Hope and Despair in the Age of Trump

Not so much the Kavanaugh appointment as Republicans' reaction to it has left me despairing about our future more than anything else.

On the one hand, there is cause for optimism.  It appears that the country can survive a Trump presidency.  The economy is booming, international crises have (mostly) been avoided, trade wars can be averted by putting a few tweaks on old agreements, and even Obamacare is limping along.

Granted, this is partly because in the early phases of his Presidency Trump had to be saved from himself.  He wanted to blow up NAFTA, destroy the healthcare system Obamacare created, and possibly start a war with North Korea.  Cooler head prevailed.  And Trump and his circle appear to have matured enough to avoid such disasters in the future.

So why despair?

Well, for one thing, Trump is a bully, and a major reason he has been successful is that his bullying tactics have worked.  For people who like me who oppose bullying tactics, this is rather depressing.

But above all, because it is increasingly obvious that the Republican Party, Never Trumpers included, love these bullying tactics when applied to domestic policy.  Right now Republican are applauding Trump for making the Kavanaugh nomination unabashedly partisan and really more about defeating liberals than anything else.  They are proudly proclaiming that finally we have a President who is standing up to those Democratic bullies and character assassins who have so intimidated Republicans up till now. 

And now we have Republicans declaring Democrats to be an intolerable threat to liberty and the rule of law, Republicans calling protesters paid Soros shills, and even Rudy Giuliani retweeting a call to freeze Soros' assets.  Republicans have been trying to delegitimize the Democratic Party for some time, but this latest outburst ramps it up many-fold.

The real value of Democrats winning the mid-term elections is not legislation.  There is no possibility of Democrats winning enough votes to beat a Senate filibuster, let alone override a Trump veto.  And Republicans seem to have given up on passing any seriously controversial legislation, so there is no real need to block them.  The real value in Democrats winning one or another chamber of Congress is to hold real investigations of what Trump has been up to.  But the events surrounding the Kavanaugh nomination are making clear that no matter what such an investigation reveals, Republicans will simply dismiss it as persecution.  Republicans wouldn't turn against Trump if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.  Indeed, I am reaching the point that it wouldn't surprise me for Trump to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue just to piss off liberals and therefore rally his base around him.

And so here is where my despair really comes from.  Donald Trump is increasingly applying his bullying tactics to domestic politics.  The evidence thus far seems to indicate that bullying tactics work.  The nation and the world can survive Trump's bullying tactics.  But democracy and the rule of law can't.

Note to Graham: Sexual Misconduct Knows No Party Lines and Neither Do Accusations

And I hope to move a little away from the toxic sludge sewer but not too far to take a minute to commend on Lindsey Graham's comment that Democrats are never accused of sexual misconduct.

And just to be clear, he is by no means the only one to say it.  I hear that alleged often enough on Twitter (admittedly an unrepresentative cross section) to conclude that it must be believed in wide stretches of the right wing.  It's something I truly can't wrap my head around.

What about Bill Clinton?  He was actually impeached for sexual misconduct.  In fact, Lindsey Graham himself served on the House Justice Committee at the time and Brett Kavanaugh was on Ken Starr's legal team.

I would also throw in John Edwards, Democratic Senator from North Carolina, some-time candidate in the Democratic primaries and John Kerry's running mate.  He saw his career end over an affair with a staffer and was indicted for using campaign funds to make payments to his mistress.

And Anthony Wiener, one-time rising liberal light in the House of Representatives who was hounded from office for sexting, hounded from an election for Mayor of New York for same, and eventually prosecuted for sending graphic pictures to a minor.  In fact, it was the discovery of Hillary Clinton's e-mails on his laptop (he was married to her chief of staff) that led to James Comey's fatal announcement that the Clinton investigation was being reopened.

Well, OK, Graham and company may say, but they beat the rap.  Republicans never beat the rap.  It is true that Clinton was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate, and that Edwards was indicted by also acquitted.  Anthony Weiner, on the other hand, is currently serving time.  And Republicans have been known to beat the rap as well.  Anita Hill's allegations didn't keep Clarence Thomas from being confirmed to the Supreme Court.  And numerous women coming forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault didn't keep him from being elected President.

