Nancy has been on a justifiable warpath against President’s Trump’s fitness for office today, so it’s tempting to find something wholly unrelated to write about. Instead, I am just going to take a different angle on what is still basically the same topic. I am going to talk about risk and damage.
So far, the damage done by Trump’s presidency has had a lot of intangible characteristics. It’s hard to quantify how our loss on international prestige negatively impacts our nation. Our beleaguered diplomatic corp might struggle to explain all the ways their jobs have become more difficult, even nightmarish at times. Our military commanders know that our working relationships with allies are under newfound stress, but maybe they can’t easily attribute any particular problem to a definite cause. How do we measure the downside of all the stress people feel because they’re worried about their access to health care or the possibility that the government might break a promise and deport a member of their family? What’s it feel like to be a part of a vulnerable community that the president attacks as criminal in nature or as insufficiently patriotic? What kind of damage does it do to the character of our kids to have a president who lies, cheats, bullies, and defrauds people, and is seemingly rewarded for it? What happens to the character of people who support the president over the things they agree with him about when this causes them to excuse things about him they would never overlook in their friends or children?
This isn’t to say that the president’s policies haven’t yet done any real tangible, measurable harm. But it’s true that his worst policy proposals have mostly been checked or watered down. Unfortunately, we’re reaching a new point in the life of this administration where the destruction is going to be more noticeable and easier to put on a straightforward cause/effect chart.
We can begin with the executive order he issued today which will weaken the Affordable Care Act by making its exchanges sicker and more expensive. Unlike the president’s prior move on the Paris climate agreement and his coming one on the Iran nuclear deal, the health care executive order is worse than a way for the president to save face without doing much immediate harm. It has the potential to be “a devastating blow.”
Something similar is happening with the NAFTA trade agreement. You may agree with Trump that NAFTA was the worst trade agreement ever crafted, but that doesn’t mean that we can simply withdraw from it without creating massive chaos. Based on the administration’s negotiating posture, the aim seems to be blame Canada and Mexico for not making unreasonable concessions. That will be followed by withdrawal from the treaty in the messiest and must disruptive way imaginable.
As previously mentioned, the current strategy on Iran’s nuclear program is designed to give Trump a way to save face without actually blowing up the agreement. It remains to be seen, however, if that strategy will hold.
It looks like Trump is preparing to leave Puerto Rico twisting in the wind, as he’s now threatening to pull back from relief efforts prematurely and blame the island’s preexisting fiscal problems. There will be nothing theoretical about the resulting death and suffering.
And, of course, the biggest thing hanging out there is North Korea. There’s a reason that there are stories emerging about Trump’s national security team’s plans to tackle him if he tries to initiate the nuclear launch codes. There’s a reason that, today, the New York Times editorial board is advocating “legislation that would bar the president from launching a first nuclear strike without a declaration of war by Congress” and claiming implausibly that this “wouldn’t take away the president’s ability to defend the country.”
Nothing does more lasting harm than nuclear fallout. And people in a position to know are sending the strongest signals that we ought to panic.
On these issues, and probably more, we’re moving from a period of inchoate and nebulous harm to a period of real, solid, tangible catastrophe.
We cannot put off a real reckoning much longer, and the idea that the adults in the White House can continue to protect us from the natural consequences of having a lunatic president is already being exposed as a fantasy.
Something needs to be done, starting immediately, to save the nation and the world from what will otherwise soon come our way.
We need adults in the room now
I hear ya, but what can I do? This is a Congress problem, and I live in a firmly Democratic state and district.
No progress until the citizens of say Wisconsin and Kentucky rise up. And that’s not going to happen – too many of ’em still seem to be enjoying the show.
Besides the issues you mention: Cutting off federal funds to “sanctuary cities;” cutting back national parks and monuments; the so-called “end of the war on coal;” and all the other stuff the federal agencies are doing in the background.
It’s horrible, evil, dispiriting. Feeling helpless.
Making Democrats feel helpless and getting Democratic voters deported or suppressed is the entire point of the policies of this first 9 months.
Only people power can beat money power, and the money that money power exerts goes mostly to demoralizing the people and allowing the powers of law and order to have small enough crowds to suppress, either at the polls or in the streets.
What money power fears most besides losing elections is non-violent protesters in the street in numbers that overwhelm the police and military and trigger violent police repression that is widely seen as unjust.
In principle there is a baseline of at least 3 million more of people willing to stand up for the Constitution compared to people willing to stand up for “L’Etat, C’est Moi; thanks for honoring me with your evening colors.”
How can you deport a Democratic voter? If the voter is undocumented, they’re not eligible to vote.
Deport a native born child of an undocumented immigrant. This is not about the next election but about the demographic trend toward a minority-majority nation.
Unfortunately the timeline for any sort of action to curtail Trump (impeachment, 25th amendment, 2018 election, massive cabinet resignation, Mueller report) is going to be much slower than the timeline of escalation of the Korean crisis to a nuclear war–which seems pretty much inevitable to me.
If we survive to any kind of happy future, I’m pretty convinced that we will be looking back in amazement at how lucky we were that Trump was felled by a heart attack just as he was about to bring the whole thing down.
