Top Democrats Stage Anti-Trump Revolt at Bonn Climate Summit

Former Vice President Al Gore and other American political figures arrive to take part in the climate conference in Bonn, Germany, on Nov. 11, 2017. (photo: Martin Meissner/AP)

By David Siders and Emily Holden, Politico

12 November 17
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“I want to make it clear: The federal government is not just the president of the United States," Sen. Ben Cardin says.

handful of Democratic governors and scores of other lawmakers and mayors are mounting an insurgency at the United Nations climate conference here, orchestrating a highly choreographed campaign to persuade world leaders that President Donald Trump doesn’t speak for the United States on climate change.

Several Democratic U.S. senators began meeting last week with officials from other countries, seeking to minimize Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Meanwhile, the governors of California, Virginia, Oregon and Washington — along with mayors from throughout the nation — were expected to touch off a blitz of public appearances at the conference as the meeting enters its final week.

“We are still in!” Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland told cheering activists Saturday at a pavilion set up just outside the official meeting zone, a de facto headquarters for the opposition. “I want to make it clear: The federal government is not just the president of the United States.”

The Democrats’ diplomacy — part lobbying, part public relations — comes amid widespread international concern about Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris accord. War-torn Syria announced last week that it would join the agreement, leaving the United States — if it goes through with its withdrawal — as the only country in the world outside of the pact.

On Saturday, Democratic politicians, climate activists and like-minded business interests sought to present the United States as a country divorced from its president. Speakers repeated the slogan, “We are still in,” a message splayed across an electronic ticker and on buttons at the unofficial U.S. pavilion. The pavilion’s estimated $235,000 cost was being covered by a coalition including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer.

Steyer, who is spending millions of dollars on a national television ad campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment, was expected to outline his case for Trump’s ouster in a speech here Sunday.

While pavilion organizers plied guests with big-name speakers and free beer and wine, a subtler campaign was unfolding inside the conference halls. Starting late last week, a small delegation of U.S. senators, including Cardin, Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) — began meeting with officials from other countries in an effort to assuage nerves about Trump. Schatz said he and other lawmakers met with delegations from India and Japan and were planning to meet with representatives of the European Union, Mexico, Indonesia and Canada.

The senators argued Trump could not quickly undo eight years of Obama-era climate policies or significantly affect state-level efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“I think that there’s an understanding of the American system of government, which is sometimes cumbersome and slow, and frustratingly so, but in this instance it works in favor of climate action,” said Schatz. “Whatever the president’s rhetoric, he can’t prevent us from moving forward on clean energy.”

Following a meeting with Mexican officials, Markey said Saturday, “Obviously, I think it’s important for them to understand that there are 30 states that have renewable electricity standards, that the fuel economy standards are still the federal law, that the appliance efficiency standards are still federal law.”

Democrats trying to thwart attacks on climate action have bureaucracy, the courts and a narrowly divided Congress that often gets stuck in legislative stalemates, on their side. Although Republicans control Congress and the White House, they need 60 votes to proceed to most legislation.

The Trump administration is moving to undo President Barack Obama’s climate standards — including carbon limits for the roughly one-third of emissions that come from the power sector. Those regulatory rollbacks could take years and will have to stand up to legal review, but in the meantime, the federal government will not move forward to curb greenhouse gases.

Markey promised Democrats will fight to maintain fuel economy standards and will block any effort to cut back wind and solar tax credits. He told a crowd on Saturday that Trump has “assembled a Cabinet of big oil all-stars” but that, “On our side, we have 100 years of science and nearly 100 percent of the scientists in the planet. And inside the United States, we have city after city, state after state, standing up to take action.”

Diplomats are paying close attention to American representatives pledging to keep fighting climate change, said Jens Mattias Clausen, a Copenhagen-based climate change adviser for Greenpeace who is attending the talks.

The most important thing those representatives can do is “show the rest of the world that even if the Trump administration refuses to face reality here and continues with this very isolationist style that the rest of the U.S. is actually ready to step up and help with the commitments that they have,” Clausen said. In terms of specific numbers they can offer “the more concrete it gets…the better,” he added.

Brown and Bloomberg are leading a group called America’s Pledge, which aims to release more specific reduction commitments from states and localities next year. On Saturday, they released a report asserting the combined economic power of every state and city that has committed to the Paris agreement would outmatch every country except for China and the U.S.

Yet even their own report acknowledged, as previous studies have, that non-federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not sufficient to meet the United States’ commitments under the Paris agreement given Trump’s stated policies. And local and state climate efforts are fraught with their own, internal disagreements about how aggressively sub-national governments should pursue climate policies on their own. On Saturday, California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown had a speech interrupted for an extended period by activists protesting California’s cap-and-trade program and its permissiveness of hydraulic fracturing.

“You have a positive message insofar as what individual states and individuals are doing” about climate change,” Mairead McGuinness, a member of the European Parliament, told Brown at a forum last week.

However, she said, “Sometimes when we make a step forward, there are forces that as McGuinness added, “One of the comments we hear from EU citizens is that, why should we act when others are not?”

For all of the Democrats’ efforts, Trump looms large over the conference, and the power of the White House is not lost on the international community. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, is publicly promoting coal production. He has said he is withdrawing from the Paris agreement because it puts the United States at a “big economic disadvantage.”