Ancient history, they may say.  Even the 2016 election is ancient history.  They are referring to the Me Too movement, which they would presumably call a blatantly partisan movement in response to the election of Trump to bring down Republican politicians.

Aside from the awkward fact that it isn't.  I don't doubt that the election of Donald Trump played a major role in inspiring Me Too.  But what immediately sparked the movement -- it's Archduke Ferdinand moment, if you will -- was the expose on Hollywood director and Democratic donor Harvey Weinstein.  Up till then, our side had been smugly complacent.  Donald Trump's "pussy" tape and the firing of Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly from Fox News had convinced our side that this was a conservative issue, born of retrograde ideas about women.  Revelations about Harvey Weinstein, soon followed by Kevin Spacey and Charlie Rose, showed how misplaced that complacency was.  And it proved that sexual misconduct cuts across partisan and ideological lines.  And the Me Too movement was out to show that it made no such distinctions.

It brought down John Conyers, described by Nancy Pelosi as an "icon."  It also forced the resignation of Al Franken, Lindsey Graham's own colleague on the Senate Justice Committee.  And Eric Schneiderman, the Democratic Attorney General of New York, who many were counting on to continue the investigations if Trump shuts down the Mueller probe.

To look for the balance, I did what people do these days and looked it up on Wikipedia.  Beginning with the Me Too Movement, it lists Al Franken as the only sitting U.S. Senator forced out by allegations of sexual misconduct, although Roy Moore lost an election based on similar allegations.  It lists allegations against seven members of the House, four Democrats (one of them gay) and three Republicans.  It also gives the following tallies for states:

Alabama -- One Republican (Roy Moore)
Alaska -- One Democrat
Arizona -- Two Republicans
California -- Six Democrats (including two women) and one Republican
Colorado -- Three Republicans, one Democrat (gay), and one party switcher
Florida -- Two Republicans, one Democrat
Hawaii -- One Democrat
Idaho -- One Republican (who committed suicide)
Illinois -- One Democrat, one Republican
Indiana -- One Republican (the Attorney General)
Iowa -- Two Republicans
Oklahoma -- One Republican
Kentucky -- Six Republicans
Louisiana -- One Republican
Massachusetts -- One Democrat (gay)
Minnesota -- Two Democrats, including Keith Ellison, deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee and US Representative (I am not clear why he is not listed in the US House) and one Republican
Mississippi -- One Republican
Missouri -- One Republican (the Governor)
New York -- Three Democrats (including the Attorney General), one Republican
Ohio -- One Republican
Oregon -- One Republican
Pennsylvania -- One Democrat
Rhode Island -- One Republican
Texas -- Two Democrats
Utah -- One Republican
Wisconsin -- One Democrat
Wyoming -- One Republican (the Secretary of State)

Adding up, I get 40 Republicans and 30 Democrats at the state level, although human error is possible here.  This does suggest somewhat more state Republicans accused than Democrats, but then again, Republicans dominate more state governments than Democrats.  At the federal level, Democrats hold a slight edge.

It is true that the only federal judges named are Republicans Alex Kozinski and Brett Kavanaugh.  Add to that Clarence Thomas, even though that was in 1991, and I will concede that (so far) only Republican federal judges seem to be accused of sexual misconduct.  I will also point out that of the last four Democratic nominees to the Supreme Court, three have been women.

And one of the reasons Democrats are running so many women for office this year is to avoid any nasty surprises.

Another Norm Shredded, Supreme Court Edition

OK, so maybe I'll dip my toe in the toxic sludge just a little.  I just want to point out that Trump, indirectly in this case, has managed to shred yet another norm in our politics.

Let's face it.  Not to be cynical, but underneath all fancy theories of what the Supreme Court should do, everyone really wants it to do the same thing.  Rule in their favor.  It's just that up until now most of us have managed to rationalize it.  We claim that if the Supreme Court would just adopt the right theory of jurisprudence and be strictly impartial, we would always win, or at least almost always.

