January 23, 2016

two articles explain how fucked Republicans are

GOP establishment capitulates to Donald Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/01/22/the-gop-establishment-capitulates-to-donald-trump/

This article (WaPo) talks about how GOP leaders are trying to cozy up to the fascist shithole because they think he's gonna get nominated anyway and they can appease him somehow. The second they offer him a few handshakes, he ramps up the the immigrant bashing again and spins out the lie that Cruz is for legalization of undocumented immigrants (all Cruz did was shy away from supporting Trump's gestapo-like round up of hard working families). Make no mistake: Trump's a fascist and the Republicans, apparently, are bracing themselves to play the Neville Chamberlain role.


Why GOP Elites Prefer Trump to Cruz
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/gop_elites_prefer_donald_trump_to_ted_cruz.single.html

This opinion/analysis piece at Salon compares how GOP top brass think they can cut deals with Trump, but see Cruz as leading an insurgent faction of extreme rightees who want to replace them as the Republican leadership. If Trump is the fascist in this analogy, then Cruz is Stalin, a smarmy dysfunctional bully who no one likes but who has a more clearly defined ideology to govern by. They're certain Cruz will lose. They think Trump has a path to the White House. Trump is a pretty sly fox. He probably does have decent chance of winning.

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Given the increasingly likelihood that Trump will win the nomination, I guess that leaves the Democrats to play the Churchill role. But now I've overstretched the analogy. I'll end it with this: Trump is a fascist and a double-dealer, make no doubt, but he's no Hitler. He's a Mussolini, but not a Hitler.

Anyway, my main point is, given the choice between a jackass and a fascist, the Republicans are going with the fascist. Why? Because they're party bosses and they think he can be negotiated with. He make a fetish out of cutting deals, after all, right? But they're fools. He won't be controlled, and frankly a Donald Trump with power is a dangerous prospect. You and I and absolutely they should be very afraid of that prospect.

So why aren't they? Because they're party bosses. They want to win. They think he can do it (and it will blow your mind next fall when you see how deftly Trump pivots and starts appealing to moderates to win the election). But as an American first and only as a Democrat second, I really want to see the Republicans nominate someone else; anyone else. Cruz is reprehensible, but at the end of the day, the Republic will survive 4, even 8, years of President Ted Cruz.

There'll be a mess to clean up, certainly, tho we're still cleaning up Bush & Cheney's in the financial sector and the MidEast. But there'll also be a Constitution and the rule of law at our disposal to start to address whatever problems a Cruz or Rubio or Christie or Kasich White House creates. I'm not quite so confident that a Trump presidency would end with bona fide elections. I can't see what's at the other end of that tunnel.

I started writing this post thinking about how fucked Republicans are, meaning fucked both as screwed and fucked in the head. The more I think about where this sort of thing goes, the more it seems that the whole country's in a pretty fucked situation.

January 22, 2016

Key Clinton Ally (Brock): 'Black Lives Don't Matter' To Bernie Sanders

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/david-brock-sanders-black-lives-matter

[font face="times new roman"]David Brock, a longtime ally of the Clinton family, told the Associated Press on Thursday that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) latest TV ad showed a disregard for Democratic voters of color.
Brock told the AP that he thought Sanders' new "America" ad, which uses Simon and Garfunkel's song of the same name in lieu of spoken words, was focused on white voters. The ad shows Sanders greeting mostly white supporters on the campaign trail, with the crowds' sizes slowly increasing.
Brock characterized the ad as a "significant slight to the Democratic base."
"From this ad it seems black lives don't matter much to Bernie Sanders," Brock told the AP.[/font]

Ugh, yes, David Brock is still circulating. Clinton needs to unload this hack--connections to people like him is exactly the reason she's struggling, again, to gain her party's nomination despite spending 16 years trying to scare everyone else out of the race.

Don't get me wrong. I like Clinton and would enthusiastically support her in the fall. Politically I'm probably much closer to her than I am to Sanders. I'm not that happy that Sen. Sanders is the only real opposition she has for the nomination. I think Sanders goes for overly simplistic answers to pretty complicated problems in our economy. That said, I'm leaning Bernie's direction, because Clinton's organization is, once again, showing signs of desperation and lashing out with bogus rhetoric, as soon as the going gets rough. Sanders's relatively even keel in these tiffs tells me how he'd manage a crisis. Clinton's connections to people like David Brock only serves to remind me why the Founding Fathers believed in the rotation in office. Hillary Clinton, for all her talents and good sense, has been too close to the center of power for too long.

January 4, 2016

Q: What would George do (about the Bundy militia)? A: Get tough, dammit.

This is how it oughta be handled: ==> The Whisky Rebellion

Alexander Hamilton, on putting down the Whisky Rebellion, told George Washington:

'Tis far better to err on the other side {by having too many troops suppress the anti-tax uprising}. Whenever the government appears in arms, it ought to appear like an Hercules and inspire respect by display of strength.

And so Washington sent down a shitload of state militiamen (not the federal army, please note) to arrest the Whisky Rebels. They scattered like cockroaches.

I mean, it'd probably be best to pardon all but a couple of the ring leaders when it's all said and done. Slap 'em on the wrist and send them home (that's what Washington did with the Whisky Rebels the year following their arrest and scattering). It's not unlike how Clinton dealt with the idiots who tried to kidnap Elian Gonzalez in 2000. When mobs of people defy the rule of law, you have to show them that order will prevail. That doesn't mean don't temper it with mercy in the aftermath. The lawbreakers in Miami got off scot free too. But the defiance of the rule of law is intolerable.

These armed thugs (and they're thugs, not terrorists, even if those "YokelHaram" jokes are pretty funny right now... before anyone's gotten killed) have been enboldened by the Republicans and their reckless conspiracy mongering over the past 20 years. There's a very real risk they won't scatter like the Whisky Rebels did in 1794. (The Republican Party that encouraged rebellion against the Washington Administration was actually the grandfather of today's Democrats). Sending in armed state militia could turn into an actual shoot-out, if not managed properly. But doing nothing only breeds contempt for the government.

But then again, I believe we have new non-lethal technology for mob control. These ugly toys will fuck you up pretty bad, but they don't leave holes in their victims like bullets do. It's harsh treatment up front, but it's kinder in the long run than the current policy of letting anarchistic punks walk all over the dignity of the United States. And dropping a few non-lethal LRAD beams on these armed hooligans will pretty quickly expose the lie that the Second Amendment is any guard against tyranny.