Politics Archives - Page 15 of 32

King Donald

Ted Cruz’s speech – including the absence of an explicit endorsement of Trump – was pre-cleared by both the RNC and Donald Trump.

Back in the 1980s, I had this working theory that Ronald Reaagan should not be President, that the day-to-day details were not in keeping with his personality. But I DID think there was a job for him: King.

Reagan could travel around like the actor he was, telling us it’s “morning in America,” while someone like Walter Mondale, who Reagan defeated in the 1984 election, would do the hands-on stuff.

I was reminded of this when I read this story about Donald Trump, originally in the New York Times:

One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

“Making America great again” was the casual reply.

I started thinking that maybe there WAS a place for King Donald in the process. I had been hearing for nearly a year that he was genuinely surprised by how well he was doing politically. All that detailed stuff such as coming up with coherent policy positions, or even sharing his tax returns are beneath him. He’s a Big Picture kind of guy.

But he doesn’t really fit into a Reaganesque mold as monarch. He enjoys the humiliation too much: Little Mario, Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, and other names more suited for a playground bully.

From RedState, July 20:

The stupid pledge that Trump fans are on about… was meaningless. Why? Because Donald Trump voided it. Donald Trump refused it. Then Donald Trump spit on it by spitting on Ted Cruz’s family. On his wife. On his father. Pledge? Really?

How could you respect him if he endorsed because of some pledge that Trump himself in no way took seriously? After all that transpired in the primary? Even Trump didn’t care about the dumb pledge.

There are bridges too far. It’s not a difficult concept…

Well, buddy, Donald Trump crossed this pledge’s boundary…to become null and void. It was null and void when Trump wouldn’t agree to it. Without everyone then it doesn’t apply to anyone. It was null and void when he mocked Ted’s wife. It was null and void when he claimed repeatedly that Cruz was a false Christian. It was null and void when Trump accused his dad of conspiring to kill President Kennedy.

Trump is very good at trying to cast doubts on other candidates’ religion, though he was outraged when the pontiff questioned his.

And he played the Ted Cruz speech Wednesday night perfectly, making Cruz the villain and himself the victim.

From RedState, July 21:
Let’s be clear about something…: Cruz’s speech – including the absence of an explicit endorsement of Trump – was pre-cleared by both the RNC and Trump. His speech, including the non-endorsement of Trump, was not a surprise to the RNC or Trump in any way. Even Donald Trump himself admitted this on Twitter, and for once Trump’s Twitter is not full of crap… He said he would congratulate Donald Trump, would avoid saying anything negative about Trump, and talk about the principles he stood for. The RNC and Trump both agreed to let him proceed with the speech as is. So the idea that Cruz sprung this on them as some sort of surprise is absolute BS.

Another piece of BS that has been circulated by the RNC to throw dirt on Ted Cruz is that he gave different remarks on stage than the prepared ones he submitted to the RNC for review. Unfortunately, the RNC screwed themselves on this score by sending to media organization prepared copies of Ted Cruz remarks which show that Cruz said exactly what his prepared remarks indicated.

In fact, in response to the news that Cruz was going to make a speech that did not explicitly endorse him, Trump intentionally chose to escalate the situation by leaking the news to friendly delegations and instructing them to boo Cruz to make this a bigger deal than it otherwise would have been. If Trump’s delegates had not booed and caused a ruckus, but instead had remained silent or applauded at Cruz’s exhortation to vote for down-ticket races, everyone today would be talking about Pence and his speech, and the discussion would be about positive things associated with Trump and Pence and how they are going to move forward after the convention to at least possible victory.

But that is not what Trump’s supporters are interested in. They are interested in having a constant object of hatred and scorn… This is the driving force behind their support for Trump, principles be damned. Trump knows it too, which is why he was perfectly happy to let Ted Cruz go on stage, as long as the signal was clearly sent to his supporters that Ted Cruz is supposed to be the new object of hate.

Trump’s supporters really and truly don’t understand how well he constantly plays them. He treats them exactly like he treats his reality TV audience, and he knows that the successful ingredient to any “reality” TV show is the character who everyone loves to hate… “Reality” TV understands that nothing keeps viewers coming back like someone they want to see get “kicked off,” preferably in some humiliating fashion.

