Unfortunately, under the House rules the minority party can't even get a bill to the floor for a vote. The majority party has 100% control of the agenda. Democracy in action.
The positive way to look at this is that all this retrograde policy is now being pushed by and identified with a presidency both personally unlikable and professionally incompetent. The fact that Trump is for it hurts any policy's popular support, and much of this agenda will hopefully be bungled as badly as immigration and health care have been so far.
But I think even the biggest of these policy questions are just distractions as far as Trump is concerned. I don't think there is a Trump "agenda" beyond monetizing the office as much and as quickly as possible. I would love to see even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much Trump makes just by going to Mar-a-Lago every weekend. He travels free, but what about the probably hundreds -- staff, media, security -- who must go with him? Where do they stay? Where do they eat? And don't get me started on Carl Icahn writing himself some quarter billion dollar regulatory reform. He's an unpaid advisor, of course, takes no government paycheck. He's doing it as a public service.
One position I would take for sure if I was the Democrats:
The reason he doesn't simply ask for a briefing is because then he would get accurate information, and then he wouldn't be able to tweet a bunch of made-up BS. They've got a perfect set-up: Publish an article in the White House's own propaganda vehicle (Breitbart), then cite that article as the source of your accusation. If Fox News can be normalized as legitimate journalism, why not Breitbart?
Brooks is a man who has watched his Ayn Rand wet dream of a political agenda being implemented for a quarter-century, has watched it manifestly not work on both the domestic and international stages, recognizes it's not working, and yet his faith remains unshaken. I watch him for amusement, not insight. Trump with better manners.
Well, if we're going to nitpick and subject his semi-literate brain farts to a Zapruder film level of micro-analysis, what he actually said was on the order of "And can you believe what happened in Sweden last night" -- clearly implying some specific horrible incident involving Muslim refugees when no such event occurred. Apparently he had seen a Fox News piece the night before about general problems resettling refugees which, when run through his ADD-restricted brain, became implanted in his mind as a terrorist attack or some kind of crisis, anyway. Who knows? He's Trump.
The scary thing to me about Trump is not that he's lying. It's that he thinks he's telling the truth.
My opinion, unsupported by any data, but I believe it nonetheless -- Trump's hardcore supporters have been feeding on a diet of hatred for "liberals," "the Democrat party," intellectuals, the media, etc. (all euphemisms for Jews) for over 20 years now via Fox and Limbaugh. It's been engraved pretty deeply at this point.
They don't know, understand, or even care what Trump is actually doing. As long as he's driving us crazy, it must be good. They love Trump because they hate us.
I love the way Americans talk about the "peace process" as if such a thing had existed at any time in the last 20 years. The "peace process" is a rhetorical fig leaf for the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.
The main thing that bothers me about this is the utter obviousness of the whole thing. Flynn may be crazy, but he is the former head of National Intelligence (an oxymoron in America;s case) -- he can't possibly be so stupid as to not know that if you call the Russian embassy, you're probably going to be listened to. A middle school student knows that. There's got to be something more. Are they just so drunk on power they think nothing can touch them? They should be wising up by now.
Still, my philosophy is if you have to choose between incompetence and conspiracy to explain something, incompetence is far more likely. These guys aren't that smart, and Trump's own historical frame of reference is pretty much a blank slate. Just ask Frederick Douglass.
But anything that throws stones in the pathway of the 70-year-old child-king is a good thing.
So a mentally unstable, delusional individual is now in charge of the most destructive arsenal in the history of humankind. What interesting times we live in.
It took exactly 25 days from his inauguration until I first heard the word "impeach" used in the ultra-timid, non-partisan mainstream media. The man continues to impress.
Higher education is one of our most important exports these days. It just happens in the form of bodies coming in rather than boxes going out.
There are several hundred Iranians at the University of Illinois right now, mostly grad students and post-docs in computer science and various kinds of engineering. If Iran ever does get the bomb, it will almost certainly be designed and built by American-educated scientists. How ironic.
But we forget that the percentage of voters who spend their time googling such things in the days before an election is actually quite small. Most people just aren't that obsessed. Republicans hated Clinton more than Democrats hated Trump, so their turnout was up and ours was down. The results weren't evenly distributed among the states. That's why we lost.
There was not much good to be said for the Weimer Republic. It was ineffectual and corrupt. But the Third Reich was not an improvement.
"Independent thought and intention" are by no means by definition positive. No matter how bad the status quo, it can get worse. My guess is Trump has no problem with covert institutions. He just wants them to be HIS covert institutions.
Unfortunately, Trump's unpopularity (and that of Republicans generally) only makes him and them more dangerous. They know they have to act quickly, before opposition can mobilize, and they will. I predict Democrats will respond by whining loudly.
And yet when the players come to Hamlet's castle, he instructs them to do just that -- address a specific member of audience -- the King -- and in the most "in your face" way imaginable. So what is Shakespeare again? Timeless, or a representative of a coarsened society. I think you have it backwards.
"You only hope that all these crackpots Trump is elevating to the highest offices in the land have been shining us on all these years with their lunatic theories and that once in power they’ll start acting like responsible adults."
If you think those laws you cite will mean anything to Jeff Sessions' Justice Department, Paul Ryan's House of Representatives, or Mitch McConnell's Senate, you have more faith in them than I do. You probably believe in the tooth fairy, too. Lawyers are not going to be the answer.
You're trying to use reason to persuade the irrational. That doesn't work. There's an old saying -- I think it originated with a Brit, in fact -- "You can't win an argument with an ignorant man."
I think anyone counting on the constitution to limit Trump's power is living in a high school civics class dreamworld. Insitutional limits are only as strong as the people manning the institutions. Do you think legal treaty obligations will prevent Trump from withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement? Who will enforce those obligations? Do you think the statutory basis for the EPA will keep it from being dismantled? You're not dealing with people who give a flying fig about the constitution. You're dealing with people who want their way.
It's amazing how people aren't panicking over the most obvious, ominous signs right in front of their faces.
I have vivid memories of toilet-papering trees on Halloween in my youth -- not that many decades ago -- and I vividly remember those trees being bare by the end of October. After many years in the south, where fall naturally comes later, I'm now not too far from my old digs, and the trees on Halloween haven't even reached peak color. By the time our last city leaf pick-up comes, half the leaves will still not have fallen, no doubt because they haven't updated the schedule in years.
But when I point these things out to people -- even fairly climate-aware people -- they look at me like, "No kidding? Hadn't really noticed."
