Teach Your Children Well

I was a dj on my college radio station, WUSB. I was also the chairman of the Student Activities Board and put on all these great concerts by bands like the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Dead, the Airplane, the Byrds, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, The Four Tops, Ravi Shankar, Muddy Waters, Love...

I got tapes in the mail... like everyday. In 1969 I was getting ready to cut out and go the Europe before officially graduating. I had heard this new group's first song, "Marrakech Express," and I remember it because I was planning to go there. But I wasn't moved enough by it to ask the band to play, even though I was a big fan of David Crosby from when he was in the Byrds doing songs like 8 Miles High-- which he definately was when the band arrived 2 hours late for a concert. But Crosby, Stills & Nash... eh, I thought.

"Teach Your Children" was on their next album, the first with Neil Young, Déjà Vu. It came out in May of 1970. I had already left Europe (and left Marrakech) and was driving across Asia towards Afghanistan singing...

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by

Someone had sent me an advance tape. It spoke to me... big time. After all, I was on the road, driving through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal... I had a code to live by too. I sang along to that song every day. And it was a hit in my van, even though it wasn't out yet.

Sunday I heard former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show talking about what CSN&Y had been singing about almost 4 decades ago:

"I tell many stories about the kids I talk to and how they're growing up learning not to hate rather than learning to hate. So what we have to do is focus on our young people. Some of the old folks... if that's the way they feel, that's the way they feel; they're not going to change. But we' have to make sure that we're teaching all of our children, in schools, in the home, everywhere, that it is not right to hate in this country. This is a country of love. This is a country of kindness. This is a country that we reach out to each other and we reach out to the rest of the world."

Yes, he's aware of the current regime and who runs it. That's the point of that hippy speech he just made. Watch as he talks about the constitutional "We the people" rather than Trump's narrow, self-serving "Me the president." (Up top.) But is there any reason to believe that Colin Powell's plea to teach the children to love instead of to hate is going to work any better now than it did when Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sang it in 1970? Trump has the bully pulpit and what the children are hearing today is, I'm afraid, hate, hate, hate. That's what sits in the White House, after millions and millions of our fellow countrymen voted for him-- the ones whose parents, apparently never took "Teach Your Children" all that seriously, if they even heard it at all.

Both Parties... Are Fumbling Around In The Dark Looking For An Identity

Fareed Zakaria had GOP establishment NY Times columnist David Brooks on his CNN show Sunday to talk about Señor Trumpanzee’s role within the conservative movement. I don’t know who watches Zakaria’s show-- no one I know-- but I bet there was a lot of teeth gnashing from Republicans when Zakaria opened the segment by setting up a comparison between Saint Ronnie and Trumpanzee. “Where does conservatism go from here? Where does the Republican Party go from here?… Is there a new conservatism developing?”

Brooks said he doesn’t think so-- “not in this administration.” In his universe Democrats want to use government to enhance equality and Republicans want to use government to enhance freedom. Most Republicans who want to use government to enhance freedom are thinking about the freedom of the rich and powerful to lord over the rest of us-- it’s like the freedom for everyone to have access to really expensive healthcare… if they have the money to afford it. But what he doesn’t mention is that the Grifter First Family wants to use government to enhance to enhance its own wealth, pure and simple. Is the Russian brand of kleptocracy the new conservatism? Brooks, I’d bet, hopes not.

Trump, Brooks says, opened a new debate-- populism vs statism-- but hasn’t delivered on the promises of his campaign “because there’s not a lot of Trumpians in the world of policy. So he hasn’t exactly helped the people who got him into office. He staffed his administration-- to the extent it is staffed-- with people who basically believed in the Reagan bargain of 1984… cut tax rates, reducegovernmoent regulation… I think he opened the door too a new kind of conservatism but has not fulfilled it. That’s for somebody in the future.” [This vicious little jerk?]

So what about Republican politicians? Do the party’s elected officials want to swing in a more populist direction? Trump, he says, punctured the worn out Reaganism balloon and now conservatives have nothing; they’re in a period of chaos, Trump’s preferred milieu. He sees various paradigms competing within the Republican Party for dominance-- libertarianism, Buchanan-like paleo-conservatism… But, he said, “if I had to bet, I would like an Alexander Hamilton open trade, lot of immigration, lot of economic dynamism… When I look at the polls, there aren’t a lot of people who want what I want. The Steve Bannons of the world, that’s where a lot of the people are; they’re older, they’re economically disadvantaged; they want a national conservatism that will protect them.”