And now Trump is reportedly launching super-PACs to attack Cruz and Kasich for failing to support him at the convention. This is petty, vindictive, and a waste of money.

I actually watched the first night of the Republican National Convention – I asked for prayers on Facebook – but just couldn’t get through anything but the summaries of the last three evenings. Still, I continue to believe that
Donald Trump will win in November against Hillary Clinton, despite, or maybe because of, his bigotry.

Expect that Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, will be a major player in the Trump administration, due to their shared “Grandiosity and Misogyny.”

And speaking of misogyny, some of the digs at Melania Trump over her Monday night RNC speech, such as this one from Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, was OK. But a lot of the comments directed towards her were distressing and embarrassingly wrong.

At least, on Thursday night, Donald Trump succeeded in delivering a speech NO ONE will want to plagiarize, it was so dark and dreary. The same is true of many of his surrogates, notably Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie.

The slogan “make America great again” is pure Reagan, even if it’s code for going back to more exclusionary times. But how can he do the King Donald thing, being such a malevolent downer?

Yet, if history is useful, mere calls for unity are not enough. The Washington Post noted: “He, until now a Republican problem, this week became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew…”

As Sojourner notes, God Has Not Given Us a Spirit of Fear. “How DO We Lift Up Love Over Hate in This Angry Election Season?”

Donald Trump is 70

“It is easy to be ‘holier than thou’ and say the voters are stupid etc. That is totally missing the point.”

I’ll admit it: I used to watch the reality show The Apprentice, for the first two seasons. As a business librarian, I thought it was an interesting concept to see which contestant could meet various challenges to get a job in the organization of one Donald J. Trump. The hotelier was pompous and arrogant, but interesting enough. But I never saw Celebrity Apprentice, because that seemed to violate the original premise.

Virtually everyone was wrong about Donald Trump running a sustained, let alone successful campaign for the Republican nomination for President, including me. Except for Ann Coulter, and THAT fact is its own punishment.

Jeff Sharlet wrote in Esquire:
“After hearing Seth Myers shell Donald Trump from the podium, at the 2011 Correspondents’ Dinner, I didn’t think Trump would or could ever want to retry professional politics.

Recently, comedian Jon Stewart referred to Trump as a “man-baby”, but when he left his show in August 2015, he too just saw the comedic aspects of Candidate Orange. I wonder when he would have decided that Trump just isn’t funny anymore, as his protege Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show did in December 2015?

He has such an…interesting history. His past crude sex talk doesn’t seem to affect Donald Trump’s Amen Corner.

Then there’s the fact that Trump Used His Aliases For Much More — And Worse — Than Gossip. “In his fictional identities, Trump could also be quite threatening… Trump: What’s The Deal recounts a wide variety of Trump lies, exaggerations, and manipulations, but the misconduct of greatest interest to voters may be his threatening litigation in a scheme to deny payment to about 200 illegal Polish immigrants tearing down the old Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue (an act of architectural vandalism). Many of the men lacked hardhats or face masks, used sledgehammers rather than power tools, had to pull out live electric wires with their bare hands, in a building laced with asbestos — all in blatant violation of worker safety laws.”

Trump Didn’t Pay Hundreds Of Employees, which should surprise no one. Plus Trump University was a bigger fiasco that we thought. A recent New York Times investigation notes Even as Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casinos failed, he made millions — and others paid the price. There’s a Biblical parable about doing well with the small things, then you’ll be given responsibility for the larger things. Given his track record, I’m not optimistic about his fiscal policy.

One could easily find ten things about Donald Trump that his supporters should have to defend. But as this cartoon notes, Donald is just recycling.

As a Boston Globe headline read, the Trump rally oozes fear, anxiety, and paranoia. His supporters share a common trait: perceived victimhood.

Yet, my distrust of Trump comes not from his positions, or his statements, but rather his apparent utter lack of conviction. Last month in the Boston Globe:

“Donald Trump says so many things that are offensive, incorrect, and dishonest that it is often impossible to keep up. In just the past few days, he’s flip-flopped on his tax position, his support for raising the minimum wage, and his so-called Muslim ban. He even denied he imitated a public relations executive in the 1980s named John Miller or John Barron, even though he’s publicly joked about it for years and there’s an audiotape to prove it.”

