whatever reason, we got lucky with this issue we chose to investigate. We knew it was going to be part of the conversation, but we didn’t realize it was going to be so domineering this late in the game.”
The team ended up traveling to Russia in early October, where Bee interviewed a couple of masked trolls who say they have been paid by the Kremlin to post negative things about Hillary Clinton—and positive messages about Trump—all over U.S. social and traditional media websites.
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