Month: April 2016

George Will grew up in Champaign, Illinois, the son of a professor of philosophy who specialized in epistemology, so you can kind of see why he’d describe himself as an “amiable, low-voltage atheist.” His impatience with the otherworldly was probably bolstered while he was pursuing degrees at Trinity, Oxford and Princeton. But, you know, I actually care less about George Will’s rigorous rationalism than his willingness to doubt the scientific consensus on climate change. The fact that he misused data from his father’s university just makes it all the more of a headscratcher.

It used to be a lot easier to be a non-believing conservative. Will may have done his undergrad work at Trinity, but he never believed in the Trinity and yet that didn’t prevent him from attaining mass syndication and a place in the highest firmaments of the Republican commentariat by the mid-1970s.

By the 1990s, when Larry David had Cosmo Kramer mock George Will for being so incredibly handsome and yet not very bright, it was funny precisely because it was the reverse of his reputation. Or, if you were really in the know, it was funny because Will knows what bright is supposed to be, but has never been quite up to snuff in that department.

The real heyday for Will was during the Reagan administration. He got on Reagan’s good side by inappropriately helping him prepare for his debate with Jimmy Carter. But his real in was with Nancy Reagan, with whom he maintained a close relationship throughout the Reagan presidency and thereafter. It’s fair to say that George Will has been one of the Reagans’ biggest and more devoted cheerleaders.

And that’s interesting because Reagan has become the role model for every modern day Republican but George Will cannot stand modern day Republicans. He loathes Sarah Palin and his opinion of Donald Trump could not be any lower.

In fact, he has just penned a column that amounts to a full-throated endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

No, I am not kidding.

Columnists don’t write their own headlines, but this one is accurate and quite telling: If Trump is nominated, the GOP must keep him out of the White House.

Yes, that is actually what Will argues. And he comes out swinging with this opening graf:

Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s history. These collaborationists will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction.

When a conservative calls you a quisling and a collaborator, that’s 98mph high cheese aimed right at your head. Notice, also, that there’s a premise laid down here that the party is going to be in need of reconstruction. George Will plans on being present at the creation of this reconstruction team, and anyone who shirked their duty to oppose Trump will be unwelcome.

But that’s all in the future. What about a good conservative’s task right now?

Were [Trump] to be nominated, conservatives would have two tasks. One would be to help him lose 50 states — condign punishment for his comprehensive disdain for conservative essentials, including the manners and grace that should lubricate the nation’s civic life. Second, conservatives can try to save from the anti-Trump undertow as many senators, representatives, governors and state legislators as possible.

Those are strong words. Conservatives should help Trump lose 50 states, meaning presumably that they should speak against him everywhere from the Delta of Mississippi to the mountains of Idaho. That’s a hard charge to give when you’re simultaneously trying to save as many down-ticket Republicans as possible.

If Trump is nominated, Republicans working to purge him and his manner from public life will reap the considerable satisfaction of preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party while working to see that they forgo only four years of the enjoyment of executive power.

Will holds out the hope that Hillary Clinton will go down in 2020, the same way that LBJ and George Herbert Walker Bush went down despite coming into office in considerable positions of strength. For him, the best way to keep that possibility alive is for Trump to lose as badly as is possible. He’s more than willing to throw in the towel on the 2016 election. He’s actually demanding this. Four more years in the executive wilderness is a small price to pay for “preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party.”

This Big Ten professor’s baby obviously has an enormous problem with Donald Trump, and he gives away the game with his remark that Trump getting slaughtered in the general election will be “condign punishment for his comprehensive disdain for conservative essentials, including the manners and grace that should lubricate the nation’s civic life.”

It’s true that Will seems to give equal weight to Trump’s conservative apostasy and his boorish manners, but let’s not forget that this atheistic son of an epistemologist isn’t exactly a down-the-line conservative himself. What does he care about the social conservatives’ agenda? When it suits him to humor them, he humors them, but he’s not a Buchananite or Falwell follower.

