The Perfect Storm

William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp describes how Hitler’s rise in Nazi Germany was enabled by his alliance with Germany’s “military-industrial complex” (the Krupps)  and Germany’s conservative Junker class.  Each party perceived it could use the other two to further its goals.  Arguably Hitler came out on top, but the alliance was necessary to get him there.

Similar dynamics have been at work in Trump’s rise to power.  See my blog at The Tripartite Coalition.  To get elected, Trump, Manafort, Stone, and Flynn – the shady dealers – allied (1) with Steve Bannon and the Robert Mercer forces, and (2) with the Republican establishment, which is enthralled to the conservative corporate and military industrial complex and led by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.  Trump, Manafort, Stone, and Flynn brought long-standing contacts with Putin and the Russian oligarchy to the party.   The Russians were key because of their access to resources to hack Democratic emails and disseminate misinformation.  The evidence of collusion, given the timeline of contacts, is self-evident.  See Hannah Levintova’s Mother Jones timeline.  Ryan and McConnell provided the legitimacy and political base  and ideological support necessary to run.  So what did Bannon and Mercer supply?

 Jane Mayer in her New Yorker  article “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency” exposes Robert Mercer as the force behind Bannon and Breitbart.  Her article also describes how Mercer made his millions as an innovative computer programmer who figured out how to use computer algorithms to game the stock market.  In essence, he figured out that, for short-term trades, he could use computers to crunch massive amounts of data to understand where the market would go next – getting a significant advantage over other market investors.  Just like the casino house in a gambling operation, he used his computers to create a “house” edge by being able to predict future behavior.  Mercer understood that what worked in the stock market could also be used to analyse behavior in politics.   He brought that expertise to at least one company, Cambridge Analytics, for use in advancing his right-wing political goals.

From all appearances, the Mercer analytics were used to maximize the benefit of the Russian and Breitbart disinformation campaign.  In an election determined by approximately 70,000 votes in three key states, that alliance almost certainly tipped the election in Trump’s favor.   See this article by Bill Palmer, “FBI now investigating Breitbart and InfoWars as part of its probe into Donald Trump and Russia.”  Here’s Palmer,  “Just hours after FBI Director James Comey confirmed on live national television today that his agency is actively investigating Russia and the Donald Trump campaign for their roles in rigging the 2016 election, it turns out the probe is even wider than acknowledged. McClatchy is now confirming that the FBI is also investigating the actions of two far right news outlets with direct ties to the Trump administration, as part of its Trump-Russia probe.

Part of the Russian government’s strategy for rigging the election involved using automated internet bots to spread pro-Trump news stories from sites like Breitbart and InfoWars in rapid fashion, helping those stories artificially go viral on social media, and giving Donald Trump a boost in the process.”

As has been well established, Breitbart was funded by Robert Mercer and led by Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Finally, we have the further circumstantial evidence that Trump, himself, personally amplified the effect of the misinformation campaign by publicly asserting, repeating, and insisting on the truth of various allegations.  See this article by Aaron Rupar  at ThinkProgress:  “Former FBI agent details how Trump and Russia team up to weaponize fake news“.

As Rupar notes:  “During the first public Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about Russia’s meddling in the presidential election on Thursday, former FBI special agent Clint Watts explained how Russia and the Trump campaign team up to weaponize fake news.

Asked by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) about why Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to make more of an effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election than in years past, Watts, who is now a a fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, said, ‘the answer is very simple and it’s what nobody is really saying in this room.’

‘Which is, part of the reason active measures have worked in this U.S. election is because the Commander-in-Chief [Trump] has used Russian active measures at times, against his opponents,’ Watts continued.”    Watts goes on to detail two specific circumstances.

It has been evident for some time that Trump successfully used a  campaign of innuendo, smears, and misinformation to steal the 2016 election.  The degree to which his election was further enabled by the perfect storm of Russian collusion and the computer expertise of Robert Mercer to  leverage the disinformation campaign is now coming into focus.  Given that the collusion was illegal and covert, it is reasonable to anticipate that substantially more activity will come to light as law enforcement investigates and as those who are culpable face subpoenas and are required to testify under oath.  This reddit link “magicsonar comments” contains some of the anonymous research and speculation that deserves mainstream attention.

