propaganda

Donald Trump’s Russian Mob Money Connections

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I picked a bad week to get sick again. Lots of crazy stuff coming out of Washington this week.

I don’t have time to get into the unconfirmed “Donald Trump dossier” and his allegedly being compromised by the Russians which blew up his press conference earlier this week. How Russian ‘kompromat’ destroys political opponents, no facts required:

Putin-Trump-KissShort for “compromising material” in Russian, kompromat is all about the intersection of news and blackmail. It’s the ability to sully the reputations of political opponents through hints, images, videos, promises of disclosures, perhaps even some high-quality faked documentation. Sex or pornography often figures prominently. The beauty of kompromat is that it has to create only a sense of doubt, not prove its case conclusively. This sounds a bit like “fake news,” but in a classic kompromat operation, real Russian state media organizations work in tandem with the Kremlin to find appealing and effective ways to discredit the target. Often, that means in the most visceral and personal ways possible.

Now kompromat may have come to the United States.

Arizona’s angry old man, Senator John McCain, managed to get himself entangled in this “Donald Trump dossier” scandal as well, so bonus! John McCain intrigue grows in Donald Trump dossier affair:

McCain this week confirmed he received the “sensitive information,” which originally was compiled as anti-Trump opposition research during the 2016 GOP primaries and general election, and gave the explosive file to the FBI.

“I did what any citizen should do: I received sensitive information, and then I handed it over to the proper agency of government and had nothing else to do with the issue,” McCain told reporters Wednesday.

The FBI apparently was already aware of the memos, or at least most of them. The memos became news this week when CNN reported that intelligence officials had given Trump a summary of the allegations. The website BuzzFeed subsequently published the memos.

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Kansas is a cautionary tale for Arizona, part the infinity

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I have been posting this continuing series for some time, but now the Arizona Republic wants in on my meme. “As a new legislative session is set to start in Arizona, a cautionary tale comes from Kansas, where deep tax cuts have resulted in steep budget cuts and anemic job growth.” A warning to Arizona on income-tax cuts: ‘Don’t do what Kansas did’:

DorothyThe “Kansas experiment” of eliminating the income tax is a failure that Arizona would be wise to avoid, participants at the launch of a new economic-policy think tank were told Thursday.

“The moral of our story is ‘Don’t do what Kansas did,'” said Duane Goossen, who ran the Kansas state budget office for 12 years. The result of eliminating the income tax on small business and chopping down the income-tax rate has been disastrous, he said.

“It’s a Dumpster fire, it’s a real crisis,” said Goossen, who came to Arizona to help kick off the opening of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress.

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‘Dear Leader’ Donald Trump’s big reveal on Russian hacking – Julian Assange?

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So THIS is supposed to be “Dear Leader” Donald Trump’s big reveal about Russian hacking?

Trump fluffer Sean Hannity interviewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange last night on “Hannity.” Assange insisted the Russian government was not his source for the hacked emails he released from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Sean Hannity Declared Reports That The US Has 17 Intelligence Agencies “Fake News”. “We don’t have 17 intelligence agencies, so now we’ve got ‘fake news’ stories to bolster the claim of the president and the Democrats losing the election.” Right-Wing Media Are Using The Term “Fake News” To Attack Credible News Sources.

“Has WikiLeaks become a laundering machine for compromising material gathered by Russian spies? And more broadly, what precisely is the relationship between Mr. Assange and Mr. Putin’s Kremlin?” How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West’s Secrets. “[A] New York Times examination of WikiLeaks’ activities during Mr. Assange’s years in exile found a pattern: Whether by conviction, convenience or coincidence, WikiLeaks’ document releases, along with many of Mr. Assange’s statements, have often benefited Russia, at the expense of the West.”

And here we have Sean Hannity advancing a Russian disinformation campaign in the post-truth fact-free world of FAUX News.

GOP_BubbleThis is how the mighty Wurlitzer of the right-wing propaganda machine works, creating Epistemic closure and the ‘conservative misinformation feedback loop’ media bubble.

Trump Quotes Assange, Says WikiLeaks Did Not Get Emails From Russia:

Mr. Assange appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night with Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest media boosters, to declare once again that the Russians were not the source of the purloined emails that WikiLeaks released from the Democratic National Committee and the personal account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Mr. Trump followed that appearance with a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday that appear to be preparing his followers for battle once more information on intelligence findings is released, likely by Thursday.

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‘Putin envy’ is about GOP authoritarianism

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Republicans gave us the Red Scare after the end of World War I, and red-baiting McCarthyism after the end of World War II.

Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” and damned near triggered a nuclear war with the Soviets in 1983. The U.S.S.R. and U.S. Came Closer to Nuclear War Than We Thought.

The days when a Republican politician could build their entire political career around red-baiting anti-communism largely ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was dissolved on December 26, 1991.

As Nancy LeTourneau at the Political Animal blog points out in What’s Up With Trump and Putin?, “[I]t is important to reject the old Cold War frame about a contest between capitalism and communism. Russia has long since ceased to be a country built on the teachings of Karl Marx and has evolved into a right-wing ethno-nationalist plutocracy.  As Jonathan Chait (December 2014) pointed out a while ago, the neocon movement in the Republican Party has been impressed with Russian authoritarianism for a while now.

cartoon_54“The ongoing Russian crisis has given American conservatives the chance to reprise in miniature their mistaken overestimation of communism’s power. When Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, the right lamented Barack Obama’s slow, contemplative diplomacy, which was no match for Vladimir Putin’s autocratic will. Rudy Giuliani practically lusted after the Russian dictator. “Putin decides what he wants to do, and he does it in half a day. Right? He decided he had to go to their parliament, he went to their parliament, he got permission in fifteen minutes,” swooned the admired foreign-policy strategist. “That’s what you call a leader.” Other conservatives echoed Giuliani’s praise for Putin’s will to power.”

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From fake news to the Trump ministry of propaganda

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Last week Congress passed the National DefenseAuthorization Act. A provision tucked into the defense bill guts the bipartisan Voice of America board — which runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other networks —and lets the president appoint a CEO.

More importantly, the network is also now allowed access to U.S. audiences (previously banned by law). This is stoking fears that Trump could wield a powerful propaganda arm (as if the conservative media entertainment complex does not already serve this function). Trump to inherit state-run TV network with expanded reach:

trumps-1984President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network.

Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent U.S. agency that includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcast Networks.

The move — pushed by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce as a way to streamline the agency — concentrates control into a powerful CEO who is appointed by the president.

That change, combined with a 2013 legislative revision that allows the network to legally reach a U.S. audience, which was once banned, could pave the way for Trump-approved content created by the U.S. diplomacy arm, if he chooses to exploit the opportunity.

Essentially, Trump is finally getting his Trump TV — financed by taxpayers to the tune of $800 million per year. And some of the few people in the know aren’t happy about it.

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