How Harshly Will Voters Deal With The GOP Because Of Trump?

Yesterday, Joe Scarborough said he thinks Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan need to withdraw their endorsements of Trumpy-the-Clown and tell their members to do likewise. "He's so self consumed, it's just breathtaking... You've got to cut him loose." Watch that video up top of the segment; it's pretty remarkable for a center-right show like Morning Joe. But it isn't just cowardly Republicans like McConnell, Ryan and Marco Rubio who have endorsed Trump and are actively campaigning to elect him, normalizing a candidate who is far from normal by any stretch of anyone's imagination. In fact, it isn't even just Vladimir Putin working against America by pushing Trump, financing him and trying to swing the election towards him. And foreign power who means America harm or who detests democracy, is drawn to Trump.

Neo-fascist leaders workldwide, from Republican/KKK Senate candidate David Duke, who spends most of his time living in right-wing areas of Eastern Europe, to deranged Hungarian xenophobe Viktor Orban and Dutch fascist and Islamophobe Geert Wilders-- who showed up in Cleveland to cheer Trump on and went around the U.S. campaigning for Trump and spreading the fears, the bigotry and the twisted lies that have always been part and parcel of the fascist appeal-- the worldwide National Front is firmly behind Trump and Trumpism. The video up top addresses that as well.

What about in Africa? That would seem to be a strange place for Trump to get any support, right? Nope. Trump himself is very much like some of the most primitive and savage African dictators, as Trevor Noah illustrated on his show some time ago (video below). In fact, one of the very worst and most brutal of the fascist African dictators, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, has pretty much endorsed him.

Chris Coons (D-DE) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) were visiting the southern African country to discuss wildlife trafficking when a request for a meeting with the interior minister turned into a sit down with the president, according to an interview with Politico this week.

According to Coons and Schiff, the discussion turned tense when Mugabe asked why the US insists on sanctioning Zimbabwe. The senators and their delegation listed reasons why the sanctions have remained in place-- the US has sanctioned the country since 2002 after reports of election abuse and human rights violations. Mugabe has held on to power by repressing his rivals as well as the public.

After an awkward silence, Mugabe said, “Once [Trump] is your president, you’ll wish you’d been friendlier to me,” according to Coons’ retelling of the encounter.

It’s unclear why Mugabe thinks Trump would be more sympathetic to him than previous American presidents. The Republican candidate hasn’t made any public statements about how he would approach US-Zimbabwe relations... [other than] that Mugabe senses a kindred spirit.

O HYPOCRISY-- YOUR NAME IS GOP: GASOLINE, TAXES, IRAN, ANTI-GAY BIGOTRY AND ZIMBABWE

I always wondered how Republican voters-- the confused and conned non-millionaire ones-- could imagine that someone like George Bush could solve their most basic problems when he expressed shock when someone informed him at a press conference that gas would soon hit $4/gallon-- this when it was clear that the price was hurtling towards $5/gallon already. I guess he had more important things to deal with, like trying to gin up a war with Iran (which would drive the cost of gas to $10/gallon). Meanwhile, ole King McCole, always eager to reassure the Republican voters that his would be a third George Bush term, drooled at the prospect of provoking Iran into a war... and also admitted he doesn't know what people pay for gas. Testy Mr. Gas Tax Holiday told the Orange County Reporter, "I don’t recall, and frankly I don’t see how it matters."

It does matter. It matters to good hard-working people-- the ones, unlike the McCains, who pay their taxes-- who are being ruined financially by the Bush-McCain-GOP-Blue Dog economic policies that are fine for multimillionaires and terrible for everyone else. It isn't enough to defeat McCain in November; every single Republican and every single Blue Dog defeat will count as a step towards righting the wrongs of the past 7 years.

Meanwhile if Bush's (and Condi's) bellicose statements about Zimbabwe's sham election struck me as the height of hypocrisy, they made me realize that politicians will say and do anything if they think voters aren't smart enough to see through them. Bush's and Condi's declaration that President Mugabe's "reelection" in Zimbabwe undermined democracy in the eyes of the international community was perfectly true, but didn't take into account that Bush's election and reelection were viewed-- and are still viewed-- very similarly by the whole world outside of the Confederacy and Utah. It's as absurd as if Larry Craig and David Diapers Vitter got together to sponsor a Marriage Protection Amendment.


UPDATE: AND THEN THERE IS McCAIN ONLY SPECIAL LITTLE TRICK

Rafael Noboa doesn't think that his active duty service in the military, where he saw combat, qualifies him to lead the country. Nor does he think McCain's military service qualifies him. Most of McCain's military service involved fucking up everything he touched, crashing planes because he refused to follow instructions, and suffering during a 5 year stint in prison where he says he was tortured. But I wouldn't even recommend him for a job as a warden since he hasn't learned the most basic lessons that have caused mankind to outlaw torture. McCain makes a lot of self-righteous noise about it-- part of his grotesque shtick of "Look at this gaping wound I still have from serving the nation while you didn't; look, look, look-- but in the end, he facilitated a policy that most international law scholars believe could lead Bush and Cheney and others in their regime to be charged with war crimes.

McCain is known for three things, and three things only:

1. His role in the Keating Five Scandal, which may have led to
2. His role in fashioning a weak campaign finance reform package, and
3. Being shot down and consequently, spending five years as a prisoner of war.

Look, let’s accept, for argument’s sake, that the Vietnam War started in earnest in 1965, and essentially ended in 1973. That’s eight years. McCain was shot down in 1967, taken prisoner, and wasn’t released until 1972.

McCain suffered greatly at the hands of the enemy, that’s beyond question. I respect what he went through over there, even if he doesn’t. His combat experience, however, was fundamentally different from that of Wes Clark, or mine, or my uncle’s, for that matter.

