Tag: politics

Complete failure

Even the mainstream media is finally giving up on Saint Obama:

There’s no other way to describe it. Every December, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post picks the biggest political loser of the past year. In 2013, Cillizza’s selection was Barack Obama. He cited the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov, the NSA domestic-surveillance scandal, the IRS’s targeting of tea-party groups, and the continuing questions about the administration’s actions before, during, and after the attack on Americans in Benghazi.

In 2014, Cillizza’s selection was Obama, again. The midterm elections went abysmally for Democrats, the threat of ISIS became much clearer, Russia moved into Ukraine, and former CIA director and secretary of defense Leon Panetta painted an unflattering portrait of the president’s leadership in his memoirs.

In 2015, Cillizza picked two co-“winners,” Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. The reasons were obvious. By December 2015, it was clear Bush’s odds of winning the nomination were small and shrinking quickly. Clinton, meanwhile, looked likely to emerge bloodied from the Democratic primaries after a tougher-than-expected fight with Bernie Sanders.

This year, Cillizza assessed the surprising post-election political landscape and selected “The Democrats”:

The Democrats may be effectively locked out of power in all three branches of government for years. At the state level, after last month’s elections, they’ll control only 16 governorships and 13 legislatures. This year, punctuated by Hillary Clinton’s loss, exposed the remarkably shallow depth of the Democratic bench. The size of the Republican primary field — for which the GOP was relentlessly mocked — was also a sign of the party’s health up and down the ballot. Democrats simply didn’t have the political talent to put forward 17 candidates (or even seven). That’s partly because there’s been limited opportunity to move up in the leadership ranks. Pelosi (Calif.) and Reps. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) and James E. Clyburn (S.C) have had a death grip on the party’s top congressional slots for a very long time. It’s also partly because the Democratic farm system is hurting. 

Lined up one after another, Cillizza’s picks create a broader narrative: President Obama’s second term has been a terrible failure for the country.

It’s actually hard to say which has been worse, Obama’s domestic policy or his foreign policy.

The boomerang concept

French Socialists quite clearly don’t understand how their actions in the National Assembly are likely to come back to haunt them before too many years have passed, if the Senate doesn’t have the sense to reel them in:

The French National Assembly has voted to approve a bill that would outlaw some pro-life websites. The Socialist government wants to criminalise sites which it says “exert psychological or moral pressure” on women not to abort. The proposed offence would be punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment and a €30,000 fine.

Archbishop Georges Pontier of Marseille, president of the French bishops’ conference, has written to President François Hollande expressing his concern about the bill. Archbishop Pontier urged Hollande to not allow the bill’s passage, calling it a “serious infringement of democratic principles”.

French law already prevents pro-lifers from demonstrating outside abortion clinics. Supporters of the bill argue that pro-life tactics have now moved online and must be stopped.

The bill will now need to pass through the French senate, which blocked the legislation earlier this year.

Dominique Tian, MP for Les Républicains, said there was a “very heavy atmosphere in parliament” and accused the government of “attacking freedom of expression”. He said the government’s proposals were “dangerous for democracy and probably anti-constitutional”, and that his party would do all it could to stop them.

I mean, it’s not like such a law would ever be used to criminalize sites that advocate alternative sexual preferences, or practices, or for that matter, Marxian economics, right? Now, I understand the principle of MPAI and I know that socialists tend to have a hard time anticipating logical consequences, but this is indicative of a short time-preference to an extent one seldom sees outside of primitive tribes that can’t count to five.

So put him in charge!

I think he should have accepted it, mostly because Trump will end up firing a neocon who doesn’t abide by his policies as directed within months, if not weeks:

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was offered the Deputy Secretary of State position by President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team, but declined because he “could not support a Secretary of State that didn’t have Trump’s policies”, according to a source with intimate knowledge of the process.

The source told GotNews that Rohrabacher, who was being considered for the Secretary of State post, refused to serve under a Secretary who did not align with Donald Trump’s foreign policy views.

Rohrabacher, an “outspoken Trump enthusiast” and long-serving member of the House called “Putin’s favorite congressman” for his pro-peace views, stands out among the other potential picks for head of the State Department, such as Trump-hating failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney, gun-grabbing classified info leaker David Petraeus, and neoconservative warmonger John Bolton.

The Deputy Secretary of State position is currently filled by Obama’s Tony Blinken, who was appointed in 2015. The Deputy Secretary of State is the chief assistant to the Secretary and replaces them as Acting Secretary in the case of death or other emergency.

