According to the ineffable Charlie Pierce:
"Because Tailgunner Ted Cruz is a messianic and friendless theocrat whose policies are a mix of the Book of Revelation and The Fountainhead, and anyone who looks at him thinks of the skeevy uncle whom they tell their kids to avoid at Thanksgiving, and anyone who listens to him who isn't already lost in Jesus wouldn't trust him to park their car."
THE OWLS' NEST - Mostly U.S. Politics
Monday, March 21, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Click here for an article entitled "Death of a Mannequin: Marco Rubio's Last Day" by Jeb Lund at Rolling Stone. It's a great autopsy of Marco Rubio's (Marquetito's?) political career, but what I love about this article is something I have said repeatedly about Rubio: He is self-described as the "new wave" of Republicanism, a new, fresh approach to politics -- and the policies he espouses are paleo-Republican, circa 1980.
A little clip from the article that seems a propos, discussing Rubio's idea of policy:
But Rubio was a Reagan Republican in the same way that all other Republicans are Reagan Republicans: 95 percent of what he believes hasn't been updated since 1981.Amen. May Marco Rubio's political career rest in peace, and may it be joined by Paul Ryan's.
A little clip from the article that seems a propos, discussing Rubio's idea of policy:
All Marco would have had to do was open his mouth and leave it there while a 40-year-old tape loop played, periodically interrupted by a new overdub saying the word "Uber."The ending paragraphs are exquisite:
It was Rubio's campaign, after all, that announced, "Nothing matters if we aren't safe," that inflated a potential single Iranian nuclear weapon into an existential threat to the whole United States, that portrayed the border as a sieve through which ISIS would infiltrate potentially thousands of terrorists, that implied we'd restart the Guantanamo torture machine, that said we'd nearly conceded the rest of the century to China, that proclaimed the next generation nearly certain to be immiserated compared to their parents and described the president as alternately a mortally dangerous incompetent and a godless Machiavelli who spent the last seven years fundamentally transforming the nation into an unrecognizable dystopia.
It was a masterpiece of bullshit, combining the Rubio experience's two true and constant outcomes: a text any follower could have reasonably assembled from the greatest hits, and one whose philosophical aspirations were invalidated by the person voicing them. Rubio's rhetoric never tried to soar higher than when it was being undermined by everything else he campaigned on.
It was the last weepy gesture of a bozo charlatan, and it sent most of the audience away unaffected. When he finished, people moved as if to exit and found themselves suddenly stopped by a room so full of journalists that everyone had their own personal interviewer.
On Thursday, Rubio told reporters that he is "not running for anything" and is going to "be a private citizen." And that, too, is almost certainly bullshit.
Voter Fraud In Texas?
Click here for an article at Crooks & Liars by Steve M. entitled Next Time, Governor Abbott, Follow The Links.
Texas governor Greg Abbott tweeted the following: "Texas will continue to crack down on vote fraud.'
Texas, of course, is looking at ways to restrict the right to vote by making government photo ID mandatory -- a restriction that weighs most heavily on the old, the young (students), and non-whites and immigrants. The article cites some figures in rebuttal: In the previous 10 years, precisely two people had been prosecuted for in-person voter fraud.
Texas governor Greg Abbott tweeted the following: "Texas will continue to crack down on vote fraud.'
Texas, of course, is looking at ways to restrict the right to vote by making government photo ID mandatory -- a restriction that weighs most heavily on the old, the young (students), and non-whites and immigrants. The article cites some figures in rebuttal: In the previous 10 years, precisely two people had been prosecuted for in-person voter fraud.
[Justin] Levitt [a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles] ... found only three credible allegations of fraud in Texas elections since 2000 that could have been prevented by an ID rule. Minnite found four cases of this kind from 2000 until 2014.According to the National Weather Service, the chances of being struck by lightning in Texas are 1 in 1.35 million.
Four cases of fraud for 72 million votes makes the chance of voter fraud 1 in 18 million.
Friday, March 18, 2016
Obama And Trump Deal With Protesters
Click here for an article entitled "When it comes to handling protesters, Obama and Trump are worlds apart," by Quiana Fulton on Crooks & Liars, posted with permission from Reverb Press. It contains a clip I was unable to copy, so here's the whole article; click on the clip to contrast Trump and Obama dealing with protesters (or disrupters, as The Donald calls them).
HInt: Obama is (as always) polite, respectful, and engages on a personal level with the protesters; The Donald ... well, not so much.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Digby Is Prescient: Trump, June 2015
Click here for an article in Salon by the redoubtable Digby. I can't tell you the title -- this is a G-rated blog! Anyway, part of the title is "We Must Take Donald Trump Seriously," and it's dated June 18, 2015 -- prescient!
