Diplomacy, Trump Style (Update)

Apparently Fearless Leader had a busy day on the phones. First, he threatened to invade Mexico:

President Donald Trump threatened in a phone call with his Mexican counterpart to send U.S. troops to stop "bad hombres down there" unless the Mexican military does more to control them itself, according to an excerpt of a transcript of the conversation obtained by The Associated Press.

The excerpt of the call did not make clear who exactly Trump considered "bad hombres," — drug cartels, immigrants, or both — or the tone and context of the remark, made in a Friday morning phone call between the leaders. It also did not contain Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's response.

Be it noted that the Mexican government has issued a response to the story, saying it is "based on absolute falsehoods."

Then he accused the Prime Minister of Australia of sending us "the next Boston bomber":

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Wednesday refused to talk about a report that a weekend call with President Donald Trump came to a blistering head after Trump attacked a plan to resettle refugees in the U.S. as “the worst deal ever.”

The conversation between leaders of the two longtime allies quickly devolved into Trump accusing Turnbull of trying to send the “next Boston bombers” to America, according to a report published Wednesday night by The Washington Post. Trump, who told Turnbull he had spoken to other world leaders earlier Saturday, said the interaction was his “worst call by far” and hung up more than a half-hour early, the Post reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials.

They were discussing an agreement, concluded in November, between the two countries to resettle refugees who have been confined to one of Australia's offshore camps.

So of course, Cheeto-in-Chief tweeted about it:

Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

"Illegal immigrants"? From Australia"? So now refugees, who go through an eighteen-month to two-year vetting process, are "illegal immigrants." One wonders if this is deliberate misrepresentation, or if he's just not intelligent enough to be able to discern the difference.

And now, through his equally deranged national security adviser, we've put Iran "on notice":

The Trump administration has said it was “officially putting Iran on notice” in reaction to an Iranian missile test and an attack on a Saudi warship by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen but gave no details about how Washington intended to respond.

The threat was made on Wednesday by the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in his first public statement since taking office.

Speaking in the White House briefing room, Flynn said a missile launch on Sunday and a Houthi attack on a Saudi frigate on Monday underlined Iran’s “destabilizing behavior across the Middle East.”

Flynn did not specify how the new administration would respond. Asked for clarification, the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, said the president wanted to make sure the Iranians “understood we are not going to sit by and not act on their actions”.

At a White House briefing, senior administration officials repeatedly refused to rule out any options for a US response, including military intervention.

I'm reminded of the accounts of the beginning of World War I, which was sparked by a particular incident but might have been avoided except for bad communications, bumbling incompetence, and over-reliance on inflexible plans.

One can hardly wait for the next diplomatic initiative.

Update: And from Reuters, Trump's first military venture:

U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.

As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists.

Representative Government, Republican Style

If you don't like the rules, change them:

The Week reports:

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee advanced President Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and Trump’s nominee for health secretary, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), on Wednesday with zero Democrats present. To do so required committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to suspend the committee rules, which normally require a quorum of at least one Democrat in the room in order to permit a vote.

Based on past history, this should really come as no surprise: we know that once in power, Republicans will waste no time abusing it. They've made no secret over the past thirty years that they're after one thing: One-party rule.

Culture Break: Nickelback: When We Stand Together

This one seems appropriate these days:

Yes, I like Nickelback. Deal with it.

(As I remarked to the music editor at the weekly we both worked at: You may not like what they do, but they do it very well.)

(I was going to post a live version, but the sound is not great -- it loses that particular raw, desperate quality in Kroeger's voice that is so important to their sound.)

Today's Must-Read: How to Run an Administration

Advice from Obama to Trump, as reported by Brian Beutler:

“[H]ow you put a team together to make sure that they’re getting you the best information and they are teeing up the options from which you will ultimately make decisions, that’s probably the most useful advice, the most constructive advice that I’ve been able to give him,” he said. “That if you find yourself isolated because the process breaks down, or if you’re only hearing from people who agree with you on everything, or if you haven’t created a process that is fact-checking and probing and asking hard questions about policies or promises that you’ve made, that’s when you start making mistakes. And as I indicated in some of my previous remarks, reality has a way of biting back if you’re not paying attention to it.”

