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.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Trump: A Cri De Coeur From A Republican
A commenter on Red State:
In a word, no. I cannot in good conscience support a candidate whom I believe to be a dangerous demagogue willing to inflame the worst elements of society in order to win personal power. His election would kill the Republican Party as any vehicle for conservative governance or opposition. Worse, his policies and proposals, such as they are, would threaten to ignite a global trade war, which, if history is any guide, would be followed by a shooting war. Moreover, he is an arrogant, unprincipled narcissist with a reckless temperament and unstable personality whose worst traits would be validated by winning that much power.
I have voted for every Republican nominee since my first vote in 1972. I did so only twice with genuine enthusiasm, once in 1980 and again in 1984, and only two other times with anything even approaching satisfaction, in 2000 and 2004. On other occasions I've had to hold my nose or fight back a rising gorge. But I've always voted for the nominee because of the alternative. I cannot and will not vote for Donald Trump. Ever. Cruz is my first choice, but I would support anyone else running or any compromise candidate that might emerge not named Trump.
If Trump is the nominee, I will vote third party and do everything I can to make sure that the Republicans retain the House and Senate in order to simply hold the line as best as possible until sanity is restored and help can arrive in 2020.
"Powerful Ripples Of Crazy"
Click here for an article in McLeans by Scott Feschuk, entitled "Powerful ripples of crazy: The Republican race farce."
Jeffrey Toobin On The Legacy Of Antonin Scalia
Click here for Toobin's scathing review of Scalia's career, entitled "Looking Back," in The New Yorker magazine.
Republican Obstructionism - A Comprehensive View
Click here for a MARVELOUS article at Daily Kos by Jon Perr, entitled "How Republicans turned the unprecedented into the new normal." It's a long article, but it's well worth taking the time to absorb it all. It covers Republican obstructionism in court appointments and appointments of administration staff nominees, and taking the debt ceiling hostage.
The article points out how the Democrats repeatedly reacted far differently when the party roles were reversed. As Perr says:
The article points out how the Democrats repeatedly reacted far differently when the party roles were reversed. As Perr says:
Why did Democrats choose cooperation where Republicans chose sabotage? Because it’s not true that “both sides do it.” Because we’re living in age of “asymmetric polarization” in which one political party has now normalized the previously inconceivable. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it in summing up their 2013 book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks:
"Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."
Krugman Economic Wisdom On Trump, Rubio, And The GOP
Click here. A must-read article by the great Paul Krugman.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Donald Trump, Truth-Teller
Click here for an article by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine entitled "Crazy Nut Donald Trump Thinks George W. Bush Was President on 9/11."
Trump claimed in the South Carolina campaign that Bush failed to take action which might have prevented 9/11 -- refuting the previously unanimous Republican position that George W. Bush "Kept Us Safe." He also claimed that the Bush administration knew there were no WMDs in Iraq but lied about it to bolster support for the invasion they wanted to make. (Chait doesn't go that far; he says rather that they relied on faulty intelligence, but repeatedly cherry-picked and manipulated ambiguous information to justify invasion.)
Trump claimed in the South Carolina campaign that Bush failed to take action which might have prevented 9/11 -- refuting the previously unanimous Republican position that George W. Bush "Kept Us Safe." He also claimed that the Bush administration knew there were no WMDs in Iraq but lied about it to bolster support for the invasion they wanted to make. (Chait doesn't go that far; he says rather that they relied on faulty intelligence, but repeatedly cherry-picked and manipulated ambiguous information to justify invasion.)
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
A Trump Zinger -- Well Played, Donald!
[Trump] added that praising the former president [W] for what happened after the Sept. 11 attacks was like saying the opposing team “scored 19 runs in the first inning, but after that, we played pretty well.”
Saturday, February 13, 2016
What Digby Said
Here's the inimitable, redoubtable Digby again:
Yesterday on MSNBC some South Carolina Republicans were shown Trump being profane and juvenile on the stump and they didn't like it. The implication was that Southerners are more genteel than northeasterners and won't like his crude personality. I don't know if that's true or not but perhaps it is.
What is astonishing to me is that everyone in the Republican Party knows they cannot attack him for his barbaric proposals to deport millions of people, build walls, ban Muslims, kill and torture suspects families, waterboarding "and worse". These are all things the GOP base favors and they dare not challenge it. The only thing they can go after him for are that tepid bowl of mush in the Club for Growth ads, none of which are deal breakers for anyone.
