Last Call For Rebuilding The Bench, Finally

Democrats aren't waiting for the DNC to start moving on 2018 anymore.  We've proven that the leadership of the party (namely Debbie Wasserman Schultz) is too  worried with fundraising and networking to bother to actually run candidates.  It galls me, but Howie Klein over at Down With Tyranny was right all along about her, and the awful House and Senate Dem operations to boot.  Hell, it's been months since Trump won and we still don't have a DNC chair.  They're beyond useless.

So meet the new guys in town, running their own candidate recruitment shop, and they're already at work getting involved in state races around the country.

Kara Lynum was meeting with a client Monday morning when she decided to run for office. The client was an undocumented man from Mexico, and Lynum, who is an immigration lawyer in St. Paul, Minnesota, brought up current events. "I said to him, 'I'm really sad about Trump,' and he said, 'Yeah, you're sad, but I'm really worried about my family,'" she says. Lynum, 35, had joined thousands of protesters at a march through the Twin Cities on Saturday and had spent weeks thinking about what the Trump administration's immigration policies would mean for her clients. 

"He was a nice guy," she says. "He's been here for like 15 years. He's got a 12-year-old daughter. He said that, and I was so upset and I was like, 'You know what? I'm gonna sign up.'" 

So that afternoon, Lynum filled out an online form created by Run for Something, a new political nonprofit founded by two veteran Democratic digital organizers to recruit progressive millennials to run for office. Like many of the people contacting Run for Something, Lynum hasn't thought much about what position she'll end up running for. But she's in good company; according to the group's co-founder, Amanda Litman, more than 650 people contacted it about running in the six days since it launched on Friday. As Democrats wrestle with how to turn mass demonstrations against the new administration into political gains, Run for Something is one of a number of liberal organizations hoping the Trump era ushers in a new wave of first-time office-seekers. 

Run for Something's mission is not to stop Trump in 2020, at least not directly. Its focus is on local races, where Democrats have been creamed over the last eight years, losing some 935 state legislative seats during the Obama era. In 2017, it is focusing its efforts on Virginia and North Carolina, two places where Democratic gains at the state level (the party controls the governor's mansion in both states) are undercut by conservative legislatures. In Virginia, a blue state in the last three presidential elections, Democrats have failed even to show up in some races: 44 of the state's 67 Republican delegates ran unopposed in 2015, including three Republicans in districts carried by Hillary Clinton. Democrats have a long way to go to recoup what they lost, but they've also left a lot of low-hanging fruit on the vine. 

Litman, a Barack Obama campaign veteran who was email director for Clinton's 2016 effort, believes that replenishing the candidate pool has taken a back seat to other party staples, like building a get-out-the-vote program. "Candidate recruitment isn't sexy, it takes a lot of manpower, it takes a lot time, and it needs more concerted effort," she says, "which is why we are stepping up here." 

The idea isn't just to supply candidates where none are currently running; the group believes the bench is too thin everywhere because Democrats are too exclusive in how they pick out candidates. "Parties are usually focused on asking their electeds, their staff, their networks, who they think should run," Litman says. That helps build a pipeline, but it's also an echo chamber that makes it difficult for new faces and voices to penetrate. It can be intimidating, she argues, for a prospective candidate to figure out how to run, without an organization to walk him or her through it. "So we're trying to reach people who, one, might not ever be approached by a party or by a recruitment network, or two, might not be comfortable raising their hand if the party asks who wants to run." In other words, women, people of color, and members the LGBT community—all under the age of 35. 

While Run for Something's founders stress that their efforts are focused on the state level, they view their program (and others like it) as an integral part of a larger rebuilding. As Litman's co-founder, Ross Morales Rocketto, puts it, "When President Obama ran for office originally, he was in his early to mid-30s running for state senate in Illinois."

This is the best goddamn news I've heard in months.  Check them out at runforsomething.net.

Of course, my big question is WHY AREN'T THE DEMOCRATS DOING THIS ANYWAY.

A Sinking Ship Of State

Things just got very worrisome at the State Department as essentially the entire seventh floor at Foggy Bottom is out the door rather than working for Rex Tillerson and the Trump regime. Josh Rogin at the Washington Post:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era. 

Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me. 

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. 

Kennedy will retire from the foreign service at the end of the month, officials said. The other officials could be given assignments elsewhere in the foreign service. 

In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the State Department, its overseas posts and its people. 

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

These are the top managers at the department that would have helped Tillerson run the day-to-day operations at State.  They are all gone, and it looks like they are gone under their own volition.  FOr Undersecretary Kennedy to retire and his entire management team to leave?  Something in the Trump regime's foreign policy apparatus is rotten (not that any of it would be good, mind you) and I dearly hope the media keeps on this story to find out why.

This is a big one, guys.  Career foreign service people just don't walk out the door like this. If Tillerson and the Trump regime made it clear they were all gone out of spite (as these are all appointed positions that would require Senate confirmation) that's terrifying.  And if Tillerson is so incompetent that they left rather than serve, that's terrifying too.

I'm not sure which scenario is worse.

EDIT: CNN is reporting Kennedy and his staff were all fired by the Trump regime Wednesday afternoon.

Two senior administration officials said Thursday that the Trump administration fired four top State Department management officials as part of an effort to "clean house" at Foggy Bottom. 

Patrick Kennedy, who served for nine years as the undersecretary for management, Assistant Secretary for Administration and Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions, were sent letters by the White House that their service was no longer required, the sources told CNN. 

All four submitted letters of resignation, per tradition at the beginning of the administration. The letters from the White House said that their resignations were accepted and they were thanked for their service.

Whether or not that really happened?  With this White House?  Who knows?

