The Commentariat -- April 8, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump on Sunday promised a 'big price' to be paid for what he said was a chemical weapons attack that choked dozens of Syrians to death the day before, and a top White House official said the administration would not rule out a missile strike to retaliate against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. In a tweet, Mr. Trump laid the blame for the attack partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the first time since his election that he has criticized the Russian leader by name on Twitter. Mr. Putin's forces have been fighting for years to keep the Assad government in power amid Syria's brutal civil war.... 'Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price...' '...to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!'... 'If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand, the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!'"
Michelle Lee, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump and his allies again assured the country on Sunday morning that they do not expect China to actually implement threatened tariffs that could rock the U.S. economy and hurt American farmers, especially those who grow soybeans or raise hogs. 'China will take down its Trade Barriers because it is the right thing to do,' Trump said in a tweet on Sunday morning. 'Taxes will become Reciprocal & a deal will be made on Intellectual Property. Great future for both countries!' In interviews on Sunday morning talk shows, administration officials defended the president's trade approach and emerging policy with regard to China. China and the United States have threatened to levy new tariffs on each other in an escalating trade dispute."
Trump Lobbied against Safety Sprinklers. Caroline Linton of CBS News: "The fire on the 50th floor New York City's Trump Tower that left 67-year-old Todd Brassner dead and six firefighters injured was the second fire in the building in 2018. President Trump's centerpiece Manhattan skyscraper opened in 1984, but does not have sprinklers on its residential floors, a measure required in new buildings since 1999. President Trump, then a private citizen and property developer, lobbied to try and prevent the mandate at the time.... Two civilians suffered minor injuries and a firefighter was hurt by debris in a fire on Jan. 8 on the top of the building. That blaze was sparked by an electrical issue, Mr. Trump's son, Eric, said at the time. Eric Trump said the fire had been in a cooling tower. [The FDNY commissioner] said in a press conference that the cause of Saturday's fire is still unclear."
Washington Post Editors: "The American people do not have a right to know all the details of what went on between Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford in their personal lives many years ago. They do have a right to know, however, whether their president is lying to them now, or if he has received what amounts to a large financial subsidy from a secret personal benefactor. Unless and until Mr. Trump directs his lawyer to identify the source of the $130,000, both of these sorry scenarios will remain within the realm of plausibility."
*****
Louisa Loveluck & Erin Cunningham of the Washington Post: "Syrian doctors and rescue workers said Sunday that scores of people had died in an apparent chemical attack on a besieged enclave near Damascus, as government forces escalated their offensive to recapture one of the last rebel strongholds near the capital. At least 40 people were killed in the attack in Douma in eastern Ghouta, about 12 miles from Damascus, according to the Syrian-American Medical Society..., a Washington-based nonprofit that supports health facilities in the area. The State Departmen said it was monitoring mass casualty reports, describing them as 'horrifying' and urging an immediate response from the international community.'" ...
... Kyle Balluck of the Hill: "The U.S. is calling on Russia to end its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad after dozens of people were killed in an alleged chemical attack on Saturday. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement..., 'The United States calls on Russia to end this unmitigated support immediately and work with the international community to prevent further, barbaric chemical weapons attacks.'..." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Who is running the State Department? Apparently Pompeo, since he's already been confirmed to another Cabinet-level position, can run it for quite a while, but is he?
... Kareem Shaheem of the Guardian: "Dozens of people have been killed in what local medics say was a toxic gas attack on the besieged town of Douma near Damascus. Videos and images showed bodies of dead children and other family members, some foaming at the mouth. Rescue workers said the attack led directly to the deaths of at least 42 people, with hundreds of injured showing symptoms they said were consistent with exposure to an organophosphorus compound." --safari
Louis Lucero & Jaclyn Peiser of the New York Times: "A 67-year-old man died after being injured in a fire at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday, the police said. The man was in an apartment on the 50th floor at the time of the fire, which was reported around 5:30 p.m., the police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His identity was not immediately released. Four firefighters sustained injuries that were not life-threatening, Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said at a news conference. He said the apartment, a large unit that was heavily furnished, was 'virtually entirely on fire.' Video footage showed flames bursting through broken windows.... More than 200 firefighters responded to the fire, the cause of which was unknown, the commissioner said." ...
