Month: July 2018

Battle Lines Are Drawn in the EU to Fight Islam

CDU/CSU Reach `Compromise’ | The Guardian | ; | Deutsche Welle | ; | Die Welt |
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Early stage concentration located in Bavaria near Austrian border … WTF! Will coalition partner SPD accept this correction on the agreed policy on asylum seekers and immigration? Merkel not out of the Bavarian woods yet … Horst Seehofer satisfied for now with a promise for change to take effect at some future date?

Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Albania leading the battle against Islamization of Europe. Just like the Middle Ages … a crusade anyone? Not necessary, Western ally Israel has already occupied (East) Jerusalem … a matter of time before the Third Temple is build.
First our alliance with the Wahhabist monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the satellite state of the Emirates needs to be strengthened to take the fight to the Shiites of the Ayatollahs in Iran. The failures of the United States in Iraq. Libya and Syria have led to a more acute problem … the CENTO nations have changed color from blue to a Red Crescent from Tehran – Baghdad – Damascus – Beirut.  A Shia crescent, so the West should supply armament to these states to fight our proxy war. Similar to the choice made in 1979 under the Carter administration to engage with jihadists in the AfPak region to overthrow Soviet Communism in Afghanistan. We all know how well that plan has worker for the West – a permanent State of War against Islamic terror across the globe.

Melo post @EuroTrib …

Re: The EU is dead  (4.00 / 2)

The EU succumbed to neoliberal brain rot, gambled in the Wall St. casino and is now waiting for the banking crisis to reveal how greedy, compromised and stupid our leaders in the EU really are.
(As if the Greek treatment were not enough to reveal the dark agenda behind the mask of noble goals.)
Arms sales, following US orders to sanction Iran and Russia, (yes sir, how high?), and dirty dealing with car companies and emissions tests, kow towing to mammoth lobbies.
Then the immigration issue…
The hypocrisy and general sliminess of Macron in this regard is remarkable.
Sarkozy was bad enough, Barroso a low point for the time, but the reason for the far-right swing in Europe was the gross mismanagement of the immigration ‘business’ and the people-trafficking interests, the mob, and the anodyne, complicit centre-left parties who lost touch with their bases and ignored the growing resentment, not for the immigrants themselves so much as the shoddy job of integration.
The NGO’s do right of course to rescue people, but are the people who financially back the ONG’s willing to take responsibility for what happens to them after rescue?
We smashed Lybia, now we pay.
Our corporations have been making banks off the backs of Africans for centuries, now comes the blowback.
Throwing money at Africa to try and redeem the plunder with money partly from the plunder is trying to push toothpaste back in the tube.
Racism is thriving, how can we educate bigots who want to hate someone they think is to blame for their plight, but instead of hating those responsible for this mess, they blame the victims!
It’s laziness, too easy to kick those who are already down.
Maybe, just maybe, Europe can use this crisis to re-invent itself in a form closer to its noble aims.
It’s the only hope, and hope is the last to go.

‘The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.’ Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Mon Jul 2nd, 2018 at 05:20:28 PM PDT

○ Xenophobia and Islamophobia Roots of Today’s Triad of Evil

From my diary:  Munich, A Ling Time Brewing …

The role of identity politics in today’s populism and the century-old battle of Christians vs Muslims …

○ In Munich, Provocation in a Symbol of Foreign Faith | NY Times – Dec. 2006 |
○ German state orders crosses mounted in government buildings | DW – May 2018 |

Pushing Angela Merkel out, U.S. president Trump puts on the pressure on German carmakers and threat to pull out the U.S. Armed Forces. A welcome gesture, looking forward to the next NATO Summit!

○ Trump’s Auto Tariffs Threat Targets Heart of German Economy | Bloomberg – May 2018 |

○ Donald Trump rails against German defense spending shortfall | DW – June 2018|

A report from America’s Trump | Nieuwsuur – Interview on July 2 | [Starts @ 26:00 min]

Voice of America (VOA) Philip Irwin living in Flint Hill, Virginia – owner former plantation Caledonia Farm 1812

Sitting at the breakfast table in Virginia are some of his friends: Demaris Miller – Walter Longyear – Richard Viguerie.

