David Brooks: The Republican Fausts

(Faust, of course, made a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.)

I've copied-and-pasted this article directly from The New York Times. It's by the (often detestable) David Brooks, entitled "The Republican Fausts." (Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.) How long can "principled" Republicans put up with Trump's malfeasance?

Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump. They don’t particularly admire him as a man, they don’t trust him as an administrator, they don’t agree with him on major issues, but they respect the grip he has on their voters, they hope he’ll sign their legislation and they certainly don’t want to be seen siding with the inflamed progressives or the hyperventilating media.

Their position was at least comprehensible: How many times in a lifetime does your party control all levers of power? When that happens you’re willing to tolerate a little Trumpian circus behavior in order to get things done.

But if the last 10 days have made anything clear, it’s this: The Republican Fausts are in an untenable position. The deal they’ve struck with the devil comes at too high a price. It really will cost them their soul.

In the first place, the Trump administration is not a Republican administration; it is an ethnic nationalist administration. Trump insulted both parties equally in his Inaugural Address. The Bannonites are utterly crushing the Republican regulars when it comes to actual policy making. 

The administration has swung sharply antitrade. Trump’s economic instincts are corporatist, not free market. If Barack Obama tried to lead from behind, Trump’s foreign policy involves actively running away from global engagement. Outspoken critics of Paul Ryan are being given White House jobs, and at the same time, if Reince Priebus has a pulse it is not externally evident.

Second, even if Trump’s ideology were not noxious, his incompetence is a threat to all around him. To say that it is amateur hour at the White House is to slander amateurs. The recent executive orders were drafted and signed without any normal agency review or even semicoherent legal advice, filled with elemental errors that any nursery school student would have caught.

It seems that the Trump administration is less a government than a small clique of bloggers and tweeters who are incommunicado with the people who actually help them get things done. Things will get really hairy when the world’s problems are incoming.

Third, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the aroma of bigotry infuses the whole operation, and anybody who aligns too closely will end up sharing in the stench.

The administration could have simply tightened up the refugee review process and capped the refugee intake at 50,000, but instead went out of its way to insult Islam. The administration could have simply tightened up immigration procedures, but Trump went out of his way to pick a fight with all of Mexico.

Other Republicans have gone far out of their way to make sure the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam or on Arabs, but Trump has gone out of his way to ensure the opposite. The racial club is always there.

Fourth, it is hard to think of any administration in recent memory, on any level, whose identity is so tainted by cruelty. The Trump administration is often harsh and never kind. It is quick to inflict suffering on the 8-year-old Syrian girl who’s been bombed and strafed and lost her dad. Its deportation vows mean that in the years ahead, the TV screens will be filled with weeping families being pulled apart.

None of these traits will improve with time. As former Bush administration official Eliot Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”

The danger signs are there in profusion. Sooner or later, the Republican Fausts will face a binary choice. As they did under Nixon, Republican leaders will have to either oppose Trump and risk his tweets, or sidle along with him and live with his stain.

Trump exceeded expectations with his cabinet picks, but his first 10 days in office have made clear this is not a normal administration. It is a problem that demands a response. It is a callous, bumbling group that demands either personal loyalty or the ax.

Already one sees John McCain and Lindsey Graham forming a bit of a Republican opposition. The other honorable senators will have to choose: Collins, Alexander, Portman, Corker, Cotton, Sasse and so on and so on.

With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature. And sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.

Good News For Anti-Semites (Looking At You, Bannon)

A tweet from Jim Sciutto, CNN:

Just in: Israel seeking clarity on #TrumpTravelBan - 145,000 Jews born in 7 countries listed in EO incl 54,000 in Iraq & 45,000 in Iran

Following that, a tweet from Matt Ortega:, digital media consultant

Steve Bannon with an extra pep in his step today: he gets to keep out 145,000 Jews, too. https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/826097943254024196

…

Well Said, Frank

“Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and monies in a state be not gathered into few hands … And money is like muck, not good except it be spread.” (Francis Bacon, 1625)

H/T Meteor Blades at Daily Kos

Extreme Vetting? Like What Refugees Already Get?

