Accessory to the Crime

In "No One Believes Anything’: Voters Worn Out by a Fog of Political News
Paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and other developments means having to figure out what is true, false or spin. Many Americans are throwing up their hands and tuning it all out." the New York Times tells us "Swaths of the American public are numb and disoriented by information saturation — struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact."

But does the New York Times acknowledge they have some role in whether and how swaths of the American public react to this "fog of political news?" Does the NYT cut through the fog? Let's see.
Their report:

A few examples of regular people busy with their daily lives.
The Democrats took their case against Trump to the public last week.
Many Americans were not paying attention and some do not trust "the media".
A flood of "partisan" news leads to exhaustion.
The president lies all the time which makes people numb and unsure who to believe.
But many Americans turn to sources they trust - some on left, and others on the right.
Examples of people tuning out.
Fake information makes the picture confusing.
Sheer volume makes it confusing - Els Ruijter is a left-leaning independent who complains that certain programs have such disdain for Trump it becomes a Trump bashing show.
Then there are "the politicians", "first among them Trump" who lie so much that people don't know what to believe.
Comparisons to Putin's Russia.
Some Republicans do not like Trump's brand of politics either.
But Mr. Memory, a Republican, complains about lack of coverage of Trump being cheered at a football game in Alabama in comparison to the coverage of Trump being booed in Nats Park, which he sees as liberal bias.
Gallup Poll about lack of confidence in the media.
Conservatives who feel the cultural tide has turned against them, that liberals have contempt for them.
News avoidance cuts across political lines and the concept of left and right no longer fits - like Russia.
When it comes to Americans evaluating news sources, we are now like Russia.

In this news article the facts presented clearly attribute material blame to one side - Trump and the Republicans for creating a fog of confusion and exhausting voters, but the conclusions drawn from those facts embrace the both sides view of politics. That is, both sides are presumed equally to blame at all times in all ways. For example, Trump is the one who lies all the time, but instead of creating mistrust of anything Trump says, that somehow causes "confusion". And the "sheer volume" of his lies magnifies that "confusion" by inducing "exhaustion".  Now, in a sane world, that set of facts would make any fair minded person mistrust everything Trump and his supporters say and turn elsewhere for reliable information. Unfortunately, the NYT, so dedicated to the proposition that they must remain "above the fray", ignores the obvious conclusion. It would be simpler to ignore Trump entirely if you want to know the truth.

For balance, NYT talks to a self-reported "left-leaning independent", whatever that is supposed to mean, who complains about the "sheer disdain" of some shows for Trump. But if Trump lies all the time about everything - and that is treated as fact - how would that be reported without seeming or being disdainful? What would you think of a commentator who said - "Trump lies all the time and that shows he is not afraid of the truth."?

For more balance, NYT talks to a self-reported Republican who complains about lack of coverage of the cheering crowd for Trump at a football stadium in Alabama. The article fails to note that the appearance at Nats Stadium was of interest because Trump has limited almost all appearances to friendly venues, mostly at this campaign style rallies. Therefore, the appearance at an Alabama football game falls into the same category as a rally. The NYT article fails to note the distinction. Of course, this example is besides the point - cheers or booes in either venue have to do with popularity or unpopularity and nothing to do with policy - domestic or foreign or Trump's actions and their impact on policy.

The article concludes by comparing the situation in the U.S. with Russia, ignoring Trump and the Republicans singular role in this as dramatic as Putin's role in making Russia what it is today.

Unfortunately this article is typical of the NYT. The facts presented in the piece would logically lead to the conclusion that Trump and the Republicans are causing significant damage to the information environment, but the writer (and likely the editor) feel compelled to dig for examples to validate the "both sides" premise, which only muddies the issue in the same way that Trump and the Republicans muddy the issues. Thus does NYT act as an accessory to the crime of turning the U.S. to the Russian model of deliberate misinformation on politics.

More Distractions and Confusion and It's Working

As POTUS, Donald Trump likes to distract and confuse. It's working. At least it works on the New York Times.To be fair, much of the objectivity-based press fell for the ruse, too.

In the Times editorial "Trump, Greenland, Denmark. Is This Real Life?
Or a Peter Sellers movie?" the editorial board treats the Trump trial balloon to buy Greenland mostly as farce. And the trip cancellation solely as a reaction to Denmark's response because that reaction is in character for Trump.

Granted, the editors noted a few serious issues involved:
1. Greenland's deposits of rare earth metals, crucial to the defense industry, which are now mostly sourced from China.
2.  The U.S. military's "northernmost missile-warning, space surveillance and deepwater seaport" in Greenland.
3. China's recent efforts to establish a "foothold", or at least a toe-hold in Greenland.

But the NYT editorial board concludes that Trump's cancellation of his upcoming trip to Denmark after being rebuffed on the Greenland sale proposal can be taken entirely thus:

"That the president of the United States would demonstrate such willful ignorance of how the world works, that he would treat a territory and its independent people like goods and chattel, that he would so readily damage relations with an old and important ally out of petty pique, is frightening."

But maybe the NYT editorial board does not know 'how the world works' - if this president abruptly cancels a trip to meet with an "ally" (ally in quotes because an ally of the U.S. is so often not an ally of Trump and vice versa) for what appears to be a ridiculous excuse, let's ask ourselves about the agenda for that trip. Maybe he needs to cancel to save face, to avoid awkward confrontations,  and not make a fool of himself.

A hot topic in Denmark this year and especially this summer is the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built by Russia to transport natural gas to Western Europe. The proposed route passes through Denmark's territorial waters. Russia has been avidly pursuing Denmark's approval in order to complete the project this calendar year and enter into new long term contracts for delivery. Otherwise the pipeline will be delayed if constructed along an alternate route. The pipeline poses a threat to Ukraine's current route for much of Russia's gas transport to Western Europe.

source:dutchnews.nl

The U.S. has so far opposed the pipeline:
Senate panel backs Nord Stream 2 pipeline sanctions bill

And Trump has spoken out against the pipeline.

But Trump opposing Putin on a major issue has been rare and awkward when it happens. The issue is complicated by the tensions between Western Europe's goal of obtaining adequate energy at low price, Eastern and Central Europe suspicion of Russia, and U.S. substantial reserves of natural gas which could compete with the Russian supply, but at higher prices due to transportation costs for the LNG.

One can hardly imagine Trump having a constructive meeting with an ally, especially if he needs to negotiate with a woman who he knows will be better versed on the issues. When confronted with his incompetence and ignorance, Trump needs to find a way out. When Putin's wishes are a factor, things become too tricky for him to handle. So he needed to bluff his way out of the meeting.

The problem with NYT (like too many other news orgs) is that even after so many lies by Trump, they are willing to take his statements at face value as a first pass if those statements can not immediately be "fact-checked" and found false instead of asking "what is really going on here?" and pursuing more likely explanations.

