The Trump chaos marches on. In recent days, Paul Manafort, the de facto Trump campaign manager, after Corey Lewandowski’s firing, has been hit with a barrage of media attacks about his connections to the deposed Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovych…… million dollar under-the-table payment, etc.
Trump now is lowering Manafort’s profile and has promoted the clueless, Kellyanne Conway and Breitbart News executive, Stephen Bannon, to run his campaign. The leftist news site/blog, The Daily Beast, reports that:
“According to The Washington Post, the decision is intended to curtail Manafort’s efforts to temper Trump’s campaign style. Trump had reportedly begun to feel “boxed in” and “controlled.” Manafort will remain part of the team, but his role will be internally diminished. The decisions, essentially, are a way for Trump to return to former aide Corey Lewandowski’s style, which was “let Trump be Trump.””
You can read that as Trump doesn’t want to “act” presidential or be bothered with policy details. He is throwing the race to Hillary Clinton. He is a total fraud. No ground game, no ads yet, and a bevy of bimbos and bozos surrounding him.
He is sure to go down in flames rapidly with this ditz Conway running his campaign. “Trump being Trump” is Trump acting like a LOOSE CANNON and proving the Clinton caricature right, day after day. What a nightmare, where this “GOP Insurgent” is deliberately throwing the race for the Witch of Chappaqua and the RNC leadership still wanders around in circles without any plan or guts to ditch this con man.
Hillary’s email scandal remains a stubborn stain, that despite every stain removal remedy known to her crew of scandal white-washers, still keeps reappearing every time she thinks the latest SPIN cycle has washed it away. (SPIN is orchestrated LYING by government officials to deceive the American people and to manufacture opinion cascades)
That this woman is above the law disgusts me. It’s bad enough that the Leftist partisans, to include some Democratic hack, high-ranking retired generals, who assuredly know her email server jeopardized national security, keep going in public and lying for the Clintons, but now many so-called Republican foreign policy experts have joined the Clinton bandwagon too. They all know her setting up a home-brew server was such a reckless, deliberate, grossly negligent action, that she should face criminal charges, but they’re so entrenched in their own careers and the politicking, that they’re willing to throw their support behind the horse that looks like it’s going to win in November. Their actions are about their own personal careers, NOT about principles or national security.
I am disgusted with the “Republican foreign policy elites” who have come out and backed Hillary and my disgust has nothing to do with Trump at all. They are unfit to work in foreign policy positions in the United States, if they could follow the facts about her handling of highly sensitive information on her home-brew server and still support her.
She is not fit to ever handle any sensitive information and should be prosecuted.
All of them, having years of experience with handling classified information, know this.
I can understand not supporting Trump on foreign policy, but to ignore her email scandal speaks to moral bankruptcy.
“Move On” is an integral part of the Clinton Scandal Survival Strategy. We all know how they wage scorched earth and create endless strawmen to light ablaze, as the cause of these never-ending, mean, “vast, right-wing conspiracies”, you know the ones, like those dastardly Koch Brothers or their evil, arch-nemesis Karl Rove or heck, anyone who tries to stand up for the rule of law, when the Clintons trample it. The Clintons behave like the kids in that comic strip, whom when their parents confront them about wrong-doing, all blurt out, “Not ME!” “Not ME” is Hillary’s constant refrain.
James Comey is in their sights now, as Bill Clinton, a perjurer, will now work to destroy Comey’s credibility and reputation. Before caving to the Clinton/Obama pressure, Comey exacted a desperate Hail Mary pass effort to expose Hillary Clinton in the “court of public opinion”, since every avenue to expose her in a “court of law” was cut off by Loretta Lynch. Comey will now receive the Ken Starr treatment from the Clinton Crime Family.
Everyone who enters into the Clinton orbit becomes corrupted and the longer they remain “Clinton friends”, the more they sacrifice all their principles, because assuredly, as the Clintons grasp for more money and power, their lawlessness escalates. With the Clintons, they will always need their water-carriers to keep trying to put out the flames on their never-ending scandals and they need their talking points messengers repeating, ” TIME TO MOVE ON!”, so hey, the Clintons turn out to be lifetime employment for these gutless, immoral sycophantic lowlifes…… Who knows, perhaps the Clintons should give out annual “Lanny Davis Awards” for their best sycophantic sewer rats….
Kevin Williamson penned a very interesting piece on the Clinton’s “Move On” motto:
“Move on” is of course the Clinton family motto. If the Clintons had a family crest, the Latin at the top would read: “movete!”
In fact, you can quickly get a read on a particular individual or organization’s dedication to kissing Clinton ass by noting how quickly it deployed “move on!” and how deeply it is dedicated to that motto.
The gold standard there for many years was MoveOn.org. For you youngsters out there, MoveOn.org is a self-described progressive group that was founded in 1998 in response to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, who committed perjury and suborned perjury in the course of trying to cover up his sexual exploitation of White House intern Monica Lewinsky, a crime for which he eventually was disbarred, though Senate Democrats ensured that his impeachment did not end in conviction and removal from office. Once he had exhausted every possible avenue of dishonesty, Clinton issued an angry denunciation that nearly took the form of an apology, and his minions immediately began demanding that the country “move on!”
