Kelly has shown himself to be a dishonorable man

A Dishonorable Man Posing As America's Most Honorable Man

By Steve M.

10/22/17 8:00am

Credit: Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Republish
Reprint

It doesn't surprise me that White House chief of staff John Kelly got his facts wrong yesterday:

... the retired general ... criticized Democratic U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson for claiming "she got the money" for [a] new [FBI] building during the 2015 ceremony while he and others in the audience were focused on the heroism of agents Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove, killed during a 1986 shootout with bank robbers south of Miami....

"A congresswoman stood up, and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million, to build the building, and she sat down," Kelly told reporters....

The General Services Administration had already bid out a $144 million construction contract for the project in September 2010, just a few months before Wilson won her congressional seat. The bidding for federal projects takes place after Congress has secured the funding.

"That is crazy that I got [the money] and Mr. Obama just gave it to me," Wilson said. "That building was funded long before I got to Congress. I didn't say that. I have staff, people who write the speeches. You can't say that."

What she did was get legislation through a GOP Congress naming the building after the slain FBI agents, for which she won praise from Republicans and then-FBI director James Comey. That's according to the Miami Herald, which tells us that Kelly also got the cost of the building wrong -- it was $194 million, not $20 million. And in a speech about how we honor slain heroes, Kelly incorrectly identified one the FBI agents after whom the building was named:

I'll end with this: In October — April, rather, of 2015, I was still on active duty, and I went to the dedication of the new FBI field office in Miami. And it was dedicated to two men who were killed in a firefight in Miami against drug traffickers in 1986 — a guy by the name of Grogan and Duke. Grogan almost retired, 53 years old; Duke, I think less than a year on the job. (Editor's note: The F.B.I. agent for which the building is named was named Jerry L. Dove, not Duke.)

↓ Story continues below ↓

Kelly also slandered Wilson by portraying her as a dishonorable person who listened in on what should have been a private phone call. Not only did La David Johnson's family members invite Wilson to listen by putting the call on speaker, they probably did so because she and the family have known one another for years:

Perhaps Kelly, who also listened to the call, would be less stunned if he realized that Wilson's primary identity to the Johnson family isn't as a member of Congress. The Johnsons have known Wilson for decades — most of those years before the former educator moved to Washington to join Congress....

The deceased soldier was an alumnus of the 5,000 Role Models of Excellence Project, a mentoring program Wilson started for youths pursuing military careers among other fields. So were his brothers. One received a full scholarship to Bethune Cookman College and the other is training to become a firefighter.

Wilson's connection to the family goes back at least one generation. She told CNN that she was the principal of a school that Johnson's father attended.

These relationships were part of why Wilson was with the family — not just because she was "a member of Congress."

There's more about Wilson's mentoring and service to her community here -- and yes, since your right-wing uncle will ask, she has spoken out against "hoodlums" responsible for gun violence in the community.

But John Kelly is a dishonorable man posing as America's most honorable man. He has a lot of people fooled, and not just on the right. Here's Axios's Mike Allen:

Sexual abuse in Hollywood. Social media abuse in Silicon Valley. Political abuse in the White House. Dive into Twitter for a few minutes, and these can feel like the worst of times. So everyone, and the GOP establishment in particular, seems hungry for moral clarity.

White House aides, beaten down by criticism from friends and beleaguered by the words and actions of the boss, got a rare moral boost from Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly as he offered a highly emotional and highly personal explanation/defense of Trump's outreach to families who lost young men in Niger....

"Kelly has managed to make himself the moral core of the Trump administration," a top White House official told us. "He just has so much credibility right now ... And he's in the best possible position, because he doesn't have to go out there and face the press every day. If he picks his spots he is now an extraordinarily credible and effective spokesperson on issues that need some moral clarity to them."

But as Josh Marshall notes, that "moral clarity" is just Trumpism with a little less buffoonery. Yesterday Kelly said:

It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation. Absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred. You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life — the dignity of life — is sacred. That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well.

Marshall writes:

The ideological and rhetorical spine of his remarks was a paean to MAGA. The old days were good. We had real religion. Things were right with women. There was no abortion. Honor was sacred and respected. Now it's all crap because of people like Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D), a showboater from Florida who transgressed our last sacred space....

Attacks on President Trump are attacks on the sanctity of heroism and patriotic sacrifice itself. Again, attacking President Trump is attacking the troops. It's the same maneuver driving Trump's war on the NFL. Kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism and police misconduct really isn't about police brutality or racism it all. It's spitting on the sacrifice of American soldiers.

The last person in Washington to use military service as a cudgel this way was another dishonorable man, Oliver North -- who, naturally, was on Fox last night attacking Wilson.

Do I honor Kelly's military service? Yes -- but he dishonors it, by using it to divide America.

****

UPDATE: Florida's Sun-Sentinel has now posted a video of Wilson's speech. I can't embed it, but you can watch it here. No, she did not boast that she obtained the money for the building. She did begin by declaring her satisfaction with how quickly she'd managed to obtain congressional approval to name the building after the two slain FBI officers -- but she shared the credit with others in Congress including Republicans John Boehner, Marco Rubio, and Carlos Curbelo. Note that her point was that the FBI agents deserved the honor. She went on to praise law enforcement, asking all law enforcement officers to stand, and then she devoted the bulk of the speech to recounting the incident in which the men died, praising them for their sacrifice. And, conservatives, please note that she ended with words for which I would have thought you'd want her to praise her:

God bless you, God bless the FBI, and God bless America.