Surprise: These Party Activists are Party Activists

CNN's "These GOP women see nothing wrong with Trump's comments" has been exposed as fundamentally misleading. Subtitled "CNN's Randi Kaye speaks to a group of Republican women who say they don't have a problem with President Trump's racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color.", the setup implies that these eight women are a focus group of somewhat randomly selected Republican women from Dallas.

Erik Wemple, among others, points out that the CNN piece (still up on CNN website at this writing, without correction or clarification) , and teed up in reporting by Anderson Cooper and Kate Boduan without further amplification, features a group of activist Republican women. And that CNN had previously used these same women in 2016 in a similar role.

After CNN's misleading identification of these women was exposed, as Wemple reports,

"CNN host Ana Cabrera on Wednesday afternoon characterized 'several' of the women as being 'affiliated with groups that support President Trump.' The purpose, said Cabrera was "to see if any of them have changed their minds.'"

So we are back on the diner circuit rationale employed by NYT, CNN and other mainstream political outlets. After the surprise victory by Trump in 2016, the presumption was that all those white Trump voters would come around soon. So each Trump outrage for months was followed like dusk follows day by a team of reporters visiting diners to see if they changed their minds about Trump. Which they never did - because the premise that any rational person would now be outraged by Trump was no better than the idea that any rational person on November 8, 2016 would be outraged by Trump.

This episode reminds me of an incident one year ago. S.E. Cupp, the conservative pundit, in a guest piece in the NYT with the straw man (straw woman?) title "No, Not All Women Are Democrats", wrote the following:

"Salena Zito, co-author of the new book “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics,” recently surveyed 2,000 Trump voters in the rust belt. They are the kind of voters, she says, that experts overlooked in 2016 and still don’t get today.

One of them is Amy Maurer, a 43-year-old well-educated suburban mom in Kenosha, Wis, who is on the executive board of the Republican Party of Kenosha County. The Clinton campaign aimed ads at Republicans— even women like Ms. Maurer — keying in on Mr. Trump’s misogynistic remarks.

“It’s not my favorite thing,” she said when I asked her about the way Mr. Trump has talked about women. “It’s kind of like what I told my mother-in-law when she complained that her heart surgeon wasn’t very friendly: If he’s good at what he does, who cares? He’s not there to be your best friend.”'

Except she did not write exactly those words. The article awkwardly suggests that Zito surveyed a large group of Trump voters, but then quotes a Republican woman activist in order to provide some insight on the thinking of representative Republican women voters. So what gives. Well, the original piece omitted significant information about Amy Maurer:

"An earlier version of this article omitted a relevant detail about Amy Maurer, a Wisconsinite who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Ms. Maurer is a Republican Party official in Kenosha County; that information should have been included with her comments."

Actually, no. That makes no sense. Ms. Maurer should not have been quoted. A Republican woman who is not a party activist should have been quoted, if we are trying to sample the crowd of 2,000 fairly.

So why is it so difficult to find Republican Party women who are not activists?  It's not.

My best guess is that the two mainstream new organizations who invariably bend over backwards the most to assure conservatives that they are truly objective - CNN and NYT - prefer to give as much control to Republicans when they "balance" their presumably "biased" political articles with pieces about Republican voters. And when they enlist Republicans in that cause, people like SE Cupp, and whoever puts together these "focus groups" for CNN, they are yielding editorial ground to a class of people - Republican political operatives - who seize every opportunity to distort the facts and avoid disclosure, in order to craft their favored narrative.

For the "facts don't matter" crowd, disclosures don't matter either, especially in these two cases where disclosure would render the pieces useless as a gauge of representative Republican women.

What's Wrong with these Headlines?

New York Times today:

As America Turns More Divided The Mood Turns More Tense
It's the first time in more than a century that all but one state legislature is dominated by a single party.
As each state's majority party pushes its agenda, the weaker one has grown more combative

Absolutely nothing there to suggest that the current American president pushes his agenda of division daily, as he did throughout the 2016 campaign. Nothing to suggest that Republicans have been playing extreme hardball in state legislature for decades and Democrats have been slow to catch on to these tactics. And Republican tactics have become more extreme - not only to suppress the votes of citizens, but to thwart the outcome of elections if a Democrat defeats a Republican governor, but the state legislature remains controlled by Republicans, by stripping the incoming governor of powers normally retained by the executive, which were enjoyed by his or her predecessor. See Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio. (Incumbent Ohio governor refused to play, to his credit.)

The NYT has a strong bias toward skewing the facts toward a balanced conclusion when reporting on politics. Thus the NYT fails to distinguish between fair, accurate reporting and balance. Balance in reporting is regarding by traditional reporters as an attribute when a fair and accurate conclusion can not be known. But Republicans in office together with Fox News reporting have teamed together to furnish America with a 24/7 propaganda channel dedicated to keeping Republicans in office and their policies in place. This conspiracy of the right has built on a mountain of lies that has worsened with Trump as president. True balance would mean that a responsible news organization (i.e. NYT or WaPo) would confront the mountain of lies with the hard truth - not after-the-fact fact checking,which always comes too late because liars have already moved on to the next lie, thus controlling the overall narrative - but aggressive reporting on the fact of Fox News as lying propagandists.And not trying so hard with every news story to report "both sides" as equal and opposite as possibly true, when they are not. The net result of the narrative that America hears is Fox News propaganda on one side and NYT maybe-yes-maybe-no "balance", which ironically yields an  imbalance in sum while failing to be accurate by implying that some lies may be true.

The NYT article provides factual information about the contentiousness of activity in the divided state legislatures, but fails to note that extreme gerrymandering has been practiced more by Republicans - to greater effect on election outcomes - than Democrats. This is not to suggest that Democrats have been perfect in all cases, but observing how Republicans behave in office and looking for the same thing in Democrats will always yield some examples, but accurate reporting requires continuing the analysis at that point to report full context, rather than declaring vicotry - done, we found an example of Democrats behaving badly so "both sides do it".

We see this again in the recent NYT:
People are trying to figure out Bill Barr. Meanwhile He's Stockpiling Power. Is he the operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report? Or the straight shooter who later disclosed portions that were damaging to President Trump?
NYT syntax shows how they gravitate to the middle of all stories relating to politics. Their headlines often take the almost comical form "On the One Hand, Yes - But on the Other Hand ,No". Bill Barr wrote an unsolicited paper in support of unbridled presidential power - a job application for AG - prior to his nomination.

The problem with these headlines is that when the NYT is satisfied with any conclusion that validates the middle as true and treats with great skepticism any conclusion that treats one "side" as different qualitatively as different from the other "side" they themselves help to create the reality of a "divided" country because that behavior encourages more extreme tactics. Republicans know that the more extreme their tactics, the more the NYT will be willing to work toward the "safe" conclusion that Democrats do it too.

And why, NYT, is the opposite of "straight shooter" an "operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report"? Isn't the opposite of straight shooter a liar?