Their Clinton Scandal Survival Strategy follows the same steps always:
Demonize those calling for the investigation and those tasked with the investigation as right-wing partisans and the investigation as another “vast, right-wing witch hunt”
Stall the investigation by any means possible, to include obfuscation, obstruction of justice, intimidation of witnesses, etc.
Destroy the reputation of any and all witnesses, who do step forward.
Toss out endless streams of diversionary talking points to confuse the legal issues involved in the investigation
After the investigation appears stonewalled and the talking points messaging has permeated for months, demand an end to “just another vast, right-wing witch hunt”
Send out the “TIME TO MOVE ON” choir,
When you hear the “Move On” choir reach crescendo pitch, you can be assured that the Clintons believe they have successfully killed another investigation into their Clinton Crime, Inc. family business and believe the final nail in the investigation has been driven home. This email server scandal keeps refusing to die, because since the House Benghazi hearing last October, the Clinton “Move On” choir now sounds like croaking frogs and the scandal just keeps rising haunting them ….. trails of email pop up everywhere, new facts keep making it to reporters’ desks and people just aren’t buying the Clinton lies as easily as they used to. It’s like more and more people are so sick of the Clinton’s BULL, that more and more are refusing to go along with the emperor’s new clothes storyline and seeing the naked truth…. and it ain’t pretty.
Bill Clinton’s public attack on James Comey was a warning shot, that he, being ABOVE THE LAW, like his coattail-riding wife, and being a former US President believes he holds all the power. Jonah Goldberg often refers to the Clintons as the Medici of the Ozarks….. That is an understatement.
In the past couple days news stories started percolating that the Clinton Foundation is under investigation for corruption, in several states, by FBI field offices and US Attorneys. The Daily Caller reported it first:
“Joint investigations by the FBI and various U.S. Attorneys of Clinton Foundation activities are most likely underway in Little Rock, Arkansas, Washington, D.C. and New York, according to a former assistant director of the FBI.
“To me, those would be the three most logical cities,” Ron Hosko told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Discrete information has made its way to local field offices and is being shared with their counterparts at the U.S. Attorney offices.”
Hosko is a 30-year veteran of the FBI and was the second highest ranking official behind director James Comey when he left the bureau in 2014.
Hosko was responding to TheDCNF report Friday that multiple FBI field offices and U.S. Attorneys in various cities are leading investigations about possible corrupt practices among Clinton Foundation officials, foundation donors, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and inner circle of aides during her years as America’s chief international diplomat.
Last week Hillary kept repeating lies about what FBI Director Comey said about her email server in his public statement. Okay, no biggie, when you consider every time Hillary Clinton makes a public statement she LIES. There were also reports that the FBI is deliberating whether to release the official report of Hillary’s three and a half hour interview with the FBI to Congress.
That sets the stage for my next amateur analysis of how the Clintons operate. Some odd things have occurred with both, Bill and Hillary’s comments in recent days. Bill Clinton started making statements yesterday asserting that James Comey is serving up a load of bull. Lest you think he’s senile or crazy, let me expound on how the Clintons and Obama use public comments to intimidate people.
A few months back Obama was putting the screws to General Petraeus about his retirement pay. I believe Obama wanted Petraeus to do something for him, that Petraeus was reluctant to do. I am sure when Petraeus’ scandal was settled with only one misdemeanor charge – they have a lot more serious charges that they dropped. The ones reported are serious – his mistress had hundreds of classified documents on her unsecure laptop, and his black books. Petraeus hired the Clinton lawyer, David Kendall, so you know Kendall knows where all the Clinton bodies are buried. A few days later, Ash Carter announced that they weren’t going to mess with Petraeus’ retirement benefits.
With this FBI investigation, several months ago, Obama commented on the ongoing FBI investigation into Hillary’s home-brew server and stated that it was careless, but not criminal. Bam, when Comey made his announcement he stated that her use of this unsecured server was “extremely careless” and gave a laundry list of serious findings, but then he caved and stated that while her actions were “extremely careless”, it wasn’t “criminal”. This is how the sending signals works.
These public shots across the bow are vintage Clinton tactics too. So, when I heard Bill Clinton so boldly saying what Comey said was “bull” – that was a challenge. Bill Clinton is the one behind the scenes strong-arming everyone from Obama on down to clear the path for Hillary. I believe the Clinton dirt-diggers found something on Comey and let him know they have it. Comey’s statement about the investigation looked like a hostage video. In front of Congress he made an odd off-hand comment, that he cares about his family and reputation most. As the FBI director testifying, he should have cared most about protecting and defending The Constitution. Oh, well time will tell….
I wrote the following in a comment in an online discussion elsewhere, but decided to post it here. I’ve used the B.H. Liddell Hart quote before, but it bears repeating. I’ve been very concerned about the acceptance of lying as no big deal, by too many Americans, our politicians and especially by the news media, for decades. When I first heard the Clinton “war room” normalizing “spin” and the liberal media using that term as if it was some sort of clever media strategy and not an affront to American civic values, the rule of law and even to their journalistic ethics, I was dismayed. Journalists should be seekers of the facts. They should be digging for the who, what, when, where, why and how on the matters they report. Here’s my comment:
“Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises. It may not sound a high attainment, but if trust in its observance be shaken the whole structure cracks and sinks. Any constructive effort and all human relations – personal, political, and commercial – depend on being able to depend on promises.”
