Author: Marie3

Eric Fisher, Chief Meteorologist @CBSBoston w/reports for @CBSNews:

Irma ticks up another notch at 2pm…now 185mph winds! Breaks own record for strongest hurricane east of the Caribbean.

To appreciate that development, check out the NOAA presentation of hurricanes that formed in the far eastern Atlantic basin

Normally it takes storms some time to get their acts together once they leave the West African coastline, only intensifying to hurricane strength after spending many days over warm ocean waters. In Fred’s case, the storm took advantage of an unusually short window where conditions were favorable for a quick development, a rare case so close to Africa.

In fact, only one storm, Hurricane Vince in 2005, became a hurricane farther east than Fred,…

Note from the graphic that none of these known hurricanes managed to reach western hemisphere land masses.  Irma was a tropical storm until it was more than 420 miles west of Cape Verde which was still a bit further east than most serious hurricanes that reach the west.  Moving further west, it organized and strengthened quickly.  

At that point, August 31, 2017, when it was 650 miles west of Cape Verde, it fluctuated between a Cat 2 and Cat 3 and expected to strengthen to a Cat 4.  Its projected track remained unclear but a shift north and dissipation far out at sea were becoming less likely and near the Leeward Islands was a given.  

See the Sep 2, 2017 projected track here.  Irma’s projected track changed significantly over the next two days.  Much further west and a threat to the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

A hurricane warning is in effect for the eastern most islands in the Caribbean: Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, Monserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis , Saba, St. Eustasias, Sint Maarten, St. Martin and St. Barthelemy.

Today Irma strengthened to a Cat 5 (up from a Cat 4 announced yesterday) The latest projected track reduces that area of DR that may be impacted but all of Cuba and a larger portion of South Florida is now in the zone.

Hurricane warning:

Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saba, St. Eustatius and Sint Maarten, Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Vieques and Culebra

The good news is that South Florida residents spent the weekend stocking up on emergency supplies ahead of Gov Scott’s State of Emergency declaration yesterday (June 4).  Assuming the empty store shelves can be quickly resupplied for those that didn’t or couldn’t make their purchases over the weekend, South Florida residents will be better prepared than most for a potential hurricane.

City of Key West

Effective  noon today Key West Transit has suspended all fare for all routes including the Lower Key Shuttle, in prep of Hurricane Irma.

8:43 AM – 5 Sep 2017

 

Use the diary thread for whatever, but updates, etc. on Hurricane Irma are most appreciated.

Update #1

Irma sets another new record:

Irma has now maintained 185 mph winds for 24 hours – no Atlantic or eastern Pacific #hurricane has ever stayed this strong for so long.

Central pressure Wed am, 914 millibars, only the lowest in a decade.

(or maybe five or six)

Reference Points:

June 2001 (June 5-June 10 – TX weather event) Tropical Storm Allison

The storm dropped heavy rainfall along its path, peaking at over 40 inches (1,000 mm) in Texas. The worst flooding occurred in Houston, where most of Allison’s damage occurred: 30,000 became homeless after the storm flooded over 70,000 houses and destroyed 2,744 homes. Downtown Houston was inundated with flooding, causing severe damage to hospitals and businesses. Twenty-three people died in Texas. Along its entire path, Allison caused $9 billion (2001 USD) in damage and 41 deaths. Aside from Texas, the places worst hit were Louisiana and southeastern Pennsylvania.
…
…Houston experienced torrential rainfall in a short amount of time. The six-day rainfall in Houston amounted to 38.6 inches (980 mm)
…

[Note: George W Bush signed his 2001 tax giveaway on June 7, 2001.  Didn’t stall that federal emergency funds to Texas.]

Texas flood damage could top $3 billion for 2015  Houston Memorial Day weekend and other areas later in the season.

A Week-Long Siege of Heavy Rain Triggers Flash Flooding in Texas in May, June 2016

Houston (24.84 inches) has also seen their second wettest spring on record. Houston’s two wettest springs have now been in consecutive years (26.61 inches at Bush Intercontinental Airport in 2015).

A Primer on Houston Metro flood risks and what has been and is being (not) done about it:
Propublica/The Texas Tribune – December 7, 2016 Boomtown, Flood Town This is part of a series on Houston’s flood risk. Read about why Texas isn’t ready for the next big hurricane.

Too soon to tell if Fort Bend County, cited as more responsible in the Propublica report, is doing better than Houston and Harris County in the 2017 “500 year flood.”  Fort Bend County – OEM

Note: those “500 year floods” in the Houston metro area are getting closer to being “5 year floods.”

…
And the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates development in coastal wetlands, only has about 10 people in charge of making sure the rules are followed for all of Texas and Louisiana.

“Our budget is fixed by Congress, and it’s been flatlined for three or five years,” said Kimberly Baggette, chief of the regulatory division at the Army Corps’ Galveston District. (Whether that will change under the new president remains to be seen.)
…

Wasn’t that budget on Trump’s chopping block?

…
Aside from the distant reservoir plans, it remains unclear whether many Houstonians realize that nothing is being done to address floods like the one that happened on Tax Day. Democratic Congressman Al Green said he was counting on his colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to fund some key bayou-widening projects in the coming months — though he understands they only aim to protect against much smaller events.

“I’m going to maintain a level of optimism,” he said. “We should not have another catastrophic event and then bemoan the fact that we didn’t do what we could have and should have done, so that’s an argument that I make.”
…

Well, here it is, another “catastrophic event.”  Optimism — or hope — isn’t a plan.

