Month: August 2017

Ah, to be ten years old again…

In theory, at least, Hurricane Harvey could be a blessing in disguise for the Republican leadership in Congress. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had a very full plate of must-do legislation to pass well before the hurricane made landfall in southeast Texas. They’d like to avoid a government shutdown, if possible, but their greatest concern is that they find a way to raise the debt ceiling before the Treasury Department runs out of ways to juggle our bills and defaults on our sovereign debt.

While no member of Congress really wants to cast a vote to authorize more government borrowing, virtually no member of Congress wants to vote against disaster relief for Houston and its surrounding environs. If the Republican leadership were to combine the two bills into one, they’d have an easier time getting the votes they need to raise the debt ceiling.

However, the Freedom Caucus wants no part of this solution.

The chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus says aid for victims of Hurricane Harvey should not be part of a vehicle to raise the debt ceiling.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), an ally of President Trump who leads the conservative caucus, said disaster aid should pass on its own, apart from separate measures the government must pick up in September to raise the nation’s borrowing limit and fund the government.

“The Harvey relief would pass on its own, and to use that as a vehicle to get people to vote for a debt ceiling is not appropriate,” he said an interview with The Washington Post, signaling agreement with Trump on the approach.

It would “send the wrong message” to add $15 to $20 billion of spending while increasing the debt ceiling, Meadows added.

Rep. Meadows appears to be optimistic about the cost of recovery from the flooding in Texas and Louisiana. As USA Today reported today, the private weather firm Accuweather estimates that the bill from Hurricane Harvey could be $160 billion. Even if that is way too high, a number in the $15-20 billion range is probably far too low.

Either way, part of the problem is that the Freedom Caucus wants to have a fight on the debt ceiling and they want to be free to wage their battle without looking heartless about the victims of the storm. In truth, though, the leadership probably isn’t counting on their votes. And if Ryan and McConnell want to pass a bill with offsets or side amendments as the Freedom Caucus is demanding, they cannot not rely on the House Democrats to help them. They’d need nearly all of the Freedom Caucus to vote with them and then figure out how to pull off a miracle and win the support of eight Democrats in the Senate.

Combining the bills would make these scenarios easier to accomplish. Democrats don’t want to vote against disaster relief, either, and they’d love a chance to soften a vote for raising the debt ceiling. To have any chance to get some Democratic senators to vote for an “unclean” debt ceiling bill, the Republican leadership would have to link it hurricane recovery.

I think it would be legislative malpractice for Ryan and McConnell to fail to take advantage of the opportunity presented here. I’ve been saying for months that they were headed for a complete crack-up in September, and this could offer them a way out. At least in theory, it might give them a chance to break the Democrats’ unified wall of resistance in the Senate while also holding their caucus together in the House.

On the other hand, if they ask for something in the neighborhood of $160 billion for emergency supplemental spending and then try to pass a clean debt ceiling bill, I can’t see that ending well for them.

The so-called “market of ideas”.  And since Edward Bernays, marketing has dominated the rhetoric of the market of ideas.  And marketing depends on “consumer intelligence”, not the intelligence of the consumer but the intelligence about the consumer’s hot buttons.

Scott Ritter reports about the technical information that has been grist for the information war about the election from the beginning.  He also reports on how the marketing strategies of cybersecurity and software firms play in to how the events of 2016 played out.

Scott Ritter, Medium, Homefront  Rising: DUMBSTRUCK: a Homefront report about how America was conned about the DNC hack

Ritter’s point is this: DNC approached cybersecurity as an inhouse operation backed up by an aggresssive cybersecurity analysis, attribution, and response company.  That company was CrowdStrike.  DNC’s inhouse protection failed catastrophically (in political terms). When they brought in CrowdStrike, that company’s skill set seemed to go more toward narrative management than toward skilled attribution of the intruder.  Meanwhile, the self-claimed actor was dismissed as a hoax and the assumption was made that of 30 potential government actors, the alleged government actor was Russia.  Ritter furthermore says that CrowdStrike then and not controls the evidence from the DNC servers that could give other investigators information about attribution but that it (and the DNC) refuses to release that evidence.

What emerges in this reporting is how vulnerable we are because the US government (for us), cybersecurity firms (for their clients), and all of the organizations that handle sensitive data can neither secure their servers from a determined attack, reliably attribute an attack, or work to shut down the source of an attack once identified.  Nor have they devoted sufficient resources to figure out how reduce the ability to carry out an attack.  Indeed, the US National Security Agency is more interested in carrying out attacks on other organization’s assets than on protecting US assets.

