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The Official Paracast Political Thread! — Part Four

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Thank you for the link, S.R.L. Good stuff, the video is compelling.

S.R.L. said:
Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame explains the differences between Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” & Trump’s “Monday Night Massacre” where Trump is within his rights.

Bernstein also explains how Trump’s actions may affect his presidency.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/car...-created-chaos-and-undermined-his-legitimacy/
Click to expand...
Some interesting sentiments expressed. :(

TEXT: “The president and his presidency is in chaos,” Bernstein told Lemon. “And it’s apparent to all but his most serious defenders, and those who are his greatest defenders and advocates. But for Republicans on Capitol Hill who are doubting his ability—doubting his stability—under pressure, this is an extraordinary series of events.”

“What Trump has done here is obstructed American principles,” Bernstein argued. “He hasn’t obstructed justice, he’s obstructed the most basic of American principles of what we stand for as a country.”

Later in the segment, Bernstein told Lemon Trump’s “executive order and chaos resulted not because of an imminent national security threat, but a political statement.” The journalist said Trump, chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon and pending Attorney General Jeff Sessions crafted the order for political purpose “at the expense of our genuine national security and the expense of our genuine history and Democratic principles.”

“He’s undermining his own legitimacy …” Bernstein said. “He has undermined, in one week, his own legitimacy to the point where there are many Republicans on Capitol Hill who question his competence. That is the worst thing he could have in terms of his legitimacy.”​

Carl Bernstein slams Trump's firing of former acting AG Sally Yates
TEXT: "Published on Jan 30, 2017"
 
Tyger said:
Later in the segment, Bernstein told Lemon Trump’s “executive order and chaos resulted not because of an imminent national security threat, but a political statement.” The journalist said Trump, chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon and pending Attorney General Jeff Sessions crafted the order for political purpose “at the expense of our genuine national security and the expense of our genuine history and Democratic principles.”
Click to expand...

I don't see how Sessions can receive the confirmation votes needed tomorrow if he admits to having "crafted" Trump's disastrous executive order. Does anyone know what time tomorrow Sessions will be questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee?

 
Two of this planet’s wealthiest industrialists are the Koch brothers, with their toxic empire (Koch Industries) headquartered in Wichita Kansas. Their political network helped to finance the Tea Party movement and power the GOP.

Times are changing for the dynamic duo & other fat cats, as Trump is seemingly in the midst of creating a type of authoritarian regime.

There may, or, may not be a paywall for the article below.

The Daily 202: Fear of authoritarianism pervades Koch network seminar, as billionaire donors grapple with Trump
 
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Here is the link to the Senate Judiciary Committee's second hearing on confirmation of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. The hearing went into recess for lack of a quorum about ten minutes ago, after more than three hours of lengthy and extremely detailed statements by committee members, and it is likely to take up another three hours this afternoon.

United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
 
A pattern of emulation between both Trump & Putin’s regimes?

Russian lawmakers are giving domestic abusers a green light | Natalia Tumashkova

Jeff Sessions just got slammed for his stance on violence against women

As Leahy noted Tuesday, the White House is reportedly using the conservative Heritage Foundation's budget blueprint, which "calls for eliminating all Violence Against Women Act grants" overseen by DOJ. Sessions voted against the most recent reauthorization of the act, in 2013, which expanded the law's protections to tribal lands, college students, and LGBT individuals.

“Then Leahy, a former prosecutor, strayed from his prepared remarks to describe a time before the Violence Against Women Act. "I still have nightmares about some of the crime scenes I went to," he said with emotion. "How could anybody who is going to be in a position to enforce our laws turn their back on that? Or suggest the law should only apply to certain classes of women?"”
 
From Heather Richardson, professor of History at Boston College:
"Political history is my job - and there is an important non-partisan point to make today.

"What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries - is creating what is known as a 'shock event.'

"Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.

"When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.

"Last night's Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.

"Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.

"My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like.

"I don't know what Bannon is up to-- although I have some guesses-- but because I know Bannon's ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle - and my friends range pretty widely - who will benefit from whatever it is.

"If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.

"But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event.

"A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union.

"If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln's strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power.

"Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'

"Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it."
​
 
The Immigration Ban is a Headfake, and We’re Falling For It
LINK: The Immigration Ban is a Headfake, and We’re Falling For It
TEXT Excerpted: "When I read about the incredibly active first week of the Trump administration, I struggle with two competing narratives about what’s really going on. The first story is simple: the administration is just doing what it said it would do, literally keeping its campaign promises. Lots of people won’t agree, but it’s playing to its base. They’re also not really good at this whole government thing yet, so implementation is shaky. The second is more sinister: the administration is deliberately testing the limits of governmental checks and balances to set up a self-serving, dangerous consolidation of power.

"A legitimate argument can be made for the former: a relatively extreme and inexperienced administration was just put in place, and they haven’t yet figured out the nuances of government. But a few of the events in the past 72 hours —the intentional inclusion of green card holders in the immigration order, the DHS defiance of a federal judge, and the timing of Trump’s shakeup of the National Security Council — have pointed to a larger story. Even worse, if that larger story is true, if the source of this week’s actions is a play to consolidate power, it’s going really well so far. And that’s because mostly everyone — including those in protests shutting down airports over the weekend— are playing right into the administration’s hand."​
 
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~ Abraham Lincoln
 
Reuters orders reporters to cover Trump like an authoritarian regime: Expect ‘physical threats’
LINK: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/reu...authoritarian-regime-expect-physical-threats/
TEXT: The Reuters news agency this week recognized the challenges of covering Donald Trump’s presidency by comparing it to authoritarian regimes like Egypt, Yemen and China.

“It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists ‘among the most dishonest human beings on earth’ or that his chief strategist dubs the media ‘the opposition party’,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler wrote in a message to staff on Tuesday. “It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration.”

He cited the organization’s work in “Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia” as an example of how to report on the Trump administration. Adler said that reporters could use experience learned in “nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists.”

Among other advice, the news agency pointed out that reporters should “[g]ive up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources,” the memo said. “Get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.”

The letter encouraged reporters to “never be intimidated” by the administration. “Don’t vent publicly about what might be understandable day-to-day frustration. In countless other countries, we keep our own counsel so we can do our reporting without being suspected of personal animus. We need to do that in the U.S., too,” the message to reporters said. “Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around the world and to lead by example – and therefore to provide the freshest, most useful, and most illuminating information and insight of any news organization anywhere.”​
 
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