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Bob, this is a great piece.
My wife and I were deconstructing this very subject tonight and the results were extraordinary. “[Cheeto Don’s] power will not be questioned.” What a crock, great comedy.
Miller is yesterday’s lettuce…a goner. In Hitler’s day the institutions were weak, their understanding and acceptance of what a Fourth Estate might be able to achieve was highly controlled, and naive, and strangely enough, very successful. But not today.
In 2017 USA, Orange Small Hands is fucked, as well as towel boy Miller. This poor sap Miller should really quit while he’s still trolling the dumpster from the top side. The American Fourth Estate is a powerful shadow branch of gov’t and Miller has set himself up as the fall clown. He is a sad sack. Done. Put a fork in his bald Nazi head.
Next idiot, please. And BTW, I would like a dance card, if possible, of those Republicans who will be falling on their swords to appease the masses through 2018. Thanks.
Michael A.
I, for one, don’t see a lot of genuine comparison between Hitler and Sideshow Don, which is, I suppose, the reason I find this all so comical. Other than the outright paganism of Bannon, the whole administration is right out of central casting of a not-ready-for-prime-time production of Blazing Saddles. Hitler was an evil mastermind that had a vision of where he wanted to go, and how to get there; these yahoos haven’t figured out the light switches.
I’m also told that fascism sneaks up on you and you don’t realize it until it’s too late. But I’m here to tell you, it’s happening, but it’s coming from elsewhere, because this crew couldn’t sneak up on a rock. Besides; sneaking isn’t this bombastic boob’s style, as witnessed by his daily TV coverage of signing the Executive Order du jour wrapped in a Mar-A-Lago menu cover. (“Hey, look what I can do.”)
No, if I had to describe the new President in a single word, it would be *shallow*, as in a gold-plated kiddie pool.
Popcorn it is.
From the horse’s mouth, or maybe his ass… http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/-what-stephen-miller-said-should-worry-everyone-875968067895
I suffered through the entire Miller interview on Meet The Press and it was clear to me the Miller rant about the presidency was in the context of the President’s powers under the Constitution and particular statutes to control the borders and immigration, not a blanket Sieg Heil!
Even Alan Dershowizc has told NPR “I don’t think the ban is unconstitutional as it affects a family in Yemen who has had no contact with the United States and simply applies for a tourist visa to come see the Statue of Liberty. I’d love to see them come, but they have no constitutional or – property or other cognizable right. And so I think the court made a mistake by considering those cases together with people who have green cards and people who have legitimate visas. And so I do think that if the Trump administration appealed it ultimately to the Supreme Court, they’d win a partial victory.”
The only actual fascists in evidence seem to be the Blackshirts dancing at their UC Berkeley Crystal Night gala celebration unrestrained by campus or city police, and our very own Gestapo that is responsible for multiple anonymous and unverifyable leaks to the likes of the WaPo and NY Times. At least UC refunded the thousands of bucks they extorted out of the campus GOP for security that didn’t actually protect anyone because of the unrepentant microaggressions of a very gay Brit humorist with black significant others who, like his comedic parents, Lenny Bruce, Mort Saul and Ann Coulter, likes to provoke easily offended snowflakes and is very good at it.
I watch Morning Joe every evening (via a Roku channel) and I’ve been unimpressed for a very long time by Joe S. warning Trump that he can’t criticize the intelligence community because they’ll leak you to a standstill, which sounds to me like any number of totalitarian secret police/intelligence units. For all the cheering from the “Progressives” happy someone (ANYONE!) is cutting Trump down to size, that really is how police states operate until they are in complete control.
DiFi has been sounding an alarm that Trump has four empty seats on the 9th Circuit to fill that, thanks to Harry Reid, can be confirmed just like DeVos was. We live in interesting times.
Perhaps some of our friends on the right would care to learn what, exactly and currently, the process is for immigrating to the United States? They might be surprised to learn that “extreme” vetting is already the procedure. I’m not sure what further steps could be taken, outside of maybe blindfolding them and spinning them around til they lost their sense of direction.
And the majority of refugees want to go back home; when we’re done bombing it, that is.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2017/01/26/extreme-vetting-refugee-process/
By the way; big side note: refugees don’t pick which country they want to go to. It’s a random choice.
“They might be surprised to learn that “extreme” vetting is already the procedure.”
You might be surprised to learn that what the election winners were selling was a pause to evaluate just what the current procedures are and how they match the current reality in the Obama 7 states with significant terrorist activity.
No, I didn’t vote Trump and have never been a Republican.
I suppose that makes sense; it just looks a bit strange for the President of the United States to say to the world, “Hold everything while I catch up.” Not being a Republican, surely you can agree that this is the most ill-prepared President to ever take office?
Realistically, what odds do you give our new leader of surviving the most cutthroat place, and profession, on Earth?
“I suppose that makes sense; it just looks a bit strange for the President of the United States to say to the world, “Hold everything while I catch up.””
That’s a straw man of your construction; It wasn’t hold everything, it was hold travel by people from the seven states the previous administration and Congress flagged as terrorist hotbeds while his administration’s appointees reviewed the procedures.
