Excellent Columbia Journalism Review Piece On Clinton Campaign and Risotto-ing of the Press

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Friday November 04, 2016 · 5:40 PM PDT

2016/11/04 · 17:40

Just a couple of excerpts. There’s a lot more, and it’s really good, foundational stuff about the relationship between the press and people in postions of power. Please go read the rest. (And keep the “tire-swing” stories that were once so popular here in mind, e.g., “Surprise! McCain BBQ attendees skew their reporting of him.”)

Journalists too easily charmed by power, access, and creamy risotto

WHEN ROBERT MOSES, the notorious New York master builder, wanted to cow the journalists who covered him, he knew he didn’t have to harangue or threaten his way to a favorable story. Food and drink did the trick.

[...]

This practice continues unabated, as made clear in a recent batch of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks. The meals may be smaller and the settings less lavish, but the goals remain the same: for a person in a position of power, in this case Hillary Clinton, to groom a friendlier press corps. Non-journalists, as well as conservative outlets, reacted with anger and incredulity at emails—the Clinton campaign has not disputed their validity—that showed the campaign setting up off-the-record dinners and cocktails with John Podesta, the campaign chairman, and Joel Benenson, her chief strategist. (The Huffington Post had reported on the Podesta meeting previously.) Journalists mostly shrugged at the revelations.

[...]

If the reporters understand, implicitly or explicitly, that these events exist solely to advance the agenda of a particular candidate, why show up? Why spend a night in the spin zone over Podesta’s creamy risotto, knowing the campaign is trying to co-opt you? If reporters can document with outrage the ways in which lobbyists fete elected officials, why is the practice okay when reporters are on the receiving end?

[...]

As Caro understood, the best reporting is done on the margins, away from the siren charms of power and prestige. “It is more difficult to challenge a man’s facts over cocktails than over a conference table,” Caro wrote. “More difficult to flatly give the lie to a statement over a gleaming white tablecloth, filet mignon, and fine wine than it would have been to do so over a hard-polished board-room and legal pads.”

Trump/Russian Bank Server Story Getting Smashed

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Monday October 31, 2016 · 11:58 PM PDT

2016/10/31 · 23:58

A Daily Kos post on this story currently has more than 18,000 FaceBook shares. There were several others. And it turns out that just because something has the word “RUSSIA!” in it, and purports some nefarious activity regarding Hillary Clinton’s (dumb and dangerous) opponent — that doesn’t mean it’s automatically true. (Note: People will of course keep investigating this — as should be. But as of now, this story should be treated very — very — warily.)

First, it appears that someone has been trying to shop this story for weeks:

There are a lot of news outlets now, and if you shop a story around long enough, someone will publish it pic.twitter.com/1YDFwhfm5L
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 1, 2016

More from the image on the left in tweet above, from the NYT:

WASHINGTON — For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

[...]

They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin.

F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 “look-up” messages — a first step for one system’s computers to talk to another — to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.

More (and all of this is miles over my head):

blog.erratasec.com/…

This is nonsense. The evidence available on the Internet is that Trump neither (directly) controls the domain "trump-email.com", nor has access to the server. Instead, the domain was setup and controlled by Cendyn, a company that does marketing/promotions for hotels, including many of Trump's hotels. Cendyn outsources the email portions of its campaigns to a company called Listrak, which actually owns/operates the physical server in a data center in Philidelphia.

In other words, Trump's response is (minus the political bits) likely true, supported by the evidence. It's the conclusion I came to even before seeing the response.

When you view this "secret" server in context, surrounded by the other email servers operated by Listrak on behalf of Cendyn, it becomes more obvious what's going on. In the same Internet address range of Trump's servers you see a bunch of similar servers, many named [client]-email.com. In other words, trump-email.com is not intended as a normal email server you and I are familiar with, but as a server used for marketing/promotional campaigns.

More. (Note: I have no idea who this guy is, but he seems to be a respected tech dude. And to get the whole story you should go look at the whole long thread.)

This Slate story is complete garbage https://t.co/lO8WG5d4ht
— Naadir Jeewa (@randomvariable) November 1, 2016

More (WAY over my head): krypt3ia.wordpress.com/...