In summary,  Trump’s election was illegitimate.  He should be investigated and removed from office and the election nullified.

Slip Sliding Toward War

 

Bombing in Mosul

 

 

 

 

 

 

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy warned yesterday in The Huffington Post that Trump is building up troops for a ground war in Syria.  See  “Trump Is Dragging Us Into Another War… And No One Is Talking About It“.  Here’s Chris:

“Quietly, while Americans have been focused on the ongoing drama over repealing the Affordable Care Act and the new revelations about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Trump has been busy dramatically expanding the American troop presence inside Syria. And virtually no one in Washington has noticed. Americans have a right to know what Trump is planning and whether this will lead to an Iraq-style occupation of Syria for years to come  Without any official notification, Trump sent 500 new American troops into Syria, ostensibly to take part in the upcoming assault on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. News reports suggest this deployment may just be the tip of the iceberg, with some saying that the plan is for hundreds more American troops to be added to the fight in the coming weeks. No one actually knows how many troops are inside Syria now, because the administration has largely tried to keep the build-up a secret.”

And yesterday,  The Washington Post ran this article by Missy Ryan and Loveday Morris, “U.S. military acknowledges strike on Mosul site where more than 100 were allegedly killed‘”   This is The Post lead:    “The U.S. military acknowledged for the first time Saturday that it launched an airstrike against the Islamic State in the densely packed Iraqi city of Mosul, where residents say more than 100 people were killed in a single event.  If confirmed, the March 17 incident would mark the greatest loss of civilian life since the United States began strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria in 2014.”

We don’t need to be rocket scientists to read between the lines.  Trump wants to escalate the conflict in Syria and he is not going to wait to develop consensus, or consult allies, or, for that matter, consider consequences.  His Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon wants a war.  Trump needs a war to distract from his collusion with Russia and his legislative healthcare disaster.  As Chris Murphy warns, we are being brought deeper into war, willy-nilly, and with not a whisper to the press – “the enemy of the people”.

In that context, take a look at Abby Martin’s excellent new podcast on Steve Bannon.  I’ve suggested in previous blogs that Bannon is an existential threat, not just to us but to all humanity.  See Who are Bannon and Trump,   McCarthy, Evola, and The Camp of the Saints,  and Darth Bannon.  Bannon is fascinated by war.  He has publicly proclaimed that we are at war with Islam and will be at war with China in five years.  He is a primary architect of Trump’s Muslim ban.  He wishes to deconstruct our government – that is to say remove the social safety nets, the regulatory system that protects stability in the the economy, and the environmental protections that are necessary to protect the planet.  He is also the vehicle of right-wingnut billionaire Robert Mercer, who is brilliantly exposed by Jane Mayer in  The New Yorker,  in The Reclusive  Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind The Trump Presidency.   What Abby Martin does that you haven’t seen is given depth to who Bannon really is.

With Trump and Bannon at the helm,  with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell leading Congress, our country is in serious peril.  In the near term, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and thousands more of our own young men may die in Syria and Iraq for no clear or considered policy.  Worse still, Bannon puppet-master Robert Mercer is a “nuclear power” enthusiast who proclaimed that those outside the blast-zone at Hiroshima and Nagasaki received “health benefits”.  Not kidding.  See Jane Mayer’s article cited above.  Defeating the foolish right-wing effort to repeal Obamacare is not nearly enough.  We need to force an investigation and impeachment of Trump now.

