Michael1942's Blog

It is well to note that incivility has been the stock and trade of this administration with the Majority party looking on in silence. It might be well for all voters to pay attention and remember dictatorships begin in much the same way. Ultimately we the people can correct it.MA

Why America’s Incivility Is A National Security Threat
Foreign cyber-propaganda is preying on American discord and divisiveness. Civility may be our best defense.

By David Marcus
June 11, 2018

Over the past few years, much has been said and written about the growing incivility in our country. From the news media to social media to the man in the White House, coarse name-calling has overtaken measured, civil discourse. There are myriad reasons this is a dangerous trend, but we need to understand and bear heavily in mind one in particular. Our growing incivility is a grave threat to our national security.
To understand why, look at the D.I.M.E. paradigm, a way of military thinkers have devised of looking at instruments of national power. The acronym stands for Diplomacy, Informational, Military, and Economic. Beneath these four levers of power exist all of the ways and means that every country may employ to exert power and influence.

In three of these areas, the United States has unquestioned dominance over all other nations on earth. But in the informational area, that dominance is nowhere near as certain. Informational levers of power include public relations, communications, and, most importantly, propaganda. The United States’ offensive informational capabilities are second to none, but our defensive capabilities are hampered by one of our most cherished institutions: the First Amendment.
While an ultimate good, freedom of speech is also a dangerous hole in our ability to defend against the growing threat of propaganda operations. Our primary foreign adversaries — Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea — are all repressive regimes vastly more capable of defending against propaganda. If speech is being used to sow division and discord in those nations, they just squash it. They shut down websites, close newspapers, and even kill journalists. These are defensive options that thankfully our government cannot use.
The Propaganda Threat Is Growing
Over the past several years, our country and its leaders have awoken to cyber-attacks’ grave threats to national security. Quite reasonably, the most focus has been placed on major operations such as shutting down power plants, actions that can potentially kill many Americans. But in the wake of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, we are increasingly focused on small, grey-zone attacks that undermine our society without reverting to acts of outright war.
While propaganda is as old as warfare, the cyber age has created abundant new opportunities for our adversaries to manipulate our information and discourse. The Russians, for example, have always stoked divisions in our country, but before social media they were much more limited in how they could do so. This is because in the analog age there were gatekeepers to most corridors of information. This is simply no longer the case.

Today, foreign information campaigns can and do go directly to the American people with no middlemen. Anonymous social media accounts can not only more easily spread propaganda, these accounts, often deployed from large troll farms, can also interact with citizens. They can pour gasoline on the issues that divide us, in massive operations that make Americans believe they are dealing with peers, not foreign agents. As stated above, these threats are asymmetrical, because our government often does not have the authority to silence the speech attacking us in ways our adversaries do.
Civility As Defense
If Americans choose, as they should, to engage each other in more civil and less angry and emotional ways, there will be two huge benefits to our efforts to stymie propaganda. First, we create a much less target-rich environment. If a politician, news anchor, or anyone with a decent follower count calls an opponent a “lying dog,” for example, within minutes meme magic can plaster that opponent’s face on the image of a dog and send it far and wide to the jocular amusement or horrified anger of millions of Americans.
If, on the other hand, the person criticizes his opponent by saying, “While my friend with whom I disagree is well-intentioned, here is what they are getting wrong,” well, that would make a pretty terrible meme. It’s important to consider that, every time we “trigger the libs” or “own the conservatives,” we are creating opportunities for those seeking to harm our society.
A second way that greater civility in our discourse can help protect us from propaganda is by making it easier for us to spot. If we are name-calling at and dehumanizing those with whom we disagree, foreign actors simply blend into the background of incivility. If, on the other hand, more or most of our discourse is polite and respectful, these foreign efforts will stand out more starkly.
Freedom Isn’t Free

