Friday, December 28, 2018

The Selling of U.S. Foreign Policy

In "A Telling Reveal", Josh Marshall's take on Trump's response to a question on how the U.S. withdrawal from Syria will impact Israel winds up thus:

"The Saudis and the Israelis have been the pillars of a regional alliance that Trump has backed fulsomely. But reading the tea leaves here strongly suggests it’s the Saudis driving Trump’s policies in the region, with the Turks and the Russians playing a more contingent second role. Trump’s aggressive/defensive response to this question, and implicitly to Netanyahu, is quite telling."

But that is not quite accurate. Understanding Trump foreign policy in the traditional sense - separate from his personal financial interest - is a flawed approach. So discussing his policy " in the region" is always going to be off. He doesn't have a policy for "the region". He has a policy for "the family".

Trump's foreign policy caters first to those willing to pay - the oligarchs who have the power to confiscate wealth in their own countries - Putin and bin Salman (allied with UAE crown prince) - and who are not subject to the whims of an electorate. Erdogan, still consolidating power and not in the same category of excess wealth, is necessarily driven to a back seat. A second circle.

So the inner circle of corrupt exercise of power remains - Trump, bin Salman, Putin. That is the Triangular Alliance to watch. The strong alliance of bin Salman with UAE, reflected in their ability to act as surrogates for each other at meetings of the secret Trump alliances, counts those two as a single entity for this analysis.

Outside the inner circle, those jockeying for influence, often with success are Israel and Turkey.
Qatar, of course, qualifies as a player in Trump world because they have money to spend. But Qatar, as a rival of Saudi/UAE seems to have lost the battle for influence with Trump. Another big loser in this is Iran because the ascendance of the Saudis and the apparent decision by Putin to cut Iran loose to bolster Russian power and influence elsewhere in the Middle East as permitted by Trump.



Thursday, December 27, 2018

Triangular Trade

The Daily Beast reports: Get Ready for Mueller's Phase Two: The Middle East Connection:

In court filings that are set to drop in early 2019, prosecutors will begin to unveil Middle Eastern countries’ attempts to influence American politics, three sources familiar with this side of the probe told The Daily Beast.

In other words, the “Russia investigation” is set to go global.

But the items Mueller is investigating have long been in the public domain, waiting for investigative journalists to connect the dots and ask questions.

"While one part of the Mueller team has indicted Russian spies and troll-masters, another cadre has been spending its time focusing on how Middle Eastern countries pushed cash to Washington politicos in an attempt to sway policy under President Trump’s administration."

OK, but from the moment Jared Kushner was appointed to seek "peace in the Middle East", questions should have been raised about team Trump's motivation. Jared Kushner was heavily in debt at the time and needed money. News accounts at the time generally ridiculed the selection of Kushner as Middle East envoy, but what if that was just a cover for doing family business in the region? The family Trump only cares about money, not the United States.

"Various witnesses affiliated with the Trump campaign have been questioned about their conversations with deeply connected individuals from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, according to people familiar with the probe. Topics in those meetings ranged from the use of social-media manipulation to help install Trump in the White House to the overthrow of the regime in Iran."

The article mentions Flynn's role working for Trump, meeting representatives of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

But then the article steps back slightly, before proceeding,

"Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said it is unclear if Mueller’s team will unveil nefarious foreign activity beyond what normally occurs in Washington."

See what they did there? That's how balance works. Take two steps forward, then one step back. But treating Trump and his family as anything close to normal is actually irresponsible, given the extraordinary evidence of likely extreme wrongdoing. If Trump is so unlike any other president, why is it necessary to compare him with other presidents or "Washington" when sifting through the evidence?

The Daily Beast article mentions certain operatives - Zamel of Israel, and George Nader with ties to the Middle East,

"Mueller has also probed Nader’s role in the January 2017 Seychelles meeting between Prince and Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. In his House testimony, Prince said the meeting was a chance encounter and the two met to talk about trade and mineral wealth. But prosecutors this year received evidence that showed the meeting was premeditated. Communications reviewed by The Daily Beast reflect that narrative.

A memo shows the two spoke about a range of topics, including peace between Ukraine and Russia, military operations in Syria, investment in the Midwest, and nuclear weapons. Although RDIF is under U.S. sanctions, it was and is still legal for U.S. individuals to meet with Dmitriev, and, in some circumstances, do business with the fund."

The most telling evidence is the denials about the meetings. The famous Trump tower meeting of June 9, 2016 was supposedly about "Russian adoptions" according to Don Jr., Adoptions probably were mentioned because it was the least important topic discussed as part of removing U.S. sanctions in exchange for release of the emails and other favors.

And the January 2017 Seychelles meeting was initially described, in part, as a chance encounter. Look at the  attendees, per Vox:
Eric Prince
MBZ, or Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of the UAE
George Nader
Kirill Dmitriev, manager of a $10 billion sovereign wealth fund

So, common sense tells you the meeting, held in the Seychelles just as Trump is assuming the presidency, takes place in the most remote possible place on earth because secrecy is paramount. The Russian representative is there to offer cash. The UAE representative (and Saudi ally) is there to offer cash. And Prince is there to accept cash for services.

This is just one of several "mysterious" meetings involving a representative of team Trump and representatives of at least two other countries with cash to give.

What better way to hide Trump's foreign policy for cash trades than to use multiple conduits - multiple countries - to conceal the transactions.

Trump has been so anxious to limit the Mueller probe to Russia. Not only has Trump traded foreign policy favors for cash from Russia. Not only has he traded with Saudi Arabia/UAE, playing them off against Qatar, but team Trump has conspired with Russia and Saudi Arabia (and possibly others) in concert.  His team has forged secret multi-state alliances of the U.S. with other countries that no other U.S. persons other than his family members know about.

Another interesting link between Russia and Saudi Arabia is Dimitry Rybolovlev.
Rybolovlev bought a Trump Florida estate for $95 million as the real estate market teetered that Trump had bought in 2004 for $41 million.
Ryboloblev bought the Davini for $125 million and sold it to a proxy for bin Salman for $450 million.  It had been appraised at about $100 million though doubts about its authenticity persist.

What better way to launder money than right there in the open. Would that Mueller or other authorities would investigate the "second" bidder who helped drive up the price of the Salvator Mundi at auction.

Then there is the other Trump tower meeting that is often overlooked. As reported by Seth Abramson  in Newsweek,
"A second area of inquiry involves spring 2018 reporting from the New York Times that on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met in Trump Tower with George Nader, an emissary from the Crown Princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; Erik Prince, a Trump national security adviser and later an envoy from Trump to a top Russian oligarch; and Joel Zamel, an Israeli business intelligence expert with ties to both Russian oligarchs and Israeli intelligence officers. At the meeting, both Nader and Zamel offered collusive assistance to Trump’s campaign; according to the Times, Trump Jr. reacted favorably to both offers. Zamel, who had in the past attempted to recruit Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn into his intelligence-gathering outfit, offered Trump Jr. a clandestine propaganda and domestic disinformation campaign that mirrored the one Russian trolls ultimately delivered in the final three months of the general election."

George Nader and Erik Prince involved yet again. This time, Joel Zamel, a veteran of Israeli intelligence is there, but the Russian connections are represented by proxy - through Nader and Zamel.

Abramson continues:

"If the Steele dossier and relevant reporting since its January 2017 publication are to be believed, Kushner personally benefited from this collusion in the form of hundreds of millions in Qatari Investment Authority-backed loans. This means that not only Trump’s historically pro-Russia foreign policy, but also certain policy decisions Trump made in 2017 and 2018 that were favorable to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel must be investigated."

