It looks like the intelligence community is convinced that Russian spooks are trying to undermine confidence in the outcome of our presidential election. Trump and his advisors are unnaturally close to Russian (and Russia-allied) leaders. This would have been a bit of problem in any prior election. Does it matter in this one?
The country’s most famous Klansman, David Duke, says “The fact that Donald Trump’s doing so well, it proves that I’m winning. I am winning.” I was born in 1969. For my entire conscious life, this would have been a major liability for a presidential candidate. Is that still true?
Trump is such a pig that his Rancho Palos Verdes golf club has to take special measures to protect its female employees:
“When Trump did visit, the club’s managers went on alert. They scheduled the young, thin, pretty women on staff to work the clubhouse restaurant — because when Trump saw less-attractive women working at his club, according to court records, he wanted them fired.”
Will Trump’s objectification of women hurt him at the polls the way we’d expect it to?
Politicians usually pay a price for demonstrating risible hypocrisy. For example, Trump keeps pretending not to talk about accusations various women have leveled at Bill Clinton in the past, but (unlike the Clintons) Trump has been divorced twice, and has been accused of rape by his first wife. She later softened that accusation, but it didn’t help matters much when Trump’s lawyer made the following defense:
Michael Cohen, special counsel to Trump and an executive vice president at The Trump Organization, went into a tirade — blasting the site via email for targeting “a private individual who never raped anybody.”
“By the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse,” he argued. “It is true. You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law.”
I don’t know whether there’s any merit to the civil suit that has been filed “accusing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of repeatedly raping a 13-year-old girl over 20 years ago at several Upper East Side parties hosted by convicted sex offender and notorious billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein.” It looks like it was pulled back last week but with the promise that a new witness will be added to the complaint.
It’s true, people can make these terrible allegations without them having even a hint of proof to them. Witnesses can be paid to lie. The Clintons are certainly familiar with this tactic. And if Trump wants to dig up those kinds of unproven and politically motivated stories from the swamps of the 1990s, he’ll discover that people will hear a lot more about the same or similar kinds of allegations against him.
Morally, he has no standing to question anyone else’s marriage, nor criticize anyone for infidelity. It’s insane that he would even try to do these things based on his record of philandering. But he does seem to somehow get away with it, doesn’t he?
I could go on and on providing examples of things that would have sunk any other candidate, but I’ll finish with the revelation that Trump violated the sanctions against Cuba.
“A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings,” Newsweek reports.
What does Marco Rubio think about that? What does the Cuban-American community think about that?
It’s quite a trick to simultaneously demonstrate pro-communist, pro-Russian disloyalty to the country and get the strongest possible endorsement from the Ku Klux Klan.
Oddly, it seems like the only thing that really hurts him is when he insults regular citizens, whether that’s a disabled reporter or the parents of a fallen solider or a former Miss Universe who he called “Miss Piggy.”
When it comes to Republicans, I have seen very little of that over the past decades. Unless it’s particularly blatant and exceedingly difficult to hand-wave away, they usually get a pass.
And that’s mostly a consequence imo of the tribal nature of their group. Democrats are apt to turn on someone who did something wrong, Republicans like bastards if they are their bastards. A unified front makes it all into dueling claims.
If you think that Democrats are even slightly less tribal in their allegiance to the party than Republicans, you are mistaken.
Midterms say we are.
I’m starting to think that the most important element (as far as Trump’s supporters go) is his tonality.
Like Cheney, he’s mastered a sneering, contemptuous, “I’m so correct that I’m not even going to bother with the opposing position” way of speaking that seems to cut through any rational thinking.
As with so many of the elements that have crossed over into politics from advertising, PR, media and psychology, it works on the emotional hindbrain and is very difficult to counteract.