I'll say it again: John Kelly is a dishonorable man.

Read More

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas: Gen. Kelly's reputation now besmirched by connection with Trump

John Kelly and the Dangerous Moral Calculus of Working for Trump

By Ryan Lizza,

New Yorker Magazine

October 20, 2017

The White House chief of staff, John Kelly, is the latest example of how the President sullies the reputations of those who work with and for him.

Photograph by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

Anyone in politics or government who works for Donald Trump, whether on the payroll or in some other supporting role, is forced to make a sacrifice. Working for Trump means that one's credibility is likely to be damaged, so there is a kind of moral calculation that any Trump supporter must make: Does working for him serve some higher purpose that outweighs the price of reputational loss?

There is a hierarchy of justifications for backing Trump. At the bottom are the spokespeople and purely political officials who are almost instantly discredited, because they are forced to defend the statements of a President who routinely lies and manufactures nonsensical versions of events. Sean Spicer learned this on his first day on the job, when Trump sent him into the White House briefing room to tell the press lies about Inauguration-crowd sizes. He never recovered. But there was also no higher purpose for which Spicer could claim he was serving Trump, except that he was a political-communications official, and being the White House spokesman is the top prize in that profession.

Republicans in Congress are a little farther up the pyramid. Many privately say that they believe Trump is a disaster of a President, an embarrassment to the G.O.P., and, as Bob Corker recently said publicly, echoing what he claimed were the views of most Republican senators, setting America "on the path to World War III." They justify their support by noting that Trump will implement the core Republican agenda, and that alone is worth the price of a person at least some of them believe is unfit to be President. They may be privately embarrassed by Trump, the agreement goes, but at least he has appointed a reliable conservative to the Supreme Court, almost repealed Obamacare (and still might), and has a decent chance at signing a big tax cut into law. How morally justifiable one believes this argument is depends a lot on how bad one believes Trump is for the country and the world, though a Third World War seems like it would be a steep price to pay for Neil Gorsuch.

The tougher cases are at the top of the pyramid. The government needs to be staffed, and, especially in positions of national security, it's hard to argue against anyone taking a senior position at the Pentagon, the State Department, or the National Security Council to insure that Trump's worst instincts are contained. This, of course, was the moral dilemma of the three generals now in top civilian jobs serving Trump: Defense Secretary James Mattis; the national-security adviser, H. R. McMaster; and the White House chief of staff, John Kelly. They were all generally respected for their military service, untainted by prior association with Trump, and their work in the Administration was generally believed to be a continuation of their service to the country by making sure our erratic President doesn't fulfill Corker's warning.

We learned this week that, even if you maintain the most sympathetic view of why these ex-generals continue to serve Trump, there is no way to work for him without paying the Trump tax on one's reputation. Since joining the White House, Kelly has been viewed as a force for good. He helped defactionalize the West Wing by removing some of its most difficult personalities, such as Steve Bannon. He has implemented some basic processes that all modern White Houses have had, such as a system for controlling who meets with Trump and what information flows to him. But then, yesterday, he was dragged into the sordid spectacle of Trump's fight with a congresswoman and the grieving family of La David Johnson, the Army sergeant who was killed in Niger earlier this month.

Trump called Johnson's widow to express his condolences. Some things that Trump said, rather than console, offended Myeshia Johnson, who allowed her local congresswoman and friend, Frederica Wilson, to listen to the call. After Wilson complained publicly about the tone of the call, Trump, rather than doing what any normal President would do by apologizing for any miscommunication, escalated the apparent misunderstanding into a Twitter war. The fact that Trump's targets, a widow and a Democratic congresswoman, are African-Americans added to the sense that the President was, yet again, being racially divisive. Kelly, who rarely speaks publicly, stepped into the briefing room yesterday to defend the President. The most newsworthy comments he made concerned Wilson, who he said was an "empty barrel" who had once turned a ceremony meant to commemorate the deaths of two F.B.I. officers killed in the line of duty into a celebration of her ability to steer tax dollars to her district.

His attack on Wilson is worth quoting at length:

A congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money—the twenty million dollars— to build the building. And she sat down, and we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned. But, you know, none of us went to the press and criticized. None of us stood up and were appalled. We just said, "O.K., fine."

As was quickly reported, the video of Wilson's nine-minute speech is online. Wilson did tell a story about how she; John Boehner, the House Speaker at the time; and Obama worked together to make sure that the building was named after the two slain F.B.I. agents in time for the event. She said nothing about securing funding (she was, in fact, not in Congress when the money was authorized) and nothing about "how she took care of her constituents." She asked law-enforcement officials present to stand up "so we can applaud you and what you do," adding, "we're proud of you, we're proud of your courage." She then told the tragic story of the two agents who lost their lives. The speech bears no resemblance to the speech Kelly described. The White House chief of staff maligned a congresswoman, whose only crime seemed to be criticizing Trump, with a series of lies.