Ecuador Cuts off Internet Access to Anti-Putin Activist During Buildup to Russian Elections

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Tuesday October 18, 2016 · 5:50 PM PDT

2016/10/18 · 17:50

The government of Ecuador has admitted to cutting off internet access to an activist holed up in its London, England, embassy. The activist is a longtime critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, and has over the last few months published thousands of secret Russian government documents that have embarrassed the Putin government, in what many see as an attempt to sway the upcoming Russian elections.

“In recent weeks, the activist in our Lond embassy has published a wealth of documents, impacting the Russian election campaign,” said the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility in a statement. “Accordingly, Ecuador has exercised its sovereign right to temporarily restrict access to some of its private communications network within its Embassy in Russia.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a terse statement about the action by the Ecuadorian government:

Today, the government of Ecuador, under pressure from the government of Russia, cut off access to the internet to an activist currently living under asylum in its London embassy. We condemn this action in the strongest terms. Access to the internet, and the freedom to express online a wide diversity of views, even ones we don’t agree with, are fundamental rights in the modern world. Today, we’ve all learned that walls can be made of ones and zeros. And it's very much our common responsibility to try to tear down those walls, just as it was our responsibility to try to do that during the Cold War. We therefore call on the government of Ecuador to immediately end the un-democratic restriction of open access to the internet.

"If Hillary Clinton Seeks (or Accepts) an Endorsement from Henry Kissinger, She's Lost My Vote"

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Monday August 08, 2016 · 3:52 PM PDT

2016/08/08 · 15:52

If Hillary seeks (or accepts) an endorsement from Henry Kissinger, she's lost my vote https://t.co/9en3Txy35d pic.twitter.com/AIKTc9IRdv
— Charles P. Pierce (@ESQPolitics) August 8, 2016

This is why.https://t.co/fxToQvdlf3
— Charles P. Pierce (@ESQPolitics) August 8, 2016

Response from David Simon:

@buenhombredavid @ESQPolitics Loathe Kissinger. Wish him in Chilean prison. But if not jailed and used to split GOP regulars, realpolitik.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) August 8, 2016

If Hillary Clinton actively seeks, or publicly accepts, the endorsement of Henry Kissinger, I will vote for Gary Johnson and Bill Weld on November 8. (Jill Stein, you might've been a contender, but going off to Red Square to talk about Vladimir Putin and human rights? Being an honored guest of a Russian propaganda channel? I don't think so.) Kissinger is a bridge too far. He is responsible for more unnecessary deaths than any official of a putative Western democracy since the days when Lord John Russell was starving the Irish, if not the days when President Andy Jackson was inaugurating the genocide of the Cherokee. He should be coughing his life away as an inmate at The Hague, not whispering in the ears of a putatively progressive Democratic presidential candidate. I can tolerate (somewhat) the notion of her reaching out to the rest of the wax museum there, but Kissinger is a monster too far. He is my line in the sand. I can choose who I endorse to lead my country, a blessing that Henry Kissinger worked his whole career to deny to too many people.

This comes across to me as a kind of gauntlet thrown down for Clinton supporters, with the question: Do you have a line that cannot be crossed?

Important New Yorker Piece on the Overblown Reaction to Trump-Putin Story

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Wednesday July 27, 2016 · 5:23 PM PDT

2016/07/27 · 17:23

Adrien Chen:

I wrote about the DNC hack, Kremlin trolls, and a need for greater chill across the land https://t.co/vhLvsv54c2
— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) July 27, 2016

Yet, like most things having to do with Russia, the connection between Trump and Putin is far from straightforward. For every piece of damning evidence there is compelling counter-evidence.

[… see note at end]

I’m not too upset that Trump has been labelled an agent of the Kremlin. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. But the zeal with which many have seized on a foreign explanation for a domestic problem sets a worrying precedent for how any future event or movement that challenges our understanding may be processed, in a time when malevolent actors, foreign or domestic, can influence perceptions more easily than ever, and we can all see it unfold in real time. Russia’s use of propaganda, dirty tricks, leaks, and hacks in foreign affairs works a lot like a troll farm on a larger scale. The aim is to promote an atmosphere of uncertainty and paranoia, heightening divisions among its adversaries. “Having realized it is unlikely to make any real or lasting friends, Moscow has instead turned its efforts into paralyzing and demoralizing its enemies,” Galeotti writes. This effort is ideologically blind: Russia supports extreme right-wing nationalist parties in France and Germany, while in the U.S. the state-run news outlet Russia Today is better known for highlighting the causes of the far left (Occupy Wall Street, the drone war, government surveillance). When I was investigating the Internet Research Agency, one of the trolls’ favorite topics to promote was the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting of Michael Brown. Today the agency has moved on to Trump. And yet one can see a future where political protests against police brutality or income inequality are discredited by opponents, because of superficial connections to Russia. This is especially easy to imagine under President Trump.