What’s wrong with that?
I suspect your beef with Trump isn’t about qualifications, it’s about what the Trump administration will do to the last president’s legacy. Qualifications were settled by the Electoral College, lobbied heavily by the left wanting the result from November nullified, only to have Clinton slide further back, albeit a trivial amount.
Stronzo,
If you haven’t figure it out yet, Greg is the most adamantly conservative person you’ll ever meet that claims to be otherwise. If you go back through the archives of this blog, you’ll find quote after monotonous quote of his claiming no past, present, or future connection with the Republican party, yet his every post is like Kellyanne Conjob on crack.
Good luck having a meaningful dialogue with someone ho denies his own loyalties. It’s a ruse we all have recognize here for quite some time; long, drawn-out explanations, straight from right wing websites, and at the end, a disclaimer that he’s never told the truth.
On a positive note: he helped us become immune to *alternative truth* way before Trump ever entered the stage.
Chris, by your own stark admissions you’ve never understood people who don’t agree with you politically. You might try reading Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions” or, from a hard left point of view, Lakoff’s “Moral Politics: How [left-]Liberals and Conservatives Think”.
I came to my small l libertarian leanings after being forced to read such subversive materials as Locke’s 2nd Treatise on Government, various books by Mellville, some Marx (not Groucho) and, don’t forget, Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies.
Virginia Postrel, a longtime Reason editor, recycled that Popper title as the Future and Its Enemies.
Current leftist rantings seem to include a very loose standard for calling people liars, a standard that does not require any evidence besides their imagination, or perhaps lack of imagination, like the Stalinists who decided political opponents were mentally ill because only the insane would oppose the workers paradise the USSR was building.
Is that really that hard to imagine in today’s US and California politics?
I salute you and your ability to recall your extensive bibliography. As I recall a child once saying on an Art Linkletter show, (Kids say the darndest things), decades ago, “My memory is that thing I forget with.”
I do have a difficult time squaring many of your past defenses of Republican actions with the words of Locke, but politics is a purely subjective field, so I can’t fault you for reading into what he said a completely different meaning.
And if his own party, the press, over half of the voters, a large group of psychiatrists, and leaders and citizens of the world, didn’t view him as at least a bubble off, I might oppose a “Stalinist” opinion of Trump’s mental stability. But, in the final analysis; he’s a fucking nutjob, no matter what your reading history suggests.
Why is THAT so difficult for you to imagine in today’s US and California politics?
Chris, it’s much easier to hallucinate something than it is to substantiate it. In the case of your “fucking nutjob” claim, let’s visit the opinion of the author of the definitions of the “fucking nutjob” followed by doctors in the USA as published in the NY Times Letters yesterday:
“Fevered media speculation about Donald Trump’s psychological motivations and psychiatric diagnosis has recently encouraged mental health professionals to disregard the usual ethical constraints against diagnosing public figures at a distance. They have sponsored several petitions and a Feb. 14 letter to The New York Times suggesting that Mr. Trump is incapable, on psychiatric grounds, of serving as president.
Most amateur diagnosticians have mislabeled President Trump with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. I wrote the criteria that define this disorder, and Mr. Trump doesn’t meet them. He may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder.
Mr. Trump causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy. It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither)”.
Truncated but not otherwise edited.
I would ask the mutual friends of RL to inform him why they thought Trump was the perfect asshole to break up the Washington DC mutual admiration society, but to answer a question recently posed by The Union publisher, they’ve probably lost too many friends over it already to come out further. The “Progressive left”, including some of the most hateful bigots in the country, is flailing with their own version of revenge.
I’m not a psychiatrist, nor have I ever been within 100 miles of Charles Manson, but trust me, he’s fucking crazy.
You might want to step back from your pseudo-clinic analysis now and then and see the forest.
” You might want to step back from your pseudo-clinic analysis now and then and see the forest.”
Chris, that wasn’t me playing a shrink on the internet, that was ALLEN FRANCES of Coronado, Calif., ‘professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical College, was chairman of the task force that wrote the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (D.S.M.-IV).”
Take your insults to the NY Times who published his letter on the 14th.
Greg,
I agree with you that Trump does not seem to suffer from his horrible malignant narcissism, at least overtly, so if that means he cannot be diagnosed as clinically mentally ill, so be it.
His bizarre behavior is still completely unacceptable for him to continue to be the POTUS, and so right now the main goal for the vast majority of intelligent and caring citizens of every political stripe in the United States, Todd Juvinall notwithstanding, is to get him the hell clear of the nuclear football.
Once that easy goal has been achieved, only then we can start to deal with how a real US federal gov’t should operate on the North American continent in the 21st century. A Pence presidency will be just fine, and you will still get your Jeffersonian SCOTUS appointments.
I look forward to that debate once the immediate emergency of Trump in power has been successfully remediated. And please don’t recycle your “we live in interesting times,” or that the Electoral College has made it’s constitutional decision so we have to honor it.
Bad things happen when bad systems go haywire, so then those systems change. That’s what’s happening here.