Rohrabacher evidently chose not to take his chances and risk serving under a conventional establishment Secretary of State with pro-war, anti-Trump foreign policy views, such as Mitt Romney, John Bolton, or David Petraeus.

Rudy Giuliani, another contender for the post, was exclusively revealed by GotNews to have failed his own vetting process, likely due to his recent foreign lobbying. Giuliani is no longer in the race.

Then again, perhaps Trump will just give him the top spot.

Making war great again

The God-Emperor Ascendant chooses Mad Dog Mattis for Defense:

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform, according to people familiar with the decision.

To take the job, Mattis will need Congress to pass new legislation to bypass a federal law that states secretaries of defense must not have been on active duty in the previous seven years. Congress has granted a similar exception just once, when Gen. George C. Marshall was appointed to the job in 1950.

An announcement is likely by early next week, according to the people familiar with the decision. Mattis declined to comment. Spokespersons for Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Mattis, 66, retired as the chief of U.S. Central Command in spring 2013 after serving more than four decades in the Marine Corps. He is known as one of the most influential military leaders of his generation, serving as a strategic thinker while occasionally drawing rebukes for his aggressive talk. Since retiring, he has served as a consultant and as a visiting fellow with the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University.

Once more, Donald Trump exceeds expectations. It will be good to see a genuine strategist who understands war and is capable of riding herd on the neocons and their insane, ignorant fantasies in a position of overseeing the military.

One hopes this will bring an end to the lunacy that has pervaded the Pentagon since 2001.

The best thing about Trump’s selections is that he clearly has a penchant for self-confident men who are not inclined to be influenced by the vagaries and narratives of the media.

To gain some insight into Mattis’s thinking, it’s worth reading A New American Grand Strategy, a piece he wrote for the Hoover Institute:

The world is awash in change. The international order, so painstakingly put together by the greatest generation coming home from mankind’s bloodiest conflict, is under increasing stress. It was created with elements we take for granted: the United Nations, NATO, the Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods and more. The constructed order reflected the wisdom of those who recognized no nation lived as an island and we needed new ways to deal with challenges that for better or worse impacted all nations. Like it or not, today we are part of this larger world and must carry out our part. We cannot wait for problems to arrive here or it will be too late; rather we must remain strongly engaged in this complex world.

The international order built on the state system is not self-sustaining. It demands tending by an America that leads wisely, standing unapologetically for the freedoms each of us in this room have enjoyed. The hearing today addresses the need for America to adapt to changing circumstances, to come out now from its reactive crouch and to take a firm strategic stance in defense of our values.

While we recognize that we owe future generations the same freedoms we enjoy, the challenge lies in how to carry out our responsibility. We have lived too long now in a strategy-free mode.

To do so America needs a refreshed national strategy.

Sure, some of the language he uses is enough to make one reflexively reach for one’s pistol and scan for neocons. But the salient point is that what the USA has been doing since the end of the Cold War IS NOT VIABLE. And the fact that we “must remain strongly engaged in this complex world” is not a prescription, it is an accurate observation.

He doesn’t say what the nature of that engagement is. And, more reassuringly, there are these comments:

  • We know that the “foreseeable future” is not foreseeable; our review must incorporate unpredictability, recognizing risk while avoiding gambling with our nation’s security.Incorporating the broadest issues in its assessments, Congress should consider what we must do if the national debt is assessed to be the biggest national security threat we face.
  • Strategy connects ends, ways and means. With less military available, we must reduce our appetite for using it. Absent growing our military, there must come a time when moral outrage, serious humanitarian plight, or lesser threats cannot be militarily addressed.  Prioritization is needed if we are to remain capable of the most critical mission for which we have a military: to fight on short notice and defend the country.

If nothing else, at least he’s asking some of the right questions.

Democrats need black female leadership

I could not agree more with this call for black women to lead the Democratic Party:

The leadership of the Democratic Party, at the highest levels, has consisted of mostly White men and women and a handful of Latinos. What Democratic leadership in the United States Congress, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) doesn’t have — and has never had — is a representative from its most loyal voting bloc over the last three presidential elections: Black women. To say that all quarters of Democratic Party leadership is in need of change is a vast understatement.

The numbers don’t lie. The Democratic Party has lost a historic number of seats across the board from federal representatives to statehouse races.  Part of that shift is due to a realignment caused by the appearance of the first Black president. But another part of it is a lack of strategy and misallocation of millions of dollars in resources focused on the wrong voters.  While Democrats roll out the same old leaders who employ the same old losing consultants and staff, they ignore members of their most consistently loyal voting group: Black women.

