This & that.....

BUTTIGIEG

Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend: demolished the homes of working class people of color and gave tax breaks to developers building luxury condos.


Bernie Sanders, Mayor of Burlington: "over my dead body are you going to displace working families."
The choice is clear. #Bernie2020 #NotMeUs

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Signe Olson

Captain Cabbage

Altemeyer on Trump’s Supporters

Worth reading! It explains a lot. 

Many things stand out in John Dean's article. 

Striking is: 

• They severely limit their sources of information. They get the news that they want to get. This also produces an echo chamber when the news sources they trust are copying each other and relaying Trump’s message.

...as well as BLAMING OTHERS as Trump blamed Obama for his G20 Summit Hotel failure which supporters lapped up. 

Altemeyer on Trump’s Supporters

7 JUL 2017 

JOHN DEAN

When writing my book Conservatives Without Conscience (Penguin, 2007) about the authoritarianism that was gaining influence in the Republican Party in the early 2000s, I read most everything that social scientists had to say about folks with such dispositions. Particularly helpful was psychology professor Bob Altemeyer’s book for Harvard University Press, The Authoritarian Specter (1996). No one has done more ground-breaking work in testing the nature of these people than this professor, who was then at the University of Manitoba in Canada. A native of St. Louis who had done his graduate work at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Bob is also a keen student of American politics. Indeed, his son is in the business in Canada, and a member of the Manitoba Legislature.

I thought it would be helpful to many Americans to be exposed to Bob’s scholarly studies, and convinced him to write them up in a book for the general reader. He did, and placed it online for anyone to read for free. See The Authoritarians. (Last time I checked, over 670,000 people had visited the book, and hopefully read it!)

Bob Altemeyer saw Donald Trump coming. More accurately, he saw the kinds of men and women who would vote for a Donald Trump-type candidate for high office. These are people he described in earlier works as Right Wing Authoritarians, and Enemies of Freedom. Without going too deep into the weeds, let me note a few of these people score high on testing that shows they not only can be devoted followers of authoritarian leaders, the so-called social dominators like Trump who want to be in charge, but they also test high as social dominators themselves. These seemingly incongruous testing results—testing high as both followers and leaders—have been explained as the social dominators envisioning the type of follower they want as leaders, or their willingness to be good followers until they get their chance to become leaders. I labeled these “double high” people as conservatives without conscience, because it is a perfect description of those who top both scales in this testing.

When I started writing about these authoritarian personalities in 2005, I was looking for an explanation of the people who had taken charge of the Republican Party. That’s when I found Altemeyer’s work, which was (and still is) widely accepted. In fact, he was awarded the prestigious prize for behavioral science research in 1986, when the American Association for the Advancement of Science recognized his work. Working in 2005, I asked him what percentage of the American population might he estimate (or intelligently guess) were authoritarian followers, and he thought maybe 30 percent. Working on my book it seemed inconceivable that so few could ever elect a president. When Trump emerged in 2015 as a GOP contender, while I thought he could win the nomination, I was certain that was the end of the road: “Of only one thing am I absolutely certain: Donald Trump will never be President of the United States, so rest easy. Authoritarians remain a minority in America, thankfully,” I declared on July 24, 2015.

Authoritarians do remain a minority, but with non-voters and anti-Hillary Clinton voters, Trump pulled off a historic upset. It appears his core supporters remain faithful—regardless of what he does or doesn’t do. So, I asked Bob Altemeyer, what if anything would get through to the Trump supporters, given the fact Trump has shown himself, so far, totally incompetent as President of the United States. Set forth below in italics is material from Bob, who is now enjoying his retirement.

It took many months for Americans to stop supporting President Nixon during Watergate, and even at the end he could count on a hard knot of supporters who would believe him, as he said to [his chief of staff] H. R. Haldeman, because they wanted to. (NYT, 11/22/1974, p. 20). A few days before he resigned, 24% of a Gallup sample approved of the way Nixon was doing his job, including 38% of the Republicans polled.

Most of Donald Trump’s supporters are probably people whom social psychologists call authoritarian followers, because they are so supportive of the authorities they consider legitimate. These are the people Trump was talking about when he famously bragged that he could shoot somebody in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and it would make no difference to his backers. They are the people who so willingly took the “loyalty pledge” at Trump rallies in the early primaries—even calling on Trump to “do the swearing” when he had skipped it.

We know enough about authoritarian supporters from research, and history, to know it will be very hard to change their minds about the leader they adore.