Here's extreme vetting for you: the situation already in place. According to Phil Torres, in an article at Salon entitled "Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” is already backfiring — and its consequences will only get worse":

As PolitiFact has outlined, refugees need a referral from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees prior to screening by U.S. authorities. Only about 1 percent of these individuals end up getting through this. The U.S. then has its own security measures, which involve background checks, fingerprint analysis and an interview with the Department of Homeland Security. If prospective refugees get through all this, “they then undergo a medical screening, a match with sponsor agencies, ‘cultural orientation’ classes and one final security clearance. . . . Syrian refugees in particular must clear one additional hurdle. Their documents are placed under extra scrutiny and cross-referenced with classified and unclassified information.” The probability of dodging these obstacles is extremely low.

If a terrorist wants to get into the U.S., why take that route instead of simply flying in and overstaying their visa?

The article says that there are 784,000 people living in the U.S. who came here as refugees; three havve been charged with plotting a terrorist attack. The odds that one particular U.S. citizen -- you, for instance -- will be killed or injured by a refugee are approximately 3.64 billion to 1 -- sort of like the odds against being killed by a lightning strike while you're being devoured by a shark.

Read the article; there's a lot more good stuff there about refugees and immigrants.

Who Wore It Better?

Say Goodbye To The Supreme Court Filibuster

I almost entitled this post something to do with the "nuclear option," but with the nuclear football in the hands of an unstable man-child, I don't think we should do any more word play with the word "nuclear."

In regards to the filibuster, of course, the phrase "nuclear option" means the ultimate anti-filibuster measure by the party in power: eliminate it. The filibuster is nowhere enshrined in law; it is simply a custom in the Senate, although one that has been followed since the 1850s. What respect do you think Donald Trump holds for custom and tradition? It is to laugh.

Trump will propose a hard-line right-winger for the Supreme Court, to replace Antonin Scalia in the seat the Republicans have stolen from Barack Obama by denying his nominee, Merrick Garland, not only a vote but even a Senate hearing. The Democrats are having a fierce debate among themselves as to whether they should filibuster this nominee, or meekly submit because this SCOTUS seat only returns the Court to the status quo existing before Scalia's death, or to hold off and filibuster Trump's next nominee, also sure to be a hard-line right-winger, but who would shift the balance of the court to a solid Republican majority.

Anthony Kennedy, considered the swing vote on the court, is 80 years old; two of the court's staunch liberals, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg (the notorious RBG) and Stephen Bryer are 83 and 78, respectively. Any of them could die or retire in the next four years. The nightmare scenario would be death or retirement for all three, in which case Trump's hard-line right-wing nominations would cement an unbreakable Republican majority, potentially for decades.

I believe it doesn't matter whether the Democrats filibuster Trump's first nominee -- expected to be announced tomorrow -- or his second. Whenever it happens, the Republicans will kill the filibuster.

Previous administrations have been reluctant to take such a drastic step, because it opens the door to tyranny by the majority, a situation which will certainly be used against them when control of the Senate passes to the other party. But we're in new territory now: Trump will not give a damn about what happens in the future. His only concern will be what will be of benefit to him while he is president. If killing the filibuster means he gets to have his way, that's what he'll do -- and the Senate are too cowardly to stand up to him.

Who Is Steve Bannon?

Click here for an article at The Daily Beast, by Ronald Radosh, entitled "Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was 'A Leninist' Who Wants To ‘Destroy the State.'"

Bannon is a Leninist, or so he told Radosh in an interview in 2013, when Bannon was running the Breitbart site. Radosh asked him what he meant by that:

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.

Some other things Bannon told Radosh:

“National Review and The Weekly Standard,” he said, “are both left-wing magazines, and I want to destroy them also.” [Bannon is big on destroying things.] He added that “no one reads them or cares what they say.” His goal was to bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. He went on to tell me that he was the East Coast coordinator of all the Tea Party groups. His plan was to get its candidates nominated on the Republican ticket, and then to back campaigns that they could win. Then, Bannon said, when elected they would be held accountable to fight for the agenda he and the Tea Party stood for.

If they didn’t, “we would force them out of office and oppose them when the next election for their seats came around.”