Why would anyone feel any social discomfort about a response they would give to a pollster on the telephone -- someone (or even a robot) they don't even know and who doesn't even know anyone that they know? Makes no sense. They certainly didn't feel any social discomfort about putting yard signs in front of their houses.
To me, it's pretty obvious the polls were using turnout models that turned out to be just flat wrong -- just like the Romney campaign's models were in 2012.
Why don't you Greens try doing something during the four years BETWEEN elections? You know -- organizing, running candidates, winning elections. THEN you might have a powerful third party.
Obama didn't close down Guantanamo because his own party wouldn't back him on it. I think he should just give the place back to Cuba now while he still has time. Solve two injustices with one act.
I don't think anyone concealed their voting intentions. The Republican far right maintained that both McCain and Romney lost because they did not go hard right enough -- that there was still an untapped pool of white voters that could be gotten with the right (racist) pitch. I thought that was a fantasy. So did the pollsters. Boy, were we wrong!
I hope the Clinton fortune provides them solace in their golden years, because it probably cost them the White House. Reagan initiated the practice of profiting from the Presidency with a $1 million speech in Japan, as I recall, and Bush 41 continued it, but Bill Clinton turned it into a business model, and make no mistake -- his wife's looming return to the White House was very much part of the sales pitch.
The Clintons received more than their share of the public trust over the last 40 years, and whatever you think of their record, they did far better for the Clintons than they did for the public. You can't blame people for resenting that.
I have never visited Twitter.com. The only thing I can imagine wanting to do less than write a tweet is wanting to read someone else's tweet. It seems to me not much interesting can be said in 140-character bundles, and the tweets that have come my way via the news media have done nothing to change that view.
I have been mystified for some time by the apparent attractiveness to so many of tweeting, retweeting, and following the tweets of others. Do people really have that little to do or think about? Who has that much time on their hands? Maybe someone here can explain to me what I'm missing.
I can't speak for Europe, but there's no question in my mind that Trumpism in America -- indeed, the entire thrust of Republican politics since Reagan -- is mainly the desperation a segment of the shrinking demographic feels about maintaining white privilege.
Growing up, I was as much aware of my own whiteness as any black kid was of his blackness, and I was very much aware that in my case, it was a good thing. It was only the moral precepts I learned in Sunday school, the plain words of the Declaration of Independence, and the visible moral example of the civil rights movement that made me open to viewing the world through a different lens than race. And even then, I had to leave my all-white suburb for a big university to even begin to get the opportunities to experience that tolerance works as well in life as it does on paper.
I think millions of "white" Americans have made basically the same journey, but millions more haven't. It's hard to grow up in an urban area now without at least being comfortable seeing people of color at the grocery store, but in rural America, more than half-a-mile from the interstate, it'll still draw stares. Most job-sites requiring a college education have achieved some degree of diversity at this point, and thus most college-educated whites have had meaningful relationships outside their race. The small town auto mechanic, not so much.
Those seem to be the basic fault lines in American politics in 2016 -- rural/urban, and education -- and those, I think, are the reasons.
When Le Pen made the run-off in France several years ago, the left en masse supported the despised Gaullists to defeat him and send him back under the rock from which he slithered. And our left wonders why they never get anywhere. It's mainly because they're cry-babies.
As you can see, Juan, a lot of your readers were dropped on their heads. Well, I'm sure you're as tired of arguing with them as I am, but thanks for trying. When you can't convince a person that there's a difference between catching a cold and catching bubonic plague, what can you do?
If you think a "Network"-style mass insurrection is what the county needs, you obviously didn't hang around for the end of the movie, because however mad as hell they were, all they ended up with was another bad TV show.
Great stuff. My only disagreement is the statement the GOP has earned this shellacking over the past six years. I would say 36 -- since Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, MS, dancing on the graves of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney.
The best part of the whole kerfuffle over whether Trump will accept the results of the election (who really cares?) is the stampede of vote-suppressing Republicans (talking to you, John Kasich and Paul Ryan) to assure Americans that there is no fraud to speak of in American elections, after several years of telling us we need photo ID laws to prevent -- fraud. The next time one of these cases hits the courts, Democrats can use these statements as Exhibits A, B, C, D . . . X, Y and Z in undermining the GOP's case.
Nicely done, Juan. Appreciate it. Dylan's a longtime favorite of mine, so I can't resist adding a few thoughts.
Dylan's "rejection" of his protest songs has always been overblown, in my opinion. Even at the height of that period, his political songs were always outnumbered by songs about falling in and out of love and the rest of the emotional obstacle course that every young man must negotiate. He did see the perils of being stuck in the box of a topical songwriter and was determined not to let that happen, but he never abandoned social commentary. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is as political a song as he ever wrote.
He never abandoned his left-oriented idealism, and he eventually returned to the occasional topical song, be it a about particular case of injustice ("Hurricane"), corporate greed and globalization ("Union Sundown"), or the general decay of our political discourse ("Political World"). He dedicated a song to Sen. Paul Wellstone at a concert in the days immediately following his death.
He got hammered pretty badly by some on the left for a few statements he made about Israel over the years. I never followed that controversy closely enough to form much of an opinion. But at the very worst, I wouldn't question the basic humanitarianism of Elie Wiesel just because he viewed that conflict through more Jewish eyes than I do.
I normally couldn't care less about who wins the Nobel Prize, the Oscars, or any of the other high-profile awards, but I admit I was thrilled about this one, probably more than Dylan.
I don't doubt that there are more Dylan Roofs and the Colorado clinic bomber-types out there -- probably a lot more, and some of them may act. But the scenario of him winning -- making his entire mass of supporters feel enabled -- is much, much scarier. If Trump loses -- and hopefully loses big -- the vast majority will just go home and grumble and hopefully shut up for a while.
But that's where he gets it wrong. Real stars don't grope women. If you're a real star, women grope you. I'd be surprised if Mick Jagger ever stooped anywhere close to the level of Trump (much less the supremely disgusting Roger Ailes). He may have sung about it, but he didn't do it. He didn't have to.
You must have been channeling me, Juan. I've had that exact same thought for some time.
We wonder how so many people can be attracted to such an obvious schoolyard bully, but when I look back at the real schoolyard bullies I knew as a kid, most of them were pretty popular guys. Why? Because his "friends" felt enabled to act like bullies too.