Death Of The DREAM

Leaked copies of Trump regime draft orders have been circulating among the media and have panned out so far on things like The Wall™ and sanctuary cities, so Vox is making the choice to publish additional draft orders.  These orders detail a massive and abrupt about face in Obama policy in what amounts to a brutal Trump regime crackdown on immigration, both legal and undocumented.

The four remaining draft orders obtained by Vox focus on immigration, terrorism, and refugee policy. They wouldn't ban all Muslim immigration to the US, breaking a Trump promise from early in his campaign, but they would temporarily ban entries from seven majority-Muslim countries and bar all refugees from coming to the US for several months. They would make it harder for immigrants to come to the US to work, make it easier to deport them if they use public services, and put an end to the Obama administration program that protected young "DREAMer" immigrants from deportation.
In all, the combined documents would represent one of the harshest crackdowns on immigrants — both those here and those who want to come here — in memory. 

The draft executive order limiting immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries, formally titled, "Protecting the Nation From Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals," suspends entry into the United States from selected countries starting 30 days after the executive order's issuance. 

On the campaign trail, Trump made comments about banning Muslims from the United States. This order is reminiscent of that promise but falls far short of it, as most Muslim-majority countries, including the most populous ones (Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan), are not included on the list of barred countries. 

The countries in question are those included in the State Department's list of terrorism-sponsoring countries (Iran, Sudan, and Syria), those designated by the Department of Homeland Security as countries of concern (Libya, Somalia, and Yemen), and Iraq, which is specially designated in the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, the law from which the executive order gets its list of barred countries. (Syria is specially designated too, but it’s already banned due to the terrorism list.) 

That law simply limited travel from countries whose residents normally don't need a visa to visit the US (which tend to be rich countries like the UK, France, and Germany) if they had previously traveled to a country of concern, like Iran or Yemen or Iraq. Trump's executive order uses that list and bars all immigration from those countries outright. 

As this ban is being implemented, the secretary of homeland security, along with the secretary of state and director of national intelligence, is instructed to evaluate which countries do and don't provide enough information about visa applicants for the US to vet them for terrorism risk. Any countries that don't provide enough information, according to the secretary of homeland security, will be given 60 days to start doing so. After those 60 days, the secretary of homeland security will provide to the president a list of any countries still judged to not be providing enough information. The president will then issue a proclamation prohibiting nationals of those countries from entering the United States. This list will replace the one based on the 2015 law.

That's just the first order, widely expected today:  A moratorium on all refugees, a revocation of visas from selected countries (even spouses of US citizens) and a complete ban on entry from these countries starting on or about March 1.  It's madness and the list omits Saudi Arabia, where the 9/11 attackers were based, and this list will only grow.

And that's just the start.

Another apparent order draft, titled “Ending unconstitutional executive amnesties,” would end a major Obama program that has effectively protected more than 740,000 unauthorized immigrants from deportation since 2012. 

This program — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA — was aimed at people who came to the US when they were younger than 16 years old, who either had pursued or were pursuing education and had no felony convictions, among other conditions. It let them get temporary protection from deportation and permits to work in the US. 

But the order would end the DACA program. Now, it says that work permits already issued under the program will remain valid. However, these permits are all already set to expire at some point in the next two years, and once they expire, they will not be renewed, according to the order. Starting very soon, a trickle of immigrants would start to lose their DACA protections — and by January 2019, barring a policy reversal or an act of Congress, all of them would. 

Even while still protected by DACA, the order says, the government will not grant them “advance parole.” That means that should they leave the country, they would not be allowed to return. 

Finally, this draft order would also put the nail in the coffin of Obama’s 2014 attempt to extend that program to cover a broader group of unauthorized immigrants — DAPA — which had already been blocked in court. All in all, if implemented, the order would roll back President Obama’s most significant legacy on immigration.

In other words, the Trump regime is planning to take information on three-quarters of a million people and almost certainly use it to start rounding them up and deporting them.  Between this and the sanctuary city order yesterday, the path of mass deportations is very painfully clear here.

The other two orders are designed to limit legal immigration into the US, the first by completely changing the way L1 and H1-B visas work, and to crack down on foreign students at US colleges and universities, and the second would deny public government services to undocumented immigrants and to anyone on visas and deport them if they are receiving any government benefits whatsoever.

In other words, the US is closing its doors over the next few days.  This is not the America I grew up in anymore.

StupidiNews!

• Television and film icon Mary Tyler Moore has passed away at the age of 80, the actress and producer had a 50-year career in Hollywood as "America's Sweetheart".
• The Trump regime's latest order is to cut federal grant money to sanctuary cities, a move that could cost billions in social programs and thousands of jobs.
• The Pentagon will expand and upgrade bases in the Philippines as President Rodrigo Duterte has warmed to the Trump regime after threatening to kick US troops out last year. 
• Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto says he is considering canceling a planned visit to the US after the Trump regime's announcement to begin construction of a Mexican border wall.
• New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has approved a wind turbine farm 30 miles off the Long Island coast that will produce 90 MW of power for 50,000 homes.

Last Call For E-Mailing It In

At this point we've gone so far around the bend on the irony meter that the leading bit has become negative.

Senior Trump administration staffers including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon have active accounts on a Republican National Committee email system, Newsweek has learned. 

The system (rnchq.org) is the same one the George W. Bush administration was accused of using to evade transparency rules after claiming to have “lost” 22 million emails.
Making use of separate political email accounts at the White House is not illegal. In fact, they serve a purpose by allowing staff to divide political conversations (say, arranging for the president to support a congressional re-election campaign) from actual White House work. Commingling politics and state business violates the Hatch Act, which restricts many executive branch employees from engaging in political activity on government time. 

But after then-candidate Donald Trump and the Republicans repeatedly called for “locking up” Hillary Clinton for handling government work with a private server while secretary of state, the new White House staff risks repeating the same mistake that dogged the Democrat’s presidential campaign. They also face a security challenge: The RNC email system, according to U.S. intelligence, was hacked during the 2016 race. “They better be careful after making such a huge ruckus over the private email over at the State Department,” says former Bush administration lawyer Richard Painter. 

