Month: July 2016

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

If I treat the question “Is the Trump Campaign for real?” as answered in the affirmative, then the Trump campaign is a staggeringly weird one, and just one day’s worth of material is probably fodder for a dozen blog posts about it’s awfulness. I have simply never encountered such an embarrassment of riches regarding the awfulness of a campaign before. It’s legendary, in a way.

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From nojo at Stinque:

In the week since the Brexit vote, we’ve read a number of analyses about why the Brits — or Little Englanders, to be more specific — chose to secede from the European Union, and what that portends for the world’s current English-speaking empire.

Not to put too fine a point on it: They’re White. And they’re angry.

From there, comparisons with current United States politics are straightforward. We’ll even grant that they’re true. But we find them insufficient.

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger.com:

George W. Bush seriously hurt the image of the United States with other countries (including our best allies). But thankfully, President Barack Obama restored our image among other nations. And currently, the United States enjoys a very favorable view with other nations…

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From Dorian de Wind at The Moderate Voice:

While on July 4, 1776, the thirteen colonies proclaimed their independence from Great Britain, the war to cement their independence had already been fought for a year and would continue for another seven years, claiming the lives of approximately 25,000 Patriots.

Sadly, the War of Independence would be just the first of a score of wars and major conflicts that would follow to maintain the independence, unity and security of the new nation at a cost of more than 1,300,000 patriot lives.

Today, 240 years after that first Independence Day, our patriots are still serving in every corner of the globe and still dying for us.

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From Chad Selweski at Politically Speaking:

With about two weeks to go before the Republican convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump’s continuing inability to mount a serious, nationwide presidential campaign effort makes one wonder if he never expected to get this far.

The reasons why nervous GOP leaders wonder if Trump never planned ahead are fairly basic: Lack of funding, lack of staff, lack of organization and a lack of institutional support as the underlying distaste for Trump among elected Republican officials begins to surface.

The question becomes: Why doesn’t Democratic standardbearer Hillary Clinton have a much larger lead?

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From The Intersection of Madness and Reality:

Donald Trump is racist, and there’s no disputing this fact. As I’ve pointed out, Trump was a racist asshole well before Barack Obama stepped onto the scene. Yes, Trump’s racism predates his alleged hiring of investigators to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Trump’s racism also predates his insults of Latinos, Muslims, and even racist insults hurled at Elizabeth Warren. Again, Donald Trump is racist – and, he can’t help himself.

However, I’ve been questioning whether Trump’s attacks on Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage by referring to her as “Pocahontas,” as another example of his racism.

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• The Big Empty watches George Will walk away from the Republican Party, renouncing membership, changing registration, making a public announcement, and reflects on how poor Mr. Will helped create the problem he deplores.
   
• Vincent at A wayfarer’s notes does not know whether the vote to leave the European Union was wise, suggesting it was largely unknowable because of a lack of reliable non-biased propaganda. He does celebrate that the vote could happen at all, a reflection of the value of democracy. He seems to be saying that part of the price of freedom is the ability to exercise bad judgment.
   
• Nothing succeeds like success, right? Determination, the willingness to knock down and destroy any obstacle, gets a portion of our weekly worship. Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post takes a different view as the Koch brothers apply that ethic to knocking down and destroying the primary obstacle to profits. That chief obstacle being democracy itself.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors notices Sarah Palin asking hard questions about UN trucks spotted going through Virginia. So tengrain investigates by – you know – reading, and comes up with answers.
   
• nojo at Stinque examines the frustrating institutional ritual of ceremonial post-shooting grief in Congress – everybody bows heads for a moment of silence – then reviews the John Lewis led sit-in. A little hope can go a long way.
   
• At Crooks and Liars, Frances Langum assures conservatives that the blog’s endorsement earlier in the year of Mitt Romney for President – replacing Donald Trump – was an April Fool’s joke. Republicans can stop trying to make the joke real.
   
• Let’s be clear. James Wigderson is pretty much always a superb writer supporting, as he does, conservative causes. When he strays from politics to entertainment, he becomes more entertaining than the entertainment itself. For example, his review of Hamlet and the drama surrounding the filming of it.
   
• Jerry Wolfe at Dog Bless Us One And All goes to the movies and discovers he really doesn’t like the sequal to one sci-fi flick about aliens re-invading the earth. When will they ever learn?
   

Pre-Autopsy – Why the Republican Party is Crashing

The Republican Party plays Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: drowning “as one incapable of her own distress.”

The Party is in a death spiral. Like a moth, it circles the flame, helpless, unable to stop itself.

Transcript

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From Green Eagle:
June 24 2016

Just a couple of thoughts about Brexit, which I haven’t really paid much attention to, despite having lived in England when I was a graduate student at Cambridge:

First of all, as usual, to American commenters, it’s all about us, ranging from some guys on right wing websites blaming the whole thing on Obama (naturally,) to the standard mainstream take that, just like with Trump, it’s about a bunch of angry working class white people who hate minorities in their country. This, of course, ignores another, and potentially much more damaging issue, “austerity.”

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From Marc McDonald at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com:
June 24 2016

British voters’ decision to leave the European Union will have an enormous impact on the global economy for years to come. I expect there will be a number of losers as a result. I think Britain eventually will rue the day it decided to leave the EU. And I think the U.S. will also suffer as a result of this momentous vote.

But in the long run, the biggest loser is the entire system of Anglo-American capitalism.

I always thought that the British got a much better deal than they ever fully realized from the EU. The fact is, a lot of the hysterical scare stories about the EU (often peddled in the Tory-leaning tabloid media) were often exaggerated, or downright false. What many ordinary Britons often failed to grasp was that Britain actually got a pretty deal from the EU over the years.

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