Michael A.
Far be it from me to interrupt this ongoing dance between you two. I’ve given up trying to communicate rationally with conservatives (or whatever hybrid you’re channeling today, Greg) and progressives. In the last week I’ve seen more batshit craziness flying from both camps to seriously consider investing in guano futures. Fake stories from websites and blogs that appear and disappear and get reposted without any consideration for the truth. I call them on it and get chastised for muddying the waters with “facts.”
Trump isn’t stupid. He’s just a swaggering brute who embodies all the worst traits of capitalism. He’s doing what comes natural. The progressives have been dismantling America brick by brick. Trump is using a sledgehammer.
It’s the “creative destruction” they see as an opportunity to rebuild on the ashes of the old ways. Empathy is for sissies. Let the big dog eat.
And this little toad Miller is more than happy to go out and extol the virtues of his hero and flog the evil press and the disloyal judges. I don’t feel a bit bad about showing him for what he is.
The progs just want us to be one big happy borderless family, where everyone votes for the check they’ll get from the government. They call it sustainable, but it ain’t no way.
You boys fight it out among yourselves. I’ll keep pounding on this sad broken system. It might not do any good, but at least I’ll go to my grave knowing I at least stood up and said something.
“Far be it from me to interrupt this ongoing dance between you two. I’ve given up trying to communicate rationally with conservatives (or whatever hybrid you’re channeling today, Greg) and progressives.”
RL, please, when and where you think I’ve been “channeling” some hybrid conservatism that changes from day to day, let me know. Most of the libertarians I’ve run across, especially in the ’80’s, were pretty distinct from “conservatives”… it just tends to be the emotional hard left (like that old friend of yours here throwing rhetorical punches without merit). And, when I those rhetorical punches thrown at me in public on your blog and elsewhere, are without basis, I point that out.
A decisive margin for Trump came from people who wanted him for his promised SCOTUS nominees, here’s something for you to be happy about, if you think NPR’s Fresh Air isn’t working for those Nazis that are springing up everywhere:
“Jeffrey Rosen, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let’s start with Neil Gorsuch. How would you summarize Neil Gorsuch’s judicial philosophy?
JEFFREY ROSEN: Neil Gorsuch calls himself an originalist and a textualist. He defines that as a judge who separates his political from his constitutional preferences. But Judge Gorsuch is also more of a Jeffersonian than a Hamiltonian. He believes in strictly construing limits on federal and presidential power in order to protect liberty.
Justice Scalia was more of a Hamiltonian. He believed in a broad national government and judicial deference to its power to make regulations. So for those reasons, Judge Gorsuch is more likely than Justice Scalia would have been to enforce limitations on the regulatory state, to require that executive agencies go through proper procedures before passing regulations, and he might even be more likely than Justice Scalia would have been to question executive orders issued by President Trump himself.”
If you aren’t a regular listener and missed it, read it here and rest a bit easier. All signs seem to be pointing to Gorsuch being confirmed, the only question is whether or not Schumer drives more swing voters to GOP candidates in 2018. If it drives a few more Jeffersonian textualists more dubious of the regulatory state, all the better.
http://www.npr.org/2017/02/01/512851970/if-confirmed-would-neil-gorsuch-rule-contrary-to-trumps-policies
While I enjoy your work, RL, I don’t think ‘toons by anyone do a great job of rationally making a a point.
Supreme court nominees always end up being a crap shoot. Once they don the black robe they are the law, period. I have no problem with Trump’s choice, although I was rooting for Judge Judy.
I am well aware of the limitations of my craft. It appeals to the psyche on a different level than journalism. It’s a way to channel people’s frustration, in many ways like throwing a rock through the window of a bank or the DMV. I’ll muddle along, thank you.
Interesting response, Greg; I suggest you take a step back, so you can see the forest for the trees, and you counter by describing a leaf.
Me thinks you’re missing the point; Sideshow Don is frickin’ looney toons, and not only do most people see it; you’re starting to sound like his personal Bagdad Bob.
I am gobsmacked by how much the illiberal McCarthyite Right in the ’50’s is repeated by the intolerant so-called Progressive Left of today. Black bloc are the new Brownshirts.
“gobsmacked”
Wow, you are such a hep dude.
And, even for you, that’s a bit bizarre; comparing the perpetrators of the communist witch hunt of the 50’s to the potential victims of today’s government overreach. There’s no doubt in my mind that you would have been 100% behind McCarthy, as you always take the side of the conservative, regardless of their position, and the more radical their actions, the more vociferous is your defense of their position and your attack on normal citizens.
Admit it: you’re a bot, incapable of independent thought.
A: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE!
YOU VACUOUS STUFFY-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!
M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!
A: OH! Oh! I’m sorry! This is abuse!
Chris, gobsmacked has, I think, been understood on the west coast since the mid ’80’s, if it’s trendy in Portland among your type I’ll be happy to avoid it.
