Category: Trump effect

September 14, 2017

The news media has been obsessed this week with Hillary Clinton’s new book, “What Happened.”  Half of those commenting decry her for having the temerity to write it at all, stating that she should retreat to the Chappaqua woods.  Others carp that Hillary fails to accord sufficient weight to her own mistakes as a candidate.  That particular criticism is rich coming from a press corps that defensively denies the role its own imbalanced coverage played in Trump’s victory.  As the Shorenstein Center Report detailed, coverage of Hilary Clinton during the 2016 election cycle was light on policy and overwhelmingly negative (62% negative vs. 38% positive).  While Trump’s coverage was also more negative than positive (56%/44%), given the seriousness of the genuine scandals in which Trump was embroiled, his higher positives simply make no sense.  (Source:  “News Coverage of the 2016 General Election:  How the Press Failed the Voters,” by Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and The Press, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at The Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, 12/7/16). Continue reading “Silence is violence”

September 12th, 2017

Sunday night we were treated to the spectacle of Charlie Rose interviewing Steve Bannon, the bilious re-animated corpse of Spiro Agnew, on “60 Minutes.”  Bannon, his voice dripping with thinly veiled contempt, uttered ahistorical nonsense that displayed less knowledge of American history than a 5th grader who was paying attention in Social Studies would have had.  Bannon bristled at the notion that The United States was a country of immigrants and said that “economic nationalism” built this country.  Unless economic nationalism is a new synonym for “slavery,” that is the most absurd thing ever uttered in public by a current or former White House staffer.  Continue reading “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”

 

Republicans and Democrats alike were stunned this week when Trump capriciously made a deal to sign a Harvey relief bill that only extended the debt ceiling for three months, as requested by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. The agreement increased the Democrats’ leverage and crushed McConnell and Ryan’s hope of extending the debt ceiling fight past the 2018 mid-term elections. Baffled commentators scrambled to make sense of Trump’s decision, ascribing his motives to everything from a narcissistic need for positive press coverage to boredom at the debate during the Oval Office meeting. Regardless of the reason for this small victory, we would be foolish to take it as a harbinger of moderation or bi-partisanship from this administration. While we were busy crowing at Pelosi and Schumer’s ability to snooker the President, his administration was continuing apace with its destructive policy agenda. Continue reading “Hell or high water”

September 7, 2017

It is difficult, amid the deafening cacophony of our chaotic daily news cycle, to take the time to consider all of the forces that had to align to bring us to this point, or to see a path forward for our nation, beyond resistance to reclamation of our vaunted national values.  We can argue that the combination of decades long coordinated attacks on the Constitutional right to vote, together with the abdication of the duty to check majoritarian abuses of power by co-equal branches of government, has landed us here.  Given the mountain of evidence supporting this view, this will be a multi-part post. Continue reading “How we got here, Part 1”

With Trump as president, our waking nightmare has no end. After months of coy equivocation, pretending to feel compassion for DACA recipients, Trump’s administration has announced that it will end DACA in six months.  Some are alleging that Trump’s hand was forced by the threat of a lawsuit from ten conservative State Attorneys General.  Spare us.  Since when has Trump backed down from a threat?  He is playing a game of nuclear annihilation chicken with North Korea, but we’re supposed to believe that Trump is intimidated by a letter? Continue reading “Dream or nightmare?”

September 3, 2017

Students of American History know that the Founders, inspired by the Enlightenment era philosopher, John Locke, created this country as a nation of laws, not men. The promise of that maxim is twofold. The first is that no person, regardless of position, is beyond the reach of the law. The second is that society will operate under a common framework that ensures the general welfare and provides citizens with a modicum of transparency and predictability. Consider the durability of that foundational principle in light of the events of the last several days. Continue reading “Law and Order?”

It has been frustrating to read statement after statement condemning antifa as the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.  Everyone from Nancy Pelosi to David Frum has gone on record to decry the violent methods of the black clad antifa, asserting that they are no different than the white supremacists they oppose.  These critiques seem to deliberately miss the point, obfuscating the fact that opposition to fascism is clearly morally superior to Nazism and white supremacy.