Please read that last sentence again:

“And yet one can see a future where political protests against police brutality or income inequality are discredited by opponents, because of superficial connections to Russia. This is especially easy to imagine under President Trump.”

We are supposed to be the reasonable party — the ones opposed to the Republican whackos who love overblown frenzy like this. We are not doing our jobs on this issue. We are fueling and fanning a dangerous narrative here that is so far based on speculation and still weak or completely lacking (regarding Russian government involvement in leaks) evidence. It’s tempting — because it seems to serve to harm Trump (and that’s not even certain) — but that’s not reason to abandon our good sense here.

---—

Note: Please go to the article for a good rundown of the compelling counter evidence. Don’t want to publish to much here.

Great read by Russian-American Masha Gessen here: www.nybooks.com/...

Joe Biden: Class Act

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Tuesday July 26, 2016 · 3:41 PM PDT

2016/07/26 · 15:41

Just asked Biden if he's concerned w Bernie backers at DNC; said Ds should "show a little class" and let em be angry pic.twitter.com/1qgPM5AT3R
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 26, 2016

Right on, Joe. Smart and thoughtful.

AP Fact Check on HRC's Previous Emails Statements After Today's FBI Report

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Tuesday July 05, 2016 · 5:27 PM PDT

2016/07/05 · 17:27

The New York Times is carrying this AP Fact Check story.

bigstory.ap.org/…

AP FACT CHECK: Clinton Email Claims Collapse Under FBI Probe https://t.co/l5VTwRom6G
— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) July 5, 2016

AP reports that today’s FBI report reveals six lies made by Hillary Clinton regarding the use of a private email address and server during her time as Obama’s Secretary of State.

One:

CLINTON: "I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified." NBC interview, July 2016.

THE FACTS: Clinton has separately clung to her rationale that there were no classification markings on her emails that would have warned her and others not to transmit the sensitive material. But the private system did, in fact, handle emails that bore markings indicating they contained classified information, Comey said.

What makes this particular “marked classified” lie especially noteworthy is that it was itself a wiggle-back from Clinton’s earlier statement on the subject of classified material: "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material." Both that and the wiggle-back were untrue.

Also note that Comey makes it clear how empty Clinton’s claim about “marked classified” was in the first place:

He said the marked emails were "a very small number." But that's not the only standard for judging how officials handle sensitive material, he added. "Even if information is not marked classified in an email, participants who know, or should know, that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”

Clinton, as Secretary of State (and former senator) was one of those “participants who know, or should know.”

How to make a scandal worse: lie about it. Repeatedly.

And do shit like this:

Let's find the most corrupt Clinton associate to come on at talk about how she's exonerated.

Campaign? Do better. https://t.co/nKemctDgae
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) July 5, 2016

Extra: Greenwald on this — and note he doesn’t think Clinton should have been prosecuted.

Alex Pareene on the Very Bad "#NoFlyNoBuy" Argument

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Thursday June 23, 2016 · 5:07 PM PDT

2016/06/23 · 17:07

Alex Pareene on why the Dems’ current fight on gun control is so bad and wrongheaded. And a depressingly awful wasted opportunity to boot:

That certainly sounds like a solid principle on which to take a stand—terrorists shouldn’t have AR-15s! Meanwhile, most gun deaths in the United States are not caused by suspected terrorists armed with military-style semi-automatic rifles. The vast majority of gun deaths—suicides as well as homicides—are caused by handguns, and the majority of people firing those guns are not suspected terrorists (which invariably refers, in contemporary discourse, to Muslims, and no other groups or individuals dedicated to political violence).