Will is embarrassed by Trump’s anti-intellectualism and offended by his crudeness. If Trumpism is what conservatism has become, then he could not be more off the reservation.

And Will is hardly alone. He’s just one of the more outspoken ones who will be openly rooting for Hillary Clinton to win the general election. Sure, it’s true that he sees this as a necessary compromise that will ultimately save the Republican Party to fight another day. But it still means something in the short-term, which is that the GOP has lost control of its central nervous system and has no access to its cerebral cortex.

George Will is widely syndicated and fairly influential, as least as far as columnists can be influential. But, by himself, this wouldn’t be all that consequential.

The problem is that he’s not by himself. He’s not even close to being by himself.

So, Clinton will enter the general election with much of the right-wing intelligentsia rooting her on. And that’s going to be hard for Trump to overcome, no matter what he says.

Well, this isn’t exactly what we’d like to see…

BAGHDAD — A state of emergency was declared in the Iraqi capital on Saturday as protesters stormed Iraq’s parliament, after bursting into the Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, where other key buildings including the U.S. Embassy are located, in a dramatic escalation of the country’s political crisis.

Live footage on Iraqi television showed swarms of protesters, who have been demanding government reform, inside the parliament building, waving flags, chanting and breaking chairs. Some lawmakers were berated and beaten with flags as they fled the building while other demonstrators smashed the car windows. Others remained trapped inside rooms in parliament and feared for their lives, lawmakers said.

Baghdad Operations Command said all roads into the capital had been closed. A U.S. Embassy official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that staff were not being evacuated from their compound, which is about a mile away from the parliament building. Organizers of the demonstration urged protesters not to attack embassies.

The surge of protesters into the secure area, which is off limits to most Iraqis, was the culmination of months of street protests. Under huge political pressure, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has attempted to reshuffle his cabinet and meet the demands of the demonstrators, who have been spurred on by the powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. But he has been hampered by a deeply divided parliament, where sessions have descended into chaos as lawmakers have thrown water bottles and punches at one another.

Our Congress seems pretty dysfunctional to me, but I guess it could be worse.

Literally the other day, I walked into my favorite coffee house, where everyone knows my name (hey, I always tip – that helps), only to learn that one of the baristas who had been on unpaid sick leave for a knee replacement her insurance company finally approved (or maybe she borrowed money from family and friends, I don’t really know), had suffered a devastating loss. Her husband died unexpectedly this week after suffering a heart attack in his sleep. His kids found him in his bed because she was in the hospital. Imagine the horror of that. Really, take a moment and imagine it.

And now, she has lost not only someone she deeply loved, but also all the income he brought in. They weren’t wealthy people. His life insurance policy won’t even cover the cost of his funeral. Her co-workers had put out two cards for people to sign offering condolences. But that is not all she needs right now. She needs money to pay her bills and attempt to fund her kids’ college education, because you damn well know her kids won’t be going to any college if they don’t have some money set aside.

In short, she has been reduced to begging people to give her cash. I asked one of the baristas if she had a GoFundMe site set up, but the answer was no. This woman is middle-aged and not particularly active on the internet (she works two jobs when she is able to work). I suggested someone help her do that ASAP. One way or another, I will find a way to dig in my pocket to contribute something to help because I know her. She talked to customers like they were her friends, always smiled even when she was in pain from her knee, and has a great laugh. But she needs far more than a few handouts from customers and friends if she is going to survive this.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve come across a person begging for money because of a medical catastrophe this year. Back in March, at a local supermarket deli, where, again, I am a frequent customer (I’m known as the “egg salad guy” because that’s what I always order), I learned that the younger brother of one of the workers behind the counter has a rare form of cancer. This young man was only 29 when he was diagnosed. Despite having health insurance, the part of his medical bills for which he was responsible exceeded $50,000 and that total is likely to increase. He did have a GoFundMe site, so I went online and contributed. Now I have a friend for life in his older brother, just for making a meager contribution to help out.