Post-“catastrophic events” costs aren’t cheaper than proper zoning/building restrictions and infrastructure planning and construction.  They do, however, have two major advantages over responsible government actions.  First the costs get dispersed with those individuals directly impacted bearing a larger share and insurance picks up a share of those costs as well.  It’s like Gov Abbot calling in only 3,000 National Guard members for relief work (subsequently raised to 4,000 and today, Monday increased to 12,000) (that was 3,000 out of a population of near 28 million) and relying on local (and not so local) volunteers (free labor) to take on the task of rescuing people.  Second, federal and state disaster relief money is much easier to get than all the money required to do the job right in the first place.  The downside is that little of the disaster relief monies makes its way back to correcting what was wrong in the first place.

However, the larger impediment to “doing it right” is the corporate and individual mindset in TX.   The “keep government out of my business” and “don’t tax me, bro” mentality with a heaping dose of anti-science thrown into the pot.  A majority of Texans and the people they vote into public office never seem to stop screaming no help for irresponsible people while being some of the most deeply irresponsible people themselves.

(Much more to discuss about the unfolding and management of this “catastrophic event.”  I’ll add a couple as a comment even though they aren’t responsive to the topic of this diary.)

Not that anyone has suggested adding it to the list of statues that merit some consideration for pulling down.  But, you never know what’s just around the pike.

Several reasons why the Statue of Liberty passes muster for keeping it around; although a couple of those reasons wouldn’t pass with certain U.S. political/cultural factions:

1. It enshrines/honors a human value present in the founding document of this country.  A value that is widely accepted in the U.S. and abroad.  And while we may disagree about the meaning, “liberty”  is one value, possibly the only one, that Americans can agree is good to have around.
2. While the form/model of the statue is human and female, it’s not an historical figure and therefore, doesn’t venerate an individual or a god that people worship.
3. It was originally “proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye the president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time.”  In honor of the Union prevailing in the Civil War and abolishing slavery.  Although that actual historical reference appears to have been lost on all but a few Americans.*
4. It was  a gift.  From the people of France.  (Not nice to reject gifts of noble intent.)
5. It has artistic merit.  Even if one doesn’t appreciate neoclassical style.

Irrelevant is that it’s huge, iconic for this nation, a tourist destination, and New Yorkers, even Trump, would lose their shit if there were an effort to pull down The Lady.

Looking over that list of reasons, the other statues, etc. that can easily pass are those depicting non-human animals.  Some are sort of creepy but most are rather nice.

The Washington Monument comes pretty darn close to passing as well. (Construction began in 1848, completed 1884, and dedicated 1885, almost two years before The Statue of Liberty.)  One reason it passes is that the building committee lacked the funds for statue of Washington in the design plan; so, they skipped it.

The statues, monuments, memorials that totally fail are those to honor Confederate leaders who initiated and waged war against this country for the sole purpose of maintaining the right to own other human beings and to expand that horrendous economic and moral plague into other territories.  Legally, they were traitors and engaged in treason.  That many were subsequently allowed to live out their natural lives in peace instead of being held to account for their crimes wasn’t meant to give them an honorable place in U.S. history.  Those statues, etc. are an historical perversion.  None should ever have come into being and it’s way past time for all of them to go, including my pet peeve, the Robert E. Lee Memorial

However, are there no other public statues, etc. that warrant reconsideration?  Why are J. Edgar Hoover and John Foster Dulles honored with public structures in their names?  Interesting to notice that not everybody is so complacent:

A wax-like, life-size figure of J. Edgar Hoover, which was recently installed among other memorabilia in the FBI’s New York Field Office, has been removed because of objections from bureau personnel.

The decision to oust Hoover, … , is something of a cultural moment for the bureau. Once revered among FBI agents, Hoover is no longer universally admired at the crime-fighting organization he built.

“There are no plans to display him again,” said Michael Kortan, assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs.  

This diary thread is now open for statues, etc. nominations “to stay” and “to go”. (Make a case for those selected to highlight in either category.

*How widely known was that when it was dedicated on October 28, 1886?  Was it strictly coincidental  — no relationship and not in any way an impetus — that Confederate statues, etc. began going up around the same time and and for many decades thereafter?  

A good place to stick a link to a news article that one wants to share and for which one has little to nothing to add.

(I’ve stopped my use of “O/T” comments in FP threads because it had become another thing for the neos to crab about.  Putting them in diary threads is often less than desirable.)

Would have been a good place for the DT and Mika and Joe spat.  That one now appears to be on holiday (after the old Trump/McMahon wrestling video tweet) as rating are up for both (the WWE wrestling lady McMahon was two points more popular in CT and DT), they may be saying, “mission accomplished.”

Today, NJ provides the fun

On Saturday he said the beach house was separate from Island Beach state park and his family would not be using any state services.

Asked if this was fair, Christie said: “Run for governor, and you can have a residence there.”

Maybe not for long if the existence of a summer beach house for the exclusive use by the Governor of NJ is news to NJ residents.  Can’t find any history on this beach house.  May be an open secret among NJ govt elites and the media, but they appear to have been mum about it.  (Unlike Drumthwacket, the NJ governor’s mansion since 1981.)

UPDATE — NJ.com, July 7, 2017 Bye-bye beach house? Guadagno wants to sell Christie’s Island Beach retreat

Blasting Gov. Chris Christie’s summer home as “a private luxury paid for with public money,” a Democratic state lawmaker is proposing legislation to lease out the property, and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno is calling for it to be sold outright.
…
“There is no real burning need to have a private beach house,” state Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) said. “Especially in a state as small as ours.”

On Friday, Wisniewski, a former Democratic candidate for governor, introduced two pieces of legislation addressing what’s become known as “Beachgate.”

