Showing posts with label WTF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WTF. Show all posts

Monday, June 26, 2017

TRUMP FAMILY EMPIRE BEGAN WITH A WHORE HOUSE



MAC42_TRUMP_HOTEL_POST01
Donald Trump’s grandfather opened this hotel during the Yukon gold rush, boasting ‘every delicacy in the market’ and ‘private rooms for ladies’

Just off the shores of Lake Bennett, enjoy the best swan and caribou meat you’ll find anywhere in these mountains, and probably better than anywhere in Canada, believe me. Many people from many tents are saying the whiskey is very, very, classy. And the ladies—they’ll make your head spin, and many other things. Those other tents and hotels serve horse meat, and it’s disgusting. If you want luxury as badly as you want gold, there is only one place, and only one name.

OK, this sort of language wasn’t in recorded Klondike Gold Rush texts from 1898, at least not from the proprietor of the New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel. But his grandson, Donald Trump, might not have been positioned to dazzle and sometimes terrify America with his boastful sales pitches were it not for Fred Trump and his plucky immigrant’s story, his tasty meals and other delicacies of the flesh, and the small fortune he made in the northern wilds of this country that now has a health care system the Republican presidential candidate says is ruinous, a country that eagerly welcomes the Syrian refugees he calls terror’s Trojan Horse.

Whether Donald Trump wins or loses with his presidential bid, a monument of sorts to his paternal grandfather’s three lucrative years in Yukon and the Canadian North will open along Lake Bennett next year—although that fabled surname won’t appear anywhere near it, in five meter high letters or otherwise.

Before explaining that, let’s go back to a time long before Trump Winery’s bottles were chilled at finer Trump Hotels the world over, to a place where Trumps themselves were in the messy business of cultivating, picking and crushing grapes. Friedrich Trump was born in 1869 in Kallstadt, Germany, in the heart of a western wine making region. Friedrich was no standout among his five siblings—he was too frail to work the family vineyard, says Gwenda Blair, the chief biographer of Trump and these boughs of his family tree. Friedrich’s father died when he was eight. His mother sent Friedrich, at 14, to become a barber’s apprentice. A couple of years later, as the military draft loomed and there wasn’t much hair to cut in his village, the 16 year old Friedrich cobbled together enough Deutschmarks to buy passage on a steamship to New York City.

Portrait of Frederick Trump (Wikipedia)
Frederick Trump (Wikipedia)

The land of opportunity seized him quickly; Friedrich got hired by a barbershop within hours of arriving in Manhattan. Six years on, he grew weary of the living wage work. In 1891, Donald Trump’s grandfather would be first in the chain to dream and reach for something bigger.

Friedrich left his New York enclave of fellow Germans and took his savings across the land to Seattle, a booming resource and port city. He hung his shingle as Fred Trump at the Dairy Restaurant he’d opened in Seattle’s red-light district. In keeping with the local custom, the Dairy’s predecessor eatery advertised “private rooms for ladies”—1891-speak for prostitution—and it’s likely Trump didn’t end the practice, Blair writes in Trumps: Three Generations that Built an Empire. Shortly, his interest turned to gold; namely, the town of Monte Cristo, which was showing promise for gold and silver deposits, some 110 km east of Seattle. He invested in some land there, but also stuck with plying his hospitality trade for the men doing all the digging.

In the summer of 1897, a ship of grubby and suddenly wealthy prospectors arrived with news of a big gold strike in Canada’s remote northern reaches, near Dawson in the Yukon territory. By then, Trump was already on the hunt for those riches, showing some flashes of his family’s later business savvy—and at the same time his grandson’s blundering streak. Fred Trump had sent two miners north to lay claims, and before the gold-rush headlines hit Seattle’s newspapers, they’d already staked a $15 claim in the Trump name on Hunker Creek, not far from the first strike at Bonanza Creek. A day later, Trump’s associates profited by flipping the land for $400, Blair writes. Flipping was common in the gold rush days.

“It was uncertain whether they were two cents’ worth, let alone two million,” Yukon historian Michael Gates says. Had they held it, these Washington-state miners and Trump could have made vastly more than they did. Hunker Creek claims panned out—yep, that’s where the phrase comes from—as one of the most productive creeks in the gold rush.

It’s unclear whether word of that blown opportunity reached Trump the restaurateur. He was already saving money from his restaurant till to trek north himself. In early 1898, he sailed up the Pacific Coast with gear for the long hike through Yukon, though he “had no plans to mine himself,” Blair writes.

The Arctic Restaurant and Hotel, seen here on the right in a photo in Whitehorse, Yukon, ca. 1899 (Provincial Archives of Alberta)
In 1900, the Arctic Hotel moved to Whitehorse. A year later Trump split town; his partner was jailed after a hotel orgy and jewelry theft. (Provincial Archives of Alberta)

Before the train, the gold rush routes were through the Alaska and Canadian mountains. White Pass, which Trump is believed to have taken, was dubbed Dead Horse Trail, the ground a “vile slush” of animal parts, the pass walls “stained dark red from the blood,” Blair writes. Pairing up with a fellow traveler named Ernest Levin, Trump set up a tent restaurant along the route, likely serving up flash-frozen horse meat, according to The Trumps. Then in May 1898, the German-American and his partner escaped the pass and reached the new town of Bennett, a collection of tents and men building Dawson-bound boats and awaiting the ice breakup. Trump and Levin bought lumber to erect a two-story building on Main Street. The New Arctic would feed the thousands of travelers and stranded folks alike, boasting an array of fine and non-equine meats, “Every delicacy in the market,” “Fresh oysters in every style,” and yes, private rooms for ladies.

