TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[tapitsbo]

Wow. We believe in pacifism but we go from support for Black Lives Matter who we can at least conceivably call protestors to Swedish groups that are explicitly devoted to using violence to crush political dissent on behalf of the state. Sweden isn't a warzone like Kurdistan there is no need to beat people up and destroy their lives just because they disagree with the government. Meanwhile certain groups that foment violence fundamentalism and terrorism in Sweden get funding from the government and winking encouragement...

I cited that pacifism is a actual belief system because I take it more seriously as an idea than complete bs like libertarianism. When someone says they are pacifist it usually sounds like a good thing to my ears.

I live in the country that prides itself on the idea of multiculturalism but it's all doublespeak, indigenous people aren't eligible for our human rights laws and have a host of other punitive restrictions. Certain minorities are allowed lavish group rights while the majority groups are denied explicit political representation - and encouraged strongly to not ask questions about their culture and ethnicity and its relationship to the state. And certain other minorities are scapegoated and subjected to all sorts of abuses.

Personally I like to distinguish between cooperation and coercion, and egalitarianism is something whose meaning is ferociously contested. So there's a lot to talk about here, so I suspect people are being insincere when when they talk to me like I am stupid and not getting something obviously off limits for discussion.

As far as the working class goes they've been doing pretty rough in a lot of places, I am not going to argue with that. I assume we're including all the people who don't get to take part in formal work...

A lot of the material on this board explicitly calls for innocent people to get hurt occasionally out in the open usually by insinuation. So what is so simple about this stuff anyways? Most unbelievably, the left has a clearly defined history and I believe it should be up for examination especially since it has been used as a cover for all kinds of genocidal oligarchic power games, for all the occasions it has been able to boast of genuine virtues like pacifism. So we can't just whitewash it so to speak like when right wingers say "nazis were left wing because of socialism" and other casuistry. I think I understand where you are coming from a lot better now Luther Blisset. The discussions that are possible in the public sphere are becoming more and more limited and it leads us away from the values you are advocating thus the Gladio like clusterfuck of Trump's rise... I think you are probably a good person and not a pacifist in the sense of Obama getting his peace prize.

82_82 I have been able to talk myself out of most fights that might have happened in my life myself. That's why I am suspicious of all the calls for no platforming (at times of vast groups of people based on their demographics as opposed to what they've said) accompanied by violence and even terrorism as a way to get us to some sort of promised land. That's what's increasingly considered respectable where I am and throughout the West though. I could be trying to talk to people on tumblr reddit chans or other echo chamber sites but I wanted to figure out what people were on about here as it seemed like a truly heterogenous place with information suppressed elsewhere. I'll quieten down now...

[82_28]

I take no sides with anyone here. That's up to you, whoever we may be. How you come across, we come across as we do. We're all here. So do what you must, just remain civil. Somehow some way with all my swearing I've glided along with having zero problems with anyone since 2007!

[JackRiddler]

Essential viewing for deciphering the Trump phenomenon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NsrwH9I9vE

[seemslikeadream]

3/18/2016

Note to Republicans: You Own Trump, You Psychopaths
Let's get this straight. The party that:

1. Has declared that the President should have no say in choosing a Supreme Court justice in his final year in office;

2. Has elected officials who support a man who led a group that pointed guns at federal employees doing their duty to enforce the laws;

3. Shut down the government because President Obama wouldn't agree to defund a program that had been passed by a previous Congress;

4. Refused to pass even the mildest of gun regulations in the wake a mass shooting that killed 20 grade school children even though over 90% of Americans supported such action;

5. Supported a government employee who refused to do her job because she didn't like what she was legally obligated to do;

6. Once passed legislation to force doctors to keep a brain-dead woman alive;

7. Killed an extension of unemployment benefits to the very jobless they now court for votes;

8. Once called anyone who opposed the war in Iraq unpatriotic and now admit that the war was, at best, a mistake (and haven't apologized for attacking anti-war Americans);

9. Refuse to acknowledge the existence of, let alone the need to do something about, climate change, even though 75% of Americans accept the reality and most think we should try to slow it down or mitigate it;

10. Demonized then destroyed ACORN, an organization that existed to assist the poor;

11. Demonizes and is attempting to destroy Planned Parenthood, an organization that exists to assist the poor.

12. Demonized and voted dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a law that exists to assist the poor;

And so very much more, now thinks that Donald Trump is too appalling for them?

It's laughable that a group of psychopaths believes that the psychopath who likes to disembowel his prey and dance with the innards is just a little too crazy to support.

Oh, dear, sweet, dumb Republicans, you own Trump. He is your deformed, conjoined twin who has pulled away from your side, leaving you bleeding to death as you wonder what you can do to ever be whole again.


Posted by Rude One at 12:57 PM
3/17/2016

Liberal Hate Porn: Conservatives Losing Their Shit Over Trump
Sometimes you need to take a break and just masturbate. Everyone's got their favorite kinds of porn, whether it's the regular ol' jizz-pile orgy or two girls, one cup, three donkeys. And then there's hate porn, some kind of schadenfreude that moves beyond mere satisfaction at the misfortune of others and tilts right into spanking and/or fingering material. So drop your pants and plunge into your drawers because we're gonna take a little tour around Right Blogsylvania, where many a conservative is losing his or her goddamned tiny mind over the inevitable nomination of Donald Trump as their Republican candidate for the presidency of the motherfuckin' United States. Sweet Jesus, it's better than teabagging a grateful 21 year-old evangelical guy in the men's room off the big conference hall at the Marriott Marquis in DC.

At Erick "Erick" Erickson's new publication, The Revenant, where he gets raped by a bear and left for dead...what's that? Oh, The Resurgent. That doesn't make any more sense. Anyways, Erickson doughily takes a mighty stand of opposition to sinful fake conservative Trump: "I find Donald Trump to be a man of low moral character and low integrity. Essentially, Donald Trump is gold plated sleaze and I have no use for him at all ever. If that means Hillary Clinton becomes President of the United States, Donald Trump’s supporters can carry that burden. Everyone saw it coming except for them." Are you hard and/or wet yet? Are you lubing your fingers with Erickson's tears?

It gets even sadder for Erickson. On NPR yesterday, he revealed that he actually, hilariously believes he has some power by threatening to get together a third-party to run a candidate for the presidency, one that he thinks would divide voters so much that the election would have to be decided by the mad House of Representatives. But he still sees destruction in the near-term: "If voters don't turn out to vote for a presidential candidate, they're not probably going to turn out and vote for state and local legislative races as well, which could be a real bloodbath for Republicans." Delicious blood, a pure aphrodisiac.