By all appearances, the secret triangular alliance among Trump/Putin?Saudi(with UAE) is supplemented by active measures to join by Israel and Turkey (more to come on that). The losers in all of this are the traditional U.S. partners in NATO, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and, by the way, the United States of America.

And don't forget that Trump found a way to eliminate the most experienced FBI investigators during the past two years: Comey, McCabe, and Strzok and has applied enormous pressure on the employment of Bruce Ohr.


Friday, December 14, 2018

Innocent Explanations

"Trump Inaugural Fund and Super PAC Said to Be Scrutinized for Illegal Foreign Donations" reads the NYTimes headline. The second paragraph raises alarm bells for anyone who has paid attention to the Trump team ties to the various factions on the Saudi peninsula:

"The inquiry focuses on whether people from Middle Eastern nations — including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — used straw donors to disguise their donations to the two funds. Federal law prohibits foreign contributions to federal campaigns, political action committees and inaugural funds."

Makes you think about the secret meeting during the interregnum when Erik Prince just "happened" to be in the Seychelles along with Saudi and Russian operatives. And Jared Kushner's close ties to bin Salman. And the shifting sands of U.S. policy toward the Saudis and Emirates vis-a-vis Qatar. Have those two sides been in a bidding war fostered by the family Trump to obtain favorable U.S. policies? And who really bailed out the Kushner family investment in 666 Fifth Avenue?

Now we heard about the excess Trump inauguration funds a long time ago, and we know that Trump lies all the time, which we normally associate with wrongdoing and attempts to cover up, and we know about actual hush money and have for a long time. But let's tread lightly here if we are the New York Times...

As the story builds and brings in Trump's billionaire friend Tom Barrack,  we are told:

'“Tom has never talked with any foreign individual or entity for the purposes of raising money for or obtaining donations related to either the campaign, the inauguration or any such political activity,” said Owen Blicksilver, a spokesman for Mr. Barrack.'

Wait. Tom has never "talked"? Why "talked"? "Talked" refers to the spoken word. Did he text or write a foreign individual, or work through an intermediary who happens to be an American - maybe his own Michael Cohen if he has one? Sort of reminiscent of "I have no business in Russia" which avoids the answer to the question, "But does Russia have business in you?"

They sort of go there, as shown below. But there's so much more:

"Prosecutors from New York and from Mr. Mueller’s team have asked witnesses whether anyone from Qatar or other Middle Eastern countries also contributed money, perhaps using American intermediaries. Among other issues, they asked about a Mediterranean cruise that Mr. Barrack and Mr. Manafort took after Mr. Manafort was fired in August 2016 from the Trump campaign because of a scandal over his previous work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Mr. Manafort was in serious financial trouble at the time, and Mr. Barrack, who has an extensive business network in the Persian Gulf, may have been attempting to help him find clients."

See what the NYT reporters did there in the last sentence {bold added]? They might as well write "There may be an innocent explanation to all of this. Maybe Mr. Barrack felt sorry for poor Mr. Manafort and was only trying to find him work after he got fired from the campaign."

Note how the reporters feel free to come up with their own innocent explanations for the behavior -- going beyond claims these individuals even make on their own behalf. This is related to the NYT policy that requires extreme caution when reviewing facts, lest speculation lead to unfounded conspiracy theories. But the result is unfounded non-conspiracy theories. Despite mounds of evidence that suggests otherwise, NYT reporters are required to tack toward the innocent explanation. The big problem with that is that these reporters create doubt about guilt that does not seem justified under any interpretation of the facts. A more reasonable conclusion would be that large amounts of money has flowed to team Trump through a variety of means that includes the inauguration fund and the super PAC Rebuilding America Now  (both mentioned in the NYT article), purchased of condos by Russians, and other possible money laundering. If the NYT is reluctant to document the preponderance of the evidence that suggests massive money laundering, they would do well to avoid speculation altogether.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Pivot to the General

In "Agents of doubt :How a powerful Russian propaganda machine chips away at Western notions of truth" Joby Warrick and Anton Troianovski construct a powerful evidence-based narrative.

They begin the story with a compelling timeline graphic that separately documents the actions of Russian officials and Russian media alongside the contemporaneous events in Britain. As they point out "Russian media have disseminated as many as 46 false stories" about the Skripal nerve gas attack in Britain. And, using the projection method popular with certain elements in the West, "Moscow has repeatedly rejected [the] accusations, while suggesting that Britain is responsible for any confusion over what happened in the Skripal case."

The WaPo writers explain that the problem goes well beyond the attempted murders of the Skripals.

"Yet the same tactics that were observed in the wake of the Skripal poisoning have been employed multiple times since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, in each case following roughly the same script. When pro-Russian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew members, Russian officials and media outlets sought to pin the blame on the Ukrainian government, suggesting at one point that corpses had been trucked to the crash site to make the death toll appear higher."

So far so good. Great reporting.

But the car goes off the road. Here we go:

"While many of the individual stories are easily debunked, the campaigns have had a discernible impact, as measured by opinion polls and, occasionally, public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments. In October 2015, months after U.S. and European investigators concluded that Flight 17 had been brought down by a Russian missile fired by separatists, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told CNN that the culprit was “probably Russia” but suggested that the truth was unknowable."

Wait. Why are the authors suggesting that the doubt expressed by Donald Trump about Russian responsibility for the downing of Flight 17 is somehow a representative example of successful sowing of doubt by the Kremlin in presumed rational Western leadership? Surely the authors have noticed that Donald Trump leans heavily toward Russian in his public pronouncements and actions. And that a full scale Justice Department investigation of Team Trump ties to Russia is proceeding apace.

Notice that the authors avoided quoting Trump's nonstop "doubts" about  the findings of U.S. intelligence regarding Russia's avid support of candidate Trump in the 2016 election with the distribution of the hacked DNC emails. "It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

Unfortunately, the WaPo, similar to the NYT, employs the dubious standard - we only know what we know for sure and anything we suspect about a politician needs to be treated as false. As a result, the opposite of what we suspect needs to be treated as true. Therefore, if we suspect that Trump and his team collaborated actively with Russia (We actually know this, by the way, but, whatever), and we are trying to discuss the reaction of Western leaders to Russian propaganda, we do not know Trump's complicity for sure, so when Trump expresses doubt about the facts that contradict Russian propaganda, we can use Trump's expressions of doubt as a solid example of confusion in the West rather than as a clear example of collaboration with Russia to advance his own personal interests.

In other words, if journalists want to assume Trump may be innocent of any particular wrongdoing, even in the face of all available evidence, that does not justify a presumption that Trump is definitiely innocent. Assuming someone may be innocent does not mean the person is innocent and does not justify coming to conclusions that are only true if the person is innocent.

Adding insult to injury, from a journalistic perspective, this device of presumed innocence creates a false frame that Trump is definitely innocent of any collaboration with Russia, criminal or otherwise.

One indicator of the logical flaw shows up in the statement "public statements by Western politicians casting doubt on the findings of the intelligence agencies of their own governments." followed immediately by a single flawed example - Donald Trump. The logical fallacy here is the pivot to the general - drawing a general conclusion from a specific case where more careful objective analysis of the specific case would yield a different conclusion. This pivot from the specific to the general is often used by conservatives as a debating tactic to avoid reasonable evidence-based inferences. (more to come on that in future posts.)

As a journalistic failure, this logically flawed practice is related to the problem of minimalism given context in The Problem With Appearances. Reporters assume the best is true if they do not know for certain that the worst is true.