“Mining the miners was the smart thing to do,” Blair tells Maclean’s. “Where was the money to be made? It was to be made out of the guys doing the hard work, not out of the ground.” Prospectors were lucky to strike any gold, and luckier to escape the Arctic with any wealth; one of the other famed names to rise from the Klondike rush was Alexander Pantages, who started with a theater in Dawson and would later launch a network that included Pantages theaters in Toronto and Winnipeg.

The Guggenheims would find post-rush bounty with a company that dredged Klondike rivers, but already had family riches that the Trumps had yet to amass.

In Bennett came a warning about Trump and women, more than a century before Donald’s brags about groping women would echo through a presidential campaign. A letter-writer in the Yukon Sun said single men would find at the New Arctic the best food in Bennett, but he warned “respectable women” away from staying there, “as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex,” Blair’s book records. Donald Trump, for his part, told the New York Times that reports of prostitution at his granddad’s restaurant are “totally false,” though he was born 28 years after the Yukon entrepreneur’s death.

The Klondike rush had begun its decline by the time New Arctic began in Bennett, but a train close to completion all the way from the port at Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse would outright kill Bennett and its businesses. Trump and Levin set their restaurant’s frame on a raft toward Whitehorse so it could open in time for the White Pass & Yukon Route’s opening in summer 1900. With a wood-framed tent and a false facade, the Arctic Restaurant opened up across Front Street from the terminal. In this fledgling city, there was competition: the Hotel Grand and White Horse Hotel on the same block dwarfed the Trump eatery. Rivals advertised fine hotels and cigars, or stabling for dogs and horses; the Arctic was more vague and braggadocious, offering itself as the “newest, neatest and best-equipped north of Vancouver,” states Trump’s ad in the Whitehorse Star.

Prospectors were struggling up north, but business remained brisk, even if winter was dreadful and dreadfully slow. “We have come to stay,” a February 1901 restaurant ad proclaimed. (Wrong!) That spring, Trump left town just as a new crackdown came on liquor and other vices. He sailed home to Germany with a nest egg of roughly $500,000 in current value, found a wife and then returned to New York, where his son would launch his family into land development.

Back in Whitehorse, Levin got into landlord troubles (with someone who didn’t actually own the land anyway) and lost control of the Arctic in 1902, when jailed after a hotel orgy and jewelry theft—a running mate who would have embarrassed a Trump, not the other way around.

This was a Trump who knew when to quit. The 1901 Canadian census counted 27,000 Yukon residents, more than Vancouver had at the time. A decade later, the territorial population plunged by two-thirds. In new hands, the restaurant burned down in the great Whitehorse fire of 1905; it was rebuilt but didn’t last long. On its site now is the low-slung Horwood Mall, full of Bernie Sanders-friendly local boutiques like Baked Café, Cultured Cheese and Climate Clothing. Trump history has little to no imprint on Whitehorse, save southerners’ mainly recent interest. “There are a lot of people who gain a piece of the action in the Yukon, make money and either never live there or only come very briefly and go on to make lives elsewhere,” says Whitehorse historian Linda Johnson.

It’s a different story down in Bennett. All that remains from the gold rush town is the vacant church.

But that’s changing, as the nearby Carcross-Tagish First Nation and Parks Canada combine to create a high-end “glamping” experience with tent-style cabins and a recreated restaurant for those shelling out $1,600 for four nights to stay at Chilkoot Trail Village. “At the heart of the village is a replica of the famous Arctic Restaurant & Hotel, that was ‘the place to be’ at Bennett City during the stampede to the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898,” states the attraction’s draft website by Nature Tours Yukon, which will market the frontier-inspired experience.

The promoters are treating the family link to the controversial politician as an awkward historical fact rather than a marketing ploy. “For us, it’s more of a campfire tall story,” says Nature Tours president Joost Van Der Putten.

Would that change if Trump wins, and this becomes part of presidential family lore? “Probably not, and you never can tell the way things work out,” Van Der Putten says. “In marketing and sales, you have to seize opportunity as it comes; that is something Mr. Trump is teaching us.”

Due to the 1918 flu pandemic that felled Fred Trump, Donald never got to hear Klondike tales from his grandfather, or learn about the hard work trudging through Yukon mountains or running an anything-goes restaurant. Fred Trump’s grandson isn’t one to tolerate a kitchen’s heat or an Arctic deep freeze. But the bold and whatever-it-takes-to-prosper steps? Those seem to be inherited traits.

Donald Trump's ancestral whore house gets a new lease on life

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. 

Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent.

Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/?utm_term=.12a31b9dd507&hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_russiaobama-banner-7a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

2016 election is officially illegitimate. TIME: Hackers Altered Voter Rolls

http://time.com/4828306/russian-hacking-election-widespread-private-data/

Election Hackers Altered Voter Rolls, Stole Private Data, Officials Say
Massimo Calabresi - Jun 22, 2017

The hacking of state and local election databases in 2016 was more extensive than previously reported, including at least one successful attempt to alter voter information, and the theft of thousands of voter records that contain private information like partial Social Security numbers, current and former officials tell TIME.