Hypocrisy Watch

Keeping a lookout for charges of "hypocrisy" is a safe space for traditional media reports on politics. Leave no possible charge of hypocrisy unexamined lest we focus on stories that actually mean something. Was Elizabeth Warren singularly effective in establishing the Consumer Protection Bureau? Yes. Was she considered such an effective advocate on behalf of consumers that Republicans refused to consider her as chief of that bureau? Yes, of course.

But none of those stories that tell us how a candidate can be expected to act in a role as President of the U.S. matter much to political reporters. In the "he said/she said" reporting world, how a candidate can be made to appear to have behaved in the past contrary to their professed goals is the only thing that matters because that type of reporting supposedly demonstrates the reporter's political "objectivity". Such is the safe space in which so-called objective reporters and their editors choose to dwell. But this information is useless to any citizen who is affected by the choices that the president, Senators, Congresspersons and other officeholders make, just as reporting everything the president tweets because it is alleged news is also useless.

The original Boston Globe headline was "Warren Disclosed Past as Corporate Advocate". Yes, Elizabeth Warren's claims about herself and her consistent actions in government should all be ignored because of her shady past.

After some hubbub on twitter, the headline was changed to "Warren assisted dozens of corporations as a bankruptcy advocate".  Now it reads "Warren discloses past corporate legal work". Who knows what the headline will read in a few minutes?

The article tells us "The issue of Warren’s corporate legal work reared its head during her 2012 race, when Republican Senator Scott Brown highlighted her advocacy for the insurance company Travelers in 2009 and other corporations as an example of hypocrisy from the populist candidate."

That's the he said/she said safe place. Scott Brown said such-and-such. Elizabeth Warren defends her shady past. That is how he said/she said journalism works - by distorting reality into an illusory world of two equal and opposite sides, no matter the stark differences between those two sides.

As a result, reporting on Trump falls far short of effectively presenting the egregiousness of Trump's actions as president which are treated as individual items to be compared with other presidents or democrats and thereby softened. On the other hand, actions by democrats are placed under a stark lens in a desperate attempt to depict them, too as "hypocritical" or otherwise inconsistent in their behavior.

In this magical realm, when Bernie Sanders changes his tune from decrying "Millionaires and billionaires" to "Billionaires" on the heels of reports of his wealth amounting to $2.5 million, he is somehow less of a populist figure - how can a man who is a millionaire be truly populist? Isn't he being hypocritical? That is nonsense. First of all, never mind the book deal, Sanders has worked for salary nonstop until current age 77, an age when many Americans have been drawing down a retirement for many years. Someone who has been able to add to savings rather than draw down those savings should be in a position to accumulate wealth. To many Americans, that $2.5 million sounds like a lot of money, but for someone making his Congressional salary all these years it is fairly modest. But, again, this is a safe space for reporters who need to demonstrate their so-called objectivity.

Political reporters need to let go of the breaking news mentality that feeds their inclination to overreact to any sign of '"hypocrisy" and ask themselves every day - what do I need to tell citizens so that they can make the best informed choices when they vote or contact their representatives? Not, what is the most exciting story of the minute.

What Jussie Smollett Is All About

"It's the false epitome stupid!"
Huh?
Yes, bear with me.
If you are Donald Trump, the decision in Chicago yesterday to drop charges against Smollett creates an irresistible opportunity to exploit the occasion for personal gain. And nothing feeds the need of Team Trump to distract from everything they do like the chance to accuse a black person, immigrant, or minority of something. And the Smollett case could not be better - he is black and gay. Terrific. And this appears to be a case of false victimization. Even better. And he got off - a black person who is not deserving who benefits from favoritism from authorities. Great. Anything else? We are going to investigate - see, we can investigate, too, just like you Democrats do. Perfect.

But there's more. One of the great tools used over and over by Team Trump is the false epitome. Highlighting the Smollett case, which does, in fact, appear to be a miscarriage of justice creates a focus that is intended to represent a far broader case. For those conservatives who like to obsess about these things, this single case provides an opportunity to take this one example as representative of a much more extensive problem.

Smollett was treated initially as a victim, but he was a perpetrator...becomes
They are all claiming to be victims, but they are all perpetrators.

False epitome was at work in Trump's claims that immigrants come here to kill people, often using as examples drivers involved in fatal traffic accidents - as if that is identical to deliberately murdering people.

And, perhaps more importantly, to help any such conservatives hold dearly to that fallacy, Trump acknowledges NO EXCEPTIONS to this rule. "They" must all be bad people. Therefore, Team Trump can never acknowledge, let alone, praise the noble sacrifice of Humayun Khan. Because that threatens the logic of false epitome - if any are good, even noble, maybe others are too...maybe they are just like us in many ways...No, we can't have people thinking like that. In fact, given the opportunity, take down his grieving mother and father.

False epitome is an especially sinister weapon because, like many of Trump's weapons and his endlessly awful behavior, the underlying reality hides in plain sight.

When Trump distracts and attacks with an argument or action that takes a specific case - of his choosing - and unreasonably extrapolates to make a general case that appeals to his followers- traditional journalists are at a loss to identify what is really happening. But, at this point, the rest of us should not be fooled.

"Inevitable Progress"

In "Trump’s America does not care" Robert Kagan presents an interesting analysis of the Trump revolution from the perspective of international diplomacy: "the United States as rogue superpower, neither isolationist nor internationalist, neither withdrawing nor in decline, but active, powerful and entirely out for itself."

Kagan observes that "Trump is not merely neglecting the liberal world order; he is milking it for narrow gain, rapidly destroying the trust and sense of common purpose that have held it together and prevented international chaos for seven decades."

As we have seen over the past two years, the role of the U.S. in the international order has been turned upside down. Common sense dictates that even an election of a Democrat as president in 2020 can not reverse this because once "America First" takes hold and requires a "Me First" or an "Us First" from other nations, excluding the U.S., other countries know they can not count on the U.S. to honor treaties or commitments from one administration to the next.

Kagan states, "Trump’s world is a struggle of all-against-all. There are no relationships based on common values. There are merely transactions determined by power. It is the world that a century ago brought us two world wars."

Kagan writes more expansively on a similar theme in "The strongmen strike back: Authoritarianism has reemerged as the greatest threat to the liberal democratic world — a profound ideological, as well as strategic, challenge. And we have no idea how to confront it."

In this piece he recounts the history of the tension between authoritarianism and liberal democracy over the past several hundred years, with the First World War largely representing a great battle between the two and the Second World War marking the defeat of authoritarians and a "new birth" for liberalism.

Of interest to readers of this blog, Kagan remarks that the authoritarians are succeeding in ways never imagined since the end of the Cold War. He writes:

"It has been decades since liberal democracies took this challenge seriously. The end of the Cold War seemed like indisputable proof of the correctness of the Enlightenment view — the belief in inexorable progress, both moral and scientific, toward the achievement of the physical, spiritual and intellectual freedom of every individual. History was “the progress of the consciousness of freedom,” as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel put it in 1830; or as Francis Fukuyama wrote in "The End of History and the Last Man” in 1992, there were fundamental processes at work dictating 'a common evolutionary pattern for all human societies — in short, something like a Universal History of mankind in the direction of liberal democracy.'” [emphasis added]

This observation about the current reversal of progress belies "the belief in inexorable progress"on a global scale that mirrors the belief in "Inevitable Progress" expressed as Point #4 of the Six Points keynote page of this blog.

