Up Really Is Down, But Not How the Times Means It

In a stunning twist, the New York Times in a NEWS column,  today ceased their longstanding hold on the truth about Donald Trump. In 'Up is Down': Trump's Unreality Show Echoes His Business Past", the NYT admits what they knew along - that Trump lies endlessly and shamelessly. Now that DJT is not running in a campaign, now that he is safely ensconced as the president of the U.S., the truth about him can be reported fully and faithfully and without mentioning Hillary Clinton in a false equivalence narrative.
In the NYT upside down world, Trump the businessman was presumed harmless, a "serial fabulist", whose "biggest best boasts about everything he touched crumbled under the slightest scrutiny". But they go on:
"But for students of Mr. Trump’s long business career, there was much about President Trump’s truth-mangling ways that was familiar: the mystifying false statements about seemingly trivial details, the rewriting of history to airbrush unwanted facts, the branding as liars those who point out his untruths, the deft conversion of demonstrably false claims into a semantic mush of unverifiable “beliefs.”
Mr. Trump’s falsehoods have long been viewed as a reflexive extension of his vanity, or as his method of compensating for deep-seated insecurities. But throughout his business career, Mr. Trump’s most noteworthy deceptions often did double duty, serving not just his ego but also important strategic goals."
So the NYT is telling us now, after they struggled all campaign until it was too late, when they decided that a really big lie can be called a lie, that they knew all along this man is a big fat liar, but could not write that as news because...WHY? They do not say. But they quote Steve Schmidt, the Republican strategist, who says:
'In a democratic government, there must be truth in order to hold elected officials accountable to their sovereign, which is the people,” Mr. Schmidt said. “All authoritarian societies are built on a foundation of lies and alternative facts, and what is true is what the leader believes, or what is best for the state.'

The implication is clear. The NYT believes they had no obligation to report the truth - no obligation of fairness, no obligation to the nation or the world. Amazing. The NYT was Falling Short and now the world suffers.

Lying In Plain Sight

In A Sane World questions the presumption of truthfulness that DJT enjoys by virtue of...actually it is not entirely clear why DJT was presumed to be telling the truth, subject to onerous and cautious "fact checking" while his Democratic opponent was made subject to endless wild accusations that needed to be put under the microscope, with the zealous enthusiasm of Fox News and the for-profit fabricated stories online.
In Philadelphia, DJT overuled his teleprompter in a garbled statement "Here in Philadelphia, the murder rate has been steady - I mean - just terribly increasing". Of course, statistics show that the murder rate has been steady. Trump thus demonstrates his affinity for lying - he starts with a lie, because it works to his advantage. And when presented with the facts - even by his loyal staff - he quickly pushes the lie instead. He prefers lying.

Loyalty Tests

As we witness the rapid emergence of an autocratic regime we should expect tests of loyalty to be used as a tool of intimidation, likely within weeks if not days. Loyalty oaths in the U.S. predate the McCarthy era of the 1950s, but they became
The "populist" Trump administration executive orders double down on unpopular policies as their claims abound to a mandate based on falsifying evidence of crowd size and vote totals. The new president already uses intimidation tactics against individual companies to bring other companies in line. But the Republican party counts on the support of big business.  Big companies with a national presence have been socially liberal for a long time, though they have maintained tolerance for Republican social policy as a necessary price for favorable tax and trade policy. What happens now when individual industries, not companies, are singled out for harsh treatment. Actions to eradicate portions of the Affordable Care Act already threaten the stability of the insurance industry. Actions on trade threaten companies whose imports will become noncompetitive due to punitive tariffs.

We should not expect the Trump administration to back away from their policies. They will continue to disrupt the peace and economy of a country that is actually doing pretty well. We are about to face a test of just how strongly voters felt about the emails, about Benghazi, about all those conspiracy theories they wanted to believe had some merit.