The Rise of the Investigative Journalists

The cries over the demise of journalism have proven to be overblown.  While the content of the local dailies is often disappointing, a surprising number of excellent journalists have risen to the challenge posed by Trump.  I have noted several of them in my “related links” site and have referenced many in my blogs over the past several months.  The New Yorker in particular deserves notice for the articles by Jane Mayer – “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind The Trump Presidency” and by Adam Davidson – “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal”.   Mayer’s article exposes the role of right-wing oligarch Robert Mercer in funding the rise of the alt-right.   Davidson writes about Trump’s partnership with the organized crime Mammadov family in Azerbaijan.  But the fact is that investigative jounalists publishing through numerous sites are making a difference.  Recent articles by Michael Winship, Steve Harper, and others at Bill Moyers’ site Moyers and Company, have been connecting the dots on Trump’s collusion with Russia.  Maggie Haberman just wrote an excellent piece for The New York Times , “Roger Stone, the ‘Trickster’ on Trump’s Side, Is Under F.B.I. Scrutiny“ setting the connections between Roger Stone, Trump, Manafort, and the Russians.  Less known web sites like Slate turn out fine articles.  In “Gutter Trash  Sebastian Gorka’s ties to a group of Nazi collaborators is a new low for Donald Trump’s administration”, Michelle Goldberg helped detail the contacts of Trump aide Sebastian Gorka with the Hungarian-Nazi Vitézi Rend.  See also David Cay Johnston’s May 23, 2016 article in Politico   “Just What Were Donald Trump’s Ties to the Mob?“.

Today, I’d like to cite Michael Tomasky’s article in the April 6 New York Review of Books, “Trump: The Scramble”.   Tomasky does perhaps the best job yet in describing the dynamics of Republican complicity with the non-ideological Trump.  Here’s an excerpt from his analysis of Mitch McConnell:  “McConnell is one thing. He has no policy commitments, beyond his hope that all campaign finance regulation might someday be wiped off the books. He just wants the power of his majority, and if it’s Trump who happens to be the facilitator and guarantor of that power, fine by him.”

And, by contrast, Tomasky on Paul Ryan:  “Ryan is another matter, indeed the opposite: he has many policy commitments. You might think that would give him reason to take stands against Trump, but in fact it is precisely his policy commitments that keep him tethered to Trump. Ryan wants to dismantle the welfare state. So the devil’s bargain he has made, and this is true of many congressional Republicans, is that they will support Trump, let him deport Muslims and crack down on undocumented Latinos, let him depart from party orthodoxy on trade, let him pursue risky and maybe even sinister policies with Vladimir Putin, turn a collective blind eye to the manifold ways in which he dishonors the office, as long as the president signs whatever legislation they bring to his desk that rips the bricks out of the wall of the liberal state. They will hope in the meantime that he doesn’t start World War III or hand state secrets to the Russian FSB.”

This is all good stuff.  Read Tomasky.  Read them all.  The journalists are back.  I’m hoping they bring Trump and his cronies down.

Birds of a Feather

“Birds of a feather flock together.”  So what birds does our president flock with?

Long time friend and confidant Roger Stone –  the Trump operative who knew about the Russian hacking of John Podesta’s emails before they were leaked.   See yesterday’s blog “Leave No Stone Unturned” and Maggie Haberman’s New York Times article  “Roger Stone, the ‘Trickster’ on Trump’s Side, Is Under F.B.I. Scrutiny“.  Trump met Roger Stone through the red-baiting lawyer for Joseph McCarthy and for New York crime families, Roy Cohn.

Former Campaign chief Paul Manafort – most recently in the news for alleged money laundering and work for Putin oligarch Oleg Deripaska.  Described in the Associated Press article by Jeff Horwitz and Chad Day, “AP findings on Trump associate’s work for Russian oligarch“.

Chief Strategist Steve Bannon – former head of extreme right fake news site Breitbart and apostle of right-wing hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer.  See my blog Who are Bannon and Trump and Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article  “THE RECLUSIVE HEDGE-FUND TYCOON BEHIND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY“.   Extreme right-wing ideologues, Bannon and Mercer would like to destroy the existing governmental infrastructure.  See also this article from McClatchy by Peter Stone and Greg Gordon,  “FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites” which suggests that Russian operatives may have used Breitbart and other right-wing media outlets to disseminate their misinformation.

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who resigned in disgrace after lying about his contacts with the Russian Ambassador.  Flynn is well described by Nicholas Schmidle’s New Yorker article, “Michael Flynn, General Chaos.”  Read the Schmidle article for its insights on Trump’s attraction to a right-wing nutcase and Islamaphobe.

