Why I Watch (So Much) CNN

I've been watching cable news way too much lately. I'd gone almost a decade without viewing much of it going into the 2016 primary season. I became glued to it because I felt like Trump's campaign was a phenomenon that was fascinating from so many perspectives, and that once November 8th had passed, we'd never see anything like it again. Of course, it didn't go that way.

I rarely turn to MSNBC. Scarborough is terrible, the mid-day programming is meh, and the prime time shows are preaching to the choir. When a big story is breaking, I make a point to watch Don Lemon, and also sometimes Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper. Back in 2016, Lemon seemed like a deer in the headlights, but now he's pretty masterful at managing the otherwise awful CNN panel format.

Why do I bother? It's not like I'm going to learn anything there I'm not going to lean on the internet. In fact, cable news is, for the most part, months behind. I mean, it's been pretty apparent since late 2016 that Trump's campaign had colluded with Russia to steal the election, and we knew in October 2016 that the New York branch of the FBI was conspiring against Hillary. Most of the news hasn't even gotten that far. But that's why I watch CNN. I learn just how far the press has gotten in their willingness to call a particular spade a spade. In the case of Trump/Russia, the press would barely acknowledge it at all until Buzzfeed published the Steele "dossier." They were skeptical about it for a long time, but hookers and pee make for good TV. The next big milestone was probably the Comey firing, when the talking heads could start musing about obstruction of justice. However, almost no one would actually discuss WHY Trump obstructed justice. As more Russia news came out, such as the Trump Tower meeting, much of it was discussed as more or less as a series of isolated incidents.

Things are changing now. Trump's attacks on Mueller, particularly the revelation that Trump tried to fire him, is starting to elicit talk of Trump actually covering up crimes, and sometimes, the TV personalities will even allude to those crimes being Russia related. Occasionally, they'll discuss whether or not a sitting President can be indicted.

But they haven't gotten to where we were (though that could've changed tonight; I haven't gotten my nightly Lemon fix yet) in December of 2016. We knew that Russia had meddled in the election, with the help of the Trump campaign, and that the election was stolen.

I don't know whether they'll get there, but I'd say the next steps are for the CNN types to acknowledge, on air, that Trump cheated. Then they'll need to discuss what the consequences should be for stealing an election. Finally, and I don't think this'll happen, CNN panelists and perhaps hosts will call for an overturning of the election. That's what I'm watching for.

The fact that there's progress at all makes this situation different than in the past. During the Bush years, the press rarely acknowledged that the administration lied us into war in Iraq, or that the administration ignored pre-9/11 warnings.

The mainstream press will just never be out ahead of these types of stories. I've been following it for 20 years, I'm nearly 40, and I know by now that I'll never be satisfied with what I'm watching.

But we're moving. And as the mainstream press moves, mainstream American opinion will move with it.

Stay tuned.

Thread of the Day -- Today's Reminder That Republicans Are Terrible People

I could've picked a dozen threads today and used the same title:

1.Without warning, I fell today and hurt my arm. Dizzy, no one was around to help me get back up. It happened because I wrote things about Trump that a supporter didn’t like, so 13 months ago, he tried to kill me. Knowing I have epilepsy, knowing strobes can set off seizures...

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 30, 2018

I have a longer post about the media's reaction to incidents like this one coming in the next couple of days, but for now, Jesus Christ. Poor Kurt. More than a year later, this one remains actual, for real (not "HOOCOODANODE") shocking to me. Way beyond the pale.

Click here or on the tweet for the whole thread.

Late Night Track -- Oh Daddy (Ivanka's Theme)

RTs for a week for the guy who puts Ivanka's head on Christine McVie's body. Two weeks if Don Jr.'s head is on Lindsay Buckingham's body and Jared's is on Mick Fleetwood's.

 

Weekend Long Read -- Franklin Foer on Paul Manafort

I actually have a lot of writing in the hopper the next week or two, but do not miss Franklin Foer's Paul Manafort profile in the upcoming March issue of The Atlantic:

THE CLINIC PERMITTED PAUL MANAFORT one 10-minute call each day. And each day, he would use it to ring his wife from Arizona, his voice often soaked in tears. “Apparently he sobs daily,” his daughter Andrea, then 29, texted a friend. During the spring of 2015, Manafort’s life had tipped into a deep trough. A few months earlier, he had intimated to his other daughter, Jessica, that suicide was a possibility. He would “be gone forever,” she texted Andrea.

That's just the first paragraph. Read the whole thing.

This is Pulitzer-worthy, and from the same guy who wrote the expose the Trump Tower/Alfa Bank server connection that everyone, excluding me, dismissed two weeks before the 2016 election. I haven't had an Atlantic subscription in at least a decade, but I may be about to change that.

And I'll go out on a limb and predict that Manafort will die of unnatural causes either in prison or before he goes -- by his hand or by mysterious ones.