(The White House has not responded to queries about the system. Newsweek will update if and when it does.) 

It’s not clear whether or how Trump staffers are using the RNC email addresses. If they are using them, they are subject to the “Disclosure Requirement For Official Business Conducted Using Electronic Messaging Accounts," a law, 44 U.S.C. 2209, that went into effect in 2014. If White House staffers have already used the RNC emails system for White House work, they must copy or forward those communications into the government system within 20 days.

The Disclosure Requirement was passed to prevent presidents from shielding communications that fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1978. The last time White House staffers used the same RNC email system, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) described it as an attempt to circumvent transparency. CREW Director Melanie Sloan charged in 2007 that the Bush White House was using the RNC email system because “they don’t want anyone ever to be able to come back and see what was going on behind the scenes.”

And the Bush email mess in 2007 was pretty huge, with 22 million emails that, you know, vanished into thin air never to be seen again.  Now the Trump regime is happy to start getting away with doing that all over again.

Oh, and The Donald is still using an unsecured Android phone these days.

I'm sure it's not a problem, I mean Russia already knows 100% of what Trump is doing, so it doesn't really matter if they've got a bead on the thing 24/7 right?

Good thing we didn't elect the lady with the private email system.

Pompeo And Circumstances

Kansas GOP Rep. Mike Pompeo was easily confirmed on Monday as the Trump regime's new CIA Director, including by more than a dozen Senate Democrats.

The Senate confirmed Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump's pick for CIA director, on Monday night. 

The vote was 66-32 in favor of confirmation, with Pompeo picking up some Democratic backing. The only Republican in opposition was Sen. Rand Paul. 

The vote was held open longer than normal in an effort to let Senators delayed by the storm in the Northeast reach Washington, but it was gaveled closed before Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal could arrive.

Vice President Mike Pence swore in Pompeo, a Kansas congressman, after the vote at the White House.

"I just want to remind our colleagues that our country continues to face incredible threats, and they are not hitting the pause button," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said in a statement issued before he voted in support of Pompeo. "The President needs his national security Cabinet, and particularly his CIA Director at his side, a Cabinet position integral to keeping our country safe." 

Pompeo's view on electronic surveillance and torture drew the ire of some Democrats.
But Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist from Vermont, cited Pompeo's support for the broad collection of metadata in his vote against the CIA nominee. 

"What we are talking about is the United States government having in many ways more information about us than we may even understand about our own life," Sanders said. "In many ways, it sounds to me like we are moving toward an Orwellian society."

Who voted for Pompeo?  Our old red state Dem friends Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, Joe Donnelly and Heidi Heitkamp of course, but also blue state Dems like Chuck Schumer, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar and Brian Schatz.

Who voted against?  Bernie and Rand Paul.  Go figure.  If you were expecting the CIA to start poking around in Trump's Russia connections, well with pro-torture Pompeo now in charge, the agency's rank and file just got bought off by Trump this week.

The Trump administration is preparing a sweeping executive order that would clear the way for the Central Intelligence Agency to reopen overseas “black site” prisons, like those where it detained and tortured terrorism suspects before former President Obama shut them down. 

President Trump’s three-page draft order, titled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants,” and obtained by The New York Times would also undo many of the other restrictions on handling detainees that Mr. Obama put in place in response to policies of the Bush administration. 

If Mr. Trump signs the draft order, he would also revoke Mr. Obama’s directive to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all wartime detainees in American custody – another step toward reopening secret prisons outside of the normal wartime rules established by the Geneva Conventions. 

And while Mr. Obama tried to close the Guantánamo prison and refused to bring new detainees there, the draft order directs the Pentagon to continue using the facility “for the detention and trial of newly captured” detainees – including not just more suspected members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban, like the 41 remaining detainees, but also Islamic State detainees. It does not address legal problems that might raise.

So the Trump regime's back in the torture game, guys.  And Dems did nothing to stop it.  We could have closed Gitmo under Obama years ago, but Dems screwed Obama over on that too.  Now Trump will make sure America tortures suspects for no actual law enforcement, legal, or moral reason.

Oh well.  At least we didn't elect that awful Hillary, right?

New tag: Mike Pompeo.  I figure we're going to need it.

Ride The Pipeline, Baby!

Good thing we didn't elect that harridan as President, or she might have betrayed us on Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipeline projects.  Not like the guy we currently have in office.

President Trump signed five more executive actions Tuesday in a blitz of executive power meant to speed approvals of high-profile energy and infrastructure projects, including two controversial pipeline projects in the upper Midwest.

Trump signed two presidential memoranda intended to expedite the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, but also signed three more longer-term and sweeping directives requiring American-made steel and changing the process of approving and regulating future pipeline and infrastructure projects.

"This is about streamlining the incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible, permitting process," Trump said in an Oval Office signing ceremony that has already become a trademark of his short presidency.

In reversing the Obama administration policy to disapprove the Keystone pipeline, Trump emphasized that the construction isn't a done deal. "It's something that subject to a renegotiation of terms by us," he said. "We'll see if we can get the pipeline built. A lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs."

Keystone XL became a lightning rod for Obama's energy policy, with the administration taking seven years to make a decision before ultimately killing it over environmental concerns. Environmental groups reacted quickly and vociferously, promising legal action and White House protests.

"President Trump will live to regret his actions this morning," said Michael Brune of the Sierra Club, promising "a wall of resistance the likes of which he never imagined"

Good luck with that Mike.  Hey, I seem to remember environmental groups like the Sierra Club being quite upset with Clinton back in June because she wasn't good enough.