When we think about the idea that freedom isn’t free, we are generally thinking about the brave men and women who serve in our military. But in regard to informational threats, the price of our freedom and our ability to defend it depends upon a citizenry that uses speech responsibly. Because our government cannot control our speech, it is we the people who must police our own speech and consider the second and third-order consequences of what we say and how we say it.
Far too many Americans on all sides of our political divides have come to believe that they are essentially at war with their fellow citizens and that the positions they disagree with must be destroyed, not discussed. This is an ideal situation for foreign powers wishing to sow discord and, in the case of 2016, even enjoy some ability to affect our electoral process. In a free society, combating informational propaganda campaigns meant to harm us is a responsibility that falls on all of us.
None of this is to say that we should not have healthy debates or strong disagreements, or that our news media should be shy about criticizing our government or society. Ironically, it is this very freedom that we use to convince countries around the world to be more like us and less like North Korea.
There are times for angry protestations in news and social media. There are outrages to confront head on, and maybe there is even a time and place for name-calling. But if we continue down the road of defaulting to anger and outrage, we are handing nations like Russia a very dangerous weapon to use against us.

As our lives become more connected to the Internet, as we use Twitter and Facebook; post blogs, articles, and memes; as we call each other deplorable or snowflakes, we must always be considering how foreign actors can turn these moments of malicious mirth into tools that degrade our communities and institutions. We must teach our children and ourselves that respectful and civil discourse, beyond being their own rewards, also go a long way towards limiting the informational capabilities of foreign powers.
This problem isn’t going away, and our government can’t save us from it. Only we can do that. Treating each other with civility and respect is not just the right thing to do, it is a powerful defensive weapon in a very dangerous world.
David Marcus is the Federalist’s New York Correspondent and the Artistic Director of Blue Box World, a Brooklyn based theater project. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

Please Donate

Looking at the poll numbers for Trump supporters, it would seem that there is strong support of TOTUS. This support is in spite of the dire actions taken against American citizens and US allies. The lack of comments by the GOP leaders in Congress should be awake up call for his supports and the Congress-will it be?.MA

JUNE 6, 2018
Kuttner on TAP
What Would Cause Republicans to Break With Trump? For the most part, Republicans have been far too willing to enable Trump’s personal corruption, his sellouts of the national interest for personal gain, and a broad array of impulsive and incoherent policies. But even Republicans have their limits.
The big red line is still firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. It would provoke an open break. Even Trump, in his stupor of Fox News fawning and genuflecting aides, knows that.
Lately, there have been other encouraging signs. A bipartisan discharge petition forcing House floor action on DACA is very close to having sufficient signatures. Trump’s implacable opposition is actually increasing support.
On Trump’s sellout of national security policy to quarantine the Chinese telecom producer ZTE, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida led a bipartisan bloc of 27 senators to protest.
And Trump’s general incoherence on trade policy is producing unified big-business opposition. However much Republican legislators find it expedient to align with Trump, they will not abandon big business.
One other factor could turn Republican legislative distancing from Trump into a stampede—the scent of an election blowout in November. In hard-core Tea Party territory, Trump is still an asset. But in the dozens of suburban House swing districts held by Republicans, he is increasingly toxic. The more of a liability he seems, the more Republicans will feel free to attack him.
The year 2018 will be remembered as the moment when Americans lost their democracy, or took it back. ~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Please Donate

The all-encompassing ignorance of our Resident on what is happening in his administration and his inability to concentrate on issues until they are complete. The campaign has long been over but TOTUS is still running for  (or from) office~MA 

 Matthew Daly and Richard Lardner, Associated Press, Associated Press 4 hours ago

 WASHINGTON (AP) — At a West Virginia rally on tax cuts, President Donald Trump veered off on a subject that likely puzzled most of his audience.

“Nine of your people just came up to me outside. ‘Could you talk about 202?'” he said. “We’ll be looking at that 202. You know what a 202 is? We’re trying.”