Last week’s elections in the United States provided a rare, positive talking point for Democrats trying to combat Trump’s message in Bonn. The Democrats’ sweep in in the off-year contests, they said, presaged a return to Democratic power in Washington and re-engagement in climate talks abroad.

“Tuesday’s election marked that Trump is alone and isolated,” said Garrett Blad, executive director of the SustainUS, a youth advocacy group. “It’s going to be our job back home — 2018 is going to be a huge year with the elections — to make sure that states … are moving forward with the most aggressive action that we can.”

When Bloomberg mentioned Saturday that the official U.S. delegation to the conference under Trump was preparing to host a controversial panel on Monday on the use of fossil fuels, the crowd booed.

“The Trump administration did send a delegation here to Bonn, and it might be the first climate conference where — this is not a joke, folks — coal is being promoted as an example of sustainability,” Bloomberg said.

He added, “It will also likely be the last. The world is moving on, and so is the United States.”

Former Vice President Al Gore, a major draw for climate activists at the conference, told POLITICO in an interview Saturday that commitments made by states, cities and businesses all “adds up to a very impressive reduction in U.S. emissions.”

He added, “I mean, [Trump] can prohibit EPA employees from talking to the public, and he can remove the word ‘climate’ from all the government websites. But he can’t stop the technological and business revolution that’s gaining speed around the world and especially in the U.S.”

If Prayers Stopped Bullets

Donald Trump. (photo: Getty)

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

08 November 17

Republicans have nothing more to offer you.

s expected, the nominal leadership of the Republican Party has responded to the massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, with the kind of steady, rational leadership that can turn the ship of state into an artificial reef at the bottom of the bay.

First, the president*—who’s confounded the oddsmakers by being in Asia nearly a week without starting World War III—replied to a very good question from NBC’s Ali Vitali with a very bad answer.

When asked by NBC News about gun control in the aftermath of the deadly shooting at a Texas church over the weekend, Trump said it wasn't the right place or time to ask the question before explaining that such measures would have made "no difference" on Sunday. "You’re bringing up a situation that probably shouldn’t be discussed too much right now," he said during a joint press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in…Trump, who advocated for stricter vetting policies in the hours after a terror attack on New York City last week, said "we could let a little time go by" before talking about gun control, "but it's okay if you feel that that's an appropriate question, even though we're in the heart of South Korea."

I don’t know what the hell that means. Would Vitali’s question be more appropriate if they were all sitting by the side of the road on Wando, or in a GI bar in Itaewon? Bad answer. Could he come up with a worse one?

Why, yes. He could. However did you guess?

The president went on to applaud "that very brave person who happened to have a gun or a rifle in his truck" and shot the killer. "If he didn't have a gun," Trump alleged, "instead of having 26 dead, you would've had hundreds more dead. So that's the way I feel about it. Not gonna help."

It is the opinion of the president* of the United States that 26 people murdered in a church is proof that the system works. A year, it’s been. Only a year.

However, the lameness of the president*’s response was challenged strongly by Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin. From The Hill:

“It’s disappointing. It’s sad, and this is what you’ll get from the far secular left. People who do not have faith, don’t understand faith, I guess I’d have to say,” Ryan told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle” when asked about the criticism. And it is the right thing to do, is to pray in moments like this because you know what? Prayer works.”

This kind of platitudinous slop is all the conservative movement has left as far as a political philosophy goes. Certainly, one can pray, for example, that the congressional majority regains some semblance of a clue and passes some sort of common sense gun regulations, but organizing to beat some of the NRA’s servants in that body seems to me to be a better use of people’s time. Besides, we probably should remind the Speaker of the shebeen’s favorite passage from the Epistle of St. James: faith without works is dead.

Who's a laughingstock and why aren't you laughing?

Donald Trump. (photo: Nigel Parry)

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

07 November 17

readersupportednews.org

Remember, in Trump’s wonderland shooting up a church is not a guns issue

n his latest impersonation of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, the president of the United States stopped just short of shouting “Off with his head!” at the latest New York terror suspect, but pretty much everyone knows that’s exactly what he meant. Lewis Carroll intended the Red Queen to be an entertaining caricature by virtue of her absurdity. That’s a luxury we don’t have when considering our Trump’s affinity with the Red Queen’s jurisprudence: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” That’s just what our Trump demands again and again from legal proceedings, with appalling disregard for the Constitution and any other law that happens to displease him.

On its face, that disregard for law, that open hostility to anything like a fair process that might produce a result displeasing to Trump – all that would seem to be an obvious and constant violation of his oath office (“preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”), as well as an obvious and constant violation of the constitutional mandate (Article II, section 3) that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

As recently as 1970, presidential messing with the judicial process was generally taken seriously, as when Richard Nixon at a press conference said of Charles Manson, “Here is a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason.” Manson’s defense attorneys promptly called for a mistrial, the presiding judge took it under advisement, and amidst public outcry Nixon backed off on his prejudicial public comments, claiming that he didn’t mean to imply that Manson was guilty. Nixon’s attorney general (and later convicted felon) John Mitchell, who was present at the press conference, said later: “I don’t believe the President made the charge or implied one.” [At the time, with killings in Vietnam, Cambodia, Kent State, and Fred Hampton’s bedroom, among other places of extra-judicial execution, it would have been more to the point to note that Nixon was a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of thousands of murders without good or just reason.]