I’ve watched the debate a couple of times, and the way that (for example) Trump handles Clinton’s first mention of the Miss Universe contestant is a particularly potent example. She’s laying out the whole sordid narrative and he just keeps interjecting “Where did you find this person? Where did you find this person?” and then, when Clinton lays the zinger about how she’s going to vote, Trump sneers, “Yeah, great,” like it makes no difference. We have learned in the ensuing days how much damage that anecdote did and how much it bothered Trump — and how it succeeded in baiting him — but in the moment, his dismissive tone was so effective that, even knowing the story, I could feel this instinctive, totally irrational “this is a dumb point; nobody cares about this” vibe in myself that I had to forcibly overcome.
The authoritative tone (again, as with Cheney) is very difficult to counteract. When it’s coupled with straight-up bragging and, for many not-well-educated distressed voters, a wish-fulfilment element of someone actually using crude language to totally dismiss Obama, Clinton, democrats, government, etc. — giving “permission” to say the worst possible stuff — it’s very powerful.
Also, the exaggerated facial and hand gestures and exaggerated head shaking while the opponent is speaking. It’s a method/style used to distract the audience from the speaker. He probably picked that up from Limbaugh. It also seems like something Ailes would suggest.
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Trump has assumed the position of Leader of the Pack, and the Pack is thrilled and delighted by, as you say, his tonality. It’s how he bested the other 16bazillion Republican primary contenders. Isn’t all WWF stuff? Clearly, the GOP voters love this stuff. I don’t get it, but you make a point at how they do respond very visceraly and positively to it. I’m not a psychologist, so I cannot analyze what it means. It is a lot like Dick Cheney, whom my rightwing fundie family members idolize to this day. They also idolize Palin, and Trump embodies some of her schtick, as well.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter who “wins” or “loses” the debates. For the R-Team, watching their hero allegedly wiping the floor with Clinton – which is how they’ll see it – is quite enough, thankyewverymuch. I’ve read some supposedly “objective” blogs – from people claiming to equally hate both candidates, fwiw – claiming that while Clinton was factually more correct, presented herself in a much more professional (if you will) manner, held her own very well and definitely got in some jabs and zingers, plus was clearly much much better prepared, it simply didn’t matter. These allegedly “Objective” bloggers claim that Trump “won” due to his manner and how he conducted himself.
Eh? I dunno. That’s why I don’t bother to watch these “beauty pageants” anymore. They seem meaningless to me. Ever since W was a stooge-dolt but proclaimed the winner by the media, it’s been clear that being prepared, being intelligent, having credible experience, etc, has been rendered worthless by the 1% who own and operate the country.
Why bother wasting the time watching this junk unless you really enjoy it. I don’t anymore. Pointless.
Trump’s fans were thrilled and delighted on Tuesday and, for them, Trump beat the pants suit off Hillary, and that’s all that matters to them.
Conservatives want to see their enemies mocked and beaten. Strongman Trump exemplifies this perfectly.
No Strongman Trump voter cares about facts or policy. They care about seeing their mutual enemies destroyed.
No one is changing their mind on Hillary.
It’s all about showing Strongman Trump for what he is.
I’ve said it before, but for Strongman Trump to be portrayed as Presidential as fuck, all he has to do is not retweet white supremacists.
Clinton, if she is smart, will continue baiting Strongman Trump into publicly displaying his white supremacist thoughts.
The polls tighten when Trump is quiet. Clinton picks up a lead whenever Trump speaks.
While many of Trump’s supporters probably do take a positive pleasure in his boorishness, there must be a significant number for whom the Machado story is a dumb distraction from the important issues as they perceive them.
Put the shoe on the other foot. Sean Hannity and his ilk are pushing back with charges that Hillary Clinton tried to destroy the reputations of the women Bill went after. Do Hillary supporters truly care whether she did or not? Even if it could be proved, would they accept it as an argument for not voting for her?
Hillary supporters will be voting for Hillary in November.
Strongman Trump supporters will be voting for Strongman Trump in November.
The debates aren’t meant to sway anyone who already knows who they are voting for.
The point is that Clinton needs to make Trump act like a boorish moron.
Nothing Clinton says about Trump is going to help Clinton. But, the stupid shit Trump says about himself typically hurts him.
This isn’t rocket science.