The Enemy Within

Who is the enemy within? To figure that out, you need to decide who you are, who is acting against you, and whether or not they were here all along acting against you or recently entered from the outside - physically or virtually.

The Mueller investigation starts with actions taken against the U.S. and makes an effort to determine their source. The Special Counsel team is investigating crimes against the U.S.by foreign actors as well as U.S. citizens.

But team Mueller is constrained by their mandate and how legal investigations work. They do not look for analogies. What if Russian has been working all along to ally themselves with conservative movements in Europe and the U.S. in order to weaken the Western alliance - NATO and the EU to strengthen the Russian hand internally as well as throughout the formal members of the Soviet Union and the unaligned nations?

Russian actions against the progressive democracies of the West have manifested themselves in similar ways in different countries. Yet this similarity is too abstract, too speculative for mainstream political journalists in the U.S.to seize upon as evidence of anything.

The U.S. and the UK stand out as examples, but Italy looms large.

"Billionaires" who are not billionaires.

In the UK, Arron Banks was the largest contributor by far to the Leave campaign at 8.1 million pounds. If the source of his funds was foreign, such as Russia, those contributions would be illegal in the UK.  For much of the past three years, the press reflexively called him "Billionaire Arron Banks". As recently as last November, Time ran a piece: "The Billionaire Who Bankrolled Brexit Is Now Under Criminal Investigation. Officials Suspect Foreign Money" even as questions mounted about the source of his wealth and whether he is a billionaire. Bloomberg now has "The Mysterious Finances of the Brexit Campaign’s Biggest Backer" which sets his known assets at 34 million pounds.

Denying Meetings with the Russian Ambassador...and many other Russians...or their agents

In Britain, as in the U.S. meetings between those who promote so-called "populist" campaigns, inexplicable meetings with the Russian ambassador are first denied, then admitted, but minimized - it was "only once", then when there are more, but it was only social. As The Guardian reported: "Revealed: Leave.EU campaign met Russian officials as many as 11 times"

For analogy in the U.S., one need only think back to Jeff Sessions in his Senate testimony at confirmation hearings claiming that no one in the Trump campaign had any meetings with Russians. Then for him personally, it became only twice with Kislyak, allegedly and improbably in Sessions' role as a Senator.

Those Russian Wives and Girlfriends

Of course Arron Banks has a Russian wife whose first marriage at age 25 to a much older Englishman was an apparent sham to obtain UK citizenship and perhaps act as an agent of influence in the UK?: "The story of Mrs Arron Banks’ extraordinary first marriage"
Which brings to mind special agent of influence Maria Butina and her much loved boyfriend Paul Erickson of GOP/NRA fame.

Another Russian wife is Olga Roh, married to Stephan Roh. Zurich lawyer Stephan Roh has had close ties to the missing "professor" Joseph Mifsud, speaking alongside him at conferences and claiming to represent him though Mifsud has been missing for over a year. Roh has co-written a self-published book “The Faking of Russia-gate: The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis,” Early Trump campaign advisor George Papadapoulos worked with Mifsud, as did his girlfriend, now wife Simona Maniante, who claims to be Italian, not Russian,  and admits her real age did not match her Italian passport age.

And Now Italy

Similarities to the U.S. are fascinating. The Daily Beast reported in March, 2017 :"Putin’s Party Signs Cooperation Deal with Italy’s Far-Right Lega Nord".

The Money: As the Daily Beast reports: "An Italian Expose Documents Moscow Money Allegedly Funding Italy's Far-Right Salvini" :
 "Italy’s interior minister and vice premier, Matteo Salvini, went off the grid for 12 hours during an official state visit to Moscow last October. Tales of Russian prostitutes seemed to explain the time lapse for the single statesman. But a new exposé by the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso suggests that his time may have been spent doing something far more sinister: he may have been making backroom deals with Russian operatives ahead of European Parliamentary elections.The investigation, which the magazine says was conducted over several months, comes to the conclusion that Russian president Vladimir Putin is selling 3 million tons of diesel fuel via a Russian company to an Italian state company, Eni, that Salvini as interior minister can help manage."

The Russian Wife: 

As the Daily Beast reports:
Salvini's key tie to Russia is his former spokesman, Gianluca Savoini, who is not present in the current Italian government, but who remains a trusted ally of the leader. Savoini, who is married to a Russian woman named Irina, is listed as president of the Russia-Lombardy Association based in the north of Italy"

Austria, too. It's all happening in Austria, as the Daily Beast reported:

"Anger as Austria's foreign minister invites Putin to her wedding""
"Kneissl, an independent, owes her appointment as foreign minister to the populist, anti-immigrant Freedom party (FPÖ), the junior party in Austria’s ruling coalition.

The Eurosceptic and openly pro-Russia party has signed a “cooperation agreement” with Putin’s United Russia party, and Kneissl’s close ties to the Russian leader are raising questions in the EU over where Austria’s loyalties lie. The FPÖ has supported Russia’s claim to Crimea and called for the easing of sanctions on Moscow."

But not the U.S., right? Where's the signed cooperation agreement with the Republican Party?

Even if Mueller can prove everything, these are just process crimes, right? Nothing to see here. Or, as the Republican House Intelligence Committee insisted, speciously and falsely - Putin was anti-Hillary Clinton, not Pro-Trump, which Republican leaders repeated even after Helsinki: "House GOP stands by controversial finding in Russia report despite Putin's preference for Trump"

OK, so Putin was
(1) Pro-Brexit in the UK,
(2) Pro-Northern League in Italy (and Five-Star Movement for Italy to leave the EU),
(3) Pro-FPO in Austria, but
allegedly not (4) Pro-Trump in the U.S, despite Trump's strong pro-Putin stance.

If we only we could find the person or party Putin secretly supported in the U.S. in our national elections, that would surely be the enemy within.

Pivot to the General Case

One communications tactic that is easy to spot is the pivot from discussing that which is specific and germane to that which is general and irrelevant, and, often misleading.

Let's take an example that has nothing to do with politics per se and show how this works.

A certain NYTimes article begins thus:

"Danielle Teuscher decided to give DNA tests as presents last Christmas to her father, close friends and 5-year-old daughter, joining the growing number of people taking advantage of low-cost, accessible genetic testing.

But the 23andMe test produced an unexpected result. Ms. Teuscher, 30, a nanny in Portland, Ore., said she unintentionally discovered the identity of the sperm donor she had used to conceive her young child.

The mother of the donor was identified on her daughter’s test results as her grandmother. Excited and curious, Ms. Teuscher decided to reach out."

So, in the space of a few short sentences we are told that the mother of a young girl who was just trying out new ideas for Christmas gifts stumbled on the heritage of her biological daughter. Something does not seem right there.

