Tag Archives: Paul Manafort

Artificial Intelligence and Our “Cold Civil War”

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While watching all six-plus hour of yesterday’s impeachment inquiry hearings I was continually struck by Carl Bernstein’s recent assertion that the U.S. is now in what has been describing as a “cold civil war.” (A mere eight months ago he was only saying we were close to “ignition” of said war.)

There are probably a dozen or more ways to describe this conflict: Liberals vs conservatives. Elites vs. real Americans. Urban vs. rural. Professionals vs. amateurs. Serious vs. silly. B-students and higher vs. C- and lower. But at some point this new civil war can be distilled to something closer to: Fact vs. fiction.

Some Things That Actually Happened vs. Some Things That Didn’t.

How else to you describe the contrast between the open and shut case of presidential extortion presented by Adam Schiff and the Democrats with the scattershot, “Oh hell, let’s spitball this” hodgepodge of guffaw-inducing nonsense thrown up by Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan? (What? “Nude pictures” of Donald Trump? What?)

Okay, yes, we understand that even Nunes and Jordan understand that Trump did it. And that it isn’t “heresay” when you’ve got first-hand witnesses. And that their only viable line of defense is to cloud up the story with a torrent of strange names lacking any bona fide connection to the extortion at hand, all in hopes of selling the idea that every government everywhere is such a sewer Trump was merely honoring a long, sordid tradition.

But the question, to Bernstein’s point, is who are they selling this sewage to? What sort of people would ever even begin to believe, to use just one example, that Trump was vitally concerned with corruption in Ukraine because, (after he said he was considering recognizing Crimea as Russian territory), a few Ukrainian officials said mean things about him on social media in 2016?

The short answer of course is that they’re selling this and every other absurd, baseless concoction to a remarkably lazy-minded (and large) constituency. The side of the civil war eager to accept that the Ukrainians have the actual physical server containing Hillary’s e-mails. That a Politico story about a few Ukrainians’ outraged over Paul Manafort’s role in gross corruption tipping Democrats off to that fact “proves” the country was aligned to undermine Trump’s campaign … and on and on, including of course the Trump-hating whistleblower and those nude pictures of Donny.

Try as I might to be generous, the constituency for this flagrant claptrap just is not very bright. Or, put another way, it’s a crowd, an upswelling or revolution you might even say, of people adamant that they know a lot but who have plainly — plainly — done way too little to actually know what is true and what is not.

As I’ve suggested many times before, this fundamental laziness explains a lot about why these very same people feel “left behind” in a fast-moving 2019 world.

In that context — and without going all science-fictioning here — the outlines of the divide in this new “cold civil war” become even clearer and more ominous.

Over the past couple years I’ve become fascinated with the quantum advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the warnings about it from people with thoughtful, first-hand experience, not only with what AI may (likely) do to human society but … how soon it will happen.

An algorithm-driven world, where our personal preferences and antipathies deliver more (and steadily more virulent and intoxicating examples) of those preferences is already well upon us. Think your Facebook feed, the rabbit hole of YouTube where every new video is weirder and more provocative than the last.

As noxious and culturally contorting as that is today, with precious few people fully understanding how this stuff works, its sophistication and application is increasing … rapidly.

One effect, say people like writer-philosopher Yuval Harari, is a further hardening of the tribal bubbles we see so much of today. And that is bad enough.

But, he and others also forsee the stark divide between people fully appreciative of facts — of science and sociology, etc. — and those ignorant of reality adding to the creation of a class of what he describes harshly as a “useless” citizens. People, who because of their ignorance of relevant knowledge are of little to no value to the people, companies and institutions propelling a pretty Darwinian society based on algorithms, machine-learning and other forms of AI.

In his book, “Homo Deus” (i.e. “Man God”), Harari notes that where cultures until now needed vast numbers of people of no great talent to populate armies and operate factories, neither is true today. Machines are already doing all that better, more reliably and less expensively. Ask any American auto worker, if you doubt it.

The “civil war” point then becomes clearer.

The appeal today of the Trump-era GOP’s sewer of nonsense and hysteria may be rooted in class and racial animus — the “left behind” feeling ever more marginalized and “disrespected”.

But let’s project — as Harari and others do — ten to fifteen years into the future, when the perpetuated ignorance of this large bloc of citizens leaves them even less relevant and employable.

Who are they going to blame then?

Probably not Sean Hannity or Devin Nunes.

Since We’re All Adults Here, Let’s Remember Everything about Bush 41

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The eulogies for Bush 41, (the father of W*, y’know), are getting a long run this week, to be capped by Wednesday’s state funeral in D.C.. And as usual with passing leaders, the reflections are heavy on hagiography.