John Roberts claimed that he would be a neutral arbiter, just calling strikes and balls.  Gorsuch assured us that he would implement the vision of the Founding Fathers.  That the vision of the Founding Fathers looked a lot like the Republican Party platform simply meant that the Republican Party was in perfect alignment with what the Founding Fathers wanted.  The fact that a neutral arbiter calling strikes and balls always seemed to side with big money interests might be written off as coincidence.  Indeed, I have heard conservatives proposing views of the Supreme Court so mechanical that it sounded like a sort of supercomputer.  Program it with the law, key in the specific facts, and it would spit out the one right answer as reliably as a mathematical equation.  (Then why bother having judges at all, one wonders).

This is not to claim innocence for our side.  Conservatives at least claimed that the proper role of the Supreme Court was to pretend we still lived in 1787 and ignore all evidence to the contrary.  Liberal theories were often so incoherent as not to be theories at all so much as wish lists. 

But up until last week, Republicans could pretend, even to themselves, that they wanted a neutral arbiter and were convinced they would win any case before the Supreme Court based on the sheer merits of their case.  Then Kavenaugh came out swinging, making an intemperate partisan speech and promising (in effect) to be an openly partisan judge.  And Republicans suddenly realized that was what they had really wanted all along.

Without Trump in office, it would never have happened.

And so another norm is lost.

A Few Comments on the Kavenaugh Nomination

Up till now I have done my best to avoid the subject of the Kavenaugh nomination on the theory that if I don't absolutely have to wade through a sewer full of toxic sludge, why would I do it voluntarily?  But since the subject has taken up all the oxygen today, I might as well make a few comments.

I am reasonably confident that Brett Kavenaugh could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and the Republicans would still confirm.  This is the absolute most important thing to them.  I recall someone suggesting to Flake or Corker that they block Trump's judges as a way of pressuring him to cooperate and Flake or Corker dismissed that as cutting off their nose to spite their face.  This is quite right from a Republican perspective.  Ultimately Trump doesn't care about judges, except to the extent that he is praised for his choices.  Republicans, on the other hand, care about judges more than anything.  It logically follows that the proposal is absurd.

In pre-Trump days, a nominee could survive allegations like Kavenaugh is facing, but only by going the contrition route.  He would acknowledge that he did binge drink in his youth, that he did drink to the point of blacking out, that he could not say with certainty what happened during the blackouts.  He was out of control when it happened, but since he chose to drink so much he is responsible.  And then he could present himself as a reformed man and discuss how he put all that behind him.  No more.  In the Trump era, the way to survive such allegations is to lie through your teeth about everything and accuse your attackers of being a partisan conspiracy.  This is very much a Bad Thing, although I suppose we should be glad that at least he left out the Deep State and Soros money as being a little too paranoid.

It is also depressing that people on opposite sides of the partisan line watched the same testimony and saw completely different things.

Finally, does this show that Democrats made a mistake in eliminating the judicial filibuster?  I would still say no.  I also highly recommend this article on the subject.  The whole idea that requiring a super majority is the norm and passing anything with a simple majority is an extraordinary event is a recent development.  Traditionally, passing legislation by a simple majority was the norm and filibusters were an extraordinary event, reserved for the most controversial legislation.  Filibusters of nominees were unheard of.  Clarence Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52-48.  While many things about the nomination were controversial, no one questioned the use of a simple majority to confirm him.  The article blames Democrats for beginning the practice in 2003.  It was at that time that Mitch McConnell called eliminating the judicial filibuster the "nuclear option," suggesting that it was a very radical measure indeed.  Judicial filibusters were suspended for a while, but began to creep back in.  Under the Obama Administration, Republicans began to filibuster all nominees for the D.C. Circuit court, refusing to confirm any regardless of the merits. It was this that inspired Harry Reid to end the judicial filibuster.  To believe that Republican would have allowed Democrats the same privilege once a Republican was elected is extraordinarily naive.