On October 31, the FBI charged Sayfullo Saipov with the truck-murder of eight people in lower Manhattan. Saipov waived his Miranda rights and said he had planned the attack for Halloween and asked to display an Islamic State flag in his hospital room. Referring to Saipov’s attack the next day, in the midst of a long statement that first blamed immigration policy with no coherent argument, Trump said to reporters at a cabinet meeting:

Terrorists are constantly seeking to strike our nation, and it will require the unflinching devotion to our law enforcement, homeland security, and intelligence professionals to keep America safe….
We have to get much tougher. We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything…. We also have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They’ll go through court for years….
We need quick justice and we need strong justice — much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock.

In other words, Trump is arguing for an American police state that is somehow omniscient enough to keep out immigrants who will commits crimes seven years after being admitted to the country. Saipov was an accountant came here in 2010 under a Diversity Immigrant Visa and became a permanent resident with a green card.

And for anyone who doubted the police state drift of the commander in chief, there was this exchange near the end of the press event, referring to the Guantanamo prison that is an ongoing crime against humanity:

Q: Mr. President, do you want the assailant from New York sent to Gitmo?

THE PRESIDENT: I would certainly consider that, yes.

Q: Are you considering that now, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo — I would certainly consider that, yes.

If it weren’t such an abomination of torture and legal horror, Guantanamo would be a laughingstock to the world. Instead it’s a shock to civilized countries and a great recruiting tool for Islamic extremists. Guantanamo, whether Americans like it or not, is America’s face to the world. Established in panic and fear by the Bush administration, perpetuated mostly by Congressional panic and fear by an Obama administration that didn’t care all that much, now it is a dark joke that is a fact of American life, where we keep people charged with no crime without a chance of release and let them starve themselves in protest until they’re too weak to resist force-feeding, by which we keep them alive to prolong the endless torture of hopeless, painful lives. Trump has long missed the brutal joke of Guantanamo reality while tweeting lies about how many Guantanamo detainees have returned to the field (relatively few), feeding a fake news story of long standing.

That’s not the joke and laughingstock our Trump was referring to, although it should be. But Guantanamo is a fine example of “Sentence first – verdict afterwards” jurisprudence, so Trump is willing to overlook Obama’s fingerprints all over this particular legacy. Trump’s laughingstock is the constitutionally-based American judicial system. Except that in the White House wonderland of 2017, Trump never said what the White House transcript says he said. He didn’t call the American judicial system a joke and a laughingstock. That’s what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied on November 2:

That's not what he said. He said that process has people calling us a joke and a laughingstock.

To be fair, only her first statement is a demonstrable lie. The second statement, that people are calling us a joke and a laughingstock is actually true, just not at all in the way Sanders wants us to believe it. And the Justice Department had already charged Saipov in federal court in New York amidst widespread reports of how well the federal court system has dealt with terrorism cases, especially as compared to the dismal record of the military tribunals at Guantanamo. Even Trump seemed to acknowledge that reality when he tweeted, once again interfering in the judicial process:

Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system…

Not to leave bad enough alone, Trump tweeted four minutes later with a sentiment that out-Nixoned Nixon:

...There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!

Our Trump knows no bounds. Every time he tweets like this it’s another impeachable offense that the cowardly majority in Congress will ignore, or even follow. We know what kind of government our Trump would like us to have. He made that clear to the Washington Post:

The saddest thing is, because I am the President of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated by that. I look at what’s happening with the Justice Department, why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with her dossier, and the kind of money — I don’t know, is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier, which is total phony, fake, fraud and how is it used?

Our Trump wants to be emperor, perhaps not in name, but in fact. He wants no checks and balances, he wants no rational consideration, he just wants obedience.

He wants to punish his enemies: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” He wants the kind of judiciary they already have in Guantanamo, where the presiding judge (a general) feels justified in convicting defense counsel (a higher ranking general) of contempt of court, not just for standing up for his client, but for standing up for his client’s civilian attorneys. This was the first military tribunal conviction since 2008, not of a terrorist but an American general, sentenced to 21 days in confinement. The convicted general is the chief defense counsel for military commissions and the second highest ranking general in the Marines. The general’s underlying offense was his objection to the government wiretapping attorney conversations with their clients. He was freed after three days’ confinement. The case is continuing, with Pentagon lawyers uncertain whether any of the developments so far are within the officials’ legal authority, and a federal civilian judge reluctant to hear any appeal. This would all be breathtakingly funny if it were fiction. But it’s a real world laughingstock.

There are laughingstocks everywhere. We have a government of laughingstocks. The president is a laughingstock, as is his cabinet and his veep. The Congress is a laughingstock – that’s the one truly bipartisan thing about Congress. For the moment, only the judiciary is not a complete laughingstock, although the Supreme Court is teetering toward the bad joke category. The federal judiciary continues to maintain centers of rationality, coherence, and constitutional principle. But time is against the judiciary. As Trump appointees fill more and more vacancies, we can expect to be governed by a full laughingstock. And the joke will be on us. Unless we can somehow regain our full civic size and become another Alice who tells them all: “Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

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William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Report on Inequality Finds 3 Richest Americans Wealthier Than Bottom Half

The New York Stock Exchange. (photo: Ben Hider/NYSE Euronext)

By The Wisconsin Gazette

11 November 17

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disproportionate share of America’s income and wealth gains has flowed to the top of the economic spectrum, confirms a report from the progressive Institute for PolicyStudies. Americans at the other end of our economic spectrum, meanwhile, watch their wages stagnate and savings dwindle. 