Really? They want-- or will accept-- a snake oil salesman and kleptocrat like Trump, rather than a sensible populist like Bernie? I bet there were an awful lot of Trump voters at Bernie’s Sunday night rally in Charleston, cheering wildly when he called for Medicare-For-All, not exactly a conservative policy goal-- although it is certainly one that “will protect them.” There were over 2,000 in the Charleston Municipal Auditorium for his Protect Our Health Care Rally. Remember, Bernie pulverized Clinton in the West Virginia primary-- 123,860 (51.4%) to 86,354 (35.8%) but Wassermann Schultz had fixed the system so in the end, Bernie got 19 delegates and Clinton got 18. Bernie won every county in the state-- even the counties considered parti of the DC suburbs-- although Kanawha (Charleston) was close-- 48.0% to 45.0%. Bernie and Trump had virtually the same number of votes in Kanawha too.

If the Democratic Party was united, the ideological battlelines would be much clearer, with the Democrats behind a set of policies wildly popular among the American people while the Republicans argued about the benefits of a society with no rules and regulations versus a fascist state. Instead… the conservatives of “moderate” Republicans is competing for dominance of the Democratic Party under the guise of New Dems and Blue Dogs, “pragmatism” and-- the same kind of kleptocratic tendencies run wild under Trump. Last week, Lee Fang, writing for The Intercept helped focus attention on this unfortunate tendency with the Democratic Party elite-- Prominent Democratic Fundraisers Realign to Lobby For Trump’s Agenda. These are the people who call the shots at the DNC and who tell Pelosi and Schumer what’s to be done and not done. Fang points out that many Hillary backers who expected too be part of her administration are now “cashing in as lobbyists-- by working to advance Trump’s agenda.”

This is the Wassermann Schultz, Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Chuck Schumer and Pelosi crowd:

Lobbying records show that some Democratic fundraisers, who raised record amounts of campaign cash for Clinton, are now retained by top telecom interests to help repeal the strong net neutrality protections established during the Obama administration.

Others are working on behalf of for-profit prisons on detention issues, while others still are paid to help corporate interests pushing alongside Trump to weaken financial regulations. At least one prominent Clinton backer is working for a health insurance company on a provision that was included in the House Republican bill to gut the Affordable Care Act.

While Republican lobbyists are more in demand, liberal lobbyists are doing brisk business that has them reaching out to fellow Democrats to endorse-- or at least tamp down vocal opposition to-- Trump agenda items.

“These cases are clear, disturbing examples of the gulf between the interests of many of the Democratic Party’s big-money donors and those of the party’s progressive base and America’s working families,” said Kai Newkirk, co-founder of Democracy Spring, a progressive coalition.

Remember when Hillary mumbled something about being part of the resistance?

A well-known lobbyist who runs in powerful Democratic circles, Heather Podesta, volunteered for Clinton during the New Hampshire primaries. She collected at least $407,000 for the campaign. In recent months, Podesta has tweeted from the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference, an event billed as a platform for the “Resist movement,” and has continued to give cash to congressional Democrats.

Podesta, however, whose New Years Resolution was to “Make Lobbying Great Again,” has adapted to Republican rule by rebranding her lobbying firm from “Heather Podesta + Partners” to “Invariant,” a name change to reflect “an expanding bipartisan team” with ties to the Trump administration.

Records show Podesta has lobbied this year on behalf of financial management and insurance giants Prudential and New York Life on the fiduciary rule, the regulation fought for by the Obama administration that was designed to require financial planning companies to act in the best interests of their clients. Early in his administration, in a decision cheered by the industry, Trump ordered a delay in the implementation of the rule.

Other Democratic lobbyists have found that their corporate clients’ interests align with the Trump administration. Some, like Podesta, are taking financial planning industry cash to work on the fiduciary rule.

Steve Elmendorf, a former senior advisor to Clinton’s 2008 run, maintained a high-profile role with Clinton’s 2016 run, raising $341,000 for the campaign. He is now one of the most prominent corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Records show that Elmendorf, too, lobbied on the fiduciary rule. His client, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a trade group for firms like Prudential, has made delaying the rule a major goal and celebrated Trump’s move to delay implementation.

UnitedHealth, the health insurance giant, is also an Elmendorf client. Filings made to ethics officials on Capitol Hill reveal that Elmendorf is helping UnitedHealth work on issues related to the Affordable Care Act, including the health insurance industry tax, a provision of the ACA that UnitedHealth has made clear it seeks to repeal or delay. Congressional Republicans have said that, if they are successful with their overhaul of the law, the tax will be gone.

A former Democratic National Committee fundraiser from Bill Clinton’s days as president, Richard Sullivan, served as a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s campaign last year. He bundled at least $345,218 for the campaign, according to Federal Elections Commission records. Sullivan is also registered lobbyist for the public relations and lobby firm Capitol Counsel, where he works on behalf of private prison giant Geo Group to convince lawmakers of the “benefits of public-private partnerships in the delivery of secure residential care in correctional and detention facilities.”