I have an ex-brother-in-law who reminds me very much of Trump, from the mannerisms to the misogynism to the cheating on his taxes (unfortunately for him, he didn't have Trump's lawyers, but that's another story), and of course he's a big Trump supporter. Trump is exactly who he would have wanted to be had he had a little bit better head start in life.
My niece -- his daughter -- and I have discussed this many times since Trump emerged, and that's the good news. Millions of American woman have some kind of mini-Trump in their past -- father, ex-husband, boyfriend -- and they will NEVER vote for him. In fact, I would guess their turnout to vote against him will be close to 100%, if not higher.
The worst part of the whole thing (aside from admitting to being a serial criminal) is being lost amid all the verbal vulgarity. As he ogled the actress who was to escort him to the set of the show, he didn't say, "SHE looks good." He said, "IT looks good." She was an "it" to him.
Frankly, this has become a one-issue election for me, and this is the issue. But I'm not that concerned with either candidate's policy pronouncements. We have avoided a nuclear exchange to date because the world's nuclear powers have so far recognized that their use is fundamentally irrational -- that no conceivable benefit is equal to their cost, and their use could quite possibly prove suicidal. The world's nuclear powers have been self-interested always, ruthless at times, but not fundamentally irrational and certainly not suicidal.
But you don't need to be a psychiatrist to see that Trump is not a stable, rational human being. His middle-of-the-night Twitter tantrums are the stuff of bipolar disorder or alcohol abuse, at the very least. That's not how normal people act. And statements such as "I alone can fix it" bespeak a megalomania that should be genuinely frightening.
Too many people seem to dismiss such alarmism with a serene confidence that such bad things can't possibly happen, at least in America, because they have never happened before. I'm not willing to take that chance. I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton, but I will vote to live to fight another day.
I agree. Russia is simply playing the same "Great Game" it has been playing for over 200 years through Tsars, Bolsheviks, and now Putin. It's a matter of geography, not ideology or personality. And there is no reason to think the Russian military will be any more effective than ours in imposing its will. Let ISIS be mad at him, not us, I say.
I'm amazed at the American politicians who blithely call for the creation of a "safe zone," as if that, at least, could be easily done. 150,000 US troops could not create any safe zones in Iraq -- not even for themselves -- and Afghanistan has been a similar exercise in futility. Syria presents an even worse prospect, since both sides of the conflict are abhorrent. The idea of "arming the moderate opposition" is absurd. The moderate opposition is in Germany.
The situation in Syria is tragic and heartbreaking, and no one wants to say do nothing, but that doesn't mean we should throw gasoline on the fire in the name of doing something. A nearly unbroken string of military failure since Vietnam has failed to convince Americans -- neither the elites nor the man on the street -- that our military, however lethal, cannot deliver the outcomes we want. Even our "successes" are failures. Kosovo is now the leading source of ISIS recruits in Europe.
I don't know what it will take. Gore Vidal had it right: The United States of Amnesia.
Actually, the data I've seen indicates the typical Trump supporter is above the national average on the income scale -- hardly in a state of penury. The Trump signs I've seen in my town are all in front of houses that appear to be doing quite well. It's kind of like the meme that seems almost universally accepted that America is in awful, awful, awful shape, although it's hard to support that with data. The deficit as a percentage of GDP is quite low by historic standards, and while I agree the benefits of the recovery have not been well-distributed, the US has done better than almost any other country in the world, and we're indisputably in better shape than we were eight years ago.
For some reason, Americans seem to think there should be no problems in the world, and those that exist should go away just because we say so. It doesn't work that way.
And if Hillary Clinton is "full-blown evil," where do you go to describe Charles Manson? Vlad the Impaler? Hitler? Hyperbole is rarely useful.
Other than perhaps overstating the importance of a smarmy wise-ass like Bill Maher, I agree completely.
On Point 5 (news as infotainment): While movies set in the near future usually look a bit silly within a few years, an exception to this is the '70s film "Network." I suspect the screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, thought at the time he was exaggerating what were then barely visible trends to the point of ridiculous absurdity. But 10 years later it looked truer than before, and 40 years later, truer still. If anything, it almost looks understated now.
Add in a specific (and heinous) political agenda like Fox News, and a Democratic Party elite as clueless about the views of its own base (they thought Hillary Clinton was going to be popular) as it is spineless in opposition to Republican bullying, and you have a democracy in peril.
True. We suffered a massive redistribution of wealth to the top, our public lands were looted, there was no longer an organized labor movement worth mentioning, and the new Jim Crow was born, but we did survive. We're a resilient species.
Agree. Clinton has agreed to push at least some of the things on Bernie's agenda. If she's elected with our support, she has every reason to follow through. If she's elected without it, she has every reason to blow us off.
The point is not that only Nader made the difference. The point is that in a close election, many things can make the difference, and Nader was certainly one of them.
I certainly understand why Ralph (who I once worked for) and the people who voted for him don't want to take responsibility for the disastrous eight years that followed. Who would? And no, it's not all their fault. But to pretend that Gore would not have followed better policies on at least some important issues -- climate change, for instance -- is an insult to everyone's intelligence.
I saw some polling data which showed that more of Trump's support is actually anti-Hillary than Hillary's support is anti-Trump. That means they find her very scary, indeed.
I think our side underestimates just how effective 25 years of Fox News and talk radio have been in creating an alternative reality that the majority of the GOP now lives in. I listen to these people occasionally on the principle of "know thy enemy," and many of the things on which we base our negative opinions of Trump are simply not presented. and if they should happen to hear them from other sources, they've been told not to believe them because the "liberal media" is in fact part and parcel of the "Democrat" party.
Don't be surprised if the post-debate polls don't move as much as we think they should in light of Trump's (almost) universally panned performance. In fact, Republicans may be surprised if they don't move in his direction. They think he won. Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, and Charles Krauthammer said so on Fox.
It's so fitting that Ailes' inglorious fall comes just as Trump -- the Frankenstein he did more than anyone to create, however unwittingly -- has taken over his party. A Trump would not have been possible without the 20-year assault on facts and reason that Fox News has so successfully led, and God willing, the whole conservative agitprop house of cards is crumbling as we speak. I'm only glad I lived to see the day. And I'm glad Roger has, too. Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.
The good news is that the Pence selection may cost Trump Indiana. The GOP is badly fractured there since the Tea Party took out Dick Lugar. That wing was infuriated by the "Religious Freedom" bill debacle, while the fundamentalists, meanwhile, got pissed at him for caving.