– B.H. Liddell Hart, “Why We Don’t Learn From History”
Sorry, I went really long again, so if you don’t want to wade through this – the main gist is lying is not just a personal character flaw – it’s a battering ram smashing against the pillars of our republic.
That phrase “post-reality” speaks to a very dangerous, horrific state of being and when it’s being imposed with the power of the state, you’re looking at a totalitarian nightmare. The hijacking of words that matter and completely turning them on their heads has been the goal of communists since the early part of the last century and for American Alinskyite/Marxists in America to continue that long march leaves us headed down a very dark road.
Living in a “post-reality” America is where we’ve allowed the very underpinnings of our republic to be corrupted. When words lose their meaning, so does the rule of law and so does our societal cohesiveness, because the common ground necessary to keep our republic girded against collapse or anarchy, rests on a shared understanding of our shared civic values.
The technology of the past century fueled mass media and our ability to communicate with others, to levels never imagined, but it has also fostered an ability for those with power and money to engage in mass deception and massively corrupt the American character (and not just Hollywood). It moved from the media blithely talking about Clinton “spin” (deliberate lying by politicians) to the Obama “narratives”, where the President of the United States has the executive branch busily rewriting facts to create a fictional version of events.
It’s so pervasive in the Obama administration, that they are purging official records, editing out portions of video from news briefings and obstructing justice whenever asked to produce records to Congress or the courts. That is the executive branch deliberately usurping the other two branches of the federal government’s power to check executive power and it should alarm everyone.
For journalists to utter the words “the administration’s narrative” is an affront to journalistic integrity, where the goal is supposed to be to report: who, what, when, where, why, and how.
The media helped the Obama administration and liberal loons spread that “narrative”, to alter the public perception of the Orlando terrorist attack, into being the result of “Christian bigotry and hate” in just two weeks. Ferguson gave us “hands up, don’t shoot” – a total lie and even more disturbing in Ferguson is the fact that there were dozens of witnesses to this incident of a white cop in an altercation with a young black man and not a single cell phone video has ever made it out into the public. That is a community willing to LIE and HIDE evidence of the truth from law enforcement, because many of these people were interviewed by police and the district attorney’s office. C’mon dozens of witnesses in a black community watching this white cop and young black man and no one pulled out a cell phone and videotaped it???
The FBI Director went on national TV and gave a list of very serious offenses and he then dismissed it as “extremely careless” handling of sensitive information, which is “grossly negligent” and even now Hillary, not only continues to lie about her email server, she’s even begun to lie about what Comey said. She has an army of political operatives and friends in the media spreading and bolstering her lies. She knows if she repeats the lies often enough, they will become the reality. It’s wholesale public corruption.
Trump doesn’t have the vast political operation of the Clinton machine yet, but he’s borrowed their talking points/scorched earth strategy to win, win, win. He blithely throws out smears, no matter their veracity, and his followers cheer that he is willing to sink as low as the Clintons. If he acquires the power of the presidency, he will be just like the Clintons. He hasn’t shown any remorse about using the Carville approach of throwing as much dirt as you can and hoping some of it sticks.
Hillary and Trump’s lying aren’t just bad personal character traits. Their lying creates large numbers of partisans engaged in, not only believing their lies, but hordes of their political followers, operatives, friends in the media and political allies jump into action to bolster, prop-up, repeat, defend their lies. It rapidly corrupts America and it feeds the rabid factionalization that is destroying America.
B.H. Liddell Hart’s , “Why We Don’t Learn From History” is available free in PDF format:
The campaign media messaging from Team Clinton and Team Trump continues its downhill race to the bottom. After a disastrous week, Team Trump began another supposed “reset”, with Trump set to launch some big economic plan today, while the Stone/Manafort duo wage an all-out crapfest of attacks on Hillary in their friendly media venues, like The Drudge Report, InfoWars, Breitbart, etc. with photos of Hillary looking either decrepit or “unhinged”. These smear attacks are to feed their counter-attack against the liberal media’s coordinated, nuclear option level, smear attack with the Clinton campaign last week, to make Trump radioactive as the LOOSE CANNON, you know, the deranged madman intent on starting a nuclear war…
Trump’s big “reset” today will be about as successful as Hillary’s string of “campaign relaunches”, ostensibly to do a personality makeover, from arrogant, harpy bitch, to America’s sweet grandmother, all sugar and spice and Charlotte face time nice… We can see how that turned out…. same old sniping, thatwitch2016…. Jonah Goldberg penned a dissection of Trump and his endless “pivots” to “acting” presidential, “Waiting for the Pivot at the End of the Universe” He writes:
Donald Trump isn’t running a presidential campaign; he’s running a national speaking tour. When a normal presidential campaign gets into trouble you can change tactics and strategy. When a cult of personality gets into trouble, what can you do? Only one thing: Change the personality. And, again, that isn’t going to happen. Ever.
Oh sure, his poll numbers will go up again. He’ll have a good few days, maybe even a good week. And given how we’ve lowered the bar when it comes to Trump’s behavior you can be sure Newt and Christie and, of course, Hannity will celebrate it like the demoralized parents of a junkie teenager who manages to get a B on his report card. “He’s got his act together!” Back in September, I wrote about the tendency of Trump boosters to over invest in Trump’s political accomplishments:
“But this is not an argument for Trump as a serious presidential candidate. It is really no argument at all. It is catharsis masquerading as principle, venting and resentment pretending to be some kind of higher argument. Every principle used to defend Trump is subjective, graded on a curve. Trump is like a cat trained to piss in a human toilet. It’s amazing! It’s remarkable! Yes, yes, it is: for a cat. But we don’t judge humans by the same standard.”