The Florida-based Geo Group is particularly close to the Trump administration; it was one of the few firms to donate corporate money to a Trump SuperPAC during the election, finance the inauguration, and openly celebrate Trump’s decision to vastly expand the detention and removal of undocumented immigrants. The firm was among the first private companies to win a contract from the Trump administration for a federal immigrant detention center, a deal worth $110 million.

Lobbyists often use their ability to bundle cash for candidates and party organs as a way of win an audience with lawmakers on behalf of their clients. As The Intercept has reported, lobbyists for Goldman Sachs and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the trade group, raised big money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, using their sway to pressure the party to adopt policies favorable to their industries and to abandon economic populist messaging that targeted the financial sector.

Trump’s election has been called a “bonanza” for Washington lobbyists, as K Street seeks to enrich itself by harnessing the administration’s zeal for rewarding corporate allies. For many Democratic insiders, there is fortune to made even in electoral defeat.

The Intercept spoke to several progressive activists who expressed outrage that leading Democratic Party officials are now advancing the Trump agenda, but were reluctant to comment on the record, for fear of angering powerful Democrats. But a few activists, like Democracy Sping’s Newkirk, decided to speak on the record.

Becky Bond, an activist and former Bernie Sanders adviser who also spoke out, said, “When Democratic insiders team up with Comcast and the private prison industry, they make it pretty difficult to see how the party can rebuild relationships with the voters it needs to bring back into the fold.”

“Destroying the internet and maximizing the profitability of mass incarceration,” she added, “is not what I would call a winning strategy for Democrats who want to take back power in 2018.”

A friend of mine is running a congressional campaign for a progressive candidate and he told me this morning that he’s about to get an endorsement from Howard Dean. I told him to think that through carefully before making a big deal of it. Today, Dean is known to many activists as just another Clinton shill who makes a living as a lobbyist for drug manufacturers and the old Howard Dean who inspired so many people is now just an historical monument unrelated in many people’s minds to the guy running around today being paid to push an ugly and despised agenda.

What Would A Trumpist Foreign Policy Be Like? No One Really Knows... But There Are Some Unfortunate Clues

Trump keeps going on TV and claiming that foreign policy experts have given his maiden foreign policy speech high grades. As with most of what Trump says, that isn't true. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Trump is a guy who doesn't understand the difference between a business negotiation and a negotiation with sovereign powers (watch the video of him up top on ABC's This Week yesterday. "One of the things that worries me," said Gates, "is that he doesn't appear to listen to people. He believes he has all the answers. That he's the smartest man in the room. I've worked with different presidents. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama. One thing they all had in common was a willingness to listen to people who had experience and then make their own independent judgments... I think [foreign leaders have] spoken for themselves. Many have said publicly, how worried they are about the possibility of Mr. Trump becoming president. His unpredictability. His lack of understanding of the complexity of international affairs. His threats. His claims that he's going to make other countries do things when, in fact, the president of the United States does not have the power to make them do things. So, I think-- I think a lot of leaders around the world, both among our friends and potential adversaries, are quite concerned."

Conservative pundits pointed out that the speech was "incoherent and shallow" and "filled with internal contradictions, falsehoods and genuinely crazy assertions." But Ryan Lizza noted that the speech "was hardly a break with current conservative thinking about foreign policy. Anyone who has listened to conservative talk radio or read prominent conservative columnists, such as Charles Krauthammer, condemn President Obama’s foreign policy as weak and feckless would recognize Trump’s speech as a standard list of grievances and proposals on the right. On foreign policy, just as he has done on immigration and crime and race, Trump has been paying attention to the base of the Republican Party. He has simply distilled the base’s grievances into something like a platform." Nonetheless, Krauthammer found it a jumble that offered no clarity.

Fareed Zakaria demolished the speech and called it an embarrasment-- populist pandering masquerading as a strategy... "anti-immigrant and nativist... largely isolationist but if and when engaged abroad militaristic and unilateral. In trade it is protectionist and on all matters deeply suspicious of international alliances and global conventions."

Writing for the Brookings Institute, Thomas Wright found the speech "contradictory in parts and repeated standard Republican criticisms of President Obama, but there was a clear message that is consistent with what Trump has said before. It was not the shift in substance that some predicted. There were several notable takeaways, most of which confirmed what we already knew.

1. Trump will end U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia

2. Trump has an isolationist mindset

3. Trump wants to do a deal with Russia and China

4. Trump’s audience was the Republican political establishment, not its foreign policy elite

5. Trump views foreign policy very personally

"Nothing in this speech will ease widespread international concern at Trump’s foreign policy," he concluded. "If anything, concerns will grow as Trump demonstrates an ability to present an isolationist 'America First' vision as a more mainstream realist foreign policy. We are headed for an election on fundamental questions of America’s role in the world."