And remember, Trump would not be the first show business celebrity who everyone assumed was too way out there to ever make a successful run for president. The other guy’s name was Ronald Reagan.
Be Afraid -- Be Very, Very Afraid (Of The Donald)
Click here for an article in The Atlantic entitled "How Donald Trump Can Beat Hillary Clinton," by Derek Thompson. It's kind of frightening. The point Thompson makes is that Trump is a genius at pandering to his audience, saying things they want to hear. He's unconcerned about consistency; what he's said in the past (in the primary campaigh) will be irrelevant. He'll say very different things in the general. The race-baiting anti-immigrant tirades will be dialed well back; he'll be lamenting the demise of the middle class and promising middle-class tax cuts, enhancement of Medicare and Social Security, higher taxes on the rich, returning industry to the U.S., et cetera.
Thompson makes the point that according to the old saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time"; but Trump only has to fool half of the people -- once.
Thompson makes the point that according to the old saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time"; but Trump only has to fool half of the people -- once.
Van Jones v. Jeffrey Lord and the KKK
Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord maintains the KKK are a leftist organization, part of the base of the Democratic party.
Digby:
Lord taunted, "Don't hide and say that's not part of the base of the Democratic party. They were the military arm, the terrorist arm of the Democratic party according to historians"I really am sick and tired at hearing over and over again about the racist roots of the Democratic party -- as if history stopped in 1964.
Noam Chomsky On Donald Trump's Appeal
Noam Chomsky on Donald Trump's Appeal
Though we do not have detailed data, it appears that Trump is appealing primarily to less educated white sectors of the population, lower middle class and working class, people who are angry, frustrated, frightened, bitter about the fact – and it is a fact – that they have been in many ways cast by the wayside. The neoliberal programs of the past generation have been harmful to affected populations almost everywhere, sometimes severely so. Rising global inequality, which has reached extraordinary proportions, is one (and only one) of the many indications. Oxfam produces annual reports of poverty and inequality. In 2014, they found that about 90 individuals held half of total world wealth. In 2015, the number was reduced to 62. Meanwhile perhaps 5 million children are dying of starvation every year – more than 500 an hour, a tragedy that could easily be remedied by available resources. Among the developed (OECD) societies, inequality is particularly prominent in the Anglophone countries, with the US well in the lead. Despite its unique advantages, by most measures of poverty and social justice the US ranks with the poorest OECD countries, alongside of Greece, Mexico, Turkey, facts heightened by lavish displays of concentrated wealth. The disparities have increased since the latest crash, with some 90% of growth going to 1% of the population. As widely reported, the global rich now live in a different world from the general population.
In the US, the neoliberal programs have led to stagnation or decline for much of the population, undermining of functioning democracy, reduction of benefits and social welfare. People do not have to read academic studies to know that real wages for male workers are about what they were in the 1960s while wealth has concentrated in very few hands; that corporate strategies have shifted manufacturing abroad; that a considerable majority of the population is virtually disenfranchised in that their representatives disregard their attitudes; and much more. Years ago, academic studies showed that the socioeconomic profile of abstention in the US matches those sectors in similar countries who vote for laborite or social democratic parties, lacking in our political system, which in some ways still reflects the Civil War. We also cannot overlook the deeply rooted historical background of white supremacy and racism that has never been overcome, and the increasing atomization of the society that leaves people alone and isolated, feeling helpless against forces that are crushing them. Under these circumstances it is not hard for demagogues to stir up anger against those who are even more victimized – immigrants, minorities, “welfare cheats” (demonized by Reaganite racist slurs) – and to stimulate highly exaggerated fears of threats ranging from the federal government to Islamic terrorists.
We should also remember that what we are witnessing is not entirely new. A decade ago, the distinguished scholar of German history Fritz Stern, writing in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, opened a review of “the descent in Germany from decency to Nazi barbarism” in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs by writing that “Today, I worry about the immediate future of the United States, the country that gave haven to German-speaking refugees in the 1930s,” himself included. With implications for here and now that no reader can fail to discern, Stern reviewed Hitler’s demonic appeal to his “divine mission” as “Germany’s savior” in a “pseudoreligious transfiguration of politics” adapted to “traditional Christian forms,” ruling a government dedicated to “the basic principles” of the nation, with “Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.” Hitler’s hostility toward the “liberal secular state,” shared by much of the Protestant clergy, drove forward “a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason.”