This is what we have been reduced to doing in our country today. There are no longer any good jobs available for millions of people. The baristas and the deli section worker I know have told me they can’t get more than 30 hours a week (at wages well below $15 an hour). Why? Because then they would qualify for benefits from their employers, like, you know, mandated health care coverage under the ACA for “full time” employees. Go to any retail or food establishment and ask how many employees they have that are full-time (i.e., who work more than 30 hours a week or 130 hours in the aggregate a month). I’ll bet you’ll discover that very few have more than a handful who are considered “full timers,” usually only store managers.

And even if you are a student graduating from college with a marketable degree, unless you’re going to work for a hedge fund, big bank or investment firm, your salary isn’t going to go very far to cover you housing costs, other expenses and student loan debt service. Millions of people are one calamity away from plunging into the depths of poverty. We have social mobility all right, but for most young people its downward mobility, unless they were born into wealthy families with connections. They can’t save money because expenses and debt eat up most of what they earn – they have no rainy day fund set aside should their life suddenly hit a rough patch. And the same thing is true of a large section of the “working class” whether they wear blue or white collars. Indeed, how many people you know who truly fit within the so-called middle class?

In my youth, middle class families were larger, there was usually only one breadwinner (Dad, of course), and yet all the kids managed to get a decent education, most who qualified could afford college, and most who got a degree were able to get a decent paying job. Even non-college grads could get decent jobs. The people I grew up around were not rich, but they had “nice things.” Many bought new cars every five years or so. They had their color TV’s and washing machines and refrigerators and what not. Hell, I even had a summer job between my sophomore and junior years in college (a union job I might add) that paid me $6.78 an hour for being a janitor at a candy factory. This was in 1976. After adjusting for inflation (using the Social Security wage index) I was effectively earning $34.15 an hour in 2014 dollars. Know any college kids earning that kind of money for janitorial work today?

And that was when the minimum wage of $2.30 an hour, i.e., effectively $11.58 in 2014 dollars. My son, who at 27 is living at home and cannot find a full-time job despite two degrees, makes a little over $9.00 an hour. He worked, until recently, only 20 to 28 hours a week, tops. You do the math. Unless he lived with us, he couldn’t afford an apartment, food, clothing or pay for basic utilities.

His saving grace? He has no student loans to pay off as he had a full tuition scholarship and his grandmother paid all his other expenses. Oh, and grandmother gave him her old car (newer than mine by nine years, actually) when she decided she didn’t like it. The gifts we give him at Christmas and his birthday? Cash. His biggest expenses are gas and car insurance. He pays us some rent for living here and for food, but he has managed to save a little money – mostly because he doesn’t drink, hit the bars on the weekends, doesn’t date and lives very frugally. His healthcare changed to Medicaid in April, 2015 (thank-you NY for accepting Medicaid expansion) when he timed out of our family coverage upon turning 26. Oddly, that was a relief, since now if he has a medical emergency that might run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s fully covered. Under our family policy, we would have been on the hook for 20% of the cost, after meeting our yearly deductible, of course.

And this is the new normal for so many people his age. That deli worker I spoke to you about, the one with the brother who has cancer? He’s married but he and his wife are still living with his parents. My daughter’s best friend from high school is making under $9.00 an hour working for Goodwill while living at home. But at least they have jobs. The effective unemployment rate among individuals 18-29 years of age is 12.8 percent, and even higher among minority youth. And despite the ACA, tens of millions of Americans still have no healthcare insurance coverage. Of those who do, many have crap policies with high deductibles ranging anywhere from $3000 to as much as $12,000 or even higher before the insurance will cover anything. Not to mention what those health insurance policies do not cover.