Much of what he said, he just pulled out of his ass-- or off the Hate Talk Radio airwaves. USAToday fact-checked his assertions and found many of them just plain false.

In his foreign policy speech, Donald Trump claimed that “now ISIS is making millions and millions of dollars a week selling Libya oil.” But an expert on Libya’s oil operations told us there’s no evidence that the Islamic State is producing or selling oil out of that country.

Trump also repeated false and misleading claims that we have vetted before on the NAFTA pact, Iraq War and the U.S. trade deficit:

• Trump said NAFTA “literally emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs.” Actually, economic studies say NAFTA’s impact on U.S. jobs has been small.

• Trump claimed he was “totally against” the Iraq War and warned “that it would destabilize the Middle East.” There is no public record of him being against the war before it started.

• Trump said President Obama “crippled us” with “a huge trade deficit.” Actually, the trade deficit has gone down under Obama.

Trump also criticized Hillary Clinton’s response to the Benghazi attacks on Sept. 11, 2012. We address one of the Benghazi claims below, and in a separate article-- “Trump on Clinton’s ‘3 a.m. Call’”-- we write about Trump’s claim that Clinton failed to take charge during the Benghazi attacks, and instead “decided to go home and sleep.” The evidence shows Clinton was actively involved in responding to the attacks, and subsequent investigations concluded the government response was appropriate.

Hisham Melhem, one of the most respected Middle Eastern journalists based in America is the Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya and yesterday warned his readers what they should expect were Trump to get into the White House, accurately dubbing the speech "a toxic brew of distrust, ignorance and isolationism" and pointing out that "the America that Trump wants to revive is a power that is unto itself, unwilling to be magnanimous, or benevolent, while at the same time serves and protects its interests as a sovereign nation."

It was a strange sight to be marveled at and remembered in amazement. Donald Trump addressing the foreign policy establishment in Washington, reading from a prepared but meandering speech, obviously written by a committee of advisors. The man who mocked President Obama for delivering his speeches by reading them with the help of a teleprompter, stood behind a teleprompter, and was ill at ease reading for 40 minutes without wildly gesticulating, or making exaggerated poses, and refraining from hurling insults at large groups of people.

The man who personifies anti-intellectualism was talking to the scholars, journalists, and pundits he usually revels in denigrating them. This was part of a long held tradition in presidential campaigns; every candidate has to deliver a ‘major’ foreign policy address to establish his knowledge of world affairs and his understanding of the complex national security challenges he is likely to face as a president. But the presidential veneer did not hide the real Donald Trump who gave us an incoherent collage of inconsistencies, superficial slogans, dangerous and simplistic solutions to complex issues, misstatements, and downright falsehoods.

The speech betrayed a shocking ignorance of the intricacies of the international system that the U.S created after WWII and the new European dynamics that emerged after the end of the Cold War. In Trump’s world, globalization is seen only as a negative force, and not as the engine of growth that the US ushered in, and mega deals can be struck with Russia and China regardless of their belligerent behavior, and alliances should be based solely on transactional and not value-based considerations, and autocratic regimes can be tolerated if they are good business partners, regardless of what they do to their citizens. He naively believes that the US has already surrendered to the ‘false song of globalism’, as if globalization could have been conceived without America at its core.

Trump chastised America’s allies supposedly because they are not paying enough for American protection, while he showed deference to America’s adversaries. Trump probably did not know that the major theme of his speech ‘America First’ is a slogan with an ominous history. In the 1930’s and early 1940’s, ‘America First’ was the name of an isolationist movement that did not want to help England and the other European countries fighting Nazism and Fascism.

Pity these strange American times, when the presumptive nominee of a major political party after delivering such a hollow speech, is given a cover of legitimacy by the likes of Republican senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who described the speech as ‘very thoughtful’ and praised the candidate for 'challenging the foreign policy establishment.’ Jacob Heilbrunn the editor of the National Interest Magazine which hosted Trump extolled the candidate because he ‘was quite disciplined’ and ‘more retrained’.

Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab version of CNN based in Dubai but broadcasting to millions of people across the Arab world, it's top markets being Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Israel, Bahrain and Qatar.

Will Kasich Try To Steal The Ability To Steal The GOP Nomination From Paul Ryan? Multi-Dimensional GOP Riots?

Do you remember the crackpot-- "I'm not a witch"-- teabagger Christine O'Donnell from Delaware? She has no illusions about stopping Trump but indicated to CNN's Brooke Baldwin that the Democrats' conservative establishment pick might be a better option than Trump. "Clinton, if you look at some of her policies, she's a moderate. She's not a far-left liberal... I don't know what I would do if Trump became the nominee... He did nothing to liberate the middle class from political correctness until he decided to run for president. He's not actually doing anything except inciting riots."

