Surfing the Right-Wing Air Waves
For all you devotees of Fox
I’d rather take advice from jocks.
Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity:
All titans of inanity.
Take the case of Bill O’Reilly.
Palin should have been so wily.
Blame it all on Roger Ailes.
In the end, the truth won’t fail.
I will be on vacation for the next two weeks, so posting will be intermittent at best.
One of Trump’s favorite lines of argument during Sunday’s debate was to attack Clinton for being in power for 30 years, but not doing anything to end crime, revitalize our inner cities, etc. The implicit contrast was with himself, the man of action, who can build tall buildings at a single bound.
Of course, our system is replete with checks and balances, so a single senator, to say nothing of the First Lady, can’t accomplish much by herself. In order to meet the standard Trump set for her, she would have to wear a cape instead of a pantsuit.
Trump clearly believes that he can run the federal government with the same sense of dynamism that he employs in his businesses. He can’t, so the question is, what then? How does a would-be strong man behave when he is ensnared by law and the separation of powers? Does he acknowledge defeat and the need for compromise, or does he simply ignore the law and dare anyone to stop him?
Anyone who has watched the man for the last 15 months knows the answer to those questions. Trump simply can’t abide the thought of being a loser. He would rather blow up the world than deal with failure.
The GOP Speaker Paul Ryan
Sees his hopes of big changes are dyin’.
He can’t find a way
To support Trump today.
Lots of others will just keep on tryin’.
You can make a case for Edward Snowden, even though I’m not completely convinced by it. I would agree with him that revealing the details of the domestic surveillance program sparked an important and necessary debate, and that the debate could not have occurred without his leaks. My issue with him is that some of his leaks about intelligence activities with impacts overseas damaged our national security and embarrassed our government; I can’t see anything positive about those leaks. The bottom line is that I would be willing to listen to a whistleblower defense from him if he came home. Of course, that isn’t up to me.
I feel no such ambivalence about Julian Assange, who, to use Clinton’s words, is his very own basket of deplorables. He promises to afflict the powerful, but focuses his attention on the West, and not Russia or China. He promises transparency and accountability, but runs his organization as a personal fiefdom. His hacking activities don’t just impact governments; he has no respect for the privacy of private individuals. And that doesn’t even include his little legal problem in Sweden.
The bottom line with Assange is that he shares an agenda with Putin; he hates the United States and wants to diminish its power throughout the world. As a result, it is fair to call him Putin’s stooge.
It was, to be sure, a vintage Trump performance. He stomped and sniffled around the stage like an enraged gorilla with a cold. He attacked the moderators. He lied, constantly. He promised to politicize the judicial system. He dissed his running mate. He gave long, rambling, stream of consciousness answers that made no sense. He called the benighted people of Aleppo terrorists. He cozied up to Putin, as usual. And, of course, he juxtaposed his “locker room talk” with “political correctness,” and went after Bill Clinton, who wasn’t the Clinton on the stage.
This would have been a great approach prior to a primary, because it undoubtedly fired up the base; I’m sure the Breitbart crowd thinks he won. Unfortunately for him, his issues aren’t with his base; they are with moderate, and largely Republican, women. Motivating the base by itself will not even come close to getting him elected.
What this debate showed, above all, is that Trump only operates at one speed; when he is challenged, he gets angry and escalates. If we elect him, he will be doubling down with our liberties, our property, and our lives. Putin and Xi would love that, but it isn’t a good bet for us.
The town hall format has some significant advantages and disadvantages for Trump. It is unlikely that the citizen questioners will be given the right to cross-examine him, and fact checking will be harder; that will help him. On the other hand, the candidates will be expected to show some empathy for the questioners, and Trump is incapable of doing that, because, in his eyes, everything is about him.
My advice to Clinton is simple: only make personal attacks as counterpunches; go high wherever possible; don’t rely on the moderators to do any fact checking; be clear and firm when you’re on defense; and let him hang himself.