The no-fly list is a civil rights disaster by every conceivable standard. It is secret, it disproportionately affects Arab-Americans, it is error-prone, there is no due process or effective recourse for people placed on the list, and it constantly and relentlessly expands. As of 2014, the government had a master watchlist of 680,000 people, forty percent of whom had “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” This is both an absurdly large number of people to arbitrarily target in gun control legislation, and far, far too few to have any meaningful effect on actual gun ownership, let alone gun violence.

Perhaps such a bill makes political sense as a sort of desperate attempt to get something through a conservative-dominated Congress. But if it is, as it appears to be, more of an effort to highlight the unpopular extremism of Republicans on gun issues, it is a stupid and counterproductive hill to theatrically die on. Almost any popular and previously debated gun control measure would have made a better symbolic lost cause. Democrats could be staging a sit-in in support of universal background checks* and waiting periods, nationally standard gun licensing and training requirements, and tougher restrictions on where and how guns are sold. All of those, or even any one of those, would have been more defensible both politically and morally. Instead House Democrats are going to the mat for a shitty, racist, useless bill.

Yes times a billion. They could have REALLY done something powerful and meaningful — but instead did this. (Note: the asterisk is to inform that Dems are demanding a vote on expanding background checks in tandem with the no-fly list ban.)

Worse: a ton of Dems are actively supporting this move.

This is a perfect illustration of what is happening among Dems right now:

This @pareene post on heinous Dem bill https://t.co/9F9a0QGqE4 - prompted this comment capturing Dems' mentality pic.twitter.com/xTTvba2dr7
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 23, 2016

I’m asking Dems to please rethink this. And to speak out and demand a smarter way forward.

@MuseWendi: The "BernieBro" Campaign

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Sunday June 19, 2016 · 4:56 PM PDT

2016/06/19 · 16:56

A really — really — great and thoughtful Twitter essay on several important issues regarding the “BernieBro” smear campaign, by the obviously super-smart and incisive Wendi Muse. (Note: I was not familiar with her until I saw this.) Important yesterday, today, and far into the future of Dem and Progressive politics.

not sure if i shld be impressed or rly frightened by the degree HrC's "bernie bro" (read:cognitive dissonance) campaign has succeeded
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

it has had the power to whiten/dismiss/erase poc leftists, even when there is physical evidence (incl actual live interaction) that we exist
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

& a more disturbing extension of that practice = whitewashing/erasure of past & present people of color heavily involved in leftist politics
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

that someone like cornel west, just as one example, would fall under the category of "bernie bro" works to shame him for powerful work
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

another (of many) other problems w/this smear campaign has been its work toward erasing poc left politics to the left of sanders
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

4 ex: may of the poc i know (myself incl) who considered sanders consider themselves to his left, meaning our politics r even more radical+
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

and yet white masculinity in the trope of the "bernie bro" takes precedence over the aforementioned political voice+
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

that those pushing the "BB" campaign refused 2 touch i think in part bc it's not politically correct to be racist anymore; in other words...
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

the optics of conventional, neoliberal, white dems coming out to shame leftist poc using a stereotype wld not have looked good+
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

using a cartoonist depiction of a bunch of white guys made for a much easier/popularly reviled enemy (to women, to poc, etc)
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

and so the risk in just straight ignoring black and other poc leftists this election was a much lower than directly antagonizing us
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

so their hopes hinged on creating a fictional enemy (that worked as the left equivalent of the specter of trump+his followers)
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

that they hoped wld galvanize poc voters to lash out not only against the "BBs" but simultaneously reject leftism (for centrism) as a whole
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

that's why we now see so many revisionist re-readings of historical black leftists popping up on twitter, msnbc, etc+
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

(just as ONE example)...
note: there is almost *always* a black person pushing for said message of erasure/whitewashing+
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

which goes back again to my comment above about it not being PC to be racist in public spaces...so they have us erase our own history)
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

that's not to say that the blk ppl doing this do not have agency in the matter, but their complicity with a system that erases us says a lot
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

most importantly that in order to succeed in our current system, we must erase/whiewash not only our own politics, but those of our past
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

(and again, our present too, esp. if we include non-US based leftist movements that include blk/other poc leadership)
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

this is not anything new w/ the clinton campaign of course, as this has been a problem for some time (see: how MLK's legacy is softened)
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

but HrC's capitalizing on this particular prob,putting fwd a campaign supposedly 4 poc *at our expense* (& that of our history),is troubling
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

and i am not sure what the longterm consequences of this process might be...it all feels far more intense than in previous years
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

PS: this isnt just abt bernie supporters btw,2b clear.i'm talking abt the poc left in gen,which incl those 2 the left of our partisan system
— Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 19, 2016

The State Dept IG Report on SoS Clinton's Emails is a Huge and Important Story

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Wednesday May 25, 2016 · 4:12 PM PDT

2016/05/25 · 16:12

Have you read this WaPo story? Please do. It’s important.