In one case, investigators found there had been a manipulation of voter data in a county database but the alterations were discovered and rectified, two sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Investigators have not identified whether the hackers in that case were Russian agents.

The fact that private data was stolen from states is separately providing investigators a previously unreported line of inquiry in the probes into Russian attempts to influence the election. In Illinois, more than 90% of the nearly 90,000 records stolen by Russian state actors contained drivers license numbers, and a quarter contained the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, according to Ken Menzel, the General Counsel of the State Board of Elections.

Congressional investigators are probing whether any of this stolen private information made its way to the Trump campaign, two sources familiar with the investigations tell TIME.

“If any campaign, Trump or otherwise, used inappropriate data the questions are, How did they get it? From whom? And with what level of knowledge?” the former top Democratic staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, Michael Bahar, tells TIME. “That is a crux of the investigation."

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Trump seeks sharp cuts to housing aid, except for program that brings him millions

Trump’s budget calls for sharply reducing funding for programs that shelter the poor and combat homelessness — with a notable exception: It leaves intact a type of federal housing subsidy that is paid directly to private landlords.

One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation’s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump’s 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trump-seeks-sharp-cuts-to-housing-aid-except-for-program-that-brings-him-millions/2017/06/20/bf1fb2b8-5531-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Trump's Bizarre Kiss Ass Cabinet Meeting

Donald Trump opened a cabinet meeting by inviting the media in to hear the important business of the country.

What did the country hear?

First, Trump took time to praise himself, saying that “nobody would have believed” how many jobs were created in the last seven months … which was less than the jobs created in the previous seven months.

And that the papers were full of “big stories” about new mines opening.

There was also a self-celebration of Trump’s great achievements as a signer of legislation. Which are the greatest. The most ever.

It may be hard to think of a single piece of substantive legislation that bears Trump’s scrawl, but that’s because you’re not thinking hard enough. Besides, every tweet now counts as legislation.

What’s passing that Lilly Ledbetter Act next to calling Comey a coward from the toasty comfort of your bed?

 Once Trump got tired of hearing himself explain how great he was, it was time to share the duty with others. That big smacking sound was each Trump appointee taking his or her turn at telling Trump what a wonderful man he is, how right he is about everything, and how much everyone loves him.



Full story: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/6/12/1671049/-Donald-Trump-turns-a-cabinet-meeting-into-a-butt-kissing-ritual

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

The Confederate General Babbles Before Congress

Posted by Excommunicated Cardinal

At 2:30pm Eastern time today, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III will testify under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding his contacts with government officials of the Russian Federation prior to the January 20th inauguration, as well as his role in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Many burning questions remain for Sessions.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has brought on money laundering experts, a veritable "murders' row" of prosecutors, while the right-wing world has turned on him in a transparent and vicious attempt to undermine the credibility of the investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia and other filthy laundry the investigation turns up.

To complicate matters further for the embattled chief executive, there are reports that he is considering attempting to fire Robert Mueller. Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott of ProPublica have also reported that Trump's personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz has claimed to have been a catalyst in the firing of former US Attorney Preet Bhara.

In other news, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the administration in regards to Trump's self-proclaimed travel ban, unanimously upholding an injunction preventing the implementation of the policy.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is trying desperately to pass another cruel ACA-repeal bill with no public text or CBO score.

Monday, June 12, 2017

The Incontrovertible Evidence


When Trump Said He'd Testify, He Didn't Mean To Congress

Trump will not testify before Congress under oath, a development that legal experts say was expected but that illustrates the pitfalls of the president’s tendency to shoot from the hip in public remarks.

Trump said at a Friday press conference that would “100%” agree to give sworn testimony in response to former FBI director James Comey’s allegations last week.

On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the president was “specifically asked whether or not he would talk to Director Mueller,” the special counsel investigating alleged Russian election meddling, under oath.

In fact, Trump was asked generally about giving sworn testimony rebutting Comey’s allegations that the president asked him to pledge loyalty and to ease up on the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Asked a follow-up about Mueller specifically, the president said he would speak with him as well.

Congressional Democrats were giddy at the prospect of grilling Trump under oath, but experts say that testimony was probably never going to happen. “I think that was expected,” said national security attorney Bradley Moss. “Having the President testify before Congress raises significant separation of powers concerns. The last to do it was Gerald Ford and all others since have adamantly refused.”

But Moss and his law partner Mark Zaid say the president didn’t seem aware of that fact during his remarks on Friday. “This Presidency is marked like none other by a White House tendency to reinterpret the specific words of the President. Every time that happens its credibility suffers,” Zaid said in an email.

Lachlan Markay

Saturday, June 10, 2017

The GOP Failed And Now We’re Stuck With Trump



As the carnage of World War I widened, Barbara Tuchman recounts in “The Guns of August,” a German leader asked a colleague, “How did it all happen?”

“Ah,” replied the other, “if only one knew.”

A century later, there is no mystery to the carnage that Donald Trump has wrought.