So I understand why Pence wanted the job -- it saves him from the embarrassment of being defeated for re-election -- but I don't understand why Trump wanted him. He's a colorless campaigner, doesn't bring him a state, guarantees he'll get 0% of the LGBT vote, and he absolutely melted his one time in the national spotlight.
Then again, his other choices were Christie -- which would have cost him New Jersey -- and Gingrich, perhaps Trump's only rival in egomaniacal blowhardism. And Trump brooks no rivals. That would have been like picking Al "I'm in Charge" Haig.
Still, my guess is you'll have an easier time finding Pence on a milk carton than on TV this fall.
The Mussolini comparisons are spookier than you think. Go to YouTube and do a search. You don't have to speak Italian. The facial expressions, the gestures, the jutting lower lip -- it's Trump.
Still, I'm not panicking until I start seeing brownshirts.
I don't think the Pope was trying to meddle in American politics. I would be surprised if he has more than a vague idea who Donald Trump even is. One of our fatal flaws as Americans is we tend to think anything that happens, anywhere in the world, is primarily about us. It's not.
When the Pope speaks, he speaks to a worldwide audience. Roman Catholics in his native Latin America outnumber US Catholics by probably 10-1. I suspect he was thinking much more about them when he spoke than about swing voters in Pennsylvania.
And then there's Europe, where walls are going up left and right as we speak to keep out refugees from Africa and the Middle East. I suspect he was speaking to them, too.
Relax, Vic Oldright. Republicans have done nothing to address their basic demographic problems except to make them worse. No amount of red-baiting is going to make African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latino-Americans vote for the white racist party instead.
My only issue issue with you, Juan, is the implicit assumption that we should take seriously anything Trump says. He says what he thinks will help him today, and he'll say the exact opposite if he thinks that will help him tomorrow. Frankly, no one knows what the hell he will do, which is scariest of all.
My gut (and his Iraq vote) suggest to me that Bernie has the best instincts on foreign policy, but he definitely needs to work on his chops.
"One hopes that the recent events in Paris (at a time when ISISphobia has replaced Francophobia) will begin the process of forging a new trans-Atlantic sense of solidarity with America’s historic friend and perhaps remove some of the allure of French-bashing among the American Right."
Don't bet on it. They are as consistent as they are logical.
I think you're giving the GOP way too much credit for having any kind of plan at all. They correctly identified their demographic issues after 2012, but while it's in their collective interest to address those issues, it's not in any individual's interest to do so, so no one does. Same at the Congressional level -- it's in each individual Representative's interest to play to the existing right-wing base. That's what saves their job even if it hurts the party nationally. It's the down side of gerrymandering. The GOP is like a car with a steering wheel that only turns one way. And they can't even recognize the problem, because they've been driving that car so long, there is no longer even any institutional memory of a steering wheel that turns any other way.
I doubt Putin is very committed to Assad personally in the long run. He is, however, committed to a friendly Syria and a defeated ISIS for both geopolitical and domestic terrorist reasons. Assad is surviving simply because the Alawites fear the same fate suffered by the Sunnis in Iraq -- a fall from the ruling class to a persecuted minority. The only non-violent solution is some kind of Assad-less ethno-sectarian power-sharing structure. With Iran back in the international community -- and with a strong interest in demonstrating that that is a good thing for the region and for the West -- that may be an attainable goal.
I can't believe the Russians think Assad is sustainable. My guess is this is the first step in a Russian-Iranian effort (with full US backing) of providing Assad with a nice retirement home while ensuring a place at the table for the Allawites in a future multi-sectarian Syria.
1) My experience is it's a small minority of African-Americans who "hate" illegal aliens. While I hesitate to paint any group with a very broad brush, I've found them to be unusually sympathetic to other disadvantaged groups.
2) See my initial comment -- It's the racism, stupid.
It doesn't surprise me that the most prominent member of the group is from the island nation of Indonesia. The Islamic world embraces many cultures and lifestyles.
Many people have run for President promising peace. This is the first time that I know of that has people running for President promising war. (And not just one.)
Between the hostage crisis and the CIA coup which installed the Shah in the '50s -- both clearly illegal and morally unjustifiable -- both countries still have some understandably raw nerves. Apologies cannot change the past, but they can play a big part in reconciliation. I think it would help if Iran apologized for holding 52 of our citizens hostage for over 400 days, and we apologized for holding their entire country hostage for over 25 years.
It seems to me the biggest winner is the United States. I just read on HuffPo about a major terrorism bust (more than 400 arrested) in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis realize they now have a significant rival for our favor, and they better start shaping up.
Interesting you should bring up the pursuit of educational opportunities. Did you know that black people founded the first public schools in South Carolina? They were run by the Freedman's Bureau and were open to people of all races (although few white people would lower themselves to attend. I guess they hated black people more than they loved their own children.) When Reconstruction ended, they reverted to the Southern state governments, who then denied them to blacks. Ironic, isn't it?
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Unfortunately, under the House rules the minority party can't even get a bill to the floor for a vote. The majority party has 100% control of the agenda. Democracy in action.
The positive way to look at this is that all this retrograde policy is now being pushed by and identified with a presidency both personally unlikable and professionally incompetent. The fact that Trump is for it hurts any policy's popular support, and much of this agenda will hopefully be bungled as badly as immigration and health care have been so far.
But I think even the biggest of these policy questions are just distractions as far as Trump is concerned. I don't think there is a Trump "agenda" beyond monetizing the office as much and as quickly as possible. I would love to see even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much Trump makes just by going to Mar-a-Lago every weekend. He travels free, but what about the probably hundreds -- staff, media, security -- who must go with him? Where do they stay? Where do they eat? And don't get me started on Carl Icahn writing himself some quarter billion dollar regulatory reform. He's an unpaid advisor, of course, takes no government paycheck. He's doing it as a public service.
One position I would take for sure if I was the Democrats:
No Tax Reform without Tax Returns.
When our own allies are demanding an end to the strikes, they must be pretty bad.
Well, at least they took Iraq off the list. After all, what possible reason could there be for any Iraqi to hold a grudge against the United States?
The reason he doesn't simply ask for a briefing is because then he would get accurate information, and then he wouldn't be able to tweet a bunch of made-up BS. They've got a perfect set-up: Publish an article in the White House's own propaganda vehicle (Breitbart), then cite that article as the source of your accusation. If Fox News can be normalized as legitimate journalism, why not Breitbart?
Yes. Way too much to hope for.