Radosh goes on:

Trump’s decision to take on Bannon indicates that he wants to wage his campaign along the lines laid down by him—that of destroying the Republican leadership and the Party as we know it. Trump’s behavior thus far has been compatible with Bannon’s belief in Leninist tactics. As the Bolshevik leader once said, “The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.”

Steve Bannon: Trump's Rasputin.

"How To Build An Autocracy," By David Frum

Click here for a long, excellent article by David Frum at The Atlantic, entitled "How to Build an Autocracy."

It starts off with a kind of dumb tale of what life might be like in the U.S. after Trump's first term; you can skip down 15 paragraphs or so to the one saying:

In an 1888 lecture, James Russell Lowell, a founder of this magazine, challenged the happy assumption that the Constitution was a “machine that would go of itself.” Lowell was right. Checks and balances is a metaphor, not a mechanism.

Then it gets good. He explains what has happened in Hungary, and how democracy in that European Union state gradually unwound over a six-year period to its present state.

The transition has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. If they work for the government, or for a company susceptible to government pressure, they risk their jobs by speaking out. Nonetheless, they are free to emigrate anytime they like. Those with money can even take it with them. Day in and day out, the regime works more through inducements than through intimidation. The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy. As one shrewd observer told me on a recent visit, “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”

There's a subheading: "If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it. It’s happening here instead, and so we are baffled."

You could tell a similar story of the slide away from democracy in South Africa under Nelson Mandela’s successors, in Venezuela under the thug-thief Hugo Chávez, or in the Philippines under the murderous Rodrigo Duterte. A comparable transformation has recently begun in Poland, and could come to France should Marine Le Pen, the National Front’s candidate, win the presidency.

He explains how the situation in the U.S. is different, with its long history of democracy and its strong institutions. But Trump is unique, and America has never faced a situation quite like this one. He shows how the self-serving cooperation of dishonest politicians like Paul Ryan helps introduce Trumpism:

“Do you have any concerns about Steve Bannon being in the White House?,” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Ryan in November. “I don’t know Steve Bannon, so I have no concerns,” answered the speaker. “I trust Donald’s judgment.”

Asked on 60 Minutes whether he believed Donald Trump’s claim that “millions” of illegal votes had been cast, Ryan answered: “I don’t know. I’m not really focused on these things.”

What about Trump’s conflicts of interest? “This is not what I’m concerned about in Congress,” Ryan said on CNBC. Trump should handle his conflicts “however he wants to.”

Ryan has learned his prudence the hard way. Following the airing of Trump’s past comments, caught on tape, about his forceful sexual advances on women, Ryan said he’d no longer campaign for Trump. Ryan’s net favorability rating among Republicans dropped by 28 points in less than 10 days. Once unassailable in the party, he suddenly found himself disliked by 45 percent of Republicans.

That's an astonishing comedown for a popular politician like Ryan, and he knows where his bread is buttered. He will accept Trump's excesses and offenses because it is in his interests to do so.

Donald Trump will not set out to build an authoritarian state. His immediate priority seems likely to be to use the presidency to enrich himself. But as he does so, he will need to protect himself from legal risk. Being Trump, he will also inevitably wish to inflict payback on his critics. Construction of an apparatus of impunity and revenge will begin haphazardly and opportunistically. But it will accelerate. It will have to.

Here's an explanation by the odious Newt Gingrich of how Trump's power might be wielded:

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, who often articulates Trumpist ideas more candidly than Trump himself might think prudent, offered a sharp lesson in how difficult it will be to enforce laws against an uncooperative president. During a radio roundtable in December, on the topic of whether it would violate anti-nepotism laws to bring Trump’s daughter and son-in-law onto the White House staff, Gingrich said: The president “has, frankly, the power of the pardon. It is a totally open power, and he could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anybody finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period.’ And technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”

That statement is true, and it points to a deeper truth: The United States may be a nation of laws, but the proper functioning of the law depends upon the competence and integrity of those charged with executing it. A president determined to thwart the law in order to protect himself and those in his circle has many means to do so.