Trump is the embodiment of the “bitch slap” theory of politics. It wouldn’t matter (however improbable) if he was advocating many of Bernie Sanders’ positions; a lot of his supporters just like the fact that he steps on the right people.
So, for close to sixteen years, if anyone on the left alleged that an election had been stolen through various means including hacked electronic voting machines, they were immediately labeled as conspiracy theorists and banned from many leftie blogs if they didn’t STFU. The public was assured that such claims were nonsense and therefore, no investigations were required.
But now we’re supposed to accept with no evidence that big, bad Russia has the capability to hack US voting systems and change the outcome? Why wouldn’t GWB’s BFF Putin have done that in 2000 and 2004?
I wouldn’t put any money on the proposition that no US electronic voting system has ever been hacked and the actual results changed, but if there have been such instances, they would pale in number compared to good old-fashioned methods to steal elections.
This Russia-Putin paranoia has now moved into the realm of the Cold-War/McCarthy era. Guess Democrats got bored with being in the “reality based community.”
You don’t even seem to know what is being alleged.
I disagree.
I think this is a lot like the old adage, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Leave Putin alone!
I just searched this blog’s archives using the phrase “voting machine”. I scrolled down through the first four pages of “hits”, at 30 hits per pages, before deciding I’d confirmed there were lots of items about voting machines and vote fraud. Evidently the folks making those fraud-related comments here were not banned.
This is the sort of elementary fact checking that Marie3 derides as “nitpicking” when yours truly is the one doing it.
Marie3 is speaking of the Great Orange Satan. So dumb.
Who cares? I have never frequented Kos, and many other commenters don’t go there, either. So axe-grinding w/re to that website is pointless.
“… frequented Kos, and many other commenters don’t go there, either.”
A presumption lacking evidence. Many visitors/posters @BooMan do. Even our host.
One does need the bravery, I wear the badge of honor of a double expulsion. 🙂
The point is to undermine legitimacy not to actually do anything, which I think would be more difficult to do undetected. It’s like the release of the hacked DNC emails, it got DWS kicked out which is good but otherwise it really didn’t provide any revelations except the Hill-Shills in positions of power really hated Bernie which we already knew. Regardless of who did it, the effect is what I’m talking about. It’s just throwing stuff at the wall to stir shit up. That’s different than fraud and it IS a style of psyops the Russians are documented as doing in the past. It’s basically trolling on a international scale.
Look, I get that for a long time Russia/USSR was a handy cudgel to bash anyone you didn’t like with but I’m getting tired of your knee-jerk defense of them.
ED: Also Hill-Shills did everything in their power to use the institutions of the party against him which we also already knew and is the human norm.
Wait, you mean Democratic party members used Democratic party institutions to oppose a non-Democrat running in the Democratic primary?!?
Holy. Shit.
Defense of what? Exactly what has Russia-Putin done and for which actual evidence exists that a) it was done and b) was done by Russia-Putin. It’s no different from the position I take wrt to allegations without evidence being made against any individual or country.
My criticism has to do with those making unsupported allegations to foment fear and paranoia among the population. The ease with which that can take hold and how stupid and ridiculous people become in the process. The Central Park Five. A lie — but it created a raft of new draconian criminal laws and and industry to support it and new terms like “super-predators” mindlessly repeated by VIPs.
WMD. Central Americans “freedom fighters” staving off the USSR infiltration of their countries. And on and on. All freaking lies.
The Cold War was manufactured in the west, costly, mean, and ugly and made Americans really stupid. Those longing to return to those days or doing nothing to stop it as it’s promulgated by VSP today are nuts.
Your deflections and evasions in response to the DNC hack stray preposterously far from Occam’s Razor, don’t they?
Today’s supporting evidence for my Occam’s Razor point here:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dos-hack-newsweek-trump-cuba-embargo-story
Newsweek Website Attacked After Report On Trump, Cuban Embargo
By KRISTIN SALAKY
Published SEPTEMBER 30, 2016, 12:29 PM EDT
The editor-in-chief of Newsweek confirmed Friday that the magazine’s website was on the receiving end of a denial-of-service attack Thursday night, following the publication of a story accusing one of Donald Trump’s companies of violating the Cuban trade embargo.