... Noah Goldberg of the New York Daily News: "One person was critically injured in a fast-moving fire at Trump Tower in Midtown, authorities said. The FDNY arrived at the Fifth Ave. highrise just before 6 p.m. Twitter users posted pictures of flames shooting out of windows on the 50th floor. President Trump also took to Twitter with an update, 'Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!' Several firefighters suffered minor injures." (Also linked last evening.)
Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "Roger Stone, a longtime associate of ... Donald Trump, said he knew the date of upcoming WikiLeaks disclosures in October 2016, despite claiming on Friday in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper that he didn't.'I had no advanced notice of the content source or exact timing of the WikiLeaks disclosures including the allegedly hacked emails,' Stone said on CNN....On CNN, Stone, while discussing comments he had made claiming to have had dinner with Julian Assange in August 2016, also 'categorically' denied having advance knowledge of the contents of the hacked emails.Those comments stand in sharp contrast with ones he made on the October 2, 2016, episode of InfoWars' radio show, to discuss a tweet he had sent a day earlier that read, 'Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.' 'Now, an intermediary met with him (Assange) in London recently -- who is a friend of mine and a friend of his...," Stone said. 'I am assured that the motherlode is coming Wednesday.'... The emails were not released that Wednesday, October 5, but ... two days later, WikiLeaks began releasing the first installment of John Podesta's hacked emails."
Juan Cole: "Greg Jaffe at the Washington Post reports that Trump has reversed an Obama-era push to get the Central Intelligence Agency out of the business of assassinating people with drone strikes.... In the course of reviewing video of a drone strike, Trump noticed that the drone pilot held off hitting the suspected militant in his own home (which would have killed his family as well) and waited until he was some distance outside it until they assassinated him.... Trump asked, 'Why did you wait?'... [W]hen Trump came into office, I warned of psychopathocracy, the rule of persons without conscience, without empathy, without the milk of human kindness, without any appreciation for the rule of law. What Trump was asking for was the murder of children. He was actually, if the report is true, scolding the CIA for leaving the children alive rather than burned and dismembered by a rocket." --safari
** Everything Is Going So Smoothly. Ashley Parker, et al., of the Washington Post: Trump & John Kelly get into shouting matches. "The recurring and escalating clashes between the president and his chief of staff trace the downward arc of Kelly's eight months in the White House. Both his credibility and his influence have been severely diminished, administration officials said, a clear decline for the retired four-star Marine Corps general who arrived with a reputation for integrity and a mandate to bring order to a chaotic West Wing." Mrs. McC: This story is rather long & amusing, in a Michael-Wolffish way. There are so many things to despise about both of these guys that one hardly cares who "wins." At least some of the gladiators who fought to the death probably had character. ...
... Presidential* Review. The Washington Post is far more fiction than fact. Story after story is made up garbage - more like a poorly written novel than good reporting. Always quoting sources (not names), many of which don't exist. Story on John Kelly isn't true, just another hit job! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet this morning
... Benjamin Hart of New York: Kelly "badly damaged his own reputation with a series of comments and actions that seem to have revealed his true character. He made an extremely ignorant comment about the Civil War; blatantly lied about a congresswoman's past comments and refused to apologize; and badly bungled the departure of White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who was accused of domestic abuse, among other missteps.... The conception of Kelly as a serious moral counterbalance to his boss is long gone. But that doesn't mean his (probably) impending departure is good news."
Coral Davenport & Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "As ethical questions threaten the Environmental Protection Administrator, Scott Pruitt, President Trump has defended him with a persuasive conservative argument: Mr. Pruitt is doing a great job at what he was hired to do, roll back regulations. But legal experts and White House officials say that in Mr. Pruitt's haste to undo government rules and in his eagerness to hold high-profile political events promoting his agenda, he has often been less than rigorous in following important procedures, leading to poorly crafted legal efforts that risk being struck down in court. The result, they say, is that the rollbacks, intended to fulfill one of the president's central campaign pledges, may ultimately be undercut or reversed." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's because neither one of these science-denying jamokes has any idea what he's doing, & Pruitt, in a mini-version of Trump, "governs by press release," as one environmental activist said recently. ...