Readers who don’t know you might be entertained with the fact we’ve never met, you can’t find any Republican to say they think I’m GOP and I think it was over at Rebane’s blog last Summer that I declared the only GOP presidential wannabees I would want to vote for were John Kasich Pres and Rand Paul, VP…
and Stephen Frisch chimed in to agree.
If any Conservative wants to stand up and claim me as a Conservative, I’ll be happy to disabuse (look it up, Chris) them of the notion.
I was heartened one of the few Senate REP who is almost LIB, Rand Paul did endorse Gorsuch as a justice that he could have nominated. So far, the progressives protesting with pitchforks looking to stop the GOP have failed at every point that mattered; the five stages of grief may be denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance; don’t be stuck in anger too long; flyover country is already reminded that doing the same thing over and over might not be an indicator of sanity.
The Gorsuch confirmation and appointment may well generate enough angst to test the emergency political spillway, as will a science advisor such as Princeton’s Happer or Yale’s Gelernter.
I am no person of note, but we have met. I seem to remember you as about 5′ 9 or 10″, dark hair, slight build, bit of a swayback, and slightly bow-legged or pidgeon-toed. Also, somewhat of a smart-ass back then. Mediocre mind, body, and talent. (I’m talking over 40 years ago.)
“I am no person of note”
More gobsmacking, but it fits. You have been taught well on the playgrounds of the local high school.
As far as I can remember the first time I saw Grass Valley and Nevada City was when the Grass Valley Group paid for a three day visit for an interview. Thank Zarquon we didn’t get along from the get-go, total mismatch of vocabulary and vision. Better match was found a few months later when my resume made the cut from a foot high pile of resumes at a small US Robotics office.
I think it’s a good bet you owe me, Earl and whoever you thought I was a big apology. That said, I am happy you finally managed to say something true and unguarded, revealing your problems, motivations and your character to all. Thanks, Chris. Bravo!
Now there’s the pompous ass we’ve all come to know and love.
I’ve had my days of glory, but unlike you, Greg, I try to be humble whenever possible. You, on the other hand seem to feel that your only redeemable quality is your bona fides. That’s sad.
But, even then, you’ll have to do better than your two degrees and 3 inventions to impress me. You see, I come from a family of electrical engineers, (Bell Labs, R&D Fairchilds, Navy Laser Lab, etc.), musicians, artists, authors, explorers, politicians, architects, veterans, and everyday plain folks who don’t cotton to stuffed shirts like yourself. So, get a grip; of the 473,000 items that come up when one types in your name, you aren’t mentioned anywhere. Which makes you, (if you are not humble), truly, a legend in your own mind.
“Be prepared to hold your liquor, pretty well,
Don’t write naughty words on walls if you can’t spell.”
Tom Lehrer might have been writing about you, Chris, and you might add your entire extended family to your list of needed apologies.
“But, even then, you’ll have to do better than your two degrees and 3 inventions to impress me.”
I have no need to impress you, Chris.. At this point, I really don’t care what you think of me, I just want to make sure a disinterested but competent observer would understand your malicious intent and reckless disregard for facts.
I am familiar with the rhetorical device you’re using… make an unfounded claim easily refuted with facts, you make a straw man argument that would be even easier to refute except you’d use that to make even bigger straw men to try to further damage reputations, at least among casual readers who are predisposed to believing you.
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals could be marketed as Aristotle and Machiavelli for Dummies, but it’s much easier to launch into a Clintonian Politics of Personal Destruction if you know why you know why you are attacking someone’s reputation.
Goodbye Kellyanne. Don’t forget to write. (I’m sure there will be a book soon…) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/15/morning-joe-has-blacklisted-kellyanne-conway-and-thats-not-all/?utm_term=.eb66897c4079
Bob,
You read my mind.
As I watched him I thought how perfect Stephen Miller would look in a Schirmmütze!
Oh he’s back in the news.
Central casting for a film about the Third Reich.
Wanted: Youthful, sadistic looking Tim Roth type to play young Joseph Goebbels.
I shoulda worked in pictures.
Wow!
Oh for goodness sake George, put on your big boy pants. Are you going to be clutching pearls throughout this process of destroying the Orange Small Hands presidency? Why is it that conservatarians seem to have such a poor sense of humor? Let’s have coffee, I can help.
I encourage everyone who reads this blog to immediately head over to billmaher.com and watch his New Rules piece from last night. I know that Republicans, “conservatarians,” and certain L(l)ibertarians, among others, struggle to comprehend why the Trump presidency is perceived as being so vile by those with whom they share no political understanding. Maher will ‘splain it for you; I am giving you the best parts here in textual form. Suffice to say, we think you are traitors to our country and we don’t countenance treason.