Let's face it.  We, as a country have reached the point that Republicans will not confirm any judge who is not approved by the Federalist Society and Democrats will not confirm any judge who is approved by the Federalist Society.  In effect, we have reached the point that judges cannot be confirmed unless the President and the Senate are controlled by the same party.  The last thing we need is to be unable to confirm judges unless the President has a super-majority in the Senate.

Syria and Yemen; Cambodia and East Timor

When I first started to read Noam Chomsky, I noticed that he had a most disconcerting habit.  He responded to any mention of Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia by downplaying them and by changing the subject to East Timor. 

What is East Timor?  East Timor is an island belonging to the same archipelago as Indonesia, but a former Portuguese colony, whereas Indonesia was a former Dutch colony.  While Indonesia gained its independence following WWII, East Timor remained a Portuguese colony until 1975, at which point it attempted to establish itself as an independent republic.  Indonesia did not take kindly to the attempt and invaded.  Its bloody attempt to subjugate East Timor continued at least ten years, and the occupation did not end until 1999.

At the time, invariably changing the subject from Cambodia to East Timor seemed like a case of "whataboutism."  Chomsky was wrong to dismiss or minimize atrocities in Cambodia which were, in fact, on a greater scale than the ones in East Timor.  He did, nonetheless, have a point.  In the end, there was not much we could do about the Khmer Rouge.*  Indonesia's atrocities, by contrast, were being committed by an allied government that we were arming and therefore actively abetting.  Furthermore, no US interest was actually served by Indonesian's actions, so it would cost us nothing to restrain our ally.  We did not.

This comes to my mind whenever I read Daniel Larison.  Larison differs from Chomsky in accepting that it is reasonable and acceptable for the US to pursue its interests (Chomsky considers it evil an illegitimate).  Nonetheless, he responds to all talk about atrocities in Syria by changing the subject to Yemen.  Yemen is a country on the southern end of the Arabian peninsula that is experiencing a civil war between pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian factions.  The pro-Iranian faction seized power in 2014.  Saudi Arabia has been attempting to restore its faction since 2015.  Saudi Arabia has been blockading Yemen, leading to famine and disease, and at least sometimes bombing civilian targets.

The situation Syria/Yemen is not unlike Cambodia/East Timor.  Two bloodbaths are going on.  The more severe is being committed by a hostile power.  We are passively allowing it to take place.  On the other hand, stopping it would require military intervention with uncertain prospects of success and the real risk of a super power confrontation.  The lesser one is being committed by an ally, armed and equipped by us, but not serving our interests in any meaningful way.  We could, presumably, put an end to it by refusing to abet it any further.

Which should be our priority, the worse bloodbath, or the one that we can more easily stop?

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*And, ironically enough, when the Khmer Rouge was finally swept from power by the pro-Soviet Vietnamese, our response was to support it as a resistance in the name of resisting Soviet power.

Trump, Syria, and the Blob

Back to accounts of Trump's staff thwarting him.  Among the plans they allegedly thwarted  were trade war with China (now underway), withdrawal from NAFTA, withdrawal from a free trade agreement with South Korea, withdrawal of our troops from South Korea, a preemptive military strike on North Korea, invading Venezuela, cutting off all aid to Pakistan, and a large scale intervention in Syria.

All but one of these are more or less unanimously seen as really bad ideas.  The exception is Syria.  The book reports that when Bashar Assad launched a chemical attack in Syria, President Trump said, “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them.”  Secretary of Defense James Matthis agreed and then promptly did not even make contingency plans for such a possibility, but proceeded with a pinprick strike on the one runway that launched the attack.  The Blob applauded, saluted Trump for restoring the US credibility that Obama had squandered in not launching such an attack at the time of the first chemical attack, and pointed out that, since the attack did not lead to escalation, there was no reason for Obama not to have done so earlier.  Apparently unnoticed was that the pinprick strike had no effect whatever on the war, except to temporarily deter further use of chemical weapons.  When Assad used them again, the Trump Administration launched pinprick strikes on three sites, as strategically meaningless as the first attack, but just as pleasing to the Blob.