Brooks is a man who has watched his Ayn Rand wet dream of a political agenda being implemented for a quarter-century, has watched it manifestly not work on both the domestic and international stages, recognizes it's not working, and yet his faith remains unshaken. I watch him for amusement, not insight. Trump with better manners.
I figure Trump is one Russian Wikileak away from Leavenworth.
Well, if we're going to nitpick and subject his semi-literate brain farts to a Zapruder film level of micro-analysis, what he actually said was on the order of "And can you believe what happened in Sweden last night" -- clearly implying some specific horrible incident involving Muslim refugees when no such event occurred. Apparently he had seen a Fox News piece the night before about general problems resettling refugees which, when run through his ADD-restricted brain, became implanted in his mind as a terrorist attack or some kind of crisis, anyway. Who knows? He's Trump.
The scary thing to me about Trump is not that he's lying. It's that he thinks he's telling the truth.
My opinion, unsupported by any data, but I believe it nonetheless -- Trump's hardcore supporters have been feeding on a diet of hatred for "liberals," "the Democrat party," intellectuals, the media, etc. (all euphemisms for Jews) for over 20 years now via Fox and Limbaugh. It's been engraved pretty deeply at this point.
They don't know, understand, or even care what Trump is actually doing. As long as he's driving us crazy, it must be good. They love Trump because they hate us.
No -- some of them are drooling kleptomaniacs.
Just because "Iran" and "Aryan" derive from the same root, that doesn't make them white people.
I love the way Americans talk about the "peace process" as if such a thing had existed at any time in the last 20 years. The "peace process" is a rhetorical fig leaf for the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.
The only positive thing here is that Netanyahu has coupled his car to the Trump train wreck. I thought he was cagier than that.
The main thing that bothers me about this is the utter obviousness of the whole thing. Flynn may be crazy, but he is the former head of National Intelligence (an oxymoron in America;s case) -- he can't possibly be so stupid as to not know that if you call the Russian embassy, you're probably going to be listened to. A middle school student knows that. There's got to be something more. Are they just so drunk on power they think nothing can touch them? They should be wising up by now.
Still, my philosophy is if you have to choose between incompetence and conspiracy to explain something, incompetence is far more likely. These guys aren't that smart, and Trump's own historical frame of reference is pretty much a blank slate. Just ask Frederick Douglass.
But anything that throws stones in the pathway of the 70-year-old child-king is a good thing.
So a mentally unstable, delusional individual is now in charge of the most destructive arsenal in the history of humankind. What interesting times we live in.
It took exactly 25 days from his inauguration until I first heard the word "impeach" used in the ultra-timid, non-partisan mainstream media. The man continues to impress.
Stephen Miller is kind of Ari Fleischer without the warmth and humor.
Higher education is one of our most important exports these days. It just happens in the form of bodies coming in rather than boxes going out.
There are several hundred Iranians at the University of Illinois right now, mostly grad students and post-docs in computer science and various kinds of engineering. If Iran ever does get the bomb, it will almost certainly be designed and built by American-educated scientists. How ironic.
But we forget that the percentage of voters who spend their time googling such things in the days before an election is actually quite small. Most people just aren't that obsessed. Republicans hated Clinton more than Democrats hated Trump, so their turnout was up and ours was down. The results weren't evenly distributed among the states. That's why we lost.
There was not much good to be said for the Weimer Republic. It was ineffectual and corrupt. But the Third Reich was not an improvement.
"Independent thought and intention" are by no means by definition positive. No matter how bad the status quo, it can get worse. My guess is Trump has no problem with covert institutions. He just wants them to be HIS covert institutions.
Unfortunately, Trump's unpopularity (and that of Republicans generally) only makes him and them more dangerous. They know they have to act quickly, before opposition can mobilize, and they will. I predict Democrats will respond by whining loudly.
"find evidence of corruption . . ."? My God -- we're practically drowning in it. But the GOP Congress impeach him? In your dreams.
But that's not our only hope anyway. Our only hope is to ACT.
Good point, super390.
I don't expect any of our troops to be coming home any time soon. Once someone explains to Trump how the military corruption works, he'll be all in.
And yet when the players come to Hamlet's castle, he instructs them to do just that -- address a specific member of audience -- the King -- and in the most "in your face" way imaginable. So what is Shakespeare again? Timeless, or a representative of a coarsened society. I think you have it backwards.
You think that's far enough away?
"You only hope that all these crackpots Trump is elevating to the highest offices in the land have been shining us on all these years with their lunatic theories and that once in power they’ll start acting like responsible adults."
Please Juan -- I need more hope than that.
I have no doubt that Jesus himself would be labelled a terrorist in America today, regardless of what language he spoke.
If you think those laws you cite will mean anything to Jeff Sessions' Justice Department, Paul Ryan's House of Representatives, or Mitch McConnell's Senate, you have more faith in them than I do. You probably believe in the tooth fairy, too. Lawyers are not going to be the answer.
You don't recall Yugoslavia? How about World War II? You have a short memory.
You're trying to use reason to persuade the irrational. That doesn't work. There's an old saying -- I think it originated with a Brit, in fact -- "You can't win an argument with an ignorant man."
"You know it seems like
Total destruction's
The only solution.
No one can stop them now."
-- Bob Marley
I think anyone counting on the constitution to limit Trump's power is living in a high school civics class dreamworld. Insitutional limits are only as strong as the people manning the institutions. Do you think legal treaty obligations will prevent Trump from withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement? Who will enforce those obligations? Do you think the statutory basis for the EPA will keep it from being dismantled? You're not dealing with people who give a flying fig about the constitution. You're dealing with people who want their way.
That's what a loser would do. Trump's a winner.
It's amazing how people aren't panicking over the most obvious, ominous signs right in front of their faces.
I have vivid memories of toilet-papering trees on Halloween in my youth -- not that many decades ago -- and I vividly remember those trees being bare by the end of October. After many years in the south, where fall naturally comes later, I'm now not too far from my old digs, and the trees on Halloween haven't even reached peak color. By the time our last city leaf pick-up comes, half the leaves will still not have fallen, no doubt because they haven't updated the schedule in years.
But when I point these things out to people -- even fairly climate-aware people -- they look at me like, "No kidding? Hadn't really noticed."
America does not know how to end wars. It only knows how to begin them.
Once more, in English please.
Why would anyone feel any social discomfort about a response they would give to a pollster on the telephone -- someone (or even a robot) they don't even know and who doesn't even know anyone that they know? Makes no sense. They certainly didn't feel any social discomfort about putting yard signs in front of their houses.