Rene Marsh, et al., of CNN: "EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is facing renewed questions about the size and cost of his 24-hour security detail, adding to a string of ethically questionable arrangements or actions on his part that have surfaced over the past year. Pruitt's security team currently consists of 19 agents and includes a fleet of at least 19 vehicles, a source with direct knowledge of Pruitt's security detail said. With the cost of maintenance, gas, and training for agents, that leaves the dollar amount for his round-the-clock security in the millions. The size of Pruitt's security is unprecedented." ...
... We're Going to Disneyland! Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "Scott Pruitt may have been spared in Friday evening's news dump, but the ethical questions threatening his role as Environmental Protection Agency administrator continue apace. Financial documents obtained by the Associated Press reveal that over the year that Pruitt has been on the job, the embattled EPA head has spent upwards of $3 million on his 20-member security detail -- a staggering figure that is reportedly more than three times the amount his predecessor shelled out for a part-time security team. The records also appear to confirm previous allegations that Pruitt had used multiple security agents for non-EPA trips, including a family vacation to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl football game." ...
... Presidential* Response. While Security spending was somewhat more than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at EPA. Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars. Rent was about market rate, travel expenses OK. Scott is doing a great job! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet last night
Elizabeth Shogren in Mother Jones: "National Park Service officials have deleted every mention of humans' role in causing climate change in drafts of a long-awaited report on sea level rise and storm surge, contradicting Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's vow to Congress that his department is not censoring science. The research for the first time projects the risks from rising seas and flooding at 118 coastal national park sites.... [T]he ... report is intended to inform officials and the public about how to protect park resources and visitors from climate change.... [According to] Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and dean of the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, 'To remove a very critical part of the scientific understanding is nothing short of political censorship and has no place in science,' he said. 'Censorship of this kind is something you'd see in Russia or some totalitarian regime. It has no place in America.'" --safari ...
Reuters: "The Keystone crude oil pipeline leak in November in rural South Dakota was nearly double the original estimate, making it one of the largest U.S. inland spills since 2010, a newspaper report on Saturday said. Robynn Tysver, a spokeswoman for Calgary-based TransCanada Corp, which owns the pipeline, told the Aberdeen American News some 9,700 barrels of oil leaked in the Nov. 16 spill, the South Dakota paper reported. The original estimate was 5,000 barrels." Mrs. McC: No doubt Scotty will get right on this. ...
... Fossil Fuel Fears. Juan Cole: "The aspiration for a 100% green electricity grid is no longer a dream. It is regularly being achieved in the real world for weeks or months on end.... In this past March, Portugal not only generated enough electricity from renewables to power the whole country for the whole month, it actually produced extra electricity this way.... Scotland, with over 5 million people, got 68.1 percent of its electricity from renewables last year. In 2016, the percentage of electricity from renewables was only 54%.... Scotland is now perhaps the world leader in renewables, and has innovated recently in offshore, in-the-sea wind turbines.... Costa Rica, a country of nearly 5 million, ran on renewables for 300 days of the past year. It has hydro and geothermal as well as having put in a lot of wind turbines. Costa Rica has a great deal of untapped solar potential, as well." --safari
More about Friends of Donald. Inae Oh: "... Donald Trump's favorite conspiracy theorist Alex Jones recently sat down with Ted Nugent -- the rock guitarist and NRA board member who was invited to the White House for a bizarre photo-op last year -- for a conversation on the 'true, America-hating' evil found in gun control advocates. The two are seen rabidly discussing the renewed, unprecedented calls for restricting the sales of firearms, when Nugent starts comparing Democrats to 'rabid coyotes' that deserve to be shot. 'There are rabid coyotes running around. You don't wait till you see one to go get your gun. Keep your gun handy, and every time you see one, you shoot one.'" Includes video. Mrs. McC: I don't know why remarks like this are legal. Nugent seems to be inciting mass murder.
Rebecca Morin of Politico (April 6): "The Department of Justice on Friday dismissed Rep. Devin Nunes' demand for an unredacted copy of the document that initiated the FBI's investigation of links between Russia and ... Donald Trump's campaign.... The Justice Department ... said it accommodated the committee in a 'manner consistent with relevant legal precedents' by providing members of the department and the FBI to review the FISA applications and renewals in camera."