Over at Glenn "Yeah, Kasich Is a Son of a Bitch" Beck's internet concern The Blaze, where Beck is raped by a bear and left for dead, some of the columnists are aghast at the betrayal of other conservatives' support of Trump. Matt Walsh names names, including Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham, O'Reilly, Breitbart, Fox "news" and some politicians, all of whom he seems like he'd like to put in a sack and drown in a river: "The capitulation that many conservative and Christian leaders have shown towards Trump goes well beyond what the liberal media shows towards Obama. I’ve never in my life seen anything like this, and I suspect I’d have to take a flight to North Korea to witness an equal level of unthinking deference. But at least Kim Jong Un’s subjects submit under the threat of death and imprisonment. Our 'leaders' have subjugated themselves to the American Kim Jong Un simply for the publicity and the ratings and the chance to be friends with a billionaire celebrity." The whole piece will make you blow your load early, but wait, there's more.

At the National Review (motto: "We're the bears raping William F. Buckley's already dead corpse"), when the writers are not blaming those stupid poor white people for finally wanting something from their government, they're pissing and moaning about that dastardly Trump: "Once, it seemed possible that November would bring with it the completion of the conservative rebuilding project. Now, the Right teeters on the edge of obliteration. Even if the clown show of the last eight months has done nothing to reduce our standing before the world, the numbers before us are clear: Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican party has been an unmitigated catastrophe," writes Charles W. Cooke in a pathetic sob of a piece.

Oh, shit, did you orgasm? Didn't it just feel good to fuck yourself as a way of showing all these right-wing shitsacks what they can go do?


Posted by Rude One at 5:14 PM
3/16/2016

Goodbye, GOP. Maybe We'll See You in 2020
There are few things more deliciously pathetic than listening to some Republican commentator or think tank denizen appearing on your mighty cable news programs of doom to proclaim, after last night, that the virginal Grand Ol' Party will save itself from the ongoing ravaging by the bestial Donald Trump. Like a damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks awaiting the brave cowboy who will save her, Republicans believe that John Kasich will ride in just as the train is about to cut them in three. Or that the magical Brokered Convention will rescue their party from the black hole of Trump's savage maw, and Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney will yank them free from the event horizon, ready to let them float on like they always do, on an endless universe of money and demagoguery and intentional incompetence.

These delusional fantasies of the fevered imaginations of the frantic Republicans will fade as the convention draws closer, as they all realize that there is but one direction for the party, and that is into Donald Trump's flabby arms. Or, more precisely, Trump has bent the Republican body over a table, ripped off its pants and underwear, and is viciously fucking away at it with his oh, no, really, not-tiny dick, cooing in its ear, "Yeah, you like that, right? Right? Tell me I'm huge," the Republican Party unable to figure out if it should resist and risk getting beaten more or just let it happen and hope it's over with quickly. Yeah, it's that grim, it's that dark, it's that awful.

And the individual Republicans themselves have to figure out what they must do. Do they just stand there while Trump rapes the shit out of the basis for their political lives? Or do they tell him to stop and do whatever it takes to stop him, even ripping him off the Republican Party, throwing him to the floor, and beating him if tries to get close to its ass again? It won't matter. It's far too late. The fucking will continue. You just have to ask yourself if you're going to abet it or go out with a fight.

This is who you are, Republicans, and, c'mon, it's who you've been for a while now, even if you deny it. And you can blame it all on Great God Reagan. Yep, once the Most Sainted Gipper allowed the crazies from the religious right to have a seat at the table of American power beyond their behind-the-scenes role of manipulating their devolved parishioners, once Reagan allowed Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson sway over even the smallest part of American social policy, the die was cast, man, and at some point we were gonna get here. And since you can't unfuck something, if we don't stop this shit now, it will only get worse.The GOP may say that Trump was speaking "figuratively" about "riots" if he is denied the nomination, but that shit will happen.

The other deliciously pathetic thing is that Republicans are so fucking trapped, one could almost feel something akin to pity (although, in this context, that means something like "Stab that fish in the head so it stops flopping around"), but they keep stumbling over their own dicks as they attempt to pretend that they are anything more than sentient road blocks. After President Obama nominated the eminently too-reasonable Merrick Garland, a dude who had a comic book collection and helped convict real, actual terrorists, Senate Majority Leader Mitch "Should Neck Skin Look Like That?" McConnell announced that Garland can go fuck himself. How fucking petty and ridiculous can a group of humans look? We're likely going to find out.

Every move Republicans make now is done in the shadow of the inevitable Trump nomination. Republicans will lose the Senate in November, maybe the House, as Trump burns out like a meteor in the atmosphere. The question will only be how much damage he'll do when he hits the ground. The most honorable thing would be to just close up shop until 2020. Take a mulligan on this election. Rebuild. Rebrand. Maybe search a soul or two.

Aw, who are we kidding here? You're just gonna watch the ongoing violation and spray beer on the party to celebrate.
- See more at: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/#sthash.ePvNYd3X.dpuf

[JackRiddler]

The GOP is dying like a professional hitman with cancer, in the public square, with automatics and grenades, lots of grenades.

But if it's a contest in propaganda skills, Trump's going to lose, as this video should demonstrate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXx5PuJ2gk

[seemslikeadream]

Rabbi David Paskin says at least 1000 people are going to walk out on Trump when he is introduced at AIPAC

GRAYZONE PROJECT
9 Hatemongers (Besides Trump) Who Will Be Honored Guests at the AIPAC Summit
Pro-Israel activists plan to boycott Trump's AIPAC speech, but they won't condemn these hatemongers.
By Sarah Lazare, Michael Arria / AlterNet March 18, 2016

A group of self-described “rabbis, cantors and Jewish leaders” who support the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) attracted considerable press this week when they announced they would protest and walk out on Donald Trump’s scheduled address to the institution’s upcoming policy conference.

Proclaiming that they will attend the AIPAC summit to “support the strong and unbreakable bond between America and Israel,” the group declared it is standing up to Trump because "as Jews, we must take a stand against hate.”

“We denounce in the strongest possible terms the bigotry, racism, xenophobia, and misogyny expressed by Mr. Trump, and violence promoted by him, at various points throughout his campaign,” continues the statement, which was released under the banner of Come Together Against Hate. “We refuse to stand idly by and let his hateful message become a part of the AIPAC Policy Conference.”

In an interview with AlterNet, spokesperson Rabbi David Paskin made it clear that his ad hoc group will not denounce AIPAC's invitations to a host of other speakers who have espoused racism, Islamophobia, anti-gay bigotry and even anti-Semitism that often exceeds the kind of incitement Trump has become infamous for.

Asked about comments by Bishop Edwin Harper, a Christian Zionist AIPAC guest who has said that the Anti-Christ "has to be a Jew," Rabbi Paskin refused to say whether AIPAC should disinvite him.

“It's not my place to say who AIPAC should or should not invite,” Paskin replied. “It's really inappropriate for me to comment on whether they should invite any speakers. I support the work they do.”

Here are just nine of the hateful figures welcomed by AIPAC as featured guests.