Not that relying on the vagaries of the gods is any kind of useful strategy.
What should we do?
That certainly is the QOD. Anyone have the answer?
Too much time has already wasted trying to keep the elders of the Democratic Party politically viable for another decade and resawing off the left wing of the party instead of focusing on Trump’s ties to neo-Nazi and white supremacist movemental groups, who allied with fifth columns in police departments seek to erase the gains of the Obama years and the concerns raised by Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
By far the most important thing that needs to be done at the moment is shutting down the multi-billion-dollar propaganda machine that diverts attention from what Congress, the President, and the conservative Supreme Court are actually doing. Coordinated through the National Conservative Political Action Committee and the groups allied through the Value Voters Summit, these groups reach deep into local religious groups through various evangelical associations and movements and academic groups, now through state legislative appointments to university and education boards. And Roger Stone and Charles Black Jr. have been there every step of the way from Nixon to Trump.
That coordination includes coordinating the media information war of Rush Limbaugh and the shock jocks and the post-Citizens United financial blitzkrieg of the noted and the anonymous billionaires and millionaires through proliferating and highly shell-structured political action committees that engage now full-time in issue advocacy, opposition trashing, social media campaigns, and candidate support.
That well-financed superstructure is Trump’s security blanket that allows his continuation in office because of the chaos that Trump will sow and the hope that he ices the deal on huge tax cuts soon. With the hope that a small part will be cycled back into even large tax cuts in the next cycle–deficit be damned. That is their strength and also their vulnerability when the public gets clear how they are being fleeced both ways from the middle.
The collapse of that now-seemingly-impregnable superstructure makes all GOP races, who long ago got soft with national money suddenly vulnerable and their voter bases uncertain of what exactly is happening.
The continuing bigot pressure and coddling at some point gets blowback from minorities in general. How will minorities in the military respond to orders to restore order or go to yet another war of choice? Silent refusals to re-up are the seeming path of least resistance. What does that do to US power, and how will the TrumpBrass react to troops not accepting a one-way bargain. Does no one say out loud that the Gen. Boykins, the Christian identity movement, and the alt-right within the military endanger unit cohesion?
If those who are close to the centers of power in the US don’t get a grip, the destruction that Trump has already caused will be considered the new normal and we will daily be relieved that today he didn’t lunge for the football. That standard of low expectation will perpetuate his hold on power. Because of those who benefit from his benefiting his own finances.
I agree the democrats seem lost and unable to mount any effective opposition. Blame it on Bernie, I suppose. That will continue for some time yet. There is no spokesman.
The republican opposition is not something easily shut down. We seem to be waiting for Trump to piss off all his base and big money supporters. Perhaps after tax reform more will abandon him like Corker. But that is far from a safe bet.
So what is your answer? You Sound like more wait and see. The democrats have no real power. And if one day we make a deal to save the dreamers and agree to fund the wall and raise the debt limit we will be in worse position. We need a dozen Corkers to help us.
The Democrats had power enough to stop TrumpCare. Shifting the Overton window is where the Democrats gain power — something they’ve been asked to do for 15 years (essentially ever since no WMDs were found in Iraq), but are constrained by lobbyists, consultants, and campaign donors not to do.
Republicans are incurring no political cost for being crazier and crazier because local Democrats are hunkered down and not studying Republican incumbent vulnerabilities at the local level.
Yes, it’s difficult; the conservatives, if not the Republicans, see it as a culture war.
There is stronger position; Roger Ailes is gone and FoxNews is just a little bit directionless. Steve Bannon is back at Breitbart but outed as a neo-Nazi/fascist/white supremacist seeking major internal conflict in the US. To do what? The alt-right became too visible too soon and the collusion with local police departments has already led to some firings and cleaning house.
When the constituents of people like Corker see the reality of the Republican Party, some who have habitually voted Republican might change — but only if Democrats have something to offer. Politics that is not for sale is a perennial swing voter issue. Government activities that are for everyone is another. Doing more than giving lip service to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse (cough, Department of Defese) is another.
The Defense Department argument is that more money is not supporting our troops; it is supporting all of the middlemen and overhead before anything material gets to our troops. The Halliburton and Bechtel failures in Afghanistan and Iraq should have been a scandal, but no politicians pushed it for fear of being labeled “unpatriotic”.
The banking scandal that David Dayen and Matt Taibbi have been reporting for over a decade is still out there. Democrats could, yes they could, decide to do something about it in good faith this time.
The clear message that needs to get out is that Dreamers (and their parents) should not be held hostage for a wall that is a construction boondoggle that is not needed to protect our borders. (Too bad that Canada is beginning to follow our bad example.)
Find out the economic damage that Trump’s (and Obama’s, to tell the truth) deportations have done to the businesses that violated the law and were allowed to continue violating the law.
There is lot of material for Democrats to actually go on a positive offense on. Once they cleanse their own house of hypocrisy.
It is proposed here that the 111th Congress and President which crafted and passed Dodd-Frank and pushed through other laws and regulations did more than create laws and rulings which are judged insufficient. No, it is proposed here that the Dem Party President and Congressional majority acted in bad faith.
