blueseas
blueseas's JournalA breakdown of trust between Donald Trump and Americas spy chiefs
The president-elect’s attacks on his eyes and ears around the globe could prove to be self-defeating.
SNIP:
“I WON”. It is hard to overstate the psychological weight carried by those two words, offered by President-elect Donald Trump as evidence that “the American public” does not care that he has not released his tax returns. The defiant words were flung out near the start of a rowdy press conference in the marble and brass lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan—the businessman’s first formal question-and-answer session with reporters in half a year.
Many mainstream Republicans, including members of Congress or business types excited by the chance to advance a conservative agenda of tax cuts and deregulation once they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, had hoped that by this moment, nine days from his inauguration, victory might make Mr Trump more magnanimous.
Snip: A man constantly in campaign mode will struggle to make America great again.
LINK:http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/01/not-magnanimous-yet?cid1=cust/ddnew/n/n/n/20170111n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/NA/email
The center has fallen, and white nationalism is filling the vacuum
Racism has the power to transform both right and left.
In 1992, a magnetic young Democrat swept aside twelve years of unbroken Republican rule by campaigning on a platform that seemed to cross the old left-right divide. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, the first Democratic president elected after the Cold War, was the great prophet of the Third Way, a seemingly post-ideological marriage of “pro-growth” economic thinking and moderate social liberalism.
SNIP:
It would be tempting to argue that Trump’s full-on embrace of white identity politics makes him an aberration among Republican officials. But it’s more likely that he is leading the party toward a destination it was already headed for.
That’s the view of political scientist Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at New America. In an August piece for Vox, Drutman described Trump’s ascension as “the logical culmination of Republicans’ 50-year ‘Southern strategy’ to make politics primarily about race and identity instead of economics.”
Trumpism speaks directly to white identity and white fear.
SNIP:
And 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — identified as a candidate of the Third Way mainly because her husband is Bill Clinton — put forward a policy agenda that would have distributed significant amounts of wealth to the entire working class, white people included.
MORE https://thinkprogress.org/the-center-has-fallen-and-white-nationalism-is-filling-the-vacuum-beb0611dfe94#.ben2y7fkh
A-Day-in-the-Life-of-Joe-Republican
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.
With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
MORE:
http://www.gbpotus.com/single-post/2017/01/02/A-Day-in-the-Life-of-Joe-Republican
Profile Information
Member since: 2001Number of posts: 11,575