1. Steven Emerson: This notoriously Islamophobic author and pundit made the following statement about Muslims in 2011: “If I had to guess, based on what I know, based on my experience and this is all anecdotal, I would say to you at least thirty to forty percent support cultural jihad. That is, at least, they support the notion that it’s okay to blow up a bus of Israelis, it’s okay to bomb the World Trade Center, it’s okay to impose the Sharia, the code of Islamic law, it’s okay to beat women or wives, as part of the Sharia."

In 2015, Emerson appeared on Fox to make fallacious claims about Muslim no-go zones in Europe, saying: “They’re sort of amorphous, they’re not contiguous necessarily, but they’re sort of safe havens. And they’re places where the governments, like France, Britain, Sweden, Germany, they don’t exercise any sovereignty so you basically have zones where Sharia courts are set up, where Muslim density is very intense, where police don’t go in… There are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”

Fox later issued numerous corrections and apologies for Emerson’s statements.

2. Josh Block: Block was fired from the Truman National Security Project in 2011 for smearing Israel critics as anti-Semites. “Josh was removed from our community because he’s unable to differentiate between an honest debate and a personal attack,” said Truman spokesman David Solimini. “There is real anti-Semitism in the world and we can’t debase the term by using it for everyone who disagrees with us on Israel policy. There is a clear pattern here. Over time many of our community members had come to realize Josh isn’t interested in an honest debate.”

An email exchange between Block and a Voice Of America staffer, Block denigrated journalist Rula Jebreal, heaping scorn on her appearance and her Palestinian background, calling her a "crazy person" and (what else?) an "anti-Semite."

As he campaigned against the Iran nuclear deal, Block claimed that Iran wanted to dominate and enslave every man, woman and child they can reach w/ their nuclear terrorist totalitarian regime."

3. Jerry Cox: The president of the Family Council Action Committee in Little Rock once argued that California's Harvey Milk Day would force students to change their gender presentations and hold mock gay weddings. "If a person has left-leaning philosophies, a left-leaning theology, a left-leaning view of the world, then it seems that it's always in vogue to honor those people and to have a special holiday for them," Cox said of the slain leader.

4. Ralph Reed: The far-right conservative activist and first executive director of the Christian Coalition spoke out against civil rights protections for LGBTQ people in the mid-'90s, declaring: “No one should have special rights or privileges or minority status because of their sexual behavior. We don't have it for people who are polygamists; we don't have it for people who have affairs on their wives or husbands.” He bizarrely proclaimed to a Virginia newspaper in 1991, "I want to be invisible. I do guerilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."

5. Benjamin Netanyahu: The Prime Minister of Israel declared as a young junior minister in 1989, "Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China [Tiananmen Square], when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

As he campaigned for a fourth term as prime minister after slaughtering 551 children in the besieged Gaza Strip, Netanyahu warned that "Arab voters are heading to the polls in droves." More recently, Netanyahu insisted that a Palestinian -- not Hitler -- was responsible for the Final Solution.

6. Paul Ryan: The Speaker of the House from Wisconsin made dogwhistle racist statements during a 2014 interview with conservative radio host Bill Bennett. "We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work,” he said.

7. Edwin Harper: As AlterNet senior editor Max Blumenthal reported this week, Bishop Harper is a self-described fanatic eagerly awaiting the Rapture. Harper proclaimed that Anti-Christ "has to be a Jew."

“Is Obama the Anti-Christ?" Harper asked his audience at the Apostolic Life Catherdral in Martinsburg, West Virginia in 2012. "No. He don't qualify. He’s not a Jew! You've got to have a Jew!"

8. Nir Barkat: The Mayor of Jerusalem was condemned for incitement against Palestinians after releasing a statement in October which states, “The mayor encourages licensed gun owners to carry their weapons to increase security. He himself serves as a personal example of this.” Barkat told Israel’s Army Radio, “In a way, it’s like military reserve duty.” Barkat has presided over the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across occupied East Jerusalem, driving Palestinians out of their own homes by force and replacing them with Jewish religious extremists.

9. Raheem Kassam: The Breitbart editor-in-chief ran an article in January under the headline, “Breitbart’s Raheem Kassam Tells Sean Hannity: If Merkel Took a Million Rapey Migrants, Hillary Will Take 20 Million.” The piece details his interview with Sean Hannity, in which Kassem declared: “Merkel isn’t the only dumpy old hag that’s for mass migration… If Hilary is elected, you can see her doing exactly what Angela Merkel has done.”

Speaking Out Against AIPAC

Ramah Kudaimi, membership outreach coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, told AlterNet, “It’s fascinating to see people who think that Trump does not belong at an AIPAC conference when everything that AIPAC lobbies and pushes for in terms of the U.S. relationship with Israel, anti-Muslim bigotry, racism and xenophobia is aligned with what Trump stands for.”

“I think that any protest that focuses solely on Trump and does not call out AIPAC for supporting Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and does not call out politicians and candidates who grovel to Israel, is a problem,” Kudaimi continued. “People need to think about what they stand for.”

Human rights and Palestine solidarity campaigners are protesting and speaking out against AIPAC, which is aligned with Israel’s far-right government and has a long history of lobbying behind U.S. and Israeli wars of aggression, including the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, attempts to undermine the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, and Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza during the summer of 2014. Al-Awda and the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition are among the groups calling for a National March to Support Palestine and Protest AIPAC in Washington, DC on Sunday.

"The messaging in some of these protests treats the xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia perpetrated by Trump as a unique phenomenon and belittles the institutional complicity of AIPAC in fomenting policies for decades that have pushed a Zionist, Orientalist, xenophobic and Islamophobic construction that equates Palestinian equals Arab equals Muslim equals terrorist, and pushes forth this narrative that Israel is the sole democratizing force in the Middle East and North Africa," Darakshan Raja, co-founder of the Muslim American Women's Policy Forum and program manager for the Washington Peace Center, told AlterNet.

"Meanwhile, we turn a blind eye to all the abuses Israel, and with it the United States engages in Palestine foremost, and the larger MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region," Raja continued. "AIPAC has been at the forefront of normalizing this violence for decades."

Alli McCrackin, an organizer with CodePink, told AlterNet that the pro-AIPAC group has not reached out in any way to organizers of human rights protests against the conference, slated for Monday afternoon.

[bks]

Arizona .....people sitting in their cars for over 2 hrs!!!!

Yeah, all those people stuck on an Arizona interstate in the middle of a sunny day on the weekend will understand that they deserved that because Trump fans need to suffer.

This reminds me of some Corey Robin I was just reading:

The big question now on the table is how to stop Donald Trump. Last Friday, protesters in Chicago offered one way (this is the best reporting I've seen on that event). Which seems to have scandalized centrist commentators like Damon Linker.