WTF! Everyone know who Richard Viguerie is. Yet no warning given to the Dutch watchers who this person is!

Of course, good-old Jaap de Hoop Scheffer participated in the studio. Jaap is completely clueless of what he has brought about with an aggressive NATO during his reign as Secretary General. Now he looks back as says: : “We were wrong to antagonize Putin with a forced expansion of NATO to Russia’s border.”

Unbelievable … Jaap De Hoop Scheffer

The Republicans in ’88 | The Atlantic – July 1987 |

One of Bush’s strengths as a candidate is his resume. He built a successful oil business. He served two terms as a congressman from Texas. He lost two Senate elections (good for humility). He was the chief United States delegate to the United Nations. He was the chairman of the Republican National Committee (during Watergate, no less). He was the U.S. envoy to China. He was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He ran for President. And he was elected and re-elected Vice President of the United States. One can almost hear the echo of Walter Mondale in 1983: “I am ready to be President.”

But Bush’s career is nothing if not an establishment career. And this is still very much an era of anti-establishment politics. That is one reason why movement conservatives, who see themselves as an anti-establishment force, continue to distrust him. No matter how loyal Bush has been to the Reagan revolution, he still looks and acts like the kind of Republican the New Right set out to destroy twenty three years ago. Last year Richard A. Viguerie, the former publisher of Conservative Digest wrote a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal detailing Bush’s sins. He had a moderate voting record in Congress. He did not give ideological direction to the Republican Party. He received an award from the Ripon Society, “a club of John Anderson-type Republicans.” In his 1980 campaign he called Reagan’s economic proposals “voodoo economics,” a term that has stuck to Bush more than it has stuck to Reagan. His inner circle includes not a single “movement conservative. “

And–the unpardonable sin–Bush was well born. Viguerie quoted Bill Baxley, the lieutenant governor of Alabama, who, in 1984, called Bush “a pin-stripin’ polo playin’ umbrella-totin’ Ivy Leaguer, born with a silver spoon so far back in his mouth that you couldn’t get it out with a crowbar.” Whether the charge is fair or unfair is not the point. The point is that the Republican Party has not dared to nominate a candidate born to wealth and privilege since Charles Evans Hughes. Democrats can get away with it (Roosevelt, Kennedy). Republicans can’t.

Related reading on topic …

○ The Anti-Semitic Zionist God Squad by ManfromMiddletown @EuroTrib on Jul 14th, 2006  
○ Sociology, Social Commentary, and the Rise of the Right

Martin Longman has written four frontpage stories featuring Richard A. Viguerie — a worthwhile read! See archives – here.

Richard Viguerie was a major fundraiser for the GOP, strictly for the Christian Right fundamentalists united in the Club for Growth.  

Hostile Takeover: The New Right Insurgent Movement, Ronald Reagan, and the Republican Party, 1977-1984

This  dissertation  examines  the  contentious  relationship  between  the  New  Right and the Ronald Reagan’s first presidential administration. Led by Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Terry Dolan, and Howard Phillips, the New Right arose during the 1970s as an insurgent  movement  within  the  Republican  Party  that  had  become  disillusioned  with party  elites  and  its  moderate  positions.  Together,  these  men  sought  to  move  the Republican  Party  further  to  the  right.  They  led  fundraising  groups  for  congressional candidates and used direct mail as a way to mobilize grassroots support for conservative political and social positions.  

The  New  Right  met  with  some  success  in  the  late  1970s  over  the  Panama  Canal and  other  “hot  button”  social issues  such  as  abortion  and  school  prayer.  Along  with  the Moral  Majority,  they  were  instrumental  in  attaching social  and  cultural  issues  to  the Republican Party platform.  Despite Reagan’s support for many of the issues on the New Right’s social agenda,  this  work demonstrates that  their relationship  was fraught  with contention,  disappointment and  distrust.
Rather, diverse  conservative constituencies within  the  Republican  Party vied  with  each  other  for  the  president’s  attention.

This dissertation challenges the notion that Reagan came to office with a unified conservative movement  behind  him;  and
draws  on archival  research,  special  collections,  news coverage  and  interviews  to  reassess  the  importance  of  the  New  Right  to  the  larger conservative  movement.