Late Night Track -- Ziggy Stardust

Thread of the Day -- Tea Pain on the Gates News

Day 2 of this feature... I'm not always going to agree with the threads I share, and I don't know where I fall on this. I'm out on some "citizen journalists" like Louise Mensch and Eric Garland. Others, who I haven't seen make massive screwups, such as Seth Abramson, I keep an eye on.

Today's thread is from one of the biggest -- Tea Pain (h/t Kimberley Johnson, who I like and who swears by him). I don't read his stuff often and I haven't decided what I think of him. But he makes a big prediction today and I wanted to see if it turns out to be true, which is that Mueller is working to remove Trump from office on obstruction of justice charges and then prosecute him for other things once he's out. I think he's dreaming, but we'll see.

1) QUICK THREAD on Mueller Probe

The news that Rick Gates is cuttin' a deal with Mueller is sendin' shock-waves through the Trump admin today. Gates should have valuable evidence against Trump directly and will possibly flip Manafort in the bargain.https://t.co/7WI8ba5GTB

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) January 24, 2018

Click here or on the Tweet for more.

Earworm of the Afternoon -- Pretty Penny

The Daily Comb Over - January 23, 2018

One crisis averted, and now onto the next.  Granted that neither CHIP nor DACA should have even been controversial issues to begin with, but the Republicans really don't care what the public thinks:

• CHIP:

CHIP has enjoyed bipartisan support since its inception in 1997, but this year, legislators let the deadline for reauthorizing it pass as they bickered over other health care issues, primarily the latest Republican-led push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

While Americans are split over how to handle Obamacare, three-quarters of the public want CHIP renewed, according to the September Kaiser Health Tracking Poll.

• DACA:

Support for allowing these immigrants to remain in the U.S. spans across party lines: 84 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and 69 percent of Republicans think they should stay.

But we have 16 more days until the next shutdown, so let's take a look at something more pressing: the future of monetary policy in the United States:

The Senate has approved President Trump's selection of Jerome Powell to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve beginning next month. Senators voted 85-12 to confirm Powell to lead the nation's central bank, a post that's considered the most powerful economic position in government, per the AP. Powell will succeed Janet Yellen, the first woman to lead the Fed, when her term ends Feb. 3. Trump decided against offering Yellen a second four-year term as chair despite widespread praise for her performance since succeeding Ben Bernanke. 

Let me rephrase that for you. Obama appointed a very successful Fed Chair, so Trump not only had to undo that success but in replacing Chair Yellen, he appointed former-investment-banker-not-an-economist Jerome Powell.

But it's not all bad news. The conservative Powell has been a voice of reason in the past, pushing Republicans to promptly raise debt ceilings and has cautioned against defaults.  And given that he has served as a member of the FOMC (the Fed Open Market Committee) for just over five years already, he has plenty of experience working under Yellen and learning about what makes good economic policy. And, in truth, it's really not that difficult to be a Fed Chair when times are good. Your only responsibility is to make sure inflation does not exceed 2%.

As an economist, I was fine with the choice when it was made.  After all, President Obama originally nominated Powell as part of a bipartisan appointment to maintain balance at the FOMC (the arch-conservative economist Fred Mishkin had retired) which absolutely needs to remain a nonpartisan entity.  And Obama would not have nominated a blind partisan from the Right to fill that position. 

And just remember Bloomberg's assessment last summer:

Powell (center)

If it wasn't going to be Yellen, our choices were the clueless supply-sider Gary Cohn (not a dove) or Warsh or Taylor who literally want to tear everything down. We quite literally dodged a bullet.

Of course, time will tell if he will be more like the Republican-appointed Ben Bernanke who staved off disaster or the Republican-appointed Alan Greenspan who undermined the recovery tools in order to prop up the woeful Bush Era recovery.

Catch you on the flip side.

Thread of the Day -- What Are the Republicans Getting At?

I'm trying something new here today because there's so much interesting stuff on Twitter that I think should be shared and also saved for posterity. I'm terrible with keeping up regular features, but I'm going to try to post a THREAD! that catches my eye every day. Here's today's:

The Republicans, like Congressman Devin Nunes (pictured above) have been trying to do anything they can to pull Mueller, the Congressional investigations, and the press off the scent of Russian collusion in the election. FBI text messages, "the memo," questioning the loyalties of various law enforcement and intelligence personalities. Attorney and blogger Susan Simpson asks, in essence, "So what?"

For the past year, the GOP has been trying to take the heat off of the Trump/Russia investigation by throwing out one Clinton/Obama/Deep State conspiracy after another.

At this point, it all kinds of blur together: wiretapping, unmasking, Fusion GPS, leaking, FBI coup, etc.

— Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) January 23, 2018

Click here or on the Tweet for more.

Susan's blog, The View From LL2, can be found here.

Late Night Track -- Washin' and Wonderin'

These are my hands

These are my faults

These are my plans

And these are my nasty little thoughts...