The report, Billionaire Bonanza, shows the extreme wealth concentrated within the fortunes of the 400 wealthiest Americans.

The report draws on data from the Forbes 400 and the Federal Reserve’s 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances.

Here are some key findings:

• The three wealthiest people in the United States — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett — own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 160 million people or 63 million households.


• America’s top 25 billionaires together hold $1 trillion in wealth. They have as much wealth as 56 percent of the population, a total 178 million people or 70 million households.


• The billionaires who make up the full Forbes 400 list own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 80 million households or 204 million people.


• The median American family has a net worth of $80,000, excluding the family car. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 33 million of these typical American families.


• One in five U.S households has zero or negative net worth. “Underwater households” make up an even higher share of households of color. More than 30 percent of black households and 27 percent of Latino households have zero or negative net worth to fall back on.

The figures underestimate current levels of wealth concentration. The growing use of offshore tax havens and legal trusts has made the concealing of assets more widespread than ever before.To reduce extreme wealth inequality in the United States we need to take two key steps:

To reduce extreme wealth inequality in the United States, the policy center says:

• "We must not make inequality worse through new tax cuts for the wealthy. The proposed Trump tax cuts, as currently designed, would grow top 1 percent fortunes and do little to reduce the ranks of America’s underwater nation."


• "We need to implement policies to reduce concentrated wealth. Inequality will continue to widen unless we intervene directly to reduce grand concentrations of private wealth. By taxing our wealthiest households, we could raise significant revenues and then invest these funds to expand wealth-building opportunities across the economy. We could also broaden the distribution of America’s wealth by encouraging employee ownership, matching savings programs and similar initiatives."

"They're in a World of Shit": Ivanka and Jared's First Year in Washington Has Not Gone as Expected

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the Diplomatic Room, June 14, 2017. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By Emily Jane Fox, Vanity Fair

08 November 17
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A year after Trump’s stunning election, the administration has zero legislative wins, a looming investigation hanging over their heads, and Jared and Ivanka have a pretty erratic family member/boss to deal with—and New York isn’t looking much prettier.

t was a warm Thursday evening in October, and the gilded crowd inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art was traversing the various delights at the inaugural All Hallows’ Eve benefit, a highlight of the under-50 society season. The event, co-chaired by Wendi Deng, Dasha Zhukova, and Karlie Kloss, among others, was attended by Ellie Goulding, Nicky Hilton, and Joan Smalls, who were decked out in Minnie Mouse ears, Dior gowns, glittering Gucci jumpsuits, and elaborate headdresses in accordance with the evening’s “mystical costume attire” theme. They shuffled among the interactive theater experiences set up inside the 16th-century Vélez Blanco patio and onwards to the 18th-century Wrightsman Galleries, where they found tarot card readings, musical performances, and dancers weaving through a ring of flickering candles, eventually plopping themselves down on the cool floor in the shape of a cross.

It was the sort of event where Ivanka Trump, before her unexpected career detour to Washington, D.C., might have once held court. In the past, Trump has walked the red carpet outside the annual Met Gala; for years, Kloss has been dating her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, who flew home from a conference in Saudi Arabia in time to swipe on some eyeliner, don a tuxedo, and stand beside his supermodel girlfriend for the benefit. (As Josh was flying back for the event, his brother, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, was on a commercial flight for an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia as part of the administration’s Middle East peace discussions, where a source familiar with the visit said he met with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who recently jailed his 11 cousins in an alarming crackdown with global reverberations.)

Ivanka and Zhukova, meanwhile, are also longtime friends. And it was Deng who reportedly reunited Ivanka and Jared aboard her ex-husband Rupert Murdoch’s yacht nearly a decade ago after their short-lived breakup. Ivanka had been a trustee for their daughters, and the Trump-Kushners were on hand for their baptism in the Jordan River in 2010. More recently, Deng vacationed with the couple in Croatia last summer, sat by Ivanka’s side on the eve of her father’s inauguration in January, and has been spotted visiting their Kalorama home in Washington since. So as masked guests made their way through the Met last month, some wondered about the First Daughter’s conspicuous absence. According to four sources, Ivanka had been invited to attend months ago. One said that she had decided not to go last month.

It has now been a year since the Trump-Kushners walked out onto the stage of the Midtown Hilton, after midnight, to the astonishing reality that Donald Trump would become the next president of the United States. The historic election commenced an equally extraordinary opportunity for two scions who had built their own careers largely upon their parents’ success. After the election, the two proceeded apace.

Despite anti-nepotism laws and looming conflicts of interests, the couple quickly determined that they would re-route their ambitions through the White House, impervious to any sort of significant public-relations setback. They benefited from both clever legal maneuvering and an American public so paralyzed by the thought of a President Trump that it could countenance the prospect of two political neophytes entering the inner sanctum of American government. Among a motley crew of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, and Mike Flynn, they didn’t merely seem moderating—they seemed human. Even if they were ambitious, inexperienced creatures of privilege, so the argument went, they were at least a secure line for the liberals they left behind in their globalist cuckocracy—the world of the All Hallows’ Eve benefit, the Met, the Upper East Side they left behind.