To me, it's pretty obvious the polls were using turnout models that turned out to be just flat wrong -- just like the Romney campaign's models were in 2012.
Why don't you Greens try doing something during the four years BETWEEN elections? You know -- organizing, running candidates, winning elections. THEN you might have a powerful third party.
That's a pretty simplistic view of the origins of civilization and the agricultural revolution. Way more complicated than that.
Shouldn't worry about Trump? Easy for you to say.
Obama didn't close down Guantanamo because his own party wouldn't back him on it. I think he should just give the place back to Cuba now while he still has time. Solve two injustices with one act.
I don't think anyone concealed their voting intentions. The Republican far right maintained that both McCain and Romney lost because they did not go hard right enough -- that there was still an untapped pool of white voters that could be gotten with the right (racist) pitch. I thought that was a fantasy. So did the pollsters. Boy, were we wrong!
I hope the Clinton fortune provides them solace in their golden years, because it probably cost them the White House. Reagan initiated the practice of profiting from the Presidency with a $1 million speech in Japan, as I recall, and Bush 41 continued it, but Bill Clinton turned it into a business model, and make no mistake -- his wife's looming return to the White House was very much part of the sales pitch.
The Clintons received more than their share of the public trust over the last 40 years, and whatever you think of their record, they did far better for the Clintons than they did for the public. You can't blame people for resenting that.
I have never visited Twitter.com. The only thing I can imagine wanting to do less than write a tweet is wanting to read someone else's tweet. It seems to me not much interesting can be said in 140-character bundles, and the tweets that have come my way via the news media have done nothing to change that view.
I have been mystified for some time by the apparent attractiveness to so many of tweeting, retweeting, and following the tweets of others. Do people really have that little to do or think about? Who has that much time on their hands? Maybe someone here can explain to me what I'm missing.
I can't speak for Europe, but there's no question in my mind that Trumpism in America -- indeed, the entire thrust of Republican politics since Reagan -- is mainly the desperation a segment of the shrinking demographic feels about maintaining white privilege.
Growing up, I was as much aware of my own whiteness as any black kid was of his blackness, and I was very much aware that in my case, it was a good thing. It was only the moral precepts I learned in Sunday school, the plain words of the Declaration of Independence, and the visible moral example of the civil rights movement that made me open to viewing the world through a different lens than race. And even then, I had to leave my all-white suburb for a big university to even begin to get the opportunities to experience that tolerance works as well in life as it does on paper.
I think millions of "white" Americans have made basically the same journey, but millions more haven't. It's hard to grow up in an urban area now without at least being comfortable seeing people of color at the grocery store, but in rural America, more than half-a-mile from the interstate, it'll still draw stares. Most job-sites requiring a college education have achieved some degree of diversity at this point, and thus most college-educated whites have had meaningful relationships outside their race. The small town auto mechanic, not so much.
Those seem to be the basic fault lines in American politics in 2016 -- rural/urban, and education -- and those, I think, are the reasons.
Trump would also win if only anorexic albinos could vote,
300 years of scientific progress has not changed the fundamental fact of human nature expressed by Louis XV:
Apres moi, le deluge.
When Le Pen made the run-off in France several years ago, the left en masse supported the despised Gaullists to defeat him and send him back under the rock from which he slithered. And our left wonders why they never get anywhere. It's mainly because they're cry-babies.
How about the idea of clapping our hands to save Tinker Belle's life?
As you can see, Juan, a lot of your readers were dropped on their heads. Well, I'm sure you're as tired of arguing with them as I am, but thanks for trying. When you can't convince a person that there's a difference between catching a cold and catching bubonic plague, what can you do?
If you think a "Network"-style mass insurrection is what the county needs, you obviously didn't hang around for the end of the movie, because however mad as hell they were, all they ended up with was another bad TV show.
What are you talking about?
"what protects us from the raging fear of devalued whiteness in 40% plus of the population?"
60% of the population.
There is zero chance Huma Abedin will be appointed Secretary of State.
Yes, but are you saying that would be worse than DAESH?
Great stuff. My only disagreement is the statement the GOP has earned this shellacking over the past six years. I would say 36 -- since Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, MS, dancing on the graves of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney.
The best part of the whole kerfuffle over whether Trump will accept the results of the election (who really cares?) is the stampede of vote-suppressing Republicans (talking to you, John Kasich and Paul Ryan) to assure Americans that there is no fraud to speak of in American elections, after several years of telling us we need photo ID laws to prevent -- fraud. The next time one of these cases hits the courts, Democrats can use these statements as Exhibits A, B, C, D . . . X, Y and Z in undermining the GOP's case.
Nicely done, Juan. Appreciate it. Dylan's a longtime favorite of mine, so I can't resist adding a few thoughts.
Dylan's "rejection" of his protest songs has always been overblown, in my opinion. Even at the height of that period, his political songs were always outnumbered by songs about falling in and out of love and the rest of the emotional obstacle course that every young man must negotiate. He did see the perils of being stuck in the box of a topical songwriter and was determined not to let that happen, but he never abandoned social commentary. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is as political a song as he ever wrote.
He never abandoned his left-oriented idealism, and he eventually returned to the occasional topical song, be it a about particular case of injustice ("Hurricane"), corporate greed and globalization ("Union Sundown"), or the general decay of our political discourse ("Political World"). He dedicated a song to Sen. Paul Wellstone at a concert in the days immediately following his death.
He got hammered pretty badly by some on the left for a few statements he made about Israel over the years. I never followed that controversy closely enough to form much of an opinion. But at the very worst, I wouldn't question the basic humanitarianism of Elie Wiesel just because he viewed that conflict through more Jewish eyes than I do.
I normally couldn't care less about who wins the Nobel Prize, the Oscars, or any of the other high-profile awards, but I admit I was thrilled about this one, probably more than Dylan.
I don't doubt that there are more Dylan Roofs and the Colorado clinic bomber-types out there -- probably a lot more, and some of them may act. But the scenario of him winning -- making his entire mass of supporters feel enabled -- is much, much scarier. If Trump loses -- and hopefully loses big -- the vast majority will just go home and grumble and hopefully shut up for a while.
But that's where he gets it wrong. Real stars don't grope women. If you're a real star, women grope you. I'd be surprised if Mick Jagger ever stooped anywhere close to the level of Trump (much less the supremely disgusting Roger Ailes). He may have sung about it, but he didn't do it. He didn't have to.
Yeah. I remember a lot of people who thought W. was too dumb, lazy, and detached to do any real damage. They were wrong.