The Russian Federation receives help from many Americans in its diligent work to suppress the votes of those who would most likely vote for candidates from the Democratic Party and ballot measures supported by Democrats it they made it to the polls.
It’s a shame when people who claim to support liberal policies are careless in their character attacks against the very best national politicians we have on offer. As expressed by the claim here, if President Obama is so easily labeled as having such low moral character, then too many in our movement have learned little and will keep on doing a bang-up job in suppresssing the vote of people who would support liberal policies if they weren’t encouraged by both the right and left political movements to view Obama along with all other politicians as not just wrong, but malevolently, knowingly corrupt in undifferentiated ways.
That this is a bald faced lie will matter little on Election Day if it helps make voter turnout shitty again. And if the response is that the Democratic Party should become more progressive and less corrupt, my answer would be that we have political Parties which bellow at the top of their poorly developed lungs that they are more progressive and less corrupt than the Democrats, and those political Parties are terrible in attracting candidates and voters. They do our political movement damage. I’m sick of pretending otherwise.
The leaders and followers of those Parties looked at Trump and Clinton and decided they were of identically low quality. They lied. That lie about a very important subject at a crucial time in our Nation’s history was an extreme act of bad faith.
Wait until the democratic nominee becomes apparent, that will really set them to howling, no matter who it is. And funny how the tone of that howling blends perfectly with the howling on the right.
.
I don’t have to wait. I’ve seen it for Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders (an unlikely run at his age), and Kamela Harris, and then there’s Joe Biden, who should retire while he’s ahead.
Bad faith?
Look at the post-political careers of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
Look at what the Dodd-Frank bill failed to do of what was recommended due diligence after the financial meltdown.
Look at what the banks are still doing.
President Obama’s post-political career is yet to be measured.
Except maybe in dollar terms. Making out quite well, thank you. Maybe a little too well. Not too surprising though for a guy who was so friendly and forgiving to the big banksters. Eric Holder is probably doing well too.
were gutted/repealed than for it to remain intact.
Am I reading you right?
Cuz here in Reality, those would seem the options.
It would have been better if Democratic politicians had not gutted critical provisions of the original legislation as a condition of Democratic unity and actually reined in the bank fraud.
There is political reality and there is the reality that people live and get financially victimized in. Giving Democrats a pass for what is essentially corruption does not build party popularity. No matter how realistic it is to the immediate passage of the bill. It was a failure of party discipline.
We are currently paying the price for their failure to improve the lives of ordinary people in all 50 states. In both rural America and urban America.
Get real with these critiques, TarheelDem.
‘…if Democratic politicians had not gutted critical provisions of the original legislation…”.
NAME THEM. Who are those Democratic politicians?
Because what you communicated in your upthread claim is that every Democrat involved in crafting and passing Dodd-Frank effort acted in bad faith. Talk about entering an extremely serious claim without evidence.
And then, continuing with this poisonous sentence: “…as a condition of Democratic unity…”.
Tarheel, you know damn well that any reform Bill needed complete Democratic unity to become law. We needed every single member of the Senate caucus, including all the most conservative Democrats, to vote for the Bill. It wasn’t a kumbaya effort; it was a vote-counting reality.
Finally, the last dose of poison: “…and actually reined in the bank fraud.”
Here you claim that no restraint of fraudulent behavior by financial institutions has been accomplished. It’s an outlandish claim which is at odds with reality. There are meaningful regulations in Dodd-Frank.
The Law and the regulators enforcing it have not eliminated all bad behavior and abusive practices, true. NO LAW IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES HAS DONE SO.
I would love to have heard you and the likes of you offering counsel to President Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in 1940. The unemployment rate was nearly as high that year as it was in 1931. In raw numbers, more Americans were unemployed that year than were unemployed in 1931. Almost none of the bankers and financial professionals whose reckless practices brought on the crash had been jailed. And there were charges that the Administration was considering entering another controversial overseas war.
You would have loved it. Plenty of factual issues to grouse about in an active effort to fracture the electoral coalition.
I’ll close with this: in one of your posts earlier this summer you identified a problem in gathering votes for progressive politicians and policies when you wrote about knowing fellow Tar Heels who disliked people who they felt were gaming public benefits programs. That is a result of nonstop propaganda campaigns which have warped the electorate and turned them away from Democrats.
But even with that, in your State it has taken incredibly unfair gerrymandered Districts and particularly preposterous and illegal voter ID laws and five-fingers-on-the-scale campaign finance laws and other electoral regulations to create the nightmare governmental situation in Raleigh today. But, reading your stuff here, you lay 20 critiques of the character and ideology of national and State Democrats for 1 critique you offer Art Pope, for one of many malevolent actors on the other side of the political fight in your State.
That seems inappropriate and unwarranted by a complete consideration of the factual record.
Dodd, Frank, Lieberman, Nelson, the usual suspects in 2009-10 who ensured that there was enough controversy to sink the House in 2010 and did nothing at all to stand up to Wall Street.