Antifa should be strongly criticized for seeking to violently shut down speech, but NOT for defensively using violence to protect non-violent protestors.  As we saw in Charlottesville, when law enforcement passively watched as a white supremacist fired a gun towards a Black counter-protestor and walked away, those of us who protest white supremacists and Nazis cannot always count on law enforcement to protect us.  We should listen to the people on the ground in Charlottesville, who credited antifa with saving their lives.  Unfortunately, in many other instances, the antifa have escalated the violence, muddied the waters and allowed those with tepid opposition to white supremacy and anti-Semitism to take a hands off approach and say, “a pox on both their houses.” Continue reading “Take a seat”

We sit transfixed, watching Hurricane Harvey devastate our fourth largest city with a volume of water that could fill the Great Salt Lake –twice.  We are buoyed by the heroism on display.  In addition to the Coast Guard, the National Guard and the Houston Police Department, scores of ordinary citizens, from Louisiana’s Cajun Navy to journalists who drop the mic to save a drowning woman, have renewed our faith in Americans’ common humanity.  It is comforting to know that when confronted by epic disaster, we still rise to the challenge.  That is more than can be said for Trump, who sits on the sidelines inanely tweeting like a “weather pundit.” (h/t Jon Favreau – Pod Save America, 8/28/17).  FEMA rescue efforts are succeeding in spite of him, given that Trump has proposed cutting FEMA’s budget by $667 million, the National Flood Insurance Program by $190 million and that of the National Weather Service by $62 million.  Trump was not alone in showing his worst qualities in the face of disaster.  Insufferable Texas Senator Ted Cruz bristled at the reminder of his callous vote against Hurricane Sandy relief, now that his constituents needed help.  Prosperity Gospel pimp Joel Osteen refused to open his bone dry mega church to Texans fleeing life threatening conditions until he’d been shamed on Twitter for hours and exposed as a liar by The New York Post. Continue reading “Houston, we have a problem.”

August 26, 2017

 

We keep wondering where the bottom is. When will Trump’s lethal combination of cruelty, racism, incompetence and abuse of power reach its nadir? Or better still, when will that combination prove a bridge too far for those in the co-equal branches of government, such that they are compelled to stop him?

Yesterday was the perfect storm of actions to showcase the fact that Trump is far from hitting the bottom. First, Trump issued a formal directive to the military to enact the ban on transgender troops serving in the military. Then, as Texas braced for what looked to be the worst storm to hit the state in twelve years, Trump was a study in fecklessness, wishing Texans, “good luck,” while boarding a helicopter to Camp David. Although the current FEMA Director is well regarded, Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, as been without a director since John Kelly was brought over to clean house as White House Chief of Staff.   Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, is still leaderless. (Source: “Trump Administration Faces Hurricane Harvey, Its First Major Natural Disaster,” Nicholas Fandos, The New York Times, 8/26/17). Continue reading “Rock bottom?”

August 24, 2017

 

Once again, Trump’s actions render us speechless. One week after he doubled down on the false equivalence between violent white supremacists and those protesting them, Trump flew into Phoenix, over the objections of its mayor, to hold a rally for his devoted supporters. We have become inured to the pathetic need of this toxic narcissist for constant validation from his devoted supporters. We cynically recognize that by “campaigning” this early in his tenure, Trump is raising funds that can be used to pay for his legal defense against the obstruction of justice and other charges that are sure to come. Yet, while we can admit that it is hardly shocking when an indecent man behaves indecently, it is shocking, in the aftermath of Charlottesville, to see the extent to which his supporters will contort themselves to hear things that Trump clearly did not say. Most of us heard a sitting President rebuke two sitting Senators from his own party, including one fighting terminal brain cancer. We heard him excoriate journalists of enemies of the people. Continue reading “Enemy of the people?”