There’s a further reason why Wes Clark or me or many other veterans don’t really talk about combat — it’s because we have other things to talk about! Essentially, we bring our game to the field, and leave everything on it.

McCain, on the other hand, has…no…game. None. Zip. In other words, Mad Jack is a punk, and he knows it! He knows it!

All he does is hint at his suffering, with a wink and a nod, and because regular folks don’t know how to deal with that when faced with it (trust me, they don’t, and that’s OK, as it goes), they give him a pass-- and they’ve been doing it for the last four decades.

Well, it all ends now. It starts with Wes Clark, continues with me, and there will be others, some louder than others. I refuse to sanctify or venerate some service more than others.

And Rafael isn't even mentioning that McCain has done all in his power to suppress his officer fitness reports so that when he uses the myth of his supposedly inspiring military leadership, no one can read the record of incompetence and insubordination that are the real hallmarks of his military career. If he wants to claim-- as he always has-- that his military career somehow makes him eligible for political office, then why not open up the records and let the voters see what kind of an officer he really was and why he was considered the worst screw-up in the Naval Academy and why he was permanently grounded and why virtually all of his superior officers thought he was unfit to lead men?

Zimbabwe opposition leader seeks refuge in the Dutch embassy as President Mugabe makes good on his promise, "Only God will remove me!"

“Only God, who appointed me, will remove me, not the M.D.C., not the British. Only God will remove me!”

--Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe [right], in Buluwayo Friday

Latest word is that Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who yesterday withdrew from the presidential runoff election scheduled for Friday because of the murderous violence directed against opposition supporters, has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare, while police raided his party's headquarters.

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The lust for power is one of many things about human nature that I don't understand but surely acknowledge. It's different from plain old greed, which is to say wanting lots and lots of stuff, stuff that other people don't have. There's nothing mysterious about that. And while power can be useful in the exercise of greed, this compulsion to have control over other people is still something else.

It's something I'm always aware of when I look at the seeming unfixability of the U.S. political system. Power doesn't have that effect on absolutely everyone, but it's pretty remarkable what it does to an awful lot of people, including many people you don't expect it from. The fact is, you never know about someone until he/she has faced the temptation.

There may be a worse example of what power can do to a person than Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, but it doesn't leap to mind. Back in 1980, who thought of Mugabe as anything but a liberator? (If we were to go back in time we might well find people who saw something else in him, but it certainly wasn't evident then.) Yet as Mugabe, now 84, has clung ferociously to power over the last decade or two, presiding over the destruction of the country he played such a large role in creating, it's hard to think of any word for what he has become but "monster." Zimbabwe, so rich in resources and once boasting one of Africa's most functional infrastructures, is an economic ruin, and yet to retain his hold on power, Mugabe has shown all too clearly that there is no limit to the violence and terror he is prepared to unleash on his tortured countrymen.

Of course Mugabe already lost his latest bid for reelection. Is there anyone who doubts that his bitter enemy, Movement for Democratic Change leader Tsvangirai, won a clear majority of the vote in the March 29 election? The government machinery couldn't overturn the election result, but it could and did maneuver the numbers down to a mere 48-to-43-percent lead, thus requiring a runoff. Then the government unleashed an onslaught of violence that first led Tsvangirai to absent himself to South Africa and finally yesterday forced him to withdraw from the runoff.

About the only hope at this point is postponing the election, in the hope that . . . well, something can be done. The NYT reports that Marwick Khumalo, who is leading a team observing the election on behalf of the Pan-African Parliament, said yesterday: “How can you have an election where people are killed and hacked to death as the sun goes down? How can you have an election where the leader of one party is not even allowed to conduct rallies?”

Mugabe's standing among fellow African leaders has diminished considerably, but it remains to be seen whether his neighbors are prepared to do anything about the war he is waging on his own people.

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IF BUSH OFFERS THE SAME DEAL AS MUGABE, WE SHOULD TURN IT DOWN-- NO RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY FOR CRIMINALS

This week, Zimbabwe's brutal dictator lost the elections so badly that even he couldn't fudge the results. So now he's trying to make a deal; he'll abide by the will of the people if he gets... retroactive immunity THE Guardian reports that "Mugabe's aides have told Zimbabwe's opposition leaders that he is prepared to give up power in return for guarantees, including immunity from prosecution for past crimes." Bush and Cheney are unlikely to offer giving up power but they, like Mugabe, are demanding retroactive immunity, or "immunity from prosecution for past crimes" for themselves and their cronies. And his "aides have warned that if the Movement for Democratic Change does not agree then Mugabe is threatening to declare emergency rule and force another presidential election in 90 days, according to senior opposition sources."

Not everyone foresees a happy ending to this episode and The Other McCain expects "an anti-democratic bloodbath." This morning's NY Times reports that a crackdown on opposition parties has already begun.

Zimbabwe’s government staged separate police raids on Thursday against the main opposition party, foreign journalists and at least one democracy advocate, raising the specter of a broad crackdown aimed at keeping the country’s imperiled leaders in power.

With the government facing election results that threaten its 28-year reign, security officers raided the Miekles Hotel in central Harare on Thursday afternoon, searching rooms that the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, had rented for election operations, said Tendai Biti, the party’s general secretary.

About the same time, a second group of riot officers sealed off the York Lodge, a small hotel in suburban Harare that is frequented by foreign journalists. A lodge worker who refused to be identified for safety reasons said six people were detained, including Barry Bearak, a correspondent for the New York Times who was later located in a Harare jail. The identities of the others were not clear.

Leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change said the raids heralded a campaign of political repression to safeguard President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders. His party, known as ZANU-PF, has already lost control of the lower house of Parliament, according to official results from Saturday’s elections, a huge turnabout in a nation where Mr. Mugabe has long controlled virtually all levers of power.