Former advisor to the Trump campaign on foreign policy, Carter Page.  What you need to know about Page is in the Washington Post article by Julie Pace, “Ex-Trump adviser Carter Page at center of Russia storm“.   Like Manafort, Page left the Trump campaign when his Russian connections became too visible.

And Trump himself?  How Trump does business, and with whom, is set out in an article in The New Yorker by Adam Davidson, “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal“,  which presents substantial evidence that Trump, himself, violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in partnering with the Mammadov family in investments in a Trump Hotel project in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Looks like a flock to me.

Jane Mayer exposes Robert Mercer

Robert Mercer’s Sea Owl

Jane Mayer, New Yorker staff writer and author of “Dark Money”, has now written a piece for the  March 27 New Yorker, THE RECLUSIVE HEDGE-FUND TYCOON BEHIND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY.  Like “Dark Money”, which describes how Citizens United opened the flood gates to the right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers to buy into politics, the latest article, on hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, describes how Mercer’s money and computer savy were instrumental in the rise of Donald Trump.  We are in “know your enemy” territory – the successful buying and subverting of our Democracy did not happen out of chance, but out of cunning.  The forces that created it are still at work – they are rich and smart and they dominate the field.  If we want our country to represent pluralistic values rather than the twisted fantasies of right-wing extremists, the time to expose them, confront them,  take them on, and defeat them is now.

Here are some excerpts.  On Mercer’s origin on the national scene: “Mercer is the co-C.E.O. of Renaissance Technologies, which is among the most profitable hedge funds in the country. A brilliant computer scientist, he helped transform the financial industry through the innovative use of trading algorithms.”  Read that again.  Mercer made his money from computer algorithms that gave him a decisive advantage in playing the stock market.  Very smart.  Probably legal.  But it also means that his fund was, in effect, able to extract money from the market with access to information – the computer algorithms – that an average investor did not have access to.  No, it is not insider trading, but in terms of undermining the investibility of the market, it has the same effect.  When his computer trades with you, he has a critical advantage that will make money at your expense.  Doesn’t that undermine the very concept of the market as an investment vehicle for anyone who does not have access to Mercer’s algorithm?  Will you invest if you know the buyer has a house advantage?

Mayer goes on to describe how Citizens United gave Mercer free rein to use his new found wealth to influence politics and then details Mercer’s gravitation to right-wing politics and kooky ideas.   For example, “[Nick Patterson, a former senior Renaissance employee]  also recalled Mercer arguing that, during the Gulf War, the U.S. should simply have taken Iraq’s oil, “since it was there.” Trump, too, has said that the U.S. should have “kept the oil.” Expropriating another country’s natural resources is a violation of international law. Another onetime senior employee at Renaissance recalls hearing Mercer downplay the dangers posed by nuclear war. Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the immediate blast zones, the radiation actually made Japanese citizens healthier. The National Academy of Sciences has found no evidence to support this notion. Nevertheless, according to the onetime employee, Mercer, who is a proponent of nuclear power, ‘was very excited about the idea, and felt that it meant nuclear accidents weren’t such a big deal.’”

Or this on Mercer’s racial views: “Mercer strongly supported the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Trump’s Attorney General. Many civil-rights groups opposed the nomination, pointing out that Sessions has in the past expressed racist views. Mercer, for his part, has argued that the Civil Rights Act, in 1964, was a major mistake. According to the onetime Renaissance employee, Mercer has asserted repeatedly that African-Americans were better off economically before the civil-rights movement. (Few scholars agree.) He has also said that the problem of racism in America is exaggerated. The source said that, not long ago, he heard Mercer proclaim that there are no white racists in America today, only black racists.”

Or this:  “Another former high-level Renaissance employee said, ‘Bob thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.’”

Mayer goes on at length to detail the rise of Mercer’s political influence, his part in the funding and creation of Breitbart, his use of computer algorithms for political purposes, and his de facto take over of the Trump campaign through Steve Bannon when Trump Chief of Staff Paul Manafort was forced to resign because of his activities in the Ukraine.

All fascinating not-to-miss information, a critical base if we are to take on the new American oligarchs and restore a pluralistic democracy.