In general I won’t quibble with the assessment that 41 was a decent guy (mostly), unfailingly polite to friends and foes (until his people weren’t), respectful of government traditions (as far as that goes), prepared to take a hit to correct a problem before it turned into a crisis and a far (far) better role model for the country’s youth than the shameful vulgarian currently squatting in the Oval Office.

In other words, as the Republican presidents of my lifetime go, he was up there with Dwight Eisenhower in terms of competence and ethics. But hagiography is a lazy, mush-headed exercise in any situation and certainly when the deceased has been a major international leader. As an adult no longer guided by fables and fairy tales I believe it’s better for all concerned to roll the warts, the blunders and the occasional hook-up with sleaze merchants into the historical narrative.

I’m always amused at how the media’s fulminating “small gummint conservatives” seem never to recall a Republican in the White House since St. Ronald of Hollywood. Until he died this past week how many times in the past year have you heard any pundit or politician even mention the name(s) of either George H. W. Bush or his son? It’s like they never existed. There was only Ronald, who should be on Mt. Rushmore, (perhaps carved over Abraham Lincoln) and then we jump to … well, most of them are still pretending Trump is a closet Democrat.

But here’s a shocker. I had no time for Reagan. Him launching his 1980 general election campaign with a speech lauding “states rights” (i.e. white nationalism) at the Neshoba County Mississippi fairgrounds, seven short miles from where the Ku Klux Klan murdered three civil rights workers barely a decade earlier, would have been disqualifying enough, if he hadn’t already played the feckless toady during the House Un-American Activities hearings on The Hollywood Ten. After that you can move on to his presidency. Refusing to lift a finger to control the AIDS epidemic, (that gay crap don’t play with the “states rights” crowd, so bleep ’em). And then jump to Iran-Contra and the usual Republican legacy of an astonishing run-up of debt and gutting of social services.

Reagan was a doltish tool for the ruling class who could read a script and tell a joke. Hence: The Great Communicator … to the Neshoba County-like, “states rights” base.

My regard for Bush 41 would be different today had he not preceded Reagan’s “states rights” strategy by renouncing his support for civil rights legislation being pushed by Martin Luther King (and Lyndon Johnson) in an effort to win votes in Texas in 1964. Playing the racial animus card for personal political game is always and forever a bridge too far. You want to change your attitude on taxes or pothole repair? Knock yourself out. But no truly moral human being ever … ever … inflames racial antipathies to get elected to a better job.

But then comes the 1988 campaign, which starts out with selecting … Dan Quayle, a Sarah Palin-like cipher — as his VP choice. (I was there at that moment next to the levee in downtown New Orleans.) Dude, you and John McCain … you lose serious points from the get-go for really bad, un-presidential judgment.

And it gets worse in ’88 by hiring on the D.C. “lobbying” firm of Charles Black, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Lee Atwater, and giving them a long run of leash to pull every sleazy, race-baiting trick they could think of against Mike Dukakis, including Lee Atwater’s notorious “Willie Horton ad”.

The retch-inducing shamelessness of that was, like Bush 43’s attack on John McCain as the illegitimate father of a black child during the South Carolina primary in 2000, all too typical of how the brahmin-like Bushes campaigned. Naked, cynical attacks on the street level under-girding a lofty, statesman-like pose from the podium.

That of course has been and still is from page one the Republican playbook, ever since “states’ rights” resentment-mongering guaranteed them white “working class”/”silent majority” votes over 50 years ago.

So yeah, in a very imperfect world where no human is ideal, and where as Bob Dylan says, “behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain”, Bush 41 was better than others. Maybe though just by being less reckless with the truth and less indecent than what we’re enduring now.

All that says though is that the bar is pretty damn low.

 

 

 

Can We Now, Finally, Talk About An Illegitimate Election?

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With yesterday’s one-two haymakers — personal attorney Michel Cohen going full “rat” and campaign manager (and career-long DC sleazeball) Paul Manafort getting nailed with eight felony convictions — only the most deluded Trumpist goober can still pretend our man in the Oval Office isn’t a criminal. More to the point, if you have been paying attention since way back when he was just a sleazy tabloid caricature, you know Donald “Drain the Swamp” Trump was a criminal before, during and after getting elected President of ‘Murica, USA.

In fact, as is now being confirmed in the starkest terms for those reluctant to believe, Trump’s criminality is directly related to him “winning” the presidency. Period. The guy’s naked illegality — first with paying off Bunnies and porn stars a fortnight before the election he won on the basis of 78,000 votes in three states — and second with whatever he actually did with the Rooskies in terms of illegal hacking, trading stolen e-mails and scamming Facebook cannot be separated from his ascension to the White House.

So, can we now have a serious, non-hysterical, fact-based and rational conversation about the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election?

What does The Constitution have to say about a candidate engaging in A: Criminal pay-offs and B: Conspiracy with a hostile foreign power to achieve election?

From what I’ve read, not a lot in terms of invalidating his election in the first place.