Editor-In-Chief Jim Impoco noted that the attack came as the story earned national attention…
…Later Friday afternoon, Impoco emailed TPM that in an initial investigation, the “main” IP addresses linked to the attack were found to be Russian. It should be noted that it is possible to fake an IP address.
“As with any DDoS attack, there are lots of IP addresses, but the main ones are Russian, though that in itself does not prove anything,” he wrote. “We are still investigating.”…
Good point.
Marcy Wheeler examined the evidence on August 30. It seems that the media have done some recycling of the same story unless someone has some different facts than a leak to a reporter (Michael Isikoff apparently was the first).
Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel: Breaking: Russians Claim They’ve Found Extraterrestrial Life to Tamper with Our Elections
“thin evidence” and the word “Russia” or assumed to be a state hacker
All these news notices could be catnip to recreational hacker with some good skills and a bent for mischief.
And maybe it’s not a good idea to delegitimize elections in advance of winning them. Just some wisdomm to the wise.
I was sort of impressed with an idea in the linked article that some actors, notably China and Russia, would rather we not try to expand democracy as they think we have in the past. They have an aversion to it. Hence, that generates the idea that Russia is hacking in some way to stir up doubts and perhaps influence who they want elected. No evidence just a conspiracy theory. It does not allege hacking of voting machines since they are not connected to the internet. Hacking could involve e mails or voting lists. I suspect that one cannot tell without a doubt who exactly did any hacking. So this is only true in a probability sense. It is not clear how effective it would be. Trump or Clinton may still fail based on their own.
According to the Time article and the anonymous intelligence officers, US elections can not be hacked. However Russia may create doubts about the election results.
According to Princeton professors they still are hackable. But who are you going to trust? After all the professors might be Russian agents or something…
(Seriously, the Politico article linked is a really good update on the state of electronic voting and related problems.)
Please do tell how exactly we’ve expanded democracy in the past. It is good not to get high off the supply of your own country’s propaganda; it leads to movements like Trump’s that have lots of verbiage and no reality.
Where democracy has expanded it has been the example of people in the US being a model, in spite of their government, of expanded democracy. And of their governments giving in to the will of the people within the constraints of western capitalism.
Where the US has failed is in “extending democracy” in places like Vietnam and Iraq in which the US has its own idea of who the leaders should be.
My state installed state wide electronic Diebold voting machines in 2002. Has never ever produced a paper record of an election. I’ve even asked in past elections if there was a paper trail of my vote or any votes. Nothing but blank looks.
Don’t know how many states have similar systems but it bothers me that someone/some country could hack into our voting system and change outcomes without many not even being the wiser.
We had a punch card system that worked very well prior to the change in 2002. Our voting machines are 14 years old.
Probably not too many US elections that haven’t been fixed in some way. From voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression, ballot box stuffing, through ballot counting fraud. Cheating is an old and fine American tradition. So fine that we project our sins onto our victims (ie. Indian giver).
I’m not one to encourage retaliation in kind, but as the US interfered in a major Russian election difficult to reject that we have earned such retaliation. OTOH, how is it possible that exceptional Americans have built voting systems that have never been penetrated by domestic opposition and changed an election but are totally vulnerable to a foreign enemy? Maybe we deserve to suffer under our own Yeltsin.
All of these were aspects of his business or personal life without care about politics. What exactly is the common thread through all of those?
BTW, when did he demonstrate pro-communist disloyalty when it wasn’t part of a business deal? The Putin connection most definitely is Alt-Right nationalist (call it neo-Nazi if you must) alignment. So is Duke. Cuba was business. I bet there’s a business deal with Iran somewhere that likely did not make it; same with North Korea.
Very much a “You tell me I can’t. I’ll show you.” sort of attitude.
Imagine the resources of the government of the United States of America being seen as merged with Trump’s corporation.
Hopefully the reports of him stiffing regular citizens takes some of the populist shine off of the weasel-head.