You must have been channeling me, Juan. I've had that exact same thought for some time.
We wonder how so many people can be attracted to such an obvious schoolyard bully, but when I look back at the real schoolyard bullies I knew as a kid, most of them were pretty popular guys. Why? Because his "friends" felt enabled to act like bullies too.
I have an ex-brother-in-law who reminds me very much of Trump, from the mannerisms to the misogynism to the cheating on his taxes (unfortunately for him, he didn't have Trump's lawyers, but that's another story), and of course he's a big Trump supporter. Trump is exactly who he would have wanted to be had he had a little bit better head start in life.
My niece -- his daughter -- and I have discussed this many times since Trump emerged, and that's the good news. Millions of American woman have some kind of mini-Trump in their past -- father, ex-husband, boyfriend -- and they will NEVER vote for him. In fact, I would guess their turnout to vote against him will be close to 100%, if not higher.
Trump doing damage control? Yeah, and the Boston Strangler's running a rape crisis hotline.
The worst part of the whole thing (aside from admitting to being a serial criminal) is being lost amid all the verbal vulgarity. As he ogled the actress who was to escort him to the set of the show, he didn't say, "SHE looks good." He said, "IT looks good." She was an "it" to him.
Your delusion is that if Trump wins, you will get another chance to vote.
And yet Pence was declared the "winner" because he said these things with a calm demeanor and a straight face.
Frankly, this has become a one-issue election for me, and this is the issue. But I'm not that concerned with either candidate's policy pronouncements. We have avoided a nuclear exchange to date because the world's nuclear powers have so far recognized that their use is fundamentally irrational -- that no conceivable benefit is equal to their cost, and their use could quite possibly prove suicidal. The world's nuclear powers have been self-interested always, ruthless at times, but not fundamentally irrational and certainly not suicidal.
But you don't need to be a psychiatrist to see that Trump is not a stable, rational human being. His middle-of-the-night Twitter tantrums are the stuff of bipolar disorder or alcohol abuse, at the very least. That's not how normal people act. And statements such as "I alone can fix it" bespeak a megalomania that should be genuinely frightening.
Too many people seem to dismiss such alarmism with a serene confidence that such bad things can't possibly happen, at least in America, because they have never happened before. I'm not willing to take that chance. I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton, but I will vote to live to fight another day.
I agree. Russia is simply playing the same "Great Game" it has been playing for over 200 years through Tsars, Bolsheviks, and now Putin. It's a matter of geography, not ideology or personality. And there is no reason to think the Russian military will be any more effective than ours in imposing its will. Let ISIS be mad at him, not us, I say.
I'm amazed at the American politicians who blithely call for the creation of a "safe zone," as if that, at least, could be easily done. 150,000 US troops could not create any safe zones in Iraq -- not even for themselves -- and Afghanistan has been a similar exercise in futility. Syria presents an even worse prospect, since both sides of the conflict are abhorrent. The idea of "arming the moderate opposition" is absurd. The moderate opposition is in Germany.
The situation in Syria is tragic and heartbreaking, and no one wants to say do nothing, but that doesn't mean we should throw gasoline on the fire in the name of doing something. A nearly unbroken string of military failure since Vietnam has failed to convince Americans -- neither the elites nor the man on the street -- that our military, however lethal, cannot deliver the outcomes we want. Even our "successes" are failures. Kosovo is now the leading source of ISIS recruits in Europe.
I don't know what it will take. Gore Vidal had it right: The United States of Amnesia.
Actually, the data I've seen indicates the typical Trump supporter is above the national average on the income scale -- hardly in a state of penury. The Trump signs I've seen in my town are all in front of houses that appear to be doing quite well. It's kind of like the meme that seems almost universally accepted that America is in awful, awful, awful shape, although it's hard to support that with data. The deficit as a percentage of GDP is quite low by historic standards, and while I agree the benefits of the recovery have not been well-distributed, the US has done better than almost any other country in the world, and we're indisputably in better shape than we were eight years ago.
For some reason, Americans seem to think there should be no problems in the world, and those that exist should go away just because we say so. It doesn't work that way.
And if Hillary Clinton is "full-blown evil," where do you go to describe Charles Manson? Vlad the Impaler? Hitler? Hyperbole is rarely useful.
Other than perhaps overstating the importance of a smarmy wise-ass like Bill Maher, I agree completely.
On Point 5 (news as infotainment): While movies set in the near future usually look a bit silly within a few years, an exception to this is the '70s film "Network." I suspect the screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, thought at the time he was exaggerating what were then barely visible trends to the point of ridiculous absurdity. But 10 years later it looked truer than before, and 40 years later, truer still. If anything, it almost looks understated now.
Add in a specific (and heinous) political agenda like Fox News, and a Democratic Party elite as clueless about the views of its own base (they thought Hillary Clinton was going to be popular) as it is spineless in opposition to Republican bullying, and you have a democracy in peril.
Be strong, everyone. Be strong.
True. We suffered a massive redistribution of wealth to the top, our public lands were looted, there was no longer an organized labor movement worth mentioning, and the new Jim Crow was born, but we did survive. We're a resilient species.
16 years of "party building" has taken the Greens from Nader's 3% to Jill Stein's 1%. I'm not impressed.
Agree. Clinton has agreed to push at least some of the things on Bernie's agenda. If she's elected with our support, she has every reason to follow through. If she's elected without it, she has every reason to blow us off.
The point is not that only Nader made the difference. The point is that in a close election, many things can make the difference, and Nader was certainly one of them.
I certainly understand why Ralph (who I once worked for) and the people who voted for him don't want to take responsibility for the disastrous eight years that followed. Who would? And no, it's not all their fault. But to pretend that Gore would not have followed better policies on at least some important issues -- climate change, for instance -- is an insult to everyone's intelligence.
I saw some polling data which showed that more of Trump's support is actually anti-Hillary than Hillary's support is anti-Trump. That means they find her very scary, indeed.
I think our side underestimates just how effective 25 years of Fox News and talk radio have been in creating an alternative reality that the majority of the GOP now lives in. I listen to these people occasionally on the principle of "know thy enemy," and many of the things on which we base our negative opinions of Trump are simply not presented. and if they should happen to hear them from other sources, they've been told not to believe them because the "liberal media" is in fact part and parcel of the "Democrat" party.
Don't be surprised if the post-debate polls don't move as much as we think they should in light of Trump's (almost) universally panned performance. In fact, Republicans may be surprised if they don't move in his direction. They think he won. Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, and Charles Krauthammer said so on Fox.