There's a growing list of Republicans who have said they will never vote for Trump in the general-- but very few of them are GOP elected officials, other than a few who aren't running for reelection, like Richard Hanna (NY), Reid Ribble (WI) and Scott Rigell (VA), all of whom announced they'd never vote for Trump and that they're retiring from Congress. The only ones I've found who are running for reelection and may find themselves on a ticket with Don Trump are Justin Amash (MI), Mark Sanford (SC), Ben Sasse (NE), Bob Dold (IL) and Carlos Curbelo (FL). That's 5... + Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. Another governor, Florida crook Rick Scott, is now urging Republicans to unite behind Trump.

In fact, conventional wisdom is starting to form around the idea that-- sure enough-- Republicans are falling in line. "The Republican surrender has begun," wrote Fareed Zakaria this week. Having described Donald Trump as an unacceptable, unconservative, dangerous demagogue, the party establishment appears to be making its peace with the man who keeps winning primaries. The Wall Street Journal editorial page argued vociferously against Trump for months, pointing out that he is a huckster and a catastrophe, warning that 'if Donald Trump becomes the voice of conservatives, conservatism will implode along with him.' Yet this week, it ended a lead editorial urging Republicans to 'continue to see if Mr. Trump can begin to act like a President . . . and above all to decide who can prevent another progressive-left Presidency.'" Forget that Trump's reaction was to start throwing his own feces at them from his crib. Even Rove has lightened up on the public Trump-loathing lately. Will Glenn Beck and David Brooks be the last Republicans standing against Don Trump in the end? "Voters," Brooks wrote, "are rarely wise but are usually sensible. They understand their own problems. And so deference is generally paid to the candidate who wins." But not this time! He asks "Should deference be paid to this victor? Should we bow down to the judgment of these voters?... Trump voters are a coalition of the dispossessed. They have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, lost dreams. The American system is not working for them, so naturally they are looking for something else." (He doesn't call them Life's Losers but...)

And yet reality is reality.

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.

Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.

This week, the Politico reporters Daniel Lippman, Darren Samuelsohn and Isaac Arnsdorf fact-checked 4.6 hours of Trump speeches and press conferences. They found more than five dozen untrue statements, or one every five minutes.

“His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources,” they wrote.

He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12. He surrounds himself with sycophants. “You can always tell when the king is here,” Trump’s butler told Jason Horowitz in a recent Times profile. He brags incessantly about his alleged prowess, like how far he can hit a golf ball. “Do I hit it long? Is Trump strong?” he asks.

In some rare cases, political victors do not deserve our respect. George Wallace won elections, but to endorse those outcomes would be a moral failure.

And so it is with Trump.

History is a long record of men like him temporarily rising, stretching back to biblical times. Psalm 73 describes them: “Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence... They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.”

And yet their success is fragile: “Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly they are destroyed.”

The psalmist reminds us that the proper thing to do in the face of demagogy is to go the other way — to make an extra effort to put on decency, graciousness, patience and humility, to seek a purity of heart that is stable and everlasting.

The Republicans who coalesce around Trump are making a political error. They are selling their integrity for a candidate who will probably lose. About 60 percent of Americans disapprove of him, and that number has been steady since he began his campaign.

Worse, there are certain standards more important than one year’s election. There are certain codes that if you betray them, you suffer something much worse than a political defeat.

Donald Trump is an affront to basic standards of honesty, virtue and citizenship. He pollutes the atmosphere in which our children are raised. He has already shredded the unspoken rules of political civility that make conversation possible. In his savage regime, public life is just a dog-eat-dog war of all against all.

As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government. He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving and deceiving demagogue they feared.

Trump’s supporters deserve respect. They are left out of this economy. But Trump himself? No, not Trump, not ever.

Yes, yes, David Brooks is an inherently intellectually dishonest man but... he has a role to play in preparing the ground for the rise of the great reluctant compromise candidate to save the GOP, Paul Ryan. Kasich may be flipping out over it-- and Cruz may be planning a riot of his own-- but Ryan is the one the establishment is behind. Ryan secretly supped at Daniel Boulud's restaurant inside the Brazilian Court hotel with Paul Singer, Todd Ricketts and the other Republican moneybags financing the Our Principles PAC ads against Trump in Palm Beach Thursday night. Other GOP candidates taking part in the 2 day secret anti-Trumpfest in Palm Beach included GOP establishment candidates for the Senate, Joe Heck (NV) and Todd Young (IN).