Message to the left: please don't congratulate yourselves about how you "stopped Trump." You're feeding a fire that will grow bigger. — Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) March 12, 2016

Hmm. If stopping Trump only feeds a fire that will grow bigger, are we supposed to...not stop Trump? Because that'll stop him? I'll admit that's a turn or two of the dialectic that I hadn't quite anticipated.

I love the fact Corey's response is we should not stop Trump? That tunnel vision is exactly the problem, so it is wild to see it used as a direct response to the diagnosis!

The point isn't that the Left "shouldn't stop Trump," the point is that the Left doesn't have a toolkit for doing that. The entire vocabulary of activism at their disposal is not equal to the task -- but it is tailor-made for inflaming Trump's base further, as well as pushing more people towards him. And because Corey Robin can't see that, he's going to keep advocating for more of the same. Eloquently and intelligently, as he does.

"What do you mean, our rhetoric is divisive? We're more united than ever!"

I was just reading that too, but I'd ask: why is incumbent upon "the left" to stop Trump anyway? Or speak in the right language to Trump supporters, or to have any particular reaction to him except what he deserves, which is, basically, get yourself some cancer? Those protestors believe he's a dangerous piece of shit. That's certainly their right and within the bounds of reasonableness, given his general piece of shitted-ness. They want to try to no-platform him, I'm fine with it. The real left has been worse than no-platformed by the state forever, and if the protestors didn't exist Trump would have to invent them anyway.

Besides, with the 25-35% of the vote he'd garner in a general election and zero political organization around him, Trump's pretty much no threat to anything, except exposing certain facets of the elite RIght. Bill Mahr, who's usually somewhat obtuse on these matters, put it right: Trump doesn't want to be president, he just wants to be called president. So there's nothing much to stop. From a left perspective, it's more a matter of being ready to talk to deflated Trump supporters once the Gaseous One has played out their relationship and sold them down the river for whatever he could get for them.

[seemslikeadream]

why is incumbent upon "the left" to stop Trump anyway?

Who said that?


oh so no one but republicans are allowed to protest Trump?

a lot of us protested Nixon but I never heard anyone say that about our protests

yea leave it to republicans to protest Nixon

I guess all the Rabbis and others who are going to walk out of Trump's speech tonight should just sit down and shut up and listen to his garbage

[seemslikeadream]

THERE WAS NO REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT AFTER ALL
Can we please retire the notion that Donald Trump is hijacking someone else’s party?


Photo-illustration by
Joe DarrowA few of the broken power brokers, from left: David Koch, Paul Ryan, Charles Koch, Miutch McConnell, and Rupert Murdoch.

In mid-July of 2015, a month after Donald Trump announced his presidential run, I joined a gaggle of political junkies in a clubby bar four blocks from the White House to hear a legendary campaign strategist expound on the race ahead. Our guest’s long résumé included service to Mitt Romney and two generations of Bushes. Not speaking for attribution, and not having signed on to any 2016 campaign, he could talk freely. The nomination was Jeb Bush’s to lose, he said. Scott Walker, the union-busting Wisconsin governor then considered something of a favorite, had no chance because he was just “too stupid.” And Trump? Please! Trump represented every ugly element that was dragging down the GOP in presidential elections. But our guy wasn’t fazed. The good thing about Trump, he said, is that he would finally “gather together all the people we want to lose” and march them off the Republican reservation — though to what location remained undisclosed.

That same week, I was at a similar gathering with John McCain, then in a mild fury that Trump had just appeared with the nativist Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio at a weekend rally in Phoenix. McCain worried that by activating “the crazies” — the same crazies, it politely went unmentioned, that he helped legitimize by putting Sarah Palin on his ticket in 2008 — Trump could jeopardize both the GOP in general and McCain’s own incumbency if challenged in a primary. The senator soon said the same in public, and not long after that, Trump retaliated by mocking his wartime bravery with the memorable insult “I like people who weren’t captured.”

And that, you may recall, was the end of Trump.

His “surge in the polls has followed the classic pattern of a media-driven surge,” wrote the analyst Nate Cohn in the “Upshot” column of the Times, speaking for nearly every prognosticator. “Now it will follow the classic pattern of a party-backed collapse.” Since “Republican campaigns and elites had quickly moved to condemn” Trump’s slam of McCain, his candidacy had “probably” reached the moment when it would tilt “from boom to bust.” How could it be otherwise? As Cohn reiterated a few weeks later, “the eventual nominee will need wide support from party elites.”

The Republican Elites. The Establishment. The Party Elders. The Donor Class. The Mainstream. The Moderates. Whatever you choose to call them, they, at least, could be counted on to toss the party-­crashing bully out.

To say it didn’t turn out that way would be one of the great understatements of American political history. Even now, many Republican elites, hedging their bets and putting any principles in escrow, have yet to meaningfully condemn Trump. McCain says he would support him if he gets his party’s nomination. The Establishment campaign guru who figured the Trump problem would solve itself moved on to anti-Trump advocacy and is now seeking to unify the party behind Trump, waving the same white flag of surrender as Chris Christie. Every major party leader — Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus, Kevin McCarthy — has followed McCain’s example and vowed to line up behind whoever leads the ticket, Trump included. Even after the recurrent violence at Trump rallies boiled over into chaos in Chicago, none of his surviving presidential rivals would disown their own pledges to support him in November. Trump is not Hitler, but those who think he is, from Glenn Beck to Louis C.K., should note that his Vichy regime is already in place in Washington, D.C.

Since last summer, Trump, sometimes in unwitting tandem with Bernie Sanders, has embarrassed almost the entire American political ecosystem — pollsters, pundits, veteran political operatives and the talking heads who parrot their wisdom, focus-group entrepreneurs, super-pac strategists, number-crunching poll analysts at FiveThirtyEight and its imitators. But of all the emperors whom Trump has revealed to have few or no clothes, none have been more conspicuous or consequential than the GOP elites. He has smashed the illusion, one I harbored as much as anyone, that there’s still some center-right GOP Establishment that could restore old-school Republican order if the crazies took over the asylum.

The reverse has happened instead. The Establishment’s feckless effort to derail Trump has, if anything, sparked a pro-Trump backlash among the GOP’s base and, even more perversely, had the unintended consequence of boosting the far-right Ted Cruz, another authoritarian bomb-thrower who is hated by the Establishment as much as, if not more than, Trump is. (Not even Trump has called McConnell “a liar,” which Cruz did on the Senate floor.) The elites now find themselves trapped in a lose-lose cul-de-sac. Should they defeat Trump on a second or third ballot at a contested convention and install a regent more to their liking such as Ryan or John Kasich — or even try to do so — they will sow chaos, not reestablish order. In the Cleveland ’16 replay of Chicago ’68, enraged Trump and Cruz delegates, stoked by Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, et al., will go mano a mano with the party hierarchy inside the hall to the delectation of television viewers while Black Lives Matter demonstrators storm the gates outside.