Before getting into the details of any proposed large-scale intervention, can we dispense once and for all with the most common justification given for such an intervention.  The argument is that since Obama made a threat to intervene, the threat must be followed through or US credibility is lost forever.  Implied here as that this was the first time in the entire history of the US that a President ever made a threat and failed to follow through.  But, in fact, Obama's threat was not as clear as many have read into it.  His actual words were:

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. . . . That would change my equation. . . . We’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans.

That is a threat, of sorts, but one that leaves a lot of wiggle room for anyone who wants wiggle room.  The Blob obviously did not.  This thread, for instance, gives other threats made and not kept, many of the involving North Korea.  And, most famously of all, Donald Trump made his "fire and fury" threat, not not one member of the Blob seems to believe that had no choice but to actually start a war with North Korea, or we would lose all credibility.  In short, the Blob is so insistent that Obama should have intervened in Syria because it favored such intervention on the merits, not because it was convinced that all threats must be carried out.

So what are the merits here?  What it comes to, as far as I can tell, is a conviction that if only we had intervened earlier or more forcefully, we could have toppled Assad.  What would have happened next never gets addressed.  This article is a fine example:

Instead of implementing what had sounded like the commander-in-chief’s directive [to overthrow Assad], the State Department was saddled in August 2012 by the White House with a make-work, labor-intensive project cataloguing the countless things that would have to be in place for a post-Assad Syria to function. But how to get to post-Assad? The White House had shut down the sole interagency group examining options for achieving that end.

In other words, the author thinks we should have toppled Assad now and worried about what would follow later.  We tried that in Iraq and Libya.  It didn't go so well.  The usual response is that this time we didn't intervene and it went even worse.  Often also present is the insistence that the moderate opposition (as opposed to ISIS and other Islamist fanatics) would have prevailed if we had intervened sooner, and that the worst atrocities happened only after the Russians intervened, and that we could have prevented them by toppling Assad sooner.  Consider this article, which takes for granted that we could have safely intervened to topple Assad in 2011 (when the revolt first broke out), in 2013 (the whole chemical weapons "red line") or even as late as summer of 2015, when Assad's army was shattered, but that delay led to Russian intervention just a few weeks later. 

An alternate interpretation is obvious -- the Russians intervened to prevent the overthrow of their ally, Assad.  There was not some magical intervention date in 2015 that could have been avoided by toppling Assad earlier.  Rather, the Russians, after seeing their ally Qaddafi toppled, had no intention of allowing it to happen again.  They intervened when they saw Assad was in real danger of falling.  If Assad had been in danger of falling earlier, the Russians would simply have intervened earlier. 

But suppose we had intervened more aggressively, to the extent that the Russians would have risked a direct military confrontation with us if they had intervened.  Perhaps then we would have toppled Assad.  But then what?  No one in the Blob appears to have thought that far.  In all probability, the rival factions would have been at each other's throats and an imploding failed state with endless civil war would have ensued.  Certainly there were plenty of extremely nasty Islamist factions out there, including ISIS.  Well, what of the "moderate" opposition we backed in 2011?  The so-called "moderates" proved remarkably difficult to find and arm even at the beginning, and nice guys go down fast during civil wars. 

Well, some people have said, even that would be better than what we have now.  Libya is a mess, but the death toll has been a lot lower than in Syria.  But Libya at least is fairly peripheral to the Mideast's great power struggles.  Libya can burn to the ground for all US and Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia care.  Syria, on the other hand borders with Turkey and is only one country away from Iran and Saudi Arabia.  If Assad had fallen, all parties would be arming one faction or another, escalating the civil war.  Anyone who does not think Russia would have found someone to back, if only to stir up trouble, is being uncommonly naive.

Well, what of diplomacy backed by force?  There are some (including, as I understand it, John Kerry) who believe we might have successfully negotiated an end to the civil war if we had been willing to back our diplomacy with force.  I would be all in favor of that.  However, so long as we made Assad's removal a non-negotiable condition and Assad, with his Russian and Iranian backers, made Assad staying in power a non-negotiable condition, the chances of a negotiated solution seem fairly close to none.

And now Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers are gearing up for the final battle and a potentially massive humanitarian catastrophe.  And some are calling for a last US stand.