This is not the first time WaPo has employed this dubious journalistic standard that results in implied false conclusions. While WaPo has been head and shoulders above the NYT the past two years, this example is particularly egregious because Trump, together with Fox News, and in support of the Kremlin has been the key operative in the West to create as much confusion as possible about the facts. As a consequence, this journalistic breach, repeated yet again, is deserving of a "Bottomless Pinnocchio".

Monday, December 10, 2018

Doubling Down on Doubling Down

Jay Rosen succinctly prescribes one solution to the bafflement of the mainstream press in dealing with Trump:
"Don't let him be your assignment editor." (At 2:30.)

If only the fact checker at the Washington Post was paying attention.

Trump doubles down on lies all the time. The constant lying is a way to deny reality, distract from the malfeasance of his team, deflect attention from important issues to unimportant or irrelevant matters, and to accuse a political opponent or the press, usually falsely or in a grossly misleading way of doing some wrong thing.  Unfortunately, if there is the slightest veracity or mere appearance of relevance to Trump's false claim, our mainstream press feels compelled to analyze the Trumpian statement in excruciating detail. By that point, Trump has succeeded in derailing the press from their mission by controlling the narrative, the constant drumbeat that he uses to keep his supporters agitated, aggravated, on edge, and fearful or hateful as the case may be.

Thus, fact checking of Trump by the press makes no sense as a reporting method because it gives Trump exactly what he wants, helping him to achieve the goals of his communications effort - satisfying supporters and confusing some opponents.

Early on, the press was mystified by Trump's doubling down on his lies. Surely fact checking would expose Trump as a fraud (but we can't call him a fraud, despite the preponderance of the evidence - we are a free press, after all, who must recoil from anything that smacks as an opinion, even when the verifiable conclusions are clear.)

So what does the WaPo do after all these years of fact checking have proved insufficient to derail Trump's false narratives? When Trump doubles down, they double down too -- on fact checking!

Wapo calls their latest invention the "Bottomless Pinnochio". When four Pinnochios are not enough.

From the WaPo fact checker ---"Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again"

How exactly does "bottomless Pinnocchio do anything that 5 or even 10 Pinnochios would not accomplish?

Any reader who is not convinced by four Pinnochios will not be convinced by a bottomless Pinocchio. And, by covering the lies in this manner, as statements that are considered with regard to their veracity instead of statements that Trump makes to deny, distract, deflect, and/or accuse, that is, statements that are made tactically, WaPo continues to fail to cover Trump responsibly ( or any politician who operates in bad faith) in the manner in which they deserve --- which is the coverage that the readership deserves.

See also: "Hothead But Not a Liar II - Tactics for Truth" for coverage of similar WaPo fact checking flaws and apt comments of  the linguist George Lakoff.
And for more about deny, distract, accuse and masterful narrative control, see:
Birtherism as a Service (BaaS)


Saturday, December 8, 2018

O Biased Fool!

The problems with mainstream media headlines are many.
Hears the title of an Opinion piece in WaPo:
Count me as one Democrat who thinks Trump made an excellent choice in William Barr

If that's what the writer believes, and the article makes a series of arguments, why don't the editors go with:
"Trump made an excellent choice in William Barr"

The original title implies - you, dear reader, may find the following article worth reading and the arguments more compelling because they are made by a member of one "side" who takes a position more common on the other "side".

But if a set of arguments is compelling, they need to stand on their own and by implying greater credibility of a writer's arguments based on resisting his own presumed bias, the editors of the WaPo are feeding the beast of false balance:

-There are two equal and opposite sides in politics.
-Everyone is either a Republican or a Democrat with biases.
-No one who is a Republican or a Democrat is able to be objective without submission to their own biases.
...
which, in the age of Trump as the apotheosis of Republican strategy over the past few decades has led to:
-All politicians lie sometimes.
-Trump is a liar, but Obama lied too.

Which is the place where nonsense reigns supreme. And in this particular case, if you, dear reader are a Democrat or vote for Democrats and oppose the nomination of William Barr, you do not have full standing to disagree with me, the writer of this piece, because I am admirably going against my natural biases just as you are succumbing to yours, O biased fool.

Friday, December 7, 2018

Election Security

The WaPo editorial board dishes us complete and utter nonsense in "The NRCC hack shows that election security is a bipartisan problem".

The big problem is the misframing of the issue.

The first sentence "PRESIDENT TRUMP may claim that Democratic incompetence was to blame for hacks of the party’s systems during the 2016 election."

Wait, why are we starting the discussion with a claim from the president who lies instinctively about every issue every day? Letting Trump set the framing of the issue is a complete mistake, but understandable if your WaPo antiquated editorial standards require you to take the view from nowhere.  The problem with that approach is that the lead nudges the reader to think about the claim - is it true? is it false? is it misleading? In what way might the claim make sense? But in light of the Russian cyberattacks on Democrats in 2016 that assisted with the installation of an increasingly authoritarian Republican regime, lending credence to the Trump claim by even mentioning it makes absolutely no sense.

WaPo editors, like the NYT editors , are inclined to view the world from a comfortable distance, with a presumed symmetry between two parties - Democrats and Republicans. (Incidentally, what would they do if there happened to be three large parties in the U.S.? Would the moderate party always be the right one and the other two always wrong when they disagreed with the middle path?)

The WaPo claim that "the NRCC hack shows that election security is a bipartisan problem" has its own problems.

What would WaPo have said four or five days ago, before the hack was revealed? It's a bipartisan issue, but we are waiting for a hack of Republicans to have "proof"?

What does WaPo mean by bipartisan problem?  Both "sides" should be able to agree because both "sides" have a strong interest in stopping hacking within the U.S. By now, WaPo editorial board should have learned that there are many issues where both "sides" have aligned interests, but somehow do not agree. WaPo would do better to try harder to understand and explain why it is so, instead of following the constant drumbeat that stems from an insistence on belief in two equal and opposite "sides" - that the world of America is divided into two equal and opposite parties that disagree most of the time, but can agree on compromise, if only they can put aside their differences.

Republicans in government found long ago that it suits their agenda to ignore actual discussion of policy issues and instead focus on winning through better marketing which meant taking down their political opponents with personal attacks that effectively distract attention from policy issues and arguments.

The WaPo editorial continues:
"It is, in fact, an issue for everyone in the United States, demanding a broad response from Congress and political actors across the board. 

Congress has done too little since 2016 to shore up election cybersecurity. Actions to increase the integrity of voting systems are regrettably stalled. Voting machines are not the only critical infrastructure under threat: There is no minimum federal standard for the cybersecurity of campaigns or parties, and there is no single dedicated agency responsible for overseeing how those organizations protect their information — or don’t. There’s a money problem, too: Without federal help, cash-strapped campaigns and state election systems lack the resources to guard themselves."

Congress has failed to act because Congress has been controlled by Republicans who benefited in 2016 from the Russian conspiracy of cyber attacks on the U.S. Setting that crucial fact aside ignores the larger problem that some Republican officeholders have purposely looked to the side while other Republicans actively participated in the attacks on the U.S. electoral system. Ignoring this stark fact with an appeal to "bipartisanship" in this editorial is complete nonsense.