In the ensuing year, however, they have not quite lived up to that expectation, though, in fairness, it was not a standard they set themselves. As they have taken on huge portfolios, Ivanka and Jared have been repeatedly derided for not doing the small things. They have not been the moderating voices many expected, instead becoming targets of a number of interest groups, from the Breitbart wing of the Republican Party to the Congress members calling for their security clearances. After months of getting scrutinized for more sweeping influence within the West Wing, they’ve more recently settled on modest victories, such as child-care tax credits and government I.T. projects. While the early months in the West Wing were rife with chaos, they settled into a rhythm once Chief of Staff John Kelly installed a chain of command and have happily kept their heads down on their issue sets now that there is some order in place. (For instance, Kushner traveled with the president to Asia, while Ivanka stayed behind to publicly push for tax reform; they both went with him on his first foreign trip in May.)

Washington has been both an unimaginable opening and a kick to the stomach. It is clear now, though, as their anniversary in the swamp dawns, that an eventual return to New York may not be more appealing. Their social circle has shifted, real-estate prospects are waning, and widespread negativity awaits. (It is also unclear if Ivanka’s invitations from Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to speak about women’s issues as a guest in their countries will still pour in if Robert Mueller’s investigation turns up something real.)

That said, the Trump-Kushners appear to still retain the quality that is perhaps their most valuable asset: a singular, obstinate, almost super-human ability to compartmentalize. And their success or failure—the answer to New York’s favorite parlor game: when will the couple move back to Manhattan?—depends mightily on how long they can hold up that countenance.

Donald Trump, with his decades-worn proclivities and habitual desire to sleep in his own bed and eat fast food, isn’t the only creature of comfort in his nexus. On a fundamental level, one of the most fascinating things about Ivanka and Jared’s year in D.C. is how they, too, have held on tight to their crutches. Since uprooting their lives and moving to Washington in January, the couple have still clung to some of their former rich-kid instincts. Hours after her father’s controversial Muslim ban executive order, Ivanka posted a photo of her and her husband in black tie, for which she was mercilessly mocked on social media due to the poor taste and timing (a source close to the family told me at the time that she felt terrible about the post and had been offline observing Shabbat when the executive order was signed). They retreated to Aspen as her father’s first attempt to pass health reform collapsed. In July, they jetted off to the Allen conference in Sun Valley. In August, in the heat of the White House’s self-induced Charlottesville conflagration, the couple took a Trump Organization helicopter to a luxury resort in Vermont for a two-day getaway.

As their horizons have brightened, notably, their circle has tightened, whether by choice or not. In Sun Valley, for instance, sources at the time told me they mainly stuck to the “Murdoch wing” of attendees. Though they were invited to Google’s annual, invite-only retreat on the Mediterranean known as “The Camp,” they turned down the invitation (the event did take place the week after Sun Valley, a trip which sources said enraged fellow West Wing staffers). In the meantime, they focused on their agendas. Ivanka has spent much of the last few months meeting with 15 to 20 lawmakers to discuss child-care tax credits and the administration’s tax-reform bill. They’ve been hosting members of Congress and the Senate, Cabinet secretaries, and White House staffers at their home for salon-type dinners on issues like tax and criminal justice reform. Last month, on their wedding anniversary, Ivanka mingled at the Fox News party hosted by Murdoch in honor of Laura Ingraham’s new show while Kushner flew to Saudi Arabia. Two times in the last three weeks, she sat with two of the network’s hosts, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, for interviews about the tax plan.

President Trump himself has repeatedly reminded the couple of what a nice life they had in New York, before they were “getting killed” by the press in D.C., several sources have said. Their old life in New York, of course, no longer exists for them as it did. Many of their onetime friends stepped away from the couple as they jumped in head-first to support her father and his policies, and few have rushed back toward them. Kushner himself noted to Forbes after the election that friends or business associates of theirs had not been enthused by Trumpian values, though he called it “exfoliation” on his part of former friends who didn’t have “a lot of character.”

They also happen to be staring down the barrel of an investigation led by Mueller and several congressional committees into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election and if members of the administration obstructed justice by firing former F.B.I. director James Comey. Kushner met with several Russian officials during the campaign and transition period, though he has denied any collusion. Kushner has also turned over documents to Mueller’s team about his involvement in Comey’s ousting, according to CNN.

Nonetheless, the couple has been insisting to friends in recent weeks that their family has settled in well in Washington and that they’re focused on what the administration should prioritize in 2018, according to three people who have spoken with them. Still, the Trump-Kushners, as much skilled branders as they are political neophytes, have not been able to privately shake concern over the looming investigation. During the weekend before Mueller’s first indictments were unsealed, three sources who spoke to Kushner or were familiar with his conversations told me that he worked the phones asking about whether they thought the investigation would amount to anything. “They’re in a world of shit,” one of the people close to the family told me. “He may seem cool, but he’s sweating, and she’s like her father. She’ll never acknowledge it and [will] blame the media. But she’s been working on her reputation forever, and now it’s going to suffer horrifically. And for what?”