Trump ignored it. Given what we know of Trump's personality, Obama might as well have been talking to the wall. What he put together is just the opposite:

Heeding Obama’s advice might have helped Trump avoid making an obvious and monumental error, but Trump either lacks the capacity to run the government in an orderly fashion or intentionally discarded Obama’s recommendations, or both. When reality quickly asserted itself, as Obama promised it would, Trump claimed (out of ignorance or malicious dishonesty) that he was merely reprising “ what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months”—a “ban” that quite literally never happened.

Of course, the author assumes that Trump wants to run an administration that actually functions to the benefit of the country. I've seen no evidence of that. He thinks it's a reality show, and is acting accordingly.

Read the whole thing, needless to say.

Via Balloon Juice, which has some interesting additional information.

Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

The headline says it all:

Report: FBI Finds White Supremacists Infiltrated Law Enforcement Agencies

It gets worse:

While the FBI has been aware of this infiltration for some time and raised concerns in a 2006 internal assessment, federal agencies have been wary of discussing the issue publicly. Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano even disavowed a 2009 intelligence study warning of the “resurgence” of far-right extremists sparked by President Barack Obama’s election, as The Intercept noted.

They're probably worried about Rush Limbaugh saying mean things about them.

(And a sudden thought: Given the way the FBI compromised itself by helping hand the election to Trump -- and it wasn't just Comey, there were agents in the New York office involved -- maybe it's not just local law enforcement that's been infiltrated.)

So, we've got local police departments being infiltrated by neo-Nazis and KKK wannabes. And the Pentagon is giving them military equipment for the asking.

That should work out well.

Source:  Political Blind Spot

Doraville?

A Nation of Idiots

Trump supporters. Read it and weep.

This may have finished me off for the day, if not the week:

Bill also disagreed with the notion that the Constitution gives Americans the right to worship the god of their choice.

“That is something I believe that has come along with political correctness and all this other garbage,” he insisted.

I'm wordless.

Quote du Jour (Update)

From White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, defending this:

Also among the protesters was Shohreh Rahnama, of Bethesda, Md., whose 5-year-old son was detained for several hours at Dulles Airport after a flight from Istanbul on Saturday night.

Artiman Jalali was born in the United States and has dual citizenship with Iran. He was traveling back from visiting relatives with his cousin, 25-year-old Aida Mohammadi, a University of Maryland student and a green-card holder.

Rahnama said she waited for hours at the airport with friends and family and a growing crowd of strangers who came to support them and others whose loved ones were detained. Artiman and Mohammadi were finally released around midnight. “He was hungry and he was thirsty, and I could not see him,” she said.

“How can a 5-year-old be banned? Just because his parents are Iranian? We are American, too,” she said. “I almost died in that airport. I can say it was the worst day of my life.”

Spicer's reaction?

Asked on Monday whether Trump’s order — which critics have called a “Muslim ban” — should apply to 5-year-old children, White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave a clear answer: yes.

“That’s why we slow [the process] down a little,” Spicer said at the daily press briefing. “To make sure that if they are a 5-year-old, that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat. But to assume that just because of someone’s age or gender or whatever that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong.”

WTF? Five-year-old terrorists?

I'm reminded of a story from several years ago, an incident that happened at O'Hare: a disabled boy on crutches was forced to crawl through the security check point by the TSA agent -- no crutches, and his mother was not allowed to help him.

This is what happens when small people get their hands on some power.

Via the New Civil Rights Movement, which makes a point for those who think this is all about making Americans safe:

And remember, Jalali is a U.S. citizen. Apparently his citizenship does not protect him in the eyes of the Trump administration.