While the former secretary of state has laid out a climate change agenda that goes further than President Barack Obama's, for many environmental activists, Sanders' ambitious plan to combat climate change served as a rallying point.

With little regard for the opposition to curbing climate change from Congressional Republicans, Sanders unveiled a plan that would tax carbon emissions, ban offshore drilling, and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. Environmental activists cheered when Sanders stated onstage at an early Democratic debate that climate change was the biggest threat facing the US today. The Sanders campaign itself criticized Clinton's climate plan as vague.

Groups that endorsed Clinton saw a swift backlash from some members who believed that Sanders' plan was more comprehensive.

Some League of Conservation Voters Action Fund supporters threatened to withhold future donations after the group endorsed Clinton in November. While climate group 350 action did not endorse a candidate, some of its members tracked both the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, peppering them with tough questions about climate change on the campaign trail.

Friends of the Earth Action endorsed Sanders early in the 2016 race after Clinton failed to say that she would not approve the Keystone XL pipeline, a controversial pipeline that would have funneled oil from Canadian tar sands to the Gulf coast. The group aired pro-Sanders ads in several early primary states. Clinton eventually came out against the pipeline.

The Sierra Club decided earlier this year against endorsing a candidate to avoid taking a side in the rift between environmental activists during the Democratic race.

But with the Democratic primary wrapping up, top climate activists suggest that the ideological gulf between Clinton and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — who has claimed that climate change is a Chinese hoax — will be more than enough to motivate "climate voters" to support the former secretary of state. 

How'd that work out, guys?

Well, now you have Trump.  Good job on that, environmental groups! You sure showed her!

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime is expected to issue executive orders concerning construction of a border wall with Mexico by ordering the redirecting of Mexican foreign aid to pay for it.
• The regime is also expected to issue orders today reviving a post-9/11 Bush program to stop immigration from several Muslim countries.
• The Dutch government says it will launch a global fund to help women access abortion services to counter NGO aid cuts announced by the Trump regime yesterday.
• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is vowing "not one euro more" of austerity cuts as EU finance ministers meet this week to review the conditions of Greece's 2015 bailout.
• A 4-4 split by the 2nd Circuit means that that battle between the the Feds and Microsoft over data stored on the company's Irish servers could now be headed for the Supreme Court.

Last Call For Take A Gander At This Propaganda

BuzzFeed News reporter Charlie Warzel takes a look at the propaganda machine that Trump regime advisor (and white nationalist) Steve Bannon is building to bypass the free press in the age of internet disinformation.

At last Thursday’s DeploraBall, Gateway Pundit editor Jim Hoft stepped on to the event podium, smiling wide in a maroon blazer and ’70s-style wide-collared party shirt. He had an exciting announcement. “We’ve been in contact with the new administration and they’re doing something different,” Hoft said, referring to a Trump administration decision that would award real legitimacy to his popular, ultra-conservative political site. The Gateway Pundit made a name for itself during the election with headlines like “BREAKING: 71% of Doctors Say Hillary Health Concerns Serious, Possibly Disqualifying!” (she had pneumonia), and served as an engine for rumors of Hillary Clinton’s poor health during her presidential campaign. And now that coverage, and its set of alternative facts, was being rewarded. 

“We got word that Gateway Pundit is going to have a White House correspondent position,” Hoft said, whipping up the crowd. “We had 1 million readers a day coming in. And the reason was because I was telling the truth and the mainstream media was telling the fake fucking news!” 

The crowd — a loose collection pro-Trumpers gathered to “celebrate memeing a president into existence” — went nuts with a deafening chant of “Real news! Real news! Real news!” 

If you’ve been paying attention during the long run-up to Trump’s unexpected victory, you may have noticed a new dynamic in the already fractured and chaotic political media ecosystem. There is a new new media. Its branding (“news you can trust,” “we report the truth”), design (sleek, media-rich webpages), and distribution (heavy social and video presences across Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, YouTube, podcasts) all feel familiar. But its message is very different. It is unedited and unabashedly pro-Trump, and it often posits an interpretation of reality dramatically different from that of the mainstream media. 

Welcome to the New Media Upside Down: a parallel universe (think the Upside Down from the Netflix series Stranger Things) that operates as a mirror image of its mainstream counterpart with its own “alternative facts,” audience, and interpretation of truth. The New Media Upside Down looks a lot like the media it’s trying to undermine and replace, but it’s darker in vision — and raw. If you live in the mainstream media world, the New Media Upside Down can be hard to find — the only real crossover between the two worlds is on Twitter, where its leaders lambaste mainstream news reports often with the aim of discrediting them. It’s (reasonably) young and hungry, and has risen with Trump all the way to the White House — where Steve Bannon, who helped construct this upside-down media world while running Breitbart News, now holds sway as senior counselor to the president himself.

Warzel may be getting a bit romantic here with his description of Bannon's "parallel universe news" outlets here, but the threat is very real.  Bannon would love nothing more than to exterminate the free press in America and replace it with his evil, goatee-wearing version, where the only source of news on Trump is what Bannon says it is.  And make no mistake, these guys have the money and production values to do it.

The New Media Upside Down and the traditional media sphere may differ in philosophy, but they share plenty in terms of presentation. Noted alt-right troll Chuck Johnson’s new website WeSearcher — a crowdfunded reporting site aimed at raising bounties to expose mainstream journalists and political opponents — is so slickly designed it feels a bit like Kickstarter’s evil twin. Mitchell’s radio show, Your Voice Radio — which is distributed mainly via YouTube and the DIY podcast platform Spreaker — is basically indistinguishable from terrestrial political talk radio. And video-centric outlets like InfoWars, Right Side Broadcasting, and OANN sport high TV production values with chyrons, swooping jib shots, and flashy sets similar to those of cable news offerings. Other figures are more deeply rooted in new media, like Cernovich’s frequent live Periscopes and the constant, frenetic live-tweeting of the day’s news. 