The deflection begins with the first sentence. Let's talk about Christmas, not -"who is the biological father of my child?". And the general case - everybody is interested in DNA testing kits these days, not just mothers who resorted to anonymous sperm donors. Besides, this testing is so darn low cost and accessible. Who could resist? And then you find out a genetic link to the father of your daughter - who knew that was even possible?

But there is a dramatic logical flaw in that first sentence. Supposedly Ms. Teuscher bought a DNA test kit as a gift for her 5-year-old daughter. That makes no sense. Ms. Teuscher is obviously buying this test kit for herself to uncover the sperm donor. And the nonsense about buying kits for other family members is just noise - introduced to create confusion and to falsely make the case that this is all about Christmas, not about the mystery of paternity.

Even the title: "A Mother Learns the Identity of Her Child’s Grandmother. A Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue." gives away the game. "A Mother Learns..." is passive voice, also a clue to deception. Why not be direct? The mother did not just learn something. She took deliberate action. "A Mother Subjected Her 5-year-old to DNA testing and located the biological father. A Sperm Bank Threatens to Sue" would have been more to the point. The author is clearly taking the side of the mother in this one, but is being incredibly disingenuous. But this type of subterfuge is common in politics. Start with a specific case, possibly a specific question from a reporter, and deflect attention away from meaningful information to other irrelevancies, thus turning a discussion into nonsense. News reporters in politics have a tough time identifying this behavior as bad faith action, which, unfortunately, leads to continued bad faith.

In the Rose Garden yesterday Trump was challenged about his evidence requiring declaration of a national emergency at the southern border when statistics tell us "illegal immigration is down and crime is down, so on what do you base your facts?". After yelling "Sit down. Sit down" as he waved the reporter away -"You get one. You get one." Trump claimed, "I get my numbers from a lot of sources, Department of Homeland Security..." and then bobbed and weaved all over the place, saying "I have many statistics." In Trump's case, not only is the pivot away from the specific and germane to the general and irrelevant, and also to the vague and misleading, but, as we all know, almost always - to a statement that is false.

Real News Now

Margaret Sullivan and Jill Abramson present starkly different portraits in journalism today in the Washington Post.

In "Trump doesn't believe his own damaging rants about 'fake news", Sullivan correctly reports, with compelling evidence - it's in the title, and worth repeating:

:Trump doesn't believe his own damaging rants about 'fake news".

Surprise, surprise.

That fact is obvious, but editorial standards at WaPo, like NYT, require that reasonable conclusions derived from facts appear as Opinion, in this case, the "Style: Perspective" column. How does Trump get away with it? People like Jill Abramson help him. As Sullivan points out:

"Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson drew right-wing plaudits recently when she referred to her former paper’s coverage of the president — as well as The Washington Post’s — as “unmistakably anti-Trump.” (The author of a new book on the press, “Merchants of Truth,” Abramson also praised much of the reporting at both papers.)"

When journalists who tout themselves as objective bend over backwards to treat "both sides" equally, at all times and in all circumstances, one side may realize the vulnerability created - that they can lie, cheat, and steal in plain sight. All they need to do is cry out "fake news", which he said/she said journalistic practice - the companion to 'both sides" -  turns into a meaningless echo chamber of charges and counter charges that easily drowns out meaning.

Abramson's inability to take a stand - on reality, not political preference - is evident in her own WaPo piece today:
"Will the media ever figure out how to report on Trump?"
If editors are all like Abramson, the answer is "No". Fortunately, they are not.

Abramson leads off:
"The news media’s collective shock that Donald Trump won in 2016 was evidence of how out of touch most reporters were with the less affluent, less educated, rural parts of the country, where white voter rage galvanized into votes that made him the 45th president. In the days after the election, there was anguished self-examination in many newsrooms and vows to cover the parts of the United States that had been mistakenly overlooked."

These statements are simply false. If polls had predicted a 50%/50% probability of Trump/Clinton victory, there would not have been the same shock. And Abramson conveniently ignores a series of events - the Clinton email releases, the Comey memo, and other factors. For example, many suburban Republican-leaning voters were convinced - mostly by the even-handed coverage of Trump by responsible news orgs like the New York Times in particular, that both candidates were equally terrible and that, as the Times so clearly put it - "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia."

 These factors had an impact in the final weeks of the campaigns.

But Abramson is conflating the issue of how and why Trump won with the issue of how news organizations need to report on politics so that readers understand best what exactly is going on. To Margaret Sullivan, who previously worked as the Public Editor at the Times when they still had that role, news orgs need to recognize Trump's games  for what they are and report accordingly. As Sullivan says, "The fact that the Trump coverage comes off as negative doesn’t make it “hostile” and doesn’t make it “anti-Trump.'"

But to Jill Abramson,
"One way out of the reactive cycle is to report the story from the places where the pro-Trump and Trump-curious live, to cover the facts and truths of their lives. The Caro approach offers a way forward for news organizations to find contributors from, or place correspondents in, the communities that support the president, to soak up the sense and sensibility of under-covered America. That way, we mix with the other tribe. The 2020 campaign, already upon us, offers a great opportunity to fulfill the pledge we made after the last election."

What Abramson is saying - unbeknownst to her apparently - is that support for Trump is so incomprehensible - that we need to go to places that have large majority Trump voters to understand how this is possible. These people must be so so angry - "white voter rage".  This is a case of deciding what the story must be and seeking it out until you find some facts to support it. The NYT and other news orgs took it upon themselves to nail down the story they had already told themselves by going on this mission many times after the 2016 election. These white people must be so angry. It must be the economy. All of this is the noble savage take. It can't be white racism or white resentment or white supremacsim. In many cases, what these journalists found was Republican Party operatives willing to masquerade as angry independent voters.

And note that last line. "That way we mix with the other tribe." There it is. The former executive editor of the NYT saying that she was not able to report true stories because she and her tribe did not mix with the "other tribe." Wow. The other "side". There is not truth based on facts, only stories two "sides" believe to be true based on their own "facts". Maybe Kellyanne Conway could be executive editor of the New York Times. Instead of traveling all that way to the country, why not bring the other "tribe" in-house right at the top?

The Artful Dodger

The headlines tell all.
"Retired FBI Agent: The Roger Stone raid was totally by the book"  reports CNN.
"FACT CHECK: Did the FBI Use Unusual force When It Arrested Roger Stone?"  says NPR.

We can ignore the actual stories beneath those headlines because the point is simple:
If you are Roger Stone - deny, distract, deflect, accuse. By the time you get to the accusation phase - in this case, putting the FBI on the defensive, you have successfully taken yourself off the defensive - promoting the FBI as the wrongdoer and, simultaneously, sending the usual suspects in the media, CNN and NPR, into fact checking mode.

The Six Forms of Media Bias?

David Leonardt of NYT has an interesting piece - The Six Forms of Media Bias -  in response to Margaret Sullivan's WaPo perspective article: "The media feel safest in the middle lane. Just ask Jeff Flake, John Kasich and Howard Schultz."