Which brings me to what I’ll be doing this evening. I will be escorting my wife to a charitable event dinner. Here’s why. In 2016, my wife was treated for pancreatic cancer. Luckily, they caught it early and she survived the cancer. Not so fortunately for her, however, she suffered severe brain damage as a result of the then standard chemotherapy treatment she received. I’ll let her explain it in her own words, words that she will be repeating tonight on stage at the charity gala for the Hochstein School of Music where she receives music and dance therapy rehabilitative services.

My brain did not bounce back. In fact, as months progressed, I became less and less able to function in my environment. I could not read without great difficulty, I could not follow favorite TV shows, I could not remember a thought or idea from inception to expression. I could not multi-task in the sense that ignoring an irrelevant noise AND maintaining a coherent thought was multi-tasking. I could not process the normal goings on in my home with husband and two teenagers. I could not keep up with real time. Everything that I logically knew should not be threatening, was terrifying. I was like a cornered animal whose instinct was to freeze, flee, or fight. I was unpredictable to others, volatile and explosive. I felt myself sinking into insanity, and I had to protect my family from myself.

I essentially lived in my SUV for over two years. I left home before sunrise and returned to be fed and to sleep. I sat by Irondequoit Bay, or in favorite snow covered park. I listened to WXXI AM, and I wrote incessantly. I could not read what I wrote, but I kept writing – as if the words on the page were validation of my continued existence. My doctors kept assuring me that I was not going insane, but I felt that if I were not already insane…. I would be driven to it by my cognitive existence.

It was during this time that Mark Noble and his team at the U of R Medical Center published groundbreaking research on the effect of a chemotherapy agent I took, and how it can cause delayed onset brain injury through demyelination of brain neurons, with the corpus callosum as a major target . This was incredible news! In 2009, I underwent comprehensive neuropsychological assessments, which confirmed that though I retained my intellect, my cognitive processing had been catastrophically slowed, amongst other findings. My reading rate had dropped to the first percentile, despite my comprehension remaining at premorbid levels. […]

In 2013, my husband heard Maria, Hochstein’s Chair of the music therapy department, on WXXI. He spoke to her on the show, and as a result I found Hochstein. After my initial work with Maria, I began taking both piano and dance lessons. I had, in my younger years been a pianist, and a decent dancer. The work that I have been doing with [redacted], and [redacted] has not been to specifically play piano better, or to dance better, but to re-ignite /trigger / develop dormant or inaccessible but functional pathways within my brain to enable those to strengthen and compensate for what I have lost. Both activities have helped me to be able to multitask at an exponentially greater level. Consider the act of dancing: One must count beats, move feet, move body, move hands, and remember to breathe, simultaneously with some modicum of grace. When I started with Maria, we were counting [the] number of steps I could take before faltering while I also focused on my breathing. We celebrated when I reached double digits. When I started with Maria in 2013, I would have been unable to enter this room without becoming completely overwhelmed, disoriented, and in need to run from the barrage of stimulation that is here.

So, why will my wife, in what will be a very emotionally stressful environment for her, be up on that stage talking to hundreds of strangers, providing intimate details of her life and her medical condition to them? Why will she bare her soul to what will be essentially an audience of wealthy, financially secure people, people in the upper one percent or wealth or higher? Because the Hochstein School will be using her as a prop to beg for donations from the upper crust of my city’s society, that’s why. She has a compelling story to tell, and a reason to tell it. Here’s the last question my wife will be asked on stage tonight and her answer:

HOW HAS FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE AT HOCHSTEIN HELPED YOU?

I have been at Hochstein for 3 years, and I have been able to do what I do here only as a result of its generous financial assistance. Health insurance does not cover cognitive rehabilitation, and I am on a fixed income. Hochstein is my “magic pill,” and I hope to continue my journey here. I thank you for making that possible.