Everything we have seen in these first 140 days—the splintering of the Western alliance, the grifter’s ethics he and his family embody, the breathtaking ignorance of history, geopolitics and government, the jaw-dropping egomania, the sheer incompetence and contempt for democratic norms—was on full display from the moment his campaign began. And that’s not just what Democrats think—it’s what many prominent Republicans have said all along.

Once Trump was elected, his foes began to indulge in a series of fantasies about how to prevent his ascendancy or how to remove him from power. The electors should refuse to vote for him (which would have thrown the election into the House, which would have chosen Trump); the Cabinet and the vice-president should use the 25th Amendment to declare him unable to exercise his duties (a scenario, as I have written here earlier, that works just fine on TV melodramas like “24” and “Scandal”); Congress should impeach him (which would require 20 GOP House members and 19 Republican senators to join every Democratic lawmaker).

So this may be a good time to remember that in a key sense, Trump happened because a well-established, real-life mechanism that was in the best position to prevent a Trump presidency failed. That institution was the Republican Party.

It is not entirely true that Trump engineered a “hostile takeover” of the GOP, provided that the party is defined more broadly than elected officials and party insiders. As Conor Friedersdorf wrote last year in the Atlantic: “the elements of the party that sent pro-Trump cues or Trump is at least acceptable’ signals to primary voters—Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Breitbart.com, The Drudge Report, The New York Post, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, Rick Scott, Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio—are simply more powerful, relative to National Review, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and other ‘Trump is unacceptable’ forces, than previously thought.”

What is true, however, is that the governing wing of the party was fully aware that Trump was not to be trusted with the levers of power. In January of last year, National Review devoted an entire issue to a symposium where 22 prominent Republicans and conservatives detailed their militant opposition to the candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry—who is now Trump’s energy secretary—called “a cancer” on the American political system. Until his nomination was all but assured, Trump had the backing of a lone Republican senator, Jeff Sessions (who is now his embattled attorney general).

More broadly, the whole idea of a disparate party coming together at a convention was, for decades, rooted in the “vetting” process; those experienced in the mechanics of politics and governments would decide which of the candidates were best equipped to win an election and carry out the party’s agenda in Washington. It’s beyond obvious that in the decades since primaries replaced power brokers as the delegate-selecting process, this role has attenuated. But it survives today as an “In-Case-Of-Emergency-Break-Glass” tool. And the question is: Why didn’t the Republican Party employ it?

Explanations have ranged from the fragmented nature of the opposition—no early consensus choice as with George W. Bush in 2000—to the underestimation of Trump’s appeal (the establishment candidates like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie spent their time and money attacking each other, while Ted Cruz was constantly praising Trump, hoping to ride in his wake when he collapsed).

But one often overlooked reason—and one for parties to remember if they hope to avoid future Trumps—is that the rules of the GOP greatly benefitted Trump. The party allows winner-take-all primaries by congressional district or statewide— which in many states hugely magnified Trump’s delegate totals. Trump won 32 percent of the South Carolina vote, but all 50 delegates. He won 46 percent of the Florida vote but all 99 delegates. He won 39 percent of the Illinois vote, but 80 percent of the 69 delegates. By contrast, Democrats—who abolished winner-take-all primaries more than 40 years ago, insist on a proportional system, much like parents cut the cake at a children’s birthday party. The result is that an intensely motivated minority cannot seize the lion’s share of delegates.

Another rule may well have stayed the hand of Republicans who saw in Trump an unacceptable nominee. The Democratic Party gives more than 700 people seats as “super delegates.” Every senator, every House member, every governor and a regiment of party officials are, by rule, unbound.

They make up 15 percent of the total votes at the convention. Republicans only have some 150 “automatic” delegates—7 percent of the total—and they must vote the way their state’s primary voters did. Thus, the whole idea of an emergency brake is almost nonexistent in the GOP.

Whether such tools should exist is a matter of debate. Many Democrats on their party’s left disdain the idea of such backroom politics (although toward the end of the 2016 primary season, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ backers were urging super delegates to vote for him on the grounds that the was the more electable candidate in November). If a candidate comes to the convention with more votes than anyone else, but with more voters having chosen a different candidate, what’s the “right” thing for an unbound delegate to do? The famous assertion by Edmund Burke, that “your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion” is very much out of fashion among the populist movements on left and right.

But either by cluelessness or willful design, the Republican Party had put itself in a position where one of the most significant functions of a party—the “vetting” of its prospective nominee—was rendered impotent.

And we are living with that institutional failure every day.

Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

FBI Notified: Mitch Mconnell In $2.5M Money Funnel Connected To Putin

By mhw

http://bipartisanreport.com/2017/06/09/fbi-notified-after-mitch-mcconnell-exposed-in-2-5m-money-funnel-connected-to-putin/

By Natalie Thongrit - June 9, 2017

SNIP

Thanks to the hard work of Democratic pundit Scott Dworkin, it’s beginning to look like every Republican politician has some kind of link to Russia.

Over the last few months, Dworkin has revealed that several Republican senators — including John McCain, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio — have accepted money from Russian donors. He also produced evidence of even more connections a couple of weeks ago that were shared by Palmer Report.