The first bill (A5131) would require the state-owned beach house located at Island Beach State Park to be offered for rent to the general public.

“Run for governor, and you can have a residence there,” Christie said when asked about his use of the facility earlier this week.
…
But Wisniewski’s second bill (A5132) would change that, too. Except for Drumthwacket, it would prohibit the use of “any residential property owned by the state and provided exclusively or primarily for the governor’s use – including the beach house at Island Beach State Park — during a state budget-related government shutdown.”

Privatizing a beach house located within a state park is a terrible idea. However renting it out could easily produce a half a million dollars in gross revenue per year with minimal additional costs to the state.
UPDATE

State parks, beaches to reopen on Independence Day. Interesting that ridicule and public outrage can sometimes work. Bullies do cave when the sand gets kicked into their eyes and kneecap spanners begin to appear.

Observation — I’m thoroughly enjoying all the different directions this thread has taken. Learned some interesting stuff. My heartfelt thanks to all the contributors so far.

Ordinary people like me get fleeting glimpses of outrageous developments and government proposals but have neither the time nor interest to collect all the required information to evaluate nor follow it through time.  This is but one, and seemingly from out of nowhere has surfaced as a new outrage.  But before getting to that, let’s do a rewind to better understand today.

Initially, it seemed more like a sad and blameless development but with a curious kick.  Reported in late 2008 on some TV news show that I saw and the LA Times, Rich Chinese find lots of bargains in L.A. house hunt

Caravans of cash-rich Chinese in Hummers and Lincoln Navigators have been weaving through American neighborhoods in recent months, looking for foreclosures and other bargain properties to buy.

With housing prices crashing in the U.S., home-buying trips to America are becoming one of the more popular tour group packages in China. New U.S. visa rules for Chinese tourists and a loosening of foreign investment policies by China have made it easier for people such as Zhao Hongjun of Beijing to go house hunting across the Pacific.
…
Chow said Chinese buyers’ affinity for paying in cash will benefit them during the credit crunch. Many of her mainland clients have paid with cash, often for mansions and condos in Arcadia, where they can begin the immigration process or leave their college-age children to live alone.

WTF — buy a US house and get a visa?  At the time it didn’t seem to matter much because in the TV version, the  Chinese tourists were looking and remarking on how cheap the houses were but they weren’t buying.

This more than flitted across the news in 2011 as a congressional effort with the support of the Obama Administration.  The LA Times again: Bill would encourage foreigners to buy U.S. homes

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles — American consumers and the federal government haven’t been able to bail out the sinking U.S. real estate market. Now wealthy Chinese, Canadians and other foreign buyers could get their chance.
Two U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would allow foreigners who spend at least $500,000 on residential property to obtain visas allowing them to live in the United States.

The plan could be a boon to California, which has become a popular real estate market for foreigners, particularly those from China.
…
 The bipartisan proposal, part of a package that also would make it easier for international tourists to visit the U.S., is similar to an existing program that puts foreigners on a fast track to a green card if they invest at least $500,000 in an American business that creates at least 10 jobs.
…
“Many people want to come and live in the United States,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who introduced the legislation Thursday along with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). “They will be here spending money and paying taxes, and the most important thing is they’ll sop up the extra supply of homes we have right now compared to demand, and that’s what’s dragging our economy down.”

Ah, so that 2008 report wasn’t quite accurate.  Those house hunting Chinese tourists weren’t buying because it wasn’t a automatic path to a resident visa/green card.  Chuckie and others in DC would fix that; with a $500,000 house, a Green Card gets thrown in for free.

Alas this report was slightly misleading.  As reported six months later, April 2012, by USA Today:

Legislation proposed last fall by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, would let foreigners get a three-year resident visa if they invest $500,000 in U.S. real estate, including $250,000 for a primary home. They’d have to live at least 180 days a year in the property and pay taxes here.

Schumer’s effort apparently died before it was formally introduced as legislation.  However, something else had been wending its way down the halls of the Capitol.  The Startup Visa.  This too didn’t make it.  Yet, these two efforts apparently drew the attention of some to an existing law — The EB-5 Visa.

The EB-5 visa provides a method of obtaining a green card for foreign nationals who invest money in the United States.   To obtain the visa, individuals must invest $1,000,000 (or at least $500,000 in a Targeted Employment Area – high unemployment or rural area), creating or preserving at least 10 jobs for U.S. workers excluding the investor and their immediate family.

As with far too much federal legislation, the investment requirement wasn’t indexed for inflation.  A million dollars in 2012 would only have been $560,000 in 1990.  (Or a million in 1990 would have been equal to $1.78 million in 2012).  An EB-5 visa was a bargain in 2012, and the race was on.  Not that we plebes knew about it until after the fact and now longer after the fact —

January 19,  2015, My Palm Beach Post (hardly a national news outlet):

JUPITER – Nicholas Mastroianni II, developer of Harbourside Place in Jupiter, fraudulently uses money raised from foreign investors, and his actions would cause “serious problems” should there ever be an audit by the U.S. government, according to a lawsuit filed by Mastroianni’s former chief financial officer and business partner.
…

Will return to this later after first presenting the sequential reporting on EB-5 visa.

Next the Boston Globe, April 14, 2015 Investor Visa Program Gains Foothold in Massachusetts

There, in November [2014], Samuels pitched his development and a visa program that provides green cards to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in US projects that create jobs. Samuels hopes to use the program to entice about 100 foreign investors to put up nearly $50 million for his $290 million development, the Point, at Boylston Street and Brookline Avenue.