That last reality is why the intelligence community has not been able itself to provide reliable attribution in the absence of political motivation.  They too are reactive; moreover they are politically constrained by their sources of funding.

It is a vulnerability that was introduced when the internet became a real-time communication tool instead of just an interface for lookup in the equivalent of what Internet Archive aspires to be — a global public library.

The story now reduces to the marketing spin of the various actors involved or alleged to be involved.

CrowdStrike has a motto: “You don’t have a Malware Problem, You Have an Adversary Problem.”

The only clear beneficiary of the DNC leak was the Trump campaign and even then just barely.

They would be the most obvious adversary.

The assumption that only the Russians could have done such a wide-ranging cyberattack has shielded direct action by the Trump campaign from scrutiny.  It as also shieded hackers friendly with Julian Assange, who might have a grudge against how the Clinton State Department made him a man without a country.  What other adversaries would have a motive and a means?

The DNC legitimately is worried that an investigation of their server materials in CrowdStrike hands could expose other confidential transactions.  This impasse is completely predictable.

Would an additional direction in Mueller’s investigation include what is known about the leak and the Trump campaign’s knowledge (if any) of the leak or the contents of the leaks, or coordination.  Testimony about the more easily discovered meeting coordinating with Russia during the campaign could lead to clarity about the cyberintrusions.  After all the subjects and topics of the leaks were reminiscent of Nixon’s Watergate operation.

What is clear is that the crapification of the internet is more and more obvious and at some point draws away internet traffic as network operation turn the revenue screws.

The implications of this caper are very clarifying for politics, international relations, technology, and information consumption.

I can’t say I enjoyed reading the U.S. Attorneys’ trial brief for their prosecution of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez. But that’s what I spent a good part of my morning doing. I was already familiar with the general outlines of their case, but now I have a sense of how strong their evidence will be at trial. The evidence looks very formidable and I don’t anticipate that the senator will be winning an acquittal.

Of course, I am not a lawyer and the prosecutions’ trial brief only presents one side of the story. On the other hand, the brief does spend considerable time anticipating likely avenues of defense, and they look well prepared to shoot down all of Menendez’s efforts to explain away his behavior. Some people think the bribery case will be hard to prove, but a conviction on failure to disclose gifts seems inevitable.

My best guess is that at the conclusion of this trial Menendez will be convicted of all of it, and then will likely be forced to resign his seat in the Senate. The political implications of this are somewhat terrifying.

The trial is set to begin on September 6th. If it ends, as expected, before a new (likely Democratic) governor is elected in New Jersey and sworn in, then Republican Gov. Chris Christie will make an interim appointment to the Senate and increase the size of the GOP’s caucus by one. Christie, who has about 138 days left to serve, says he won’t appoint himself, which is I guess some small comfort. But we shouldn’t forget that the Obamacare repeal effort failed by a single vote.

You shouldn’t completely panic on that score, however, for a couple of reasons. First, there were more votes against the health care repeal in the Senate but some senators hid under McCain’s skirt. If the whole thing is replayed and another ‘no’ vote becomes necessary, it’s not unlikely that it will be found.

Second, if the Senate passes a new budget it will obliterate the old budget. That means that the health care bill can only be brought back again under the budget reconciliation rules so long as Congress hasn’t moved on to tax reform. In layman’s terms, if they want a second bite at the health care bill apple, they’ll have to hold off on doing a new budget. And a new budget is a prerequisite for passing a tax reform or even a tax cut with a bare majority.

Still, the possibility exists that Obamacare repeal could return like a zombie and actually succeed in passing the Senate.

In that case, the fallback will be an inability of the House and Senate to come together on a bill they can agree to. I believe the House would have failed to pass the Senate bill as is, even if McCain had voted for it, but that isn’t a certainty.

Given the stakes, I’d like to be able to put in a good word for Menendez, but I can’t. Whether the prosecutors prove their entire case or not, Menendez’s behavior was contemptible and corrosive to the people’s faith in their government. He should resign for the good of the institution he serves and the party he represents.

And, speaking selfishly, as a New Jersey born-and-bred Democrat (now living in Pennsylvania), I have had more than my fill of corrupt Garden State Democrats. I’ve never been a fan of Menendez and have disagreed vociferously with his foreign policy stances on Iran and Cuba, and in some instances Israel. But that’s not my reason for wanting to see him made an example of. We need politicians with some personal rectitude and the good sense to treat their positions with reverence rather than as an opportunity to travel on private jets and stay in the swankiest Parisian hotels and Dominican resorts.