Did the pillars of the Establishment fail to turn back the Trump insurgency because they have no balls? Because they have no credibility? Because they have too little support from voters in their own party? Because they don’t even know who those voters are or how to speak their language? To some degree, all these explanations are true. Though the Republican Establishment is routinely referenced as a potential firewall in almost every media consideration of Trump’s unexpected rise, it increasingly looks like a myth, a rhetorical device, or, at best, a Potemkin village. It has little power to do anything beyond tardily raising stop-Trump money that it spends neither wisely nor well and generating an endless torrent of anti-Trump sermons for publications that most Trump voters don’t read. The Establishment’s prize creation, Marco Rubio — a bot candidate programmed with patriotic Reaganisms, unreconstructed Bush-Cheney foreign-policy truculence, a slick television vibe, and a dash of ethnicity — was the biggest product flop to be marketed by America’s Fortune 500 stratum since New Coke.

While it’s become a commonplace to characterize Trump’s blitzkrieg of the GOP as either a takeover or a hijacking, it is in reality the Establishment that is trying to hijack the party from those who actually do hold power: its own voters. The anti-Establishment insurgencies of Trump, Cruz, and Ben Carson collectively won the votes of more than 60 percent of the Republican-primary electorate from sea to shining sea both before and after the opposition thinned. If you crunch the candidates’ vote percentages in the five states that voted on March 15, after Carson’s exit, you’ll find that Trump and Cruz walked away with an average aggregate total of 67 percent. The next morning, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, the leading Establishment voice of anti-Trump conservatism, saw hope in Kasich’s “impressive” victory in Ohio and Trump’s failure to break 50 percent in any state. It failed to note that Kasich also fell short of 50 percent in the state where he is the popular sitting governor, or that his continuing presence in the race perpetuates Trump’s ability to divide and conquer.

It’s debatable who or what can be called the Republican Establishment at this point. Presumably it includes the party’s leadership on the Hill and in the Republican National Committee; its former presidents, presidential nominees, top-tier officeholders, and their extended political networks; hedge-fund and corporate one-percenters typified by Paul Singer, Kenneth Langone, and the Koch brothers, mostly based in the Northeast, who write the biggest campaign checks; and the conservative commentators who hold forth on the op-ed pages of the country’s major newspapers, conservative media outlets like Fox News, and conservative journals like National Review, which devoted an entire issue to its contributors’ “Dump Trump” diatribes well after his runaway train of a campaign had already left the station.

Once you get past the hyperventilation that Trump will destroy democracy, wreck the GOP, and make America unsafe, you’ll see that the objections of Trump’s Establishment critics have several common threads. Trump is a vulgarian (true). He has no fixed ideology or coherent policy portfolio (true). He repeatedly and brazenly makes things up (true). He wantonly changes his views (true). He is not recognizable as “a real Republican” (false).

It’s the members of the Establishment who have a tenuous hold on the term “real Republican.” Their center-right presidential candidates of choice (Jeb Bush, Chris Christie) were soundly rejected, and their further-right candidates (Rubio and Kasich) fared little better. The Republican-primary voters embracing Trump and Cruz have every right to say that they are the real Republicans, and after Cleveland, they could even claim to be the de facto new Establishment, if they believe in such a thing. The old center-right has not held in the GOP. Last fall, some 73 percent of Republicans told Pew that they support building a border wall, Trump’s signature campaign issue. A Washington Post–ABC News poll, published March 9, showed that Hillary Clinton would whip Trump, 50 to 41 percent, but that 75 percent of Republicans would vote for Trump. While it is constantly and accurately said that “millions of Republicans will never vote for Trump,” those millions are unambiguously in the party’s minority.

[backtoiam]

Video, Giuliani dressed in drag getting kissed by Donald Trump

Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli Newspaper Has A Crush On Donald Trump
Israel Hayom (Israel Today), has featured fawning coverage of Trump. The newspaper is widely seen in Israel as a megaphone for Adelson’s own views.
By Robert Mackey | March 21, 2016


Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson at The Champions of Israel Gala, New York, New York.


While Sheldon Adelson has yet to endorse a candidate for president, and refused to let reporters peek at his ballot at last month’s caucus in Nevada, it’s starting to look like the conservative rebellion against Donald Trump will not be bankrolled by the casino operator and Republican donor known for his far-right views.

Three times this week, the front page of the Israeli tabloid Adelson set up to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Israel Hayom (Israel Today), has featured fawning coverage of Trump. The newspaper is widely seen in Israel as a megaphone for Adelson’s own views.

On Friday, the Hebrew-language print edition featured an interview with Trump —translated into English online — in which he assured Israelis that, far from being “neutral” on the Middle East, his election would be “tremendous news for Israel.”

His message to Israelis, Trump told the paper’s foreign editor, Boaz Bismuth, was this:

“Your friend is leading in the primaries. I’ve always been your friend, even at the toughest moments. And that’s not going to change. I love you.”

Bismuth got little else from Trump, except the assurance that his election would also be “less good news for those who don’t like Israel,” but the rest of his report, a star-struck ode to ostentatious wealth, reads like it could have been written by Trump’s publicist, or his doctor.

Several hours earlier, I had arrived at Mar-a-Lago club in a cab driven by Boris, a Peruvian-born Israeli who moved to Florida. Boris told me that the Mar-a-Lago club is one of the most impressive places not just in Florida, but also the entire United States. At the gate, a striking blonde attendant named Heather greeted me. “Welcome to the Mar-a-Lago,” she said.

The Mar-a-Lago club has become a center of attention during the Republican primaries. Trump bought the estate in 1985 and turned it into a 126-room paradise. And that is what Americans are hoping Trump will do with their bank accounts: take $15 or $150 and multiply it by who knows how many times.

I must admit I was excited to be among the 300 media members (most of them Americans) invited to the press conference. A Trump event is the best show in town. And to see Trump on his home turf in a luxurious setting (think gold bathroom fixtures and huge chandeliers) reminiscent of “One Thousand and One Nights” is an incomparable experience. I got to see up close the man who is the main focus of global media attention today.

Each new meeting with Trump is just as fascinating as the previous one.

After Trump’s primary victories earlier this week, the newspaper told its readers on Thursday that he was “Nearly There.”

Front page of Adelson mouthpiece Israel Hayom has pic of Trump and headline “Within Reach.” pic.twitter.com/jZ0ckdRWKJ

— Michael Pitkowsky (@mpitkowsky) March 16, 2016

On Tuesday, under the banner headline “Trump Not Afraid to Say ‘Islamic Terrorism,’” the candidate’s praises were sung by his old friend Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor whose own failed bid for the presidency in 2008 was bankrolled by Adelson.