In the days ahead, Trump will stay on message for a day or two and the reaction from many will be “The Prophecies Are True!” and “Watch out Hillary!” and “Behold! The Cat Who Pees!” Never mind that serious presidential candidates are expected to be disciplined for months on end. We’ve so downgraded our expectations of Trump that even minimal or sub-minimal professionalism from him is greeted like unprecedented statesmanship. But it won’t last. It won’t last because it can’t. The “Days Since an Unpresidential Screw-Up” Clock will never hit double digits.
This messaging sinks to such levels of absurdity, yet the media minions and a large chunk of the yammering political punditry class are little more than large-mouth bass taking any bait tossed their way. So many supposed political wizards leap at all these shallow, campaign messaging sleaze dumps and treat them as serious news and legitimate “campaign issues”.
It’s still stunning that the political punditry class and supposed Republican political operatives don’t know how to discern how the Clinton “spin cycle” works after all these years and can’t seem to identify the talking points messaging. Most of them seemed clueless that the “GOP Insurgent sent to burn the GOP to the ground” meme was a typical Clinton sewer rat meme from the start. The trick is to not get sucked in emotionally by the messaging and just dispassionately identify the messaging, how often they’re repeated, where they originate in the media messaging stream, who all is working to spread the messages and then dispassionately determine, who the messaging benefits and to what ends is the messaging working to advance.
Cokie Roberts, on ABC’s This Week reacted to the Trump messaging counter-attack:
Roberts said, “About unhinged and she doesn’t look presidential, is totally code for we shouldn’t elect a woman. That is exactly what that is.”
So, who the heck is Cokie Roberts, well she isn’t some professional, unbiased journalist. She’s the daughter of two very prominent Democrats, Congressman and Congresswoman, Hale and Lindy Boggs. That should be added as a disclaimer to every word she utters on any partisan political issues, the same as ABC’s Georger Stephanopoulos, should have a disclaimer that he was is a top Democratic political operative and former White House Communications Director for President Bill Clinton. These people aren’t journalists; they’re Democratic political operatives.
Newsflash to Cokie, if you live by character assassinations in politics, you might die by them too. This campaign has moved way beyond trying to pull the “mean Rick Lazio attacking a defenseless woman” tactic
Time to put on the big girl panties, Cokie, and quit playing the “victim of sexism card” every time someone uses the same Clinton smear tactics against Saint Hillary. Her whining about the Trump counter-attack serves as a clear-sign that she fears the Trump counterattack will gain some traction. The Clinton spin machine went “nuclear” last week against Trump, with the relentless, over-the-top, liberal media onslaught, casting Trump as a deranged madman, intent on starting a nuclear war (a LOOSE CANNON).
Too bad Trump has spent more time feeding their messaging than his own, so all he’s left with is getting into the gutter like the Clintons.
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH;
The reason for the schizophrenia inside the Potemkin Trump campaign, I firmly believe, stems from the battle over Trump’s messaging campaign inside the Potemkin Trump campaign. There’s been this endless battle between the Lewandowski faction and the Roger Stone/big name GOP enabler faction. The Trump children seem to be torn between the two political operative factions. Trump was sold early on the Clinton talking points. scorched earth approach and his “GOP Insurgent” campaign, even though that messaging was a Clinton set-up. That is obvious!
Roger Stone and the big name GOP enablers have been trying to pull Trump away from the Lewandowki (CLINTON) messaging, but truthfully that kind of throwing as much dirt as you can and hoping it sticks (the Carville approach) fits Trump’s bullying personality perfectly. Last week was Trump deciding to try what worked to burn the GOP to the ground in the primary, with disastrous results. The liberal media that colluded for his 24/7 “GOP Insurgency” Show is now doing what was planned all along – running the Clinton scorched earth to destroy the Republican nominee. Despite Lewandowski finally being ousted, Stone and his friend, Paul Manafort have little control or influence on Trump, because Trump revels in the Clinton-style scorched earth messaging. Manafort and Trump’s big name GOP enablers promise that today is the Trump “reset”…. So start counting how many days he can stay on message before he goes back to the LOOSE CANNON….
The BILLIONS of dollars of free media Trump was given by the likes of liberal CNN and MSNBC should have clued people in that this was a set-up. Even the fascist memes back in February, the timeline points to Trump was sold on those strong-man talking points being a good idea by someone in his campaign. Trump did that pledge rally, where he read a prepared pledge from a card and immediately, the likes of Chuck Todd were prepared to hype the “Nuremberg Rally” charge – it was a set-up, but someone inside Trump’s campaign convinced him that pledge rally was a good idea and set-up that pledge rally for him. That two-week strong-man messaging of his led to the showdown against Soros funded mobs in Chicago and after that CNN and MSNBC pivoted to running Hillary’s scorched earth and Trump 24/7 friendly media there ended.
The bigger picture is way more than whether one of these two corrupt sleazes wins in November – it’s the WHOLESALE PUBLIC CORRUPTION.