On Turning Deplorables Into Persuadables

Senator Jeff Flake. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)

"We need a commander-in-chief of sound mind to oversee a Department of Defense, not a Ministry of War."

By Mort Rosenblum, MortRosenblume.net

05 November 17
readersupportednews.org

 
HOENIX - Serpents can be sneaky, but Arizona’s rattlers usually look you in the eye and make noise before they strike. Thus alerted, you only have to whack them with a stick. It is the same with most Arizona’s Republicans.

This is not a partisan screed but rather a cry from the Cadillac desert. If we can’t chase off our snake-oily president and all those who slither in his tracks, our democracy is a sham. We need a stick, in Arizona and in every other state.

It was good to see Jeff Flake stand up in the Senate and say out loud what we all know about Donald Trump. A man of integrity who cares about his grandkids, he said, cannot stay silent. But then, he added, he was heading off into the sunset.

Republicans offered faint praise and then looked for a successor with fewer scruples.

Flake voted with the party to stop people from suing banks. America went back to inside baseball and opining about events in an imaginary wider world.

Thus fortified, Trump doubled down on his mob-style extortion tactics. At home, this pushes our corrupted government deeper into authoritarian demagogy. In a real world on the boil, it is dangerous beyond description.

Now Trump is in Asia speaking way too loudly and wielding a pathetically small stick. Our vaunted power is based on a nuclear arsenal we can’t use without blowing a chunk out of our planet. Meantime, we’ve just killed 17 of our own crewmen in two guided missile ship blunders in Asian waters.

We can fix all this with a basic concept that we have yet to master: showing up at the polls. In functional democracies, voters examine facts, size up candidates in focused debate, and pick the better of two choices on the final ballot.

Only 60 percent of eligible Americans voted last November, and many squandered ballots on not-Hillary fringe candidates. The easily conned rallied behind an inept narcissist with a convincing line of bullshit. Now we face ecological calamity, economic folly, military quagmire and a High Noon nuclear standoff.

Firing Trump is paramount, by impeachment or a humiliating landslide in 2020. Mike Pence, a fundamentalist owned by big money, is no alternative. Our legislature is corrupt and dysfunctional. We need a peaceable sustained revolution.

Living in France, I’m an expatriate but hardly an ex-patriot. As a reporter, I have watched our nation rise to greatness and sink to ignominy during five decades in most every region of the world. I have never been so alarmed.

We’re no longer a laughingstock. Now we are seen mostly as deluded, arrogant about our ignorance, and blind to our impact on others. We can’t be “first.” Borders today are little more than lines on the map. No country can protect itself from weather patterns, trade imbalances, nuclear fallout – or human flow.

Reagan years were a turning point. Schools were dumbed down, unions withered and big money set a new course. The Iron Curtain crumbled from its own weight yet that military-industrial collusion Eisenhower warned us about saw little profit in peace.

Today, half a century after folly in Vietnam, we are at it again in Africa, still seeing illusory lights at the end of tunnels. There, as in the Middle East and South Asia, we will likely waste billions to create yet more bitter foes.

When I first went to Niger in 1968, covering West Africa for Associated Press, it was relaxed and friendly, with French restaurants, and beer-splashed bars where dance music throbbed all night. Imams hobnobbed with Christian missionaries and welcomed infidels in their mosques. Tuaregs in the desert served tea by their tents.

Wracked by drought and wretchedly poor, Niger needed help it did not get. Americans barely noticed it. Over the years, when infrequently mentioned on newscasts, its name was sometimes pronounced with an extra “g.” Its political turmoil escaped our attention.Iraq War fallout changed that. Reports of U.S. troops’ torture hardened attitudes among Muslims from Africa to Southeast Asia. Terrorists fleeing Libya found eager recruits in Niger. Now Trump’s bombast swells their ranks and creates sympathizers.

America tuned in when four of our own were killed. Trump is right: in the military, risk is part of the deal. Yet, devoid of humanity, he did not apologize when he upset a widow by saying that. Instead, he picked a fight and touched off uproar.

John Kelly slandered a congresswoman, the widow’s friend. When reporters pushed, the White House briefer called it “highly inappropriate” to question a four-star general. That had a troubling whiff of military coup. Even on active duty, Kelly was only a public servant answering to the people who employed him.

For weeks, clueless commentators picked at every detail. Did villagers (who hate us) “betray” us? Would flak vests have saved lightly armed men ambushed by 60 guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenades? Where was the air cover?

We need to get real. Shadow units move fast within a 2,000-mile stretch of sub-Saharan sand and mountains that nomadic tribes have roamed for millennia. It would take an awful lot of elite scouts in SUVs. Drone strikes tend to create more terrorists than they kill.

That is only West Africa. The farther out you zoom, the worse it gets: devastating civilian deaths in Yemen; unending war to no avail in Afghanistan; campaigns in Iraq that destroy entire cities to save them.

We need a commander-in-chief of sound mind to oversee a Department of Defense, not a Ministry of War. This is hardly just a military matter. Combatants we kill leave widows and mothers who grieve. Every infant and grandmother blown up as collateral damage creates spreading waves of visceral hatred.

That is only logical. When we shut our borders, slash foreign aid and strafe villages, we win neither hearts nor minds.

Beyond conflict, there is so much else. It all comes down to electing leaders with a conscience and a moral compass.