[Update-1]

Source: Angela Merkel’s last-ditch migrant compromise under scrutiny| DW – today |

Still a lot of water will flow under the bridge of the Rhine before this quarrel is settled. Most likely it has become more difficult as the discussion will move forward to a next EU Summit and the Schengen agreement. Nice, as Europe is under attack by Trump’s advisors in the White House to slam Germany with tariffs on car imports, blocking steel and aluminium products AND putting pressure to build-up Armed Forces in Europe with taxpayers bearing a burden to buy US military equipment. Exchange of money to buy AmericaFirst! lethal armament and shipping our jobs overseas to Trump’s Red States. Great deal Trumpf.

Good-bye Blog Ethics

The abuse of blog ratings here @BooMan became obvious with marduk and nalbar.

After they trolled Arthur Gilroy, they came after me.

It’s just a foursome who set out on this obnoxious course of wrecking the blog community. Imposing their kind of morality on what is and is not acceptable to write. The old-style of the worst days @dKos.

Enters oncorhynchus with his harassment in the diaries of Arthur Gilroy. Harassment is defined as repeated bullying over time. When it becomes an obsession, or a compulsion, go see a psychiatrist. Repeating the same old tiresome accusations of lies where he expects AG to reply until he is satisfied. OAB never will be satisfied.

Don Durito made a valiant effort to stop this ugly behavior. His diary was up for quite a while – This blog has a ratings abuse problem. As the comments were posted in his diary, nalbar continues troll rating my posts elsewhere. Yes I called him out for that behavior.

More below the fold …
OAB and bazzz have now joined the vigilantes of BT.

Any comment I make in a front page article by Martin Longman, I get troll rated.

A new star bazzz said he wanted to engage in a conversation. I wrote two special diaries to engage. Bazzz too will never be satisfied in my replies. So bazzz, you have now joined the heavenly realms of troll rating me! What a big boy you are now.

Request to Martin. Please take down your stated ethics for writing on this blog … no one adheres to the rules of not being a prick. All debate of opposing views will be stifled.

This post of mine to Martin’s frontpage article was the most recent that got troll rated by nalbar … nice!

I won’t ask for an explanation, I am satisfied to witness this erratic behavior.

I won’t be silenced here @BooMan …. I have been part of this special blog community since its founding . Have written thousands of diaries throughout the 13 plus years. I still have plenty to analyse and write about, on a daily basis. You can find me on the right edge of this blog. My views are left progressive. Recently  I have been accused of being an anti-Semite and in turn a Trump supporter. Both allegations are far from the truth. There are more than just one idiot in the White House. Right or left, so it goes.

Leftist Obrador Wins Mexican Election by a Landslide

An inspiring first speech by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addressing his supporters from his campaign headquarters in Mexico City:

○ Mexico electionresults: López Obrador vows profound change after win | BBC News |
○ Leftist is victor in Mexican vote | The Globe & Mail |

My comment was NOT off-topic as Martin had a link to the Mexican election result in his article. Even then, it should NOT have been troll rated.

STOP!

[Update-1]

zelf-kennis

One of the rules would be no bringing shit from other blogs over here.

You kids want to fight about BT shit, go do it there.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jul 3rd, 2018 at 04:19:38 PM PDT

[Update-2]

A prime example of a hateful comment added with a historic resentment. Going full nationalistic … living in a red state full of ignorance? WTF .. no I have no intent to “go away”!

If it weren’t for the Dutch and French in 1776, most likely your 13 states would not have “won” independence and stayed under British rule of King George III. I’m not sure if that would have prevented white puritans from the genocidal murdering of America’s indigenous people, the Indian tribes.

Just a few threads away, a smarter post …

Our country is the jackass now (4.00 / 2)

Nice country you had there, too bad you effed it all up.

The progression from Reagan to Quayle to Bush II to Palin to Trump completely confirms that white Republicans don’t prize intellect in any way, shape, or form. Their 1000% commitment to willful ignorance (and proud of it) was bound to reach Trump’s level of juvenality. And there’s no reason to ensure it will stop at that level.