MY OWN ECHO:
Starting with the Clinton “war room” in the early 90s, and now we’re at Obama “narratives”, where every tool of the executive branch is used as a partisan tool, to include 50 military intelligence analysts reports being altered to fit the “Obama narrative” and a WH effort to corrupt the Army chain of command, by interfering in the prosecution of a deserter, the corruption has spread to undercutting military justice. Susan Rice going on national TV to declare Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction” was a blatant “undue command influence” trying to interfere in a UCMJ matter. That Bergdahl’s case is still in limbo is solely because of Obama administration pressure on the Army to drop the case. Then there are all the other “narratives” the Obama administration spread to cover-up – Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and the list goes on and on.
So, the Democratic Party is little more than an organized crime syndicate, where laws are for the little people and Republicans, but not for the likes of Hillary Clinton. If the email and electronic message traffic, between the Clinton operatives/the Potemkin Trump campaign and media conduits to smear and destroy 16 Republicans, gets leaked it will prove that the Clintons set in motion a corrupt effort to destroy the GOP primary and if the mass media collusion is proven, then that’s a totally corrupt system.
Blog Note: In the next few days, I’m going to do a chronological thematic list with links to my blog posts about the 2016 Presidential Election and post it somewhere at the top of my home page.
“My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for my share
When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:
“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.”
—RUDYARD KIPLING, 1911
Hannan, Daniel (2013-11-19). Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World (p. 91). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Coming from a blue-collar background, I do understand the rise of populist icons, like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, among working class Americans, who aren’t going to assiduously study issues, read history or pay any attention to renowned pundits like George Will, with his use of words most of these people have never even heard, let alone know their meaning. These are the people I grew up around and as one of my sons, as a precocious 12 year-old informed me, many years ago while on a visit to the backwoods of PA, “Mom, your family is kind of like Northern rednecks.” There you have your explanation for the rise of Donald Trump and Sarah Palin before him.
In my many years online, I have been banned two times from posting comments on two blogs, The American Thinker and The Last Refuge Blog, one years ago and one just recently. After my experiences posting on the Excite message boards way back during the Clinton impeachment, these days I don’t venture to other sites very often to post comments, preferring to stay here at my own backwoods blog, to ramble to my heart’s content. The past few days, I spent some time at National Review posting under my long-time user name, mhere (my little inside joke on the Russian word for peace) and at The American Thinker under the name, susanholly. I was observing the comments from the devoted Trump supporters and thinking about the Trump supporters’ views.
This Trump phenomenon hearkened back to the Sarah Palin flirtation with a 2012 run for President and that is where I got banned from The American Thinker, for commenting on Sarah Palin wallowing (and making big money) in the reality TV trash culture, while bashing the decline in American culture. I hadn’t written any cuss words or called any other posters names, just expressed my opinion, that she is a populist, self-promoter more than she is a staunch conservative standard-bearer.
Often Palin lands on the right side of conservative issues, but she can’t offer more than trite slogans and appeals to emotion to support her views. Her supporters adore her and any venue where she ends up looking stupid, gets turned on the reporter asking the question, like Katie Couric asking Palin what newspapers and periodicals she reads to stay informed, in that famous interview before the 2008 election. Palin couldn’t even list any and to this day she insists that was a gotcha question, when in fact it’s a fair and very pertinent question. Instead of learning from that failure, Palin doubled down on her attacks against the “lamestream” media and her supporters do the same. Charles Krauthammer fell prey to vicious attacks from Palin supporters for his comments in a Dec 2010 appearance on Bill O’Reilly (at minute 2:50), for suggesting that Palin should have spent the past two years acquiring policy expertise. Krauthammer committed the ultimate sacrilege for insisting the Couric interview questions during the 2008 election were not gotcha questions :
Daniel Hannan, in his book, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World explains this gap between the elites and ordinary people perfectly:
On July 3, 1940, Admiral Sir James Somerville issued the saddest order of his career. France had been occupied by the Nazis and was required under the armistice terms to transfer its Mediterranean fleet to German command. The British couldn’t allow such a development: Italy had entered the war on Hitler’s side, and control of the Mediterranean was at stake.
Winston Churchill ordered a larger British force to confront the French fleet off the Algerian naval base of Oran. The French admiral, Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, was given three options: to take his ships to British waters and carry on the struggle; to remove them from the theater of operations and keep them in the West Indies for the duration of the war; or to scuttle them.
All three options were turned down and, as the sultry day wore on, a final ultimatum was issued and rejected. At last, Admiral Somerville ordered his ships to shell the French fleet, the only occasion the British and French navies have exchanged hostile fire since Trafalgar. For ten minutes, great geysers of water shot into the sky, soon joined by black smoke from the battleship Bretagne, which was badly hit. No fewer than 1,297 Frenchmen were killed and 351 injured, by far the worst naval losses suffered by France during the war. There were no British casualties.
Somerville was sickened by what he later called “the most unnatural and painful decision” of his life. He passed a grim and silent evening in the mess, where many of his officers had tears in their eyes. But he couldn’t help noticing that, on the lower decks, a very different attitude prevailed, most sailors cheerfully declaring that they “never ’ad no use for them French bastards.”
It was an extreme illustration of an age-old social divide. The English (and later British) upper classes tended to be Francophone and Francophile. Yet theirs was a minority tendency, one that opened them down the centuries to accusations of being effete and unpatriotic.