The National Review is being less secretive about what to do about Don Trump: Steal the nomination, David Harsanyi, author of The People Have Spoken (and They Are Wrong): The Case Against Democracy, demanded Friday. "No team-building exercise is going to fix the 2016 iteration of the Republican party," he wrote. "There is only going to be a crackup, no matter who captures the nomination. If that’s true, and if it means one side has to prevail, why not save your party from a hostile takeover that could potentially cost it both the Senate and the House?"

The key would be denying Trump the 1,237 delegates necessary to secure the nomination. Cruz (maybe with Governor John Kasich) could still pull together the requisite number of delegates to block Trump from winning before the convention.

Voters don’t decide the nominations; delegates do-- preferably in smoke-filled rooms where rational decisions about the future of a party can be hashed out. The Republican party is not a direct democracy. It crafts its own rules, and it can change them. Here are questions that Republican delegates should be asking themselves: Is it worth upsetting a bunch of angry, marginally conservative voters who often have a minor fidelity to the doctrines of your party? Or are you prepared to put your political infrastructure and full weight behind a cartoonish George Wallace–like character who’ll probably inflict more damage than you could ever hope to repair?

RNC chairman Reince Priebus says that he expects every GOP presidential candidate to uphold a pledge to support the eventual nominee. Considering what we heard in Senator Marco Rubio’s concession speech, I find this difficult to believe. At best, Priebus is going to have a bunch of politicians tiptoeing around Trump in tacit nonsupport. And if enough big-name Republicans end up supporting Trump, it only accentuates the need for a new party.

An ABC exit poll-- with all the usual caveats about the unreliability of exit polls-- said that six in ten non-Trump-supporters say they would “seriously consider a third party if he became the GOP’s nominee.” The more disgust his big-government positioning and ugly rhetoric generate, the higher that number rises. And there are a number of rational reasons to support such a run.

For starters, Trump supporters are already very angry about everything. It’s not as if they could be any angrier with the establishment. Once Trump is gone (and he’ll leave with no coherent movement), these voters will either have to come back and look for alternative candidates with compelling messages, or leave the party altogether.

In the short run, a third-party candidate might insulate down-ballot candidates from Trumpism. You do remember Todd Akin, I’m sure? Imagine a candidate being ceaselessly asked to comment on the various impulsive and unsavory positions that the presidential nominee has taken. For example, “Do you agree with the GOP nominee that children of terrorists should be executed?”

Offering a conservative alternative-- whether it be Cruz, Senator Ben Sasse, or whoever-- would allow candidates to endorse someone who jibed more faithfully with their beliefs. This could shield them somewhat from this dynamic.

A third party would also help sink Trump and elect Hillary Clinton. Electing a weakened and corrupt Democrat that Republicans would unite against in Congress is a far better reality than allowing a charlatan to hollow out a party from within.

It is an utter disaster, not only for Republicans, but for the entire nation, to have one functioning political party. Despite some wishful thinking on the left, conservatives have often held their own in Congress these past eight years. Supporting gridlock is a conservative position, even if it’s not ideal. In fact, GOP voters would be better off thinking about Washington, D.C., as a collection of institutions, with the legislative branch being the more realistic center of conservative power.

Earlier this week, Rubio (the most hated man from the establishment since Jeb Bush helmed the ship) argued that conservatives who back Trump will one day ask themselves, “My God, what have we done?” This gives politicians such as Governor Chris Christie far too much credit for introspection. But for those who still care about the underlying principles of their party, it probably still matters. And it’s important to remember that the primary-process rules are neither chiseled into stone on Mount Sinai nor part of the Constitution.

Exciting times. Remember, Ryan was instrumental in getting guns banned from the Cleveland convention in July. Only you can help save America from these sociopaths:

It's tough to talk sensibly about the situation in Egypt, but it's a snap to talk nonsense

At least I don't kid myself that my opinion of Nobel peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei's suitability as a possible leader for Egypt is either here or there.

by Ken

Egypt is another of those situations I've been keeping my head down on, for the simple reason that I understand that the situation is way too complicated for my understanding, and also far too little under our control anyway. Do I need to note how narrowly such scruples are shared?

Nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak. Now more than ever, we need strength and sound of mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And we do not have all of that information yet.

This is crass imbecility. Oh, that and the very cheapest form of political theater. The woman knows nothing about Egypt, has nothing to contribute to any discussion of the situation there, but by God she sees an opportunity for yet another cretinous broadside against the president.

Now I don't doubt the president knows more than he's let on publicly about the most likely scenarios for the next government of Egypt, but of course there's not much he can say publicly: (a) because we have so little power to influence the outcome, (b) anything we do publicly is likely to produce the opposite effect, and (c) I doubt that he's prepared to make a public statement as to how far the U.S. is prepared to go to perpetuate the present military dictatorship.