The 2016 election was, in some ways, a powerful statement on who remains loyal to the Democratic Party and who doesn’t. On that note, Latino voters shocked and confused everyone by giving Donald “build a wall” Trump nearly 30 percent of their votes.

In 2012, more than 70 percent of Black women voted, while White women voted at 65.6 percent. Black women continue to make up a larger proportion of Democratic votes than any other subgroup.  Given all the research, the Democratic Party continues to chase and reward other groups. One would think that ensuring that African Americans get to the polls would become a number one priority at the DNC and DCCC or to anyone campaigning for the White House.  Instead, the party continues to chase voters who seem to have less loyalty to the party than Black women, spending millions, while losing elections.

More than half of White women (53 percent) voted for Donald Trump. Meanwhile, just 4 percent of African American women and 26 percent of Hispanic women voted for the reality TV star.

Why shouldn’t Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Marcia Fudge (D-OH), Joyce Beatty (D-OH), Alma Adams and Rep-Elect Val Demings (D-Fla.) serve in leadership? They’re part of the most reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party and Fudge, Beatty, Adams and Demings are from key swing states.  Who better to figure out how to win voters in other sectors than the members of the sector who’ve already shown support?  Who better to lead than a former college administrator, a former mayor in a swing state or a former police chief in a battleground state?

Why shouldn’t they indeed? If you’re a Democrat and you don’t support a gay black women for every party leadership position, then you are objectively a homophobic, racist, and sexist bigot. Loyalty must be rewarded and privileged Whites and Jews must be banished to the back of the party.

Let’s keep this party rolling, everyone!

That’s one down. Now we just need to convince the cuckservatives to either a) leave the White American Party altogether and sit in the back of the Not-White bus or b) get over their “I would just love to vote for a clean and articulate minority like [insert Black name here] to demonstrate how totally not-racist I am” fetish already.

Anyhow, this is the only chance black women are ever going to get. By 2020, Asians will be demanding their fair share of representation, which means Jews are all but done in both parties.

The recounts are irrelevant

There is nothing in it. There never was.

Jill Stein has everything she needs to launch a presidential recount. She’s got the cash, the grassroots fervor and the spotlight of an adoring media. But there’s one thing she needs to overturn Trump’s victory: a calendar.

Stein missed Pennsylvania’s deadline to file for a voter-initiated recount. That blown deadline is a huge blow for Democrats who have pinned their hopes on recounts in the Keystone State, Michigan and Wisconsin.

“According to Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday, “the deadline for a voter-initiated recount was Monday, Nov. 21.”

All of the dark conspiracy theories about overturning the election were nonsensical. Jill Stein’s call for a recount was driven by one thing: money. She raised far more money than was required for the Wisconsin recount, publicly stated that all the money raised would not be used for the recount, and publicly posted an incorrect date on the Pennsylvania deadline.

Cobb said they only factored in Wisconsin when they first publicized their $2.5 million goal on their website. Once the campaign realized the cost of a recount for other states, they upped the goal, he said.

The money will be used to pay off the Green Party’s campaign debt, which is to say, into the bank accounts of the staffers. It would be informative to know if they knew the November 28th filing date was inaccurate when they posted it.

And then, there is this:

Just two days after confirming that he would participate in Jill Stein’s recounts in WI, MI and PA, Hillary campaign attorney, Marc Elias, is now publicly calling on North Carolina Republican Gubernatorial candidate, Pat McCrory, to halt his recount efforts and concede his race.

Once you open Pandora’s Box, don’t think you can control the demons that are released.

An endorsement of General Mattis

General Krulak thinks very highly of him. That’s a good sign. He’d be a great choice for Secretary of Defense.

A couple of months ago, when I told General Krulak, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, now the chair of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors, that we were having General Mattis speak this evening, he said, “Let me tell you a Jim Mattis story.” General Krulak said, when he was Commandant of the Marine Corps, every year, starting about a week before Christmas, he and his wife would bake hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christmas cookies. They would package them in small bundles.

 Then on Christmas day, he would load his vehicle. At about 4 a.m., General Krulak would drive himself to every Marine guard post in the Washington-Annapolis-Baltimore area and deliver a small package of Christmas cookies to whatever Marines were pulling guard duty that day. He said that one year, he had gone down to Quantico as one of his stops to deliver Christmas cookies to the Marines on guard duty. He went to the command center and gave a package to the lance corporal who was on duty.