Trump is the ultimate expression of the Republican base and they're stuck with it.Beautiful! The establishment desperately wants to take Trump down, but he's only articulating -- and trumpeting -- the things the bigoted racist element of the GOP feels, but has felt unable to say.
John Podhoretz Thinks Democratic View of America Is Dystopian
Here's a piece by Digby from Hullabaloo that's too good to let go, but I find myself unable to link to it, so I have to painstakingly cut and paste it, page by page. The Republican worldview is that Obama has ruined the country and it's on the brink of collapse; Hunter Thompson was 40 years to early with "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail." I wish Hunter were here to offer an opinion on the 2016 Republican race. Digby:
"Here is a hilarious observation from conservative writer John Podhoretz about last night's Democratic debate:
"The frontrunner for the nomination openly says:
"And by the way, I haven't heard any Republicans touting the improved economy lately, have you? Have any of them talked about the low unemployment rate? I guess I may have missed those comments on the stump. I listen to and read a lot of right wing talk. They are convinced that Barack Obama has turned this nation into a third world nightmare from which we may never recover. In fact, they are in a daily state of full-fledged panic over it. Sanders' abstract indictment of the financial system and Clinton's dry list of policy improvements are downright cheery and Reaganesque by comparison."
"Here is a hilarious observation from conservative writer John Podhoretz about last night's Democratic debate:
The message from Thursday night’s Democratic debate is that everybody in America should get on a leaky rowboat and find somewhere, anywhere, else in the world to live — because life in the United States is a nightmare from which millionaires and billionaires and the Koch brothers and the Republicans will not allow us to awake."Has he listened to any of the Republican debates? In their view American is a dystopian hellscape of epic proportions on the brink of total ruin at the hands of foreigners who are making us eat beans tacos against our will, terrorists who are plotting in our own neighborhoods to kill us in our beds and require the survivors to live by Sharia law, and gays and feminazis forcing everyone to have abortions and marry members of their own sex. And that's just for starters.
"The frontrunner for the nomination openly says:
“This country is a hellhole, and we’re going down fast.I want to make this country great again.”"Here's just a sample from the last debate:
Bush: The idea that somehow we're better off today than the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States is totally an alternative universe. The simple fact is that the world has been torn asunder.
Carson: You know, when you go into the store and buy a box of laundry detergent, and the price has gone up — you know, 50 cents because of regulations....And everything is costing more money, and we are killing our people like this....It's the evil government that is putting all these regulations on us so that we can't survive.
Trump: Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show....We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people....Those two young people — those two horrible young people in California when they shot the 14 people....Many people saw pipe bombs and all sorts of things all over their apartment. Why weren't they vigilant? Why didn't they call? Why didn't they call the police?...We have to find out — many people knew about what was going on. Why didn't they turn those two people in so that you wouldn't have had all the death? There's something going on and it's bad. And I'm saying we have to get to the bottom of it.
Rubio: This president is undermining the constitutional basis of this government. This president is undermining our military. He is undermining our standing in the world....The damage he has done to America is extraordinary. Let me tell you, if we don't get this election right, there may be no turning back for America.
Kasich: In this country, people are concerned about their economic future. They're very concerned about it. And they wonder whether somebody is getting something to — keeping them from getting it. That's not the America that I've ever known.
Christie: When I think about the folks who are out there at home tonight watching....They know that this country is not respected around the world anymore. They know that this country is pushing the middle class, the hardworking taxpayers, backwards, and they saw a president who doesn't understand their pain, and doesn't have any plan for getting away from it."In the Republican psyche it is midnight in America.
"And by the way, I haven't heard any Republicans touting the improved economy lately, have you? Have any of them talked about the low unemployment rate? I guess I may have missed those comments on the stump. I listen to and read a lot of right wing talk. They are convinced that Barack Obama has turned this nation into a third world nightmare from which we may never recover. In fact, they are in a daily state of full-fledged panic over it. Sanders' abstract indictment of the financial system and Clinton's dry list of policy improvements are downright cheery and Reaganesque by comparison."
Monday, February 8, 2016
Rubio A Moderate? Krugman ...
Professor Krugman had the following to say, while discussing the results of the Iowa caucuses, where Cruz and Trump finished first and second:
Let me add that someone horrifying also came in third. Marco Rubio may seem less radical than Cruz or Trump, but his substantive policy positions are for incredibly hawkish foreign policy, wildly regressive tax policy, kicking tens of millions of people off health insurance, and destroying the environment. Other than that, he's a moderate.It's always been a source of some amusement to me that Rubio touts himself as a new-generation politician; the policies he advocates are truly paleo-Republican.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
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