Former Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan Tells Trump to Stay Offensive. He writes, “Why, then, should he apologize for speaking the truth, as he sees it?: But the sentence before: “Assume, as we must, that Trump believes what he said.” And, largely, I don’t.

Can he hold the same policy position for longer than 24 hours? His tax plan is a fraud, but it surely will NOT lose him the election.

And he occasionally softens his rhetoric: “Look, everything, honestly, is going to be up… we’re going to negotiate. I can’t make these decisions myself. We have Congress…we have to deal with a lot of people. I mean, you know, I can’t just take executive orders like Obama and .. it’s me, and lots of congressmen and lots of senators and lots of everything. So I would say that certain things will be changed, certain things will be, stay exactly the same.” So the red meat ranting that won him the nomination now pivots to a seemingly rational being. Except when it doesn’t.

No wonder they are mocking Trump, even in New Zealand.

Trump aide Paul Manafort called the presidency the “ultimate reality show.” And Trump is way better at playing it than the others. He may have already destroyed the GOP by pointing out its irrelevance to his nomination.

This Quora response is at least partially correct: “As a Wall Street Journal article recently put, Trump did to the Republican party what AirBnb did to the hotel industry. Airbnb ignored the middlemen and directly went to the hosts & guests – with the simplest model. In the same way, Trump made the party irrelevant and directly went to the voters.

“It is easy to be ‘holier than thou’ and say the voters are stupid etc. That is totally missing the point. Trump’s rise has revealed a fundamental flaw in the US political system – its effective two-party system doesn’t give a voice to diverse interests.”

‘President Trump?’ Here’s How He Says It Would Look. And I think it could very well happen. No, that is NOT my desire, but rather my fear. And it’ll be his disgusting victory lap, rather than Obama’s measured response, that we’ll hear after a national tragedy, in this case, after 49 people died in the Orlando attack.

Listen to Ken Burns at Stanford University’s June 12 commencement ceremony: “For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and characters of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified.

“So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much-maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment…”

From The New Yorker:

If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump.

Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by Peróns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal. Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians—or Germans. The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile and their ability to resist a dictator that weak.

Finally: “Last of all comes…the tyrant…In the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes everyone whom he meets…making promises in public and also in private, liberating debtors, and distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to everyone…This…is the root from which a tyrant springs” -Plato

May rambling #2: Blind In Your Mind

Since when did Christianity become more about preaching the rules than preaching the Gospel of mercy?

A sad case of Facebook blackmail.

“Dude, enough with the entitlement.” She doesn’t owe you @#$!”.

Women are getting harassed in bathrooms because of anti-transgender hysteria. Plus Utah man attacked for taking his 5-year-old daughter into Walmart men’s bathroom. I have taken my then-5 y.o. daughter to a Wal-Mart men’s bathroom, in North Carolina, without incident.

Obituary of a Homophobic Racist, or, My Grandfather.

Killing Dylann Roof. “A year after Obama saluted the families for their spirit of forgiveness, his administration seeks the death penalty for the Charleston shooter.”

Why should schools move away from suspensions?

Poor People Deserve To Taste Something Other Than Shame.

The Election Is About the Country, Not the Candidates

Cartoon: Cut from commencement speeches.

The End Of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Campaign.

What third parties CAN do.

John Oliver: Primaries and Caucuses.

R.I.P. Pinius Bergmann (1925-2016).

Aphantasia: How It Feels To Be Blind In Your Mind.

Book review: Stardancer by Kelly Sedinger.

Alicia: As I’m leaving the library today, I walked by a pile of new books and literally said out loud to myself, “No, I already have enough at home to read right now.”
Roger: The question: What did the books say in response?
Alicia: It was more of a quiet weeping.

On the heartbreaking difficulty of getting rid of books.

Neither Rand nor McNally. Death by GPS.

This month in 1856: Violence on the U.S. Senate floor.

Three-minute video about the Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region, produced by the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.

The Trouble with Comics: the epic Question Time survey of the best current comics titles.

Now I Know: Combat Juggling and The Land Down Under in the Land Down Under and And Together They’ll Make Music.

True Facts About The Owl.

Sodium.