• They are extremely ethnocentric, dividing the world sharply into people in their in-group, and automatically disliking all others. They feel politicians who promote minority rights and immigration discriminate against them. Donald Trump tells them they are right. He is their champion.
• They are highly dogmatic. They get their ideas from others in the in-group, especially from their leader, not from evidence and logic. They say there is no evidence that will make them change their minds. They’re quite comfortable believing “alternate facts.”
• They get great satisfaction from being part of a large movement. Being in a cohesive crowd at rallies thrills them because they silently tell one another, just by being there, that they are powerful and right. They create an echo chamber that reinforces the belief that all the good people think like they do.
• They severely limit their sources of information. They get the news that they want to get. This also produces an echo chamber when the news sources they trust are copying each other and relaying Trump’s message.
• They have highly compartmentalized minds. When an unpleasant truth forces its way into their awareness, they do not try to integrate the other things they believe with it. Instead they put it in a box and isolate it from the rest of their thinking, which proceeds as if the truth never existed.

Put all this together and you get an idea how hard it will be to change their minds about Donald Trump.

One can expect some of Trump’s followers to waver if the months ahead are thick with damaging revelations like those that brought down the Nixon White House. But a repeat of “Watergate-type scandals” may not damage Trump as much as they did Nixon.

Nixon had little means of communicating directly with his supporters. Trump’s followers eagerly await his tweets to tell them the truth they will believe and repeat to one another. And so far, they have apparently believed everything he’s said.

Second, the major news outlets in the 1970s were the three TV networks. There was no Fox News. And while there were some newspaper columnists and radio personalities who supported Nixon, today there are dozens of Trump-endorsing blogs that are on tens of millions of “Favorites” lists in American homes.

Third, Trump’s party controls all three branches of the federal government.

Given this gloomy assessment of how likely Trump’s support is going to weaken, it seems clear that the more effective strategy now is to activate the Americans who oppose him, who happily amount to a solid majority of the public.

Questions [people ask):

How do people get this way? Answer: There is evidence that authoritarian followers are more afraid than most people. And also, that they were trained in self-righteousness, and ethnocentric thinking in early age.

Will Trump supporters never change? Answer: Some will, if their personal experience shows them Trump has misled them or caused them grief, such as a loss of medical coverage. And if you anticipate a close election in 2020, these people are worth pursuing. But Trump will blame others, and his supporters will give him the benefit of the doubt more than most people will.

Isn’t all this true of Obama/Clinton supporters too? Answer: Yes, to a certain extent, but the studies show it’s much more prevalent “on the right.” If you want a generalization about generalizations, these things are about 2-3x as true among right-wingers as among left-wingers. Research has shown that “progressives” are much less ethnocentric, much less prejudiced, much more likely to be guided by logic and evidence, much more likely to have consistent ideas, much less likely to conform, much less likely to trust someone just because he says he agrees with them, have much more self-insight, and so on.

With that information in mind, from someone who may understand Trump supporters better than Trump does, it is clear that to prevail in 2018 and 2020, Democrats must focus on getting sympathetic non-voters to the polls, and bring back into the fold the anti-Hillary folks, who suffered from Clinton exhaustion—voters who are clearly not right-wing authoritarians.

https://verdict.justia.com/2017/07/07/altemeyer-trumps-supporters

Initially posted here: LINK

FOCUS: After Bernie's Win in Iowa, the Democratic Party Is Shitting Its Pants

07 February 20 Why Would You Come Here and Completely Ignore Funding? To fix all of our funding problems we need about 30 people to donate a day. With 20,000 visitors in the course of a day that should be very easy. That doesn't happen because almost all of those people completely ignore our fundraising appeals. That works for a while, but then the money runs out. The money has run out. Now we have to seriously focus on funding. Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611

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FOCUS: After Bernie's Win in Iowa, the Democratic Party Is Shitting Its Pants

Connor Kilpatrick, Jacobin
Kilpatrick writes: "Democratic Party leaders like Tom Perez have long dismissed the threat posed by Bernie Sanders. With their meltdown in Iowa after Bernie's victory, we're witnessing the final crumbling of that delusion - and they have no one to blame but themselves."

he mask is off now.

Earlier today, Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, announced via Twitter that he was calling for a complete “recanvassing” of Monday’s Iowa Democratic Caucus — a contest Sanders handily won by popular vote and was likely to win by even the party’s own deeply confusing and arbitrary official metric known as “state delegate equivalents.”

For those who want to give Perez the benefit of the doubt, CNN reported that the DNC Chair made the call specifically due to the method in which delegates were being awarded to the satellite caucus sites — places where Sanders crushed his competition, particularly in those that were disproportionately working class and nonwhite. At the Ottumwa site, Ethopian immigrant workers at an Iowa pork facility handed overwhelming victory to Sanders, with only a single Warren supporter — a staffer for her campaign — preventing a complete Sanders blowout.