Wonderful. The White House is now stocked with bigots. Can we hear again about "the party of Lincoln"?

Update: I guess that applies to little old ladies in wheelchairs, too. Can't be too careful.

It seems that Trump is determined to remake this country in his own image: whiny cowards.

Cue Wailing and Rending of Garments

The Boy Scouts of America have announced a new policy regarding transgender boys: they're in:

The Boy Scouts of America announced Monday that it is lifting its ban on transgender boys joining the organization, saying that it would abandon a policy that determined eligibility by using the the sex listed on birth certificates.

“Starting today, we will accept and register youth in the Cub and Boy Scout programs based on the gender identity indicated on the application,” Effie Delimarkos, a spokesperson for the scouting group with more than 2 million members, said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

This was a pretty quick response, considering how long it took them to accept gay boys and scout leaders. Maybe the threat of a lawsuit had something to do with it. And maybe they've figured out that we're not still in the nineteenth century.

Tony Perkins is going to hemorrhage.

Via Joe.My.God.

Today in Disgusting People: Making a President-for-Life (Update)

Kellyanne Conway has a permanent place in the "disgusting people" category, partly because she's such an unregenerate liar, and partly because she's working overtime to browbeat the press. Now she wants every reporter and commentator who criticizes Trump fired.

Conway went on to complain that last week, she went on three Sunday news shows to discuss Trump's policy proposals, but the only thing that got reported was her now-infamous statement about "alternative facts," and "not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts for not covering the facts that matter."

"Who’s cleaning house?" Conway said. "Which one is going to be the first one to get rid of these people that said things that just aren’t true?

By that criterion, she should be the first to go. And "the facts that matter" -- that would be your "alternative facts," right?

It's an interesting strategy -- pretend that you actually have the standing to demand that the press cater to your bullshit, demand firings of journalists who show signs of independence, discredit the press at every opportunity.

Hey, it worked for Franco, Peron, Mussolini, Hitler, and every tin-pot strong man on the African continent.

Her boss, of course, is weighing in on this as well, specifically targeting the New York Times:

Somebody with aptitude and conviction should buy the FAKE NEWS and failing @nytimes and either run it correctly or let it fold with dignity!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

Click through to see the responses on Twitter. They're not positive. (And do note that since The Hairpiece started his anti-NYT campaign, subscriptions are up.)

This says what needs to be said:

Attacks on legitimate media that holds power to account is a routine precursor to the rise of authoritarianism. https://t.co/vGDqlNfjuy

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) January 29, 2017

The sad part is that the American press has set itself up for this. "As ye sow. . . ."

Update: On to Phase Two: siccing the Secret Service on the journalists.

Wha's New at Green Man Review

It's that time of week again, and there's some interesting stuff, mostly centered on London -- as it is, was, or might have been. Click through to see what I mean.

Oh, and there was a story this week, too.

What's Most Offensive Is the Sheer Incompetence

Aside from the absolute moral bankruptcy, I mean. It's more Keystone Kops than the Keystone Kops:

The policy team at the White House developed the executive order on refugees and visas, and largely avoided the traditional interagency process that would have allowed the Justice Department and homeland security agencies to provide operational guidance, according to numerous officials who spoke to CNN on Saturday.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Department of Homeland Security leadership saw the final details shortly before the order was finalized, government officials said.

Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen -- did not apply to people who with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.

The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President's inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US. . . .

Before the President issued the order, the White House did not seek the legal guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department office that interprets the law for the executive branch. A source said the executive order did not follow the standard agency review process that's typically overseen by the National Security Council, though the source couldn't specifically say if that included the decision to not have the order go through the Office of Legal Counsel.

Separately, a person familiar with the matter said career officials in charge of enforcing the executive order were not fully briefed on the specifics until Friday. The officials were caught off guard by some of the specifics and raised questions about how to handle the new banned passengers on US-bound planes. . . .