"The lack of genuine Saudi Royal concern for Palestinians is an old story."
That's not true. They care a great deal about Palestinians. They're an important source of menial labor.
I think the more accurate way to put it is she's the honorary chairman in charge of trying to save her own sorry butt in Florida.
By the way, how good a Jew is she, really?
It's so fitting that Ailes' inglorious fall comes just as Trump -- the Frankenstein he did more than anyone to create, however unwittingly -- has taken over his party. A Trump would not have been possible without the 20-year assault on facts and reason that Fox News has so successfully led, and God willing, the whole conservative agitprop house of cards is crumbling as we speak. I'm only glad I lived to see the day. And I'm glad Roger has, too. Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.
The good news is that the Pence selection may cost Trump Indiana. The GOP is badly fractured there since the Tea Party took out Dick Lugar. That wing was infuriated by the "Religious Freedom" bill debacle, while the fundamentalists, meanwhile, got pissed at him for caving.
So I understand why Pence wanted the job -- it saves him from the embarrassment of being defeated for re-election -- but I don't understand why Trump wanted him. He's a colorless campaigner, doesn't bring him a state, guarantees he'll get 0% of the LGBT vote, and he absolutely melted his one time in the national spotlight.
Then again, his other choices were Christie -- which would have cost him New Jersey -- and Gingrich, perhaps Trump's only rival in egomaniacal blowhardism. And Trump brooks no rivals. That would have been like picking Al "I'm in Charge" Haig.
Still, my guess is you'll have an easier time finding Pence on a milk carton than on TV this fall.
I believe it was a campaign promise. A lot of Tories wanted out of the EU, and a referendum was the deal Cameron made to run for PM.
The Mussolini comparisons are spookier than you think. Go to YouTube and do a search. You don't have to speak Italian. The facial expressions, the gestures, the jutting lower lip -- it's Trump.
Still, I'm not panicking until I start seeing brownshirts.
That's why the media's collective heads exploded. "He gave a straight answer? What's his angle?"
The most "Christian" people I have ever known have been atheists, Jews, or atheistic Jews.
I don't think the Pope was trying to meddle in American politics. I would be surprised if he has more than a vague idea who Donald Trump even is. One of our fatal flaws as Americans is we tend to think anything that happens, anywhere in the world, is primarily about us. It's not.
When the Pope speaks, he speaks to a worldwide audience. Roman Catholics in his native Latin America outnumber US Catholics by probably 10-1. I suspect he was thinking much more about them when he spoke than about swing voters in Pennsylvania.
And then there's Europe, where walls are going up left and right as we speak to keep out refugees from Africa and the Middle East. I suspect he was speaking to them, too.
Relax, Vic Oldright. Republicans have done nothing to address their basic demographic problems except to make them worse. No amount of red-baiting is going to make African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latino-Americans vote for the white racist party instead.
My only issue issue with you, Juan, is the implicit assumption that we should take seriously anything Trump says. He says what he thinks will help him today, and he'll say the exact opposite if he thinks that will help him tomorrow. Frankly, no one knows what the hell he will do, which is scariest of all.
My gut (and his Iraq vote) suggest to me that Bernie has the best instincts on foreign policy, but he definitely needs to work on his chops.
Funny, but hibernation is NOT an option.
"One hopes that the recent events in Paris (at a time when ISISphobia has replaced Francophobia) will begin the process of forging a new trans-Atlantic sense of solidarity with America’s historic friend and perhaps remove some of the allure of French-bashing among the American Right."
Don't bet on it. They are as consistent as they are logical.
I think you're giving the GOP way too much credit for having any kind of plan at all. They correctly identified their demographic issues after 2012, but while it's in their collective interest to address those issues, it's not in any individual's interest to do so, so no one does. Same at the Congressional level -- it's in each individual Representative's interest to play to the existing right-wing base. That's what saves their job even if it hurts the party nationally. It's the down side of gerrymandering. The GOP is like a car with a steering wheel that only turns one way. And they can't even recognize the problem, because they've been driving that car so long, there is no longer even any institutional memory of a steering wheel that turns any other way.
I doubt Putin is very committed to Assad personally in the long run. He is, however, committed to a friendly Syria and a defeated ISIS for both geopolitical and domestic terrorist reasons. Assad is surviving simply because the Alawites fear the same fate suffered by the Sunnis in Iraq -- a fall from the ruling class to a persecuted minority. The only non-violent solution is some kind of Assad-less ethno-sectarian power-sharing structure. With Iran back in the international community -- and with a strong interest in demonstrating that that is a good thing for the region and for the West -- that may be an attainable goal.
I can't believe the Russians think Assad is sustainable. My guess is this is the first step in a Russian-Iranian effort (with full US backing) of providing Assad with a nice retirement home while ensuring a place at the table for the Allawites in a future multi-sectarian Syria.
Like all other Trump scandals, this will only help him with the Republican base.
super390 -- 2 answers:
1) My experience is it's a small minority of African-Americans who "hate" illegal aliens. While I hesitate to paint any group with a very broad brush, I've found them to be unusually sympathetic to other disadvantaged groups.
2) See my initial comment -- It's the racism, stupid.
To take a page from James Carville, "It's the racism, stupid."
It doesn't surprise me that the most prominent member of the group is from the island nation of Indonesia. The Islamic world embraces many cultures and lifestyles.
Many people have run for President promising peace. This is the first time that I know of that has people running for President promising war. (And not just one.)
Between the hostage crisis and the CIA coup which installed the Shah in the '50s -- both clearly illegal and morally unjustifiable -- both countries still have some understandably raw nerves. Apologies cannot change the past, but they can play a big part in reconciliation. I think it would help if Iran apologized for holding 52 of our citizens hostage for over 400 days, and we apologized for holding their entire country hostage for over 25 years.
It seems to me the biggest winner is the United States. I just read on HuffPo about a major terrorism bust (more than 400 arrested) in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis realize they now have a significant rival for our favor, and they better start shaping up.
Interesting you should bring up the pursuit of educational opportunities. Did you know that black people founded the first public schools in South Carolina? They were run by the Freedman's Bureau and were open to people of all races (although few white people would lower themselves to attend. I guess they hated black people more than they loved their own children.) When Reconstruction ended, they reverted to the Southern state governments, who then denied them to blacks. Ironic, isn't it?
If physical displays cannot affect hearts and minds, then why are they displayed in the first place?