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Republicans Redefine Elections

"Stung by Election Losses, Republicans in the States Seek a Way to Neutralize Democrats" reads the NYT headline.
source: random house dictionary

"Stung by losses...". Think about the meaning of that purported objective news blurb.
Feeling hurt and sad, a little depressed perhaps - and only due to their hurt feelings, Republicans in the State legislatures that have a majority in the current lame duck session and, thanks to gerrymandering, in the upcoming legislative session, Republicans who received a minority of votes in certain states while maintaining a legislative majority, have passed laws that the current lame duck governor will sign, in order to eliminate gubernatorial powers that these Republicans want to deprive the newly elected governor - powers that the majority of voters were fine with - powers that these same Republicans were fine with, if and only if, the next governor was going to be a Republican.

Being "stung" asserts a feeling and that headline implies a cause and effect relationship. Only because of their hurt feelings, Republicans are doing things they might not otherwise do. The headline is subjective, not objective, a subjective thought that, according to NYT journalistic standards, belongs in an Opinion piece, not the headline to a hard news story. But the Times pulls back and casually observes each Republican step in its own solitary universe, without regard to a pattern of increasing anti-democratic behavior. How can we downplay this latest Republican maneuver in order to maintain our casual air of objectivity?

So voters in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan are denied the fruits of their ballots because Republicans are willing to act against the majority to change the laws that control the separation of powers - the very functioning of State government. Reps are only able to do this because the government has lame duck sessions as a means of assuring a smooth transition between legislatures. The existence of the lame duck is based on a basic trust,  the proposition that we are all in this together, that no one would think to take advantage of the lame duck to thwart the will of the people expressed at the ballot. But that is yet one more step in the destruction of a functioning democracy.

Feeling hurt, wounded and in pain, Republicans ....

Why not "Desperate to hold onto their minority rule and thwarting the will of the majority of voters, Republicans in the legislature are usingthe lame duck session...." ?

Republican tactics that are used to hold on to power are becoming more extreme. The more extreme and dangerous the tactics, the more the NYT news writers feel compelled to downplay the gravity of the threat to democracy, ostensibly because objective news writers must sound calm. But if you try harder to appear calm than you try to be accurate, you will find that it becomes too late to fix your reporting because it is too late to do anything to save functioning democracy.


Friday, November 23, 2018

Demonization as a Both Sides Thing

Joe Scarborough, who pilloried Hillary Clinton for years, had his own interesting twist on good people on “both sides” for his Thanksgiving moment:



But claiming “both sides” are hesitant to enter public service is off base in a few different ways.
Yes, effective office holders who are qualified to run for President on the Democratic ticket may be hesitant to run for fear of being demonized. But the Republican Party has demonstrated that you, too can win the Party nomination if you are unqualified, incompetent, corrupt, and adept at distracting voters from your sheer awfulness with obtuse, yet vicious demonization of your opponents. Scarborough’s tweet implies that this is a peculiarly trumpian phenomenon,  it Trump is simply the logical consequence of Republican electoral strategy over the course of several decades. And nothing suggests that we are ever going back. It would have been more accurate to suggest that good people can feel discouraged from running for the Democratic nomination for president and bad people can feel encouraged to run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Election Fallout

We are getting some interesting post-election fallout.

Doug Heye, whose HarvardKennedySchool bio touts "In 2010, Heye served as communications director of the Republican National Committee. Heye excelled in his handling of multiple large-scale public relations crises and pursuing an aggressive media strategy", citing as an example that he "was a player in the 2010[sic] Florida Recount, participating in Miami/Dade’s famed “Brooks Brothers Revolt."

Since when do Republican strategists, current or former, so readily admit to an active measure. It's obvious they aggressively kneecap Pelosi precisely because she is so effective, but to admit the truth? Never. But times change.

Their target audience is not just voters - giving loyal Republicans, especially Trumpists a target for all that hate, but Democratic members of Congress foolish enough not to perceive their game. For Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and others, it's hard to ignore that constant frame of the "hated" Pelosi, which crowds out the accurate frame of the "effective" Pelosi.






Wednesday, November 14, 2018

One of these "Senators" Is Not Like the Others

Conservatives understand the power of the frame and manage to keep one step ahead of their opponents in this realm. In 2000, the Miami Dade demonstrations on behalf of democracy looked like this:
But Democrats caught on and, after some research, this not-so-spontaneous demonstration late came to look like this:
This showing by Republican operatives who descended on the Miami/Dade vote count has been dubbed the Brooks Brothers Riot, a mocking label that is unusually catchy and apt for one affixed to a group of Republicans.

In 2018, with Republicans again determined to stop counting votes in Florida, another "spontaneous" riot might not fool folks quite so easily. As Bush the Younger has taught us  "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.'"

No, do not misunderestimate Republicans. You can count on Mitch McConnell, inventor of the 'Biden rule' to set the frame:
source:CNBC


"We're here this morning to welcome our six new Republican Senators." said McConnell. Notice how MSNBC repeats the framing with their chyron, doing the work for McConnell in the photo, even while noting that Scott is not elected as of this date:
source:CNBC
MCCONNELL WELCOMES NEW
GOP SENATORS TO HIS OFFICE

Actually, McConnell welcomes new GOP Senators-elect and purported Senator-elect Rick Scott to his office, but that is a mouthful. By being the first to set the frame, by framing Scott as the elected Senator, McConnell puts Democrats on the defensive. By casually grouping Scott with the five elected Senators in a photo op, McConnell visually removes any doubt about Scott's current status, despite the continuing counting of votes in the Florida senatorial election. This photo op puts Democrats in a defensive posture, having to insist on the legitimacy of vote counting.

This jumping to the front of the line -pretending that something exists that does not and something that does exist does not - is something Democrats never do. It's not in their nature. Democrats are more inclined to work within reality. Republicans do whatever it takes to win, and if that means embracing an alternative to reality, so be it. But it works.

News organizations like CNBC could react to a staged photo of a meeting that is designed solely to frame this issue, with their own more accurate label that recognizes how they are being used by McConnell. How about:
ONE OF THESE 'SENATORS' IS
NOT LIKE THE OTHERS


Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Warning Signs of Failing Journalism

In About this Blog we refer to red flags as public statements or actions by public officials or their supporters that are better explained by the Six Points model than the current left-right equivalence model.". We can overcome the problems indicated by these red flags if other responsible parties understand how their role needs to adapt to this environment. An example of a red flag is the singling out of opponents such as the Washington Post (usually personalized by Trump in Jeff Bezos or Amazon as a corporation) and CNN's Jim Acosta.

When journalists continue to behave in accord with outmoded journalistic standards of objectivity, certain missteps and shortcuts that worked in the distant past stand out as warning signs.

Certain phrases frequently used by journalists are such warning signs.

Without evidence has been discussed here. Journalists who use that phrase in their reporting are ducking responsibility.

Both sides has been discussed extensively in posts with the label False Balance.

"The president believes" is a phrase journalists frequently use. But reporters have no idea what the president believes, or anyone else for that matter. We know what people say and do and may draw conclusions, but those conclusions are opinions, at least if these same reporters cared to apply their standards regarding the separation of fact from opinion consistently. In the case of this president, who appears to have no core beliefs in the sense we expect of most all human beings, attempting to isolate "beliefs" he may have and to state that he has them is a convenient shortcut, but such a statement is unprovable and likely false or meaningless.

Kevin Cirilli is guilty of this journalistic malpractice. Today he reported from the Capitol that "This is a president who believes that that type of rhetoric will help him not just with his base but in swing states..." If that is the case, where is the quote from Trump? Why not play the video of that statement? Because the video does not exist, Cirilli is observing Trump's behavior and attributing both motive and calculation, when a reasonable observer might otherwise observe ---this is the president's behavior. He fires up the base. Win or lose, he claims victory. The reality is that this president lies all the time and as Paul Krugman writes today[emphasis added]:

"Do Republicans really believe that there were vast numbers of fraudulent or forged ballots? Even asking that question is a category error. They don’t “really believe” anything, except that they should get what they want. Any vote count that might favor a Democrat is bad for them; therefore it’s fraudulent, no evidence needed."