These articles properly address major problems of objective media political reporting, but miss the big picture. Leonardt organizes his piece around six elements, but in two of those - Centrist Bias and Liberal Bias, he notes the problem of bothsidesism, which is the correct point of focus.

Bothsidesism derives from an inability of political journalists to understand the difference between:

1. Fair and accurate reporting
2. Fair and balanced reporting

Balanced reporting can be inaccurate, and often is, especially if one "side" recognizes this media vulnerability and instinctively or, with calculation, act to exploit that weakness.

So, political reporters, so afraid of being wrong, now and then, practice bothsidesism, and wind up wrong more often than not.

The commitment to forced balance leads to these errors:

-If a full and objective analysis of facts would logically lead to dire conclusions regarding one "side" in our politics, especially if it is the other "side", these so-called "liberal" journalists soften their conclusions in order to maintain the appearance they are unbiased, but the result is bias against factual reporting in full context. Fox News does not have "Conservative bias" as Leonhardt writes. Fox News is a propaganda machine with enormous influence on viewers who like what they see and hear on the station. But Leonhardt can not say that. He says they "skew hard right" says nothing about their disregard of reality. They lie. Trump lies.

Fair and balance leads to
Forced balance, leads to
False balance,
False equivalencies

We need a new journalistic set of standards for political reporting with a commitment to objectivity and accuracy,  not so-called "fair and balanced" reporting. Fair and balanced implies the reporter is just a conveyor of facts without context. This has resulted in reporters who try to step back at all times to the "View from Nowhere" as Jay Rosen calls it, practice he said/she said journalism by default. They can not do otherwise under this regime. He said/she said political journalism favors the more aggressive politician, especially those who lie over those who tell the truth. Lying sends the political reporters into fact checking, which means they waste their time. Or they go running to the political opponent to ask - "he says this bad thing about you. What do you say about that?

"Bias for the new" is a big problem that is related to an inability to properly handle incremental changes to the status quo on important items. For example, the unbelievably significant interactions between Trump, his campaign, and Russia in 2015 and 2016 became public slowly over an extended period of time and the means of revelations was often manipulated by team Trump to soften the immediate blow to their credibility.  So, for example, Jeff Sessions sworn testimony to the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he was not aware of any contact with Russia was an absurd statement.

The solution to outdated standards of reporting for journalists is to step away from he said/she said reporting. Political journalists need to be like scientists - not referees, not judges. Instead of fair and balanced, be complete and accurate in context. Instead of horse race emphasis, turn to likely outcomes. We live in a world that is completely opposite to the world America would have inhabited if Clinton had won and Brexit had lost. But we did see much, if anything on that story in the he said/she said, false balance reporting of 2016.

Donald Trump is not an aberration. He represents the apotheosis of Republican political strategy of the last half century. Republicans are good at winning. Democrats are good at analyzing complex problems and designing complex solutions. Republicans succeed by dumbing down the debate to the lowest common denominator. Journalists have a duty to report this as fact, as the context for political debate, not as opinion.

The God that Failed

The American model for objective political journalism takes the he said/she said, both sides approach to every issue. Jay Rosen calls this the View from Nowhere. And nowhere is it more apparent than in the persistent adherence to this soft, hands-off approach followed by The New York Times.

This forced balance reporting falls easily into the horse race model for elections also decried by Rosen. After the horse race field is winnowed down by the primaries to two opposing main party candidates, one Democrat and one Republican, this archaic model can be strictly applied by political reporters.

And so NYT news analysis drifts easily into the headline: For a President Consumed With Winning, a Stinging Defeat. In it, Peter Baker writes:

"Democrats were not exactly gracious in victory, barely containing their delight. “Hopefully, it means a lesson has been learned: Shutting down government over a policy difference is self-defeating,” tut-tutted Mr. Schumer. “It accomplishes nothing but pain and suffering for the country and the American people.”

See what he did there? Government shutdown battles are a tug of war between the two sides. Trump "wanted" a wall and did not get it, so he lost. Nancy Pelosi held the Democrats in the House together, so she "won". She "defeated" Trump. But what did Pelosi win exactly? Getting the government running again, though weakened, falls short of the status quo before Trump/McConnell employed this tactic. That's no victory.

Suppose the goal of Trump is to disable the federal government so badly that the FBI and Justice Department are hamstrung in their investigations of him and his team. Suppose Mitch McConnell wants to disable the federal government so badly that most of the agencies fail in their mission and, when Democrats return to power, need to spend all of their energies just trying to revive the functioning of the government. And, in addition to wanting to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, Housing and Urban Development, the Consumer Finance Protection Agency, isn't it obvious that a weakened IRS benefits Trump and the billionaires who financially support Republicans?

No, Pelosi has not won, if winning means gaining an advantage that you did not have previously. Pelosi and the Democrats have lost. Trump had no chance of holding the functioning of the U.S. government hostage and obtaining a legislative advantage. But he was able to hold the U.S. hostage with the aid of Mitch McConnell who held the Republican coalition in the Senate together for 34 days - long enough to inflict real damage on government and make skilled people think twice about going to work fot the feds and, for those who are good at their jobs, think twice about staying in those thankless roles when private industry beckons.

Peter Baker's "Democrats were not exactly gracious..." nonsense demonstrates his full commitment to the horse race, both sides, black and white winner/loser view of politics." At the NYT, the "barely containing their delight" take on the Dems is not the observation of an objective reporter. The NYT loves to refer to "gleeful" politicians. And for some reason, probably their commitment to "both sides" symmetry, Baker and many fellow reporters do not acknowledge the assymetry between Democrats and Republican on government shutdowns. Republicans are happy to engineer shutdowns, as noted above, to weaken the federal government to make a later cleanup by Democrats that much harder, but also to support and expand the cynicism of voters about the federal government. Baker's comment about Schumer's quote shows he has no understanding of the game theory dynamic of government shutdowns.  The NYT and Peter Baker do not and can not face the facts because it would force them to confront their perpetual devotion to the God of both sides symmetry - the God that failed.

He said/She said Journalism Rules

At the Schumer/Pelosi news conference announcing the agreement with Trump to end the federal government shutdown, Pelosi was asked:

"The president has wanted this wall funding for a long time, but it wasn't until Democrats won the House that he really went to the mat for it. How much of all of this do you think is about the new power dynamic that is his desire to show you who really is in charge?"

Pelosi did not take the bait.

The question can be reparsed as "Why is he doing this to you?" Isn't that better asked of the person doing the doing rather than the done to party? Better to ask someone who is not going to yell at you and shout you down as "fake news".

This particular reporter is demonstrating a problem with journalistic standards in the U.S. Mainstream political journalism is comprised of reporting actions and events and asking each side what they think about the other side. Direct observation with reasonable interpretation is forbidden under standard political reporting and relegated to the opinion section. Just as journalists willingly follow every tweet by the president, in part, because it fits their model the "he said" parry, someone like Nancy Pelosi, who is performing her job, needs to be drawn into the he said/she said model of both sides journalism in order for the model to appear to function, to advance to the next parry. The reporter in this scenario had made the same observation that many others have made (see "Not a Wall, Not a Wall"). But if you think this, there is no reason to ask Pelosi if she agrees with you. It's just not her job.