Administration officials also defended the process Saturday. They said the people who needed to be briefed ahead of time on the plane were briefed and that people at the State Department and DHS who were involved in the process were able to make decisions about who to talk and inform about this.

Bannon and Miller were running point on this order and giving directives regarding green cards, according to a Republican close to the White House.

But even after the Friday afternoon announcement, administration officials at the White House took several hours to produce text of the action until several hours after it was signed. Adviser Kellyanne Conway even said at one point it was not going to be released before eventually it did get sent out.

Administration officials also seemed unsure at first who was covered in the action, and a list of impacted countries was only produced later on Friday night, hours after the President signed the document at the Pentagon.

And what does Trump think about all of this?

Asked during a photo opportunity in the Oval Office Saturday afternoon about the rollout, Trump said his government was "totally prepared."

"It's working out very nicely," Trump told reporters. "You see it at the airports. You see it all over. It's working out very nicely and we're going to have a very, very strict ban, and we're going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years."

Moron. Oh, and by the way: we have had a very tight vetting process in place for years now, sometimes taking as long as three years to OK refugees for entry.

Via Balloon Juice.

State of Emergency, As Republicans See It

For example, if the voters pass a ballot measure to create an independent government ethics commission, well, that's certainly a "state of emergency":

Just 10 weeks ago, South Dakota voters passed a slate of ethics reforms and campaign finance law overhauls by a slim majority. By the end of the day on Thursday, state Republican lawmakers will have canceled the whole package. . . .

If voters’ decision were allowed to stand, South Dakotans would have an independent ethics board with subpoena power. Given a pair of recent high-profile corruption scandals in which former public officials in South Dakota had bilked taxpayers for years and then killed themselves after investigators caught on, the state had reason to seek a watchdog with sharper teeth and a longer leash. . . .

Republicans lost that battle in November. Now they’re using extraordinary measures to override the voters.

The emergency package passed the House on Tuesday and is moving through a Senate committee on Wednesday, with a full floor vote in the upper chamber expected on Thursday. Once the GOP supermajorities finish up, state employees and lawmakers will be safe once again from independent investigations of public corruption in state government.

I don't really need to add anything, do I?

Via C&L, which has more background.

Beyond Outrage

I was so infuriated yesterday by the news about Trump's Muslim ban that I literally couldn't write. We already knew the man was a walking, talking piece of shit, but that just drew it in high relief.

There are stories all over the place about the chaos at airports, the people who were returning home -- legal residents, mind you -- who were detained at airports or told they could not board their flights. The Age has a good summary, and points out one salient fact:

The new President is cravenly political in the countries he decided to put on a refugee and migrant blacklist. And his inclusions and exclusions don't make sense – unless your name is Donald Trump.

Trump claims to be motivated by the horrific September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, but the countries of which the 19 aircraft hijackers were citizens are not on the list – most came from Saudi Arabia and the rest from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon.

Also absurdly absent are Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan – all of them hotbeds of terror. In excluding them, Trump is grovelling to their leaders, not making a gesture to their people. . . .

In the 40 years to 2015, not a single American was killed on US soil by citizens from any of the seven countries targeted - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - according to research by the conservative-leaning Cato Institute.

But the same research shows that in the same period nearly 3000 Americans were killed by citizens of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Turkey — most victims of the September 11 attacks.

And oops, wouldn't you know it, Trump has multimillion-dollar business operations in all those countries.

In 2015, he registered eight hotel-related companies in Saudi Arabia, according to The Washington Post; in Turkey, two luxury towers in Istanbul are licensed to use his name; in Egypt, he has two companies; and in the UAE, he has naming and management deals for two golf courses.

(Emphasis added.)

Source:  Bloomberg

I doubt that anyone will be surprised by that little tidbit, and I'm sure it will just roll of his supporters' backs, like every other bit of reality they come in contact with.

For what it's worth, MoveOn has a petition, which you can sign here.