So what's the big deal with these journalistic shortcuts? They occur right at the juncture where the lies and reality collide. When honest reporting fails there, it fails at exactly the place where the public record can most readily be set straight. Attributing beliefs to Trump, ironically without evidence, out of journalistic laziness normalizes him without justification. Journalists and their editors consider this acceptable, not just for convenience, but because covering Trump without always trying to normalize grossly abnormal human behavior, even accurately, would violate their requirement to soften factual reporting that might come across as opinion because it is grossly negative - critical of Trump by its very nature, which we cover in The Problem with Appearances.

In the end, instead of fact checking the statements made by Trump, journalists need to reality check their own writing.

More to follow in a related vein: "Critics of the president" and "What Democrats need to do"


Monday, November 12, 2018

Without Evidence is Not Good Enough

"Without evidence, Trump alleges forged ballots in Florida, calls for halting recounts" reads the top headline in the Washington Post. There it is again. It never stops. That pesky qualifier "Without evidence..." followed by an outrageous claim.

So that frames the issue as two sides, where one side introduces a new topic - a charge of a crime, so far an nonexistent crime --- "without evidence" gives it away.  Pretending your political opponent has committed a crime tells  us that you, the accuser may just as credibly be committing a crime and covering it up by being the first to frame the issue (see Lakoff) or maybe just "suppressing" the counting of ballots.

What is a legitimate news organization to do?

The Miami Herald's "Trump, Scott and Rubio continue to push claims of Florida voter fraud without evidence" does better. But something is missing.

First of all, center every story on the most credible narrative at the moment, not on the most outrageous statement or action of Trump or anyone else. Make the headline reflect that reality. As part of that effort, resist the impulse to center the subject of the headline on a person making a claim. If the process is so important, which voting is, then make the headline about that to improve the accuracy and the reader's best understanding of what is happening.

So remove Trump as the subject of the sentence. Make it Election, Ballots, Voting, or Voters.

"Without evidence.." should never be the start or even part of a headline on any important matter. Never.

Accurate count of Florida ballot threatened by unsubstantiated claims of Trump, Scott, and Rubio.

That's better, but something is still missing.

Isn't making accusations without any evidence an "outrageous" claim? How hard would it be to cite evidence if the claim has any credibility? Then call it "outrageous" when it is outrageous.

Accurate count of Florida ballot for Senator and Governor threatened by outrageous claims of Trump, Scott, and Rubio.

That's it! And isn't that the real story?

Sunday, November 11, 2018

It's the Fact Pattern, Stupid!

Let's take a look at this tweet from Adam Goldman of NYTimes fame:


Some of the replies are apt. What the Times might call "critics of Mr. Goldman go into detail about contrasts between Whitaker and Robert Kennedy with persuasive arguments, but the most compelling is "this is classic whataboutism". When the president does this, it's all about distraction, denial, deflection, and accusations. When a reporter does it on behalf of the President because NYT reporting standards so dictate, then he or she is carrying his water.

Goldman's tweet and the referenced article demonstrate the problem that false balance creates as it feeds into the favored narrative of this president. Clearly, the Times method of political reporting  requires looking at something Trump does and then, instead of a laser like focus on the context, dictates that they research comparable actions that a Democrat took as president. Due to the power of framing, magnified by any mention of the Kennedy's, this creates a greater persuader for the argument - See, the Democrats did it, so it is all right. And even if it's not all right, the Democrats do it and there is nothing you can do because that's politics. Or, more dangerously - "see, it happens all the time, so Trump is not as bad as you think, Democrats. And, moderate Republicans, nothing to worry about here - go back to your personal business and good times!"

The proper context requires reporting the nomination of Matthew Whitaker as part of a sequence of actions to quash Mueller's investigation. It's a fact pattern, stupid! Many of those steps were taken under false pretenses, which includes the firings of Comey, McCabe, and Strzok, and significantly, the appointment of Whitaker as AG Sessions' chief of staff a year ago.

A WaPo piece that places the Whitaker appointment in proper context ( and which could go much further, but for the constraints of space) is Aaron Blake's "Almost everything about Matthew Whitaker’s appointment is problematic". I know, it make's you wonder. You say, "Aaron, how is it you do not mention Bobby Kennedy in your article?"

Now, the NYT article by Mark Landler that mentions Kennedy, goes on to say, "...there was no precedent for installing a political crony as attorney general at the very moment he could decide the fate of a federal investigation involving the president." That's point, New York Times! You don't try to cram the facts into a story that forces balance between two equal and opposite sides in a never-ending search to report equivalance at all times in all things regardless of what the evidence tells us. Instead, examine the evidence and tell us what the truthful narrative is...which requires a careful examination of context. And you do not get to context by going back almost 60 years and starting a debate about the facts of that time and the story those facts may or may not tell, which may or may not compare in important ways.

Thursday, November 8, 2018

With Fear or Favor

We often think of the strength that comes with great numbers of people acting together as one, but there are forces working against that.

Individual journalists were singled out this week by Trump. (OK, there are journalists and"journalists".)

Trump singled out Hannity and friend Pirro for favor, inviting them to join him up onstage at his rally.

And CNNs Jim Acosta was singled out for fear, his White House press credentials revoked.
source:people.com

source:cnn

The details of the treatment of Acosta do not really matter. The Trump White House has been building up to this making CNN and Acosta in particular his punching bag. CNN is the greater threat to Trump, not MSNBC. Trump supporters ignore MSNBC as biased, but CNN has a history of inviting Trump apologists, not just Republicans and conservatives, as talking heads to position themselves as "fair and balanced". That makes CNN harder to ignore.

This is all about the authoritarian demonstration of his power. See, I can revoke your press pass and your livelihood is gone. There is nothing you can do about it. I can lie about my reason for doing this, everyone knows I am lying, and there is still nothing you can do about it. I revoked Brennan's security clearance - a clear demonstration of power, and there was nothing any of you could do about it. In fact, I can grant my son-in-law, Jared Kushner a security clearance, and there is still nothing you can do about that either.  I can fire Comey and any other witnesses Mueller may find to my antics -  McCabe, Strzok. In McCabe's case, firing him just before eligibility for full pension was the point - the intimidation factor matters. And humiliation.  Picture Rex Tillerson getting the news of his firing on the toilet.

Under the authoritarian mentality, I define reality. So each of these victims to my ritual humiliation is made to look weak and, therefore, something of a loser,and therefore someone who is wrong, morally weak and morally wrong. That becomes the frame in which I define truth. The ritual humiliation is important, the signaling ahead of time - Sessions has been dangled for months - that even when you know the hit is coming, there is nothing anyone can do about it.

The authoritarian relies on fear --- and dispersal of the opposition into individual atoms. No one wants to be singled out for the hit and will think twice before taking action against the authoritarian. That's the point.

Greg Sargent explains how this authoritarianism works.




Friday, November 2, 2018

Hothead But Not a Liar II - Tactics for Truth

The Washington Post fact checker tells us President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days So what? Is that different from 323 false or misleading claims? How about 2.3 million false or misleading claims. Well, here at WaPo, we believe in fair and balanced he said/she said journalism. We report the facts and let you decide based on the evidence.