The only real reason for this shutdown was for Trump to asset his dominance and deny that the Democratic majority in the House has any power.

The reporter reached this reasonable conclusion, but is not empowered to make a declarative statement - hence the disguise in the form of a question to try to get a response from Pelosi that nudges team Trump to respond in an endless he said/she said "debate" of both sides journalism.

Hey - this isn't Jeopardy people.

source:npr.org

Eighteen is Enough

In the U.S. we now live with a world of Team Trump-Putin or you may more accurately call it Team Putin-Trump. Either way, the reality is that there are two sides:
1) Team Putin-Trump
2) All others
This reality is quite clear to any rational observer, but much of our traditional media views this reality as so incredibly shocking and extreme, that we must be very very very sure this is our reality in order to acknowledge it and face it. (That was three very's. The actual number of very's is equal to the number of Trump documented lies before they stop counting lies and start to stop listening to Trump lies.)

Unfortunately, the "both sides" model of traditional political reporting dictates that there are two equal and opposite sides, that those two sides are the "Democrats" and the "Republicans". So any "Republican" who abandons Team Putin-Trump is "really" a Democrat and maybe always was a "Democrat". And if Trump is a problem, then "Democrats" need to fix it. Traditional journalism, embodied in the intransigent New York Times, helped create this dichotomy by imposing their artificial binary worldview on their stories and then treat the result as a fait accompli totally unrelated to their behavior. So the NYT often refers to "these polarized times" or our "deeply polarized country."

Max Boot is one of those political conservatives who has gone over to the "other side". His article in WaPo is quite effective at identifying red flags in Trump's behavior. Instead of counting thousands of lies in some vain attempt to convince true belivers in Trump who will not budge no matter the lie count, Boot says, when it comes to red flags, eighteen is enough : "Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset."

My one quibble with Boot is his weak closing remarks: "This is hardly a “beyond a reasonable doubt” case that Trump is a Russian agent — certainly not in the way that Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames were. " Actually, that's not true. There are many more than 18 reasons to believe precisely beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump is guilty, guilty, guilty. The only reason that reasonable people express any doubt is that the reality is so horrible - that the U.S.is and was so vulnerable to ignominious defeat at the hands of a weak and corrupt foreign power and only needed the aid of a willing weak and corrupt American agent.

Martial Law

In America, the president has enormous power. Trump will use those powers not only for personal financial gain at home and abroad, but to stifle opposition to his regime. The chief opposition to Trump is law enforcement because Trump, his family and their associates have committed serious felonies before the election of 2016, during the transition, and following his inauguration.

The mainstream press has focused on the Mueller investigation as the single potential solution to the problem of Trump. Under this interpretation, no matter what else goes wrong in the U.S., so long as the Mueller investigation continues and his investigation's magical report may be issued - the U.S. is not in an existential crisis.

But it is. The Wall Street Journal report on continuing Russian cyberattacks reminds us that the U.S. is made extremely vulnerable because we have a president who can not be trusted to act in America's interests, but can be trusted by Putin to act in Putin's interests. Our mainstream press has no journalistic standard that allows them to consider the president as anything other than the chief player on one side of a binary functioning democratic system with two equal and opposite sides, both of which act in the interests of the U.S. , but who have different political philosophies that are equally valid in all circumstances. Under that lens, a president who acts solely in his personal financial interests, and who is happy to commit crimes can not exist in nature. It just can not be.

Trump's incrementalism is plain for all to see. He began his term in office by appointing a mix of family members, campaign loyalists, people with Russian ties, and a smattering of generals and traditional Republican party operatives. The generals were there for a combination of optics and as a test of loyalty - could the generals be counted on to maintain loyalty throughout the military when push comes to shove? Meanwhile, the Republican party operatives were mostly there for window dressing - no way would Sean Spicer and Reince Preibus last long. But they, too, were window dressing - see, this is only a little different from a normal Republican administration. Meanwhile, there was no question that the long arm of the law would head towards team Trump. That meant the greatest threats - the Justice Department and FBI needed to be wrestled to the ground. In short order, Trump was able to eliminate or sideline some of the FBI's most effective leaders in Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and Bruce Ohr. (And no coincidence that this plays into Russia's goal of eliminating the U.S. ability to withstand their cyberattacks.)

As now Trump has succeeded in consolidating power within his administration. Only lackeys and sycophants remain. Predictably, a leader who can only remain in power by authoritarian means in a democracy will need to impose marshall law at some point to avoid removal by the normal operationo of the legislature and the courts. But the imposition of marshall law requires a reason, or at least an excuse...like the claim that there is an emergency, such as a flood of enemies massed at the southern border trying to enter illegally to cause harm.

Today it is a false claim of a national emergency. But tomorrow the national emergency will be any attempt by the legislature - or the people -to remove the president by legal means. If a false emergency can be declared, nothing would stop this president from signing a declaration that suspends the 2020 elections. One way or another, Trump's incremental approach to consolidating power will lead to a state of martial law in the U.S., whether or not that is the term he uses.

This is not to argue that Trump's incrementalism is a carefully calculated and orchestrated approach - that he thinks to himself - "I see where this is going and will have to declare martial law someday, but what do I need to do today to get there?" Or, "I see where this is going and I will have to suspend elections in 2020. What do I need to do today to get there?" Rather, it is a matter of Trump doing whatever works for him today, personally, and without regard to any future consequences whatsoever,  based on the assumption that his next step will be regarded as only incremental and not as part of a developing scenario - by Republicans in Congress and the mainstream press alike.  And those two players - Republicans in Congress and the mainstream press are both setting up America for a complete breakdown of our basic governmental systems and processes, just as Trump is doing. Trump is actually the only player among those three who is behaving strategically, in the sense that he knows that his short term thinking approach has always worked to his personal advantage in the long run, no matter what else happens. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress and the mainstream press have willingly locked themselves into a system that is designed to protect Trump in all circumstances. That is, unless the magical "Mueller report" transforms America and saves us all.

Not a Wall, Not a Wall

The fight over the wall has nothing to do with the wall. It's all about power. If Trump had really wanted the wall, he would have used his considerable leverage to get his wall when Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. Trump is asserting his absolute power - if he wants to, he can declare a national emergency, even as a whim, sending a message to Pelosi and the Democratic House - "don't get too excited about your new majority...you have no power."

For decades now, ever since Newt Gingrich and House Republicans tried to force their Contract on America through Congress, a series of federal govenment shutdowns have illustrated the stark asymmetry between the two main political parties. Republicans are willing to impose shutdowns because they are basically opposed to the federal government with the sole exception of the military and federal law enforcement. In game theory terms, Republicans only care about the effects of a shutdown on the next election, which tend to be quite limited. For Trump, who is unpopular and conducts himself as the president of his base rather than the nation, the shutdown affords a perfect opportunity to assert his absolute dominance over national politics. And Mitch McConnell is more than willing to assist. The added benefit for Trump in this case is that strangling the federal government eventually hurts the special counsel investigations into his presidential campaign, the transition, and the conduct of the president and members of his administration.