In May, Dworkin found documents that link Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to a super PAC that accepted $2.5 million from a “pro-Putin Ukrainian businessman.” He shared photos of the documents on Twitter, along with the following message:

‘#TrumpLeaks Docs: Mitch McConnell linked super PAC took $2.5 million from a pro-Putin Ukrainian businessman last election cycle #trumprussia’

#TrumpLeaks Docs: Mitch McConnell linked super PAC took $2.5 million from a pro-Putin Ukrainian businessman last election cycle #trumprussia pic.twitter.com/V7HTq16fCR

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) May 21, 2017

*Scott Walker*
Dworkin also found that McConnell is not the only person who has benefited from a pro-Putin businessman. He tweeted a couple of days later photos of documents that show Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker also received money from this “pro-Putin” individual during the last election cycle.

MORE..Interesting read.!



Why they refuse to have Trump investigated.
We all knew that bunch was invested in Putin's scam, now we have the story.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Cyberpunk 2077 assets stolen by actual cyberpunks

Cyberpunk 2077 assets stolen by actual cyberpunks

When Will Trump Voters Realize They've Been Had?

People don't like to admit they were wrong, which is what they would be doing if they concede that Trump is not up to the job.

Photo Credit: George Sheldon / Shutterstock.com

When will the people of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, those stalwart Trump voters who believe he’ll be bringing back coal jobs, finally figure out they’ve been had?

History suggests it's unrealistic to expect people to change their minds quickly. This is a pattern that has held for centuries. In the 1600's the Salem witch trials dragged on for eight long months before townsfolk finally began to realize that they had been caught up in an irrational frenzy. More recently, Americans proved during Watergate that they are reluctant to turn on a president they have just elected despite mounds of evidence incriminating him in scandalous practices. The Watergate burglary took place on June 17, 1972. But it wasn't until April 30, 1973 – eleven months later – that his popularity finally fell below 50 percent. This was long after the Watergate burglars had been tried and convicted and the FBI had confirmed news reports that the Republicans had played dirty tricks on the Democrats during the campaign. Leaked testimony had even showed that former Attorney General John Mitchell knew about the break-in in advance. But not until Nixon fired White House Counsel John Dean and White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resigned did a majority turn against the president. And even at that point Nixon's poll numbers stood higher than Trump's. Nixon:  48 percent; Trump: 42 percent.

It's not just conservative voters who are reluctant to change their minds. So are liberals. After news reports surfaced in the 1970s proving that John Kennedy was a serial philanderer millions of his supporters refused to acknowledge it. A poll in 2013 show a majority of Americans still think of him as a good family man.

Thus far not even many leading Democrats have been willing to come out in favor of Trump's impeachment. Cory Booker, the liberal senator from New Jersey, said this past week it's simply too soon. And if a guy like Booker is not yet prepared to come straight out for impeachment, why should we think Trump voters would be willing to? It is only just in the last few weeks that polls show that a plurality of voters now favor Trump's impeachment. (Twelve percent of self-identified Trump voters share this view, which is remarkable.)

It's no mystery why people are reluctant to change their minds. Social scientists have produced hundreds of studies that explain the phenomenon. Rank partisanship is only part of the answer. Mainly it’s that people don't like to admit they were wrong, which is what they would be doing if they concede that Trump is not up to the job. When Trump voters hear news that puts their leader in an unfavorable light they experience cognitive dissonance. The natural reaction to this is to deny the legitimacy of the source of the news that they find upsetting. This is what explains the harsh attacks on the liberal media. Those stories are literally making Trump voters feel bad. As the Emory University social scientist Drew Westen has demonstrated, people hearing information contrary to their beliefs will cease giving it credence. This is not a decision we make at the conscious level. Our brain makes it for us automatically.

So what leads people to finally change their minds? One of the most convincing explanations is provided by the Theory of Affective Intelligence. This mouthful of a name refers to the tendency of people experiencing cognitive dissonance to feel anxiety when they do so. As social scientist George Marcus has explained, when the burden of hanging onto an existing opinion becomes greater than the cost of changing it, we begin to reconsider our commitments. What's the trigger? Anxiety. When there's a mismatch between our views of the way the world works and reality we grow anxious. This provokes us to make a fresh evaluation.

What this research suggests is that we probably have a ways to go before Trump voters are going to switch their opinions. While some are evidently feeling buyers' remorse, a majority aren't. They're just not anxious enough yet. Liberals need not worry. The very same headlines that are giving them an upset stomach are making it more and more likely Trump voters are also experiencing discomfort. What might push them over the edge?  One possibility would be a decision to follow through on his threat to end subsidies to insurance companies under Obamacare, leading to the collapse of the system, and the loss of coverage for millions of Trump voters. That’s become more and more likely since the Senate is apparently unable to pass the repeal and replace measure Trump has been counting on.  So liberals just have to wait and watch.  Will the story unfold like Watergate?  Every day the answer increasingly seems yes.

An optimist would argue that social media will help push people to change their minds faster now than in the past.  But social media could also have the opposite effect. People living in a bubble who get their media from biased sources online may be less likely to encounter the contrary views that stimulate reflection than was common, say, in the Nixon years when virtually all Americans watched the mainstream network news shows.  Eventually, one supposes, people will catch on no matter how they consume news.  Of late even Fox News viewers have heard enough disturbing stories about Trump to begin to reconsider their commitment to him.  That is undoubtedly one reason why Nate Silver found that so many Trump voters are reluctant to count themselves among the strongest supporters.