But the only reason to report in detail on so many outright lies is to tell citizens that any reasonable person should not believe anything that Trump says. If Alec Baldwin can be called a "hot-head" in a political news story because he is a hot-head, surely Trump can be called a liar in every news story about him that includes a claim by him. "Lying Donald Trump says a 400 pound man may have done it" or "Lying Donald Trumps says 'maybe it's Tchina'". This approach would eliminate the need for reporters to lamely state "Trump claims, without presenting evidence..." Yeah. No kidding. Without evidence because he lies all the time.

George Lakoff comes as close as anyone to pinning down the news media for their kid gloves treatment of Trump based on his research over decades. Lakoff explains why fact checking is a recipe for failure.  See his Medium piece "A Blitzkrieg Strategy of Lies and Distractions."


Lakoff's writing is compelling:

"Trump’s “big lie” strategy is designed to exploit journalistic convention by providing rapid-fire “news” events for reporters to chase. Trump spews falsehoods in a blitzkrieg fashion, but the lies are only part of the game. What reporters continue to miss is the strategy behind the big lies: to divert attention from big truths. The technique is simple: create controversy and confusion around politically-charged topics to stoke his conservative base and distract from stories that harm Trump.

It’s a numbers game. The more he can get his key terms and images repeated in the media — even as “fact checks” — the more he wins. That’s just how our brains work. The more we hear about something, the more it sticks. Even if it’s not true. When I say “don’t think of an elephant,” it forces you to think of an elephant. Repeating lies, even to debunk them, helps spread and strengthen them. The scientific evidence is clear."

As Lakoff tells us, "Trump’s success is rooted in the media’s tendency to amplify, rather than analyze, his tactics." Lakoff recommends a "truth sandwich", that is, placing the lie between two truths at all times in any coverage, which does not seem adequate either.

Trump's strategy has been enormously successful. Fill in the blank: "Lyin' ___" Or how about "Crooked _______". You don't need help. You know the answers. Funny how the most appropriate and accurate response, though, is 'Trump" in both cases. But that's why he instinctively does that. What better way to distract. And that tells us the best approach. For each specific lie, there is a specific purpose- a denial, distraction, deflection, accusation, and so on that can be identified. In some cases this is speculation, but that is OK. Better to be accurate about treating a tactic as a tactic, which it always is, rather than treat Lyin' Trump's statements as possibly true inputs for the fact checking machine.

Which gets us back to "hot-headed actor Alec Baldwin. OK, if that works, then if Trump makes a claim that is false, and a fact checking reporter determines the statement is false, why not lead that news article with "Lyin' Trump says...". That kind of reporting sounds aggressive, but it would put both Trump and his supporters ( who have by the way embraced lying as a successful tactic) on notice that their little tricks have met some opposition, some tactics for truth. If 10 lies a day does not a liar make, what does? And if the article on Trump does not report Trump lying, then don't refer to him as "Lyin' Trump" in that article. Which is actually a gentle approach, though, to avoid snarkiness, I would suggest "Lying Trump" or "The Lying President" over "Lyin'"

Sometimes Trump is not lying as much as bluffing. This week he felt the need to say that he would raise the troop levels at the border from 5,200 to 15,000. Then he brought up changing the rules of engagement to have troops shoot at anyone who picks up a rock. Wait a second, this caravan of mostly women and children is hundreds of miles away, trying to escape to live in the U.S., and now they are expected to pick up rocks in a threatening manner against the military? of course that makes no sense, but see what he did there?  By raising the stakes, he kept the threat of violence on the people from Central America and away from the white nationalist terrorists who struck this week - one who sent bombs to prominent Democrats, another who committed mass murder at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and yet another who tried to enter a predominately black church, failed, and then murdered a black man and a black woman nearby. My guess is that many Americans missed that last example and many others already forget about it. Trump wants us to forget. And he really does not want us thinking about the two young Saudi women bound together and thrown in the Hudson River off NYC. Because that reminds us about Khashoggi --- and Yemen.

Trump only needs to make his claims and threats to achieve the intended effect - to focus attention on the border with Mexico and away from these horrors.

At the end of the day, political reporting is just one subject of reporting. If the result is deficient, and the truth does not prevail, then remedial action is required. Political reporters who wring their hands and say "We are just doing what we need to do - reporting the facts" are wrong and need to start doing their job. It may not be easy, but it's not as hard as they make it sound.

Hothead But Not a Liar I

Interesting quick take from CNBC on Alec Baldwin's arrest in NYC for punching a person over a parking space. The article refers to "Hot-headed actor Alec Baldwin." (Italics added)That seems fair enough - meaning accurate enough, given some prior documented incidents of aggressive physical behavior.

But "hot-headed" is surely a negative description, and this story appears under the Politics heading as news, not opinion, along with a photo of Baldwin impersonating Trump on Saturday Night Live. As an important player in Democratic politics immediately prior to the mid-term elections, isn't Baldwin a political figure entitled to "both sides" treatment?

This treatment dictates that the reporter highlight antisocial physically aggressive behavior by a prominent Republican, preferably an actor to keep it as parallel as possible. If you can't find a good example of an actor, maybe go with Corey Lewandowski fighting with John Kelly at the White House in February. See - both sides do it. No matter what "it" is.

And if it's the New York Times, you might even pivot to a bland, but misleading generalization in the headline like "Tempers Flare on Both Sides as Mid-term Election Nears" -  rendering the story meaningless.

But Baldwin is not an officeholder, nor is he running for office. Even though the CNBC story falls under a Politics heading (shown below), he is being given the Entertainment treatment by CNBC.

Besides, it's Republicans whose long history of "whatabout the Democrats" complaints have the news media afraid of their harsh criticisms.



Thursday, November 1, 2018

When Political Calculation Becomes Your Only Policy

"When tactics become policy" is an attempt to describe the situation in U.S. politics that has developed over many years. Conservatives have a strategy that counts on short term political victories without regard to the long term impact - destruction of the U.S. political system.

People have been catching on to this.


Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Facts Don't Matter

Elizabeth Warren can be forgiven for believing facts matter, but they don't. Stories matter, but only stories that "feel" true - true to the listener.

Warren released the results of the DNA test of her Native American heritage. What does this tell us?

Number 1, this tells us that she is owned by the Republicans - Trump, and before him, Scott Brown who also called her "Pocohontas". By responding with her own "fact checking", Warren is showing respect to the campaign distractions of Republican leaders. This situation is nearly identical to the demands for Obama's birth certificate. The accusations about Obama were really just a way to challenge his legitimacy as an appeal to a base that hated having an African American president.

The Republican strategy is always to distract from policy and focus on personal attacks. The more that Republican policy veers away from the preferences of large majorities of Americans, the more that winning requires showering negativity on their political opponents. And, for Republicans, lies are more powerful than facts because telling lies sends your opponents - Democrats and the purported responsible press - into fact checking mode which is a defensive posture of weakness. Members of the press express pride in fact checking, but fact checking in the current environment is a symptom of press failure. Fact checking someone like Trump who lies all the time as a tactic of distraction and confusion only adds to the confusion, especially when the fact checking includes analysis that says "Obama did it too, but when Obama did it, there was this difference...". Sorry, but when you frame the issue as "both sides" do it, the differences you invoke get lost in the shuffle.

Democrats, with their ceaseless faith in the power of truth and logic, continue to work on messages consistent with their belief that reality matters to everyone, that eventually, people will come around to the belief that reality matters. And it does, to anyone paying attention to politics. But the Trump base does not care.