His company, Samuels & Associates, is among the increasing number of American businesses turning to the visa, called EB-5, to help finance enterprises from hotels to sports arenas to condominiums. EB-5 applications — nearly 11,000 last year — have surged more than eightfold since 2008; over the past decade, the program has attracted about $6.5 billion to hundreds of projects across the country and supported more than 130,000 jobs, according to trade groups.
…
As the visa program gains more interest from developers, it has also drawn scrutiny from federal and state regulators, who have criticized it for poor oversight, fraud, and favoritism. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general reported that the former director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services intervened in three EB-5 visa projects that involved high-level Democratic politicians, giving them special access to the process and encouraging favorable reviews of their projects.

Reports in other publications followed this one in 2015.  We here at The Pond read all about it in real time, didn’t we?  (For myself that is a big fat no.)   I’ll fast-forward to Bloomberg, March 6, 2016 when it became really important: Trump Tower Funded by Rich Chinese Who Invest Cash for Visas

Where the hell have the regulators and USG employees charged with managing this program been for decades?   How much cash made its way from well heeled foreigners to the intended development purposes of this legislation?  Or was it mostly money changing hands between wealthy Americans and wealthy foreigners?

More:

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of Congress, found last year in a general report about the EB-5 program that many applications contained a high risk of fraud, and discovered cases of counterfeit documentation. State Department officials told the GAO that there is “no reliable method to verify the source of the funds of petitioners.”
…
Last spring, a Homeland Security special agent testified that EB-5 applicants from China, Russia, Pakistan and Malaysia “had been approved in as little as 16 days, with files lacking basic law enforcement queries.” And a report last year by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General found politically connected participants may have received favorable treatment, citing projects involving Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham.

iirc, that “last spring” was six years into the Obama administration.  Did that administration and/or Congress jump in and clean it up in response to the 2015 GAO report?

Slate jumped right on that 1/15 Palm Beach Post report on April 4, 2017: Meet the Shady Broker Jared Kushner Used to Facilitate a Luxury High-Rise With Trump’s Name on It.

Can we, for once, not turn this into a partisan political battle?  I’m not defending the sleazy business practices of either Trump or Kushner.  If they weren’t in the WH and had never taken advantage of this poorly administered program that has facilitated corruption, would it have continued to operate without public awareness?  Most likely and politicians and their well heeled supporters in both parties would have continued to feed at the trough.

It’s possible that KushnerCos has crossed some undefined line — The Kushner Project Touted in China Is in Trouble at Home — or maybe it’s only that they have been more blatant and/or are now more visible (1).  Sunshine is good, but nationally, we want to get all the crooks and cheats and their domestic facilitators independent of political affiliation.  Exclusively zeroing in on Trump associates smacks of liberals/Democrats being political opportunists instead of dealing with the full issue and likely protecting some of their friends.  This is how knee-jerks on both sides of the aisle rush in to condemn or defend isolated instances of corruption.

The politician or political power player under attack may go down, but the corruption is hardly impacted at all.  It lives on and somehow is perceived by ordinary people to be in operation; so, it’s not odd at all that many respond favorably to a political candidate that spouts “drain the swamp.”  That was one theme by the out party in the 2000, 2008, and 2016 presidential campaigns and it had figured into many Congressional election cycles as well.  Yet, all we do is change who gets to sit on top of the massive pile of corruption.

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For your pleasure – Hernandez Javier tweet:

Here’s a slide shown during Kushner Co. event in Beijing identifying @realDonaldTrump as “key decision maker” on EB-5 investor visa program

 
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(1) side note.  Back in 2001, I was subjected to a company pitching the bucks to be made from and very specficially Cheney’s Energy Task Force.  I walked out in the middle of one such dog-and-pony show.  That one died relatively quickly on the vine with the subsequent energy company meltdowns.  However the very broke Halliburton and KBR made out like bandits from it and the subsequent Iraq War.  

UPDATE – Since posting this diary, the Wikipedia EB-5 Visa entry has been expanded and updated. It’s now a very good and relatively complete article. Highly recommend it, particularly for the coverage of how it’s been fraudulently used by administratively redefining TEAs. A few things to note:

Hotel and multi-use developments financed with EB-5 investments include Hilton, Hyatt Hotels, Marriott’s, Starwood’s SLS Hotel & Casino.

…
…starting in 2008 there was a renewed interest in the “under-utilized” EB-5 visa program as the number of “wealthy investors” and “ultra-wealthy individuals” in emerging markets abroad increased and the access to “traditional domestic financing” in the United States had decreased because of the Great Recession. …

…
The program reached capacity for the first time in August 2014 when the State Department stopped issuing EB-5 visas until the beginning of the next fiscal year, October 2014.[25] By 2014, the number of EB-5 visas granted had more than doubled since 2009.

…
In February 2017 Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Grassley, a critic of EB-5, introduced a bill in February 2017 to terminate the program.[12] In a joint statement they claimed that, “The EB-5 program is inherently flawed. It says that U.S. citizenship is for sale. It is wrong to have a special pathway to citizenship for the wealthy while millions wait in line for visas.”[12] Grassley and Feinstein say that “there is no reliable or verifiable way to measure how many jobs are created” and that “many of the wealthiest parts of the country have been incorrectly labeled as “high unemployment.”//

…
On May 5 President Trump renewed the EB-5 Visa program as part of his first major piece of legislation, Bill H.R.244, which extended the spending bill—and Immigrant Investor Visa Program—through September 30, 2017

Other than Feinstein and Grassley, the EB-5 Visa program doesn’t seem to concern all that many. What others are exercised about is its use by fraudsters to scam investors out of their money and not the selling visas for cash component.