We’ve ( the country collectively) let this happen. We overestimated our capabilities (collectively). We’ve underestimated the level of irrational evil in our fellow citizens and especially in the Republican cult and leadership.

Consequently, we’ve made ourselves an unreliable ally whose judgment (collectively) and commitment to alliances and international norms can’t be trusted.

Torture, waterboarding, rendition/detention/black sites, unregulated crashing financial markets, unwarranted destabilizing invasions, turning our backs on treaties – all of those things happened under Bush II who was also an ignorant buffoon.

Trump is an even more ignorant buffoon and he brings trade wars more racist immigration policies, more treaties/agreements being abrogated and serial sexual assaulting into the mix to turn up the stupid and evil to eleven.

Unless a longer term plan starts shaping up to fix the structural problems in our governing framework this trend will be both recurring and intensifying.

by LosGatosCA on Thu Jul 5th, 2018 at 04:54:35 AM MEST

Could have been my own words …. jeez, they are exactly what I have diaried about here @BooMan. Living in a parallel universe?

[For fair treatment join the sister blog European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]

Michael Cohen Sounds Eager to Flip on Trump

The bad news has been so unrelenting in last couple of weeks that it is causing a noticeable amount of resignation, panic and defeatism on the left, but the Russia investigation has not gone away and there’s one thing the president absolutely cannot afford to see happen:

Michael Cohen — President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former executive vice president at the Trump Organization — has always insisted he would remain loyal to the president.

He was the fix-it guy, the pit bull so fiercely protective of his boss that he’d once described himself as “the guy who would take a bullet” for the president.

But in his first in-depth interview since the FBI raided his office and homes in April, Cohen strongly signaled his willingness to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York — even if that puts President Trump in jeopardy.

“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told me. “I put family and country first…To be crystal clear, my wife, my daughter and my son, and this country have my first loyalty.”

That’s a pretty clear signal that he’s going to flip unless Trump can help his family. But it got worse.

But Cohen did not praise the president during our conversation — and pointedly disagreed with Trump’s criticism of the federal investigations…

…When I asked Cohen how he might respond if the president or his legal team come after him — to try and discredit him and the work he did for Mr. Trump over the last decade — he sat up straight. His voice gained strength.

“I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy,” he said emphatically. “I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”

That’s a long way from promising to take a bullet for the president. He called Trump “a villain.” And he wasn’t exactly trying to flatter him either, as you might expect him to do if here were still angling for a pardon:

On issue after issue, Cohen did, however, separate himself from President Trump -– starting with the president’s criticism of how the government has conducted its investigation.

After federal agents searched Cohen’s New York properties, Trump described the raid as a break-in, an “attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”

“I don’t agree with those who demonize or vilify the FBI. I respect the FBI as an institution, as well as their agents,” Cohen told me. “When they searched my hotel room and my home, it was obviously upsetting to me and my family. Nonetheless, the agents were respectful, courteous and professional. I thanked them for their service and as they left, we shook hands.”

Cohen also refused to criticize the Mueller investigation.

“I don’t like the term witch hunt,” he said, adding that he condemned Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.

“As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same,” he said.

And in a direct rebuttal to President Trump, who sent out a tweet last week repeating Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia did not interfere in our election, Cohen added this: “Simply accepting the denial of Mr. Putin is unsustainable.”

He’s not confessing, but he is promising to cooperate with the Mueller investigation and he only predicts that he himself will be exonerated in the Russia affair, without making the same assertion for his former boss.

Cohen also repeated his previous denials of any personal involvement with Russian attempts to interfere in our election, declaring that he never went to Prague, as alleged in the Steele dossier, and never colluded with the Russians in any way.

Although he has not been interviewed yet by Mueller’s team, he says he has provided documents and added that he would fully cooperate with them, just as he says he has with the Senate and House committees investigating the matter.

“I appeared under oath before the House Select Intelligence Committee for over six hours and to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee for over eight hours,” he says.

Cohen believes Mueller will not find any evidence that he had any illegal or improper dealings with the Russians.

Cohen would not defend the actions of Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort or Donald Trump Jr., not would he answer when asked if he knew whether Trump Sr. knew about the infamous meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower.

