An Observation

 

There seem to be two main schools of thought with respects to dealing with Trump's narcissism. One is that he needs a constant supply of ass-kissing, so give it to him so that you can deal with "Nice Trump." Behave a certain way, and you can expect positive results. The other is that he's just a shameful cretin and treat him like one until he slinks off fuming.

Trump strikes me as being as socially hierarchical as can be imagined; very kiss up, punch down. Even if we didn't suspect (or know) that he's compromised, he would treat Putin more deferentially because in his eyes, this is a multibillionaire with nukes. This is why it's okay for Elon Musk to go about the White House dressed like a large teenager, but Zelenskyy, who is dressed in solidarity with his people at war, gets a chiding. 

Rays of Hope for Democracy

 

Le Pen: "The policies I represent are the policies represented by Mr. Trump... They're represented by Mr. Putin."

And today, the French people rejected them.

Based. 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/Rk3P4IyBRR

— Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 (@JoshEakle) July 7, 2024

Between yesterday's pushback against the far-right in France and the Labour Party win in the UK, I guess at least there are some things to feel good about, even while US politics is giving me the agita. Evil never rests though. Le Pen (and Salvini's La Lega) has some kind of Patriots for Europe thing cooking with Orban who had just gone sleazing off to visit Putin (not in a way that represents the EU).

Not sure how patriots of any stripe mooch up to Putin.

I have thoughts about that, and about how CPAC and Heritage seem to love, love, love Orban, too. But I think I will just be happy about the elections for a little while, first. 

On the Passing of the Queen

 

One isn't obligated to comment on the passing of every single meaningful personage, but in this case, I feel it should not go unremarked that while I didn't know her, I appreciate that her astonishing 70 year reign will feel like the passing of an era to so many among the 2 billion souls of the Commonwealth and elsewhere. 

Even hearing "God Save the King" seems jarring--and it seems like the royal formerly known as Prince Charles has accepted King Charles III because if he's gone by "Charles" for this long, how can you throw "George" or whatever on with one's coronation? It would be absurd.

I think the word that has echoed in remembrances that strikes me as awkward is "stability", If anything, Queen Elizabeth II represented a Great Generation face of the post-WW2 era of trying to move on. She wasn't responsible for colonialism, but represented the family that wrought the scars of empire on whole nations and was not, herself, the person who would ameliorate them. She maintained the face of the royal family and the duty to service of the state but did not essay to remake it.

Stability is a word that often means keeping up appearances. Maintaining a status quo.  Monarchs are not apt to be revolutionaries, and for my part, while I don't despise her for the sins of her ancestors, it only goes to show I am very white and my Irish ancestors left for the US a long while ago. I'm sure my distant cousins living through the Troubles would have felt differently and more personally about it. History has a bad habit of not judging people for what they failed to do when they weren't particularly expected to do it. 

As an American, I was able to view the Queen more as a character in a royal soap opera played out over the front pages of tabloids. I suppose that sounds seamy and I am not sure that isn't what the royals had coming. Randy Andy (who his mum covered for, and while love and duty are meaningful, so was his culpability), Charlie the Tampon, the dirty way they did Diana, Camilla the Homewrecking Vampire, Prince Phillip as a creature not unlike Fawlty Towers' "Major".  And Elizabeth, the resilient monarch, just keeping the whole rotting thing together. 

I toast, not the new King or the memory we have of his mother, but Archie and Lilibet, her great-grands via Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  We in the US are supposedly shed of kings and queens (despite the coronation some want to push on a decrepit real estate magnate/game show host) and the idea of using human beings as a symbol just feels off to me. Maybe there needs to be a post-royal future--that what the family represents or is supposed to is just too batshit and stressful and they should just be healthy and work on themselves.  And the UK, etc. also moves on. Beyond an age of the romanticizing of personages based on their birthright, and on to something more meritocratic.  

These babies just got titles, but don't need them. I would like to believe we can move past such titles, as well. 

They Do Things a Little Different

I guess this would be where some political bloggers might offer a take on how this has anything to do with politics on this side of the pond, but quite honestly all I've got is folks don't like Corbyn and he will not be leading his party next election and that sounds about right.  Otherwise, I've never gotten the hang of UK politics.

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is In Like Flynn

I refrained from jumping the gun this week on doing a "maybe Mike Flynn is cooperating with Special Counsel Mueller" post because that kind of thing is starting to aggravate, you know? Maybe the moon is a heretofore unknown species of green cheese that calcifies into a rocklike mass, huh? Maybe you've never seen Mother Theresa, allegedly deceased, and Lady Gaga in the same place for a reason, people.  I don't want TrumpWorld Grab-bags to be about maybes, my babies. I want pleas, deals and indictments and promises of significant revelatory whatnot. 