His behavior ought the be punished. But I don’t think it’s wrong of me to hope that the process takes considerably longer than expected so that a Democratic governor can appoint a hopefully much better replacement.

I guess there is a possibility that Menendez will beat all the most serious charges and get nailed only for a failure to report gifts. And then the party may back him up in refusing to resign. I would consider that a bad outcome despite the obvious benefits. The party should have some standards, and that’s not possible if they’re making excuses for Bob Menendez.

Sorry it hit so close to home Martin – Google Causes a Bloodletting at New America . Well, after all it’s only a job lost … most likely principles kept. A fair trade-off.

Calling herself a Democrat and getting a platform. In February 2014 the Obama administration was succesful in a coup d’état in Eastern Europe. The military intervention by NATO in Libya and Syria has traumatized millions, caused massive migration flows into Europe, strenghtened the likes of UKIP in Britain, Geert Wilders and many right-wing extremist parties across Europe. Made a “YES vote” possible for Brexit and strenghtened the racist white people movement in Trump’s America. People die because of the likes of Susan Rice, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Samantha Power, HRC, … R2P principle my a$$. Yes of course, A New America … the Google Principle. America’s tech giants supporting Arab monarchies of the Gulf and support the “Arab Uprising” elsewhere. The long arm of propaganda through social media, bots and right-wing funding by bilionaires. Mercer didn’t mind who sat in the Oval Office as long as it’s not a Democrat. From Bush to Rubio to Trump … it’s about corporate America which has infested politics and removed “We The People” from the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

○ Fiddling While Libya Burns | NY Times – Opinion | by Anne-Marie Slaughter on March 13, 2011
○ Libya in the Spotlight: the women are now being dubbed “Obama’s Female Hawks”

The Washington Monthly Monthly Interview – Jan/Feb 2014

A conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter, policy planning chief in Hillary Clinton’s State Department, on the future of military interventionism.

Anne-Marie Slaughter recently became president and CEO of the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. A former professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, she was the first woman director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department, a job she held from 2009 to 2011. She was also among the first to call for U.S. military intervention in Syria, making her case in an op-ed published in the New York Times in early 2012. She spoke recently with Washington Monthly editor in chief Paul Glastris about her views on foreign policy and the role of think tanks in affecting policy.

WM: People who share your liberal interventionist views on foreign policy have not been winning many battles in recent years. Do you see cause for concern in that?

AS: I object to the characterization and the diagnosis. I would describe myself as a liberal internationalist, in a traditional Wilsonian tradition, somebody who believes that if you don’t pay attention to what is happening on the ground to actual people, you will pay. So that has meant that I’ve been very supportive of the intervention in Libya and I’ve been calling for action in Syria for two and a half years. Given how terribly–and predictably–the conflict in Syria has evolved, I think I was right there too. When I was calling for it there weren’t al-Qaeda members. The Free Syrian Army had just started, and you had plenty of much more moderate people who were basically asking for the same rights as everyone else across the Middle East. It was completely foreseeable that if you don’t help the moderates, the extremists are going to take over.

Anne-Marie Slaughter will always find employment. Plenty of “centrist” think-tanks around starting with the Soros Foundation of colour revolutions. Getting sacked by Google boss she might join the Atlantic Council with the likes of Bellingcat and Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike. [What’s In A Name?] Bah!

In 2017 praising president Trump’s delivery of Scud cruise missiles into Assad’s Syria. BIG Man carrying a BIG Stick. Texas too is BIG.

Anne-Marie Slaughter: Donald Trump has done the right thing on Syria. Finally!!
Hillary Clinton: The Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and Bipartisan Praise For Bombing Syria
President Obama: Reactions to the Syria Strike: A Brief Guide

○ What is CrowdStrike? Firm Hired by DNC has Ties to Hillary Clinton, a Ukrainian Billionaire Pinchuk  and Google

From previous diaries …

○ Cambridge Analytica (Mercer) the Real Election Cycle Culprit
○ The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine

UK investigation …

○ Data Firm that helped Trump threatens to sue The Guardian over Investigative Series about Brexit
○ Michael Flynn to disclose advisory role linked to Cambridge Analytica | The Guardian – Aug. 4, 2017 |

 « click for more info »

[Update-1] More on New America Foundation and political bias in reporting …

Continued below the fold …

Flawed Analysis of Drone Strike Data Is Misleading Americans | The Atlantic |

The media’s go to source for kill figures is the New America Foundation. But its invaluable work is being cited in support of conclusions it doesn’t support.