The American Civil Liberties Union is leading the fight. You can donate here.

The Age article via Nick's Place.

Footnote: NCRM has the complete text of the executive order.

Footnote 2: And it seems to have been as carefully planned as everything else these yahoos have come up with: nobody bothered to tell INS how to implement it.

So, Is This a Surprise? (Update)

You want the White House's real attitude toward a free and independent press? New York Times, via Joe.My.God.:

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s chief White House strategist, laced into the American press during an interview on Wednesday evening, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by an election outcome few anticipated, and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call. “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

Let me start off by noting that the press is supposed to be the opposition. If anyone doesn't understand this country, it's Trump and his advisors. Or, let me say it this way: it doesn't matter whether they understand it or not, because they have no respect and no sympathy for our basic principles and values.

And frankly, if the press were to really examine the way Trump became president, they'd have to admit their own complicity. Here's just one example:

I don't think we get to pretend anymore that there is a functioning media in this country. The nation's 'paper of record' is showing that they are fearful (not timid, damn it, but out-and-out cowardly) of publishing stories about our newly sworn-in president who entered office with a plethora of conflicts of interest and scandals, none of which the Times took all that seriously in their reporting prior to the election. But they will rationalize their inadequate reporting away as 'doing their job correctly' while democracy is being stolen from us by Putin.

Digby has a more detailed discussion.

This is interesting. It posits that in order to achieve Trump's foreign policy aims, the media and the intelligence community both have to be thoroughly discredited.  I'm guess that would be Bannon.

Her "this" is a very interesting article from The Atlantic on why Trump is taking on the press and the intelligence community. Worth a read.

Update: It's already started: journalists arrested for "felony rioting." And note the mainstream press' reaction:

While foreign and new media outlets such as The Guardian, Buzzfeed, City Lab, Daily Beast, and Huffington Post have reported specifically on the arrests of journalists (as has traditional outlet US News) most major media outlets in the United States have remained surprisingly silent. The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and MSNBC have not reported on the arrests at all. Washington Post’s report on the episode was framed in a decidedly pro-police terms–complete with an apocalyptic burning limo (that, it should be noted, was set on fire after the arrests in question) and the ominous, conspiratorial headline: “Protesters who destroyed property on Inauguration Day were part of well-organized group”

It was a nice country while it lasted.

Stray Thought

Actually, not so stray, considering the concern about rollbacks to gay rights, especially marriage, engendered by Trump's choice for Attorney General, an unregenerate racist and homophobe, and probable choice for the Supreme Court.

I pass, on my daily or near-daily wanderings, one: medical offices located on the ground floor of a newish building, with large street-level windows, and two: a former senior apartment building newly rehabbed and now leasing apartments. In both cases, one of the large street-level windows, both facing major traffic arteries, portray gay couples as happy clients/residents.

Now, granted, this is the North Side of Chicago and not Nowhere, Alabama, but it seems to me that there is a degree of acceptance revealed by this that gives a good indication of what the Tony Perkinses of the country are up against if they try to roll back the advances we've made in the past couple of decades. We're an integral part of the fabric of this country now.

They shouldn't get too cocky.

(This is aside from the number of gay and lesbian couples I see walking through the Zoo arm in arm or holding hands -- where there are cheeldrun! -- and no one bats an eyelash. It's at the point where, if I see two men with strollers or small children, it's hard to tell if they're a family or just two guys giving their wives a day off.)

The First Week

I was going to post yesterday on the horrors coming out of the White House, but there was just too much -- input overload. However, Politico has done the work for me: here's a summary of Trump's executive orders so far, which are pretty much as bad as you thought.

One that strikes me as odd, since it seems to me to be the one positive thing that Trump has done, is number 4 on the list:

4. Scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Trump’s next executive action withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which former President Barack Obama negotiated with 11 other pacific nations. The deal was never ratified by the Senate, so it had not gone into effect. Instead, the Trump administration says it plans on negotiating bilateral deals with individual nations.