The next logic approach to doubling down will be to question the loyalty of the opposition - the popular majority who happen to live in the major cities of the U.S. Popular protests by marches or other means will escalate. The Trump administration will question their loyalty as an appeal to their base who believe in an autocratic leader who should not be questioned. Protesters may be met with violence. And we may see demands for loyalty oaths which are designed to intimidate and subdue opponents. We already have the example of Nikki Haley approved as U.N. ambassador telling other nations that they better get in line and follow the U.S., not because we are the beacon of the world, but because we have a laser focus on them - "taking names" of those who choose not to follow us.
"Taking names" rings in the ear as the shrill echo of the McCarthy era "naming names". Bring in the witness from Hollywood or academia, ask the witness under oath whether or not they were ever a "Communist" and than ask for the names of people the witness knew to be Communists. This approach strains each witness, pitting self preservation of career and family against basic loyalty to friends and colleagues as well as sense of meaning of good citizenship and American values.

Whether taking names of countries deemed to be unfriendly or forcing the witness to name names for the committee, the Trump administration and their (so far) unflinching henchmen in Congress will double down on tactics to appeal to their base in rural American and try to define American values as loyalty to them rather than loyalty to traditional American ideals and values. These new autocrats will cause enormous disruption in American life. Whether or not they fail, sooner or later, will depend in large part on how quickly companies that are not in the oil industry react with vigor. Loyalty to party - the Republican Party - is now stronger, much stronger,  than loyalty to the United States of American.

History will look back at this time and discuss the mistakes of the "Muslim Scare", like the "Red Scare" of the 1950s. We can only hope that this era is short lived.

A Sane World

In A Dubious Vote-Fraud Claim Gets the Trump Seal of Approval, the NYT, yet again, debunks a Trump claim and demonstrates that the source of the claim lacks any credibility whatsoever.
But in a sane world, should not the burden of proof shift?

source: nasa.gov

At this point, should not every statement of Donald J. Trump, President of the U.S., be presumed false, unless he produces irrefutable evidence to the contrary? In fact, his statements should have been presumed false early in the election campaign, based on the history.
The benefit of the doubt lapsed long ago, believe me. Bigly.

When a Lie is a Shield

A pattern of obfuscation, lies, vague claims, distractions, exaggerations, frequent use of superlatives and so on is an obvious shield which represents an effort by a speaker to avoid having to face the truth. News organizations that sift through statements to determine which individual statements are false or who measure degrees of falsity with Pinocchios are completely missing the point. Reporters need to look at the pattern, not the individual statements.
The pattern of lies viewed in its totality is a shield that Trump employs. What is he hiding? The number of possibilities is quite limited.
1. He is not really a billionaire after all. This was an accusation made during the campaign. Does this matter? Not really. If his assets and liabilities are both large, the difference between the two can easily be rationalized away with arguments that are not entirely specious. His most ardent supporters would not be swayed if DJT is not really a billionaire.
2. He is not really a businessman. At least not in the normal sense of the term. He is more of a shakedown artist who refuses to pay contractors for completed work and uses lawsuits as an instrument of intimidation and control. All evidence points in this direction. Yet this does not explain his behavior. He can rationalize this away.
3. He runs a criminal enterprise and/or he has committed criminal acts. This would be a good reason to hide his tax returns if investigative reporting of those returns would yield information of fraudulent or other criminal behavior.
4. He is the functional equivalent of a mole for a foreign power, Russia. Many individual details point in this direction based on his outward behavior. In fact, the only reason to infer that DJT is not a mole is that he has openly behaved like a Russian spy. Logically, what Russian spy would act like one? Paradoxically, this means that the best cover for a Russian spy would be to act like a spy. One variation on this #4 is not that he is a spy per se, but that he is willing to trade American policy decisions by the president for personal financial gains to his personal business interests in Russia, all of which is being kept secret based on an argument that nothing he is doing is forbidden by law.

What are the chances that #4 is true? Is it 1%? Less than 100%? 