And then there was the illustrious Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, who might be considered a very influential Democratic politician. Yes, any reform bill needed complete Democratic unity, and there were enough corrupt Democrats that that unity did not happen. That is exactly my point. It is normal in the first part of an administration to full press on solving issues with full unity through party loyalty and get the momentum going. Too many Democrats wanted Obama to fail. And the leadership gave them a pass.
I hope that Democrats are smart enough to figure out how catastrophic Republicans have been over the past 50 years. Yet, some are not smart enough not to advocate for Republican policies–lots of the Blue Dogs in North Carolina. The corruption of the Easley and Perdue administrations was not something that finally could be hidden, and that in the context of the 2010 catastrophe changed the general assembly. The gerrymandering tilted slightly Democratic before the 2010 census results came out; then they tilted slightly GOP until 2014; then they tilted hard GOP.
Those non-stop GOP propaganda campaigns spread through Rush, Fox, and the shock jocks we given credibility by Democratic corruption and Blue Dog Democratic echoes. The Blue Dogs were the ones validating that Barack Obama was a scaaary progressive leftist President by running away from him politically. By being lazy (or corrupt) they did not fight the propaganda campaign back, beginning in the 1990s.
Some Democrats have brought and continue to push suits to overturn those Republican laws that you identify. Those are still not getting major support from the leadership.
Democrats are going to have to defeat the propaganda in order to move forward; that either occurs through superior marketing (which after 2016 is much in doubt) or through superior local political speech and enlisting personal networks in a real conversation about principles, policy, and who to trust in politics.
The people who have worked their butts off over the past three decades should by now realize that something in their well-defended business as usual is not working.
I have listed three things that are not working: writing off of support in “red counties”; corruption of policy and communications by rich donors and lobbyists; failure to stand up for the New Deal vision of a mixed economy with needed infrastructure that included health care, education, and income maintenance in unemployment, disability, and old age. I could now add a disaster relief infrastructure to that list. And include unprosecuted banking fraud and dodgy contracts and licenses as part of that disaster.
How we will pay for it is by raising taxes on those who are currently dodging taxes that they duly owe (if currently sheltered by corrupt tax laws). Tax reform is a hot item that the GOP is twisting to tax cuts for the rich. We did that 30 years ago; the same barnacles on the tax system established themselves in Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses. Time to do it again and ensure that those making less than $100,000 don’t get hit the most with taxes, and loss of public benefits.
Maybe I need to post about Republican catastrophe; centrist Democrats don’t seem to be too clear about all of the catastrophes and how they play out in people’s lives.
We have left a system in place that will allow for continued violations of the law, and everyone on Wall Street knows it.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/eric-holder-banks-too-big_n_2821741.html
This “centrist Democrat” epithet is an attempt to demagogue and polarize liberals/progressives against each other. It’s infuriating. Nevertheless, I’ll shove past that to try to prevent this conversation from ending like too many are these days.
You don’t know me at all. I’m a far lefty. I’m also looking at what’s happening and wanting people in our movement to get real about the racist/sexist/fascist/oligarchic movement we are facing.
I’m a labor organizer. I’ve got plenty of bitches to pitch about the 111th Congress’ failure to pass even a portion of the reforms of the Employee Free Choice Act, as one of a number of examples of where I would like Democrats to do better. As strong as my State Legislature is, we have a relatively moderate Governor and many moderates in one of the Leg bodies which are preventing us from accomplishing as much as we might.
That said, we have done a good (not great!) job of implementing the ACA, we have by far the best State minimum wage law in the United States, and that moderate Governor of ours had the credibility with voters to lead campaigns in 2012 and 2016 to get the Stare’s voters to increase their own taxes twice.
I’ll try again to bring a dialogue on this: I would love to have heard you and the likes of you offering counsel to President Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in 1940. The unemployment rate was nearly as high that year as it was in 1931. In raw numbers, more Americans were unemployed that year than were unemployed in 1931. Almost none of the bankers and financial professionals whose reckless practices brought on the crash had been jailed. And there were charges that the Administration was considering entering another controversial overseas war.
Most of the community members here who lay waste to all of this generation’s Democratic Party leaders beg for this century’s Democrats to be as bold as Roosevelt. Yet Obama’s record in many policy areas are substantially better than FDR’s, and his record of reducing unemployment and other economic crises are also superior in many areas.
The ACA, Dodd-Frank, the financial stimulus and a multitude of other Congressional and Administrative actions taken in 2009-10 were anything but “business as usual.” That’s an incredible mischaracterization.
One of the very worst things happening in the progressive movement right now is that ideological differences are labeled with the “corrupt” epithet. Our Assembly Speaker is labeled “corrupt” because he took the bullet on behalf of a Senate bill which theoretically would create a single payer program, but the Bill was a pathetic shell which didn’t have any of the difficult policy details, details which would have been even more politically difficult to pass.
And polls show that Californians would vote down a State single payer referendum again the minute the campaign told the voters that’s have to pay more taxes to finance the program. Does that make the voters “corrupt”? No, it makes them misinformed. Our movement simply has work to do; the cake is not baked yet, on this and many other issues.