Peter Bergen is among the most influential people in America when it comes to shaping public attitudes about drone strikes inside Pakistan. An author, print journalist, and broadcaster, he is a national security analyst at CNN, a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security, and the director of the New America Foundation’s National Security Studies Program. It’s that last position that is most important for our purposes, for the New America Foundation sponsors “The Year of the Drone,” an invaluable effort to analyze press reports on drone strikes. “Our research draws only on accounts from reliable media organizations with deep reporting capabilities in Pakistan,” Bergen wrote, “and reports in the leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan–the Daily Times, Dawn, and the News–as well as those from Geo TV.”

Using reports of drone strikes in those outlets, the New America Foundation does its best to determine the date an attack occurs, the number of “militants” killed, and the number of civilian deaths. Everyone interested in those subjects is indebted to the organization for the work it has done aggregating disparate information. But Bergen and others are repeatedly overstating the conclusions that can be draw from their research. As a result of this wrongheaded analysis, published most prominently at CNN, countless Americans are being misled about our drone war.

I noticed this problem earlier this month, when a graphic published at the top of a Bergen column at CNN asserted that zero innocents have been killed during drone strikes carried out in Pakistan this year.

“Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

As I explained at length, there is no way to confirm that conclusion from the New America Foundation’s data. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a British run enterprise that tracks drone strikes, has since weighed in agreeing with my analysis, concluding in part that “Bergen’s claim of zero reported civilian casualties this year is … factually inaccurate.”

○ UN urged to ban ‘killer robots’ before they can be developed | The Guardian – April 2015 |
○ Elon Musk leads 116 experts calling for outright ban of killer robots | The Guardian – August 2017 |

New week, new café.

Nothing like an Ode to Joy flash mob to brighten the day.

This was was published by the Associated Press:

President Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild from Hurricane Harvey, but his Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the president’s border wall.

The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account is part of a spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when Congress returns from its August recess. The $876 million cut, part of the 1,305-page measure’s homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump’s down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

It seems sure that GOP leaders will move to reverse the disaster aid cut next week. The optics are politically bad and there’s only $2.3 billion remaining in disaster coffers.

Not much seems to be working out well for Trumpy-Boy. He’s going to head for Missouri soon to make his case for tax reform, and he doesn’t even realize how dead that effort already is.

Everything he touches fails. So, maybe he’s not the person to try to get relief for southeast Texas or figure out how to raise the debt ceiling. Someone needs to figure those things out, though. And fast.

I’ll try to remain somewhat calm and dispassionate here, but I kind of doubt that will be possible:

The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left.

But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Mr. Schmidt, who had chaired New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is a friend of the Washington Monthly. We’ve both interviewed her for the magazine and gratefully published her as well. I have no preexisting animus towards her– quite the opposite, actually. But let’s take a look at how she protected her scholar when Eric Schmidt called to voice his displeasure:

The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Mr. Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington offices where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.” The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.

Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Ms. Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a larger corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Mr. Schmidt serves as executive chairman.

Ms. Slaughter told Mr. Lynn that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” according to an email from Ms. Slaughter to Mr. Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team — nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows — would be exiled from New America.

While she asserted in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, that the decision was “in no way based on the content of your work,” Ms. Slaughter accused Mr. Lynn of “imperiling the institution as a whole.”

I certainly understand that Ms. Slaughter was in a bit of a spot considering how important Eric Schmidt is and has been to the organization she leads, but her reaction was to fire not only Barry Lynn but the entire Open Markets department, including my brother Phillip. Phillip is also, of course, the senior editor of the Washington Monthly.

Perhaps I’m not the best person to discuss this since it involves my family, but I have no problem questioning the justice and administrative wisdom of canning “nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows” for the supposed sins of just one of them.

And what was that sin, exactly? Barry Lynn put up a post on the think tank’s website supportive of the European Union’s decision to fine Google “for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service.”

Now there are two handfuls of people looking for work.

Ironically, the Open Markets initiative has probably been the most influential and important department at the New America Foundation over the last couple of years.

It is difficult to overstate Mr. Lynn’s influence in raising concerns about the market dominance of Google, as well as of other tech companies such as Amazon and Facebook. His Open Markets initiative organized a 2016 conference at which a range of influential figures — including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — warned of damaging effects from market consolidation in tech.