When a reporter at the White House on Friday asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the glaring discrepancy between Kelly's account and the actual speech, she said that the White House stood by his remarks. "There was a lot of grandstanding," she said. "He was stunned that she had taken that opportunity to make it about herself." The reporter pressed: "He was wrong yesterday in talking about getting the money. The money was secured before she came into Congress."

Sanders shot back with the kind of statement that would be normal in an authoritarian country, suggesting that Kelly's previous military service placed him beyond criticism. "If you want to go after General Kelly, that's up to you," she said. "But I think that that—if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that's something highly inappropriate."

No, it is not. Kelly is the chief of staff and a political operative. He held a press conference and told a lie that smeared one of Trump's political opponents. No government official's military background, no matter how honorable, makes him immune to criticism, especially given the subject at hand. Sanders's response was unnerving. But the bigger lesson of the episode is that no matter how good one's intentions are, when you go to work for Trump, you will end up paying for it with your reputation. For Kelly, not even his four stars prevented that.

Read More

Duhmbya's Back and he's attacking Trump (Good Grief, will this nightmare never END?)

Did you ever think the Republicans would have to send out Duhmbya Bush (who helped ruin the party) to try to salvage it?  Duhmbya and Cheney -- along with Mitch McConnell and all the obstructionist congressmen--laid the foundational bricks for a Trump presidency.  They are responsible for the FrankenTrump monster they alone created.  And now they have to turn to Cheney's puppet to try to mitigate the disaster they have foisted off on the nation--and the world.  I turned off the TV this morning when Duhmbya came on (Oh, NO!) reading the words that had been written for him by a terrified GOP that sees its sweet dreams of taking over the White House and inflicting their disastrous policies on the middle-class and poor, come to fulfillment in ways they never expected.  But they should have expected this from Trump. He is their man, the creature they built, and they are the ones who will have to take him down (until Mueller can do it--HURRY UP, MUELLER!). 

WATCH: Bush just delivered a stunning 16 minute repudiation of Trumpism — without ever mentioning his name

Read More

The Savior In Our Midst (Please save us from him!!!)

Read More

Republican right-wing columnist speaks of Christian value voters

I've been wondering when someone--ANYone--in the right wing would finally say what many of them are thinking, but are afraid to say.  Why does Mike Pence, a devout self-proclaimed Christian man, take the humiliation and disrespect that Trump doses out to him on a daily  basis--especially about Pence's deeply held religious beliefs and his strong conservative values, such as his thinking homosexuality is a sin and that his wife must always accompany him when he is around other women where alcohol is served?  Whether or not you agree with those beliefs, Pence obviously takes his religion very seriously.  Why do Christian voters, who also think of homosexuality as sinful, applaud and cheer Trump, a man who makes fun of Pence for his beliefs and who is constantly demonstrating to the world by his words and actions that he hasn't a religious bone in his body?   At last, a right-wing conservative is speaking up about the hypocrisy of it all.  I would like to hear from conservative Christians as to how they compartmentalize all of this?

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.

'Values' voters are misnamed

By Jennifer Rubin October 16 at 1:30 PM

President Trump revels in the adoration of Christian conservatives, who remain among the most steadfast supporters of the thrice-married, frequently accused misogynist who evidences not a single Christian virtue (e.g. humility, honesty, empathy, kindness, generosity). Trump tells them simplistic applause lines — they can say "Merry Christmas!" — and they applaud. He has delivered for them, in the form of a Supreme Court justice appointment of their liking, a broad order to ban transgender people from the military and sweeping permission for employers to deny birth control as part of the health-care coverage they provide. Sure, he's cruel to "dreamers" and indifferent to the health-care needs of Americans, but it is not as if "values voters" are politically influenced by concern for immigrants or the poor.

Former congresswoman Michele Bachmann, following up on remarks she made on Friday at the Values Voter Summit, called Trump a "man of faith." That's the fable these voters tell themselves and others so as maintain their air of self-righteousness. Trump, you see, is a God-fearing Christian who shares their determination to protect religion, which they actually believe is under attack in the United States. His overt behavior — his bullying, rudeness, nastiness, sexual abuse of women, lying, excessive materialism (doesn't want poor people in his Cabinet) and total lack of empathy — is ignored.

Revealing the depths of these voters' hypocrisy, the summit also hosted Stephen K. Bannon, chairman of the self-described home of the alt-right, Breibart News. The invite prompted conservative David French to tweet: "Why is a Christian organization hosting this vile man?" He continued, "The alt-right launched racist attacks against my daughter. Steve Bannon said he gave the alt-right a platform. Why honor him? … The alt-right also made vile threats against a host of people who were your longtime friends and allies. Yet you chose to feature Bannon." The answer is that the organizers traded political influence for defense of true religiosity; they celebrate anyone who wages the culture war on their behalf, a war based on resentment, anger, self-pity and dishonesty.