The fact there is no clear legal mechanism much less any precedent for this situation has led most people to dismiss even the discussion. I mean, that isn’t how we play the game in this most exceptional of republics.

No matter how they win — whether Joe “The Prohibition Liquor Baron” Kennedy cooking a deal with Chicago mobsters to get out the dead vote in Cook County, or George W* being waved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on a straight 5-4 partisan vote of the Supreme Court, we ‘Muricans are always admonished to accept the results with equanimity. Because … well, because that’s just how things are done here in the world’s greatest democracy.

Except that we’ve never had a situation where a candidate actively conspired with our foremost foreign adversary to get where he got. Bimbos? Sure. Rooskies? Not so much.

If you’re saying, “Whoa, Nelly! We haven’t got to that whole ‘collusion’ thing, yet,” I will only point out the fact that Trump and his bejeweled urchins have lived off the proceeds from business with Russian gangsters at least since he went belly up in Atlantic City and that that much has been laying out in plain sight for years. After that you can start factoring in the notorious meet up with the Rooskies in Trump Tower to talk, you know, “adoptions.”

Then for a special Super Duper Bonus Package you can imagine for maybe a half-second how much more vivid detail Team Mueller has on all this not even remotely sophisticated sleaze.

So what is the solution? There is no language or precedent for voiding Donald Trump’s election certificate on the basis of criminal fraud and conspiracy against the United States, and certainly none that would hand that certificate and the remainder of his term over to the candidate who actually won the popular vote by a large and convincing margin.

But if this lunatic farce continues to spiral out of control as it most certainly will with what Cohen will now tell Mueller, what Michael Flynn has already revealed to prosecutors and all the hammers that are going to drop on gormless little Donny Jr., Jared the human cipher and Ivanka the Princess of Entitlement, are we really going to sit still and accept the Trump kleptocracy being handed off to Mike Pence?

If Trump achieved the Presidency through criminal (and treasonous) means, those are the same means that put Pence there. (Never mind for the moment his own legal exposure over what he damn well had to have known about Mike Flynn and the Russians.)

With all the talk about a looming Supreme Court fight over whether Mueller can subpoena Trump, or whether a sitting President can be indicted, I think there’s an even more relevant conversation to be had about “suitable remedies” for an election decided on the basis of tawdry criminality and outright conspiracy against the Constitution.

When Manafort Met Trump.

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I would love to have been in the meeting where Paul Manafort pitched his services to Donald Trump. What those two grifters saw in each other may be the wet kiss that seals both of their fates.

The suspicion today, before the inevitable avalanche of more damning details, is that Manafort was in hock to Russian paymasters — i.e. oligarch/gangsters — and badly needed to “get whole” ASAP. We know that almost immediately after getting the job to run Trump’s campaign he uses that very phrase in a correspondence seeking ideas about how to monetize his new presidential candidate connection.

But come on! The guy, who has been a DC system parasite for over 30 years, with a career of shady deals in his treadworn baggage, has no concern about walking into the spotlight of a presidential campaign? No concerns that at long, long last the Justice department or US Attorney or someone will take a more focused look at what he’s been up to or … what he will now do to win an election?

Talking Points’ Josh Marshall speculates that Manafort was so desperate to resolve his debt(s) to Oleg Deripaska (and likely others) that he decided the lesser risk was in the spotlight working for Trump. As we know, Manafort, a character who regards every breath he takes as an opportunity to make a buck off someone, worked for free.

Now that’s a motivated employee.

Says Marshall in the context of Manafort suddenly increasing his value to the Russians, “… spies look for people who are crooked and people who are desperate. Manafort looks like he was both.”

So what did Trump see in Manafort? We’re told they were well acquainted with each other, but not close. Besides a relationship with (yet another career long grifter) Roger Stone, the one thing they absolutely had in common, and which I suspect they knew about each other, were long-term relationships with Russians laundering money, in Trump’s case through wildly over-priced purchases of Trump real estate.

But what does Manafort promise to deliver? As of yesterday we now know Team Trump was being baited with the prospect of Hillary e-mails as far back as March, months before they eventually dropped, (within hours of the Access Hollywood tape.) Did Manafort promise to make that delivery happen? Did he convince Trump that he knew the right people to make it happen? Had he heard offers of cooperation from the Russian hacking operation? Did Trump see in him, a veteran grifter, a guy who could weaponize such information and not screw up?

We know that Manafort had some kind of role in dropping that plank about arming Ukrainians against the Russians. That move — though symbolic — had to have impressed Russians watching to see what they might get for their money, or at least their continued patience until Manafort delivered the money he owed.