At home, Trump holds 800,000 “dreamers” hostage, demanding support for his idiotic Wall along with sweeping authority to seal off our symbiotic backyard. He condemns people to early death so he can boast that he brought down Obamacare.

Abroad, he disgusts and disheartens our oldest friends. Most nodded in rueful accord when Rex Tillerson described his boss as a “fucking moron.” They see a self-obsessed nation, arrogant in its ignorance, blind to its impact on others.

Statecraft is hard enough when a leader blatantly lies. It is impossible when his power to shape policy at home is in question. Adversaries prepare for the worst. Allies seek more reliable ways to protect their own interests.

Massive election turnouts would overwhelm “safe” districts, big money infusions, and the rest. Such a groundswell gave us an unknown Illinois upstart of the wrong color with a name only a consonant different from our worst enemy.

In the aftermath of Flake’s 17-minute Senate soliloquy, Paul Ryan all but snickered. People don’t care about all that, he said. Many don’t. Nearly a third of Americans will support Trump, no matter what. For some, it’s for personal gain. For others, it is simple stubbornness. And for too many, it is about race and gender.

We can’t counter growing domestic violence unless we understand it. We need better schools, safety nets for the poor, sick, mentally fragile. Simply put, socioeconomic justice. This is not about charity but rather survival as a society.

Islamist terrorists in America are a growing threat, but we cannot cede to fear or overreaction. Since 9/11, nearly all are homegrown citizens or once hopeful immigrants radicalized by what they see as exclusion. Such collective responses as blanket travel bans worsen the problem by geometric proportions.

Trump crows as the stock market defies gravity as he reaps rewards from Obama’s economic recovery and expected tax cuts. This obscures the fundamental point. We are a free, noble nation, not a business. Congress is not meant to be a corporate board.

As Robert Mueller’s bloodhounds close in, Trump counters with his Big Lie, stirring up his deplorable diehards in bigoted hyper-nationalist terms. That should scare the hell out of us. It is, as Bill Maher observed, a short distance from goose bumps to goose steps.

Trump is not Hitler. But as Charles Blow wrote in the New York Times piece, he weaponizes untruth with to assault and subdue, “doing to political ends what Hitler did to more brutal ends: using mass deception as masterful propaganda.”

George Orwell knew about dictators. Beyond his harrowing fictional fantasies of Big Brother and a pig-run society, he was a keen-eyed reporter who took up arms against Fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

“If you want a picture of the future,” he wrote, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”  This may well be hyperbole. But let’s not bet on it.

U.S. can't force others to behave the way we want

GEORGE TEMPLETON

      COMMENTARY     

By George Templeton
Rim Country Gazette Columnist

America First?

“Can citizens learn to seek their own welfare and growth not at the expense of their fellow men, but in concert with them?”  Gordon Allport

In my student days, I lived in a house along with six girls and four boys.  A “boarding house” reach was essential at the dinner table, because the food might run out.  I hope “America First” is not like that.

The Traditional Viewpoint

History and mythology can help us understand our developing spirit.  They are authoritative because of their age.  Do we suffer from “tunnel vision”?  Our experiences seem longer and more important than the history that came before them.  It is not straight-line predestination, but more like a question mark.

Myths are conservative.  They work because they are believed.  They support the status-quo.  They help us to know ourselves.  They keep us together and pass our heritage from generation to generation.  It is not abstract principle, but as Edmund Burke would say, prejudice and convention that keeps us from dissolving into a new normal of revenge, nastiness, brutality, and violence.  Tradition holds us together, but what happens when radical change is needed?

We are in the process of creating new myths though we do not realize it.  Myths are not literally true, but they speak to our inner selves in a way that nothing else does.  We have myths in religion and politics.  Human beings are naturally inclined to deify their leaders.

David Allan Coe’s song explained “The only way you’ll ever get along in this world is to get a little dirt on your hands.”  It’s how we legitimize con men.  Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the first political scientist, described this in his book, The Prince.  “Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many … the end justifies the means.”

A leader must seem to be merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, and religious, but to maintain the state he must sometimes act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion.  The prince is a sinister, cunning person who ruthlessly pursues personal power and control.  He knows he must always side with the “silent majority” instead of the elite.

The identifying signature of the Machiavellian is self-interest.  His form of leadership is concise, but it often fails when people begin to understand that he does not really act on their behalf.  He uses people.

Revisionism

When the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit, they are bent until they do.  There is a disconnection between beginnings and contemporary thought.  What did he say?  Did he mean it?  What was his intention?  Given my situation, what would he do?  Is he lying?  Is he bragging?

The June 2017 issue of the National Geographic explained why we lie.  Forty-four present of the time we do it to promote ourselves.  Thirty-six percent of the time it is to protect ourselves.  Only eleven percent of the time, it is to influence others.  Lying is more a matter of personality than manipulative intent.  Belittling adversaries to appear stronger, tougher, and smarter is similar.

The Church’s mutually exclusive truths may not have been the intent of Jesus.  Each religion thinks that it is the only correct one.  There are also disagreements between beliefs about the meaning of the Constitution.  Conservatives look to the original intent of the writers or original meaning of the words.  Liberals understand that times change.  Another way of looking at this is to consider that words, categories, and labels exist both within our minds, hearts, and a concrete external reality.