Sheldon Adelson's paper is aggressively campaigning for Trump in an attempt to sway Israeli public in his favor pic.twitter.com/bAiGCuFZmz

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 14, 2016

Inside, there was a transcript of Bismuth’s long chat with Giuliani, conducted partly in Jerusalem and partly in Las Vegas, where the former mayor had attended a gala in his honor staged by Adelson last month. (According to Tal Schneider, an Israeli blogger who obtained video of that event, Adelson answered the question of whether he might support Trump by saying: “Trump is a businessman. I am a businessman. He employs a lot of people. I employed 50,000 people. Why not?”)

Giuliani, who told Bismuth that he was both “a friend and an informal adviser” to Trump, tried to downplay the candidate’s outrageous side. “Maybe because of his background as the host of [a] reality TV show, I think he has sort of developed a television personality that is prone somewhat to exaggeration,” Giuliani said. “The real Trump is not like that. The real Trump is thoughtful, intelligent, and very well-educated. He has extensive political knowledge and he chooses to support good people, so I don’t understand all the fear about him.”



Although it is published in Tel Aviv, Adelson has previously tried to use the newspaper to drum up support from Jewish voters in the United States for candidates he supports. After Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election, despite strong support from Adelson and Netanyahu, Israel Hayomreported President Obama’s reelection under the headline: “America Chose Socialism.” As the Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf reported at the time, on the eve of that election, the tabloid’s news section quoted from opinion pieces by both Adelson and his Israeli wife, Miriam, in which they had urged readers with American passports to vote for Romney.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/sheldon-ad ... mp/214906/

[seemslikeadream]

Donald Trump unveils foreign policy advisers
By Jeremy Diamond and Nicole Gaouette, CNN
Updated 5:03 PM ET, Mon March 21, 2016 | Video Source: CNN


Donald Trump revealed a list of at least five foreign policy advisers guiding his policies
This comes weeks after Trump has said he would unveil whom advised him on foreign policy
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump on Monday finally named several members of his team of foreign policy advisers in a meeting with The Washington Post's editorial board, also laying out a global posture starkly at odds with longstanding U.S. policy.

The names he provided for his advisory team ended weeks of questions about who forms the Republican front-runner's brain trust on global affairs. But the group's lack of boldface Washington names and clear policymaking track records means there are still unanswered questions about the international direction they would hope to lead the country in. They also don't clarify the GOP candidate's broader global vision, as some have taken positions contrary to those he has articulated on the campaign trail.

Trump told the Post that he wants to reduce American commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a pillar of relations with Europe, and challenged the benefit of American military investment in Asia, one of the world's fastest-growing economic regions.

Trump detailed the position and his foreign policy team just hours before his first major foreign policy test -- a speech before the annual 18,000-strong American Israel Public Affairs Committee gathering in Washington.

Speaking alongside his Democratic and Republican rivals, Trump will have to display a grasp of substance on issues within Israel, such as the peace process and and Israel's qualitative military edge, and in the region, including Iran's nuclear program. In doing so, he could provide an initial sense of how this new group of advisers will shape Trump's world view.

"If he does not make this foreign policy advisers group look good by what's in that speech," political strategist Angela Rye told CNN, "I think he's got a problem."

Comparing the unglamorous business of crafting a foreign policy to sausage-making, Rye added that for Trump, the test is that "it's about knowing what to put in the sausage as well."

The team of foreign policy advisers, led by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, consists of counter-terrorism expert Walid Phares, energy consultant George Papadopoulos, former Defense Department inspector general Joe Schmitz, managing partner of Global Energy Capital Carter Page and former Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed the names to CNN.

"And I have quite a few more," Trump told the Post's editorial board, without offering details. "But that's a group of some of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different aspects of what we do. But that's pretty representative group."

Later at a Washington news conference on Monday, Trump said, "I have a team, we actually have a very good team," calling it, "a top-of-the-line team."

None of the men on Trump's list are leading figures in the Republican foreign policy establishment. Many of the latter group came out publicly against a Trump presidency in a March letter that declared he would make "America less safe" and that he was "utterly unfitted to the office" of president.

One challenge Trump faces is that at this stage of the campaign, he doesn't have a large pool to draw from, Matt Lewis, a CNN political commentator and senior contributor for The Daily Caller, told CNN. "It's tough for Donald Trump," Lewis said.

Describing Trump's advisers as "smart, serious people," Lewis added that, "You're either going to choose people who weren't at the upper, upper echelon, or people who are associated with the George W. Bush era," who Lewis said are known for "nation-building and adventurism."

Another option for Trump, Lewis suggested, would be to go with Democrats.

Trump supporter John Phillips, a KABC radio host, said that the real estate mogul will have no trouble fielding talented help. "No question, as he moves closer to the convention in Cleveland and he looks more and more like the nominee every single day, all of this these people or many of them are going to come on board," Phillips said.

But one of Trump's opponents, John Kasich, blasted the foreign policy names that the former reality TV star announced earlier in the day.

Taking a dig at Trump on Twitter, Kasich sent out a list of his own advisers -- former administration officials and lawmakers who include a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a former CIA director.

"This is what it looks like when you build your national security team out of actual experts," Kasich said.

The advisers already with Trump include Phares, a professor at National Defense University and and adviser to the U.S. House of Representatives on terrorism. The Lebanese-born Phares, who previously advised 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was also a high-ranking official in a Christian militia tied to massacres during Lebanon's civil war.

Carter Page, the founder of Global Energy Capital, has experience as an investment banker in London and Moscow. George Papadopoulos, who worked for former Republican candidate Ben Carson, is an oil and gas consultant focused on the geopolitics of the energy trade, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Joe Schmitz, a lawyer, is a former Defense Department Inspector General and a former executive with the Blackwater security firm, associated with the killing of Iraqi civilians.

And Gen. Joseph Keith Kellogg, at one point a COO at Oracle, led the 82nd Airborne Division and served as chief operating officer of the multinational Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq from 2003 through 2004.

Trump has criticized American involvement in Iraq and said that he was an early opponent of intervention there.

He acknowledged that Kellogg and his perspectives on the conflict diverge.

"He does have a different opinion, but I do like different opinions," Trump told CNN.

And he said more broadly of his advisers: "It doesn't mean that I'm going to use what they're saying."

Trump's meeting with the Post came just hours before the billionaire businessman took questions from the press at the hotel he is building in Washington. This evening, he addresses AIPAC along with Kasich and fellow Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, a Texas senator.

Trump has for weeks said he would release the names of foreign policy advisers but has until now repeatedly missed his own deadlines.

Asked last week in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about his advisers, Trump first pointed to himself: "I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain."

The foreign policy positions he advanced Monday demonstrated that his thinking on global affairs has led him to advance positions that would turn parts of U.S. foreign policy on their head.

"NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we're protecting Europe with NATO, but we're spending a lot of money," Trump said of the alliance in his remarks to the Post. "We certainly can't afford to do this anymore."

And when asked whether the U.S. benefits from its engagement with Asia, Trump responded, "Personally, I don't think so."