But now that he’s under house arrest, with no chance of repaying whatever he owes Deripaska (and other Russian mobsters) how does Manafort see a way to defeat these first charges, much less all the others very likely to come down thanks to George Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, and “proactive cooperation”, (i.e. wearing a wire to talk to campaign and White House supervisors)? Russian oligarchs with millions in property all over Western Europe and the United States have to see a Manafort under arrest as worse than useless to them. If he starts singing, aggressive US attorneys (if there are any left after the Trump purge) will be delighted to move on those empty $5 million condos glutting markets in New York, London, San Francisco and everywhere else.

And then, as has been noticed, let’s not forget Gen. Flynn, about whom nothing was said yesterday. If Mueller kept Papadopoulos’s guilty plea under wraps for months, fair speculation says he’s got something similar going with Flynn.

 

 

 

 

How Would “House of Cards” Handle The Donald Problem?

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3Not that any Hollywood screenwriter since Terry Southern could imagine a spectacle as bizarre and farcical as this. But I’m watching this week’s Trump meltdown, which is an extra melt you didn’t think possible after last week’s meltdown, and the sight of the ever loyal Republican herd trampling itself to avoid even mentioning (on camera) their party’s “presumptive nominee’s” name and thinking, “What would ‘House of Cards’ do with a toxic liability like The Donald?”

Amid chatter that Trump’s poll numbers are intolerable and predictions of a god almighty November gut punch to the conservative agenda, (you know, more guns, not so many gays and social service cuts for Hispanics), there are whispers of rules changes at the Ultimate Warcraft Nutzapalooza in Cleveland next month. One idea would free all of the delegates 17 candidates brawled over all winter and spring and allow them to vote for whoever they damned well please. The problem with that is besides setting off a civil war with Trump’s (not exactly rational and stable) people, a.k.a. every other Republican’s base, the Grand Old Party has no one to offer as a replacement. Well ok, maybe Ted Cruz, who would certainly leap at the opportunity and very likely send the party to an even worse defeat than Trump.

So … what to do?

Clearly something fully above board and traditional and proper is out of the question. No GOP wiseman is going to step up and say, “This guy is a [bleeping] disaster. I’m not going to support him.” Not even John McCain, who needs Trump’s pitchfork crowd to win reelection in Arizona. One reason is that there aren’t any “Republican wisemen”. Or there are they’re as rare as coelecanths and never expose themselves to sunlight. These are modern Republicans after all, i.e. salesmen and huckstersl.

But if life were to imitate Hollywood, the plotting would go something like this:  An envelope would be handed to one of Trump’s bouncers. Either Corey Lewandowski or Paul Manafort. Maybe by someone who bumps against them in a crowded elevator, slipping the envelope into their pocket and vanishing away when the doors open.

After first inspecting it for anthrax spores, the envelope would be opened. The message inside would be specific and blunt. It would lay out in unequivocal detail not just Trump’s  personal tax information, but incident after incident of his long history of financial fraud, leaving no doubt of that all such information will be disclosed, exposing him to not just reputational ruin, (I know, far too late for that) but full, bankruptcy-inducing criminal and civil prosecution as well. In short, catastrophic blackmail. His only option? Concede to demands freeing his delegates. Accept the inevitable defeat that follows on the convention floor and the nomination of someone else, Cruz or some other skin crawling replacement, and walk away.

But come on. That’s way too bureaucratic and not all that much fun. Worse, Trump’s still around. God knows who the guy’ll take down with him out of pure spite?

So, then there’s the option of him claiming to have experienced a severe health incident. Perhaps a heart attack from all those McDonalds lunches. The blackmailers would agree to support this fiction, under certain conditions. A tweet would go out that the presumptive nominee collapsed in the royal boudoir, leaving it to fervid imaginations that he clenched up while having world class sex with the super sexy Melania. He would be private jetted off to Mar a Lago, given “the greatest” cardiac care the world has ever known and remain essentially under house arrest recuperating until the day after the election.

Of course, were this a “House of Cards” script and Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) orchestrating the plot, Trump would simply be a dead man.

The Donald would be slipped a toxic hamburger patty, go into cardiac arrest, maybe midway through one of his feverish apocalyptic fantasies about blood-sucking Muslims, and croak right there on “Fox and Friends”, before the nation’s startled but mostly relieved eyes. Because, as Frank (a Democrat, you know), would explain in one of his distinctive, fourth-wall breaking asides, the only way to truly escape the hell of someone like Trump, is to inflict upon him a total, indisputably final, (un)timely demise.

Only with the deathly bolus of The Donald irrevocably removed from the party body, could the Republican  leadership apparatus — the Koch brothers, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, and heavyweight donors like John Menard Jr. — be free to replace him with their anointed champion, which, given the way those guys operate could be anyone from Ted Cruz to the Sham Wow guy.

Now, if you, playing script doctor, want to replace the super sexy Melania with Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) locked in a deeply connived love nest with The Donald, I could buy that. I just can’t picture Claire touching a greasy hamburger patty.