And make no mistake, a military dictatorship is what Egypt has been for decades, and the Egyptian military has been tightening the screws. (Not, though, that the military is a monolithic force, as that lost link I mentioned sketched.)

I certainly don't claim to be an expert, which is why I've kept my mouth shut, and while the following deals with only one of the "player" elements I alluded to above, it's so important that it deserves notice. This is Fareed Zakaria in his WaPo column yesterday, "Egypt's real parallel to Iran's revolution":

Egypt is not a personality-based regime, centered on Mubarak, despite reports of his wealth and efforts to establish his son as his successor. Since the officers' coup in 1952, Egypt has been a dictatorship of, by and for the military. The few presidents since then have emerged from the officer corps; the armed forces have huge budgets and total independence, and are deeply involved in every aspect of society, including owning vast tracts of land and hundreds of companies.

Right now, the military is consolidating its power. Mubarak's efforts since 2004 to bring civilians and business leaders into the cabinet have been reversed over the past week - in fact, the businessmen have been turned into scapegoats, sacrificed so that the generals can continue to rule. The three people running Egypt - the vice president, prime minister and defense chief - come from the army. Half of the cabinet are military men, and about 80 percent of the powerful governors are drawn from the armed forces. The military seems to have decided to sacrifice Mubarak but is trying to manage the process of change, to ensure that it remains all-powerful. Egypt, remember, is still ruled by martial law and military courts.

Now I don't mean to minimize the doleful role Mubarak has played at the top of this dreadful regime since he slid into place following the assassination of the previous military dictator, Anwar Sadat. I think it would be especially lovely if some way were found to shake that $70 billion or however much it is that his family has stolen from their country. But Mubarak himself seems hardly an issue anymore. The question is: Can the military retain its control?

Of course much of the American Right, unlike Princess Sarah, who's still waiting for information to strike her (though she does insist that we shouldn't "stand for" a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood, about which, like everything else, she knows nothing -- and of course nobody is imagining the Brotherhood commanding enough support to wind up somehow in control of the government), has made up its mind. Those great champions of international "democracy" and "freedom" in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are all for . . . propping up the military dictatorship in Egypt.

Realistically -- though I don't think this is the information the princess is waiting to hear -- the overwhelming likelihood is that we're not going to like whatever government replaces the present one, the likely question being just how much we're going to hate it, though the reality is that, unless we're really prepared to invest heavily in propping up the military dictatorship, we have next to no influence over what form that next government will take.

For once where a Middle Eastern country is concerned, we actually do have leverage, because of the amount of money we pour into Egypt, to exert some pressure on the present government to do something. But what that something is? Have we really learned nothing from out decades' worth of misadventures in the Muslim Middle East? (Answer: I wouldn't be at all surprised.)

For example, while I find the prospect of Mohamed ElBaradei as Egyptian leader, distinctly intriguing, I have no reason to believe that he commands any sizable support among the Egyptian people, or for that matter that he would be effective at dealing with the country's large problems. Far more important, though, my feelings about him are totally irrelevant to the ones that matter, which is to say those of the various political, social, and religious factions within the country.

And remember, the American Right hates ElBaradei almost as much as it hates the Muslim Brotherhood -- for having done his job as the U.N.'s nuclear-weapons-inspection chief, which meant that (a) he didn't knuckle under to the we're-agoin'-ta-war plans of the Bush regime warmongers, and (b) he was right about Iraqi WMDs. Logically, the right-wing doodyheads should be on their knees apologizing to him for having been so wrong, but logic hardly ever comes into play in right-wing behavior. So rather than own up to their own combination of stupidity, dishonesty, and outright corruption, they vilify the guy who was honest, courageous, and (worst of all) right -- the [expletive deleted] son of a bitch. You'd think the Righties would be used to being proved wrong by now, since they're always wrong. Nevertheless, their wrath against the people who prove it only grows wilder.

I think the final paragraph of Fareed Zakaria's above-cited piece is worth attending:

It's worth remembering what has led to the rise of Islamic extremism and anti-American rage in the Middle East. Arabs see Washington as having supported brutal dictatorships that suppress their people. They believe that it ignored this suppression as long as the regimes toed the line on American foreign policy. If Washington is now perceived as brokering a deal that keeps a military dictatorship in power in Egypt, de jure or de facto, the result will be deep disappointment and frustration on the streets of Cairo. Over time, it will make opposition to the regime and to the United States more hard-line, more religious and more violent. That might be the real parallel to the forces that led to the Iranian revolution.