Part 1:
“New Rule, someone has to tell me what’s magic about a capital ‘R’, the kind that goes after your name if you’re a Republican, because if you have one of those you can get away with pretty much anything when it comes to selling out, cursing out, or compromising your own country…[Trump has] compared our intelligence agencies to Nazis. He said McCain, who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison, wasn’t a war hero because ‘I like people who weren’t captured.’ I gotta say to all you flag-waving right-wingers who always say ‘I’m not just gonna stand here and let you run down America,’ you’re standing there and letting Trump run down America’…[President George W. Bush] sat, frozen, for seven minutes, after being told the words, ‘the country is under attack.’ And Republicans defended that. And we all just accept this. America is the Republican Party’s bitch, and they can criticize and betray her, but you can’t. Even though Obama spent two terms talking up the troops, talking up the country, how much he loved it, how in no other country is my story even possible, didn’t matter, conservatives all nodded when Rudy Giuliani said ‘I do not believe that President Obama loves America’…To paraphrase Donald Trump, I like mayors who don’t let towers collapse.”
Part 2:
“A few weeks ago an old, but very smoking gun, emerged from the Nixon era, when it came out that in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson was trying to end the war in Vietnam, candidate Richard Nixon was actively, purposefully undermining the peace talks because he wanted the war to go on so he could have it as an election issue. You would think that the America First crowd would find that a bridge too far – fuck no. Dick Cheney once outed a CIA agent to say ‘fuck you’ to her husband. Reagan sold weapons to Iran, the country they all want to bomb now in brazen defiance of American law, and instead of being impeached he was elevated to sainthood, and now rides horses in heaven with Jesus. Why do Republicans get away with this? Why do they have patriotic immunity? America is like a dysfunctional family, with the Democrats as the older mature son who works hard and does everything right but is somehow never good enough, and the Republicans are the young asshole son, who’s a fuckup and no matter how many times he crashes the Camero, daddy buys him a new one…All of America’s intelligence agencies say that a foreign power tampered with our election to favor the Republican, and they say also that they don’t trust that Republican, our president, with our state secrets. And yet the theme of Trump’s inaugural was ‘America First.’ Please – his ego is first, his hotels are second, Russia is third, I’d be surprised if America made the top ten.”
“Trump’s mood before he left to his resort Friday, The New York Times reported, seemed to ‘be explosive’, and the president reportedly railed about leaks in his staff and among federal intelligence agents.” — The Atlantic 3/3/17
I hope the Secret Service tranq darts the big effing orange baby before he blows up the planet. Jesus effing Christ.
A friend of mine who has worked in Washington as a civil servant in the NSA for many years, starting back at the end of the Clinton administration, explained his/her view of the “leak” phenomenon to me.
First it is important to note that in an agency like the NSA civil servants play a very important role, they are essentially the stoically fact based and dispassionate analysis and professional advice that underpins the political advice that comes from appointees. That is not to say according to him/her that appointees are inherently political in nature–my friends view is that the vast majority of them from the late Clinton, Bush II, Obama and early Trump admins, armor become just as dispassionately rational–political appointees enter service with an ideology and leave service with prejudices/ideologies stripped. In his/her view the mountain of data the NSA brings to play and the predictions being almost 100% accurate buries ideology and even political appointees end up with the data driving their decisions.
Back to leaks–my friends contention is that leaks are how the NSA and really any civil service employee tempers the ideological thought of political appointees and brings them to the data–and that as long as the appointees or the leader refuse to change, the leaks will continue.
My friend further posits that in the political offices of the White House (they would say Congressional staffs and committee staff too but to much less effect) leaks are the shaking out of power sharing between staff and favor of the President (or their principal), but that the Oval office has NEVER seen a President that manages like Trump does.
There is a relatively common management dynamic known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
If a manager is highly competent they always think they can do better, and rate themselves poorly, thus elevating minds that exceed theirs, and force discipline upon themselves to compensate and improve performance through a team.
If a manager is marginally competent or incompetent they think they are brilliant and can do do better than even the experts in fields they are inexperienced in. Some of this group of managers tout this as intuitive leadership but most never even recognize it.
Trumps management style plays people off against each other, intentionally undermines those even in favor to keep them dependent, shifts favor to newcomers on a regular basis, shoots the messenger, and shifts responsibility to others because he is the most competent person on absolutely everything in his own mind. This coupled with vindictiveness, intellectual laziness, and inability to prioritize, means that the rational dispassionate measurement of performance based on ability to predict and produce results and results achieved, never rises to the top.
My friends contention: the important people in both the agencies and Congress have already come to the conclusion that Trump is incompetent, thus this administration will never get the support it needs to achieve anything. He/she sees four years of frozen governance, punctuated by leaks designed to keep the President from ever gaining traction, punctuated by outbursts and lurches from appointee to appointee in an failing effort to gain traction.
Further, he/she sees this as an appropriate role that the apparatus of government plays when a President is incompetent and untrustworthy– the actions of a ‘sixth estate’ if you will–that has become embedded in government.
His contention is that the classical definition of the “estates of the realm” being clergy (or religious moral leadership in the USA), nobility (top 1%), the people– later joined by the more contemporary 4th (the press)–has been joined over the last few decades by the 5th (the counter-culture), and now a 6th (the apparatchik or bureaucratic state). New alignments of the estates act as a check on power (in this case the counter-culture, apparatchik and press, shifting the people).
I enjoyed our conversations about his/her theories but the idea left me depressed that with so many things to do–we are likely frozen for 4-8 years because the consequences of being fluid are chaos and failure….oh, well.