In the era of fake news, a defining characteristic of the New Media Upside Down is how it presents its arguments and biases. Borrowing language from its legacy counterparts, it frames the information it broadcasts as sourced reports, using a collection of like-minded writers and video personalities out in the field to tell its version of the truth. Unlike the patently false news coming out of political content farms in places like Macedonia, the New Media Upside Down’s work is based, to some extent, on actual reporting, despite its shaky sourcing and questionable, often misleading framing. 

Last week, for example, InfoWars — the unabashedly conspiracy-touting radio and video empire dedicated to fighting the globalist New World Order — reported that BuzzFeed News was planning to release a damning tape of Trump just 48 hours before the inauguration. The piece was reported out by InfoWars’ editor-at-large, Paul Joseph Watson. Yet the tip was discovered to be a hoax by a 27-year old marketer who wanted to see how fake news was generated. 

Rarely are such false reports so clear cut; most stories percolating inside the New Media Upside Down exist in a gray area, deftly walking the line between salacious framing/innuendo and falsehoods, but rarely stepping into the dangerous territory of fake news. All signs suggest the ecosystem will only grow murkier. Breitbart News — arguably the largest and most visible publication of the New Media Upside Down — is staffing up across its politics and entertainment desks and is poised to attract mainstream voices to its masthead; just this month, it poached a respected Wall Street Journal reporter to head its business and finance coverage.

The New Media Upside Down’s mirror-image embrace of mainstream language, presentation, and tactics has also helped undermine the traditional media’s credibility. Earlier this month, when BuzzFeed News published a salacious, unverified intelligence dossier on Donald Trump, the New Media Upside Down — often accused of being purveyors of fake news — repurposed the term to denounce reporting by outlets including BuzzFeed News and CNN.

When Bannon's pro-regime propaganda is no longer distinguishable from actual journalism by news consumers, then the game is over.  The Constitution may protect free speech, but it doesn't guarantee your local newspaper can stay in business.  Much of the damage inflicted on the state of the news has been self-inflicted over the last quarter-century,  but Bannon and friends are now in the position to deliver the killing blow to news.

And now they are backed up by the full power of the Trump regime.  You don't have to outlaw the media, you can just flood the zone with crap and people won't bother to look anymore.  All that's left at this point is "exclusives" going to Breitbart and InfoWars and OANN from the Trump regime, and they can drive their competitors out of business.  News is a product, and Republicans want to make sure any government alternatives are tightly controlled if not eliminated.

In other words, we're in real trouble here, and the problem was of our own making.  Sort of glad I never got into the business myself.  New tag: Propaganda Stupidity.

An Air Of Danger At The EPA

The Trump regime is beginning the dismantling of America's basic infrastructure in order to pave the way for total privatization of everything. The plan seems to be to issue an executive branch freeze on everything regulatory, and then let it fall apart through neglect as a best case scenario.  The worst-case is an abrupt elimination of regulatory agencies by Congress.  That may take another election or two depending on when the filibuster gets nuked (or the GOP gets 60 seats), but there's plenty of damage the Trump regime can cause in the meantime without Congress lifting a finger.

The Environmental Protection Agency has frozen its grant programs, according to sources there.

EPA staff has been instructed to freeze all its grants ― an extensive program that includes funding for research, redevelopment of former industrial sites, air quality monitoring and education, among other things ― and told not to discuss this order with anyone outside the agency, according to a Hill source with knowledge of the situation.

An EPA staffer provided the information to the congressional office anonymously, fearing retaliation.

It’s unclear whether the freeze is indefinite or temporary as the agency transitions fully to the Trump administration; the Senate has not yet confirmed Trump’s pick for EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt. It’s also not clear the immediate impact the grant freeze would have on programs across the country, since EPA grants are distributed at varying intervals and frequency.

“I will say it’s pretty unusual for us to get these kinds of anonymous contacts from people at the agency, which makes me think it’s unusual,” said the Hill source.

Neither the Trump transition office nor the central press office at the EPA responded to a request for comment Monday.

The Huffington Post also received a message that was reportedly sent to staff Monday that seems to cover the current agency guidance on talking to the press in general, not just about the directive on grants. The memo states that the agency is imposing tight controls on external communication, including press releases, blog posts, social media and content on the agency website.

Expect that most other executive agencies will be given similar directives to no longer communicate, especially to the press.  Vague leaks like this will be all you can expect from the Trump regime.  This is how you maintain an authoritarian regime, all information will come from Trump's propaganda machine.  Even the Bushies weren't this obviously fascist.  But the Trump regime is locking down agencies -- particularly agencies with focus on science -- within the first week.

I recall conservatives scoffing at the "lack of transparency" in the Obama administration.  These same pundits and critics are strangely silent about the Trump regime.  It's okay however, I don't expect the EPA to last much longer anyway considering the only budgetary issue now is how many trillions in draconian cuts the Republicans make starting this spring.

The more immediate picture is this means Flint, Michigan and several other American communities will be receiving zero federal money from the EPA to help fix water pipe problems and toxic drinking water.  People will continue to be poisoned.  But hey, you'll be able to keep buying bottled water at ten times the cost, and it'll probably be safe.

Probably.

Trump Can't Stop Lying

Our new Dear Leader is a pathological liar, and while meeting with congressional leaders yesterday he repeated the nonsense claim that millions of "illegals" voting are the only reason he could have lost the popular vote as he did in November.

In his first meeting with congressional leaders of both parties since taking office, President Donald Trump on Monday reiterated a debunked claim that he lost the national popular vote only because of widespread voter fraud.

Multiple sources described the exchange as part of a generally lighthearted meet-and-greet between Trump and the lawmakers at the White House. It’s unclear whether any of the leaders responded to Trump.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) confirmed that Trump made the voter fraud claim, but added, "I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I was ready to move onto some policy issues. I didn't anticipate that discussion."