I just wish Mr. Zakaria had taken his case the obvious and necessary one step farther in terms of a link between the end of the Shah's regime in Iran and the imminent end of Mubarak's in Egypt. The Shah too was a "valued ally," and given the nature of the U.S. relationship with him, there was clearly potential to influence the way he took his leave of a country that was clearly growing increasingly weary of him, even as he himself was suffering the ravages of age and illness. Of course there doesn't seem to have been any strong faction within U.S. politics thinking ahead to the shape of the post-Shah era in Iran.

As far as I know, the U.S. government quietly allowed and possibly even encouraged the Shah to unleash on his people the absolutely most brutal and repressive regime his amply brutal imagination could conjure up in order to hold onto power as his own powers slipped away. The result was that when the regime finally imploded, there was no imaginable alternative to the radical Shiite clerics. Even though at present there's no force in Egypt remotely comparable to Iran's Shiite clerics, could something along those lines wind up being the lesson of Iran?

You know, when the right-wing doodyheads start trying to draw blood screaming about "who lost Egypt"?

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Bill White Is No Nathan Myhrvold

Each day I get up and go through e-mails, looking for stuff I can delete without opening. One batch of easily deletable e-mails, spam, comes from political campaigns I'm not following and don't care about. And one of those campaigns is that of the conservative Democrat running for governor of Texas, Bill White. I suppose I should have asked his campaign to take me off their list but I never got around to asking them and a few dozen other candidates to stop filling my box up with spam. This morning however, just as I was about to click delete on a Bill White e-mail I glanced at the title, FOX: Bill White opposes cap and trade. Now White is running against one of the most reprehensible men in American politics, Rick Perry, a closet case driven insane by a psychosis so dark and ugly that he would be truly a danger were he to ever get any power. Fortunately, as we found out when George Bush held the job, the governor of Texas holds a largely ceremonial position. I hope Rick Perry loses and I doubt it would make anyone's life any better were Bill White to win. The race isn't on my radar. But Global Warming is. So I opened White's spam. He cites Fox as a validater of the fact that he's nearly as reactionary and out-of-touch as Rick Perry on the whole topic of climate change and energy.

On Friday, Houston's FOX 26 News reported on Rick Perry's lies about Bill White's position on cap and trade. Bill White does not support cap and trade, and Rick Perry just can't seem to tell the truth.

Click here to read the article and watch the news segment.

Perry's false claims about Bill White and cap and trade have been rated "Pants on Fire" lies-- twice-- by the independent fact checking website Politifact.com. But Perry keeps citing a letter Bill White wrote that makes the case for four different energy solutions and gives a warning about cap and trade.

Well, four veterans of the energy and political arena reviewed the letter for FOX 26 and none of them agreed with Perry, reinforcing again the fact that Rick Perry is lying about Bill White's record.

Texans want a governor who shoots straight.

Literally. Oh, there are millions of Texans who are normal, clear-headed Americans... even outside of Austin. Houston is filled with them. So are Dallas and Fort Worth. San Antonio as well. But there are more millions who are batshit crazy, resentful of facts, driven mad by fake religions and so angry at their miserable unfulfilled lives that they take it out on everyone else by voting for people like George Bush and Rick Perry. 4,479,328 of them (55% of voters) pulled the lever or touched the screen for John McCain in 2008.

Here's how the article cited by White's campaign contrasts his energy views with the man he is well aware is a dangerous sociopath, Rick Perry:

Texas sits on a third of U.S. domestic oil supply and produces more than 30 percent of the country's natural gas.

These fossil fuels have come under fire from President Obama's administration, which seeks to reduce global warming by placing a governmental cap on total carbon emissions. The government would then issue a limited amount of pollution credits that could be traded between major energy consumers.

Those who produce so called "clean energy" could earn a huge windfall by selling their unused credits while consumers of fossil fuel would pay dearly for the right to pollute.

Governor Rick Perry calls this 'cap and trade' proposal economically catastrophic for Texas.

"We know that the 'cap and trade' legislation that they are talking about will cost upwards of 300,000 [jobs] in this state," said Gov. Perry to FOX 26 News.

Bill White, Perry's Democratic opponent who has made millions of dollars in the oil patch, says he is also firmly against 'cap and trade.'

"'Cap and trade' would be an enormous windfall for the lawyers and consultants," said former Houston mayor White... "I was fighting against 'cap and trade' before Governor Perry," said White.

When I woke up today the first thing I saw-- even before White's e-mail-- was Fareed Zacharia interviewing Jeffrey Sachs, the man the NY Times has called "the most important economist in the World," first about how to solve the economic mess Bush left us with and then how to get a grip on climate change. The climate change interview included a global warming scientist and an oil industry shill from Cato spouting the same excuses for inaction you hear from everyone on Big Oil's payroll, from Rick Perry to... Bill White.