A little late, but I would like to nominate this comment for the Best Blog Comment So Far in 2017 (BBCSF17) category. Any objections?
Funny thing is that we are seeing precisely what he/she suggested coming into play–they slow, gradual disempowerment of the Trump administration from within and the outside. We are seeing the alignment of 3rd-6th estates…freezing Cinnamon Hitler.
BTW I take BBCSF17 from you as a high compliment Michael, regardless of your youthful anarchic blog post cross posted by the faux libertarian with too much time on his hands here earlier this week.
Mike, let’s go one at a time…
The problem with fake news is that it crowds out the alternative facts that can be verified as opposed to the fake news that can’t:
“No reporter or lawyer concerned with the case believes that Novak’s original source was any other than Richard Armitage. I have heard it lamely said that, if true, this would “undercut” the idea that Wilson and Plame were targets of an administration vendetta. No. it wouldn’t “undercut” the idea. It would annihilate it. Mr. Armitage exceeds even his own former boss and current best friend Colin Powell in visceral hatred of the neoconservatives.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/07/the_end_of_the_affair.html
Just in case Hitchens doesn’t pass muster as a valid source despite the Slate filtering, apostate comrade as he was in his later years… what about the horse’s orifice himself, as reported by CNN?
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged Thursday that he was the source who first revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak back in 2003, touching off a federal investigation.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/08/leak.armitage/index.html
IIRC the real tragedy is that is because of the political feeding frenzy, few actually noticed Plame had been inactive long enough that the statute in question didn’t apply to her.
Oh for goodness sake Gregory, are you really going to prevaricate about the Plame Affair? It was a tawdry bit of business–inside baseball–and it helped solidify the fact that powerful extraconstitutional American institutions have arisen during the past ~240 years to counter the U.S. Constitution, an amazingly solid and resilient document, and yet still a flawed document.
Actually a living document, unless you want to pretend that the continuous rain from “forty days and forty nights” caused a man to build an ark and save the animals – https://arkencounter.com/
But okay then Gregory, well enough, let’s get on to whatever other prevarications you have in store for us…Iran-Contra?, Paris Peace Talks?, the Iraq War?, Arms for Hostages?, 9-11?, and now Russia/Wiki”Leaks”? I wait with abated breath.
“Suffice to say, we think you are traitors to our country and we don’t countenance treason.”
Suffice it to say I think willful irrationality is how the Democratic Party lost their mojo and doubling down is not a winning strategy.
Answer why Hillary wasn’t 50 points ahead and you’ll be regaining some of your senses but it may be too late.
What you are saying, Mike, is that your sacred cows can get away with doing what you imagine to be my sacred cows are doing all the time because of the anger you’re worked yourselves into, and you can get away with the same sort of crap because your heart is pure.
Keep it up, Mike, the next big date is in Nov 2018… more of the same will make it worse.
Mike, any prevarication is yours as the issue is Mahre presenting “alternate facts” that have been shown false to support his (and your) Cheney Delusion Syndromes. Maybe you should find a different hobby, at least Mahre is getting very wealthy from whipping his fans (for a time that was including me, back when he was funny) into a frenzy. I did appreciate the late Werner Klemperer as one of his regular guests on his later shows.
At least Mahre claims to be a libertarian which means there may be hope for him… he knows there is a better way.
Gregory,
you really ought to consider doing standup comedy on the local circuit. Paul Emery and Tom Taylor can hook you up at the Nevada Theater, but I can certainly get you some stage time at the Center for the Arts based upon my connections there…just let me know.
I really enjoyed Milo Yiannopoulos’ interview with Bill Maher on the same show that he delivered the New Rules piece I notated above. Milo is a troubled young man and his unfortunate comments on pederasty will have to stand on their own, at least until he himself better understands the abuse he suffered and how he is publicly reacting to it; there is certainly no good reason to prevent him from taking the stage at our public institutions of higher learning, though as a student of COINTELPRO I am dubious that the vandal-crazed black masks in Berkeley are a disorganized group of liberal thugs who hate the 1st Amendment.
I am going to openly disagree with you that the “Democratic Party has lost its mojo.” Not even close; Trump has energized the ongoing progressive movement, and the Obama couch-sitters who thought it was all a slam dunk from here on out are back on the front lines.
Trump did us two huge favors: he got rid of the Clinton cobwebs once and for all, and he set up 2020 for the progressive revolution that should have happened in 2016, but was not quite ready to come out of the oven.
As a Libertarian Progressive who continues to enjoy Paul Emery rope-a-doping all the ancient dinosaurs on Rebane’s Leave-It-To-Beaver Ruminant Fantasy World, I believe that the future on planet earth is bright and wonderful. I am very much looking forward to President Pence in the fall of 2017, when citizens of diverse political stripes get down to the hard work of figuring out how to solve real-world problems in the 21st century.
Let us know when you’ve booked the venues. I’m good for the first 10 tickets, planting the seed corn for you next career.
Michael A.
