MERYL STREEP - MY HERO

It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It -- it kind of broke my heart when I saw it. And I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life. 

 And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. 

Meryl Streep is my hero, and not for the first time.  She said what needed to be said about President-elect Donald Trump in her speech at the Golden Globe Awards.  When Trump mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski's physical disability, he should have been shunned by everyone, including sane members of the GOP, and eliminated from the field of candidates.

When the tape of Trump boasting about assaulting women was released, his candidacy should have been finished, over, done, but that did not happen.

Trump invited his friend Putin to hack Hillary Clinton's email, and I don't recall a GOP outcry at the time.  The vast majority, if not all, Republican members of Congress endorsed Trump in the end. Putin followed through, hacked the Clinton campaign's email server, and interfered with the election.  Now, too little, too late, a few Republican leaders are "concerned".  That Trump is unfit to serve as president is obvious, but where were the sane Republicans who should have been speaking out forcefully against Trump for months and months?

Also, now that the election is over, Democrats are far too quiet about Trump's unfitness to suit me. The Democratic leadership, with some exceptions, seems overly focused on a smooth transition of power, but a smooth transition to what? Maybe the focus should be on the disastrous nightmare that will follow the smooth transition. WTF?

DEAD PEOPLE WILL NO LONGER PAY TAXES SAYS TRUMP

Yesterday, Donald Trump gave an economic policy speech in Detroit in his subdued persona, speaking from a teleprompter. He offered a replay of the old, failed GOP trickle down economics, which results in great benefits to corporations and the very rich, but, from past experience, we know that very little benefit trickles down to people who need it most.  In the greatest exercise of self control I've seen, Trump did not strike back at several protesters who were quickly removed from the venue, though if looks could kill....

Trump spoke to a group of corporate executives at the Detroit Economic Club, who probably approved of his message. If Trump's goal was in any way aimed at attracting the votes of ordinary people, living in an economy that is struggling to recover from bankruptcy in 2013, his promise to repeal the "death tax" stood out as particularly ironic. The estate tax affects only a very small number of people in the entire country.

Though I assume Trump was also speaking to the wider world, his supporters among working class white men could hardly have been moved by the promise, unless they greatly misunderstand how few people actually pay the "death tax".

The Tax Policy Center estimates that some 10,800 individuals dying in 2015 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5.43 million need not file this return in 2015). After allowing for deductions and credits, 5,330 estates will owe tax. Nearly 85 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top 10 percent of income earners and over 40 percent will come from the top 1 percent alone.

WHAT IF THE WORST HAPPENS?

Michael Gerson in the Washington Post:

Every Republican of the type concerned with winning in November has been asking the question (at least internally): “What if the worst happens?”

The worst does not mean the nomination of Ted Cruz, in spite of justified fears of political disaster. Cruz is an ideologue with a message perfectly tuned for a relatively small minority of the electorate. 
....

No, the worst outcome for the party would be the nomination of Donald Trump. It is impossible to predict where the political contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton would end up. Clinton has manifestly poor political skills, and Trump possesses a serious talent for the low blow. But Trump’s nomination would not be the temporary victory of one of the GOP’s ideological factions. It would involve the replacement of the humane ideal at the center of the party and its history. If Trump were the nominee, the GOP would cease to be. 

Michael, Michael, the "humane ideal at the center" of the Republican Party disappeared years ago, and the racist, sexist, loathsome Donald Trump candidacy of today is the creation of the GOP, your very own Frankenstein's monster, who is now out of control.  Trump says in plain language what the other so-called establishment Republican candidates speak in veiled code language.  (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know what I mean.)

As for Hilary Clinton's "manifestly poor political skills", I wonder if you watched any part of the eleven hour Benghazi!!! hearings, in which Clinton made Trey Gowdy and the other Republicans on the committee look like bumbling fools.  Maybe it's just me, but I thought Clinton's political skills, intelligence, and stamina were very much in evidence.  She would not only perform well against candidate Trump but perhaps send him over the edge to the point where even Republicans would vote for her, or, if they could not bear to cast a vote for a Democrat, they would not vote and perhaps even stay home, which would affect not only the presidential vote but down-ticket Republican candidates. 

Further, the GOP "conservatism" of today quite obviously does not involve "respect for institutions and commitment to reasoned, incremental change" and has not for quite a number of years.

You say:

Liberals who claim that Trumpism is the natural outgrowth, or logical conclusion, of conservatism or Republicanism are simply wrong. Edmund Burke is not the grandfather of Nigel Farage. Lincoln is not even the distant relative of Trump.

You are wrong, Michael. The members of the so-called "center" of the GOP, who no longer have an influential voice in the party, stayed silent through the worst of the excesses perpetrated by Republican members of Congress, thus giving them free rein to vote for their extremist agenda, with the result that the two candidates who now lead in the polls are Trump and Cruz.

Two quotes come to mind:

Silence is the voice of complicity.  (Fr Roy Bourgeois)

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.  (Hosea 8:7)

WHO IS REWRITING HISTORY?

Brian Glyn Williams, writes in a guest post at Juan Cole's Informed Comment of the history of development of ISIL in Iraq, for which Republican candidates for the presidency now blame President Obama. The essay is a long read and a challenge for those of us with short attention spans who are accustomed to sound bites and Twitter feeds, but it is well worth attention as George W Bush's brother Jeb will soon announce his candidacy for president of the United States. A good many of George W's foreign policy advisers are already busy at work in Jeb's campaign.

Today ISIS fighter-terrorists rule over millions of Iraqis (many of whom were formerly secular Baathists under Hussein) and Syrians in a region larger than the U.K. and twice the size of Israel. It goes without saying (well except by the likes of Ms. Ziedrich) had Bush, or more correctly Paul Bremer, not fired both the Iraqi Army and Baathist Party after the 2003 invasion of Iraq there would be no ISIS today. It has been widely demonstrated that the Baathists fired by Bremer in 2003 play a major operational role in ISIS today. The Washington Post, for example, has reported that “almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes.”

Jeb Bush, it's not courageous Ivy Ziedrich who is rewriting history. Your brother is your albatross, and you are compelled to rewrite the history of the Iraq war during the campaign, but at least some of us see your lies for what they are.

Today ISIS fighter-terrorists rule over millions of Iraqis (many of whom were formerly secular Baathists under Hussein) and Syrians in a region larger than the U.K. and twice the size of Israel. It goes without saying (well except by the likes of Ms. Ziedrich) had Bush, or more correctly Paul Bremer, not fired both the Iraqi Army and Baathist Party after the 2003 invasion of Iraq there would be no ISIS today. It has been widely demonstrated that the Baathists fired by Bremer in 2003 play a major operational role in ISIS today. The Washington Post, for example, has reported that “almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes.”

Reading through the essay reopened wounds from the runup to war through the entire debacle, which is not yet over for us here in the US. If Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld had set out to test just how incompetent a government could be in launching and conducting a war, they could not have done a worse job.