That class division can be traced right back to the Norman Conquest, which placed England under a French-speaking aristocracy. It was to be more than three centuries before English again became the language of Parliament, the law courts, the monarchy, and the episcopacy. Certain parliamentary procedures are still, a millennium after the Conquest, conducted in Norman-French. The Queen’s approval of legislative bills, for example, is announced with the phrase “La Reine le veult.”
The native English, disinherited and resentful, projected their resentment onto French-speakers in general. The popular stereotype of the Frenchman closely resembled the radicals’ stereotype of the aristocrat: mincing, epicene, sly.
Even today, most Britons suspect (with good reason) that their elites are more Europhile in general, and more Francophile in particular, than the country at large. By “Europhile,” they don’t simply mean readier to accept EU jurisdiction, though that belief is demonstrably accurate. “Europhile” has wider connotations: of snobbery, of contempt for majority opinion, of the smugness of a remote political caste.
The extraordinary thing is that we can find no period in the past nine hundred years when such a sense was absent. The linkage between French manners and upper-class decadence has been made in England (then Britain, then the Anglosphere as a whole) by every generation.
Hannan, Daniel (2013-11-19). Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World (pp. 92-93). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In the day, weren’t Old Hickory and the Jacksonians “mad as hell?” Jacksonian Democracy was fueled by a righteous indignation — as is today’s liberty rebellion.
When we consider the struggle for freedom (and it’s been ongoing since the Revolution), we need to consider how past movements are amalgamated, synthesized. Today’s liberty rebellion resembles the Jacksonian but has many fathers. Expressions for liberty change, somewhat, to fit the times, but the core principles remain. Liberty is still man’s natural state. Humanity’s direction (as epitomized in the American experience) struggles toward achieving this birthright. It’s nearly instinct.
Though the focus is on Trump, some conservatives — and more Republicans — are unsettled by the liberty rebellion. It’s too Jacksonian in profile for whiggish conservatives — it’s raw, coarse, and full of the frontier; it discounts government more than they’d care. They are the George Wills of the world.
By the 1820s, these tensions fed into a many-sided crisis of political faith. To the frustration of both self-made men and plebeians, certain eighteenth-century elitist republican assumptions remained strong, especially in the seaboard states, mandating that government be left to a natural aristocracy of virtuous, propertied gentlemen. Simultaneously, some of the looming shapes of nineteenth-century capitalism—chartered corporations, commercial banks, and other private institutions—presaged the consolidation of a new kind of moneyed aristocracy. And increasingly after the War of 1812, government policy seemed to combine the worst of both old and new, favoring the kinds of centralized, broad constructionist, top-down forms of economic development that many thought would aid men of established means while deepening inequalities among whites. Numerous events during and after the misnamed Era of Good Feelings—among them the neo-Federalist rulings of John Marshall’s Supreme Court, the devastating effects of the panic of 1819, the launching of John Quincy Adams’s and Henry Clay’s American System—confirmed a growing impression that power was steadily flowing into the hands of a small, self-confident minority.
Daniel Hannan and J. Robert Smith clearly lay out this common man vs the moneyed elite sentiment, which transcends centuries in American society as surely as in British society. At the turn of the 20th century novelist Owen Wister, dedicated his popular novel, “The Virginian”, to his close friend, President Theodore Roosevelt. “The Virginian” introduced America to the iconic cowboy, bold, brave, unfettered by Eastern elite snobbery. This is one of my favorite American novels and I often cite a quote from it too: “When a man ain’t got no ideas of his own, he’d ought to be kind of o’ careful who he borrows ’em from.” Wister perfectly describes the class gap between the self-made Western cowboy as he prepares to go East to meet the family of his new bride, a New England schoolmarm from a blue-blood family:
“Why, I have been noticing. I used to despise an Eastern man because his clothes were not Western. I was very young then, or maybe not so very young, as very–as what you saw I was when you first came to Bear Creek. A Western man is a good thing. And he generally knows that. But he has a heap to learn. And he generally don’t know that. So I took to watching the Judge’s Eastern visitors. There was that Mr. Ogden especially, from New Yawk–the gentleman that was there the time when I had to sit up all night with the missionary, yu’ know. His clothes pleased me best of all. Fit him so well, and nothing flash. I got my ideas, and when I knew I was going to marry you, I sent my measure East–and I and the tailor are old enemies now.”
Bennington probably was disappointed. To see get out of the train merely a tall man with a usual straw hat, and Scotch homespun suit of a rather better cut than most in Bennington–this was dull. And his conversation–when he indulged in any–seemed fit to come inside the house.
Mrs. Flynt took her revenge by sowing broadcast her thankfulness that poor Sam Bannett had been Molly’s rejected suitor. He had done so much better for himself. Sam had married a rich Miss Van Scootzer, of the second families of Troy; and with their combined riches this happy couple still inhabit the most expensive residence in Hoosic Falls.
But most of Bennington soon began to say that Molly s cow-boy could be invited anywhere and hold his own. The time came when they ceased to speak of him as a cow-boy, and declared that she had shown remarkable sense. But this was not quite yet.