These were the satellites that were to hand Sanders a third metric of victory in Iowa — this one by the arcane and confusing “State Delegate Equivalents” metric which few, even in the Iowa Democratic Party, seem to understand. Wednesday night, just before that group of satellites was to be counted, the Iowa Democratic Party abruptly announced they were breaking for the night. Just a few hours later, Perez attempted to invalidate the election.

You might remember Perez from the 2016 Wikileaks hack of the DNC, in which he made it clear that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were one in the same: “I also look forward to my appearance on Telemundo tomorrow where I can trumpet [Hillary Clinton’s] strong support among Latinos and put a fork once and for all in the false narrative about Bernie and Latinos.”

I feel almost a little sorry for Perez — he’s been tasked with saving a party elite and a status quo that cannot and should not be saved. But Democratic Party leaders like him have dismissed the Sanders threat for years now at their peril. What you’re witnessing this week is the final crumbling of that delusion. And they have no one to blame but themselves.

Had they taken Sanders and his coalition seriously, they probably could have stopped him by now. But they didn’t — they simply couldn’t believe an old socialist with a funny regional accent could rally millions to such off-the-wall causes as Medicare-for-All and full employment, two former planks of the supposed workers party which they curiously never got around to implementing.

And for once, we might have to thank the US Constitution for this turn of events. If we lived under a Westminster system, Trump’s election might very well have seen Sanders taking over as the official leader of a deeply divided opposition party way back in 2017, giving our ruling class years to take him down as they finally did with Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.

Thankfully, the sheer arrogance of our elites kept them from ever considering the possibility that Sanders, despite being loathed by DC politicos, was already in effect the leader of the Democratic Party as determined by its voters who, unlike the party elite, always liked the guy. And now it’s only a few months until the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, after which — if Sanders does indeed win the nomination — it will be only a few months more until the general election.

Our ruling class can do a lot of damage in that time, but not as much as they could’ve done in the past three years. They couldn’t even find an anti-Sanders champion to rally around. In fact, they’re still looking for one, falling in love with a new politico only to dump them for the next hot young thing. We’ve watched as the media puffed up Beto O’Rourke, then Kamala Harris, then Pete Buttigieg, then Elizabeth Warren, now cycling back to Buttigieg and perhaps Michael Bloomberg. Like desperate, miserable Tinder users, they want somebody worth a swipe-right, but their heart is forcing them to swipe left.

Whatever happens between now and Milwaukee, they failed to put out the flame that has spread like wildfire across the country. But that doesn’t mean that shit isn’t about to get totally insane. It definitely is. And it’s far too late to turn back now. Simply by demanding basic working-class policies like Medicare for All, full employment, and a reform of our anti-democratic political institutions, we have collectively picked a fight. And it’s going to be the fight of our lives, starting right now.

Perez and the “Stop Bernie!” clown car that is the Democratic Party are only the first line of defense for the American ruling class. We’ve got a long road ahead of us and we’re not even close to the final boss. So just take a deep breath. It’s going to get a lot uglier soon.

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Al Franken Blasts Susan Collins: She'll Let Trump 'Get Away With Anything'

07 February 20

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Al Franken Blasts Susan Collins: She'll Let Trump 'Get Away With Anything'

Marty Johnson, The Hill
Johnson writes: "Former Sen. Al Franken criticized Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday, saying that she and her fellow GOP lawmakers will let President Trump 'get away with anything' after the Maine Republican announced she would vote to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial."
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in Milford, N.H., on Tuesday. (photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)

Sanders, Pointing to Popular Vote, Declares a 'Very Strong Victory' in Caucuses
Amy B Wang and Cleve R. Wootson Jr., The Washington Post
Excerpt: "With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders noted that he holds a lead of several thousand popular votes, one he said he is unlikely to relinquish."
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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. (photo: Alex Wong/MCT)

Trump Targets National Security Official Who Testified in Impeachment Hearings for Ouster
Josh Dawsey, Robert Costa and Greg Miller, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "President Donald Trump is preparing to push out a national security official who testified against him during the impeachment inquiry after he expressed deep anger on Thursday over the attempt to remove him from office due to his actions toward Ukraine."
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Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks during an event to introduce his gun safety policy agenda in Aurora, Colorado, Dec. 5, 2019. (photo: Michael Ciaglo/Getty)