Speaking of strangling the important work of the federal government:

Follow the Money Laundering

The Trump - Russia story had three separate phases:
1) Cultivation of Trump as an asset. Started in the 1980's(?). Gained head of steam circa 2008 after legitimate bankers stopped lending to the serial bankuptcist. Casinos and real estate offer two great opportunities for money laundering. Of course, that does not prove anything. Maybe they were all just friends.
2) Cultivation of Trump as a candidate for president and agent of influence in the Republican party.
3) Cultivation of President Trump as an agent of influence - revolutionizing American foreign policy, destruction of NATO, elimination of sanctions against Russians, create political upheaval in the U.S. by dismantling the American system insofar as possible, and provide U.S. intelligence to Moscow.

How does Natalia Veselnitskaya fit into this?

Veselnitskaya become known in the U.S. as an attendee at the famous June 2016 Trump tower meeting about which Don Jr. claimed he expected "dirt on Hillary Clinton", but Veselnitskaya "only"wanted to talk about "Russian adoptions".

Yesterday's news on Veselnitskaya : Russian lawyer at Trump Tower meeting charged in separate case:

"A Russian lawyer whose role in a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower has come under scrutiny from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was charged Tuesday with obstructing justice in a separate money-laundering investigation."

But how separate are the two cases? Isn't it an odd coincidence that a Russian lawyer, who was in NYC June 16, 2016 for a scheduled court appearance in the Prevezon Holdings Case that relates to money laundering happened to appear at a Trump Tower meeting regarding "dirt on Hillary Clinton"?

Team Trump lies all the time about everything. So do Putin, his oligarchs, and their representatives. But they tell us where to seek the truth with their denials and deflections. If Don Jr. (aka Individual-1 Jr. ) invokes "adoptions" as a deflection, what does that tell us? Well, Veselnitskaya represents the interests of the Katsyvs in the Prevezon money laundering case. Publicly, Veselnitskaya has registered a non-profit to work Russian adoptions in the U.S. that would presumably resume if and when sanctions are lifted. But sanctions against Russia are targeted at the oligarchs. The oligarchs who desperately want to move their wealth out of Russia to places like the U.S. and the U.K. No, this wasn't a meeting about adoptions and not just about dirt on Clinton. Topic 1 was money laundering through real estate - removing sanctions to ease restrictions on money laundering -and possibly other types of  transactions. That meant that Jared Kushner's attendance was important - hence the necessity to deny that Kushner was even there or spent much time at the meeting.

As to the dirt on Hillary Clinton, the original stories omitted the attendance of Rinat Akhmetshin.
As reported,
"Mr. Akhmetshin, a Washington resident, has told reporters that he just happened to be lunching with Ms. Veselnitskaya in Manhattan that day when she spontaneously invited him to the meeting with the president’s son, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr. Manafort. He did not explain why she wanted him there."

That's a clear case of deflection - tells us Akhmetshin's participation was critical. My guess is that Akhmetshin (the Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet intelligence officer per Wikipedia) was there with the news of "dirt on Hillary Clinton". Why would Jr. claim it was Veselnitskaya? To distract attention from the money laundering that would resume when sanctions were lifted on the oligarchs.And that money laundering would include handsome payoffs  - not just for money laundering services, but for the president who, by the way,  has been extremely reluctant to impose sanctions on the oligarchs and anxious to remove those sanctions as quickly as possible. The Treasury Dept. announced just before Christmas, the lifting of sanctions on Oleg Deripaska's Rusal and EN+Group while allegedly keeping sanctions in place on Deripaska, Paul Manafort's boss for many years.

The Safe Place

In America, political journalists in the business of objective news reporting pull themselves to the safe place of "both sides" reporting as a purported best practice in their field. When you play the "both sides" game you innoculate yourself from criticism of bias.

Reporting "both sides" is not always wrong or inaccurate, but forcing all political reporting into a "both sides" box is one of the great journalistic failures of 2016. And it continues.

On MSNBC this morning, Craig Melvin announced in his lead-in:

source:msnbc

"A disrupter in Congress...
How Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez draws the right's outrage and forces members on the left to look over their shoulders all at the same time.

Take a look at the subject and the predicate. Ocasio-Cortes just is a maverick - is that now that John McCain is no longer with us? Is that why - just to fulfill the press's need for a maverick?

And what action did she take to draw the right's outrage? Is it really outrage at some action? More likely she represents a threat or an opportunity. A threat if she is well liked, or an opportunity if she lets certain conservatives check all the boxes of their antagonism - a) female, b) outspoken, c) latina, and d) young. After her election, a Washington Examiner reporter tweeted a picture of her taken from behind, challenging her personal story by claiming her being too well dressed to be poor. That also gave him the excuse he needed to take a photo of her butt. More recently, an old video of her joyfully dancing with friends at Boston University was tweeted in an apparent effort to discredit her for being what? Young, attractive, energetic, and happy? That most recent episode demonstrates that something peculiar is going on here with the urgent attempts to take her down. Ordinarily a freshman member of Congress has very little power - one vote among 435. So the rapid fire attacks on AOC demonstrate that Republicans feel a need to make the story about her. It's a tell - something about the Republicans. Not AOC. That is the real news. The Republicans want AOC to be their spokesperson for the Democrats. And for that story, let's keep "the left" out of it. Don't bring in "the left" to force the appearance of balance. Just tell the real story.

"How conservative operatives jumped on the election of AOC to attract attention and foment anger and resentment of this new member of Congress as a way to distract from serious policy discussion"

Not perfect. But would be much better. Much closer to the truth.

Melvin made it worse after he came back from the "break."
"Love her or hate her Congress youngest member AOC has become a lightning rod for Republicans 
She has also become a darling of the left."

There he goes again. Both sides. You can't say anything about one side without invoking an equal and opposite statement about the other "side" That may seem harmless enough, but that approach has made it almost impossible to state the obvious as plain fact or even as the most likely set of facts in any situation where "both sides" leads to fallacy.

The presumption that both sides are always the same is a fallacy that flies in the face of the reality we have faced over the past two years. A man is president of the U.S. who did certain things and did not do certain things.

He never ran for or served in any government office or as a general in the military.
He never functioned in business in any way similar to ANY business leaders in the U.S. He just is not Rex Tillerson, let alone Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, or anyone else.

He ran beauty pageants.
He ran casinos.
He traded in real estate, such as condos and office buildings. Much of his real estate was sold to Russian oligarchs and criminals.

And so on. Ignoring that stark asymmetry  with a both sides approach guarantees that reporting will distort the truth about Trump. Which is why we are where we are today. And failure of major news organizations to recognize that problem with their reporting guarantees that 2020 will be a replay of 2018.