The Blob is not truly as uniform as sometimes implied.  The first time the Assad regime used chemical weapons during the Trump Administration, Mathis prevented a large-scale intervention.  Some members of the Blob disagreed.  Some are still calling for a last-ditch attempt.  But I agree with this critic of both Obama and Trump:

The “red line” retreat was a humiliating moment for U.S. power but I’ve never understood how an alternate course wouldn’t have ended in retreat anyway. If O had hit Assad, Assad almost certainly would have defied him afterward by using chemical weapons again. That’s what he did to Trump, after all, after the first U.S. strike on him in April 2017. What would Obama have done then? Another token bombing run, a la Trump? A small contingent of troops? The insuperable obstacle for every president on Syria is that Americans don’t understand what national interest is at stake and have had their fill of Middle East adventures over the past 20 years. There’s always support at the beginning of hostilities for punching a bully in the eye, but if the bully’s going to ignore you and keep doing what he does, you’re forced to either keep punching or to acquiesce and walk away. Trump was willing to throw a couple of jabs, Obama was willing to throw none, but neither one was going to commit to a sustained fight for purely humanitarian reasons. And so the question: If Obama had hit Assad in 2013 and then ended up retreating after Assad shook it off and kept gassing people, wouldn’t we have paid a price in lost credibility anyway? What price in terms of American lives lost might we have paid if Obama had committed to a McCain/Graham-style strategy of perpetual escalation to preserve American prestige?

I, for one, and glad that James Matthis avoided a large-scale intervention in Syria, and I suspect most Americans would agree with me.  But some members of the Blob may not.

The Steele Dossier and the Page Warrant

People arguing that the Steele Dossier was an elaborate Russia/Steele/Clinton campaign/Deep State plot to frame Trump run into the awkward question of why neither the Clinton campaign nor the Deep State ever published the information they allegedly went to such lengths to fabricate.  The usual counter is that even if none of these entities published the dossier before the election, but FBI did use it to obtain a warrant to spy on a member of the campaign.

Actually, Page had left the campaign at the time the FBI applied for the warrant.  This is significant because it means the FBI was not spying on an ongoing campaign.  Spying on a former campaign adviser could ultimately lead to incriminating information on the campaign, so the warrant was politically significant.  But it was not an attempt at real-time information on the political moves of an opposing campaign.

Still, regardless of whether he was part of an ongoing campaign, Carter Page should not have been wiretapped without probable cause, as properly established.  The Republican contention is that the warrant was improper because it was based on opposition research, and because the FISA court was not informed of the source's origins.

The Steele Dossier alleges three main incidents.

First and most notoriously, it alleges that during Donald Trump's November, 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, he hired some Russian prostitutes to urinate on the Obamas' bed in the Moscow Ritz Carlton, and that the Russian intelligence filmed the incident and used the film to blackmail Trump.  The only part of this that has been established is that Trump was in Moscow in November, 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, and that he stayed at the Ritz Carlton.

Second, it alleges that during Carter Page's July, 2016 trip to Moscow to address the New Economic School he met with Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft oil company to discuss lifting sanctions on Russia.  In return, Sechin offered, "the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft."  Page showed interest but remained non-committal.  Page is also alleged to have met with Russian official Igor Divyenkin, who said that Russia had damaging information on Clinton, and broadly hinted that they had it on Trump as well.  This information allegedly came from "a trusted compatriot" of "a close associate" of Sechin.  In other words, it is a third-hand rumor.    (Memo 94, pp. 9-10 and Memo 134, pp. 30-31).  Nonetheless, there is at least some verification here.  Page's trip to Moscow at this time is a matter of public record.  Rosneft really did privatize a 19% interest.  And a close associate of Sechin turned up dead under suspicious circumstances.  (Nothing can be said of his "trusted compatriot.")

Finally, it alleges that Michael Cohen met with a Russian operative in Prague in August or September of 2016 to work on the coverup.  Cohen produced an apparent alibi to this meeting; Robert Mueller is working to break it.

The warrant against Page deals with this second alleged incident.