Rick Shenkman is the editor and founder of the History News Network and the author most recently of Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (Basic Books, January 2016).

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Larry King, Ed Schultz On Putin's Payroll

Russia Today, Putin’s propaganda ‘news’ network, is getting help from familiar American media figures to undermine, well, America.

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast

Inside Russia Today’s American headquarters in Washington, across from the receptionist’s desk stamped by a lime green “RT” banner, an ad starring Ed Schultz and Larry King plays on a large screen TV.

Schultz and King, whom he dwarfs, stand opposite one another, marveling at the success of the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, which they both agree is astounding. “Follow the 2016 campaign right here on RT America!” Schultz says. King points at the camera and delivers the network’s slogan, “And question more.

Founded 11 years ago Thursday in September of 2005, Russia Today is a Moscow-based, English-language news outlet which is funded by the Kremlin and serves to promote Russian state propaganda, like stories about the West collapsing and the CIA being to blame for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, which according to RT, Russia did not invade.

In 2010, RT branched out to the United States, launching RT America. In a 2014 BuzzFeed investigation, Rosie Gray reported former RT America employees describing “an atmosphere of censorship and pressure” at the network—like orders to report on Germany as a “failed state” despite any evidence that the country fits the criteria.

One RT anchor, Liz Wahl, protested by quitting live on air. She later described herself as “Putin’s pawn.” Casual viewing of the network shows a focus on negative stories about the U.S., from claims that American Olympians received special treatment which allowed them to take drugs to outward mocking of the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, despite claiming non-partisanship.

Nevertheless, the network today broadcasts shows hosted by Schultz, a former sportscaster turned right-wing radio host turned liberal bullhorn; King, the longtime host of Larry King Live; and Jesse Ventura, the former wrestler and governor of Minnesota who promotes 9/11 truther conspiracies, among a handful of other less notable names.

Ventura makes sense in a way—RT is a network, after all, with an Illuminati correspondent. Schultz and King, however, are head scratchers.

Both men left their major American networks—Schultz, when his MSNBC show was canceled in July 2015; King, when he retired from CNN in 2010—amid sinking ratings and dwindling popularity.

But that hardly makes them unique in television, where hosts can come and go with the seasons.

Neither was persona non grata in the U.S. media when they decided to work for what amounts to an arm of the Russian government, legitimizing the network with their presence—King, due to his long history as a reliable and trustworthy interviewer, and Schultz, for his reputation as an emotional, liberal populist who says what’s on his mind.

“Endorsements from prominent people can bring legitimacy to unknown brands,” Nicco Mele, the director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said. “That’s true of tennis shoes and that’s true of media properties.” Hiring King and Schultz, Mele said, grants RT America a “patina of respectability” although, unlike Al Jazeera English, which was initially feared to be an extension of the Qatari government, RT America has not made it a point to build a robust newsroom or pursue shoe-leather reporting. As for concerns about RT, Mele said, “I don’t feel like it’s been overstated.”

Amid Trump’s decision to appear on King’s program last week—which was criticized by, among others, President Obama—the hosts’ strange association with the Russian government has come into focus just as concerns about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election have reached a fever pitch.

RT America, with its corn fed media personalities serving to soften the blow of blatantly anti-American Russian propaganda, now looks like proof of those concerns, available for viewing 24 hours a day on a cable channel near you.

And the question remains, why would any American work there if they could avoid it?
“Desperation,” Jeff Jarvis, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, said. “To go on RT is—to me—primarily just a desperate move to have a camera in front of you with willful disregard for who’s putting that camera there.”

Schultz had initially been eager to do an interview about his role at RT and provide his own answer to that question.

He scheduled the conversation to take place immediately at his office near the White House after receiving the request on Tuesday afternoon.

“Your story just got better,” he wrote in an email. “Obama just called out Trump for doing an interview on RT. The Russian propaganda channel. We are not propaganda. Yes, I will speak with you.”

But then something changed abruptly.

“I guess I cant do the interview, [sic]” he wrote, just 12 minutes later.

The receptionist said he was at his usual post on the 7th floor, but he refused to come down. “I’m sorry for this… I’m just aware of how unfair the DB has been to RT,” he said, perhaps referring to the sometimes-stormy history between the two organizations. “I’m not willing to take that chance.

Thanks Ed.”

When Schultz was on MSNBC, he was an enthusiastic critic of Trump, whom he lanced as a “racist,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he derisively labeled “Putie.” But since joining RT in January, The News With Ed Schultz host has been neutered.

He’s an anchor now, he stresses, not a pundit. But, as Michael Crowley noted for Politico Magazine, his shows often focus on U.S. missteps at home and abroad, from oversized budgets to failing policies in the Middle East. Trump, rather than being called out, is instead given an exceedingly fair shake, characterized as someone who’s “tapped into anger among working people.”

It’s Putin-approved programming, in other words.

Obama, speaking in Philadelphia on Tuesday, said Trump, “just last week went on Russian state television to talk down our military and to curry favor with Vladimir Putin. He loves this guy!”

RT America obsessively covered the remark. Correspondent Caleb Maupip dismissively called it “a standup comedy routine.”

Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and even parroted the Kremlin talking point that Russia did not seize Crimea, and the Russian conspiracy theory that Obama founded ISIS. Thousands of Twitter accounts, known for pushing demonstrably-fake Russian news stories, are also reliably on the #TrumpTrain. When his campaign was run by Paul Manafort, a lobbyist who worked for Russian oligarchs (among other unsavory characters), they took the unprecedented step of softening the Republican Party platform’s language regarding how far the United States would go in defending Ukraine against Russian incursion.

And Russia has appeared to exert influence over the democratic process in other ways. The hack of the Democratic National Committee is widely considered, within the U.S. intelligence community, to have been the work of the Russian government. Further, Wikileaks, which is suspected of having ties to Russia, has been working overtime on behalf of Trump, taunting the release of materials that would be damaging to Clinton’s campaign and even, on Twitter (before deleting it), taking a poll of which illness people thought Clinton was suffering from.

A spokesperson for Trump attempted to quell concerns about his RT appearance—during which he criticized the American media and said claims that the Russians were meddling in the election were probably just Democratic talking points—by making the dubious claim that Trump simply didn’t know the show was for Russian state television, but thought it was for King’s podcast. Then Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said the appearance was just a “favor” to his longtime friend, whose CNN show he frequented.

King could not be reached for an interview as of press time, but in response to questions about his association with RT, he’s often claimed that he is not employed by the network and they simply license his material. That doesn’t explain why King stars in at least two ads for the network, where he says the network’s slogan. King’s publicist was unaware of the ads when asked about them.

One former RT America anchor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said King’s claim of independence from RT is suspicious, given his chummy relationship with the Russian news director.

When the former anchor was at RT, King taped his show “a few doors down” from the news director’s office. “They meet and they talk,” the former anchor said. In King’s interview with Trump, King asked questions that were, in the former anchor’s telling, “questions that I would’ve been asked to ask if I was interviewing a congressman or something like that.”

Before King came onboard, the former anchor remembered, “It was kind of like a rumor he was coming on and we were all like, ‘What? Why would Larry King come here?’ It makes no sense.”

The former anchor said, “The Russian news director, I remember he was really, really excited to get him on board.”

For RT, King’s decision to associate with the network was “like Christmas.”

“A big part of the strategy is to use American voices to spread these pro-Kremlin messages or point out U.S. hypocrisy,” the former anchor said. “So, if you have someone like Larry King do that, it really adds legitimacy… The whole thing with RT is kind of, like, using U.S. officials and U.S. media figures.”

Still, Trump’s greatest defender was not a member of his campaign staff or an outside surrogate. It was his onetime enemy, Schultz.

“It should be pointed out that the Clinton campaign has refused interviews on RT America,” Schultz said in a homemade video he posted online. “This is manufactured news by the Clinton campaign to vilify Donald Trump and connect him to Vladimir Putin, and that’s their strategy to win the election.”

He added, “It is so sad and so small and so elementary and I think it’s hurting Hillary Clinton, which I think is even more than sad.”

Meanwhile, Schultz was deciding whether or not to change his mind about canceling our interview.

“Let me think on it,” he said. “I don’t need the story. I do this job because I love it, not to be the focus of some story.”

He then told me he could be found at the White House, where liberal activists were protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

He stood on the grass outside the protest in a pinstripe suit and royal blue shirt, talking on the phone.

 He is a tall and broad figure, with rust-colored hair and small blue eyes that fight against his fleshy eyelids to make contact with the world.

“I’m sorry that it kinda worked out that way,” he said about the inconvenience. He claimed it was his decision to cancel the interview, not RT’s. “I have to respect the people I’m working for,” he said.

He stared off at the protest, a troubled look on his face. “Our world is fucked up, isn’t it?” he asked.

He said he’d recently taken a “chance” by talking to The Washington Post, but was unhappy with the attention in the end—though he wouldn’t divulge why, or if it had led to trouble at RT. “I’m just at a point in time in my career where I just, I don’t need any publicity,” he said. “I do this job ’cause I love it. I’ve never really figured out why the media covers the media, you know? I’m a reporter just like you are.”

Just then a protester approached with a stack of signs and asked if Schultz would like one. “No, thank you, sir,” Schultz said. The protester looked at him skeptically. “Your days of signs are over?” he asked. Schultz laughed through a frown. “No, it’s not over,” he said.

Asked if it bothered him when he was criticized for working for what almost everyone outside of the Russian government believes is a propaganda network, Schultz said, “Well, it doesn’t bother me because I know it’s not the truth, you know? There’s so much in the media that’s not the truth. You know, so I go with what I know and I go with my instincts and I go with the facts.”

Schultz emphasized that he’s now “in a totally different role than what I was doing at MSNBC. I was doing an opinion show. I’m a nightly news anchor now, I don’t—if you watch my show, at 8 o’clock—I don’t give opinions.” Although, he was eager to give his critical opinion of Clinton after Trump’s RT interview proved controversial.

Still, Schultz called the alleged change “rather refreshing,” and said the reason he didn’t seek out a job on another American network was because he wanted to do something different and he didn’t want to rival MSNBC, where he said he still has a lot of friends.

“I feel very comfortable about being fair to Trump,” he said, “I think I’ve been very fair to him.”