There is nothing whatever “pro-Communist” about Trump’s involvement in Cuba in 1998, as Eichenwald’s article makes clear. Under the impression that the Clinton administration might end the embargo, Trump was simply hoping to get a jump on the other gangsters in profiting from any change. More here.
heh — sort of like John Reed and Sandy Weill merging Citigroup and Travelers in anticipation of the passage of Gramm-Leach-Bliley. With Treasury Sec Rubin and others greasing the skids to hold off the Justice Dept invoking anti-trust laws to prevent the merger. Instead they got a one year grace period in which the laws might be changed. As Rubin didn’t get his quid until after the passage of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, no quid pro quo could possibly exist.
I don’t see Trump as pro-communist. He’s out to make business deals with whomever he can and from whomever he thinks will benefit him personally and benefit his business empire. One can pick and choose whether one agrees with his choice of business partner; that’s valid. But claiming he was some sort of pro-communist – either in his attempted deals in Cuba and/or whatever deals he has with Russia – is silly, imo. That’s just me. I don’t really know enough about Trump’s business deals to make solid comments. I just see Trump as someone who’ll do deals with anyone if he thinks the deal is good for him.
I leave it up to others to determine, for themselves, whether that’s a “good” thing or “patriotic” or whatever.
Frankly, in this regard, Trump’s not all that different from any other successful business person in the USA. Take for example St. Steven of the No-Jobs. Jobs off-shored tens of thousands of good-paying US jobs to “commie” China, and we’re directed to bow, scrape and venerate at his feet. So what’s the difference between Jobs’ deals and Trumps??
One can posit that Trump treds dangerously close to mixing up his business deals with govt business should he get elected. It seems likely that he’ll certainly try. One may then argue that’s completely inappropriate and/or potentially (I’m not sure; I really don’t know; but seems possible) dangerous for the USA overall. Personally, I don’t think Trump should have anything to do with his business empire should he win… but you know he WILL at least via his kids.
So… whatever Trump did in the past – unless it can be proved definitely that he broke laws or somehow it was dangerous for the USA (I can’t think of an example) – I don’t really care. I mean, it’s probably good to get the info out into the public sphere, but what I’ve seen so far doesn’t rattle me.
JMHO, of course.
“He’s out to make business deals with whomever he can and from whomever he thinks will benefit him personally and benefit his business empire”
That is the worrisome thing to me about the Trump-Putin nexus. And it could be extended to other world leaders. We may have a president who will “..treds dangerously close to mixing up his business deals with govt business should he get elected.”
His entanglements include banks
It’s unprecedented.
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Yes. That concerns me, as well, but as far as attempting to make deals in Cuba in the way-back machine is concerned??? pffft. Unless it can be proven that he broke laws or was somehow making super duper chummy with Fidel.
For me, it’s more about what happens going forward, which is hard bc we simply don’t know. But given how loose of a canon Trump is, it’s likely that he’d get up to some shenanigans… which could potentially be not good for the USA. That’s my concern.
That said, I’m pretty ignorant about his business empire and who he’s had (or attempted to have) deals with. So not that knowledgeable.
“Oddly, it seems like the only thing that really hurts him is when he insults regular citizens, whether that’s a disabled reporter or the parents of a fallen solider or a former Miss Universe who he called “Miss Piggy.” “
It does indeed. He can drop almost anything down his personal memory hole. Don’t like his tax plan? What plan? He lies? What lie? And on it goes.
LinaArabii tweet
Yes, that’s what the US UN Ambassador said in a public statement at the UN.
Why our Syria policy and ability to eradicate Daesh is all effed up.
That reads my like an excuse or cover-up of US policy part of the formulation of US policy.
Now Putin is aligned with the GOP since Reagan in casting doubt on the US government’s legitimacy and ability to govern. Fascist fellow-travellers.
Politico — Howard Dean apologizes for cocaine tweet, but says Trump should be called out more
Yeah, because more people will listen next time after you’ve tweeted a false accusation and later issued an apology.
Keep on with your obsessive attempts to try to suppress the Clinton vote and get Trump elected, marie3. We have grown to expect nothing more of you.