For another example, you could claim that Senator Ben Nelson was “corrupted” by his past as a CEO for a health insurance company. It would be more accurate to say that Senator Nelson entered office with an ideology which made it remarkable that we got his ACA vote at all, and made it particularly unlikely that we could have gotten his vote for a broad single payer or public option policy.
So, call him and others financially or ideologically corrupt if you must. What does that make the current Senators from Nebraska? Shit, we’d pray to have someone with Senator Nelson’s ideology representing that State now. But, hey, at least we finally got rid of a Blue Dog, eh? Whoopee.
Finally, these claims…
“Too many Democrats wanted Obama to fail. And the leadership gave them a pass.”
…I disagree with quite strongly, for a multitude of reasons.
Nobody went to jail. And that most assuredly is what the people who created the crisis were most scared of. Hell, we didn’t even break up the institutions responsible.
Rudy Giuliani held Wall Street accountable criminally. I was there: I saw how scared he made everyone.
Barack Obama did not.
The same people who defrauded millions took the same helicopters back to the Hamptons in the summers and fly to Aspen in the Winter. You think those really give a shit about Dodd-Frank? Or that they believe it will matter in the next crisis?
Obama may have felt he had to let Wall Street off the hook – but he failed miserably in holding the perpetrators of the financial crisis accountable.
There is no defense for it. We paid the price in 2010 and we paid it again in 2016.
For instance on the obscene amounts given to the Pentagon. I’m waiting for an updated version of Ike’s 1953 Cross of Iron speech. But given the recent NDAA vote, only 3-4 Dems would be in a position to give it.
I think that nuclear war is the last thing on Trump’s mind. He’s just a moron who thinks you can bully “Little Rocket Man” with tweets and treat him like some contractor for one of his hotels that he’s trying to stiff.
Thus the Generals fear. But, if they can get Trump to calm down and just not do anything for about 1 week, and there are no further incidents, we could easily muddle through. His attention span of a gnat means he’ll probably have forgotten all about whatever crisis he created and have moved onto some race baiting against the NFL or something.
The one advantage we have is that almost no world leader is as stupid and ignorant as Trump. Most of them have to prove themselves at various stages of government BEFORE they are given responsibility over foreign policy. So, they realize that Trump is best ignored. They respond with restraint, Trump thinks he “won” and the world doesn’t blow up.
The only REALLY bad thing would be some major crisis like the Cuban Missile Crisis blowing up on Trump’s watch. There’s just zero chance he could handle something like that without disaster.
It is unfortunate to have to rely on other world leaders to exercise the restraint that the US can’t because of the moron in charge. But that is the challenge for the next year.
If Mueller comes up with serious felonies to lay at Trump’s feet we’ll have some more changes to get rid of him.
Uhhhh, I think we are pretty much there, my friend. And if anyone thinks that ignoring Trump is all that the rest of the sane world needs to do in order to put all this unseemly stuff to bed, well, I think that is height of naivete. This isn’t a case where you close the bedroom door on the crying infant, knowing they will eventually cry themselves out and go quietly to sleep.
I’m leaning the same way as BooMan. The day of reckoning is virtually on our doorstep. All of the hypotheticals of impeachment, the 25th amendment, and patiently waiting for “the adults in the room” to allay our nightmarish fears about the monster in the basement and save us from its clutches are likely to all be rendered moot very soon. Probably much sooner than any of us really wish to contemplate.
Trump said last week, This is the calm before the storm”.
If I were you, I would fucking take him at his word. You would be crazy not to.
So what exactly do we do? There seems to be no answer to it.
The honest truth, I fear, is that right now there is probably not a damn thing that “we” can do. At this point we are pretty much fully dependent on those who have the constitutional authority to put a check on Trump’s behavior. And this is what REALLY keeps me awake at night. I think, by and large, this Congress will decide it is time to act only at the very moment that their actions are powerless and ineffectual to stop what is already in motion.
They are playing a game of Russian roulette because they are hoping and praying they can hold on just long enough for their Tax Cut Goose to lay her golden egg so they can rake all the chips off the table before the shit hits the fan. Too cynical of me, you might ask? If there is one thing that has been proven by watching our Congress over the last year, it is that you can never overestimate their cravenness and greed.
“So what exactly do we do”?, you ask. At this point, I would suggest you do all you can to take care of those nearest and dearest to you. I think we are finally at the doorstep of the crisis that everyone has been worrying about and felt was probably inevitable, though we had all hoped we were just being too hyperbolic. In the end, it is going to take historic political courage to keep from burning down the house on this Great American Experiment. And at the moment, that doesn’t seem to me to be much on which to hang your hat with any confidence.
I agree. Quite concerned about these military guys being the protection. Our system is set up the other way around: the civilians are supposed to keep the military in check. Will there be a coup? Is the ghost of Alexander Haig going to visit us again?
My suggestion: revive “duck and cover.”
You are not particularly encouraging. I agree the republicans and their masters are following the tax cut golden egg, And that brings up a potential vulnerability assuming we all survive long enough for it to play out.
The stock market Dow average has increased around 21% since the election and 16%since the inauguration, Also the last GDP number exceeded 3%. Much joy for Trump as it beat Obama. Theres a decent bet this was all in anticipation of the tax cuts, or to say it another way, I am not aware of anything Trump has done to cause it– even though he takes all the credit.