It's further evidence of Trump’s fixation with his narrow victory, in which he won the Electoral College handily despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. Nearly three weeks after his Election Day victory, as late California returns drove up Clinton’s popular vote margin, Trump tweeted incorrectly about the size of his victory.

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he wrote.

He’s provided no evidence to back up that claim, and multiple fact checks and investigations have called the assertion false.

Trump's aides did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday evening.

Let me say this again for the folks in the cheap seats: Donald Trump is a pathological liar.   News outlets need to describe him as such, and they are starting to do a better job of that. 

The NY Times headline on this story is pretty simple, Trump Repeats Lie About Popular Vote in Meeting With Lawmakers. The WaPo headline, not quote as strong but still Without evidence, Trump tells lawmakers 3 million to 5 million illegal ballots cost him the popular vote. CNN's headline is nearly identical to WaPo's, FOX simply says that Trump made the claim about "illegals" and barely bothers to say the claims are unverified in the second paragraph.

But the problem is still the fact that Trump is spouting lies to cover his ego, a bad quality in a business leader, but a potentially disastrous one in a US President.

StupidiNews!

• Minnesota Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton will give a planned budget speech this morning after fainting last night during the State of the State address.
• The Trump regime says it will make a decision on a Supreme Court nominee by early February, Senate Democrats are expected to fight the pick as much as possible.
• The UK Supreme Court has ruled that PM Theresa May must get parliamentary approval before going ahead with Brexit.
• Automation on offshore oil rigs means the Trump regime's policy to allow more offshore drilling will mean only a fraction of the new jobs the White House is promising to create.
• As expected, the Trump regime has named Ajit Pal as chairman of the FCC, Pal is a former Verizon legal counsel who has vowed to end "net neutrality" consumer protection policies.

Team Never Trump Folds Immediately

Once again, if you thought Senate Republicans were going to ever really oppose the Trump Regime, you're too stupid to be allowed to vote.

After weeks of agonizing over Rex Tillerson’s ties to Russia, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham said Sunday that they will vote for President Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, essentially clinching approval for Tillerson. 

Though Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is still holding out on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Graham and McCain’s support will allow Trump to breathe easier, knowing that Tillerson will likely be confirmed later on the Senate floor. Tillerson needs just a bare majority of votes to win approval, and it appears highly unlikely now that Tillerson will lose the three or more Republican votes that could have scuttled his nomination.

McCain said he was “very cautious” about voting for Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO who once received an Order of Friendship award from Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the Arizona senator said that his deference to a new president combined with several private conversations with Tillerson sealed the deal. 

“He talked to me a lot about his views with Russia, a lot about the events that have taken place, about … what his duties were as a head of one of the world’s largest corporations,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Listen, this wasn’t an easy call, but I also believe that when there’s doubt, the incoming president gets the benefit of doubt, and that’s the way I’ve treated every president.” 

The Foreign Relations panel will vote on Tillerson’s nomination Monday, and Rubio still hasn’t decided whether to vote for Tillerson. The Florida senator said Friday that Tillerson has addressed “some” of his concerns that were brought to light at a brutal inquisition during Tillerson’s confirmation hearing, where Rubio criticized Tillerson for not coming down harder on Putin, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and Saudi Arabia.

Oh, and Marco Rubio?  He folded this morning.  Tillerson will easily be confirmed by the Senate.

BREAKING: Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida says he'll support Rex Tillerson's nomination for secretary of state.

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 23, 2017

So many suckers, so little time.

Graham, McCain and Rubio folded within days of Trump assuming power.  Don't expect anything other than capitulation from them in the future.  Tillerson, Sessions, Perry, all will be slam dunks.

There's a reason for that.

The Trump Austerity Plan Starts With Medicaid

If you were somehow expecting the Trump regime to save you from House Speaker Paul Ryan's trillions in draconian austerity cuts, you're exactly the fools that Trump and the GOP were counting on to hand over the power to destroy the safety net to them.  They were laughing at you then. They're coming for you now with the long knives.

President Trump’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act will propose giving each state a fixed amount of federal money in the form of a block grant to provide health care to low-income people on Medicaid, a top adviser to Mr. Trump said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. 

The adviser, Kellyanne Conway, who is Mr. Trump’s White House counselor, said that converting Medicaid to a block grant would ensure that “those who are closest to the people in need will be administering” the program. 

A block grant would be a radical change. Since its creation in 1965, Medicaid has been an open-ended entitlement. If more people become eligible because of a recession, or if costs go up because of the use of expensive new medicines, states receive more federal money. 

If Congress decides to create block grants for Medicaid, lawmakers will face thorny questions with huge political and financial implications: How much money will each state receive? How will the initial allotments be adjusted — for population changes, for general inflation, for increases in medical prices, for the discovery of new drugs and treatments? Will the federal government require states to cover certain populations and services? Will states receive extra money if they have not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, but decide to do so in the future? 

Ms. Conway, speaking on the NBC program “Sunday Today,” said that with a block grant, “you really cut out the fraud, waste and abuse, and you get the help directly” to intended beneficiaries. 

Medicaid covers more than 70 million people at a combined cost of more than $500 billion a year to the federal government and the states. More than 20 million people have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act, more than half of them through Medicaid.

So the Trump plan would not only eliminate Medicaid coverage for ten million by rolling back Medicaid expansion, but converting Medicaid to a block grant would eliminate coverage for tens of millions more, particularly in red states.  States wouldn't have to spend the money on coverage, and in fact red states would almost certainly use the money to give tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy (since states actually have to balance their budgets.)

In other words, this will end up being hundreds of billions in austerity cuts yearly, and tens of millions of Americans without basic health coverage.

That's just the start.  I don't think people have realized yet just how bad these cuts are going to be, and I don't know if Senate Democrats will be able to stop it.