Republicans appear to be right about one thing at least.  The Steele Dossier really does appear to have been the primary source in applying for the warrant, as evidenced by the application (starting page 15) referring to Steele as "Source #1." 

Keep in mind this does not mean that the Steele Dossier was the primary source in the entire counterintelligence investigation, only that sub-portion of it that involved obtaining a FISA warrant against Page.  This is a distinction that Republicans like to blur, but it is real nonetheless.

Furthermore, the reference to Steele as "Source #1" implies that there are other sources as well, but does suggest that they are less important and are merely used as corroboration of the primary source.  Still, let's give at least part of a point to Republicans on that at least.

Republicans are outraged that the application does not say that the dossier was prepared as opposition research for the Democratic Party.  Democrats have essentially three responses.

First of all Steele was simply doing work for a dirt-digging firm.  He didn't know who the firm's client was.  Thus he didn't actually know that he was working for Trump's political opponents, although it seems most improbable that that Trump's allies would be funding the investigation.

Second, the application (page 16) makes clear that, although "Source #1" did not know who the client was, the FBI speculates that the research was probably being done to "discredit Candidate #1's campaign."  In other words, opposition research by Trump's political opponents.

Third (an rather caustically), although the FBI says that it believes Steele was doing opposition research for Trump's opponents, Republicans seem to be complaining that the application does not specifically name names.  This is remarkably hypocritical, given the uproar they made about inappropriate unmasking.  Apparently only Republicans should be shielded from unmasking.

Finally, although Republicans are outraged that the application relies on a hostile and biased sources, doing so is absolutely routine in warrant applications, and for obvious reasons.  Friends and allies of the target are usually not going to give the sort of information that can be used to establish probable cause.  Truly neutral and impartial parties generally just don't know that much.  Establishing probable cause generally means digging around in some sordid business because that is where the information is.  All of this really should draw a collective duh!

But so far as I understand it, Republicans' response is that if Steele didn't know who is ultimate employer was, then it was the FBI's responsibility to investigate and find out.  While acknowledging that the ultimate employer was most unlikely to be friendly to Trump, they maintain that it might have been a business rival, or a jilted ex-mistress (presumably with a new sugar daddy to pay for the research).  If the animosity had been purely personal or commercial, Steele's memos would have been fine, but knowing that the ultimate employer was a political rival hopelessly taints them.

I really don't see it.  The application goes on to say that Page and Sechin discussed "future bilateral energy cooperation" and lifting sanctions.  It also says that Divyekin discussed the possibility of releasing damaging information on "Candidate #2."  That does not sound like the sort of thing a business or romantic rival would be looking for.  It sounds very much like research for a political rival.  Just how much digging is the FBI expected to do into which political rival, and why does it matter?

What obviously is important is whether any of Steele's allegations have been verified. Milking the rumor mill is fine as the opening of an investigation.  It is not sufficient for a political ad -- or for a news article, or for a wiretap.  For any of these things there must be corroboration.  It was because of the lack of corroboration that the Clinton campaign did not use any of Steele's research during her campaign (must I reiterate again why it makes no sense at all to make such an elaborate fabrication and then not use it?), and why the press did not publish it until after the election and then with great controversy.  But the intelligence community has access to sources not available to the Clinton campaign or the news media.  Were these sources able to give sufficient verification to justify a warrant?

And the only reasonable answer, based on what has been made public so far, is that we simply do not know.  The application begins (pp. 1-2) with a pro forma explanation of who Carter Page and Russia (!) are.  Page 3 is a large, blacked out section of Russian's clandestine intelligence activities.  Page 4 says that Carter Page is foreign policy adviser to "Candidate #1" and is believed to be a target for recruitment by the Russian government to undermine and influence the US election.  This is, once again, a strong hit that it was probably not a commercial or romantic rival who underwrote the research.  And, really, it is appropriate to investigate attempts by a foreign power to undermine and influence an election, even if it is on behalf of the party out of power.