Trumpy is trying to figure out how to fire James Comey as I type this. His box-of-chocolates Attorney General has recused itself, so there’s that problem as well.
What I find so interesting about James Comey is that he is a fighter, and he apparently likes to take down bad people, such as the Gambino crime family: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/21/nyregion/us-charges-14-reputed-members-of-gambino-crime-family.html
So now Comey is going after the Trump crime family, and it’s pretty upsetting to the Outer Swamp, people led by Tiny Hands Don who can’t seem to get any respect from the Inner Swamp of Washington D.C. insiders. Oh the ennui I feel!
This will go one of two ways. Either the rule of law will rule, or Trumpy will do everything he can to use his populist bullshit to destroy the US Constitution, and succeed. I am so excited by all of this because this country needs this crisis to figure out how to move forward into the 21st century.
We will either get it right, or not. Either way, the gridlock will break, and that is all to the good.
Clarity is coming.
“Suffice to say, we think you are traitors to our country and we don’t countenance treason.” -Michael P Anderson
You’ve been a seriously disturbed ‘toon for quite some time, Mike. Here’s one of your past screeds, from 11 years ago at techrepublic.com:
“I recognized that the citizens of the US had hopelessly contracted Nazi-Germany disease back in the late 1980s, and I moved to a rural community where zombi-Republicans don’t have the ability to destroy my quality of life. The only way all these problems are going to be fixed is when the USA is finally (and thankfully) dissolved, and we can once again rebuild civilization on the North American land mass. All you Republicans reading this might want to take note: when the &%$!?**! hits the fan, you guys are gonna be on the short list for reparations. I’ll need bank account info. and other important documents ready for inspection at the appointed time. If you need any further information, go to mandersonation.blogspot.com and have a nice read.”
Reparations demanded by and for Michael P Anderson? It appears you’ve been threatening Republicans for a very long time, Mike. Libertarians too.
…..every progressive imagines himself as a commissar…. every socialist imagines himself sitting atop a pyramid of human skulls!
Your poetically dismal depiction of the proletarian’s prism leaves one to wonder; is it the ever-changing landscape of the progressive, or the never-changing morass of the conservative, which has left us the barbaric marvels of tzompantli?
Oppression, in it’s many forms, is always rooted in a mandate for the status quo; proclaimed by the powerful few, and delivered by their genuflecting minions.
Conservatism is the absence of free thought.
Wow! That is almost on par with some of the computer generated POMO nonsense!
Well done Chris…..I think you have a real future in authentic frontier gibberish!
Your comments on style, over substance, are duly noted. Perhaps someday you’ll find the capacity to combine the two, rather than mere sophomoric hyperbole.
Reel out some slack Chris, he’s just a lonely
سَمَك
…or not!
Thanks for the blast from the past, Greg. Sounds like I was a State of Jefferson proponent way before you guys!
I’ve never been a SoJ proponent, Mike, and there’s nothing in your past screeds that match your self congratulatory assessment of 4:17PM.
The only brownshirts demonstrating in the streets are Black bloc.
Since both Chris P and Crabbman think there’s no difference between libertarians and conservatives, here’s a Progressive’s countering view:
https://thinkprogress.org/why-libertarians-and-progressives-will-never-get-along-104624871614#.gy4zmeoq5
and a public opinion survey piece that progressive links:
http://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2013.AVS_WEB.pdf
Reading through the piece, it rings mostly true for all the LIBs I’ve met over the years. Perhaps Chris P will read both and learn something.
I know, and/or am personally friends with, dozens of Libertarians/libertarians. I agree that liberaltarians make up a minuscule percentage of those folks. I have also observed several of them become temporary statists when their own personal ox was gored due to a coercive/corrupt judicial or economic unlevel playing field. My [and I suspect Paul Emery’s as well] version of libertarianism is just more highly evolved than yours, and I apologize that my previous explanation of all of this was not clear enough for you to understand.
Thanks Greg. Read them both; not much to see there. I find it particularly laughable that, in a Daily Beast article that came out after the election, the Libertarian Party was saying, “Don’t blame us for Trump. We only got 3% of the vote.”
Laughable, because the articles you furnished claim they are 7% consistent Libertarian, and vote 90% of the time, so if they only got 3% of the vote, that means the majority of dyed-in-the-wool Libertarians voted for Trump, which is consistent with both articles; 40% identifying as Republican, 45% as Tea Party, and near 90% hate the Democratic Party..
Basically, they’re much like the rest of us independents; voting issues on their merits, but decidedly Republican when it comes to candidates. They talk a good game on social issues, then vote for the party of trickle down and corporate welfare every time.
They are basically politically lost souls who praise the free citizen, and then vote for his shackles.
And Trump most assuredly IS their fault, to a very large degree. You broke it, you own it, Greg.
Let’s remember it was Hillary’s campaign manager, Podesta, who gave his media contacts marching orders to promote Trump (and Carson and Cruz) as Pied Piper candidates.
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
The DNC and their lickspittles elevated Hillary over Bernie S, and had been pushing Trump since before April 2015.
Great plan, guys. Bravo!