Trump’s fixation on Jackson was revealed in an interview this week.  As is his usual wont, his knowledge of Jackson seemed to have derived from listening to a five minute condensation of Cliff Notes on Jackson and with that soupcon of information, he proceeded to stamp his garbled narrative and opinion onto Jackson.

One big difference between Trump and many other politicians is that his ignorant buffoonery is always on display.  Not couched, coached,  and hidden by minders employed to make a buffoon look smart and informed.

This still left me with a question: when did Trump first  fixate on Jackson as a president to admire?   Can this be condensed to his political MO: cable news and obsessive loathing of all things about Barack Obama?  Mostly yes as Politifact writers detail.  But we can’t ignore an earlier notation from Trump on July 10, 2013:

Interesting…the last time a Democrat succeeded a two-term Democratic pres. was in 1836 when Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson.

Still that can be written off as a factoid* someone (one of his kids?) mentioned to him as he was assessing his odds for a presidential  run in 2016.  (Not to be overlooked — and which I and most people paid no attention to in 2011 — the guy was making enough motions to run against Obama that he was roasted by both Obama and the keynote speaker at  the WHCD that year.  But he is too much of whiny ass titty baby to have gone mano-a-mano against Obama.)  Plus, there wasn’t much more that he could do with the factoid because Jackson was a Democrat.

Did he mention Jackson anytime after that and before the Treasury Department announced in 2016 that Jackson was being demoted to the back of the bill?  Recall that by then Trump had been on the campaign trail for ten months.   When, where and how did he praise that guy in those months?  If he didn’t, his Jackson bromance began with cable news and his faulty idea of the federal government and how decislons about US currency and coins are made.

Today April 21, 2016

Republican front-runner Donald Trump says that “Harriet Tubman is fantastic” but that Andrew Jackson should be left on the $20 bill; decrying the move as “political correctness.” He calls for another denomination of bill for Tubman to be put on.

Steve Inskeep at the The Atlantic was onto the team Trump-Jackson connection before others in the media. Building on a factoid of no significance and whitewashing Jackson to raise the stature of the buffoon into “Presidential.”

Steve Bannon, the media executive and soon-to-be White House strategist, has been describing Donald Trump’s victory as just the beginning.  “Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism,” he told the Hollywood Reporter, “we’re going to build an entirely new political movement.”

Newt Gingrich [noted fifth rate historian] has compared Trump to Jackson for some time. [220 year old] Rudolph Giuliani declared on election night that it was “like Andrew Jackson’s victory. This is the people beating the establishment.” That may seem a comforting comparison, since it locates Donald Trump in the American experience and makes his election seem less of a departure.

Just goes to show that history can be twisted into whatever a charlatan wants it to be.

*Technically true (an exception for Trump) but meaningless for many reasons not worth the bother recite.

______

Related:

“What we know, first and foremost, is that it hardly matters what Trump says because what he says is as likely as not to have no relationship to the truth, no relationship to what he said last year during the campaign or even what he said last week. What he says bears no relationship to any consistent political or policy ideology or world-view. What he says is also likely to bear no relationship to what his top advisers or appointees have said or believe, making them unreliable interlocutors even if they agreed among themselves, which they don’t.

“This lack of clear policy is compounded by the fact that the president, despite his boasts to the contrary, knows very little about the topics at hand and isn’t particularly interested in learning. In other words, he’s still making it up as he goes along.”

What gets inflicted on USians when moneyed elites panic (all over the MSM right now) combines with entrenched Putin-Russia-phobia at The Daily Beast: The Insane French Elections That Could F*ck Us All.  This is Freedom Fries level of stupidity.  Which coincidentally was only a few months after the 2002 French presidential election when the combined left, including commies and greens, took  21.4% in the first round and Chirac (republican) got 19.9, Le Pen (neo-nazi) 16.9, Jospin (dem/socialist) 16.2%, and Bayrou (center/center) 6.8% (and republican affiliates (combined) got 9.4%, neo-nazi affilate 2.34%, and socialist affiliate 5.3%).  It all worked out well that time with the odious Chirac decimating the neo-nazi in the second round.

But horrors in 2017:

…
Let’s be just that blunt. These elections could fuck us all. They have turned into an insane gamble–Russian roulette (and we use the term advisedly) with at least two of the chambers loaded–and the implications for the United States are huge.

The biggest winner in the forthcoming French presidential elections may well be Russian President Vladimir Putin, in fact. And while he might have played a few of his usual dirty tricks–indeed, in 2014 a Russian bank funded the party of Marine Le Pen, the current first-round leader in the polls–Putin can now sit back and watch the French themselves try to destroy the European Union and the NATO alliance he hates so much.
…

A sanity concession (rethink on 2016 at home)?

But two televised debates took much of the wind out of Macron’s sails. Compared to Le Pen and Mélenchon, he was both wonkish and vague–a deadly combination.  …

The Le Pen and Macron choirs dominate the remainder of the article, a reporter and/or editor choice that assumes these two will go on to the second round.  The CW at this point and maybe for once in the past year the CW will be right.  (Wouldn’t put money on it being right or wrong.)

No other noteworthy news on this election beyond what has already been posted in this diary and thread.  This one can be used for updates and comments from now until the April 23rd election day.

Added – Bloomberg weighs in: French Election Shocker: Pollsters Baffled by Four-Way Contest.

With just a few days to go before Sunday’s first round of voting, every poll for the past month has shown independent Emmanuel Macron and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen taking the top two spots. Macron would then easily win the May 7 runoff, polls show. Yet both front-runners have been steadily slipping over the past two weeks, and Republican Francois Fillon and Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon are now within striking distance.
…

“This situation is totally unprecedented,” said Emmanuel Riviere, managing director of Kantar Public France. “The fact that there are four potential finalists makes the situation very complex.”