Meanwhile, Christian conservatives should know, as with anyone who sucks up to Trump, that he has nothing but contempt for their views, and for their darling Vice President Pence. The New Yorker reports:

A staff member from Trump's campaign recalls him mocking Pence's religiosity. He said that, when people met with Trump after stopping by Pence's office, Trump would ask them, "Did Mike make you pray?" Two sources also recalled Trump needling Pence about his views on abortion and homosexuality. During a meeting with a legal scholar, Trump belittled Pence's determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legal scholar had said that, if the Supreme Court did so, many states would likely legalize abortion on their own. "You see?" Trump asked Pence. "You've wasted all this time and energy on it, and it's not going to end abortion anyway." When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, "Don't ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!"

Mocking prayer? Denigrating the effort to overturn Roe v. Wade? They'd be horrified if a Democrat came close to that sort of conduct. Does Trump believe these things, or is he merely willing to humiliate a devout Christian for his faith?

Trump knows that without the religious right, he's politically dead. There is little likelihood that he will cross them on a policy issue of any importance. Like the National Rifle Association, the religious right made a pact with someone who never evidenced any concern for their issues. So far, the gamble has paid off for both. Trump and Republicans remain the NRA's poodles; Trump delights in fighting the culture wars.

Christian conservatives should give up the ruse — they've made a bargain with the most irreligious and faithless president in history, a man who holds what they value in contempt. Their scam — that they and their candidates operate from some high, moral plane and are the true repositories of American values — should end with this president. They are nothing more and nothing less than an anti-abortion, anti-gay lobby group that seeks to enlist government to impose their ideological positions on others. In short, they are what their critics have always claimed.

Read More

Bombshell Expose: Big Pharma Wrote Bill That Crippled DEA Fight Against Opioid Epidemic

Well, no surprise here. Big Pharma, Big Money. Just like the NRA -- They can buy whoever and whatever they want, whenever they want.  How naive we all were to believe we live in the "land of the free."

The bill removed one of their most effective tools against complicit pharma manufacturers.

Politics

Read More

Trump jokes that Pence wants to "hang all gays"

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-gays-pence-hang-them-all_us_59e4afd5e4b04d1d518320d9?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

A president and vice president to be proud of.  Can't wait till they start war with Korea and Itan.

Read More

Vanity Fair article on Trump

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/donald-trump-is-unraveling-white-house-advisers

Read More

I love Bishop William Barber! He was GREAT on AM Joy this morning, speaking REAL Christian truth to the powerful and deluded

'Their values are cash and not Christ': Rev. Barber rains holy hell on right-wing Values Voters Summit

Read More

One of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes

Read More

Read about Calvin and Hobbes with descriptive analysis of the characters by the creator of the strip

Calvin and Hobbes is my all-time favorite comic strip, bar none!  Its creator Bill Watterson is a deep thinker who has the talent and ability to project his thoughts/fears/imaginations into his little boy character Calvin and his real-to-Calvin but stuffed-toy-to-the-world tiger friend Hobbes.  

In the following link, I enjoyed reading Watterson's own explanation about all the characters in his strip  -- and what they represent to him.  I am so sorry Watterson decided to retire and stop drawing Calvin and Hobbes back in 1995.  Thankfully, though, his strips for the 10 years from 1985-1995 are a lasting gift to the world that, more and more in this time of historical insanity, desperately needs humor and laughter to get us through.  

I would love to see him draw a strip about the idiocy we see now in our White House and Congress -- but we have reached a time of lunacy in which parody can't compete with "real world" events that stretch credulity and belief far beyond previously established bounds.

http://www.calvinandhobbes.com/about-calvin-and-hobbes/

Read More

Caribbean islands now need to go green -- Most Sensible!

Time for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands to Go All Green

by Harvey Wasserman | October 7, 2017 - 6:16am |permalink

— from Truthdig

The terrible global-warmed tragedy that has ripped through Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands now offers us a unique opportunity—and a vital imperative. As Elon Musk and others in the business of clean, green power have made clear, the islands' centralized fossil-fueled electric grids should not be rebuilt.

Instead, they advocate entirely replacing them with decentralized, community-owned micro-grids, powered by solar panels, wind turbines and locally grown biofuels. That conversion would guarantee the islands a cheap, secure energy supply while fighting the global warming that made these hurricanes such fearsome destroyers of life and property.

» article continues...

Read More

Over 50? Read this chilling New Yorker magazine article: How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

I read this article last night. It tells an incredible story that is happening in many states, in which elderly people are being taken from their homes and institutionalized without their consent or the consent of their children--even against the protests of their children!  Their assets, including their homes, are taken from them and put into the hands of state-appointed "guardians" who are free to do whatever they want with the elderly who have been put into their care, including making all decisions about their health care--what insurance they have and who their doctors are.

This article touched me even more deeply than it of course would have because of a personal experience of my own.  I have a dear friend in my home town in upstate New York who told me she and her husband were forced into a nursing home for a period of several months but were finally released not long ago.  She was shaking and crying when she told me and kept saying, "I don't want to talk about it.  I am too embarrassed!"  So I didn't learn all the details, but it chilled me to the bone to hear her tell of being taken from their home and forced into institutionalized living.  As we were talking on the phone, my friend told me she had absented herself from the living room and had taken herself and the phone into a spare room in her home where she couldn't be heard by a guardian type of person who was there at the time.  I don't know if this was a visiting nurse or someone else, but my friend appeared to be fearful of the person's presence in her home.