One person who undoubtedly knew what Trump was talking about last month was Jeff Miller, an energy lobbyist with whom the president had dined the night before. Miller had been hired by FirstEnergy Solutions, a bankrupt power company that relies on coal and nuclear energy to produce electricity. His assignment: push the Trump administration to use a so-called 202 order — named for a provision of the Federal Power Act — to secure a bailout worth billions of dollars.

Although Trump didn’t agree to the plan — he still hasn’t — for Miller, a president’s public declaration of interest amounted to a job well done.

How a single lobbyist helped carry a long-shot idea from obscurity to the presidential stage is a twisty journey through the new swamp of Trump’s Washington. Rather than clearing out the lobbyists and campaign donors that spend big money to sway politicians, Trump and his advisers paved the way for a new cast of powerbrokers who have quickly embraced familiar ways to wield influence.

Miller is among them. A well-connected GOP fundraiser, he served in the past as an adviser to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also a close friend. He ran Perry’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2016. And when Trump tapped Perry to lead the Energy Department, Miller shepherded his friend through confirmation, sitting behind him, next to the nominee’s wife, at the Senate hearing.

When Perry came to Washington, Miller did, too. He launched his firm, Miller Strategies, early last year and began lobbying his friend and other Washington officials.

Besides Perry, Miller is close to other Trump-era power players. He is among House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s best friends, their relationship dating back decades to Miller’s days in California. In more recent years, Miller developed a friendship with Vice President Mike Pence adviser Marty Obst.

Obst says the two began working closely together when Perry and Pence held leadership roles at the Republican Governors Association several years ago. “He’s very influential in Washington, a leading fundraiser,” Obst said of Miller in a brief interview.

Now, after 14 months in business, the 43-year-old has collected more than $3.2 million from a roster of clients that includes several of the nation’s largest energy companies, among them Southern Co., a nuclear power plant operator headquartered in Atlanta, and Texas-based Valero Energy, according to federal filings.

Miller also has continued to raise money for GOP politicians. He contributed nearly $37,000 of his own over the past year to Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Greg Pence of Indiana, who’s seeking the congressional seat once held by his younger brother, the vice president, according to federal campaign records.

He is an active supporter of America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC that raised $4.7 million in the first three months of 2018. That work earned him a spot at dinner with Trump, McCarthy and other GOP donors in the upscale City Center complex blocks from the White House.

“What happened to draining the political swamp?” asks Dick Munson with the Environmental Defense Fund, who said he sees FirstEnergy and other coal operators “grasping” for bailouts to solve problems of their own making. “It seems when you don’t have solid arguments, you hire well-paid lobbyists and make huge political contributions.”

Miller declined to comment for this story.

Brian Walsh, president of America First Action, said Miller raises money for the group on a volunteer basis. Miller, who lives in Texas, spent years outside of Washington independently developing an “amazing” network of connections, Walsh said. He described Miller as a “straight shooter” and rejected the notion that he is cashing in on Trump’s election and Perry’s ascension to energy chief.

“He doesn’t play games with people,” Walsh said of Miller.

But Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an activist group, called Miller’s involvement in the bailout request the ultimate “Washington swamp” situation.

“We have a special-interest appeal by FirstEnergy, a top lobbyist dining with the president, and that same lobbyist is raising money for a pro-Trump super PAC and asking for ’emergency action’ from someone whose presidential campaign he ran,” Judson said.

Miller registered as a lobbyist in Washington in February 2017, just after Trump took office. He was hired by FirstEnergy in July 2017. Lobbying disclosure records show he was paid to target the highest levels of American government: the White House — to include the offices of Trump and Pence — and Perry’s Energy Department. Miller has earned $330,000 from FirstEnergy since last year, making him one of the company’s highest-paid outside lobbyists.

The coal industry’s top priority at the time was seizing on the campaign promises Trump had made — he pledged repeatedly to bring back coal jobs — to ask for unprecedented federal assistance.

Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp., the nation’s largest privately owned coal-mining company, and its largest customer, FirstEnergy, pushed the Energy Department for an emergency order, a measure typically reserved for war or natural disasters. Among other measures, the intervention would have exempted power plants from obeying a host of environmental laws and would have spent billions to keep coal-fired plants open, an unprecedented federal intervention in the nation’s energy markets.

CEO Robert Murray and Charles Jones, CEO of FirstEnergy’s parent company, met with Trump in West Virginia to discuss the request, informing the president that the power company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Despite the high-powered lobbying, Perry rejected the request in August, saying the emergency order wasn’t the right mechanism. He offered another option, asking federal energy regulators to approve a plan that would reward nuclear and coal-fired power plants for adding reliability to the nation’s power grid. But the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the plan in January, saying there’s no evidence that past or planned retirements of coal-fired power plants pose a threat to grid reliability.

Soon after, FirstEnergy began pushing anew for the 202. Miller has visited the Energy Department at least twice since June, including on the day Trump delivered a speech on his energy agenda at the agency’s Washington headquarters.

The company argues the emergency order is needed to prevent premature retirement of coal and nuclear plants that “cannot operate profitably under current market conditions.” The proposal would allocate money to subsidize the company and other coal operators — an outcome the company says would avert thousands of layoffs and help ensure reliability of the electric grid up and down the East Coast.

The Ohio-based company filed for bankruptcy in late March, days after announcing it would shut down three nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania within three years. The announcement followed the planned closure of a West Virginia coal-fired plant, one of a series of closings as the coal and nuclear industries struggle to compete with electricity plants that burn natural gas.

FirstEnergy’s bid for the emergency request is widely opposed by business and environmental groups as an unfair tipping of the scales in favor of faltering energy sources.

An independent wholesaler that oversees the power grid in 13 states and the District of Columbia has said the Eastern grid is in no immediate danger. FirstEnergy can shut down its three nuclear power plants within three years without destabilizing the power grid, according to a report last month from the wholesaler, PJM Interconnection.

Still, the push for a bailout continues.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., recently suggested that Perry consider using a Korean War-era defense law to prevent the retirement of ailing coal and nuclear units. The Defense Production Act of 1950 is intended to prioritize industries deemed vital to national security. President Harry Truman used the law to cap wages and impose price controls on the steel industry.

FirstEnergy said it supports the premise, although it says it has not specifically urged Perry to use the defense law.

Perry said the administration is looking at the defense law “very closely,” one of several options being considered.

Associated Press writer Steve Peoples contributed to this report.

Follow Matthew Daly: http://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC and Richard Lardner: http://twitter.com/rplardner

The lesser heard Evangelicals seeking a bigger platform to offer the better side of the Evangelical beliefs.~MA.
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN 15 hrs ago
LYNCHBURG, Va. — The night before Shane Claiborne came to town to preach at a Christian revival, he received a letter from the chief of police at Liberty University warning that if he set foot on the property, he would be arrested for trespassing and face up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
At first glance, Mr. Claiborne hardly appeared a threat to Liberty University, a dominant force in Lynchburg, Va., and a powerful engine in evangelical Christianity. Wearing baggy clothes that he sews himself, Mr. Claiborne preaches the gospel, lives among the poor and befriends prisoners on death row, modeling his ministry on the life of Jesus.
But to the leaders of Liberty, he was a menace to their campus. He and his national network of liberal evangelicals, called the Red Letter Christians, were holding a revival meeting to protest in Liberty’s backyard. Their target: Jerry Falwell Jr., Liberty’s president and a man who has played a pivotal role in forging the alliance between white evangelicals and Donald J. Trump, who won 81 percent of their vote.