…

UPDATE 1 FWIW from FiveThirtyEight The French Election Is Way Too Close To Call

In short, the French presidential election is a mess.

Not a mess except for those projecting election winners and losers. None of whom have been accurate in the past year.

Interesting

Second, pollsters may be herding — putting their thumb on the scales so as not to get any result that’s too far from the consensus (by weighting their results towards the average). While herding can make any individual survey more accurate, it makes the average of polls less accurate and increases the chance of a big miss.

Didn’t know that there was a word for pollsters putting a thumb on the scale to increase “external validity.” Don’t know that they actually do this. But Enten is correct that polls in the last two weeks tend to show more variation due to random sampling than we’re seeing in the French polls.

Concur with (and have previously made comments stating the same thing):

One thing I wouldn’t count on to contribute to a polling miss: “shy” Le Pen voters. Some people have argued that survey respondents might be afraid to admit that they support a candidate who espouses what some see as politically incorrect views (i.e. a French Bradley effect). But we can test this hypothesis by looking at how Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen (another far-right-wing candidate) have performed in previous presidential elections compared to their polls.

Would add that in both 2002 and 2012, the polls were based on an expected higher turnout than what materialized on election day. And those were the two elections when a Le Pen exceeded the polls numbers by a couple of points. The 2017 polling is based on low to extremely low (for France) turnout; so, a higher turnout could easily lead to Le Pen coming in third or fourth.

After being relatively stable for nearly two months, there is now movement in the polls.   The official campaign began today, April 10.  The election will be held on April 23.

On March 20, a TV debate was held with the top five candidates.  (This preceded the date when legally all official candidates must be included.)  Western media response: Le Pen middling, Hamon awful, Fillon looked presidential, Mélenchon amusing, and Macron rocked.  Non-MSM and French speaking response disagreed on Mélenchon and Macron assessments with Macron also middling, but Melenchon the star on the stage.  The subsequent polls confirmed the second view.

Eleven candidates appeared at the April 4 marathon (over three hours) debate.  

A total of 6.3 million people representing an audience share of 32% viewed the debate; BFM TV alone claimed 5.5 million viewers, equivalent to 28% audience share – an all-time record for the channel

Reuter’s report on it led with:

Centrist Emmanuel Macron kept his position as favorite to win France’s presidential election after a televised debate on Tuesday night in which he clashed sharply with his main rival, Marine Le Pen, over Europe, just 19 days before the election.

They would wouldn’t they.  However,

In the Elabe snap poll taken when the debate ended in the early hours of Wednesday, firebrand leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran of France’s political circuit, took first place as the most convincing performer.

Le Pen lagged in fourth place behind Macron and Francois Fillon.

Also:

In a debate that also discussed trade, immigration and security, Fillon and Le Pen came in for stinging attacks from two far-left candidates, who cited the judicial investigations facing them.

Note Reuters didn’t see fit to identify those two far-left candidates, and only named one, Nathalie Arthaud, later in the article.

Where it all is now:

The LaRouchie is holding steady at 0.5% or less.

Asselineau (far-right, euroskeptic) may have advanced from <0.5% to 1%

Dupont-Aignan (Gaullist) bouncing between 3% and 4.5% which is down slightly from before the debate.

LaSalle (new party; split from MoDem that passed on this election) hanging in at 0.5% to 1%

Arthaud (far left) no change at 0.5%

Poutou (anti-capitalist) up from 1% to 2% (almost a point better than his ’12 result).

Hamon (Socialist) continues his downward slide and is now at 9% (or somewhere between 8% and 10%).  It was the debates that put him into the primary and in which he won both rounds.  He hasn’t been able to replicate that in the general election.  Hamon appears not to be a strong enough candidate to revive the party that Hollande destroyed.

Fillon (Republican)  has been bouncing between 17% and 20%.

Le Pen down slightly from her 25% with ticks up to 27%.  She’s now at 24% (with a low of 23% and high of 24.5%)

Macron is also down from 25% (with ticks up to 26%) to a range of 23% to 24%.

Mélenchon  has steadily climbed from 10-11% (where he was in 2012) to 18%.  (A flip from a 2/1 poll that had Mélenchon at 9% and Hamon at 18%).  He’s not yet in contention to come in at first or second.

A third debate was scheduled for April 20 but has been cancelled.  Macron only wanted one debate with all the candidates (echoes of Hollande in 2012).  Mélenchon objected to holding it three days before the election and therefore, wouldn’t participate if it were held.
The prognosticators are using the outcome of Brexit and the USG election to conclude that Le Pen is being under-polled and therefore, will make it to the second round.  In 2002 her father finished in second place with 16.86% and was only able to take that up to 17.79% in the final and in 2007 sunk to 10.44%.  Marine Le Pen got 17.9% in 2012.  It didn’t turn out that way in Dutch election, PVV (racialist party) fell far short of its polling numbers, only 20 seats out of 150 seats for 13.1%, a gain but only up from 10% in the prior election.  The socialist party also collapsed there and VVD to the right ended up weaker.

That 18% for what can be referred to as a “neo-nazi” candidate may be the upper limit in coutries like France and Holland that experienced the real thing if the candidate offers nothing more.  In the debates, Le Pen demonstrated that she doesn’t have anything else and her rise in the polls is a function of current difficulties with immigrants and terrorist attacks, but she may not be substantively that different on this issue from other candidates.

In 2012 the right side of the aisle ended up with 47.12% and that’s where it is now in the  latest polling.  At this point in the 2012 election, Le Pen’s poll numbers were between 16% and 17%, but that may not have been an undercount because the abstention/protest vote was projected to be much lower than the actual of 20.5%.