I am going to try to find out more about what was done to her and her husband, but it is obvious to me from her story and from the New Yorker article that "authority" figures have far too much power over the lives of the elderly. 

When you read the article,  you will see exactly what I mean.

Read More

Because, Why Not get more family involved? Trump offered Ivana (his ex-wife) ambassadorship--she turned it down

There is no bottom to this presidency!

Politics

Trump Offered His Ex-Wife The Ambassadorship To Czech Republic

Read More

SAD truth -- Even families divided: We are two emotional nations at war

Thoughtful essay.  Trump has not only divided the Republican party -- he has divided families...and an entire nation. :'(

We Are Two Emotional Nations at War

Peace & Justice

by Todd Gitlin | October 5, 2017 - 7:39am

---

— from Moyers & Company

The cliché of the decade is that America consists of two nations which don't like each other. Like many clichés, this one is rooted deeply in truth, but in ways that bear closer inspection. The country's differences are mostly obvious, familiar to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave (at least one without Wi-Fi). But something else is going on, too. Increasingly we divide not only according to what we think but what we feel when we oppose the folks on the other side of the divide.

On a host of issues, the great majority of Americans cluster around two poles of mutual contempt. "Issues" are not the issue: facts are at issue. Your "fake news" denies my "alternative facts." Your up is my down. Amplification systems blare at each other — radio, TV, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, you name it. The universes of opinion not only diverge, they cancel each other out. They both abhor vacuums. Polarization is the buzzword.

The ways we polarize are uncountable, but they cluster around questions of identity. The issue is not so much what you think but who you are. (Leonard Cohen brilliantly caught one axis of cleavage in his great line: "There is a war between those who say there is a war and those who say there isn't.") You sign up for a tribe — usually from birth — and your tribe thinks and feels for you. The name of the tribe you belong to is all I need to know about you. The name of the tribe may change, but identity is always at stake. Not so long ago, the right to same-sex marriage was a crucial divider; now, it's bathroom access. The opposite position is inconceivable.

The tribes run our political parties. What's evident and decisive is partisanship. Americans don't reason their way from opinions to party choice, they choose their party first and then subscribe to its list of favored opinions. The same goes for loved and hated politicians, none more than the fabricator-in-chief. Trump's zealots glue themselves to his coattails so fiercely that they will abandon previously held positions (like budget hawkery) once they learn Trump's position du jour.

Was there a precise moment when the words "one nation, divisible" erupted volcanically in the midst of the Pledge of Allegiance? Of course not. Civil War, anyone? Charlottesville showed that the Civil War did not end, it morphed. It's absurd to accuse politicians of divisiveness, for it's self-evident that two climates of American opinion claw at each other like scorpions in a bottle. "Divisible" is our middle name, if not our first and last as well.

There's a geography of division, too. A continuing line of cleavage was the Cotton Curtain. It went by the name Mason-Dixon, and its variants continue to ricochet down the years. Less than two decades ago, the Continental Divide was declared to be something more anodyne: a line between blue and red states, the former clustering on the three coasts (the third being the middle one on the shores of the Great Lakes), the latter in the "heartland," the "flyover states," the "real America." Now we speak of lines separating locals from globalizers, and those who left their home counties from those who never did.

Now, what does this have to do with feelings? It should come as no surprise that members of the warring tribes think ill of each other. Regardless of the distinct stories they tell of how their tribe is victimized by the other tribe, they make no bones about their mutual suspicions. Consequently, of antagonism there is no shortage, and where it will end is anyone's guess.

Over the past two years, of course, the two tribes have crystallized into Trumpworld and Anti-Trumpworld. Some emotions the tribes share — fear and loathing, to name two. Contempt also ranks up there. Your tribe is not only different from mine, it's incomparably superior. Contempt draws a sharp boundary line between my worthiness and your unworthiness. It grants solidarity — however little you may think of yourself, you know that the members of the other tribe are truly worthless. You're as right as the others are wrong. How could you esteem yourself if you didn't loathe "them"?

We all want our country back from the usurpers. Trumpers hold in contempt "illegal aliens," the "politically correct," the members of an "elite" (or "swamp") made up of people whom they believe hold them in contempt, not least the "fake news," who are "the worst people in the world." Anti-Trumpers, by contrast, are contemptuous of white supremacists, climate-change deniers, "p***y grabbers," crony capitalists and those who would deprive Americans of decent health care.

Perhaps the capacity for contempt is humanity's great uniter. Human beings being what we are, weak and frightened, almost all of us survey the landscape for threats, and where we find threats, rightly or wrongly, we find throats to leap at. This tendency cuts across all political, religious, ideological and national lines. The Buddhists of Myanmar are as culpable as the Serbs of former Yugoslavia. Where the left sees a war on women, the right sees a war on Christmas. Of course there's a distinction: the former is rhetorical excess for right-wing policies that burden birth control, while the latter is entirely fictional. But no one can deny that loathing and horror cut across political lines.