But Cohen did criticize those members of the Trump campaign who participated in that now infamous Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016 with several Russians after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“I believe it was a mistake by those from the Trump campaign who did participate,” he said. “It was simply an example of poor judgment.”

When I asked Cohen if President Trump knew about that meeting before it happened, he declined to answer.

“I can’t comment under advice of my counsel due to the ongoing investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York,” Cohen said.

I don’t know that Trump can get himself out of this jam. If Cohen shares what he knows about the president, that’s going to dramatically change the political environment in this country. And I’m almost certain that it’s going to happen.

Leftist Obrador Wins Mexican Election by a Landslide

[Cross-posted from European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]

An inspiring first speech by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addressing his supporters from his campaign headquarters in Mexico City:

More below the fold …
○ Mexico electionresults: López Obrador vows profound change after win | BBC News |
○ Leftist is victor in Mexican vote | The Globe & Mail |

Mexico, a new revolution …
○ Sick of corruption and of Trump, voters embrace the maverick leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador | The New Yorker |

AMLO considers Mr. Corbyn a great friend!

Corbyn surge raises hopes that Mexico might soon have a friend in No 10 | The Guardian |

Britain’s Conservative government has forged close ties with Mexico’s Nieto administration, which has been tainted by corruption scandals, worsening violence and accusations of spying on journalists and activists.

And while Theresa May has sought to appease Donald Trump, who has threatened and offended Mexico at every opportunity, Corbyn has become an unlikely source of inspiration for Mexican activists.

Corbyn, whose wife, Laura Álvarez, is Mexican, often speaks at solidarity events organised by London’s Mexican community. He has, in parliament, condemned Mexico’s media censorship and human rights abuses, and led demonstrations against Nieto’s state visit in 2015 while the British government was signing controversial oil deals.

First posted as a comment @BooMan in lead frontpage story …

Re: The Response to Trump vs. The Response to Obama

Thx Martin … excellent, great stuff. I called the SCOTUS decision on asylum seekers and the resignation of Kennedy a watershed moment for America. Indeed, a sea change for decades. The mid-term election will be momentous for Freedom in America. Individual freedom can never be wagered for the collective AmericaFirst! of the Trumpistas. NEVER!

May the nations of the European Union grow a spine and tell bully Trump a piece of their mind.

○ The EU is dead by IdiotSavant @EuroTrib on Jul 2nd, 2018

A Tired Middle America. SO Tired…

(I recently replied to a comment by Tien Le on Booman’s recent post The Response to Trump vs. The Response to Obama. It grew. Here it is as a standalone.)

#####################################################################

Tien Le wrote:

[The media] are not on our side.

Sadly Tien Le, the salient word in that sentence is “our.” The same goes for the title of your comment.

Who is “us,” exactly?

Looking at this blog over the past several years?

Looking at the media in general?

Damned if I know.

It is quite plain that both the NY Times and Washington Post are against both Trumpist forces and the true progressive wing of the Democratic Party. So…on whose side are they?

And once again, the answer is fairly clear.

They are “on the side” of the corporate-owned establishment duopoly, be it nominally Democratic or Republican. When Republicans cooperate with Trump…for quite understandable reasons of simple political survival if you take away any thoughts whatsoever regarding “morality”…they are the bad guys. When Democrats ally themselves with say Bernie Sanders, they are also the enemy, although since the Democrats did a much better job of isolating their left wing from potential power than did the Republicans of isolating their right wing, the neocentrist media can be much more…subtle…with the Sandernistas, etc.

Oh…they mean well, of course, but it’s obvious that they have no chance whatsoever of coming to power!!! Such nice people though. What a shame. What a waste!!!”

The center holds power by dissing those that are not part of its plans. It is, however, in the midst of a potentially seriously blown inning. Unless there are some real home runs hit in November…and from what I have been seeing they are not very likely…the game may well be over.

Trump 7, Everybody Else, 2.

I hope I’m wrong.

I just spent a couple of weeks immersed in Red Country, U.S.A., mostly the Eastern Pennsylvania area thereof. The last time I did that, I came back predicting a Trump win. Everybody and his brother on the progressive and neocentrist sides of the Democratic fence thought I was crazy. I wasn’t. I read “ANGER!!!”