Congressional Races
The No-Show Corral. Mother Jones: "The organizers of last month's March for Our Lives have taken their movement to town halls across the country and invited congressional lawmakers -- who have returned to their districts for a two-week recess -- to discuss action on gun control. According to the Town Hall Project, more than 130 of these meetings are taking place, with most of the events happening on Saturday. Though invited, no Republicans appeared at any town halls, and many of the forums featured empty chairs to symbolize their absences." [Emphasis mine] --safari
Ticking Time Bomb. Michael Savage of the Guardian: "An alarming projection produced by the House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world's wealth by 2030.... Since 2008, the wealth of the richest 1% has been growing at an average of 6% a year -- much faster than the 3% growth in wealth of the remaining 99% of the world's population. Should that continue, the top 1% would hold wealth equating to $305tn (£216.5tn) – up from $140tn today." --safari
Michael Kimmel of the Guardian: "[T]he fact that virtually every single violent extremist is male creates hardly a ripple.... I have interviewed over 100 current or former extremists, including Americanneo-Nazis and white supremacists, jihadists and Islamists in Canada and Great Britain, and anti-immigration skinheads in Europe, to understand how they experience masculinity on the extreme right. I heard many stories of what I came to call aggrieved entitlement: a gendered sense of entitlement thwarted by larger economic and political shifts, their ambitions choked, their masculinity lost.... It is this sense of victimhood -- that they are the new victims of the politically correct, multicultural society -- that lends a degree of righteousness to their political activities.... Just for a moment, then, let's pay attention to gender and see where it takes us." --safari
Way Beyond the Beltway
Shaun Walker of the Guardian: "Voting is under way in Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is seeking to win a third consecutive term. After running a campaign almost exclusively focused on the threat posed by migration, Orbán's Fidesz party is expected to win a majority in parliament. However, a late push for coordination among the opposition, as well a string of corruption scandals around the government has given Orbán's foes a glimmer of hope. Voter turnout in the first hours of voting was the highest since 1998." --safari ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If Orbán win, expect him to get a congratulatory call from the POTUS*.
Sam Cowie of the Guardian: "Brazil's former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has handed himself in to police after spending two nights at the metalworkers' union headquarters in São Paulo in defiance of an arrest warrant.... Although the 72-year-old will appeal the conviction and is unlikely to serve the whole [12-year] sentence, his imprisonment has for now ended his hopes of regaining the presidency in October's elections. A final decision on his eligibility will be made by the electoral court." --safari
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Reader Comments (21)
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I'm reposting this comment Akhilleus wrote late yesterday. Trump's tweet came before it was public knowledge that a resident of Trump Tower died in the blaze, tho Trump himself may have known. I checked Trump's Twitter feed this morning to see if he had some thoughts & prayers for the man's family. He didn't.
Akhilleus:
A deadly fire at the Trump mausoleum. One man dead, four firefighters hurt. What does the idiot carrot say?
"Fire out! Well built building!" In other words, aren't I great?
The building was built, in part, by immigrants he refused to pay and with the help of the mob.
Never has there been a more despicable, narcissistic, self-serving asshole in the White House. What a prick. "My building is great!" oh, and someone died, but so what?
Waiting for the tweet claiming that Hillary or Barrack tried to burn
down the trump dump, or maybe that will be on infowars or faux
news. I'll have to be sure to keep tuned in to both (ha!).
Seems that someone should know who resided on the 50th floor.
Unless it was one of those 96 Russian billionaires in hiding.
OK, can we translate Trump's behavior into medicine again? AK's comment (despicable, narcissistic, self-serving asshole ) is an excellent summary but also note that Trump has no problem killing children in drone attacks. Why? Because the reason there was a deadly fire was to show off Trump. The reason for drone attacks is to make Trump look tough. In other words all events that somehow involve him have only one purpose. Trump. In fact that is the primary purpose of human existence.
My frustration with all of this is that I can't exactly blame Trump. He has no control. He is seriously mentally ill. But to tell the truth AK, I do like asshole and prick.
In part, this is a refection of how difficult it is for humans to deal with mental illness.