These Disunited Nations

As I keep saying, while everyone's pointing at Trump's obvious lies and authoritarian overtures, please keep an eye on the GOP in Congress as they use him for cover to distract America from their efforts to undo the last eight decades of progress and turn America into a dangerous rogue nation.

A bill co-sponsored by about half a dozen Republicans would force the United States to quit its membership in the United Nations.

Earlier this month, Rep. Michael Rogers (R-AL) filed legislation called The American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2017 on behalf of himself and at least four other GOP co-sponsors.

The measure aims to repeal the United Nations Participation Act on 1945, which authorized U.S. membership in the intergovernmental organization.

The bill states that the president “shall terminate all membership by the United States in the United Nations, and in any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations.”

Additionally, the measure prohibits “diplomatic immunity for U.N. officers or employees.” Without immunity protection for diplomats, the organization would be forced to re-locate its headquarters outside of the United States.

Again, I don't see how this measure would get through the House, let alone Democrats in the Senate, but the larger point is the fringe Bircher idiocy that always powered the GOP is now firmly in charge of the party.

With the diplomatic damage of wanting to leave the UN and wanting to relocate the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, ripping up the TPP and NAFTA and starting a trade war with China, and all but dismantling the decades of intelligence community cooperation with the UK, Canada, Australia and other partners by embracing Moscow, the US is heading for a diplomatic nightmare scenario under the Trump regime.

The cost for all that will be massive and lasting.  We're heading for rogue nation status pretty quickly here, and it won't take long for the nations of the world to unite against us.

StupidiNews!

• At least 18 are dead in Georgia and Florida as a series of tornadoes ripped through the Southeast on Sunday, two are dead from flooding in Los Angeles as California is deluged.
• The Trump regime says it is in the early stages of talks to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
• Legal watchdog group CREW will bring a lawsuit against Trump on Monday over the Constitution's Emoluments clause and Trump businesses taking foreign government money.
• Canada is considering bilateral trade measures with the US as the future of planned renewal of the NAFTA free trade agreement next month is now in doubt.
• Electronics giant Samsung has completed its investigation of the Galaxy Note 7, the smartphone could catch on fire due to defective batteries from two different manufacturers.

Sunday Long Reads: A Forgotten May Day

As the world is still trying to come to grips with the Trump regime and the wave of nationalism around the world, the lessons of the Nixon era come to mind as to the kind of things America can and should expect to happen under Trump.  The criminalization of protest is moving very quickly in Republican ranks, and after yesterday's Women's Marches across the country will millions participating, those efforts will now be top priority.

That brings us to the now largely forgotten Mayday Tribe shutdown of Washington DC in 1971.

On May 3, 1971, after nearly two weeks of intense antiwar protest in Washington, DC, ranging from a half-million-person march to large-scale sit-ins outside the Selective Service, Justice Department, and other government agencies, some 25,000 young people set out to do something brash and extraordinary: disrupt the basic functioning of the federal government through nonviolent action. They called themselves the Mayday Tribe, and their slogan was as succinct as it was ambitious: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.” The slogan was of course hyperbolic— even if Washington, DC were completely paralyzed by protest for a day or week or a month, that would not halt the collection of taxes, the delivery of mail, the dropping of bombs, or countless other government functions—but that made it no less electrifying as a rallying cry, and no less alarming to the Nixon administration (Nixon’s White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, called it “potentially a real threat”). An elaborate tactical manual distributed in advance detailed twenty-one key bridges and traffic circles for protesters to block nonviolently, with stalled vehicles, improvised barricades, or their bodies. The immediate goal was to snarl traffic so completely that government employees could not get to their jobs. The larger objective was “to create the spectre of social chaos while maintaining the support or at least toleration of the broad masses of American people.”

The protest certainly interfered with business as usual in Washington: traffic was snarled, and many government employees stayed home. Others commuted to their offices before dawn, and three members of Congress even resorted to canoeing across the Potomac to get themselves to Capitol Hill. But most of the planned blockades held only briefly, if at all, because most of the protesters were arrested before they even got into position. Thanks to the detailed tactical manual, the authorities knew exactly where protesters would be deployed. To stop them from paralyzing the city, the Nixon Administration had made the unprecedented decision to sweep them all up, using not just police but actual military forces.

Under direct presidential orders, Attorney General John Mitchell mobilized the National Guard and thousands of troops from the Army and the Marines to join the Washington, DC police in rounding up everyone suspected of participating in the protest. As one protester noted, “Anyone and everyone who looked at all freaky was scooped up off the street.” A staggering number of people— more than 7,000—were locked up before the day was over, in what remain the largest mass arrests in US history.

Many observers, including sympathetic ones, called it a rout for the protesters. “It was universally panned as the worst planned, worst executed, most slovenly, strident and obnoxious peace action ever committed,” wrote esteemed antiwar journalist Mary McGrory in the Boston Globe afterwards. In the New York Times, reporter Richard Halloran flatly declared, “The Tribe members failed to achieve their goal. And they appear to have had no discernible impact on President Nixon’s policy in Vietnam.” Even Rennie Davis, the Chicago 7 defendant and New Left leader who had originally conceived of the Mayday action, announced at a press conference that the protest had failed.

But the government’s victory, if you can call it that, came only as a result of measures that turned the workaday bustle of the district’s streets into what William H. Rehnquist, the assistant attorney general who would later become chief justice of the Supreme Court, called “qualified martial law.” While the government hadn’t been stopped, there was a very real sense that it had been placed under siege by its own citizens, with the nation’s capital city transformed into “a simulated Saigon,” as reporter Nicholas von Hoffman put it in the Washington Post. Nixon felt compelled to announce in a press conference, “The Congress is not intimidated, the President is not intimidated, this government is going to go forward,” statements that only belied his profound unease. White House aide Jeb Magruder later noted that the protest had “shaken” Nixon and his staff, while CIA director Richard Helms called Mayday “a very damaging kind of event,” noting that it was “one of the things that was putting increasing pressure on the administration to try and find some way to get out of the war.”