This time around, pollsters are getting an abstention/protest vote averaging in the mid-thirties.  Who is lurking in there that may end up voting or not voting?  A reasonable guess is disgusted/demoralized Republicans and Socialists.  At the end of the day in 2012 it appears to have been disgusted/demoralized “moderates” and lefties.  So, low turn-out, Le Pen gets to the second round.  High turn-out, who knows?
Illustrating a change over the past two weeks (using Ifop polling).

March 26-31

Macron 26%

Le Pen 25.5%

Fillon 17.5%

Melenchon 15%

Hamon 10%

April 9-12

Macron 22.5%

Le Pen 23.5%

Fillon 19.0%

Melenchon 18.5%

Hamon 8.5%

—

UPDATE 4/12/17

The Guardian Freaks Out. And somewhat irresponsibly.

A dramatic seven-point surge by the wildcard leftwing veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon appears to be holding, unexpectedly turning France’s roller-coaster presidential race into a possible four-way contest.

Barely 10 days from the first round of voting on 23 April, the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, both with 23-24% of the vote, are still favourites to go through to the run-off round.

But Mélenchon, an acid-tongued political showman with a radical tax-and-spend platform, is now just five or six points behind. Some recent polls have placed him third, ahead of the scandal-hit centre-right candidate, François Fillon.

Back in January before the Socialist Party had selected its nominee, Melenchon was polling at up to 15%. That dropped to 10% when a non-Hollande affilited nominee was chosen. By the end of March, Hamon was down to 10% and Melenchon was up to 15%.

The race between Macron and Le Pen isn’t tied up; Le Pen is still in the lead. More interesting is that both have dropped a few points.

The difference between Melenchon and Fillon is currently running at 0.5% with variance between polls as to which of the two is leading for third place.

With an acid-tongued political showman with a radical tax-and-spend platform…, The Guardian got in all the negative buzzwords they couldn’t use in describing Corbyn or Sanders. Then a moment of accurate reporting before they really get rolling:

Mélenchon’s rise means that with up to a third of voters undecided, no two opinion polls entirely alike and margins of error to account for, it is impossible to say with certainty who of the front four will go head-to-head in the second round.

As I noted above, that’s correct.

The extreme unpredictability of the contest is rattling financial markets and observers alike. The campaign “smells bad”, the outgoing president, François Hollande, has privately told friends, Le Monde reported.

Fearing what commentators are calling a destructive mood among voters, Hollande also warned against the dangers of “simplifications and falsifications” in an election widely marked by anti-establishment anger and populist politics.

How dare voters be angry! Oh, and the “smells bad” has been coming from Hollande; so much so that he didn’t stand for re-election.

Then the fear-fear-fear card.

Pierre Gattaz, the leader of France’s main business group Medef, said this week a second round pitting Mélenchon against Le Pen would be “a catastrophe” for France, forcing voters to choose between “economic disaster and economic chaos”.

The plebes and rubes are supposed to STFU and choose more income/wealth inequality and more war. Not sure why they think this will work better than it did in the UK and US.

UPDATE #2 Uh Oh

A MONUMENTAL computer blunder could cost Marine Le Pen the French general election as 500,000 citizens living outside of France have the chance to vote twice.

Half a million people received duplicate polling cards in the post, which would allow them to cast two votes at the first round of the election, held on April 23.

French authorities confirmed they would not be investigating the potential electoral fraud until AFTER the election, when retrospective prosecution may take place.

This could crush Ms Le Pen’s dreams of surging to power, as most French nationals living outside of their country are not right wing – demonstrated by the fact many feel they depend on the European Union (EU) to guarantee their stay in foreign countries.

Emmanuel Macron visited London in February and held rousing talks urging London’s 300,000-strong community to vote for him.

London’s French population equates to France’s sixth largest city, and now many of those 300,000 people will have the chance to vote for Mr Macron twice.
…

Interesting how a computer “glitch” just happened to put two ballots in the hands of TPTB favorite candidate. Doubt they will now be screaming that Putin-Russia did it. (Of course it’s illegal for those that received two ballots – and some that aren’t eligible at all to vote received ballots — to cast both of them. But with a crook or two running for president, why should the little people worry about legal niceties?)

UPDATE #3 Sondage popularité : le grand bond de Mélenchon Ifop public approval rating for various politicians. May mean nothing considering that the 72 year old convicted felon Alain Juppe, who lost the LR primary to Fillon, has a 60% approval rating. 2017 Presidential candidates in order of approval rating:

Melenchon – 68%

Macron – 55%

Hamon – 48%

Dupont-Aignan – 41%

Le Pen – 32%

Fillon – 27%

Atrios

…But Trump made a boom boom in his pants and everyone is so fucking excited!!

A lesson in ignoring the obvious, or what can be known with a little effort, in favor of mysterious, unidentifiable, and imagined woo-woos.

A comedic version of this from Absolutely Fabulous

Eddie: Oh, God. Why am I so fat?
Saffie: You’re not SO fat.
Eddie: I am! Why?
Saffie: Well, for start, you eat too much, you drink too much and you take no excercise.
Eddie: Darling, darling, please. It’s far more likely to be an allergy to something, you know… You know, sort of a build-up of toxins, or something, or hormone imbalance, isn’t it? Hmm? And also, sweetie, did you know I’ve got a very heavy aura? Did you know that? That’s why animals love me, darling.
Saffie: They just see you as something to hibernate in.