It is just possible the market is in a bubble and will reverse in due course perhaps after the economics of tax cuts have been absorbed. When that happens the market will turn and so too will Trumps fortunes, or at least that possibility is a non zero probability. If the democrats have not squandered their position by ill advised cooperation with Trump, and are able to figure out where their balls are it could help trigger a rebellion joined by the elites.
There is, of course, no guarantee. Since Trump could start an infrastructure program to shore things up or the tax repeal could
increase the deficit significantly. But the repeal of Obamacare, expense cuts and other regulations will offset some of that and his program is often too little.
Don’t get discouraged permanently. That’s the only path which is certain to lead to tyranny. Sure, there are things discouraging about the current circumstance. But Trump has already lost support from some of his historically thin electoral coalition. Pay more attention to the polls and less attention to the ultra-condescending journalistic profiles of unrepentant Trump voters and some of our own anecdotal personal experiences.
There are many campaign days between today and Election Day 2018. Let’s all use them the best ways we can.
Start by registering Democratic voters and ensuring that the existing Democratic voters are on the lists. Especially in red states.
Or if you are leftier than that, start building a new incarnation of the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s that could put a half million into the streets, but build it with the idea of putting large numbers of local people in the streets of red states. Build the movement; some politician (whom you must vet carefully) will likely try to use your marginal strength to win.
Or if you are more oriented to identity politics, get your coalitions together now and vet the candidates you with push. You ask them to run instead of waiting for their announcement. And you build your coalitions with other progressive groups and white voters. And start the legal work of making the registration process real and not manipulable in the run-up to next November. Including educating people how CardCheck works and what to look for and report.
And voter education and candidate education sessions.
Sitting with you head between your knees waiting to kiss your ass goodbye from Trump’s pre-emptive nuclear strike is definitely not an effective strategy.
Trump has not been kind to the people of Puerto Rico. He now threatens to withdraw help, such as there is, and to loan them more money that inevitably will not be paid back, and who knows what the terms of the new loan will be. So on the Twitter machine today came the thought of charging Trump at The Hague for crimes against humanity. That might get a splash and perhaps get him to, like, do something.
One further thought and then I will shut up. Nancy had a neat list of the things Trump could be impeached on. Why not make more noise, like how much money he has taken in emoluments? And what is wrong with your tax returns? It seems he is the only one on the attack. Do we have no one?
It seems he is the only one on the attack. Do we have no one?
A valid question. I wonder the same thing.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”
Napoleon Bonaparte
.
“Don’t stop a guy from stepping on his own dick.”
-Me-
I’ve heard that saying. Trump has made lots of “mistakes” . Just now he is about to repeal a big part of Obamacare, by eliminating subsidies. I think there is a time to stand up and it is now.
No, we’re not at the CMC stage yet. But we are getting this close to being there.
I refer mostly to recent events in Syria where the Russians have now warned the US three times about their suspicions that the US has been advising anti-Assad rebel/ISIS/AQ forces as to the whereabouts of SAA/Russian military personnel. In the latest incident, a Russian officer was killed. The Russian govt seemed to make clear that they have been patient long enough and if another similar incident occurs, they will likely retaliate militarily against US personnel or areas where they are known to be stationed.
That is what could precipitate another CMC. And in such circumstances of US military being killed by Russian forces, is there any doubt that DT would be overwhelmingly advised to strike back more forcefully? And can there be any doubt that, given the relentless attacks on him for allegedly colluding with Russia, he would not be in a position (unlike JFK) to resist the calls for further escalation.
Ah… so now you traffic in suspicions eh? Quit the pants-wetting over something you read on Sputnik.
Downrating a negative — but substantive — reply to . . . um . . . yourself.
Not even a tit-for-tat downrate (plenty pathetic in its own right) of someone who downrated your comment without further explanation.
Rather, a downrate of a substantive reply, to which you could not deign to reply in turn, but just downrated.
Pathetic.
You should try to grow up.
Ignoring him may be the best strategy. It is not foolproof. Anytime Rocket Man fires off another missile he gets Trumps attention and that could be dangerous.
Even ignoring he finds shit to blow up, like Obamacare, NAFTA, the Iran deal etc. The trick may be to ignore him after he threatens to do something crazy, but that is impossible.
“The one advantage we have is that almost no world leader is as stupid and ignorant as Trump.”
Yes, except for one–Kim Jong Un.
He is exactly the kind of narcissistic, thin-skinned, isolated from reality dictator who will gladly take Trump up on the ladder of escalation.
The kind of idiot who thinks that he can probably win a nuclear war.
That’s why I’m so worried.
Most nuclear nations become clear pretty quickly that one doesn’t “win” a nuclear war. A half-dozen bombs and missiles at best create deterrence that they might be used somewhere. For sixty-some-odd years, North Korea and their Chinese allies have been clear where the limits of North Korean power are.