Donald Trump basically lies every time his lips move. It’s who he is; he can’t help it. His fondness for coarse language is well-known; he justifies it by juxtaposing vulgarity with “political correctness.” His misogynist tendencies and his blatant infidelities are a matter of public record. His bigotry is the centerpiece of his campaign. He admires foreign strong men, advocates violating international law and the Constitution, and supports a neocolonialist foreign policy. His tax plan is a huge giveaway to rich people who are already sitting on mountains of cash. His protectionism and his deficits would lead to a sharp recession. He thinks climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese in order to take away American manufacturing jobs. And, of course, he’s the king of the birthers.
Apparently, that amazingly undistinguished record wasn’t enough to cost him the endorsement of most of the Republican leadership, but an eleven year old tape may do the trick.
I’m at a loss to explain it. To me, the only people who should logically even consider voting for the man are the truly desperate, the deluded, and white nationalists. Everyone else is gambling his life, liberty, and property for. . . what?
My wife thinks it is his use of the p-word that set this episode apart from the rest. Maybe she’s right, or maybe it was a pretext for people already planning to jump ship, or maybe it was just the final straw on the camel’s back. One thing is for sure: if the establishment truly deserts him en masse, the likelihood of a split in the GOP after November just increased dramatically.
Civil war immediately breaks out in the Republican Party. Trump supporters blame the establishment for his defeat; the establishment, of course, blames him and his white nationalist supporters.
Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan work for party unity by engaging in the same kind of obstructionism that worked so well from 2009 to 2010. In McConnell’s case, it is because he loves power; for Ryan, it is all about keeping reactionary voters on board to bring about his revolution. Will they succeed? Probably, but not certainly.
Two things happen:
Trump argues that his success in gaming the system proves that he knows where the loopholes are and how to fix them. I’ll grant him his familiarity with the tax code, but where is his plan to deal with the loopholes? His tax proposals are nothing but a windfall for people like himself.
China and Russia have a very complex, layered relationship. On the positive side, they resolved their boundary issue a few years ago, the PRC might not even exist but for Soviet assistance after the end of World War II, and, above all, they have a common enemy: the US. On the negative side: there is plenty of racism at play, particularly on the Russian side; the Russians were enthusiastic imperialists in China at the end of the 19th Century; the relationship between the two countries was extremely frosty during the 1960’s; and the growing imbalance of power between the two does not bode well for the future.
As China rises, it will increasingly threaten to turn parts of Siberia into an economic colony, but Russia as a whole is much too large to be a vassal state. It is likely, in the long run, that the Russians will view the Chinese as a greater threat than the US.
Back to the USSR
Flew into Damascus just the other day.
Russian power everywhere
Saw the bodies piled up along the way.
And, you know, I didn’t care.
We’re back to the USSR.
You don’t know how lucky you are, boys.
Back to the USSR.
My Ukraine boys really knocked them out.
They left the West behind.
And cyberspies make me sing and shout.
Assange is always on my mind.
Show me how you’re wiping out your foes today.
Pretend we’re killing terrorists.
Obama’s throwing mud at me most every day
But none of it can really stick.
We’re back to the USSR.
You don’t know how lucky you are, boys.
Back to the USSR.
Parody of “Back in the USSR” by Lennon/McCartney.
Do you remember when Mitt Romney was ripping the 47 percent of Americans who weren’t paying anything in federal income taxes? Who would have imagined that the GOP would nominate one of them in 2016?
The Chinese have traditionally divided the outside world into two parts: vassal states and barbarians. India doesn’t fit in that narrative; like China, it is a great civilization with an enormous population that suffered the yoke of colonialism and has nuclear weapons. It actually exported part of its culture (Buddhism) to China, rather than the other way around. The two differ, however, in that the impacts of colonialism were more widespread in India, India is far more chaotic and democratic than China, and the Indian economy is based on agriculture and services, not manufacturing.
Analogies are never perfect, but I think it would be fair to say that the relationship between China and India resembles in some respects the relationship between Germany and Italy. Geographically, India looks a lot like a much larger version of Italy: a peninsula with mountains protecting its northern border.
The rise of China, and its increasing assertiveness abroad, has inevitably led to a closer connection between the US and India. If the Chinese blunder their way into encirclement, India (with some reluctance) will be the key player. China and India may well be the most important big power rivalry in the 21st Century.
The great would-be emperor Xi.
The master of all that he sees.
He’s the man of the hour.
He wants to keep power.
He won’t give it up easily.