Calling a Lie a Lie

NPR is the latest news organization struggling with the challenge of truthful objective reporting. The NYT halfway came to their senses in August 2016 deciding to call a lie a lie due to the extremity of the Trump phenomenon, but it was really too late. Now NPR tells us they will not call a lie a lie. And this is the big problem. This is the reason Trump was able to garner the necessary popular votes to be president.
Facts without context are just flotsam in an open sea. Objective reporting requires critical thinking to place those facts in context, recognizing patterns. For all political reporting, our liberal news outlets define objectivity as reporting facts and letting others define the context for themselves. Ironically, for liberals in press rooms, when true statements supported by facts align with their political beliefs -they back away from the truth - for fear of appearing biased. Conservative propagandists love to exploit this weakness.
Conservatives define themselves for America. Conservatives define others. Bannon's rant about the NYT "The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States." tells all we need to know  - and should have figured out long ago. He might have added that the media is a weak opposition party. They try to help their readership get to the truth, but refuse to put facts in context.
So conservative strategist renamed a party once known as the "Democratic Party" the "Democrat Party" (lest anyone recognize which of the two political parties supports democratic principles of majority rule, free and fair elections, and working together in the legislature for all of the people.
Conservative strategists succeeded in renaming the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare", making it look like the work of one man, rather than the Congress with him, and deflecting attention from the benefits of the law to the object of their hatred.
Conservative strategists recast the frame away from the actual policy issues, where they stand on weak ground due to the unpopularity of those policies, toward distractions.
Another renaming that recently succeeded is the recasting of "Neo-Nazis" to the "Alt-Right". With Breitbart in the White House and a president of German extraction (which the Trump family originally concealed by claiming they were Swedish) any appearance of similarity to the Nazis needed to be swept away.
Once again conservatives play to win and do not hesitate to lie to support a deeper truth, of sorts, if the lie supports their worldview. Liberals in the mainstream press hesitate to call a lie a lie even when the fact of lying is the truth. So, in order to avoid any possible appearance of unfairness, they refuse to call a lie a lie. But isn't that lying?

The 1% Doctrine

Ten years ago Dick Cheney's calculus on assessing and reacting to terrorist threats was immortalized in Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine. According to Cheney, who wielded enormous power in development and implementation of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policy,
"If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response."

source:nbcnews.com

We look forward to hearing Dick Cheney's take on the recent arrests of high level operatives in Russia's security service, the FSB. According to sources cited by TPM, Sergei Mikhailov was a U.S. asset who tipped off U.S. officials: 
"to information about Vladimir Fomenko and his server rental company “King Servers,” which the American cybersecurity company ThreatConnect identified last September as “an information nexus” that was used by hackers suspected of working for Russian state security in cyberattacks."

Josh Marshall asks the right questions about this affair:
"But this immediately poses the question: if Mikhailov was a US asset, how was he compromised? Did the information put out by US intelligence somehow lead to his exposure? Without putting too fine a point on it, a number of close advisors to President Trump are being scrutinized for ties to Russia. Some of them participated in the intelligence briefings the President receives.

Do we have a very big problem?"

The big problem is, as I posted Jan. 10th without any other content,  It's Not Illegal if a Republican president does it.  Is the dire possibility that Russia has a high-placed mole in the White House greater than 1%?

Is it lower than 100%?

What does conservative mean in 2017? Does it mean compromising our intelligence agencies and national security and the heart of our government, just so that terrible 'scourge' of 'Obamacare' can be eviscerated? You know, that terrible law that increased taxes on investment income over $200,000 so that lower income people in the U.S. can afford insurance coverage, and all Americans who fall through the cracks can be covered even if they have preexisting medical conditions.

Unfortunately, "when tactics become policy" means that Republicans are simply unwilling to compromise their current dominance in the federal government. They would rather tolerate severely compromised national security - when the Kremlin is on their side.