Health insurance does not cover cognitive rehabilitation, or at least ours does not. So, she’ll be begging, on her own behalf and on behalf of all the people Hochstein serves. Begging rich, powerful, well-connected people, almost all of them likely Republicans or wealthy conservative Democrats, no doubt many of them deeply religious, to give what amounts to a pittance – (tickets for the gala cost $175, and suggested, but not mandatory, donations range from $2,500 to become a “Friend Sponsor” up to $25,000 or more to be designated a “Platinum sponsor”) – in order to benefit the relatively few people to whom Hochstein provides financial assistance, all of them poor, disadvantaged and disabled children and adults.

This is what we are now as a country. A begging bowl society.

A society that the establishments of both major political parties have worked tirelessly to create over the last 30 years as we have seen our social safety net shredded rather than strengthened. A society that can afford a single payer health care system such as the one that exists in many other developed nations, one that would have reigned in rising costs, but whose politicians chose to placate the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and protect their profits, instead. A society where online donation sites like GoFundMe have exploded in growth over the last few years to meet the needs that once upon a time our social safety net, and a generally robust economy where good paying jobs were plentiful, provided. A society where large multinational corporations evade paying taxes on trillions of dollars of profits while ordinary people who suffer catastrophic emotional and financial losses through no fault of their own must rely on the kindness of wealthier strangers (who of course get to write these donations off as charitable deductions on their income taxes).

A society of beggars and debtors effectively ruled by the wealthiest .001 percent. Our betters.

And people wonder why an relatively unknown, 74 year old, self-described Democratic Socialist, with little if any major media coverage, with a campaign that relies on small donations instead of millionaires and SuperPacs funded by billionaires, was able to challenge so successfully the most well-financed and deeply-entrenched presidential candidate the Democratic Party establishment has ever produced.

My wife asked me if I thought telling her story tonight would make the people in attendance want to give money. I said I didn’t know, but it would make me want to contribute if we could afford to do so. What else could I have said? We are all too often at the mercy of people who must be wined and dined and chatted up and made to feel important and extra super-special and morally superior simply for doing the right thing. Simply for doing the only decent thing.

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

Update. Last night my wife received a standing ovation for telling her story at the Hochstein charitable gala. I was extremely proud of her since I know how difficult this was for her to compose and then present to an audience of hundreds of people in a crowded ballroom. A presentation that would have been impossible for her to pull off as little as two years ago, without being overwhelmed with stimulus overload to her brain, a likely panic attack and the very real possibility of a meltdown on the stage, or her fleeing the room as fast as she could. I want to thank her dedicated and hard working music teacher, dance instructor and musical therapist who have done so much to bring about this progress in the recovery of her cognitive function. Even though she will never fully recover fully from the brain trauma she suffered, the benefits of their work have been truly astounding and vastly improved the quality of her life. And of those who love her.

Hochstein raised over $41,000 last night for their financial assistance program, which helps provide these services to around 1000 students and patients, young and old. It’s a small drop in a large ocean, but it was something. Just not good enough for an exceptional society, though, don’t you agree?

Its finally dawning on the “voices” of the GOP establishment, that D Trump is going to be their nominee.  As starting to filter through into the MSM, we are learning that Trump as gotten more votes during the primary than any other Republican, ever.  That while sounding tough, his foreign policy has points.  That he will tone down his demeanor for the General Election….etc….   All the things you would think you would hear when your daughter brings home an arrogant, ignorant,  bigoted, SOB to marry.

“Well, he dresses nicely.”

She (the GOP Base) loves him and the parents will just have to get along or miss seeing the grandkids.

Of course, the caveat thrown in is that he has the highest negative numbers for a Presidential candidate in recorded history.  What is occasionally mentioned is that the presumptive Democratic nominee has the 2nd highest.