Donald Trump, part and parcel, a creature of that wealthy, elite class that his supporters loathe, has managed to transcend his personal history and take on an outsider personna, carefully crafted to tap into this populist sentiment of his supporters, many who like Palin, rail against the Washington elites, big-money interests, mainstream media and most especially those they deem RINOs. I was called a pinkie wagger a couple times yesterday while commenting, for holding a different view of Trump. Most of these people will not be swayed by smart punditry, as Kevin D. Williamson and Jonah Goldberg are finding out, nor will they bother with George Will or Charles Krauthammer, because what is happening is they are closing ranks and it is very much a class struggle. The more information you provide to show Trump flip-flopped or discredit his vague policy ideas, the more they will hunker down, fuming about “pinkie-waggers” and elitists. In fact, here’s Sarah Palin’s interview, commiserating still over those unfair media gotcha questions, with Trump. He, being asked what his favorite Bible verse is, fits her definition of a gotcha question… Truly, he said his favorite book after the Bible was his own book, “The Art of the Deal”, so asking him what his favorite Bible verse was an attempt at a gotcha question???. You can watch the entire Palin interview of Trump, replete with their mutual adoration society, but very slim on policy or insights on anything more than how they understandhow ordinary people feel: Video here.
Partisan political ideology aside, America remains torn apart by factions and this Trump phenomenon must be forcefully exposed as just that – a populist movement centered on a personality more than firm American founding principles. They may rally under “freedom and liberty” slogans, but there is no firm principled core to the Trump campaign, because his campaign centers on emotion and ginning up a mob tactics. In every other breath he spouts his polls numbers as vindication that he is right. Poll numbers don’t make you right. He should hone his arguments in well-thought out, clear sentences.
America needs to hold all of its presidential candidates’ feet to the fire. Expecting intelligent, well-reasoned arguments and explanations for their policies and ideas, should be the standard we demand. We need leaders who read extensively, who will study issues carefully and at the heart, being President is the highest political office in the land, so demanding a president who has mastered government policy issues is a must. Expecting that all of our elected officials, both in Congress and the President possess an in-depth understanding of The Constitution, a breadth of knowledge on US history and a strong foundation on foreign policy issues should be our minimum expectation.
Education is free in America! Accept no excuses! I possess no college degree, but I devoted my life to reading as much as I can in my spare time. I have signed out books from Army post libraries, public libraries, purchased many books and even borrowed books from friends. The ability to access information and learn is limitless in our internet age. Assuredly, there are gaps in my education, as my blog will surely affirm, but if someone points out something they think I need to read or points out an issue where what I have written is totally misguided or ill-informed, I don’t get angry. I get reading and try to learn more. We must all start demanding excellence, not only from our leaders, but from ourselves as well. America should be admired for it’s educated citizens, not considered as the home of ignorant, loudmouth, vulgar slobs!
Trump is a smart man, who has been fabulously successful. He can afford the best speech coaches, writers and political advisers. Showing up for a debate unprepared is not to be cheered, it’s a show of arrogance and self-conceit. Ronald Reagan wrote his speeches out on index cards. A poster yesterday told me I was supposed to infer what Trump was saying in his ramblings . Absolutely, dead wrong!!! The President represents all of us to the entire world and he/she must be a person with clear ideas, excellent public-speaking ability and our American message must reverberate, clear, concise and leave no doubts! Perhaps, Trump will devote the energy to study policy and perfect presenting his vision for America, and prove that he is the best candidate to represent all of us. And that’s the key, the President of the United States is not just the President of his partisan followers; he is the President of ALL Americans.
To put America on the right track, every American should read President George Washington’s Farewell Address and understand that railing about partisan political views is fine, but to “make America great again” we need to unite as one nation, bond by common values, and that remains the challenge none of the Presidential candidates has spoken to. Factions will destroy our Republic andPresident Washington warned that it is the “duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”
Donald Trump continues to lead in the GOP field and if you didn’t know that, just listen to one of his speeches, where he will remind you of that in every other breath. He uses his poll numbers as vindication that he is right, but the truth is when it gets down to details – he’s vague, vacillates and frankly hasn’t offered much in the way of concrete proposals that have any real plan behind them. He will build a Great Wall of Trump, but do we even need a “Great Wall” or do we need modern enhanced border security, faster interdiction of illegals trying to enter the US, enhanced e-verify, an end to sanctuary cities and a revamped program to keep track of visa-holders? He has offered no idea of how his mass deportation plan would work or how he would decide how the “good ones” would be determined and be allowed back in, which is nothing more than a tricky and costly word play that is really amnesty. Why not just deport the bad ones and save us the money of mass deportation of the “good ones”, if he’s going to have expedited reentry? It does not make any sense.
Beyond illegal immigration, Trump’s plan to defeat ISIS ranks as ludicrous – he’s going to circle them and take their oil. One can only wonder which of his friends he’ll appoint to oversee the Defense Department, because believe me, he knows the “best” people for everything, as he brags. He’s for affirmative action and universal health care, he’s for taking care of women (whatever that means) and the rest of his platform may unfold as he rambles along, but rest assured the disjointed, angry tirades against anyone who treats him “unfairly” or disagrees with him, should clue people in to his character, but his “fans” love him and sadly many have begun emulating him. I have watched in amazement as the comment sections on conservative pundits who disagree with Trump have become angry, name-calling, like you’d expect at a WWF match.
Polls don’t make Donald Trump’s policy ideas (vague as they are) right, all they indicate is the conservative base and some of his celebrity fan base have gravitated to his illegal immigration-anti-Washington spiel and his campaign slogan, “make America great again”.