Comments I've seen are all on the order to "Oh, no! We're going to be left out and China will fill the gap!" When Obama was pushing the deal, one thing that made it an absolute no go for me and a lot of other commentators was the provision that took adjudication of conflicts involving worker's rights laws out of the jurisdiction of national courts and put it under the control of a special panel composed of corporate stooges. Aside from issues of national sovereignty, the idea of having safety and health standards under the jurisdiction of people who don't give a flying flip about worker's safety and health was pretty repellent.

And now that Trump is pulling us out of it, that's a terrible thing.

(Via Towleroad.)

Go figure.

Culture Break: Billy Collins on What Dogs Think

I realized I've been focusing almost exclusively on music here, and there's a lot more to culture than that. Here's Billy Collins with a couple of poems on what dogs think:

I reviewed his collection Questions About Angels some years ago at Epinions, and happily, it's still there.

Can You Say "Brazen"?

This is really almost beyond belief:

Lawmakers in South Dakota are invoking emergency powers to overturn an anti-corruption law that was passed by a ballot measure during the 2016 election.
The South Dakota Government Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act makes it illegal for lawmakers to receive more than a total of $100 annually from lobbyists in the form of “any compensation, reward, employment, gift, honorarium, beverage, meal, food, or other thing of value made or given directly or indirectly.”

The law, which was passed by a majority of voters in November, immediately incited panic among state officials and lawmakers. Some resigned from their posts while others cancelled meetings with any groups represented by lobbyists.

Lawmakers who are found guilty of violating the act face $1,000 in fines and up to one year in prison.

According to a statement from the advocacy group Represent South Dakota, lawmakers are now trying to use their “emergency powers to bypass normal check and balances, and repeal America’s first statement Anti-Corruption Act.”

I say "almost" because South Dakota is one of those states with a legislature dominated by Republicans. (I remember when the Republican party had real policy positions and a real interest in governing for the benefit of the country. That changed sometime in the late 1970s, maybe 1980s, when the "religious" right started to have major influence and the GOP became the party of taking power, by whatever means necessary.)

Any guesses on how long it's going to take Congress to latch on to this idea? Or Trump?

Rewriting History: Coda

Towleroad has a good summary of the Trump administration's "alternative facts" strategy, as I sketched out yesterday, with this analysis, which is right on the mark:

Everyone should read this post written by an alleged member of a former administration that was posted on a DC message board and has gone viral, because, despite the anonymity of its author, it is an important explanation of what’s going on here:

If you are puzzled by the bizarre “press conference” put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump’s inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes:

1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of “negging,” the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible person (e.g., Donald Trump).

2. Increasing the separation between Trump’s base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as “fake news” (because otherwise they’d be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)

3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say “clearly the White House is lying,” a third will say “if Trump says it, it must be true,” and the remaining third will say “gosh, I guess this is unknowable.” The idea isn’t to convince these people of untrue things, it’s to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.

This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump’s White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they’ll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It’s gonna get real bad.

Welcome to Kremlin Lite.

Footnote: The next step is to control access to data:

During a discussion about the future of the Affordable Care Act, MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid pointed out that Trump's White House was already lying about how the GOP's plan to "replace" Obamacare would leave millions without insurance.

"People are being hurt by their coverage being diminished, by their opportunities to get insurance being diminished," Reid explained. "And [White House Press Secretary] Sean Spicer comes out and says, 'No, they're not. Nobody is suffering.' And then you try to find the data on people's insurance and HHS just doesn't give it to you."

"That's where we are," MSNBC analyst Joan Walsh agreed. "I think we're really in a place where they're going to scrub the data. They're scrubbing websites now.

And this:

The mind boggles.

What's New at Green Man Review

Yes, it's Sunday, and that means reviews. Lots of interesting stuff, if I do say so myself, so scoot on over.