Frum says:

Trump is poised to mingle business and government with an audacity and on a scale more reminiscent of a leader in a post-Soviet republic than anything ever before seen in the United States. Glimpses of his family’s wealth-seeking activities will likely emerge during his presidency, as they did during the transition. Trump’s Indian business partners dropped by Trump Tower and posted pictures with the then-president-elect on Facebook, alerting folks back home that they were now powers to be reckoned with. The Argentine media reported that Trump had discussed the progress of a Trump-branded building in Buenos Aires during a congratulatory phone call from the country’s president. (A spokesman for the Argentine president denied that the two men had discussed the building on their call.) Trump’s daughter Ivanka sat in on a meeting with the Japanese prime minister—a useful meeting for her, since a government-owned bank has a large ownership stake in the Japanese company with which she was negotiating a licensing deal.

There's a great deal more; it's a very interesting article. Frum closes by saying:

We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you and me. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American.

The Firing Of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates

Sally Yates was appointed Deputy Attorney General in 2015. In her Senate confirmation hearing, a questioner said:

"Well, you have to watch out because people will be asking you to do things and you have to say no. Do you think the Attorney General has the responsibility to say no to the President if he asks for something that's improper?"

And:

"If the views the president wants to execute are unlawful, should the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General say no?"

Her response:

"Senator, I believe that the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution, and to give their independent legal advice to the President."

Her questioner in that Senate hearing? Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

Trump And The Popular Vote

Interesting statistic: Hillary Clinton received almost 3 million more votes than Trump. In fact, Trump's share of the popular vote was exceeded by the following, all of whom lost the election:

Richard Nixon in 1960, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, Gerald Ford in 1976, and Mitt Romney in 2012. Trump finished barely ahead of Michael Dukakis in 1988.

"I Lift My Lamp Beside The Golden Door"?

The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus:


Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Maybe not so much.

Voter Fraud

Click here for the most comprehensive article I've seen on voter fraud, by Sher Watts Spooner at Daily Kos, entitled "Sure, there's voter fraud. By Republicans." Spooner cites eight cases where people cast fraudulent ballots -- all Republicans, who presumably voted Republican -- in previous presidential and state elections from 2012 on. She says there were four cases prosecuted in the 2016 presidential election, and three of them were Republicans.

Of course there are irregularities in voter rolls: Steve Bannon, Tiffany Trump, Steve Mnuchin, Jared Kushner, and Sean Spicer are each registered in two different states. There's nothing wrong with that, and it happens all the time when people move from one state to another - but it isn't voter fraud unless the person votes, or tries to vote, in both locations. Same thing with people on the voter rolls who die; it sometimes takes a long time to get their names off. But there's no fraud unless someone tries to vote in the dead person's name.

The 25th Amendment

Here is a portion of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

The way things are going, this amendment may be a subject for discussion.

The Command Structure In Trumpworld

Click here for an article in The Washington Post, by Josh Rogin, entitled "Inside Trump’s shadow national security council."

The triumvirate at the top of the heap are chief strategist Steve Bannon, senior adviser Jared Kushner, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. "No major decision can go forward without their sign-off."

The national security adviser-designate, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, is also playing a major role, not only in choosing his National Security Council staff but also by putting forth candidates for other national security and intelligence agencies, transition officials said. Billionaire Peter Thiel is involved in the Defense Department transition, mostly on an organizational level, and is also on the official executive committee.

Each of the three advisers at the top has carved out a niche:

Bannon has been working on the long-term strategic vision that will shape the Trump administration’s overall foreign policy approach. He has a keen interest in Asia, is committed to working on the buildup of the military and is also interested in connecting the Trump apparatus to leaders of populist movements around the world, especially in Europe.



Kushner has become a main interlocutor for foreign governments and has been interacting with leading representatives from countries including Israel, Germany and Britain. He also has the most amount of confidence from the incoming president and is charged with looking out for the personal political interests of his father-in-law.



Priebus’s role is often to take the ideas and plans put forth by other Trump loyalists and filter them through the lens of what would work practically. He is known to weigh in on how major foreign policy ideas or appointments would be received by outsiders such as lawmakers, foreign governments and the media.