@forrest morris: Wow, Forrest, you think of everything! However, the NY Daily News reports that the man killed was Todd Brassner, an art dealer.
The report also notes that Trump's "well-built" tower doesn't have sprinklers on its residential floors.
Also, Brassner had fallen behind on his mortgage payments, so no wonder Trump didn't send condolences (tho I'll admit Trump probably isn't the mortgagee).
Well, today's Maureen Dowd commentary in the NYT is quite eye-opening (at least to me about today's hookup behaviors!), but best of all...read the number one comment by Gemli. It's a beaut!
Looks like Frank Bruni has as much a crush on my boy Beto as I do. And looks like Beto O'Rourke may just unseat Cruz––Oh, please make it so! And @Akhilleus: Take note: Beto's older son is named Ulysses (O'Rourke was a literature major which to me is thrilling). Can the real deal in Texas become the real deal in the senate replacing the green eggs and ham strung "once I was great" guy who resembled Joe McCarthy early on but fizzled out midway in.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/opinion/sunday/ted-cruz-beto-orourke-texas.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-2&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article
@Forest: As soon as I heard about the fire, I thought some guy just got whacked. So turns out Brassner is an art dealer––BUT–-could that have been a ruse profession? Could Todd have been a secret agent working for the FBI while selling paintings on the sly? In the age of Trump everything is possible and anything goes up in flames at the end of the day.
Trump didn't write the Washington Post critique tweet. Capitalization is coherent throughout, and actually shows an adept use of punctuation. That's his oracle golf caddy, fo' sure.
Oh yeah, and don't expect any Trump condolences of the deceased tenant. Only losers die in fires. But if Drumpf had been in NY, he would've ran up to the 50th floor himself, thrown the man on his back, and ran him to the nearest hospital, with nary a singed hair on his coiffed combover (or, uh, comb-back-wraparound-and-glue).
@MAG: You're right. I love Gemli's comment.
As to Dowd's column, those experts on 20-somethings should widen their perspectives. Just last week I spoke to a woman acquaintance of a certain age who told me how this 70ish man, whom she had met thru an online dating service, had dumped on her & just then he had -- after a several-months' hiatus -- texted her for a dinner date. I told her to faggedaboudit; this guy was just not that into her, that she was attractive (true), blah-blah, & she could do better (who knows?).
Her "yeah-but" was that these guys have tens or hundreds of other options right there on their iPhones for the asking, so it's impossible to get anything like a "normal" commitment. I haven't tried online dating, & these experiences suggest to me it's a bad idea, even when the guy doesn't turn out to be a serial killer or Donald Trump.
The whole premise of dating services requires objectifying yourself (whatever your gender); that is, putting yourself out there as a "product" for strangers to pick over. There's a teevee ad for Match.com (or some other dating app) in which the closing line features an attractive young woman who says, "Come find me." I've seen the ad several times, & it makes me sad every time.
@MAG: Christiane Amanpour has a running CNN series in which she visits different countries examining their sexual patterns and practices. In Germany, for instance, there are young women who group together as a kind of sexual "Online hookup" where they connect with various and sundry, have sex, and move on to the next. When questioned whether they actually enjoy this kind of sex, they affirm enthusiastically. On a certain German public T.V. station they feature, once a week, a woman who holds sessions on sexual matters, has groups of immigrant males––the session I watched were Muslims––schooling them in the ways of basic sexual matters like having rubber vaginas and rubber penises in order to illustrate–-point being here is that these lads, given their religion, know little about the finer anatomical necessities. The other surprise for me was this program is assessable to anyone so a five year old could tune in and learn what a vibrator is for––"cool, mom, I'd like to have one of those." Forget having to tell your children about those birds and bees, they just turn on the tube and it's done for you–-with graphics and rubber duckies–-oops, sorry, organs and such.
To engage in a sexual act with someone you are not attracted to/or don't even like is subjecting yourself ––you become the slave, the victim as it were. That some find this acceptable is sad; that some find this kinky and pleasurable is a whole other bag of beans.
And of course Stormy had sex with the doofus with gratuitous rewards looming large or so she thought. Money talks and obviously it's messages make for easy pickins in the pussy-galore department.
Time for a Sunday sermon, which like many such will have the flavor of conspiracy.