It reveals a surprisingly sloppy, undisciplined Hillary Clinton while she served as the head of the State Department. The IG report reveals that Hillary Clinton violated agency rules (read: laws) regarding the use of a private email address for State Department business; that there were confirmed hacking attempts on Clinton’s emails system, and that the responses to those attempts were far below adequate; that Clinton’s closest staff did not cooperate with the Inspector General in making the report, and this:

6. IT security officials were concerned about Clinton’s use of personal email and held meetings to discuss the need to preserve records and security. One staff member said the security director said the email system had been approved by state’s legal staff. The IG did not find evidence that the department’s legal adviser had reviewed or approved Clinton’s email system.

Another staff member who raised issues was told that their mission was “to support the Secretary, and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

The report also reveals that Clinton did not turn over all her work emails, as she has said. That’s (another) violation of the law.

The report also reveals that the oft-used (here and elsewhere) “Clinton did nothing wrong because previous SoS’s did the same thing she did” is complete bullshit.

Please also note that reports like this use the word “rules” — when it should be using “laws”:

State Dept. audit: Clinton violated federal records rules through her use of private email server. @mitchellreports reports #NBCNightlyNews
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) May 25, 2016

More here, including the report itself.

Correcting Some Popular Bullsh*t on DKos

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Friday May 20, 2016 · 3:11 PM PDT

2016/05/20 · 15:11

May 2008, NYT/CBS poll: 60% of Clinton backers say they'd vote Obama

May 2016, NYT/CBS poll: 72% of Sanders backers say they'd vote Clinton
— Taniel (@Taniel) May 19, 2016

Link to 2008 poll: www.realclearpolitics.com/...

Among Democratic primary voters who support Obama, 70% would vote for Clinton in November if she is the Democratic nominee. Among those who support Clinton now, 60% would vote for Obama if he is the nominee.

Link to 2016 poll: www.cbsnews.com/…

On the Democratic side, 72 percent of Sanders supporters would vote for Clinton against Donald Trump.

• This has been another edition of “Correcting Some Popular Bullsh*t on DKos.”

Hey! Read this! Yeah — you! newrepublic.com/...

Major ________ Surrogate Says "Ugly Women" Will Ensure Trump Loss

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Wednesday May 18, 2016 · 3:39 PM PDT

2016/05/18 · 15:39

Put “Sanders” in the blank, and take a moment to imagine the reaction here. (At least six hundred writers and commenters here would break their “BernieBro!” buttons, pretty sure.)

Now put “Clinton” in the blank — and imagine your favorite Simon and Garfunkel song:

There are more than enough ugly women in America to doom Donald Trump’s campaign for president, at least according to former Gov. Ed Rendell.

He made the comment in a Washington Post article Wednesday, as part of his assessment of Trump’s chances of carrying Pennsylvania, which has gone for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1988.

“Will he have some appeal to working-class Dems in Levittown or Bristol? Sure,” Rendell was quoted as saying. “For every one he’ll lose 1½ , two Republican women. Trump’s comments like ‘You can’t be a 10 if you’re flat-chested,’ that’ll come back to haunt him. There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally.”

www.philly.com/...

Ahem:

Big ups to all the feminist Clinton supporters who are calling out Ed Rendell's sexist comments somewhere, I'm sure https://t.co/uie4I1VpNE
— Katie Halper (@kthalps) May 18, 2016

Ay-yup. (Just something to think about regarding the regular ragesplosions over Sanders and his “BernieBro!” supporters here at the DKos machine.)

Update: Oh hell, I forgot: Rendell is the one who said Sanders supporters better “behave” at the convention. Marvelous. (Bonus: He’s also a fracking lobbyist. Much more on Clinton surrogate Ed Rendell here.)

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