There are some conflicts between strong, forceful members of Trump's team:

Mattis and the Trump team have already clashed over Pentagon staffing, and consequently most Defense Department senior official positions remain unfilled. Transition officials told me that Mattis requested that almost two dozen Pentagon political appointees be allowed to stay on during the first months of the Trump administration because he did not want the Pentagon to be caught flat-footed in case of an early emergency.

The Trump transition team pushed back and allowed Mattis to retain only a half-dozen top officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work.

There's competition for the top spots:

Inside Trump world, there is also a lot of jostling for spots on what are known as the “beachhead teams.” These are sets of officials who will receive temporary 120-day political appointments while the permanent appointments are sorted out. There’s no guarantee the beachhead team officials will get permanent jobs, but they will be in a stronger position to contend for them. This is another way in which the Trump insiders are already exerting influence before the Cabinet officials can get their boots on.

Rogin concludes by saying that those who appear to be in the strongest position are those who have been with him since the beginning (With some exceptions, I might note, such as Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani.)

Trump's Unhinged Behavior In His First Week As POTUS

Click here for an article by Ruth Marcus at The Washington Post, entitled "Trump’s erratic first week was among the most alarming in history."

Marcus's article is not about Trump's policy enactments, which are scary in themselves, but just about his "erratic, even bizarre, behavior." She says: "In depressing retrospect, the dark inaugural address, with its invocation of 'carnage' and 'tombstones,' was the week’s high point."

The first thing on Trump's agenda on Saturday morning, the first full day of his presidency, was to angrily order the acting director of the National Parks Service to come up with other photos of the inauguration crowd size, in an effort to prove the false claim that his crowd was the biggest at any inauguration ever, including the one in 2008 celebrating the election of the first black president. Next, he ordered his hapless press secretary, Sean Spicer, to hold a "press conference" for the purpose of angrily berating reporters.



Then came a clownish performance in front of the CIA Memorial Wall, where he made a single eight-word reference to the wall (later claiming he had "paid great homage to the wall"). He boasted of his intellect, attacked the "dishonest" media, and "lamented that the United States did not 'keep the oil' in Iraq even as he dangerously observed, 'Maybe you’ll have another chance.'" He also tried a couple of lame jokes, which to the CIA, in that place, is kind of like doing a standup comedy routine at Arlington National Cemetery.

And so it went, each day feeling scarier than the one before, and Trump’s sycophantic aides modeling his own fact-free rants — press secretary Sean Spicer’s falsehood-filled briefing-room tirade, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway’s brazen defense of “alternative facts,” chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon’s brutish admonition to the media to “keep its mouth shut.”

Trump himself outdid his petty obsession with crowd size with his delusional obsession with popular-vote fraud, first behind closed doors with incredulous congressional leaders , then for all the world to watch in his ABC interview. What was once delusional ego-salving now appears headed for official inquiry.

This is ominous not only for the implicit threat of imposing new and unnecessary obstacles to voting, but also because it means that no one, neither American citizens nor foreign leaders, can believe the president of the United States when he makes an assertion. Meantime, the destabilizing cost of Trump’s behavior manifested itself with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s abrupt cancellation of his trip to Washington.

Trump Administration's Incompetence (Thank God)

“The malevolence of President Trump’s Executive Order on visas and refugees is mitigated chiefly—and perhaps only—by the astonishing incompetence of its drafting and construction.” See below.

Click here for an article at The Washington Post by Ilya Somin, entitled "Making America cruel again – Trump’s executive order on refugees."

President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on refugees is both cruel and counterproductive. It inflicts great harm on many thousands of people while simultaneously endangering national security.

Somin goes on:

The White House claims that the order is intended to protect the US against terrorism. But any such risk is extremely small already. The average American has only about a 1 in 3.6 billion per year chance of being killed by an immigrant terrorist of any kind, Muslim or non-Muslim, refugee or otherwise. That is far less than the odds being killed by a lightning strike.

On net, Trump’s order actually increases the risk to national security far more than it might reduce it. Trump and his supporters are not the only ones who want to keep Syrian refugees out of the US. The leaders of ISIS feel exactly the same way. They want to prevent Muslims from fleeing to the West so as not to reduce the number of people living under ISIS rule, and also because they fear that refugees might be influenced by Western liberal values inimical to radical Islamism. Trump’s order plays into ISIS’ hands, both by keeping out refugees and by needlessly antagonizing Muslims around the world.