With the politics of moralistic aversion comes disgust, which declares, We who would be pure have been contaminated by them. Disgust is not only cognitive and intellectual but aesthetic. The other side is not only wrong, it is grotesque and unnatural. It's hard to say which camp is more easily disgusted in America today. Did the hard right feel any more or less disgusted at Barack Obama in the White House than the left feels at the spectacle of Donald Trump watching Fox News and tweeting there?

So we are one nation, under contempt, disgust and antagonism. Still and all, there are differences in what, and how, the tribes feel toward each other. There's a striking difference between the emotional clusters that each tribe harbors toward the other. It's a difference in the coloration — the flavor — the tone of their respective negativities.

Trumpworld seethes with resentment, hatred and aggression. Ordinary anger is directed against someone else because of what he, she or they do or say. Resentment feels wholly threatened by the enemy. His, her or their existence is an insult. The enemy not only threatens but undermines me by having taken what is rightfully mine.

Trumpworld seethes with resentment. It is not only misogynist but voices its misogyny with maximum venom: "Lock her up," "Hang the bitch," "Hillary sucks more than Monica." By contrast, for its part, while Anti-Trumpworld never blew kisses at criminal bankers, Bernie Sanders' crowds did not chant, "Castrate the bastards" or "Fry the capitalists."

If I am right, though, there's another mismatch between tribal hatreds. Anti-Trumpworld beholds Trump not only with fear and loathing but with embarrassment and shame. Anti-Trumpworld listens to this man thunder at the UN General Assembly and feels that our fair name — the name of all of America's better angels — is besmirched. We, all of us, are dragged down in the muck he deposits everywhere. Whatever our feelings abut what's lovable and leaveable about America, we cannot bear watching this man unload his unending falsification, venom and ignorance, and transgress everything we hold honorable and decent about America. The spectacle of him sliming the idea that America could ever stand for anything other than conquest and brute force feels like murder.

His sins and crimes judge us across the board. We did not bar him from power. However flawed his 2016 opponent, however toxic James Comey's interventions, however wicked Putin and his Russians, however impressive our alibis, however bad our luck, however absurd our Electoral College, the sum of all our good and intelligent works did not bar him from power. This is our collective shame.
_______

Read More

Trump is spelling the end for the GOP--and entrance of a new party

Which one will "normal" Republican conservatives follow?  We know where his base will go.  Onward, "Christian" (in their own minds) soldiers....

The GOP is on its deathbed

LAWRENCE MARTIN

WASHINGTON

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

5 HOURS AGOOCTOBER 5, 2017

You can get a lot of takers in this town for the proposition that the Republican Party is in its death throes, that the radical outliers have taken over, that it will go the way of Canada's old Progressive Conservatives.

This will be Donald Trump's big legacy piece; crushing the establishment Republicans, finishing the process he began in the Republican primaries. There is a lot of sentiment supporting the notion that the Grand Old Party has had its day, that it is time American conservatives moved on. But moving on in the hyper-nationalist, anti-immigrant, protectionist manner of a Mr. Trump is a course Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan could scarcely have imagined.

Trump is isolating himself from important power centres with his approach to governing

We should recall that few saw the demise of the old Canadian Tories coming. Only nine years before their collapse in 1993, that party won 211 seats, the most in Canadian history. But populist and nationalist movements at the provincial level took hold. The populism fomented in the West, chiefly Alberta, under the Reform Party banner while nationalism soared in the province of Quebec with the Bloc Quebecois. Those insurgent forces captured 52 and 54 seats respectively in the 1993 election while the Progressive Conservatives fell a staggering 209 seats short of their 1984 tally.

The forces that took down Canada's grand old party are arguably stronger today in the United States. There's already been a dress rehearsal here, coming in the form of Tea Party insurgency in the GOP beginning in 2009.

That movement lacked a formal structure, a hierarchy, a leader. Now more elements are in place. There is a boss of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, who is not beholden to it. For the presidential nomination, he ran against the party establishment and staged what was essentially a hostile takeover. He has since that time become more estranged, blaming congressional Republicans for failing to enact his agenda while aligning himself recently with the Democrats on immigration and budgetary issues.

The Trump populist/nationalist agenda is more like a third-party one. The agenda has far more adherents than the platitudes of the Republican old guard. The party's big base is firmly in the grip of Mr. Trump. It has held firm no matter how he veers, how he falters.

The third party, a shadow party as some call it, is currently being organized by Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump's former campaign manager. It's got mega-money, that of hedge-fund executive Robert Mercer. It's got a media platform, Mr. Bannon's Breitbart News. It is home for the nation's grievance bearers, the millions who feel they've been exploited by elites, by immigrants, by the undrained swamp.

A Bannon-backed America-firster, Roy Moore, roiled the Republican establishment last week by easily defeating its favoured man, Luther Strange, in a Senate nomination battle in Alabama. With Mr. Trump's tacit support, Mr. Bannon is lining up other outlier candidates to take down Republican regulars.

If there comes a time for Mr. Trump to bolt the old party, an infrastructure will be in place. That time could well come after the midterm elections. Mr. Trump will blame losses on the old guard for its failure to implement his policies. If his America-firsters do better at the ballot box, it will provide added incentive for an exit. A complication could well be the Robert Mueller inquiry into Russian collusion in the election. If the President is fingered and sees a lack of support from congressional Republicans, he will be all the more inclined to strike out on his own.