 He asked, “Who’s the officer of the day?” The lance corporal said, “Sir, it’s Brigadier General Mattis.” And General Krulak said, “No, no, no. I know who General Mattis is. I mean, who’s the officer of the day today, Christmas day?” The lance corporal, feeling a little anxious, said, “Sir, it is Brigadier General Mattis.”

 General Krulak said that, about that time, he spotted in the back room a cot, or a daybed. He said, “No, Lance Corporal. Who slept in that bed last night?” The lance corporal said, “Sir, it was Brigadier General Mattis.”

About that time, General Krulak said that General Mattis came in, in a duty uniform with a sword, and General Krulak said, “Jim, what are you doing here on Christmas day? Why do you have duty?” General Mattis told him that the young officer who was scheduled to have duty on Christmas day had a family, and General Mattis decided it was better for the young officer to spend Christmas Day with his family, and so he chose to have duty on Christmas Day.

General Krulak said, “That’s the kind of officer that Jim Mattis is.”

Not looking good for Captain Underoos

We can’t know if KellyAnne is speaking for the God-Emperor Ascendant or not, but one would tend to imagine that she is, at the very least, speaking with his approval:

Appointing Mitt Romney as secretary of state would be viewed by many supporters of President-elect Donald Trump as a major betrayal, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Sunday.

“It’s just breathtaking in scope and intensity,” Conway said of the opposition to Romney among Trump supporters.

“Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state,” Conway wrote on Twitter on Thursday, linking to a POLITICO article about opposition to Romney.

“I felt compelled to come forward on behalf of the people who were weighing in,” Conway said of that tweet.

Speaking to correspondent Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Conway went on to say that she, too, had personal concerns with Romney getting the job of top diplomat, and she even took shots at Romney’s run for president in 2012.

“You know, Gov. Romney ran for the same office four years ago and lost spectacularly,” she said. “Mitt Romney lost Michigan by 10 points; Donald Trump just won it. Gov. Romney in the last four years, I mean, has he been around the globe doing something on behalf of the United States of which we’re unaware? Did he go and intervene in Syria, where they’re having a massive humanitarian crisis?” Conway asked. “Has he been helpful to Mr. Netanyahu?”

At this point, I would not expect either Guiliani or Romney to be Secretary of State. They don’t require vetting, so if they were going to be named, they already would have been named.

KellyAnne is hilarious. She followed up that shot with a Frum-slapping chaser:

David Frum @davidfrum
Trump won according to the rules, but if I were his team, I’d go ixnay on “the people have spoken” bit. Reality is just the reverse

 Kellyanne Conway ‏@KellyannePolls
Thx for advice @davidfrum.  Just saw vid of you on CBC Election night saying Trump trying to win “solidly Dem” Michigan was “delusional.”

The new diplomacy

Somehow, I just don’t see Mitt Romney being selected as Secretary of State in this administration. He’s just not the man to go and relieve himself on graves on America’s behalf.

Donald J. TrumpVerified @realDonaldTrump
Fidel Castro is dead!

I am beginning to suspect we’re going to enjoy the God-Emperor’s iron-fisted rule even more than we initially imagined. In other news:

Trump piles pressure on Brussels after inviting eurosceptic Hungary leader to Washington

No Mitt

Forget the apology. The Trump administration should just say no to Captain Underoos:

Aides to Donald Trump have discussed asking former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to publicly apologize for insulting the president-elect in order to pave the way for a nomination to lead the State Department.

A Trump transition aide confirmed to DailyMail.com on Friday that there have been ‘discussions’ inside Trump Tower about the possibility. The source wouldn’t say if Trump himself is aware of those discussions or has given them his blessing.

Romney famously tore into Trump in March, telling a Utah audience that the New York billionaire was ‘a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing members of the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.’

But eight months after the former Massachusetts governor said that ‘dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark’ and mocked his ‘bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics,’ Trump is reportedly considering making him America’s top diplomat.

Considering how the Reagan administration was often led astray by its moderates, the God-Emperor Ascendant’s team should know better than to put any trust in Mitt Romney. While Romney is competent and probably will take orders and do as he’s told, he’s simply not popular with, or trusted by, anyone who isn’t a Mormon or a GOPe figure.

There is simply no significant benefit to a situation where the best case scenario is that he doesn’t stab his boss in the back. Bring in new blood. Surely there is someone else out there with height, good teeth, and executive hair.