[brekin]

Read it all to get the full K.O., or just the last paragraph for a T.K.O.

Did American Psycho Predict The Way We Live Now?
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201603 ... e-relevant

By Nicholas Barber
21 March 2016

If you’ve ever had a hankering to see a jaunty Broadway show about someone who hires prostitutes so that he can lop off their limbs with a chainsaw, then you’re in luck: a musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is previewing in New York in March.
It’s not the craziest subject for an evening of toe-tapping entertainment: the title characters in Sweeney Todd and The Phantom of the Opera are both serial killers, after all. But when Ellis’s novel was published in 1991, nobody would have believed that such a controversially gruesome book would one day be the source of a Tony contender. A virtuosic commentary on conspicuous consumption in the 1980s, American Psycho is a darkly funny first-person account of an investment banker’s decadent lifestyle, which ranges from cocaine-fuelled nights out at Manhattan’s most expensive restaurants to the murders he describes in similarly minute detail.

Its detractors loathed it, and even its fans would agree that its anti-hero, Patrick Bateman, is one of the most unsavoury creations in literary history. So what does it say about us that we’re now willing to whistle along to his depravity? Have we inched closer to Bateman’s way of thinking over the past 25 years? Or has the story told in Ellis’s novel been diluted with each subsequent retelling? The answer is somewhere in between.
One feminist campaigner labelled American Psycho a ‘how-to novel on the torture of women’
Looking back, it’s quite touching to recall that in the early 1990s, something as highbrow as a novel – rather than a video game, a rap album or an ill-considered tweet – could have prompted such outrage, but American Psycho was headline news. Completed when Ellis (like Bateman) was just 26, it was condemned as misogynistic pornography by feminist authors, Gloria Steinem and Kate Millett included.

The New York Times slammed it as “moronic and sadistic”. The National Organization of Women campaigned for a boycott. And its publishers, Simon & Schuster, were so agitated that they cancelled their deal with Ellis. “It was an error of judgement to put our name on a book of such questionable taste,” said the company’s CEO, Richard E Snyder – because if there is one thing that literature should always be, it’s unquestionably tasteful. American Psycho was then published by Vintage Books, but the storm of disapproval didn’t die down. Many shops refused to stock it, and, in Australia and New Zealand, the novel couldn’t be sold to anyone younger than 18. Even then, it was shrink-wrapped to ensure that under-age browsers wouldn’t be corrupted.

Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, said last year that the “negative reviews the novel received now sound a little like the stampeding of frightened children”, and it’s true that some of the book’s most vociferous opponents seem to have made a point of misreading it. One feminist campaigner labelled American Psycho a “how-to novel on the torture and dismemberment of women”, but the violence (which is inflicted on men as well as women) doesn’t start until a third of the way through, and when it does, there is some ambiguity as to whether it actually happens, or whether it all takes place in Bateman’s fevered imagination. Still, the protests were a testament to how powerfully vivid the novel can be. And they were, ultimately, invaluable publicity. American Psycho was soon so famous – or infamous – that a Hollywood movie was inevitable. But how could any film visualise Bateman’s macabre hobby without being unbearably horrific?
Left to the imagination?
Step forward Mary Harron, who had directed 1996’s I Shot Andy Warhol. Harron and her co-writer, Guinevere Turner, knew that in order to translate Ellis’s stomach-turning prose into something that audiences could watch without being sick into their popcorn, they had to emphasise that American Psycho was a comedy, and that Bateman himself was the butt of the joke. In their 2000 film, it’s plain that he isn’t a ‘master of the universe’ in the mould of Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko. He is, Harron has said, an “absurd, ludicrous, pathetic monster”.

When he tries to get a reservation in an exclusive restaurant, the maitre d’ bursts out laughing. Among his colleagues, he doesn’t have the swankiest apartment or even the swankiest business card. His work consists of lounging in an office watching quiz shows and doing the crossword, and he only got that job via his family connections. In general, Harron and Turner have no time for the machismo and hedonism celebrated by Oliver Stone in Wall Street and Martin Scorsese in The Wolf of Wall Street. And, unlike The Silence of the Lambs, their film doesn’t buy into the fallacy that being a homicidal maniac somehow makes you a charismatic genius. Bateman, as Turner put it, is “a big dork”.
The passages that angered so many 25 years ago have been erased from the musical
It’s an interpretation which is embraced by the film’s leading man, Christian Bale. Seemingly modelling his performance on Steve Martin’s in The Jerk, Bale may look like a Greek god, but he never lets us forget that Bateman is an anxious doofus who believes that it’s the height of sophistication to be a Phil Collins fan. Incidentally, his sudden switches from smarmy chatterbox to frenzied butcher make Bale’s subsequent casting as Batman seem like a wasted opportunity: he would have been a lot more suitable as the Joker.

As clever as Harron and Turner’s adaptation of American Psycho is, however, there is no doubt that they blunted the serrated edges of Ellis’s satire. As well as being lighter in tone than the book, the film is less explicit in terms of both sex and violence. And the new musical is less explicit still. A Variety review of the London production which is transferring to Broadway noted its “near total refusal to depict the gore that defines the work”, a decision which “robs the show of darkness and, for the most part, any galvanizing sense of horror”. The people who protested against Ellis’s novel, then, have scored a belated victory: the passages that angered them 25 years ago have been erased.
Staring into the abyss
But if the makers of the film and the show have moved American Psycho towards the mainstream, the mainstream has moved even more rapidly towards American Psycho. For one thing, Bateman’s grisly murders are no longer beyond the pale in popular culture. In the wake of Game of Thrones, the Hannibal TV series, and the various post-Saw torture-porn movies, a far more graphic film of Ellis’s novel could easily be made today. But it isn’t just that our tolerance for blood and guts has increased. In all sorts of ways, Bateman would fit into the 21st Century as comfortably as he fits into his linen suit by Canali Milano, his cotton shirt by Ike Behar, his silk tie by Bill Blass and his cap-toed leather lace-ups from Brooks Brothers.

Society has come to endorse Bateman’s attitudes

When the novel was first published, it was seen as an indictment of a materialistic era that had already passed: Harron would later describe her film as a “period thing” that looked back at the excesses of 1980s corporate capitalism from a safe distance. But it’s apparent now that American Psycho is horribly contemporary. Bateman’s exhaustive knowledge of luxury brands no longer seems preposterous: when he chats about designer labels over cocktails with his three best buddies, the book could be a gender-swapped episode of Sex and the City.
Likewise, variations on his sybaritic skincare regime – “a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey-almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub” – can now be found in every celebrity magazine. And the byzantine dishes Bateman orders in restaurants – “shad-roe ravioli with apple compote as an appetizer and the meat loaf with chèvre and quail-stock sauce for an entrée” – are indistinguishable from the concoctions served up by the contestants on MasterChef. It’s not just investment bankers who resemble Ellis’s creation these days. It’s all of us.