Mayday, the scruffy and forgotten protest that helped speed US withdrawal from Vietnam, changed the course of activist history as well. It came at a time of crisis for the left—indeed, the distress call embedded in the mobilization’s name could apply equally well to the state of American radical movements in 1971 as to the conduct of the war they opposed. The last major national protest against the Vietnam War, Mayday was also a crucial first experiment with a new kind of radicalism, one rooted as much in its practices as in its ideas or demands. This quixotic attempt to “stop the government”—so flawed in its execution, yet so unnerving in its effects—was organized in a different manner than any protest before it, in ways that have influenced most American protest movements since. 

Nixon and Halderman broke out the National Guard and martial law to stop the Mayday protests.  And that was just 25,000 people.  If we had another mass shutdown, something larger, like on the scale of the hundreds of thousands who showed up for the Women's March?

Trump would be terrified.  And the world would know.

Just saying.

Not Foxy Enough For The Trump Regime

Dissent will not be tolerated in the Trump regime, and nobody is a bigger target now than conservative pundits who weren't sufficiently loyal enough during the Trump campaign. There's no use for them in the era of Trump propaganda, and so they are being purged.

Fox News has declined to renew contributor contracts for longtime political commentator George Will, Republican strategist Ed Rollins and actress Stacey Dash, according to a network spokesperson.

Will, 75, is a Pulitzer-winning conservative columnist who was with ABC from 1981-2011 before coming to Fox in 2013.

In June of 2016, he declared he was leaving the Republican party because of Donald Trump, a decision the then-nominee appeared to embrace.

In 2015 and 2016, Will had periodically feuded with the network's highest-rated host, Bill O'Reilly, with Will once stating that O'Reilly's best-selling book, "Killing Reagan" was "nonsensical" and "The Factor" host calling Will "a hack" in a subsequent interview.

Dash was signed by Fox in 2014 and was primarily seen on the afternoon news discussion program, "Outnumbered." The 50-year-old Republican is best known for her co-starring role in the 1995 comedy, "Clueless."

Political strategist Ed Rollins, 73, was a political commentator for CNN before jumping to Fox in 2011. He's primarily known for serving as national campaign director for the successful Reagan-Bush 1984 campaign and currently co-chairs the pro–Trump Great America PAC.

Veteran journalist Marvin Kalb, 86, and syndicated columnist and radio commentator Cal Thomas, 74, also did not have their contracts renewed by the network.

No need for Dash with Obama gone.  No need for older "Never Trump" conservatives like Will, Thomas, Rollins and Kalb with Trump in charge.  They've outlived their usefulness.  Greta Van Susteren and Megyn Kelly were the smart ones and left for greener pastures on networks who need conservative cred with the Trumpies.  This is how the business of political media works.  It's not about fact, it's about "truth".   They're out.  Who's in at the new Trump News Network?

On Friday, Fox announced the signing of former U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage as a contributor.

Farage is a major backer of Brexit and outspoken supporter of President Trump.

Have to make the new regime happy.

Last Call For The New Baghdad Bob

Meet Sean Spicer, Trump regime mouthpiece.  He has the hardest job on Earth, which is pretending the garbage that flows from the lips of Dear Leader is true, and that America believes it.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday accused the media of misrepresenting the crowd at Donald Trump's inauguration in order to dampen enthusiasm for the event, getting some numbers wrong himself in the process.

“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said with emphasis. “Both in person and around the globe.”

He accused the media of "deliberately false reporting" both with regard to photos of the crowd that were published as well as crowd estimates.

"No one had numbers. Because the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, does not put any out," Spicer said.

"These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong," he added.

Spicer took no questions after delivering his remarks.

This is his first day on the job, but his job is apparently "screaming at the press about Trump's tiny...attendance figures."

Meet The Sisters Of The Resistance

The planned Women's Marches around the country blew away estimates as hundreds of thousands showed up to protest the Tangerine Tyrant in cities across America.  In Washington DC, crowds dwarfed that of Trump's inauguration the day before.

Activists and politicians rallied huge crowds who descended on the nation's capital today for the Women's March on Washington this morning, the biggest of hundreds of similar marches taking place today.

The rally featured speeches from women's rights activist Gloria Steinem, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, Madonna, actresses Ashley Judd and Scarlett Johansson and director Michael Moore among others.

A group of largely women senators and other politicians took the stage together at one point, including Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, Claire McCaskill, D-MO, and newly elected senators Kamala Harris, D-CA, and Tammy Duckworth, D-IL, who addressed the group as did Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-FL, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, were also on stage.

With the timing and sheer number of people involved, it comes as little surprise that there are various causes attached to the march, which was largely billed as a demonstration in support of women's rights and civil rights but for many has clear political undertones connected to the inauguration of Donald Trump.

In Boston, LA, Chicago and NYC huge crowds marched and chanted.

They were joined by crowds in cities across the country: In Chicago, the size of a rally so quickly outgrew early estimates that the march that was to follow was canceled for safety. In Manhattan, Fifth Avenue became a river of pink hats, while in downtown Los Angeles, even before the gathering crowd stretched itself out to march, it was more than a quarter mile deep on several streets.

Portland, St. Paul, Denver, even Austin, Texas had major demonstrations.

The Austin Police Department told CBS Austin that it estimates more than 40,000 people descended on the state capitol Saturday afternoon to participate in the Women's March on Austin. They said the participants filled more than 20 downtown city blocks.

People are pissed off, guys.  Trump is the most unpopular president since Dubya crashed and burned, and he's starting at this level and will only get worse for him.