Mr. Claiborne and his group are the other evangelicals. The Red Letter Christians, a reference to the words of Jesus printed in some Bibles in red type, are not the evangelicals invited for interviews on Fox News or MSNBC. They don’t align neatly with either political party. But they have fierce moral and theological objections to those evangelicals who have latched onto Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.
“Let’s go where the Christians are, go where toxic Christianity lives,” Mr. Claiborne said last year, when proposing the idea for a revival in Lynchburg at an annual retreat for the Red Letter Christians.
The revival last month was the most energetic of several recent attempts by Christians in various camps to confront what they see as Mr. Trump’s “court evangelicals” selling out the faith. The critics have written columns, and a book called “Still Evangelical?” They convened a closed-door summit last month at Wheaton College. A number of bereaved, eminent elders plan a procession to the White House soon to hand over their manifesto, “Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis.”
Mr. Claiborne and his group were far more audacious, but they also faced disappointment, resistance and fear. They were taking on Lynchburg, a company town where Liberty University is the biggest employer. Their “Red Letter Revival” revealed the state of the evangelical church in 2018: The loudest voices and institutional power and money are with Mr. Trump; the dissenters are fired-up, underfunded and scattered; and the vast majority of pastors are silent for fear of dividing their congregations or risking their jobs.
“There is another gospel in our country right now, and it is the gospel of Trump,” Mr. Claiborne preached at the revival in his Tennessee drawl. “It doesn’t look much like the gospel of Jesus.”
Lynchburg sits at the heart of pro-Trump evangelical Christianity. Liberty University’s commencement speaker last year was Mr. Trump, a personal friend of Mr. Falwell’s. Fox News hosts are frequent speakers at chapel services.
Mr. Trump has retained the loyalty of conservative white evangelicals because he is delivering on their political priorities: appointing conservative judges, moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and allowing religious entities to opt out of serving gay people or providing birth control in insurance plans. This record has enabled them to look past Mr. Trump’s personal scandals, including allegations of extramarital affairs.
But Red Letter Christians and other evangelicals have increasingly become frustrated that their church appears to be endorsing Mr. Trump’s program of deporting immigrants, fanning racial tension and passing a tax deal benefiting the rich.
“This is not of God,” thundered Barbara Williams-Skinner, an influential black evangelical elder in Washington, D.C., as the audience stood and clapped at the revival. “This is not worthy of our savior. This is not what he died for.”
Beginning in January, Don Golden, the executive director of the Red Letter Christians, visited Lynchburg seven times in three months to try to recruit like-minded leaders and Liberty students.
Mr. Golden had done refugee and missionary work in 70 countries. At age 51, with three daughters in college, he had left behind a fat salary in large ministries he called “Evangelical Inc.” and was on contract for the Red Letter Christians, without health insurance. Each morning he prayed to God to help him make it through the day without a mishap.
In Lynchburg, Mr. Golden began following the approach of the mass revivals honed for decades by the Rev. Billy Graham, in which organizers from out of town recruited local ministers to help turn out crowds and engage new believers. But Mr. Golden quickly learned how challenging his task would be.
When the president of Lynchburg College, Kenneth R. Garren, learned that some of his chaplains and faculty had hosted a Red Letter meeting on campus, he told them the college could not sponsor the event or host meetings.
“We didn’t want to take sides. We have a fine relationship with Liberty,” said Michael Jones, a spokesman for Lynchburg College, also a Christian school.
Three days before the revival, Mr. Golden met for breakfast with a leader of a local evangelical church in the dim, empty back room of a downtown cafe, so as not to be seen together. The church leader, who spoke on the condition that neither he nor his church be identified, said he believed in the Red Letter campaign because he was concerned about white evangelicals’ bond with Mr. Trump.
But the leader said that his church could not participate in the revival. He and three other elders at the church had jobs at Liberty University.