Remember that the North Koreans were in the IAEA non-proliferation regime with inspections and everything until the US accused them and Iran of cheating in 2002 in Bush’s Axis of Evil speech. North Korea’s rational reading is that the US has put a target on them for regime change; the US has made no serious efforts to establish diplomatic recognition or bring and negotiated end to the Korean War. Until the end of the Cold War, the US precondition was reunification (surrender to South Korea); since 2002, the precondition is immediate nuclear disarmament. As many have pointed out, that nuclear disarmament did not help Muammar Gadhafi or (seemingly now) Iran at all. Diplomacy works best by walking first in the other party’s shows and then forming your negotiating strategy instead of Trump’s “art of the deal” that starts with “I want it all and I am going to get it, or else.” The US with North Korea clearly does not want a solution, it wants an enemy. And even that is not enough by itself to justify a $800 billion defense budget.
North Korea is clear about the persistence of our manifest intentions. It is rational for them to play the same madman role that Trump is playing, but with their own personal style and cult of leadership. With Trump, there are increasing hints of senility that go beyond his default aggressive narcissism.
Those fires in California might be about to bring us some real inflation and job loses. CAL is the 4th in the world in wine production and that accounts for over 700,000 jobs nation wide. Cal is 1st in dairy production. Did not google those job numbers but more important…think the GOP will support the price of milk so that it remains affordable. Or will the just blame Obama. Obama handed off relative peace and a healthy economy and in 10 months we may be at war and food ration cards. Time for the donald to go back to Trump Tower and yell at whoever.
Saw an LAT piece early this a.m., which I hope is still valid, that in fact the vineyards up there have actually acted as a firebreak, as the they retain much more moisture than the surrounding terrain. No significant vineyard damage was reported.
so far, i think unlikely the fires will have national impact. Wine production is spread all over the state. Locally the biggest impact is probably all the lost housing.
This may sound stupid but the problem I’m having is, I’m old enough to remember the last act (arguably the “height”) of the Cold War — the massive antinuclear demonstration against the UN in ’82; the Reagan-era saber-rattling against the Soviets (and their responses); the anti-war fervor and the pro-buildup response; pop culture like War Games (on one side) and Red Dawn (on the other) all addressing this global terror at the prospect of nuclear war.
And there’s just nothing like that, now. There’s no context — there doesn’t even seem to be a grievance against Korea; it’s all abstracted — and there’s no world-wide frenzy like their was in the 60s through to the Gorbachev era. There’s no Jonathan Schell; no Buckminster Fuller; no Atomic Café; no The Day After on TV (with all that sober, handwringing commentary directly afterwards). There’s just Trump, doing his thing…even his base doesn’t seem to grasp that there’s anything going on or anything to worry about (if they even follow global events at all, which they don’t seem to).
So what’s the story? Having lived through a period of actual risk of nuclear war, I just can’t get the same idea going in my head, today. It doesn’t seem like reality — like the “border wall,” it just seems like a bunch of nonsense coming from a casino-owner type; a drunk at a bar. What am I missing?
The Left has been weak and MIA on FP for years, or roughly since Obama took office nearly a decade ago. Look at the pass the liberals gave him for so many things of an aggressive FP nature (drones employed and special forces inserted in many countries especially). (He did have Iran and Cuba to his credit, and not acting on the stupid red line in Syria)
I’ve been bitching here for several years that no one on the left seems interested in FP or cutting back on massive defense spending. Just energy spent and wasted commenting on Trump and his tweets and on a nonstop pseudo scandal directed at America’s favorite FP bogeyman.
At the very least, there should be a mass protest movement calling for those Pentagon cuts. But no, nothing. And only a small group of senators recently voted against the huge Defense budget increase (3 Dems + Bernie and 2-3 Rs). And barely a mention in the MSM.
Even Liz Warren voted for it. How sad is that.
There should also be more of us on the left calling for less, not more, involvement/intervention in overseas matters. But two polls reported in recent days suggest the public is now a majority in favor of more foreign involvement (b/c we just haven’t had enough in the past 16 yrs), with Dems/liberals leading the way among groups who have moved the most in this aggressive direction. One poll even said Americans now favor sending US troops to protect Latvia/Lithuania/Belarus. The anti-Putin propaganda seems to be working.
Back then in the early 80s, there was a substantial organized left on those nuclear matters, a peace movement to freeze further development of nukes. There was a sense of seriousness and urgency and great concern in the air, a feeling that someone in the reckless, crazy admin of Reagan, maybe Ronnie himself, would finally go ahead and act on their extreme rhetoric against the Soviets. I believe the organized left and their writings and movies (especially The Day After) probably helped keep RR from acting on a whim and doing something stupid. Supposedly he was greatly affected by the Day After tv movie.
Just the opposite today — the Left is asleep or too willingly lapping up the Deep State propaganda, busying themselves with Rachel trying to connect the dubious dots, looking for a Russian under every bed.
But respectfully, I’m not just talking about organized, internal/external policy opposition from the Democratic party. I’m talking about a worldwide dread and panic, which I remember vividly — it lasted from the Cuban Missile Crisis/Dr. Strangelove period all the way through to the end of Reagan’s Presidency, and it was global and intense, penetrating every part of society.