This time?

I read “exhaustion.”

Read on.
The centrist/right wing news still pours out of the TVs in the Dunkin’ Donuts and such, but the volume has been turned down and nobody seems to be paying much attention. Life goes on. They’ve heard enough. They are more in a sort of party mood. Pro-Trump or anti-Trump, and everyplace in between. I was shocked late this past Saturday night…around midnight…when I drove through a smallish city, a fairly newly-rebounded-from-semi-collapse-on-the-Rust-Belt-model kind of city. It used to be basically closed up after about 10:30PM except for maybe a couple of serious drinker’s bars, but this time the long main street was lit up and cars were parked everywhere!!!

I felt the same thing in a jazz club where i have played for many years. A bigger crowd, more responsive to the music while simultaneously not paying it a great deal of mind.

In a party state of mind, and I do not mean Republican or Democratic “parties.”

Hmmmmm…

Short of a serious emergency in this country before November…Trumped up, CIA-created or real…I don’t think that the right, center or left is going to pour out in unprecedented numbers. The right already thinks that it has won; the left is feeling…well, it’s feeling beaten up by its own party, truth be told…and the massive center is sick of hearing all of the yelling.  

Shut the fuck up, why dont’cha!!! I can’t hear myself not think!!!

Like dat.

My sample size may be too small this time…last time I drove hundreds of miles with short stops through NJ, eastern PA, southwestern NY right on up to Rochester and then back down through central NY to NYC. This time…straight through rural-ish NJ into rural eastern PA and a longer stay. But that’s the smell I’m getting outside of largely Hispanic areas like the Bronx neighborhoods that were the heart of Ocasio-Lopez’s upset win over Crowley. I have long held that bilingual Spanish people with fairly recent generational roots in Central and South America are overall much less likely to be hypnotized by the mainstream trance-media than are single language U.S people whose families have been here for a number of generations.

Maybe they will be our saviours.

I sure as hell hope so, because it’s beginning to look like we’re gonna need some.

Soon!!!

Later…

AG

The Response to Trump vs. The Response to Obama

The Washington Post and the New York Times both published articles yesterday with the same basic premise.  The Democratic base has has moved so far to the left that it is embracing socialism.  The left’s voters are so angry and fearful that they’re calling for the abolishment of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. They’re voting out their own leadership in favor of intemperate and vituperative radicals who espouse unworkable and foreign-sounding ideas that won’t play in the heartland.  The responsible adults are losing control and the best recent analog for all of this is the 2009-2010 rise of the Tea Party.

In fairness, they aren’t making this up out of whole cloth, and some of the concern they’re reporting on is coming straight from the mouths of veteran Democratic politicians and strategists from Washington DC or high up in the party’s top organizations.

“There is a big difference between a strategic message targeted to win an election and an emotional call like ‘Abolish ICE,’ ” said former congressman Steve Israel (N.Y.), who led the Democratic House election effort for two cycles. “One feels good for the person screaming, and one works for the person voting.”

“What sounds good in Brooklyn, N.Y., doesn’t work in Brooklyn, Iowa,” Israel said.

I have a lot of objections to how this story is being reported but one of the main ones is the comparison to the Tea Party. The analogy bothers me for two reasons. First, the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) revolt sprung into being during a period of historically low federal taxation and in response to a housing crisis that grew and exploded under Republican leadership. It was immediately repurposed to fight health care reforms, and that was at least a reaction to a sharp change in longstanding policy. Overall, however, the Tea Party movement was obsessed over debt, deficit spending, and government overreach, which were things that concerned Republicans not at all during the Bush administration and no longer concern them now that Trump is president.

What Democrats are responding to at the moment are momentous changes that are really too long to list. The president just said that some states will soon ban abortion which has has been constitutionally protected for forty-five years. The Supreme Court just gutted public sector unions, legalized racial disenfranchisement through state redistricting, and gave the president the authority to impose a nakedly racist and religiously bigoted travel ban. Trump is in a Watergate-level of trouble over his suspected coordination with Russia during the election and his policies toward our allies in Europe, the Far East, and on our borders amount to a brazen compromise of American alliances and values. His self-dealing is unprecedented and his violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution are going unpunished. He’s openly obstructing justice every day. The environment is under attack. Science is under attack. The FBI and Department of Justice are under attack. The press is threatened and intimidated constantly. Our system of immigration is being reworked in radical ways, and white nationalists are serving as senior White House advisers and on the National Security Council.