Can’t argue with any of that, although it must be noted; not my call. Truth be told…again… I’m no fan of Hillary; never have been. Voting for her was definitely voting for the same old crap, on perhaps an elevated level. But I did, even though, as you also know; Bernie was my man.(Quite possibly the majority of politically educated liberal voters, too.)
But voting for Trump?! Seriously? As 70% of hard core Libertarians did?
I voted for the loser. Libertarians voted for the assbag who won. Guess which action I consider the more imbecilic of the two, (by a mile)
Libertarians are political chameleons, until they’re scared; then they turn a red.
Nice going, guys. This is on you, as much as the fat, loyal Republican somewhere in Selma, AL, who’s just now realizing that his food stamps and health care are going away. (Always bothered me that we West Coasters are supporting the red states. And here Rockefeller thought he was getting them off their asses by furnishing outhouses for ’em.)
http://endtheneglect.org/2012/01/how-the-outhouse-helped-save-the-south-and-what-it-can-do-for-the-worlds-bottom-billion/
I just happened to think; if hookworm made folks in the south lazy, is there maybe something in the sand making Middle Eastern religious freaks violent?
Just a thought.
For those of you who are seeking a little more socialism in your diet I offer the following article. I am not advocating for this point of view but am definitely fascinated at the quickly shifting policy sands in our spiraling federal gov’t, and this piece stood out:
“Democratic Party floats proposal for a palace coup
23 March 2017
On Wednesday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman addressed an open letter to a group of generals, deep state operatives and a corporate executive in President Trump’s cabinet, effectively calling on them to organize a palace coup.
The recipients of Friedman’s letter, code-named “Calling On a Few Good Men,” are three generals—Secretary of Defense James Mattis, National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly—along with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the former oil tycoon and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Using the language of a political toady, Friedman’s column begins: “Dear Sirs, I am writing you today as the five adults with the most integrity in the Trump administration. Mattis, McMaster and Kelly, you all served our nation as generals in battle. Pompeo, you graduated first in your class at West Point and served as a cavalry officer.”
He continues, “I am writing you directly because I believe you are the last ‘few good men’ who can stand up” to Trump. Referring to the impeachment of Richard Nixon, Friedman declares, “The last time our country faced such a cancer on the presidency, the Republican Party’s leadership stood up and put country before party to get to the truth.” But today’s Republican Party has “declared moral bankruptcy” and “abdicated its responsibility.”
Combining flattery with self-abasement, he continues, “I ask those of you who honored our country as military officers how you would have reacted if your commanding officer had charged his predecessor with a high crime that violated his constitutional oath… Would you military men have simply said, ‘Sorry, I just do artillery’ or ‘I’m just staying in my lane?’ Knowing some of you, I’d like to think not.”
Friedman reveals the completely reactionary character of the opposition of the Democratic Party to the Trump administration. Trump and his band of fascists, generals and billionaires have provoked the hatred of tens of millions in the US who oppose the administration’s attacks on democratic rights, its police state persecution of immigrants, and its appeals to chauvinism, racism and militarism. But the opposition of Friedman and the Democratic Party on whose behalf he speaks has nothing to do with these democratic sentiments.
Friedman gives voice to tendencies in and around the Democratic Party that are prepared, in pursuit of their McCarthyite-style demonization of Russia, to welcome a palace coup that would impose a military/intelligence/corporate junta on the American people. The wealthy and corrupt social layers for whom the millionaire columnist speaks are motivated by two primary concerns.
First, that Trump is threatening US imperialist interests around the world by backing away from the Obama administration’s war-mongering policies toward Russia, and at the same time undermining the image of the US internationally with his overt lying and bullying of Washington’s allies. He makes this clear in his column, pointing to discussions in the United Arab Emirates and polls in Germany showing declining support for the US, and warning that “the world is watching.”
He cites US imperialist strategist Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who warns that without an urgent course correction, the US could find itself “not with America first, but with America alone.”
The second major concern is that Trump is stoking popular discontent at home that could spiral out of control and threaten the entire economic and political system. Far from appealing to the broad popular opposition to Trump that began to erupt in the days after his inauguration, the Democratic Party is fixated on avoiding at all costs the emergence of a movement of the working masses. That is why it appeals to the military/intelligence apparatus and the corporate aristocracy in its struggle with the faction of the ruling class represented by Trump.
The war between the two is a war of liars between two deeply reactionary factions of the same capitalist elite. The Trump camp seeks to pursue a different approach in the drive of US imperialism for global hegemony—putting off for now war plans against Russia in order to focus US aggression first on China.
Both factions would drag the people of the United States and the world into a third world war, with the prospect of nuclear annihilation. And there is no difference between the two on the need to escalate the war against the working class.
Those opposed to Trump’s policies of anti-immigrant racism, the destruction of social programs and war must reject the efforts of the Democrats to corral popular anti-Trump sentiment behind their own program of war and social reaction. What is necessary, and what is being fought for by the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site, is the development of a working class opposition based on a socialist program to put an end to capitalism and imperialism.
Andre Damon”
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