His base would be with him and one can bet Republican regulars would come over to run under a new banner, the American Party or whatever he might call it. They would realize, as Canadian Tories eventually did, there is no future in the old party.

If it all sounds outlandish, bear in mind the impulsive, incendiary, mercurial nature of the man occupying the Oval Office. He defies the norms. He could defy a party that has existed since 1854.

Read More

Vietnam - comments on Ken Burns special from a soldier who was there

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/75453/the-vietnam-nightmare-again   (On this link you can read some Readers' replies to this article)

The Vietnam Nightmare — Again

Vietnam | War

by Eric Margolis | October 1, 2017 - 5:47am

---

Much of America, including yours truly, has been watching the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series, 'Vietnam.' Instead of clarifying that confusing conflict, the series has ignited fiery controversy and a lot of long-repressed anger by soft-soaping Washington's motives.

This march to folly in Vietnam is particularly painful for me since I enlisted in the US army at the height of the war. Gripped by youthful patriotism, I strongly supported the war. In fact, the TV series even showed a pro-war march down New York's Fifth Avenue that I had joined. Talk about déjà vu.

At the time, 1967, the Cold War was at full force. We really believed that if the US did not make a stand in Vietnam the Soviets and Chinese would overrun all of South Asia.

No one in Washington seemed to know that China and the Soviet Union had split and become bitter enemies. As ever, our foreign human intelligence was lousy. We didn't understand that Vietnam deserved independence after a century of French colonialism. Or that what happened in Vietnam was of little importance to the rest of the world.

Three American presidents blundered into this war or prolonged it, then could not back out lest they lose face and risk humiliation. I don't for a moment believe that the 'saintly' President John Kennedy planned to end the war but was assassinated by dark, rightwing forces, as is claimed. This is a charming legend. Richard Nixon, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all feared that a withdrawal from Vietnam would lose them the next election. Republicans were still snarling over 'who lost China'.

The current 17-year old US war in Afghanistan has uncanny resemblances to the Vietnam War. In Kabul and Saigon, the US installed puppet governments that command no loyalty except from minority groups. They were steeped in drugs and corruption, and kept in power by intensive use of American air power. As in Vietnam, the US military and civilian effort in Afghanistan is led by a toxic mixture of deep ignorance and imperial arrogance.

The US military understands it has long ago lost the Afghan War but cannot bear the humiliation of admitting it was defeated by lightly-armed mountain tribesmen fighting for their independence. In Vietnam, Washington could not admit that young Vietnamese guerillas and regulars had bested the US armed forces thanks to their indomitable courage and intelligent tactics. No one outside Vietnam cared about the 2-3 million civilians killed in the conflict

Unfortunately, the PBS program fails to convey this imperial arrogance and the ignorance that impelled Washington into the war – the same foolhardy behavior that sent US forces into Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq and perhaps may do so in a second Korean War. The imperial spirit still burns hot in Washington among those who don't know or understand the outside world. The lessons of all these past conflicts have been forgotten: Washington's collective memory is only three years long.

Vietnam was not a 'tragedy,' as the PBS series asserts, but the product of imperial geopolitics. The same holds true for today's Mideast wars. To paraphrase a famous slogan from Vietnam, we destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria to make them safe for 'freedom.'

One of the craziest things about the Vietnam War has rarely been acknowledged: even at peak deployment, the 550,000 US soldiers in Vietnam were outnumbered by North Vietnamese fighting units.

That's because the huge US military had only about 50,000 real combat troops in the field. The other half million were support troops performing logistical and administrative functions behind the lines: a vast army of typists, cooks, truck drivers, psychologists, and pizza-makers.

Too much tail to teeth, as the army calls it. For Thanksgiving, everyone got turkey dinner with cranberry sauce, choppered into the remotest outposts. But there were simply not enough riflemen to take on the Viet Cong and tough North Vietnamese Army whose Soviet M1954 130mm howitzer with a 27 km range were far superior to the US Army's outdated WWII artillery.

Poor generalship, mediocre officers, and lack of discipline ensured that the US war effort in Vietnam would become and remain a mess. Stupid, pointless attacks against heavily defended hills inflicted huge casualties on US troops and eroded morale.

The monumentally stupid war mismanagement of Pentagon chief Robert McNamara, a know-it-all who knew nothing, turned the war into a macabre joke. This was the dumbest command decision since Louis XV put his girlfriend Madame de Pompadour in charge of his armies.

We soldiers, both in Vietnam and Stateside, scorned the war and mocked our officers. It didn't help that much of the US force in 'Nam' were often stoned and rebellious.

The January 30, 1968 Tet Offensive put the kibosh on US plans to pursue the war – and even take it into south-west China. Tet was a military victory of sorts for the US (and why not, with thousands of warplanes and B-52 heavy bombers) but a huge political/psychological victory for the Communists in spite of their heavy losses.

I vividly recall standing with a group of GI's reading a typed report on our company barracks advising that the Special Forces camp in the Central Highlands to which many of our company had been assigned for immediate duty had been overrun at Tet, and all its defenders killed. After that, the US Army's motto was 'stay alive, avoid combat, and smoke another reefer.'