Barry Lynn was instrumental in convincing Sen. Warren to look beyond her initial area of expertise in consumer protection and lock in on the role of lax antitrust enforcement in hollowing out America’s working class. Getting Warren to appear at New America and give the following speech was a coup for the think tank and a demonstration of the power of their ideas.

But Anne-Marie Slaughter wasn’t happy even then.

In the run-up to that conference, Ms. Slaughter and New America’s lead fund-raiser in emails to Mr. Lynn indicated that Google was concerned that its positions were not going to be represented, and that it was not given advanced notice of the event.

“We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points,” Ms. Slaughter wrote in an email to Mr. Lynn, urging him to “just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others.”

Again, I understand that Anne-Marie Slaughter has to consider a variety of factors and she was correct that the work being done by the crew at Open Markets was going to make Google unhappy. But she should at the very least own her decisions rather than allowing the following statement to be issued:

New America’s executive vice president, Tyra Mariani, said it was “a mutual decision for Barry to spin out his Open Markets program,” and that the move was not in any way influenced by Google or Mr. Schmidt.

“New America financial supporters have no influence or control over the research design, methodology, analysis or findings of New America research projects, nor do they have influence or control over the content of educational programs and communications efforts,” Ms. Mariani said.

I know I said I wanted to remain calm and dispassionate, but that statement by Tyra Mariani is demonstrably and egregiously false.

And unless Ms. Slaughter just panicked and overreacted to Eric Schmidt’s call, the statement made by Google is complete bullshit, too.

Google rejected any suggestion that it played a role in New America’s split with Open Markets. Riva Sciuto, a Google spokeswoman, pointed out that the company supports a wide range of think tanks and other nonprofits focused on information access and internet regulation. “We don’t agree with every group 100 percent of the time, and while we sometimes respectfully disagree, we respect each group’s independence, personnel decisions and policy perspectives.”

Either way, Google certainly “played a role” in the destruction of the Open Markets initiative. If they are so fearsome that they can get an entire department sent to the soap factory without even explicitly demanding it, it seems to me that they might be an even bigger problem.

Here’s the deal, though. The Open Markets initiative has already left its mark.

Last month, Democratic congressional leaders rolled out a policy platform that included a pledge to dismantle monopolies, including in cable and internet service, which some read as a direct challenge to Google in particular. That sentiment — which appears to have some support from populist elements of President Trump’s base — diverges sharply from the approach that had been taken by most Democrats until recently.

In our last issue, I had a feature piece on How to Win Rural Voters Without Losing Liberal Values that focused on the importance of revitalizing antitrust enforcement and anti-monopoly policies. Since that time, I have been contacted by several Democratic candidates and thought leaders who want to know more about how do messaging and strategy around these issues. They might get that kind of advice from me, but they probably won’t be getting too much of it from any source that relies on money from Google or Amazon or Facebook. Platform monopolies are popular and wealthy beyond imagination, and they’re fighting back against what they correctly see as a growing movement within the Democratic Party to disrupt their vertical integration and limit their power.

They can’t shut Elizabeth Warren up but, as you can see, they can limit where she can speak. She can say what she wants on the Senate floor, but she won’t be getting more invites to New America to talk about monopolies.

This is a lesson to anyone who doubts that these platform monopolies have too much market power and too much political power. They shouldn’t be able to put people like Anne-Marie Slaughter in this kind of vice, and that’s true regardless of whether or not what Slaughter did was wise or justifiable.

I think that there must have been better options than putting innocent people on the unemployment line, but the broader issue is that New America is functionally a subsidiary of Google. And they are far from the only left-leaning organization in that position.

There is no doubt some ideological component that helps explain why the Trump administration has made so few appointments and seen so few confirmations of people to fill out their government. But the fuller story is one of lack of preparedness, a refusal by Trump to consider nominees who have been critical of him, a lack of desire by an increasing number of people to seek employment in his administration, and a lack of qualifications or actual disqualifications among those why were vocal supporters of Trump’s candidacy. The Democrats have engaged in some slow-walking, too, mainly in a reciprocal denial of unanimous consent in the Senate that would speed along the nominees who have been named. On the whole, though, Democratic obstruction explains almost none of the phenomenon.

Trump was called on his failure to staff up his government on Fox & Friends this morning and he doesn’t like to be criticized. So, it was perhaps inevitable that he would find some justification for his lack of action.