Trump’s order also benefits terrorists because it keeps out Iraqis and Syrians who helped US forces, often risking their own lives in the process. If you were an Iraqi or Syrian considering helping the US, would you trust American promises of refuge after this order? I don’t think I would. Intelligence and other assistance from members of the local population is essential to combatting terrorists and insurgents. Don’t take my word for it. Take that of the US military’s counterinsurgency manual, coauthored by General James Mattis, the newly confirmed secretary of defense (one of Trump’s few good appointees). Thanks to Donald Trump, US forces are now less likely to get that kind of support.

But we're lucky, to some extent, that Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, et al, are completely incompetent at what they're doing:

The one silver lining of Trump’s order is that its incompetent drafting leaves it vulnerable to various legal challenges. Already, opponents have already secured four federal court orders suspending various parts of the order, and there may be more such rulings in the near future. As Benjamin Wittes, a leading national security law expert, puts it: “The malevolence of President Trump’s Executive Order on visas and refugees is mitigated chiefly—and perhaps only—by the astonishing incompetence of its drafting and construction.”

Pro-Trump Distortion Of Syrian Refugee Numbers

Yes, 97% of the refugees accepted from Syria have been Muslims; and yes, 10% of the population of Syria are Christian. One would think there would be a higher number of Christian refugees.

Trump supporters frequently throw out this fact, implying that the Obama administration was clearly discriminating against Christians and giving Muslim refugees preference. While a lot of the uninformed audience may think this is a significant statistic, the spokespersons we see on TV know better, and they are being dishonest.

Christians are definitely victims of discrimination within Muslim communities in the Middle East; that's just a fact. The main U.N. refugee camp in Jordan from which the Syrian refugees come to the U.S. -- after an 18-month to two-year vetting process -- contains many thousands of Muslims, and the Christians there are persecuted; as a result, they flee the camp and are not selected, or they don't go there in the first place. That is why the number of Christian refugees is low, not because of Obama administration favoritism.

Obama's 2011 Ban On Iraqi Refugees - Different From Trump's Ban

I've been reading and hearing Trump supporters (including the odious Jeffrey Lord) claiming that there was no popular uprising when Obama instituted a six-month ban on Iraqi refugees in 2011, arguing that current protests are hypocritical and simply a result of irrational hatred of Trump.

Click here for an article by Mikey Smith at the Mirror, entitled "No, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter didn't do the same thing as Donald Trump's Muslim ban."

The article explains that Obama's six-month ban was as a result of U.S. authorities discovering that two al Qaeda operatives had used the refugee program to settle in Kentucky. The ban was not based on religion -- it was directed against all Iraqis of whatever faith -- and it was a response to a specific threat. The U.S. used the six-month period to review, research, and draw up new immigration guidelines for Iraqi refugees, after gathering information such as fingerprints on IEDs, etc.

A serious flaw was found in the refugee program, so the Obama administration opted to halt the program to examine the problem and come up with a solution. The refugee program was reinstated after the six-month period, with tighter regulations and more careful vetting -- a sensible way to deal with a newly discovered problem.

The Sad Journey From FDR To Donald Trump

Click here for an excellent article by Heather Cox Richardson at The Guardian, entitled "From Goldwater to Reagan and now Trump. But Americans will fight this latest brand of cartoon conservatism."



It presents an outline of the development of American society from the Great Depression through FDR's New Deal, through Eisenhower's Middle Way and into the tumult of the civil rights movement in the '60s, the development of movement conservatism, influenced by William F. Buckley and the National Review, Barry Goldwater, Nixon's Southern Strategy to absorb disgruntled racist Southern Democrats into the Republican party, through Ronald Reagan:

With Reagan, the principles of movement conservatism captured the White House. Reagan contrasted his own cowboy persona with the “welfare queen”, a black woman who drove a Cadillac and lived high on the hog thanks to government benefits she collected under “80 names, 30 addresses, 12 social security cards… and on four non-existing deceased husbands”. In office, Reagan slashed government regulations, taxes and social welfare legislation, explaining that the government activism that created the welfare queen was destroying America by killing individual initiative and morals.