Still, Mr. Golden and the Red Letter Christians found small signs of support. The local organizing committee for the revival included three Liberty students, a Native American minister, and a few black pastors and church leaders. They held different views on homosexuality, but decided to work together in the interest of Christian unity.
“We need to break out of our silos,” said Anne Boynton, an elder at First Christian Church, who was a local co-chairwoman for the revival. “This is an aspirational moment, an opportunity to experience what the kingdom of God looks like.”
Mr. Golden also went to a white stucco church, Rivermont Baptist, to visit the Rev. Byron J. Elliott, who had been deliberating for weeks whether to accept an invitation to preach at the revival.
Mr. Elliott’s father, also a minister, had grown up in the church and braved the sit-ins at a “whites only” lunch counter on Main Street. The family later moved to New York and Mr. Elliott said he returned to Lynchburg two years ago to serve his father’s struggling church. But he felt like an outsider.
“Everyone’s afraid,” he said, pausing. “That’s strong language. Everyone’s very mindful of how they speak and how they deliver the truth. It’s hard to tell the truth in a context like Lynchburg.”
Few black churches in low-income Lynchburg can support full-time pastors, Mr. Elliott told Mr. Golden, so many find jobs on the Liberty campus.
Mr. Elliott, though, had made his decision. He would preach at the Red Letter Revival. “I’ve learned recently that there’s a difference between having something to say and having a voice,” he said.
But there was still the question of how Mr. Falwell himself would react to the event. Ten days before the revival, Mr. Claiborne wrote a letter to Mr. Falwell inviting him to join. Mr. Claiborne was not entirely a stranger — he had preached at Liberty after writing his book, “Jesus for President.” And Mr. Claiborne asked if he could bring some of the participants onto the Liberty campus for a prayer vigil. He asked Mr. Falwell to join them.
“I already pray for you, but I would love to pray with you,” Mr. Claiborne wrote, signing off, “Your brother in Christ.”
Mr. Falwell never responded, though in addition to banning the Red Letter Christians from campus, he forbade the Liberty University student newspaper from covering the revival. When Erin Covey, the student assigned to the story, asked Mr. Falwell to comment on the revival, she received a text from him that said: “Let’s not run any articles about the event. That’s all these folks are here for — publicity. Best to ignore them.”
Mr. Falwell’s brother, the Rev. Jonathan Falwell, agreed to meet with Mr. Golden, though, at Thomas Road Baptist Church on the Liberty campus.
“We really didn’t ask permission to come to Lynchburg,” Mr. Golden said in the meeting. “But we weren’t asked permission for evangelical leaders to say that Donald Trump is the president for evangelicals.”
In an interview later by phone, the Rev. Jonathan Falwell said he disagreed with Mr. Golden’s premise that evangelicalism has been compromised by backing Mr. Trump. “I think the condition of the church today is strong,” he said.
And he said Liberty was justified in barring the Red Letter Christians because Mr. Claiborne had threatened to commit civil disobedience.
“An organization has a duty to the parents to protect their kids,” he said.
When the day of the revival came, the mood and the music inside the cavernous auditorium was upbeat, but began to deflate as the 2,000 seats failed to fill. About 350 people from 28 states attended over two nights. Many said they felt alone in their home churches and had come to find their tribe. Another 3,500 watched a livestream. Roughly two dozen students from Liberty University came.
Mr. Claiborne still wanted to lead a group onto the Liberty campus and hold a prayer vigil — or at least leave a gift for Mr. Falwell, who had just opened a new $3.2 million gun range on campus. Mr. Claiborne had ready a hand plow that he made from a melted-down handgun, a literal following of the Bible’s instruction to “beat swords into plowshares.”
They decided instead that the Liberty police would not dare arrest an 83-year-old. So that afternoon, the Rev. Tony Campolo, co-founder of the Red Letter Christians, entered the front door of Thomas Road Baptist Church, and left a red box with the bewildered receptionist.
Inside the box, tied with a ribbon, was a stack of prayers, written on index cards, from the participants of the revival.
“Dear Liberty, I am praying for your campus,” said one. “The Jesus in the Bible speaks of love and acceptance. I hope you learn to speak of this too.”