More to come on this and the difference between placing focus on persons vs. policy.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

The Art of the Frame

George Lakoff tells us that Republican strategists are the masters of messaging. They understand the importance of being the first to frame an idea. Repeating the idea over and over - "Lyin' Ted" - crowds out competing thoughts, or any rational thinking for listeners who are so inclined.

But there is another side to the art of the frame.
source:theonion

In "Khashoggi’s Disappearance Puts Kushner’s Bet on Saudi Crown Prince at Risk", NYT reporters show that they do not understand the vulnerability of their outdated journalistic standards to inadvertent framing that they employ. If you try too hard to be "objective" to avoid framing as illegitimate, you create a frame of legitimacy.

Anyone who has paid attention to the emerging story of the Trump administration and the relationship with repressive regimes comes to the story with the following perspective:

Authoritarians have felt emboldened to ratchet up their authoritarian behavior with Trump in the White House, especially those who feel close to him.  Putin seems to be murdering political opponents with greater frequency and brazenness. That includes his stated enemies in the press.

The Trumps have not hesitated to use their position for personal financial gain. In fact, personal financial gain appears to be the primary goal. So it would not be surprising if the Trump administration would use Kushner's title of negotiator of peace in the Middle East as a cover for business initiatives aimed at financial gains for the Trumps.

In the NYT story about the relationship between Kushner and the Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the writers apply a journalistic standard peculiar to the Times that says - anything germane to the story that has not been proved with verified evidence beyond a reasonable doubt should be completely omitted from the story lest the reader be left with a false impression.

By not providing this context - suspicions that a reasonable person may have - in this case, the fact that a strong personal and business relationship between the Trumps and the Saudi Royal Family, has emboldened Bin Salman to murder Khashoggi, (after all, the non-propaganda press in general and the Washington Post in particular have been designated enemies of Trump) the NYT frames the story more as a Saudi scandal that may damage Kushner's foreign policy"bet". So we are not talking about a family that has run a widespread corrupt business enterprise for years, evading taxes, most likely money laundering, and so on. No, we are talking about Jared Kushner, a young man like Bin Salman, who is interested in peace in he Middle East. Never mind stories like this:

Saudi Arabia's crown prince reportedly bragged about having Jared Kushner 'in his pocket' after being told classified information meant for Trump
OR this:
Top Trump fundraisers who sought to negotiate $1 billion in business deals with Middle East princes called Jared Kushner a 'Clown Prince'

which includes the line: "And US officials told The Washington Post in February that UAE officials had discussed ways to manipulate Kushner using his "complex business arrangements, financial difficulties, and lack of foreign-policy experience" as leverage."

Even today's WaPo, in a story - Crown prince sought to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and detain him, U.S. intercepts show  - focused not on the relationship between Kushner and Khashoggi, but on the man's disappearance, includes the following line:
"Kushner’s relationship with Mohammed, known within national security agencies by the initials MBS, has long been the subject of suspicion by some American intelligence officials."

The frame of the Times story is clear. This is a legitimate presidential administration and Jared Kushner is a legitimate Middle East negotiator, not someone who is badly compromised. Nothing in the story talks about Kushner's inability to obtain a security clearance (other than by father-in-law fiat.)

Based on the actions and inaction of this administration over the past two years, a reasonable person would now conclude that members of Congress will raise a stink over this murder of a dual American/Saudi citizen who worked for the Washington Post, but the Trumps will do nothing while calculating just how much they need to keep up appearances that they care or are willing to do something.

How soon will Trump use his infantile Russian technique - " I am tough on the Saudis. Hillary was always easy on the Saudis".

And why not? It works every time, because every statement Trump makes, instead of being immediately identified as a weapon of deception, is instead treated as a possible statement of fact that needs to be accepted as possibly true (thus sustaining the frame of possible truthfulness), and made subject to fact checking (as a first step into the wilderness of confusion) along with comparisons to Obama or Clinton (thus locking the door on any meaningful understanding with the death knell of false balance).

Friday, September 7, 2018

NYT Opinion as News

The NYT frequently inverts news articles and opinion pieces these days. The recent story "Some of the Democrats grilling Judge Kavanaugh have their eye on the White House" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg (also running under "Democrats Grilling Kavanaugh Have Their Eyes on 2020").

The alternate headlines frame the piece quite nicely. The times has been running articles calling the Kavanaugh nomination approval by the Senate basically a done deal. So the Times logic goes something like this:

Republicans have control of the Senate and will approve Kavanaugh without question. (This despite the narrow 51-49 margin by party.)
Since Kavanaugh is a done deal, any visible attempts to derail the nomination are a sham.
As for Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, they can not stop Kavanaugh, so they are just showboating.

If Senators just give up, their failure is a certainty. If there is any hope at all, don't they need to do everything they can to stop Kavanaugh. And doesn't it make more sense to frame their effort as a big victory if they succeed, but if they fail, then they have highlighted the concerns about Republican Supreme Court (and lower courts) nominees effectively for the 2018 Congressional elections?

But at the Times, where forced balance is established doctrine, politicians can always be presumed looking out for themselves. Besides, presidential races are exciting! All of these other races are so boring. I really don't care, do u?

The Times story which they present at a news item, rather than opinion is actually an opinion piece pretending to be a news story. It stems from a bias at the Times to see the world through a self imposed prism which is almost as bad in some ways at the Fox worldview.

A very different story could have been written. For me, the big news was the Cory Booker found a way to deflect the best efforts of John Cornyn, chair of the committee, to read him the "riot act" about Senate expulsion for his release of a handful of Kavanaugh documents. Cornyn's threat was actually an empty threat, but a framing tactic to label Booker as almost criminally out-of-order, in fact, so terrible that he could be punished and expelled from the Senate.  Booker's open and immediate defiance was likely unexpected because team Cornyn's empty threat was shown to be a charade. So Cornyn was left to apparently falsely deny that the documents were still confidential and therefore there was no basis to expell Booker. But of course he had openly stated that Booker's actions could lead to expulsion, which had Cornyn simultaneously holding contradictory positions.

And so we continue to see Republicans threaten and attack democratic institutions as Democrats and some Republicans who do not hold elective office fight back. Republican officeholders continue to act in bad faith, often with lies and obfuscation, as they consolidate their hold on power with Trump at the center of the Party.

Not surprisingly, Paul Waldman provides his rebuttal in a WaPo opinion column, from a slightly different perspective, to wit:
"But thinking about politics — including how Democratic presidential primary voters might respond to the Kavanaugh nomination and the Supreme Court, in general — is exactly what these politicians ought to be doing. Politics is how we settle the most vital questions that confront us as a nation. And if the process of choosing and confirming Supreme Court justices was ever removed from politics, it certainly isn’t now. What’s wrong with Democrats, or Republicans for that matter, raising the issues they think their constituents care about?"

The main point here is that the Times sorting of articles into news and opinion categories is not working any more and has not worked for a long time. This Stolberg alleged news piece is clearly an opinion piece by any objective measure, but it is labeled news solely because the opinions of the author are forced into the newsy frame that "both sides" really only care about running for president in 2020.


Sunday, August 12, 2018

About that Trump Whisperer

On this lazy Sunday in August, the NYT headline to a straight Politics news piece from Maggie Haberman reads "Trump Tweets Reflect Fixation on Women's Appearances".

source:abcnews.go.com
Throughout the Trump term in office, Haberman has amassed a reputation in some quarters as an access journalist who softens Trump's image along with humanizing treatment of Ivanka and Jared. This approach to news reporting adds fuel to the standard NYT editorial policy on political reporting that nearly always requires "balanced" treatment. The political reporter must report straight facts without interpretation and avoid context because adding useful context changes news reporting to opinion that must appear in the Opinion section. Or if an "in-between" approach is called for, label it clearly "News Analysis". "News Analysis" means we added context, but we were extra careful to be as objective as possible where "objectivity" is defined to mean - assemble facts that seem to go together, but always assume good faith on the part of polticians. That approach is, of course, an enabler of politicians who do act in bad faith.