I've been thinking about the rise of nationalistic fervor in Europe and here in our own heimat where the winning ticket is explicitly anti-immigrant.
(Ironic aside: While we western, largely Christian countries criticize Islamic nations for what they call their inhumane anti-Christian behaviors...but what the heck...)
So let's connect some dots.
In 2017 eight of every ten dollars of income went to the top one percent, and the lopsided pattern of wealth distribution is expected to continue, even grow. We know wealth inequality is massively destabilizing. Just ask the millions of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europeans who relocated to these blessed shores, when the planet housed many fewer billions lives that could be disrupted.
More recently, we could also query those affected by NAFTA, which while it has made some very rich has also made many more poorer here and in Mexico. One NAFTA effect was to force millions of brown-skinned people whose agrarian economy had been ruined by imported subsidized agricultural products (primarily corn) to El Norte, to seek a better life in the country that had impoverished them. In short, NAFTA did generate wealth, but that wealth's uneven distribution disrupted millions of lives, not only creating what the Right had called the immigration crisis but also by stripping away good paying manufacturing jobs here at home, contributing to the economic decline of America's middle class.
The result? A beleaguered American middle and lower-middle class with conveniently color-coded someones in their midst to blame. In short, a recipe for the Pretender's rise to high office.
Stated in summary, we have a ruling class whose accretion of power, ownership and influence and the massive disruptions that accumulation has caused have created the very conditions that make their campaign promises (anti-immigrant and in most respects heavily paranoid) attractive to so many.
We are the victims of a very sick and deeply systemic synergy, a feedback loop that creates a problem whose origins are rampant inequity and offers a nationalist, even fascistic solution, and I don't see much evidence that many pundits (no matter how clever their phrasing) have taken much notice.
Was thinking that Gemli could make a buck or two with a collection of Gemli comments, each with a short intro providing context.
Though my sampling is only intermittent, they do seem of a uniformly high quality, and like today's often very funny.
And I'm guessing Gemli could make the intros smile-worthy, too...
@Ken: Madeleine Albright addresses your concerns in today's NYT's–-titled: "Will We Stop Trump before it's too Late." She cites the countries whose nationalistic fervor has been growing stronger along with leaders who are becoming dictators. She says Fascism poses more of a serious threat than anytime since the end of WWII. And although she can't beat Gemli's way with words, she does a fine job of letting us know exactly what she thinks of Trump.
Sorry––here's the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/sunday/trump-fascism-madeleine-albright.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
@PD
Thanks. Read the Albright and agree with everything she said.
She fails however to identify the source of the growing discontent, which as I said I believe to be the power increasingly concentrated in few hands. (see Safari's "Guardian" link above and note that averages do not begin to paint how grim the story is for the billions at the bottom of the wealth pyramid, who are now the hordes on the move like our own Okies during the Great Depression and who constitute the "unwelcomes" in Europe and elsewhere.)
Unless we identify the cause of current unrest, we have no hope of finding a solution, and since the oligarchs who are daily getting oligarchier are themselves the cause, they are doing all they can to ensure that cause remains hidden.
Hence all the finger-pointing and distractions, the rise of faux "nationalism" being only one. In our case, they obviously care so little about our country and the dream of democracy it has presented to the world for centuries now, they are hellbent on wrecking it.
As you can tell, I'm in a mood.
@Ken Winkes: I tend to agree with your Sunday sermon. It's a psychological thing, especially in the U.S.: for a few generations, people -- generally speaking -- could count on their own situations improving & on their children's prospects improving even more. Even selfish people didn't have to think too hard about being selfish, because their economic prospects looked good in spite of themselves.
For white people especially & for white men especially specially, that has changed. Not only have they lost their "special status" of being the "better sort of people," their futures began to look bleak. They couldn't afford to send their kids to college as Republican legislatures especially reduced funding for land-grant colleges, & at the same time, manufacturing jobs dried up, making higher education even more important. The Trumpbots, et al., didn't have to look far to find the cause of their "bad luck" -- must be "those people."
The irony, of course, is that the opposite is true: the more people we have able to join a robust work force, the better off the economy -- all things being equal. But as you write, all things aren't equal. Republicans have managed to collapse progressive taxation, so the rich got richer & the poor got poorer. Ain't we got fun.