As we have discussed here before, the notion that Trump can’t win flies in the face of the whole primary season.  I call it, “whistling past the graveyard”  His ability to shrug off attacks on character, history or policy positions astounds the average political reporter.  Add to that, HRC is disliked by the reporting herds and gets her back up whenever confronted with a contradiction or a question about past actions and decisions.  Her face sets in an expression that must be well known to Bill and Chelsea, her posture stiffens, and she shuts down … freezing the questioner with a stare that communicates, “How dare you doubt me.” then begins to stonewall. Just the thing the average voter wants to see on TV.  And they will see it more and more as the election advances.  Because to the moderately informed observer, there are questions about past decisions and positions.  We and reporters can Google flip flops easily.  

Whereas Trump is entertainment.

So we have this to look forward too.  A wealthy buffoon who appeals to a large portion (perhaps majority) of the electorate and who appears to be made of Teflon.  And a woman who reacts negatively when pushed and criticized, hides things, stone walls and then wraps herself in the “Woman” flag.  And you know the more she reacts, the more Trump and reporters will push.  Its called bear baiting and we have months of it to look forward to.  If only we could see a play by that new actor “Shakespeare?” next door when the spectacle is finished and the bear is drug away.

R

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Victorian mansion.  I am using the photo seen directly below.  I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on an 5×7 inch canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have painted over the entire pencil sketch.  Below, I’ve added some temporary green.  I’ve continued the blue paint into the sky.  All of this is preliminary with many changes to come.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

 

I need to sit down and really think about these numbers and what they mean, what they don’t mean, and what they should mean and shouldn’t mean.

At least in my experience, the biggest thing that’s changed between now and the 1980’s when I graduated from high school, is the cost of higher education and the disconnect that has opened up between what entry-level jobs pay and what rents and mortgages cost. I was raised in the ‘Born to Run’ state, so it’s not surprising that virtually everyone I knew left New Jersey as soon as they turned 19 years old. A lot of us came back, at least for a time, but we all had the ability to uproot and find work and pay rents, even if we occasionally got a little help from home. And this was in spite of a nasty recession that hit right around the time most of us were graduating from college.

For me, I was able to split a nice two-bedroom apartment in a nice part of Los Angeles for about $400 a month, my credit hours cost only $105, and was only that high because I wasn’t a citizen of California, and while work was difficult to find after the recession hit, it paid enough that I could get by as long as my parents gave me a little help.

The kids I know in a similar position today, simply cannot replicate that experience. And most of them choose to go without a car of their own and to stay at home. Obviously, if their parents have the money and are willing to pay, they can still go off on their own, but it’s not real independence, or even semi-independence. Most kids wind up deeply in debt if they want a college education, and it’s not as clear that the education they get will immediately show a pay-off on investment.

It’s probably easier to control the cost of education than it is to control the cost of housing, so that seems like the more fruitful way to go.

Still, I’m surprised that people are roughly as positive about this economy as they were right before they reelected Reagan in a landslide. I don’t dispute the numbers, but I don’t understand them.

Shouldn’t we have all known that it would come to this?

May the Draft be with you.

A new Morning Consult poll finds that Bernie Sanders is the most popular senator in the country and that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is the least popular. This comes at the same time that Donald Trump’s newest caddie, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has reached new lows in popularity in the Garden State. I suppose Ted Cruz can comfort himself that the public has some Republicans that they hate with more white hot furor than himself, but this won’t last if he keeps up his shenanigans.

His newest stunt, coming on the heels of naming Carly Fiorina as his running mate, is a result of looking at some polling data that shows him losing in Indiana and some other other polling data that shows that Hoosier conservatives hate transgender people.

“As Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas seeks every possible edge to stop Donald Trump, he has seized on a once-obscure issue with a proven power to inflame conservatives: letting transgender women use women’s bathrooms,” the New York Times reports.

“With polls showing a narrower lead for Mr. Trump in Indiana than in the five Eastern states that he swept on Tuesday, the Cruz campaign’s private polling indicates that the bathroom issue has the power to help close the gap. Moreover, it is fresh in Indiana voters’ minds because of high-profile battles in the state in recent years over gay rights.”