But the most disconcerting example of how society has come to endorse Bateman’s attitudes is that, in the novel, he can’t help talking about his hero, Donald Trump. “This obsession has got to stop,” snaps his girlfriend, after the tenth time Bateman has brought up Trump’s parties, Trump’s wife and Trump’s favourite pizza parlour. Somewhere in Manhattan, the American Psycho must be delighted to see what his beloved “Donny” is up to today.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Well i'll be damned. 25 years ago the man was saying the same thing he is saying today. Who knew. Maybe he actually means it. This is a fucked up world.

Of course he means it. As I posted upthread, this is his major league dog-whistle to Corporate America for an astronomical tax windfall where we pick up the tab, whereas the Sanders version of trade reform would do the opposite. (Or attempt to anyway: neither one has a chance in hell, even if elected in November, of getting either socialist trade reform or super-capitalist trade gangfuck legislation through Congress.) But it really doesn't surprise me that he's been advocating this for 30 years - this is a billionaire trying to help his true compadres become trillionaires. Trump is no threat to the System; he's been wining and dining these psychopaths since long before he shot that Oprah segment.

[Harvey]

Hmmm, Bateman, Batman...

As far as critiques of capitalism go, what's changed since Trollope wrote The Way we Live Now? Not a lot. Even if it's ever so slightly more cogent than Batman or Bateman, of which Trollope wrote:

Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now

Confusing popular entertainment with effective analysis isn't the point, even when it's good, the long term prognosis hasn't altered because, well, we like sexy, driven and unfathomable heroes/anti-heroes, they provide a necessary distance distraction from all of that mundane stuff 'we' want to own despite the cost. And there it is, nut inside shell, the villain of the piece.

Stuff. Just say no.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Donald Trump unveils foreign policy advisers
By Jeremy Diamond and Nicole Gaouette, CNN
Updated 5:03 PM ET, Mon March 21, 2016 | Video Source: CNN


Donald Trump revealed a list of at least five foreign policy advisers guiding his policies
This comes weeks after Trump has said he would unveil whom advised him on foreign policy
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump on Monday finally named several members of his team of foreign policy advisers in a meeting with The Washington Post's editorial board, also laying out a global posture starkly at odds with longstanding U.S. policy.

The names he provided for his advisory team ended weeks of questions about who forms the Republican front-runner's brain trust on global affairs. But the group's lack of boldface Washington names and clear policymaking track records means there are still unanswered questions about the international direction they would hope to lead the country in. They also don't clarify the GOP candidate's broader global vision, as some have taken positions contrary to those he has articulated on the campaign trail.

Trump told the Post that he wants to reduce American commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a pillar of relations with Europe, and challenged the benefit of American military investment in Asia, one of the world's fastest-growing economic regions.

Trump detailed the position and his foreign policy team just hours before his first major foreign policy test -- a speech before the annual 18,000-strong American Israel Public Affairs Committee gathering in Washington.

Speaking alongside his Democratic and Republican rivals, Trump will have to display a grasp of substance on issues within Israel, such as the peace process and and Israel's qualitative military edge, and in the region, including Iran's nuclear program. In doing so, he could provide an initial sense of how this new group of advisers will shape Trump's world view.

"If he does not make this foreign policy advisers group look good by what's in that speech," political strategist Angela Rye told CNN, "I think he's got a problem."

Comparing the unglamorous business of crafting a foreign policy to sausage-making, Rye added that for Trump, the test is that "it's about knowing what to put in the sausage as well."

The team of foreign policy advisers, led by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, consists of counter-terrorism expert Walid Phares, energy consultant George Papadopoulos, former Defense Department inspector general Joe Schmitz, managing partner of Global Energy Capital Carter Page and former Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed the names to CNN.

Joe Schmitz, a lawyer, is a former Defense Department Inspector General and a former executive with the Blackwater security firm, associated with the killing of Iraqi civilians.

The whole Schmitz family is evil incarnate. And Sessions is someone I mentioned on page 3 of this thread as being particularly racist:

Whaddya Know, First Prominent Elected Republican to Endorse Trump Is Arguably the Most Racist
If Trump's policy is to strategically weaponize bigotry to his advantage, Jeff Sessions' endorsement is a sign it's working.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet
August 27, 2015

Last week, Donald Trump spoke to a large crowd in Mobile, Alabama, at a rally that featured Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL). At the rally, Sessions became the first member of Congress to endorse Trump.

The endorsement was fitting, because Sessions has been known as one of Congress' biggest bigots. Don Siegelman, the former Democratic Party governor of Alabama, wrote a short letter about how the endorsement is apropos:

Jeff Sessions endorsed Donald Trump for President in Mobile Alabama at the exceptionally large Trump rally.

Alabama's junior U.S. Senator, Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III, says "I used to think the Ku Klux Klan was a pretty good group of guys, until I learned they smoked pot." U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy made Sessions confess to having said this during Sessions' would be confirmation hearing for a U.S. District Court judgeship, for which he was nominated by President Reagan.

As the U .S. Attorney, Sessions, in order to suppress the black vote, sent the FBI out in Alabama's "Black Belt" to round up black political activists, have them photographed and finger printed, and told that the FBI would be watching what they did in the upcoming general election. Sessions was challenging a Democratic incumbent for state attorney general, and the Democrat was expected to get a landslide of black votes.

To show he meant business, Sessions had two black activists charged and convicted, both friends of mine. One a sweet 72-year-old woman, Miss Julia Wilder, a retired school teacher, who was sentenced to two years, and Ms. Maggie Bozeman, a noted activist in black politics. I studied the case and the testimony. First, I do not believe they broke the law and secondly, they did not get fair treatment at the trial. Sessions was determined to scare the hell out of the black activists so they would not get out the vote for his Democratic opponent.

Before that 1994 election in which I was running for Lt. Governor, I spoke to a noted black leader, Senator Hank Sanders, who told me most were simply afraid and would not be working as they had in the past to turn out black votes.

Sessions won in an upset victory and two years later won his seat in the U.S. Senate by alleging his Democratic opponent, a state senator, had broken the law in getting a grant to provide water services from which the senator would allegedly benefit. The charges were dropped after the election.

Sessions is as far to the right as you can get. He likes the KKK, doesn't like blacks, and wants every immigrant sent back to wherever they came from. A perfect match for Trump at least on immigration.



Sessions goes way beyond your typical Republican opponent of immigration reform. He has complained that immigrants create “cultural problems,” and has gone on a witch hunt to ensure that undocumented immigrants aren't granted Social Security numbers. So it's no surprise that earlier this month, it was reported that Trump was consulting with Sessions on his immigration plan, which represents perhaps the most extreme anti-migration policy the United States could pursue, including mass deportations and a total militarization of the border.

If Trump's policy is to strategically weaponize bigotry to his own advantage, the Sessions endorsement is a sign it's working.