All this is pretty obvious to progressives; I have to hand it to Republicans for their mastery of hoodwinking the dimwits with "traditional values" & "Christian nation" crap.
Thanks, Bea
Only one addendum to my last post.
Maybe not "faux nationalism" but better "neo-natonalism," or nationalism concocted for the 21st century, ala the neo-liberalism which cherry-picks only those aspects of liberalism that support unrestrained capitalism and which led in a pretty straight line to our present sorry state.
Thought the doctors (and patients) among you might be interested in this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/health/health-care-mergers-doctors.html?
And some of what my family practice doc son had to say about it this AM.
"Relationships (face to face, trustbuilding) are under seige throughout our society. As part of that process, corporations are using technology to insert themselves into the profitable portions of human-human interactions.*
"“The quality of care that you see at a retail clinic is equal or superior to what we see in a doctor’s office or emergency department,” said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School, who has researched the retail clinics. “And while there is a worry that they will prescribe antibiotics to everybody, we see equal rates occurring between the clinics and doctor’s offices."....can be translated as, some doctors do a shitty job, even in regular clinics. The danger to your profession and your society of being an incompetent professional is real (i.e. bad doctors make it harder on non-bad ones and they undermine the potential benefits provided by the profession).'"
*Ken again: And the extraordinary growth and success of internet platforms like Facebook, Twitter and even RC, which is brought to us by the folks and algorithms of Squarespace, whoever, whatever and wherever they are.
The editors at Elsevier, Science, Nature, etc. should just submit all newly submitted climate-related research for Zinke's and Pruitt's final approval. The consortium of editors should then tally federal tax dollars appropriated for collecting and analyzing climate data that Zinke and Pruitt deem worthless because of its contradictory policy implications, and attribute the waste to the Department of the Interior and EPA's censorship; the amount that the administration is spending on denial. Attribute some wasted research dollar values to these top censors; (a figure that should be added to the economic and environmental cost of maintaining the status quo by any means necessary). This should help Scotty with his justification for a security detail.
Actions, not words.
A man died and firefighters were injured because Trump cares more about money than safety and people's lives. Now, it's not like sprinklers are some far-fetched system costing outrageous amounts of money that will never be used. It's not as if he declined to install an anti-anthrax system as an unnecessary expense. Buildings catch fire. Sprinklers work. But not for Trump. He worked hard to chisel everyone connected with his mausoleum and he wasn't, by god, gonna cut into his profit margin for some lousy sprinklers.
So that's why the guy died.
Why hasn't Trump issued the slightest tweetie saying he was sorry about this death in his own building? Because Confederates don't apologize. Ever. For any reason. Trump especially never apologizes. And that's how it would appear to the Orange Monster if he made even the briefest reference to the dead man: an apology, which would mean he is in the wrong. He couldn't even be bothered with the old standby "thoughts and prayers". Oh, wait. That's reserved for innocent victims of the NRA.
Plus, any mention of the name or reference to the death might, in Trump's view, put him on the line for damages. I mean, just imagine if the situation were reversed. If someone in Trump's family died in a high rise because the owner was a greedy, chiseling cheapskate who refused to put in the most basic of safety systems, he'd bring a dozen suits against that owner, his company, all his kids, and the guy's fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers, so he's not gonna give anyone of standing the time of day.
He might make all sorts of representations about what a great person he is, but his actions count for a lot more than his mealy-mouthed expressions of self veneration ("Well built building!!")
He truly is a reprehensible snake. He can't even fake being a decent human being.
So the little dictator is going to extract a "big price" from Assad and Putin?
Okay. We'll see. Maybe he'll bomb an airbase, but he's already said he wants nothing more than to get the hell out of Syria so Putin and Assad can assault and murder at will.
If I had a nickel for every blustering threat from this wimp that was shortly walked back or simply forgotten about, I could afford to buy my wife some of Ivanka's thousand dollar clothing items manufactured by slave labor in India, Bangladesh, and China.
Maybe he can send Scott Pruitt to Syria as a kind of exchange administrator. Can you imagine the size of the security detail he'd demand there? Ten thousand armed troops to guard one little imbecile. Now THAT would be a big price.