I mean, the way things look now (if BooMan and others are to be believed), some future historian — or, an alien archeologist investigating dead civilizations, to borrow the framing device that was removed at the last minute from Strangelove — would say, The entire human civilization was obsessed with the danger of nuclear war, for decades…and then, they managed to avoid it, and the fear went away. And then they suddenly had one out of nowhere, thirty years later, and nobody can figure out what they were even fighting over.
You see what I mean? It makes no sense.
I understand, but disagree with your take. I think you’re overstating the intensity of feeling either in the US or worldwide wrt the Cold War and nuclear dread.
There were two periods of white hot intensity, the CMC in 1962 being the darkest moment both here and worldwide that set people on edge, and the early 80s where here and in Europe people were growing deeply concerned about the extremely hostile American rhetoric towards the Soviets and the rather casual talk in D.C. about enough surviving here “with enough shovels” for backyard fallout shelters.
But in between? Not so much. Life went on, plenty of things were happening. The 60s for instance — assassinations, civil rights/urban unrest, major crime in the cities, massive social/cultural/political upheaval. Vietnam. Plenty there to distract people away from too much focus on nuclear dread. Then the 70s, beginning of detente, a positive development; presidential resignation, oil shocks and inflation, all the rest.
I count two major points in that time when people thought intensely of the nuclear situation, but in between those 20 yrs living with the nuclear threat became routinized and was largely tucked away in the back of people’s minds.
Nassim Taleb wrote something that was pretty interesting. Taleb is, of course, the author of Black Swans, a book that in the aftermath of 2016 looks particularly prophetic.
Anyway, he tweeted something from a book I found interesting – and actually quite relevant to your point.
It is why people who follow politics are often the least able to predict politics.
I don’t share Taleb’s politics – which are libertarian. But consider:
Trump hasn’t done much that effects people’s day to day lives. In fact, unless you live in fear of ICE, the odds are that your day to day life had gotten better since Trump was elected. We are actually seeing real wage gains, and if you have a 401K you balance has most assuredly gone up.
This guy would have voted against the budget increase as well:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron”
But what did he know about war?
Fuck all of our leaders – they are the true deplorables.
What is amazing is how LITTLE notice the Defense Budget vote received from “liberal” blogs. The damn thing was invisible.
The fear of being branded as weak on foreign policy is so deep ambitious Democrats will do virtually anything to avoid it.
I really don’t want Bernie to run again. But only Gillibrand of the other contenders voted against that monstrosity.
You make an interesting observation. I think the difference is that, right now, we are not talking about global thermonuclear war. We are talking about a relatively localized nuclear war, which might destroy Korea, and part of Japan.
The best analogy is probably not with the US-USSR conflict, but with India-Pakistan. There were numerous times when they came close to nuclear war. Were you, as an American, aware of it? Probably not. But those were the times when the world came closest to a nuclear war.
You are holding out hope that the worst case for North Korea will look like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The fact that the US military is not willing to test that assumption says that their analysis is that the conflict, once begun, will not stop with North Korean capitulation. And further US nuclear retaliation certainly will bring international response of some kind that will be catastrophic for the US.
Most nations understand that in practice, nuclear weapons are deterrent not active weapons. Any craziness is in the service of credibility of actual use under some circumstances. Most often, those circumstances effectively mean no first strike. What Trump is threatening is a first strike without serious diplomatic efforts and ensuring that North Korea continues not to be recognized as a legitimate country (the figleaf of the 67-year-old state of war.
First rule of war: It never turns out as planned.
(Corollary to von Moltke’s epigram.)
I don’t see how preventing a president from launching a nuclear first strike w/o a declaration of war would help with North Korea. Technically, aren’t we still laboring under a declaration of war with North Korea? Aren’t we mired in a 60+ year cease fire?
It depends on whether the Congress wants to delve in those technicalities (correct as they are) or wants to create an new authorization of military force.
With this Congress, either one could be legitimizing something very dangerous.
This Congress cannot even end the long-term authorizations of military force that it currently has.
A formal old-style declaration of war will put North Korea’s formal national security allies on notice that their aid might be invoked. Do we know who those allies are? At a minimum that might bring in China and if the US is attacked might also bring in NATO. Things could ratchet up very quickly to a huge war even if it does not become a generalized nuclear war.
What can we do? All I can think of right now is to keep bugging the congresscritters (they DO worry about re-election, and gerrymanders only go so far) and engaging in massive, peaceful civil disobedience and demonstrations (which is to a degree also aimed at the congresscritters). And yes, I am well aware of how thin a reed those are.
We all have personal networks who have personal networks who have personal networks that reach into all parts of the country.
We’ve discovered that bugging them does not work.
Maybe shortly we can discover what does work to disenthrall them of Rush and the shock jocks. To get them stop toying with the “libruls” and seriously talking policy again.
I’ve not found the mix yet, but I am convinced that imagination instead of fear will eventually get us there.
Just a small reminder that the Winter Olympics occur in February and are scheduled to be in South Korea. It will be a disappointment to all the young people with dreams of being in the 2018 Winter Olympics to have them canceled. Instead, the American athletes may end up in a nuclear war. Of course Trump and his supporters don’t care about other people.