Reminded how much he used to hate Trump, Schultz said, “Um, well, then I guess that kind of shows my opinions aren’t getting in the way, right?”

Suddenly, a look of concern spread across Schultz’s face.

He never wanted to be interviewed, he said, and despite giving a reporter his location and answering questions for several minutes, he didn’t want to be quoted. He grew incensed and accusatory, but then seemed to try to calm himself by saying he was comfortable with everything he had said on the record.

He said he didn’t want to answer any more questions, but then he ran after me, in a state of total panic.

“I’m asking you professionally to not write anything about me,” he said.

Informed that I couldn’t promise that, since I was there talking to him to report a story partially about him—something he knew—his face turned red.

He moved closer and stared into my eyes, and then he screamed at me, divulging something personal and wholly unrelated to both RT and the conflict at hand.

“This is a hit job, I know it is!” he screamed again.

Later, in an email, he said, “I’m on record asking you not to do s story on me. I did not know I was being recorded. I don’t want any coverage . I’m professionally asking you to not write about me.

Thank you Ed [sic].”

A few hours later, he called my phone and hung up.

Monday, May 29, 2017

‘Tiny hand clenched on top’: Internet hilariously mocks Trump for plagiarizing his family coat of arms

                
News broke Monday that President Donald Trump appears to have plagiarized his family coat of arms that appears outside of the Trump National Golf Club outside of Washington. This weekend the Senior PGA Championship was hosted at the golf club and the “Trump family coat of arms” was featured on signs all over.

The actual emblem features three lions and two chevrons on a shield with a gloved hand gripping an arrow or spear, The New York Times reported. The coat of arms was originally granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies. He was the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the man who built the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Ironically, he once served as the ambassador to the former Soviet Union.

The Trump Organization staged a hostile takeover of the coat of arms and replaced the Latin word for “integrity” with “Trump.”

Davies grandson Joseph D. Tydings, a former U.S. state senator from Maryland, admitted there are members of his family who are ready to sue Trump, but he cautioned against it. Tydings once worked for a large firm that managed Trump. He told his family that the suit would end up costing generations after them money.

“This is the first I’ve ever heard about it being used anywhere else,” Tydings said of the coat of arms placement at the northern resort.

When Trump tried to bring the American version to Scotland for his new development the authorities refused to allow the usage.

The Internet was not necessarily surprised by Trump stealing the coat of arms. Instead of encouraging the lawsuit, the Internet sought mockery instead:

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Greg Gianforte cited for 'body slamming' reporter on eve of election

U.S. House candidate Greg Gianforte has been cited for assaulting a reporter from the Guardian at the Republican's campaign headquarters in Bozeman, Montana.

Gianforte was cited for misdemeanor assault, according to the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office.
In a recording of the incident, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs said he was "body-slammed" by Gianforte and wanted to call police.

A Fox News TV crew in the room reported seeing Gianforte grab Jacobs by the neck and slam him to the ground.



http://billingsgazette.com/news/government-and-politics/greg-gianforte-cited-for-body-slamming-reporter-on-eve-of/article_3a6bf896-6c25-5dd9-a4b8-d7e097a950e4.html 

Monday, May 22, 2017

Destiny 2 is leading to gold deflation in World of Warcraft

Real-world value of in-game gold dips 7 percent since Battle.net announcement.

Careful, friend... while you were sleeping, the real-world value of that gold pile just went down a bit.
Activision's decision to sell Destiny 2 through Blizzard's Battle.net (or the Blizzard app, if you insist on calling it that) is already having ripple effects throughout the platform. Look no further than World of Warcraft, where the real-world value of in-game gold has sunk quickly in the wake of the announcement, according to the tracker at WoWToken.info.

The in-game auction price of a WoW Token—which can be exchanged for $15 in credit on other Battle.net games—settled at around 120,000 gold pieces on North American servers this morning.

That's up from a price of about 110,000 gold pieces just before the Destiny 2 announcement threw the market into turmoil, causing the Token price to briefly spike to over 140,000 gold on Thursday evening.

The result looks to be about a 7 percent decline in the real-world buying power of a piece of WoW gold in less than a week. Put another way, the functional price of a $60 copy of Destiny 2 in WoW gold jumped from just under 450,000 gold pieces to just over 480,000 in a matter of days. An incredibly focused, min-maxing gold farmer could still earn that gold in a month or two of dedicated WoW play, though.
While WoW Token prices show minor fluctuations throughout each day, the last time the market saw this much turbulence was back in February, when Blizzard first allowed Tokens to be sold for Battle.net credit. Before that, Tokens could only be used to purchase World of Warcraft subscription time and were considered much less valuable at the in-game auction markets.
 Since the change, the in-game value of a Token has slowly grown about 22 percent over the course of about three months, from about 90,000 gold pieces on February 15 up to about 110,000 last week.

Looked at another way, the Destiny announcement condensed about a month's worth of "natural" gold deflation into a single weekend.

As Bungie rolls out suspected plans for microtransaction-based purchases in Destiny 2, we may see in-game demand for the WoW Token increase even further in the coming months. If you're looking to trade one video game addiction for another, we recommend trading in that WoW loot for pre-emptive Destiny funds sooner rather than later.