The war became aimless and often surreal. We soldiers all knew our senior officers and political leaders were lying. Many soldiers were at the edge of mutiny, like the French Army in 1917. Back in those ancient days, we had expected our political leaders to be men of rectitude who told us the truth. Thanks to Vietnam, the politicians were exposed as liars and heartless cynics with no honor.

This same dark cloud hangs over our political landscape today. We have destroyed large parts of the Mideast, Afghanistan and northern Pakistan without a second thought – yet wonder why peoples from these ravaged nations hate us. Now, North Korea seems next.

Showing defiance to Washington brought B-52 bombers, toxic Agent Orange defoliants and endless storms of napalm and white phosphorus that would burn through one's body until it hit bone.

In spite of all, our imperial impulse till throbs. The nightmare Vietnam War in which over 58,000 American soldiers died for nothing has been largely forgotten. So we can now repeat the same fatal errors again without shame, remorse or understanding.

Read More

Humorous essay re. Jared Kushner and his "forgetfulness"

On his voter registration, he checked the box Female instead of Male -- and he can't remember any of the meetings he had with Russians.... Read on:

Full disclosure: I am Jared Kushner. I have no idea what I'm doing.

By Alexandra Petri September 29 at 3:31 PM 

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner. (Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

"[Jared] Kushner has been criticized in the past for initially not disclosing more than 100 contacts with foreign leaders including those from Russia, as well as ownership of a multimillion dollar tech company with links to Goldman Sachs and businessmen Peter Thiel and George Soros. Kushner was also one of three top campaign officials or surrogates who failed to disclose a June 2016 meeting with a woman billed as being with the Russian government and having incriminating information on Hillary Clinton." —CNN, Sept. 28

Jared here. Sorry about forgetting to tell you about my private email account, senators!

In general, I apologize if, on a form, I forgot to disclose anything about myself, or, indeed, everything about myself. I just have this condition where the second I am presented with a form for making disclosures, I lose all recollection of who I am, what I am doing and the meaning of the word "disclosure." It sounds like something that a bank should do to a poor family. Boy, I hope I'm not poor! I assume I'm not, based on these cuff links I'm wearing, but I honestly don't know! The second I was asked to supply information about myself, my condition kicked in.

Have we met before?

I am not trying to be rude. It's just that apparently I've met like a whole BUNCH of Russian officials, and I have zero recollection of any of this. Or, like, any income I've received at any time. Or most of my business holdings. Looking at my fine-tailored suit, I assume I must have business holdings. I can't wait to find out what they are! I hope they don't involve a complex web of business dealings with hostile nations. That could be awkward.

You know that thing where you can't remember your password and the hint seems as though it was written by an entirely different person? I have that, but also for the email address itself and for having created the email. Do I have an email address? What's an email address? No, genuinely, what is an email address?

I'm sorry. I should have mentioned this to Congress earlier, really, but, again, the second I am presented with a form to fill out, my mind goes blank, and so does the form. Who am I? What am I doing here? Am I qualified to be here? Should I be here? Why was I chosen to be a presidential adviser? Do I have any expertise at all in anything? Good questions, all equally difficult to answer.

Oh my God, I've been filling the form out with the wrong end of the pencil, haven't I? Oops.

They tell me that this woman is my wife and that I am a senior adviser to the president. Senior adviser — wow! Good for me.

I would tattoo personal information on my hands for ease and convenience, but tattoos are lower-class and somehow I know that whatever else I may turn out to be, I am not that. I feel as though I own something made of marble, maybe a building. Or a boat, the kind with costly silent consonants in it. I bet I went to Harvard, whatever that is.

Am I male or female? Well, it's a 50/50 shot here, at least according to this form's restrictive binary. Boy, I hope I'm male, just based on, like, society. I'll pick one at random.

Have I been here before? Should I be talking to you? Who am I? Is this all a nightmare? Or, wait, am I a goldfish? Is there anything else I am failing to disclose? Maybe. Who can say? I certainly can't.

I bet I know a lot about the Middle East, though. Definitely put me in charge of that.

Read More

Watched a good film today--Our Souls at Night with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda

Highly recommended movie on streaming Netflix now.  One song that kept playing through it was The Highwayman sung by (who else?) The Highwaymen (Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, etc.)  Nice song of reincarnation. This version is particularly good on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFkcAH-m9W0

Read More

IMPORTANT to READ: Trump's Tax Plan: Ultimate Domination by the Rich

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-tax-plan-rich_us_59cd6a14e4b05f005d3328cb?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Important for us all to understand what is being done to us under the pretense of "helping the middle class by giving breaks to the rich."

Read More

Want to laugh hysterically today? Read the following humorous essay: BEFORE THE INTERNET

Need to laugh?  After living with Trump as President for almost 10 months, we all need something to lift our spirits.  This is one of the BEST laugh-givers Ever, from the New Yorker:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/before-the-internet

It had me laughing so hard, it hurt (in a good way, for a change). (~.~) 

Very much like Steve Martin's SIDE EFFECTS, which you can read at:  http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060324/msgs/626555.html

Don't even think about Trump for the rest of the day.  Just keep laughing....it's all just a crazy dream! (~.~)

Read More