Yes, it’s fresh in the minds of Indianans that Gov. Mike Pence signed an anti-gay “Religious Freedom Bill” and caused an immediate business boycott of their state. Meanwhile, Gov. Pence obviously can’t read a poll because despite the fact that Ted Cruz is about to get shellacked in his state’s primary, Pence will endorse his transgender-hating ass.

Meanwhile, Pew Research finds the Republican Party less popular than anytime since 1992, and Trump has a net unfavorable number of thirty-seven percent. His 28% approval number mimics George W. Bush’s numbers at the nadir of his presidency, and also barely tops the 27% who voted for Alan Keyes over a young state Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy was poorly received by neoconservatives, as is obvious if you look at the reaction at the Washington Post. Pro-Iraq War editorial board chief Fred Hiatt said that Trump’s vision was incoherent, inconsistent, and incomprehensible. Columnist Charles Krauthammer described the speech as incoherent, inconsistent, and jumbled. While the Post’s resident columnist/blogger Jennifer Rubin expressed concern that, based on Trump’s language, he might be a malleable mouthpiece of anti-Semites.

If neoconservatives come pretty close to being always wrong, the Post’s reaction might be considered the highest form of praise. Unfortunately, most of their criticisms are accurate. This is particularly true when they go after Trump for his looseness with the facts, his contradictory and mutually exclusive messages, and his praise of unpredictability.

For example, Fred Hiatt nailed Trump for insisting that we “abandon defense commitments to allies because of the allegedly weakened state of the U.S. economy” at the same time that he criticizes President Obama for not being a steadfast friend to our allies. Krauthammer wondered how Trump could criticize Obama for letting Iran become a regional power and promise to bring stability to the Middle East without having any commitment to keep a presence there or to take any risks or to make any expenditures.

If there is any remaining doubt about how neoconservatives view Trump’s foreign policy ideas, Sen. Lindsey Graham removed them:

Sen. Lindsey Graham tore into Donald Trump’s speech on foreign policy, calling it “unnerving,” “pathetic” and “scary.”

The South Carolina Republican former presidential candidate told WABC Radio on Wednesday that the speech was “nonsensical” and showed that Trump “has no understanding of the world and the role we play.”

“This speech was unnerving. It was pathetic in its content, and it was scary in terms of its construct. If you had any doubt that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief, this speech should’ve removed it,” Graham said. “It took every problem and fear I have with Donald Trump and put in on steroids.”

He added: “It was like a guy from New York reading a speech that somebody wrote for him that he edited that makes no sense.” And: “It was not a conservative speech. This was a blend of random thoughts built around Rand Paul’s view of the world.”

It’s true that Graham’s response there is a substance-free ad hominem attack, but he did get around to making specific critiques. In particular, he noted that Trump can’t keep his promises to both minimize our presence in the Middle East and destroy ISIS in short order without significant alliances with the regimes in the Middle East. But he won’t be improving our alliances by talking negatively about Islam as a religion and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Graham said that the problem with Obama is that he isn’t seen as a reliable ally by these despots, but that Trump “is worse than Obama…the entire world is going to look at Donald Trump as a guy who doesn’t understand the role of America, that doesn’t understand the benefit of these alliances.”

Graham also blasted Trump’s position on NATO and said that “the idea of dismembering NATO would be the best thing possible for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

It’s not that Graham properly understands “the role of America” or that he gets the downsides of our alliances with foreign dictatorial regimes. But he understands that you can’t win a war against radicals in the Arab world by making enemies of every Arab (and Muslim) in the world. Graham understands that you can’t criticize the president for being a lousy friend and then rip up longstanding and uncontroversial agreements with those friends while demanding both more money and more deference.

A full treatment of Trump’s speech and foreign policy ideas is beyond the scope of this blog piece, but he’s about to become the leader of a party that is filled with neoconservatives.

They aren’t going to pretend that the emperor has clothes on.

And, for once in their lives, they’re largely right.