TELEVISION

60 Minutes, the Sunday night news staple, honored Morley Safer, one of television’s most celebrated journalists. Then, days later, Safer died at 84. From the New York Times: “Mr. Safer had broadcast 919 “60 Minutes” reports, profiling international heroes and villains, exposing scams and corruption, giving voice to whistle-blowers and chronicling the trends of an ever-changing America.”

Alan Young, RIP, star of Duck Tales, and, of course, Mr. Ed. But, of course, of course, some are unhip to the lingo.

Beth Howland, Accident-Prone Waitress Vera From the Sitcom ‘Alice,’ Dies at 74, on New Years’ Eve 2015. Her husband was the actor Charles Kimbrough, who played the anchorman Jim Dial on the television series ‘Murphy Brown.’

Muppets TV show, RIP.

David Letterman – Behind The Scenes Of Late Night’s Longest Running Broadcaster and Leaving Letterman, Part I.

The closing of Johnny Carson’s last Tonight Show.

I disagree broadly, but as for these three: Celebrities Should Not Play Jeopardy. Plus Buzzy Cohen Might Be The Most Polarizing ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Yet.

MUSIC

What Kind of Fool Am I? – Kermit the Frog. And Grover.

CREAM – The Last Goodbye (1968).

Coverville 1126: Bob Dylan Cover Story VII.

Debunking Every Excuse For Keeping The Monkees Out Of The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, plus a positive review of their NEW album. Here’s Me & Magdalena, which was written for the band by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard.

First Listen: Paul Simon, ‘Stranger To Stranger’, due out June 3.

The fight over Prince’s estate will dig deep into copyright law for a very long time.

Lady Gaga and the Online Eucharist Police. Since when did Christianity become more about preaching the rules than preaching the Gospel of mercy?

May rambling #1: The Case Against Reality

I had a terrible blogging April, but because I work ahead, it wasn’t always evident.

1965 edition of “Our New Age”[/caption]

The Case Against Reality. A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

Song Of My Self-Help: Follow Walt Whitman’s ‘Manly Health’ Tips, appearing in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. It was uncovered by a University of Houston student, and includes: “The beard is a great sanitary protection to the throat.”

The Neverending Workday – A pervasive cultural norm of work devotion leaves many employees with little time for family, friends, or sleep.

In rural Maine, a life of solitude and larceny. Police say the hermit stole to survive 27 years in the woods.

What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight. “Contestants lost hundreds of pounds during Season 8, but gained them back. A study of their struggles helps explain why so many people fail to keep off the weight they lose.”

United Methodist Church Requires Removal of Reference to LGBTQI Christians from Worship Greetings, and, reported the next day, United Methodist clergy come out as church conference begins.

Transcending ignorance. Plus AmeriNZ weighs in, as does Funny or Die.

This isn’t just for me. It’s for everybody who needs a pep talk.

The smug style in American liberalism.

John Oliver: science reporting and Puerto Rico debt and cicadas.

Russian Insider Says State-Run Doping Fueled Olympic Gold.

Someone Put Bartolo Colon’s First Homer In The Natural, Where It Belongs.

Boston Globe: As great as David Ortiz is, Teddy Ballgame is still No. 1.

Free Comic Book Day isn’t free for everybody.

Morley Safer Stepping Down From ’60 Minutes’ After 46 Years.

President Obama delivered a commencement speech at Howard University.

WHCD: Barack Obama and Larry Wilmore. Plus An Obama Blooper Reel, from The White House Correspondents’ Association.

America operates under a crazy quilt of voting requirements, “with each state making its own laws for different populations and with challenges to those laws whipping back and forth through the courts. But if the primaries have frustrated the candidates, try being a voter in November.” Including New York.

Former NY State Assembly Speaker Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison. And former NY State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos sentenced to five years for corruption. Those were two of the three most powerful people in state government, along with Governor Andrew Cuomo.

MUSIC

First Listen: Bob Dylan, ‘Fallen Angels’.

Great audio/visual presentation of Billboard Top 10 songs from 1956 – 2016 (22,000 songs!)

Jaquandor: Music to write swashbucklers by.

Happy birthday to Reverend Gary Davis (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) and James Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006).

K Chuck Radio: Rare tracks.