Oh, and did I mention that Trump is about to replace Justice Kennedy with a true movement conservative and give these radicals a clear majority on the Supreme Court for the first time, and that their majority may last for decades?

So, the first thing that bothers me is that the two situations (Tea Partiers in 2009-10 and Democrats today) are far too dissimilar to be breezily compared to each other.

The second thing that bugs me is that the press doesn’t seem to have updated their estimation of the effectiveness of the Tea Party movement to account for their midterm successes in 2010 and 2014 or the election of Donald Trump. This dismissiveness was wrong from the get-go, as it focused only on the races the Republicans lost in 2010 and 2012 that they might have won with more status quo candidates. It’s true that the GOP left some Senate seats on the table, but they seem to have bounced back from their nadir in 2008 to gain the biggest majorities they’ve held in this country since the 1920’s. The radical rhetoric of the Tea Party surely contributed to these successes and if so-called Democratic socialists have the same kind of successes over the next ten years, I don’t think they’ll mind the comparisons.

In any case, as Trump supporters revel in their current power, they surely have earned the right to laugh at every analyst who said the Tea Party’s extremism would doom the right.

There’s a better case to be made that their radicalism doomed the country, and if the press wants to write concern-troll stories about how radical-sounding Democrats are going to contribute to ripping the country party apart, that would at least be an interesting debate to have. What doesn’t seem merited, at all, is to argue that strong, impolite rhetoric will spell electoral doom or that utopian ideas based on fantasies will be broadly rejected out of hand.

We like to cherry-pick things, exaggerate their consequence, and then act shocked when the electorate acts like it doesn’t give a damn or actually likes the things we thought they ought to hate. It’s true that the Republicans weren’t thrilled to have Senate candidates calling for Second Amendment solutions to our political differences or assuring us that they are not a witch. They were embarrassed to hear their candidates argue that rape cannot cause pregnancy and that, regardless, God loves rape babies. Those candidates lost winnable seats, but did it really hurt the party in the bigger picture? Did Trump’s insults and sexual assaults and blatant racism hurt him in the bigger picture?

There’s definitely a story in how the country seems to be moving in different directions at light speed. The crack-up of the Republican Party, irrespective of its electoral success, can definitely serve as a cautionary tale for party leaders on the left. But there’s just nothing to really support the idea that the radicalism of the right was anything other than helpful to the right’s electoral recovery from the Bush years.

What we’re seeing, rather, is a new sort of the electorate. Suburbs become blue, red areas get redder. That trade-off just barely worked for Trump and it works great for the Republicans in state legislatures and the House of Representatives. The Democrats need to be mindful of this, and that’s one reason to listen to yourself talk so can hear how something might sound in Brooklyn, Iowa rather than in Brooklyn, New York.

The truth, however, is that people who are fed up will vote for almost any kind of change. Mexico showed that last night, and Donald Trump demonstrated it better than anyone ever could back in 2016.

Then there are the merits. Obama got his health care bill and it didn’t plunge the country into bankruptcy or tyranny. It helped tens of millions of people without fundamentally changing how most of us experience our day to day lives. The apoplexy that fed the Tea Party revolt was based on fairy tales. The apoplexy of the left in response to Trump is shared by the middle, many former Republicans, our Intelligence Community, our foreign policy establishment, and all of our allies.

Given that, any similarity between the radicalization of the right during Obama’s presidency and the radicalization of the left in response to Trump’s is completely superficial.

SPP 672 / Froggy Bottom Cafe

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the eastern shore of Virginia inn.  The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.  I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas.

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

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

Starting at the top, I have added paint to the roof, both to lit and shadowed portions.  The chimneys and windows have added color and details, as has the porch roof.  Finally, the lawn, path and bushes have been overpainted.  Those bush shadows are a bit much and will be cut back a bit  before I’m done.

 
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.