That was ten years ago. The words resonate more ominously today.
It is also useful to compare the current malaise with the Great Depression in the 1930s, which I’m old enough to remember. Objectively, conditions were far worse than today. Subjectively, they were quite different, as I could see even from my own extended family, many of them unemployed working class with limited education. Despite the grim conditions, there was a sense of hopefulness, a belief that we’ll get out of this together. The labor movement had been virtually crushed by the 1920s, largely by force, but reconstituted in the ‘30s with organization of the CIO and militant labor actions that helped induce a fairly sympathetic administration to institute significant social reforms. The unions also provided crucial forms of association and interaction, including educational and cultural opportunities. There were also lively political organizations – Communist, Socialist, others -- participating actively in labor and civil rights actions and general intellectual life in which much of the working class participated. Business publications warned of “the hazard facing industrialists” in “the rising political power of the masses,” but were powerless to stem the tide, though reaction was building up by the late ‘30s and picked up forcefully when the war ended. This is not the place to review what has happened since, but one consequence is that the hopefulness of the ‘30s and the social struggles and achievements that inspired it have been largely supplanted by fear, despair, and isolation, opening the way to the Trump phenomenon, which should be cause for deep concern.
Perhaps the most favorable observation that can be made about his candidacy is that Cruz is even more dangerous, and the other likely Republican prospect, Rubio, is hardly less of a threat to the country and the world, at least if he means a word he says.
In the US, the neoliberal programs have led to stagnation or decline for much of the population, undermining of functioning democracy, reduction of benefits and social welfare. People do not have to read academic studies to know that real wages for male workers are about what they were in the 1960s while wealth has concentrated in very few hands; that corporate strategies have shifted manufacturing abroad; that a considerable majority of the population is virtually disenfranchised in that their representatives disregard their attitudes; and much more. Years ago, academic studies showed that the socioeconomic profile of abstention in the US matches those sectors in similar countries who vote for laborite or social democratic parties, lacking in our political system, which in some ways still reflects the Civil War. We also cannot overlook the deeply rooted historical background of white supremacy and racism that has never been overcome, and the increasing atomization of the society that leaves people alone and isolated, feeling helpless against forces that are crushing them. Under these circumstances it is not hard for demagogues to stir up anger against those who are even more victimized – immigrants, minorities, “welfare cheats” (demonized by Reaganite racist slurs) – and to stimulate highly exaggerated fears of threats ranging from the federal government to Islamic terrorists.
We should also remember that what we are witnessing is not entirely new. A decade ago, the distinguished scholar of German history Fritz Stern, writing in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, opened a review of “the descent in Germany from decency to Nazi barbarism” in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs by writing that “Today, I worry about the immediate future of the United States, the country that gave haven to German-speaking refugees in the 1930s,” himself included. With implications for here and now that no reader can fail to discern, Stern reviewed Hitler’s demonic appeal to his “divine mission” as “Germany’s savior” in a “pseudoreligious transfiguration of politics” adapted to “traditional Christian forms,” ruling a government dedicated to “the basic principles” of the nation, with “Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.” Hitler’s hostility toward the “liberal secular state,” shared by much of the Protestant clergy, drove forward “a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason.”
That was ten years ago. The words resonate more ominously today.
It is also useful to compare the current malaise with the Great Depression in the 1930s, which I’m old enough to remember. Objectively, conditions were far worse than today. Subjectively, they were quite different, as I could see even from my own extended family, many of them unemployed working class with limited education. Despite the grim conditions, there was a sense of hopefulness, a belief that we’ll get out of this together. The labor movement had been virtually crushed by the 1920s, largely by force, but reconstituted in the ‘30s with organization of the CIO and militant labor actions that helped induce a fairly sympathetic administration to institute significant social reforms. The unions also provided crucial forms of association and interaction, including educational and cultural opportunities. There were also lively political organizations – Communist, Socialist, others -- participating actively in labor and civil rights actions and general intellectual life in which much of the working class participated. Business publications warned of “the hazard facing industrialists” in “the rising political power of the masses,” but were powerless to stem the tide, though reaction was building up by the late ‘30s and picked up forcefully when the war ended. This is not the place to review what has happened since, but one consequence is that the hopefulness of the ‘30s and the social struggles and achievements that inspired it have been largely supplanted by fear, despair, and isolation, opening the way to the Trump phenomenon, which should be cause for deep concern.
Perhaps the most favorable observation that can be made about his candidacy is that Cruz is even more dangerous, and the other likely Republican prospect, Rubio, is hardly less of a threat to the country and the world, at least if he means a word he says.
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