Reagan ushered in the "Greed is Good" era of Gordon Gekko, and started the huge transfer of wealth from the lower rungs of society to those at the very top.

Dominated by movement conservatives, the Republican party advanced an increasingly cartoonish narrative divorced from what a member of George W Bush’s White House [reportedly Karl Rove] famously disparaged as “the reality-based community”.

Despite some pushback during eight years of Clinton and eight more of Obama, movement conservatism brought us to the era of Donald Trump:

In the 2016 election, Donald Trump stripped off whatever genteel veneer remained on that narrative. He presented himself as a larger-than-life Gordon Gekko, a successful billionaire who had risen from almost nothing through his own hard work. He deliberately reinforced the idea that he – and by extension his supporters – was better than other Americans. He cultivated the support of white supremacists and boasted of sexually assaulting women. And yet he nodded to his own rhetorical sleight of hand: he lied shamelessly, boasting: “I love the uneducated.” To his supporters’ dismay, as soon as he was elected, Trump embraced the policies of movement conservatives, turning policy reins over to ideologue house speaker, Paul Ryan, who called for more tax cuts, the destruction of Obamacare and the shredding of the remnants of the social safety net, and to Vice President Mike Pence, who pushed a dramatic rollback of abortion women’s rights. But the triumph of movement conservatism has illuminated that it is hollow. Trump is Gordon Gekko on steroids, a man so convinced of his own superiority that he can abide no rival and yet who is clearly unprepared for the presidency. He focuses solely on dominance and power rather than competent governance.

It's a good article, but I wish it had mentioned the Powell memo. Click here for my post entitled " The Powell Memo: Founding Document For Corporate Dominance."

Are Flynn And Bannon Taking Over The National Security Council? Be Afraid - Be Very Afraid

Further down, I've copied an earlier post of mine, entitled "Fake News? Let's Hope So!" Unfortunately, one of Trump's latest executive orders may be a step in this dangerous direction. it's elevated the odious Nazi sympathizer Steve Bannon to a position of outrageous power, as a member of the National Security Council's "principals committee," the real inner circle -- including the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, as well as the National Security Adviser, the nutball Michael Flynn -- but sometimes not even the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff! (Update: The weakling Reince Priebus, too, is to be a member of the principals committee, further politicizing the national security apparatus.)

Click here for Karoli Kuns' take on it at Crooks & Liars.

Susan Rice has tweeted that this situation is "stone cold crazy."

Click here for an article in The Washington Post by David J. Rothkopf, entitled "The danger of Steve Bannon on the National Security Council." The article says: "David J. Rothkopf is chief executive and editor of the FP Group, which publishes Foreign Policy magazine. He has written two histories of the NSC, 'Running the World' and last year’s 'National Insecurity.'"

This is a huge, scary red flag. Watch this space.

UPDATED: Click here for an article at Daily Kos entitled "Trump removes DNI and Chairman of Joint Chiefs from National Security Council; adds Bannon, Priebus."

If Trump wants to start a war, it’s hard to imagine a better first move than this one. All decisions on national security will now be made by political operatives, while career professionals in the intelligence and military communities have been deliberately excluded from the process. Every single member of the NSC PC is now political; there are no career professionals left.

Fake News? Let's Hope So!

Click here for an earlier post of mine, entitled "Wingnut Flynn - Updated." Since that was posted, Flynn has continued on his merry nutball way, most recently contacting the Russian ambassador to the U.S. multiple times on the same day Obama was announcing sanctions against Russia.

Click here for an article by Digby at Hullabaloo entitiled "Let's hope this is fake news." Michael Flynn Jr. -- apparently a worse alt-right conspiracy theorist than his nutty old man -- "... tweeted out a story published on Voltaire Network entitled “General Flynn’s Proposals to Reform Intelligence.” He tells of a plan afoot to abolish the position of Director of National Intelligence -- currently held by James Clapper, who, together with Michael Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, forced Flynn out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency -- and to make all 16 intelligence agencies responsible to a different official.

That official? The National Security Adviser, a person not subject to Senate confirmation. The official presently holding that position? Michael Flynn, Sr.

Jesus wept.