Pages 5-8 address Russian attempts to sway elections, in the US and other countries, in general, and in the 2016 election in particular.  Some chunks are blacked out that presumably deal with how they know Russia is meddling.  Pages 8 (toward the bottom) through 10 (near the top) say that George Papadopoulos and Carter Page are foreign policy advisers for "Candidate #1" and that the FBI believes the Russian government's efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with "Candidate #1's campaign."  Further information (a little more than a page) are blacked out.  Two things here are significant.  First, the application believes that Page, though no longer a member of the campaign, was still coordinating with the Russians, suggesting his association with the campaign had not entirely ended.  Second, the others doing the coordination were "associated with" rather than members of the campaign.  That probably refers to Roger Stone.

Pages 10 through halfway down 13 are about Page's business ties with Russia and are almost entirely blacked out.  Pages 13 through 15 is about Russian spying in 2015.  It is not quite clear why this is significant.  Page was a target for recruitment as a Russian spy in 2013, but the 2015 operation was separate.  What it may have to do with Page is blacked out.

Pages 15 through 18 are the sections dealing with the Steele Dossier and Christopher Steele as "Source #1."  It reports Page's trip to Moscow and address at the New Economic School as matters of open record and discusses Page's alleged meetings with Sechin and Divyekin according to Steele.  It also says that Steele has been a reliable source, that he was and doing dirt digging, and that he did not know who the client was but suspected "Candidate #1's" political rivals.  It also identifies who Sechin and Divyekin are and what "kompromat" is.  It also contains some blacked out information about Steele's ties to the FBI (presumably the work he and Bruce Ohr were doing seeking to flip Russian oligarchs), and on why Steele is considered reliable.  Pages 19 and 20 are blacked out and my contain corroboration.

Page 21 quotes July and August news articles about the Trump campaign's seeming openness to recognizing the Russian annexation of Crimea and lifting sanctions.  Pages 22-24 quote the September 23 Yahoo News article which made most the same allegations as Steele about Carter Page's trip to Moscow.  (Conspicuously absent:  Any talk about a 19% share of privatized Rosneft).  Republicans strongly condemn the FBI for using this article as corroboration of Steele's report, since Steele himself was the source.  Democrats defend it as not being offered as corroboration, but to show that Page denied the meetings.  Actually, the article is offered more as a setup for Page's denials.  There is also a footnote that acknowledges the remarkable similarities between the article and Steele's findings, but says the FBI does not believe Steele was the source of the article.  This mistake was never acknowledged, though later versions of the application mention that the FBI terminated relations with Steele after the October 31, 2016 Mother Jones article sourced to Steele came out.  (The first application dates to before the Mother Jones) article.  Pages 24 through 26 cite various new and other open source denials of the meeting by Carter Page and attempts by the Trump campaign to repudiate Page.

Pages 27 through 31 are blacked out but may contain corroboration of Steele.  Page 32 is boilerplate language saying there is probable cause to believe Page is the agent of a foreign power in violation of criminal statutes.  The rest of the application (total pages 67) is either boilerplate or blacked out.

Conclusion:  The Steele Dossier alleges real and serious crimes. Its origins as opposition research do not taint it and were revealed or at least strongly suggested in the application.  It is the product of milking the rumor mill.  Milking the rumor mill is fine as the starting point of an investigation, but not sufficient to justify a wiretap without further corroboration.  The publicly released portions of the dossier are not enough for a conclusion one way or the other whether there is enough corroboration.

And now Donald Trump has authorized further releases.  His authorized releases are specific -- pages 10 through 12 and 17 through 34.  Pages 10 through 12 appear to address Carter Page's business ties to Russia.  Pages 17 through 20 probably address corroboration or lack thereof of Steele's material.  Pages 26 through 31 follow Trump's and Page's denials of allegations.  I have no idea what they contain.  Pages 33 through 34 probably contain information about why the FBI suspects Page is the agent of a foreign power.

I will make two more comments.  First, I don't trust Trump as far as I can spit.  Presumably the releases he has authorized are selected to make him look good.  Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that he is not disclosing the most dangerous parts of the warrant -- the early parts showing how the intelligence community knows that Russia is trying to sway the election and the later parts that presumably discuss how the surveillance would take place.