Return of the Monkees and remembering Harry the Hipster Gibson.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? – Pet Shop Boys, with Dusty Springfield.

What does Becky mean? Here’s the history behind Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ lyric that sparked a firestorm. (And me, nearly oblivious to it all.)

Keef cartoon: Nina Simone.

Local legend Ruth Pelham to close Music Mobile. Lack of funds leads the musician to close her beloved program.

Minnesota’s Broad Publicity Rights Law, The PRINCE Act, Is So Broad That It May Violate Itself.

GOOGLE alerts (me)

TWC Question Time #36: I Love You, But… Moments from your favorite comics characters you consider particularly embarrassing.

Arthur on the blog balance. I too had a terrible blogging April, but because I work ahead, it wasn’t always as evident. So we may be Blogging Twins™.

Dustbury is blogging. Chaz is my blogging hero.

AmeriNZ on Kasich dropping out of the presidential race and the REAL May Day.

Shooting Parrots is a grammar nerd.

Ted Cruz solicits me; no, that doesn’t sound right…

I goose Jaquandor; it was not painful.

Where is the revolution?

Huge outbreak of civil disobedience. The cause?

Actress Susan Sarandon has said “some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in. Then things will really, you know, explode.” She made similar comments on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.

Then last week, on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, “Sarandon took her argument a step further, all but encouraging [Bernie] Sanders supporters to sit out in November should Clinton become the Democratic nominee.”

I know other people willing to vote for DJT rather than HRC, because Trump will either make things better or so much worse that people will get off their duffs and have mass protests. Whereas Hillary will be an incrementalist, picking off a couple of Sanders issues to placate the left. More than one person has suggested that Hillary would make a good Republican from the era before many of them (Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina) went guano crazy.

I keep vacillating between expecting the revolution, the political one that Bernie Sanders keeps talking about, or perhaps worse, and… almost nothing.

In response to a comment from an old acquaintance of mine, a fellow named Max Dee wrote:

At one point, I thought riots would be breaking out all over. I figure the American people had finally been pushed to their limit and they would take to the street to express their displeasure at being treated like garbage by their elected leaders. Didn’t happen. I wanted to find out why.

Then there was a huge demonstration in Chicago. People were coming from all over to protest. But what the cause? Macy’s was removing the name Marshall Field from the store. And in looking, I see it again and again.

Huge outbreak of civil disobedience. The cause? Sporting events. Black Friday. Lotto Fever. What would really upset the masses? Dropping the Super Bowl coverage. What would get people riled up and shouting? Delay shipping in the latest smart phone. At one point I didn’t think we could have a president as bad as Dubya Bush. Now I don’t think we’ll have one any better. You get the government you deserve.

Now rioting does happen when the social contract gets broken. But it’s usually in marginalized communities, and onlookers scratch their heads and say, “What’s wrong with THOSE people? They’re burning down their own neighborhoods!”

Given the continuing inequality that Occupy Wall Street began addressing a half-decade ago, where do you think we’re going as a country:
1) If Trump wins (which many people dismiss as a possibility, but I’m not one of them)
2) If Clinton wins

A bunch of religious leaders has issued a Call to Resist Bigotry — A Statement of Faithful Obedience. DJT is the target.

Oh, a note to you rabid Clinton supporters: these belligerent calls for Bernie to drop out of the race, since he has no likely path to the nomination, are not helpful. He maintains leverage going to the convention as a candidate, to formulate the party platform. Of course, NO ONE EVER remembers much what’s on the platform. Frankly, Hillary’s folk cannot fathom the depth of the true left’s contempt for her family.

Those Bernie supporters are not Bernie’s just to hand over. They’re committed to HIM, not the Democratic party, which he only recently joined. His supporters are grieving his, and their, probable loss and you’re over there hectoring, “Get over it!” Please Stop It.

In time, some will vote for Clinton; I will, even though she’s more of a war hawk than I’d like. I know I’m reacting, in part, as a response to some blatant sexism. What IS the “woman card” that Drump has accused Clinton of playing? Is it like the race card, only with estrogen instead of melanin?

A few Bernie supporters will vote for Trump. A bunch of them will cast their ballot for Jill Stein from the Green Party. A fair number will stay home in November. Hill fans: your nagging WILL NOT HELP your cause; give it time.