.@foxandfriends We are not looking to fill all of those positions. Don't need many of them – reduce size of government. @IngrahamAngle

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2017

In context, that didn’t sound too good because he was taking flak from Laura Ingraham, a strong supporter, who took the opportunity of her appearance of Fox & Friends to point out that the hurricane response, not to mention our nation’s response to provocations from North Korea, might be undermined by understaffing in key departments. The president was basically saying that the understaffing is an ideologically based free decision and his way of reducing the size of the government. He didn’t seem to realize that it’s a bit perilous to argue that we “don’t need” these positions filled at a time of crisis.

But this is typical Trump. He often reacts defensively and winds of making matters worse for himself.  It’s not exactly true, or fully true, that his understaffing is intentional.

Another example of this tendency of Trump’s to make poor justifications for his actions came when he was criticized for announcing the pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio during a typical Friday news dump and in the midst of a looming catastrophe from Hurricane Harvey on the Gulf Coast. The implication, of course, was that Trump wanted to announce a controversial decision when most people are done with work and starting their weekends- a time known for having the lowest viewership and consumption of news.  Insofar as people would be paying attention, they’d be paying attention to the Hurricane and any resulting carnage.

Trump decided the best way to counter that argument was to argue that his intention was actually the opposite. He wanted the largest possible audience to see his announcement on Arpaio, and he figured that the Friday news dump would be a good time despite it being a time of low viewership precisely because people would be tuning in to get news about the hurricane.

This, of course, made him seem completely callous about the coming victims of Hurricane Harvey, but he somehow could not anticipate that this would be the result.

In both cases, Trump was lying. As I’ve stated, he’d have a better-staffed administration if he was willing to work harder and had more people to choose from. And he actually was trying to bury criticism and discussion of his Arpaio pardon.

But his opponents can now use his own words against him to critique his response to the devastation in Texas and Louisiana. If FEMA comes up short, well, the president didn’t want FEMA fully staffed. And why was he using the victims as cover for his deeply unpopular and controversial decision to pardon a racist sheriff?

In some ways, Trump can be completely unpredictable and it’s a political strength for him. But in his defensiveness he is all too predictable and can be baited into making unforced errors. The way he is allergic to taking responsibility for his actions leads him, time and time again, to take even fuller ownership of his missteps and mistakes.

David Drucker of Vanity Fair has been talking to Republican political consultants about how they are advising their clients to talk about the president.

“Your heart tells you that he’s bad for the country. Your head looks at polling data among Republican primary voters and sees how popular he is,” said one Republican strategist who, like most of the nearly two dozen I interviewed for this story, requested anonymity in order to speak candidly and protect their clients. “It would be malpractice not to advise clients to attach themselves to that popularity.”

Never mind the president’s low national approval ratings; his temper tantrums and chaos at the White House. If you want to win nomination in your Republican primary and, in the hardening red state-blue state divide, the general election that follows, embrace Trump and hold on tight. “To break the dam, you have to put cracks in it, and here we are plugging up the cracks,” this strategist added. “It’s really cynical, but so is politics.”

Once a mercenary picks a side and accepts the check, it’s best not to think too hard about who ought to win the war. Are you fighting for the wrong side? If your army wins, will it be bad for the country and the world? Is your leader even a German patriot or he is some Austrian interloper with dangerous ideas that will bring ruin to your people? However bad he is, he surely can’t be as bad as the Bolsheviks.

Oh, look, I came to the fork in the road and took the Godwin Path. Silly me.

Upton Sinclair once astutely observed that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” We could say the same thing about getting a man to do something. These consultants are in a genuine quandary, I admit, but they already too much resemble defense attorneys who know that their clients are guilty. It says a lot that they’re in the same ethical limbo but without the high-minded principle to back them up that everyone deserves an adequate legal defense.

After all, their clients’ freedom is not on the line. They aren’t serving a useful purpose, like assuring that the police and prosecutors respect people’s civil rights. It’s not the case that it’s better that nine undeserving politicians win their elections than that one deserving one lose his. From an ethical point of view, this is cynicism in the service of appeasement and collusion, all done for simple career preservation and money.

No one is really forcing them to continue in their line of work, and if the only honest advice they can give is that their clients do the wrong thing (as they see it), they can’t fall back on the idea that they have a responsibility to render their best counsel to paying customers. They only need consider what an ethical or spiritual consultant would say, and that’s pretty obvious: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”