Forbes 11/22/16, Exclusive Interview: How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House

Kushner went all-in with Trump last November [2015] after seeing his father-in-law pack a raucous arena in Springfield, Illinois, on a Monday night.
…
“I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley, some of the best digital marketers in the world, and asked how you scale this stuff,” Kushner says. “They gave me their subcontractors.”
…
By June the GOP nomination secured, Kushner took over all data-driven efforts. Within three weeks, in a nondescript building outside San Antonio, he had built what would become a 100-person data hub designed to unify fundraising, messaging and targeting. Run by Brad Parscale, who had previously built small websites for the Trump Organization, this secret back office would drive every strategic decision during the final months of the campaign. “Our best people were mostly the ones who volunteered for me pro bono,” Kushner says. “People from the business world, people from nontraditional backgrounds.”

Kushner structured the operation with a focus on maximizing the return for every dollar spent. “We played Moneyball, asking ourselves which states will get the best ROI for the electoral vote,” Kushner says. “I asked, How can we get Trump’s message to that consumer for the least amount of cost?” FEC filings through mid-October indicate the Trump campaign spent roughly half as much as the Clinton campaign did.
Just as Trump’s unorthodox style allowed him to win the Republican nomination while spending far less than his more traditional opponents, Kushner’s lack of political experience became an advantage. Unschooled in traditional campaigning, he was able to look at the business of politics the way so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have sized up other bloated industries.
…
Soon the data operation dictated every campaign decision: travel, fundraising, advertising, rally locations–even the topics of the speeches. “He put all the different pieces together,” Parscale says. “And what’s funny is the outside world was so obsessed about this little piece or that, they didn’t pick up that it was all being orchestrated so well.”
…

Jared Kushner as Trump’s “secret sauce,” is no different from what we see/hear every four years.  Every Presidential winner from Nixon on has had a secret weapon.  Something his/her oppoenent didn’t have or didn’t have a good enough version of.  A lot of this is hyperbolic crap for the simple reason that the secret weapon can’t replicate his/her success with a different candidate, and sometimes not with the same candidate.

Team Clinton had most of Obama’s “secret sauce” on board for the primary and general election.  Still a virtually unknown septuagenarian came damn close to stealing her crown.  After which team Clinton did everything they could to get their hands on what they thought was  Sanders’ “secret sauce.”  (hint: it was nothing more than a good candidate, running at the right time, and on the fly building a good enough campaign operation.)

Kushner isn’t a genius and reportedly not even viewed as very bright.  Ascribing the win to two novices, Trump and Kushner, would be like a couple of garage tinkerers claiming to have cracked fusion electricity generation.  (Okay, professional political consultants and operatives are hardly of the caliber of nuclear physicists but still considering experience, expertise, and funding, the analogy is good enough.)

So where was the experience, expertise, and funding in Trump’s win?  GMAFB about Russian hackers and bots.  Trump was always in the contest before any of that came into play, but  was widely and incorrectly viewed as too ludicrous to win (same was true in the GOP primary).  The blindsiding, beginning about the same time as Kushner’s “revelation,” is where it’s at.

Remember back to January 2015 — Politico (but most of the media reported the same thing) — The Kochs put a price on 2016: $889 million.   Then everybody watched to see what GOP horse they put their money on in the presidential race.  And many of those horses begged for it.  Walker’s “go big” and spend, spend, spend campaign model likely counted on him being that horse.  But the Koch blessing and money didn’t materialize (and he was broke within sixty days).  The Kochs aren’t into losers and are savvy enough to recognize that public support from them is not a plus.  The word they put out is that they were sitting out the presidential race.  More public was that they didn’t like Trump.

Owning and not liking is closer to their criteria. From Lee Fong at The Intercept, Koch Brothers’ Operatives Fill Top White House Positions

IF THE BILLIONAIRE Koch brothers turn to the White House for favors, they will see many familiar faces.

Newly disclosed ethics forms reveal that a significant number of senior Trump staffers were previously employed by the sprawling network of hard-right and libertarian advocacy groups financed and controlled by Charles and David Koch, the conservative duo hyper-focused on entrenching Republican power, eliminating taxes, and slashing environmental and labor regulations.
…
The fact that Trump’s political team worked for the Koch network during the campaign adds a new wrinkle to the relationship between the president and the most well-known pair of Republican billionaires.
…
Despite the common myth that the Koch network, in the words of Politico, “sat out” the presidential campaign, Koch groups were active in battleground states that proved critical to Trump’s victory. Americans for Prosperity employed 650 staff members during the campaign, with many stationed in Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Missouri. The field staff, using the new data tools from i360, focused on making sure Republican voters made it to the polls.

In the aforementioned states, Americans for Prosperity also aired negative ads attacking Hillary Clinton in the last weeks of the campaign, linking her to Democratic candidates and problems allegedly caused by the Affordable Care Act. The ads, which blanketed swing state television stations, held Clinton responsible for healthcare with “higher cost, lost coverage, lost doctors.”

To repeat:

Americans for Prosperity employed 650 staff members during the campaign, with many stationed in Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Missouri.

And that’s just one of the Koch backed operations and SuperPacs and which aren’t without experience, expertise, and funding.  (Maybe little Jared and his team of 100 was the difference in Michigan, but the Clinton and Democratic vacuum there made it far easier than it should have.

Expect to see more shuffling out of Trump’s bottom-feeder brigade and more shuffling in of Koch approved operatives.  Because the Kochs aren’t in this for a single improbable electoral win.  Publicly, unfettered capitalism is their raison d’etre and all other domestic and foreign political considerations are irrelevant to their agenda.  The truth is slightly different; it’s unfettered capitalism for the plebes and for them

The Koch family,…, would not be the billionaires they are today were it not for the whim of one of Stalin’s comrades.

Black-gold-hearts.