Bloomberg Plagiarized Parts of at Least Eight of His Plans
Akela Lacy, The Intercept
Lacy writes: "Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign plagiarized portions of its plans for maternal health, LGBTQ equality, the economy, tax policy, infrastructure, and mental health from research publications, media outlets, and a number of nonprofit, educational, and policy groups."
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FBI Director Christopher Wray. (photo: AP)

The FBI Just Put White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis on the Same Threat Level as ISIS
Tess Owen, VICE
Owen writes: "The FBI has elevated racially-motivated violent extremism to a 'national threat priority,' in yet another sign that the U.S. government has finally woken up to the threat posed by white nationalists and neo-Nazis at home and abroad."
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Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko. (photo: B. Peverelli/Ballake Sissoko)

World Renowned Malian Musician Ballake Sissoko Says US Customs Destroyed His Beloved Instrument
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Malian musician Ballake Sissoko, a renowned player of the kora, has accused US customs of breaking his 21-string instrument 'without any justification.'"

EXCERPT, PHOTOS ON LINK:

alian musician Ballake Sissoko, a renowned player of the kora, has accused US customs of breaking his 21-string instrument "without any justification".

Sissoko's team said in a statement on Tuesday that he discovered his "cherished, custom-made kora ... completely destroyed" upon returning to Paris in an Air France flight from New York after the conclusion of a two-week tour around the United States with his group 3MA.

"He checked in his kora, in its hard case, with its state-of-the-art amplification system, specially designed by sound engineer Julian Cooper," the statement read.

"At the airport, Ballake picked up his kora case, went back to his flat and slept. But when he woke up and opened the kora case, he was shocked and dismayed to find his kora in many pieces, with only a note from US customs - in Spanish, with the unfortunate motto: 'Intelligent security saves time.'"

Images posted on his Facebook page showed the instrument, played across West Africa, lying in pieces. 

The statement said the strings, bridge and entire delicate and complex sound system of amplification had all been taken apart.

"Ballake is a highly acclaimed, distinguished performer who travels around the world with his kora for concerts at top venues," the statement said.

"His reputation is impeccable as both artist and human being. He has no criminal record. He is just a brilliant musician, a pacifist, a kind and gentle person, a magnificent and creative performer who manages to give African tradition a contemporary voice with total integrity."

"In Mali, the jihadists threaten to destroy musical instruments, cut the tongues out of singers, and silence Mali's great musical heritage. And yet, ironically, it is the USA customs that have in their own way managed to do this," it added.

"Would they have dared do such a thing to a white musician playing a classical instrument?"

Many people online took to social media to demand US customs apologise to Sissoko and express their support for him.

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The Upper Gulch section of the Escalante Canyons features sheer sandstone walls, broken occasionally by tributary canyons. (photo: Jerry Sintz/AP)

Trump Administration Finalizes Plans to Allow Mining, Drilling in 2 Utah National Monuments
Brady McCombs, Associated Press
McCombs writes: "The U.S. government implemented final management plans Thursday for two national monuments in Utah that President Donald Trump downsized. The plans ensure lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling despite pending lawsuits by conservation, tribal and paleontology groups challenging the constitutionality of the president's action."

EXCERPTS:

Market dynamics have limited interest in a large coal reserve found in the now unprotected lands cut from Grand Staircase and uranium on lands cut from Bears Ears.

But an economic analysis by the U.S. government estimates coal production could lead to $208 million in annual revenues and $16.6 million in royalties on lands cut from Grand Staircase. Oil and gas wells in that area could produce $4.1 million in annual revenues, the analysis says.

Trump cut the size monuments following review of 27 national monuments by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. He recommended shrinking two other monuments as well, but Trump has yet to take action.

Trump said he scaled back the size of the monuments to reverse misuse of the Antiquities Act by previous Democratic presidents that he said led to oversized monuments that hinder energy development, grazing and other uses. The move earned cheers from Republican leaders in Utah including former U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch.

Conservation groups have called Trump’s decision the largest elimination of protected land in American history. They criticized the Trump administration on Thursday for spending time on management plans they believe will become moot when the court sides with their assertion that Trump misused the Antiquities Act to reverse decisions by previous presidents.

President Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996 on lands home to cliffs, canyons, waterfalls and arches in southern Utah. President Barack Obama created Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 on a scenic swath of southern Utah with red rock plateaus, cliffs and canyons on land considered sacred to tribes.

“It’s the height of arrogance for Trump to rush through final decisions on what’s left of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante while we’re fighting his illegal evisceration of these national monuments in court,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity in a statement. “Trump is eroding vital protections for these spectacular landscapes. We won’t rest until all of these public lands are safeguarded for future generations.”

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