We have called on the Times to recognize and report patterns of behavior, particularly Trump's patterns, as an important fact and not to take Trump's tweets or statements at face value as statements of his beliefs when a more rational interpretation is that Trump says whatever works most to his advantage in an environment of news reporting that fails to recognize his patterns of behavior for what they represent. Add to this the NYT forced balance approach to political journalism that requires looking for comparisons with presidents of the opposing party (Obama and Clinton).

So it is a bit surprising, given the Times "fair and balanced" standards,  that Trump's attacks on the physical appearance of women, which have gone on so long, are finally reported by the NYT in a straight news piece without seeking out behavior by Obama and Clinton for comparison.

OK, so that is a pattern of behavior, but what does it mean? He is fixated on the physical appearance of women. OK, but he has a lot of deep personal flaws, but of greater significance, if we focus on personal qualities, Trump seems to have an abundance of flaws of both character and personality and the president does not appear to have any positive human characteristics. The obvious conclusion to this piece is that Trump, the POTUS, is an unbelievably petty man - someone who none of us would want to know or deal with in our personal lives or in business. Yet that obvious conclusion would render this piece "opinion", so no go.

Without a conclusion from the author, the Haberman report drops off a cliff at the end.

And several typical NYT reporting flaws remain. Why does every article about Trump's many insults have to close with "and he never apologized"? What is that supposed to mean? Of course he never apologized. He never apologizes. And you apologize if you are a person who makes a mistake and hurt someone accidentally. If you insult people intentionally all the time, then an apology is meaningless. The Times' habit of closing with "and he never apologizes", lame as it is, does matter because it demonstrates just how clueless the NYT is in their coverage of Trump, even at this late date. If the Times had the courage to convey reality about Trump in their reporting, they would not fall back on the "fair and balanced" "He never apologized" as if that statement has meaning.

The Times insists on describing the Christopher Steele series of documents as "a dossier that made salacious claims about Mr. Trump." Never mind that the document represented fairly raw intelligence - so it is not really a dossier, so the document does not make "claims". Of greatest significance, the NYT news articles always link "Steele dossier" with "salacious" even though the least important item mentioned in the document is the possible existence of the pee tape. Which suggests that if the Times wants to talk about "fixations" and Trump, they may want to take a look at their own fixation on pee tape.







Friday, August 10, 2018

Polar Expressions

With the 2018 midterm elections looming, WaPo's headline this morning in a piece by Mike DeBonis plays to balance of those "two sides". So the big political news becomes "Pelosi is the star of GOP attack ads, worrying Democrats upbeat about midterms" which leads with:

"While Democrats grow optimistic about their chances of taking control of the House in November, they are increasingly anxious that the presence of their longtime and polarizing leader, Nancy Pelosi, is making it harder for many of their candidates to compete in crucial swing districts."

You could be forgiven for thinking that the description "polarizing leader" is an apt beginning to any accurate description of Trump. And anyone can see that the Republican talking points in campaigns play to a somewhat visceral reaction of the Republican base to certain prominent Democratic politicians who - not coincidentally - happen to be powerful women, or minorities, or both.

But our popular press gives themselves a pass in news reporting on politics and government - if one "side" does it - Trump in this case, then the other side can safely be assumed to "do it" - meaning Pelosi. If Trump polarizes, all day, every day, then reporting that Pelosi is a "polarizing figure" is deemed to pass the objectivity test. This approach in political news reporting may seem harmless enough, but this flaw in objective reporting, in its many forms, creates a loophole that is exploited by  Republican party campaign (and governing) tactics, as frequently discussed on this blog. And actual assymetry between the two leading parties that dominate U.S. politics is, as a matter of "objective" journalistic practice, explained away. And if you provide counterexamples, then you are presumed biased and your examples are safely ignored. At least that is the position of WaPo much of the time, and the NYTimes editors virtually all the time.
Source: bostonglobe.com

Late today, without reference to the above news article about "polarizing" Pelosi, WaPo opinion writer Paul Waldman in "What Republican attacks on Nancy Pelosi are really about" lays bare the flaws in WaPo's news reporting. The accompanying picture of Pelosi from the DeBonis piece is used again in Waldman's piece, which seems intentional as a call-out on the original article. Waldman explains in detail why Republican campaigns target Pelosi, stating:

"And it’s partly the us-versus-them conflict that has animated every Republican campaign for a half century. Democrats, they tell voters, aren’t like us. They don’t share our values; they’re elitist and alien and threatening. Those ideas can be expressed through issues, but what they’re about is cultural affinity: The Republican candidate is one of us, and the Democratic candidate is one of them."

So it is not about policy. And it is not about anything Pelosi herself actually does. It is all about Republican tactics to demonize the opposition - tactics that Trump was able to employ better than any other Republican candidate in the 2016 primaries.

The term "polarizing" thus applies best to Republican tactics in campaigns. It is something Republicans do - not something our country is, no something that both sides do, or leading Dems do. Only laziness of reporters and their editors, or even bias, can explain why a WaPo news article refers to Pelosi as "polarizing" and it takes a WaPo opinion piece to call out the flaw in WaPo's own reporting.


Thursday, August 2, 2018

Flashing The Bunt Sign

For those in power, accountability is important. For the president of the U.S., accountability is of paramount importance due to the awesome power of the presidency as head of state, executive of government, and head of the party, especially in this case as head of the controlling party in the legislature.

And so, when this president, who is prone to holding political rallies for himself as a supplemental form of "governing", did so in Tampa July 31st.  CNN is, of course, a frequent target of Trump's attacks, so it is no wonder that the crowd of Trump devotees chanted menacingly at Jim Acosta during his live reporting.
source:cnn.com

When pressed on this at the daily presser, Sarah Sanders pushed back, citing "The zombie claim that won’t die: The media exposed bin Laden’s phone".

So the president stokes hatred and anger against the responsible news media. He holds rallies of his base - this one attracted QAnon signs. As the base menaces reporters - Trump calls them "fake news". Reporters feel concern for their safety. Sanders pivots to a generalized vague "condemnation" using the "we have always said" form or expression directed at no one in particular, but just as quickly ducks responsibility on behalf of Trump with an irrelevant call for the press to be "responsible", citing that zombie claim.

But whether or not that zombie claim is true or false is irrelevant. In fact, deflecting news organizations to fact checking is a tried and proven method of distraction - more effective than a true claim would be because more work goes into proving a claim false. And if the claim, if true, is irrelevant anyway, then fact checking that claim is an exercise in futility.

Having distracted with a "both sides" argument (where "both sides" means the president on one side and his enemy the press on the "other side"), Sanders pivoted quickly to wrap up with an endorsement of "free speech" - which is strong encouragement to Trump supporters to keep up the good work, to intimidate the press at these rallies and, who knows, any place they may care to track down these members of the press.

Deny
Deflect
Distract
Accuse

(DDDA) is the go to tactical response in these situations. The final statement that follows the DDDA combination inviting continued menacing in the future - "While we certainly support freedom of the press, we also support freedom of speech..." which is effectively like the third base coach flashing the bunt sign in the midst of a raft of other gestures. The Trump supporters, like the batter, know which signs to ignore and which to take to heart.
source:howtheyplay.com