Last week I bought one of Trump’s books, as I mentioned before, and I read it. Assuredly, Trump offered many interesting insights into, as the book’s title stated, “TRUMP: How to Get Rich”. The pride he takes in his children comes across and he offers some worthwhile advice on investing and negotiating, but trying to get to the character of who exactly is Donald Trump, well, he’s a man who has chapters in his book like “Be Strategically Dramatic”, “Sometimes You Still Have To Screw Them”, and “Sometimes You Have To Hold a Grudge”, replete with examples from his life and his guiding principles. Here are some quotes (page 138):
“When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye.”
Be paranoid. I know this observation doesn’t make any of us sound very good, but let’s face the fact that it’s possible that even your best friend wants to steal your spouse and your money.”
The chapter on holding a grudge is even more interesting, because Trump relates how for years he had donated huge amounts of money to NY governor, Mario Cuomo and when he called Cuomo to ask for a favor from Cuomo’s son, Andrew, who was running the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mario Cuomo refused to do the favor (which Trump doesn’t explain in detail other than to say it was an appropriate favor involving attention to a detail). Trump blew up and for any who are confused with Trump’s vendetta against Megyn Kelly on Twitter, calling her a bimbo last night or his refusing to entertain a question by Jorge Ramos from Univision this evening, well, this chapter on holding a grudge (page 142) explains it. Trump called in a political favor believing it was owed to him, because he donated a lot of money to Mario Cuomo (crony capitalism is what most people call this greasing of palms). Here is how Trump describes the phone call:
“I did the only thing that felt right to me. I began screaming. “You son of a bitch! For years I’ve helped you and never asked for a thing, and when I finally need something, and a totally proper thing at that, you aren’t there for me. You’re no good. You’re one of the most disloyal people I’ve known and as far as I’m concerned, you can go to hell.”
My screaming was so loud that two or three people came in from adjoining offices and asked who I was screaming at. I told them it was Mario Cuomo., a total stiff, a lousy governor, and a disloyal former friend. Now whenever I see Mario at dinner, I refuse to acknowledge him, talk to him, or even look at him.”
When you hear Trump whining about being treated unfairly, here’s what I believe he means: If you agree with him, fawn over him and puff up his ego, that’s treating him fairly. If you disagree or criticize him, I believe, he will wage an all out campaign to destroy you. So, I keep wondering how his character will play in the long, arduous rough and tumble of presidential politics, where being ripped apart by opposition research, pundits and reporters only escalates as the campaign wears on. We’ve got plenty of rounds to go, so it’s certainly not going to be boring.
So, the Clinton Scorched Earth 2.0 blitz is something to behold. Holy cow, Trump is facing incoming from all directions and he does everything to aid the Clinton scorched earth by playing right into their hands.
Trump, the idiot, takes every piece of bait tossed out there. He went on this attack against the Gold Star family that spoke at the Democratic Convention, he has tried to turn his guns against any Republican leaders who aren’t kissing his butt, while the Clinton machine’s scorched earth, in collusion with the liberal media (that’s just about all of them) have opened fire on Trump with everything they’ve got.
Joe Scarborough, at MSNBC, sat there for 8 months acting like Trump was great and one of his best friends, then when MSNBC made their pivot around the end of February to running the Clinton scorched earth, he turned on Trump. Yesterday, he dumped this radioactive stink bomb, anonymously sourced of course, about Trump asking about using nuclear weapons as a first strike option:
“Several months ago, a foreign policy expert went to advise Donald Trump,” Scarborough said. “And three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons — three times he asked. At one point, ‘If we have them, why can’t we use them?’”
“That’s one of the reasons why he doesn’t have foreign policy experts around him,” Scarborough added.
To be honest, this week, the Clinton Scorched Earth 2.0 has already gone nuclear. I’m surprised Trump Tower isn’t glowing in the dark, geesh, they have even been digging through Melania Trump’s visa records. Hillary and Obama started the drumbeat that Trump is mentally unstable and now there’s an all-out effort to destroy him:
“Representative Karen Bass (D-Calif.) said Wednesday “Donald Trump isn’t mentally equipped” to be president — and the congresswoman launched a petition demanding that he take a psych evaluation.
Bass’ petition, #DiagnoseTrump on Change.org, calls Trump “dangerous for our country” and says she is concerned about his “impulsiveness and lack of control over his own emotions.””
The story continues:
“Mr. Trump appears to exhibit all the symptoms of the mental disorder Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)” and goes on to list those symptoms in the petition and on Twitter.
I believe Trump and Hillary both suffer from that disorder, but Hillary has learned to hide her crazy better and she connives and sends other people to do her dirty work, while she sits there like the Queen, serene and head held high. She’s got an entire political machine and her husband orchestrating this WHOLESALE PUBLIC CORRUPTION, with media collusion to destroy Donald Trump, after a year of their orchestrating the “GOP Insurgency” to burn the GOP to the ground. Back in January I wrote:
“Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are of a piece – they, in clinical terms, are sociopaths – successful, smart, but at their core, both believe the rules don’t apply to them, so now we have the two most overblown egos in America fighting for the same job. From experience, I can tell you that Donald Trump, impulsive, vulgar, ruthless is a man barging ahead, but Hillary Clinton is a woman who believes it is her destiny to be the first female President. And women manipulate and scheme and connive, so in this match-up, despite all Trump’s bluster, Hillary Clinton will win.”
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