The man who was sainted, Sir Thomas More (1477-1535), described by the 1966 film, A Man for All Seasons, wanted a changed government.  He was known for his piety, devotion, and integrity and was a learned man of great wit.  Saint More had served as a member of parliament, an ambassador, and Lord Chancellor of England.  He wanted to bring Christ’s gospel of caring for the oppressed and the downtrodden to government.  To prevent chaos, political issues would not be argued outside of government chambers.  There should be no debate over legislation on the day it was introduced.  This would allow time for understanding the viewpoints of others.

In More’s ideal society all houses would be unlocked, owned, and maintained by the community.  Households would become the factories of that time and marriage would be for love, not by arrangement.  Many of us are skeptical of More’s utopia.  Even dogs have territory!

Skepticism

The problem with skepticism is that it leads to a loss of content in meaning.  We need to believe in something.  So, the problem is, exactly what will you believe If anything?  Religion stands in the light of the utility for the public good.  The great theologians of our tradition were not trying to replace the Bible.  They were trying to understand what it meant in their time and circumstances.  Reason is the enemy of faith that allows no doubt, but faith has no meaning without doubt.

Have we lost faith in democracy?  Would we prefer a dictator who would force conformity and absolve us from the responsibility of having to make decisions?  Such an ideal is described in Thomas Hobbs’ book, Leviathan.  Hobbs (1588-1679) lived in a time of brutality, civil war, and the threat of England’s invasion by the Spanish Armada.  It was natural for him to conclude that passion, pain or pleasure, and not religion ruled the day, because that was what he observed.  Nature’s laws were cruel.  What he feared he called evil.

For Hobbs, protection from evil would come from a strong leader.  He would hold power over everything and everyone, including the executive, legislative, legal, personal, and public property.  The justification for this was that the sovereign would represent the self-interest of everyone.  It was a simpler world!  Hobbs was not authoritarian.

An American Prototype

The political philosophy of John Locke (1632-1704) strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson when he wrote our Declaration of Independence.  Locke provided the justification our founding fathers needed for their defiance of King George’s arbitrary tyranny.  They recognized that governmental power was legitimate only when it would serve at the consent of the people.  Government existed to remedy the inconveniences of nature.  There was a natural moral law discoverable by reason.  “…all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  This leads to a social contract with the people (propertied white males) and to written law.  The majority rules the minority.  Legal equality is protected, but not equality of material possessions.

Locke saw the need for government, but he did not see the need for a leader who would rule by power, force, and fraud to protect us from ourselves.  Locke’s ideas were more than political.  He argued that all knowledge is only probable and that our ethical values come from experience.  What we call “good” is that which causes well-being and what we call evil causes pain.  Locke did not feel that this threatened religion, but it brought religion and politics together because we come from experience and politics changes the world we live in.

Balanced Government

Montesquieu (1689-1755) argued for a separation of governmental powers, each to serve as a check and balance against the other.  He knew that democracy was the least stable form of government.  Its stability required getting the individual to understand the benefit of the collective.  History showed that prosperity led to selfishness, greed, and the downfall of nations.  Nobodies wanted to be somebody.  They craved luxury.  They tried to emulate the rich and famous, not realizing that their values might be invalid for them.  They confused wants with needs.

Is greed good?  Adam Smith’s 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, claimed that the economic self-interest of people engaged in commerce would lead to meeting the needs of others whom they didn’t even know.  It works without benevolence or charity.  But is this enough?  It ignores that crooks steal instead of trade.  Let the buyer beware!

Government has never left business alone.  It can be traced back to Alexander Hamilton’s first national bank.  Business has been regulated and promoted all along.  Communism failed in the eighties.  Regardless, the commandment to love our enemies has morphed into hatred.  It is patriotic.  Murder becomes valiant patriotism when borders are crossed. 

Cuba is Evil

The news person explained that Cuba was an evil nation that we must retreat from because it is communist.  She didn’t realize that when someone does not believe as you do, it is not an attack.  We can’t force others to think, act, and believe as we want them to.  Our setting an example will change the world and ourselves.  We wondered how she felt about China, with all their products in our stores.  It is trade that provides the motive for justice.  There was no need for justice in Eden because Adam and Eve had all they needed. They did not eat the apple because they were hungry.  They wanted power, knowledge, and to be like God.

At the UN, Trump’s speech wrapped sovereignty with a cloak of virtuous self-interest.  At the recent Values Voter Summit, he said, “We don’t worship government, we worship God.”  But it is right-wing churches that are extremely Republican.

Trump calls us as a nation under one God, suggesting that he knows what America’s God is.  You probably have some ideas.  Neither I nor anyone else can offer anything broadly inclusive and better than what you have.  But youth doesn’t see a man in the sky with a magic wand or understand the three in one visible invisible.  But how else could the ancients have understood it?

All I wanted was a job.  But the fact is that I needed to see that which could not be seen.  When we realize our blindness we become more tolerant.  Our construction of a deity who favors the interests of only those who believe in him is bad for America.  Healthy religion motivates us to follow the value underlying all reality for its own sake and as an end in itself.  Our construction of a harsh politics that teaches envy, bigotry, and withdraws from the world is unhealthy.  The happiest places in the world are secure, healthy, stress free, and where people have a sense of belonging and purpose.