This is also why I refrained a bit from posting "Trump so mental" stuff in the past 36 hours, when Trump was basically being kind of extra, enough so that "Is Trump losing control?" was a real concern. Trump, in a very short period of time, spread anti-Muslim propaganda from a small RW-UK party that basically amounted to a Fake News snuff film, propagated a somewhat defunct conspiracy theory that the host of an MSNBC morning show and former congressman, Joe Scarborough, was a potential murder suspect, and had leaks come out that he still believed in conspiracy bullshit--that he might have doubted that the Access Hollywood tape was really his voice, that he was still a Birther, etc. The idea of a "duty to warn" re: Trump isn't new, and I have tried to refrain from taking fully seriously the idea that Trump's present behavior solely stems from some organic mental breakdown--he never was stable or well-behaved. I had a series of posts in 2016 titled :"The Trump Problem" where I detailed his basic unfitness for the job against a backdrop where the GOP base did not even have a metric for unfitness. 

But it was not out of order to also suppose that the manic nature of Trump's behavior had to do with the knowledge that he had some bad news on his horizon. It is also the nature of a narcissist to deflect from bad news, but there are only so many ways to deflect from the news that the guy who Trump bruited as a VP choice at one time and seriously did have as a foreign policy and national security advisor during his campaign and NSA for, like, a month, admitted to contacts with the Russian Ambassador, with the approval of a senior Trump transition personage (believed to be Jared Kushner), to discuss something to do with Israeli settlements. And I don't know--on a different date? He was on the horn with them about sanctions and possibly "Merry Christmas". 

Flynn is maybe going to roll on all kinds of Trump transition folks. There is no reason to believe that Mike Pence (who, if he was not in the loop regarding Flynn's December phone calls in 2016 got told by Sally Yates that Flynn was a no-good) and Donald Trump had no idea that Flynn had foreign contacts with Russia and Turkey, and they probably knew he had lied about them,. And yet Pence publically said he knew of no one with Russian ties, and Trump called upon former FBI Director Comey to back off of Flynn. 

It's one small guilty plea for Flynn about making false statements, but it's one giant leap in context about how the Trump circle's relationship with Russia is not at all kosher. These people have consistently lied about their relationships to Russia. As if there was a there "there" they preferred no one notice. 

The Finsbury Park Mosque is A Great Example

First of all, my sincere sympathies to those affected by this heinous attack--the deed of Darren Osbourne was appalling and hateful, and a bad reflection on what we hope a well-blended diverse multicultural society should be. What stirs me, is that if there were no great-hearted people among the congregation into which Mr. Osbourne plowed his rental van, Mr. Osbourne himself might have been torn to pieces by an angry crowd. But he was not, because by and large, the mosque-goers were sensible and law-abiding folks.  They sought out the civil authorities to make sure he was remanded to the law--instead of taking the law into their own hands.

They did the right thing--but then again, this was the nature of this congregation.  These have been the "good guys". These have been the folks we're talking about as the moderate guys who speak out against extremism.

Which is not to say that this horrendous and unnerving act of bias and discrimination would be okay if it happened to anyone else. But it only goes to show that so-called "discrimination" is often blind and undiscriminating stupid violence, and we would all get along better if we...just did. Get along. Better.

This is What I know About the UK Election

So I know I had good feelings in general about the recent election in France, and I generally think it a salutary thing when people show interest in the democratic franchise, so it feel like I might have an opinion about the UK election. However, while I guess it is indicative of something that Labour picked up seats and the Conservative party lost some, I'm not going to pretend I know what that something is, or derive any conclusions from it to apply to US politics, such as forming a takeaway that because Labour made gains (while not forming a majority) this year, meant that Bernie Sanders would have won our election last year, or that somehow, the Conservative party's lost seats are part of a "Trump-lash". Theresa May made some odd choices during the campaign, like not showing up for a debate, and just didn't come across as effective. Putting those things in perspective probably is beyond me as a foreign observer.

The above picture, however, pretty much sums up for me why I am refraining from comment. That Theresa May is standing on a stage with Lord Buckethead and Elmo, is something so, perhaps,  Pythonesque? This lets me know for an actual certainty that I don't get the flavor of UK politics. Because I really can't imagine, say, Trump and Clinton, standing alongside Vermin Supreme in any kind of event. And since we don't have a parliamentary system, the idea of anything like a coalition government because there are more than two parties to work with also seems quite weird. Libertarians, Greens, Socialists, and Constitutionalists are unlikely to get very far in our electoral structure. We just have random independents who caucus one way or another.

Which is not to cast aspersions on either how we do things here, or how they do things there--it's just really different from US politics, and it's all I can do to keep up with them.

This Trump World Grab-Bag is Too Much

Because I am starting to become "an old", my memory is stuffed-full of detritus that is fertilizer to me, even if it is mere dead material to "youngs". The term "useful idiot" is associated with Soviet Communism to me, because my first experience understanding of the world was a Cold War understanding, before the Berlin Wall fell and before Glastnost and perestroika and all that--it was that weird thing where some people thought it was hip to be Gorky Square. You start out as a with-it socialist who cares about human rights but thinks the working man suffers more from Big Money than Big Government, and then you take rubles to talk out your ass about whether Mother Russia's government love-taps people into submission or just earns every bit of respect from the citizenry that comes her way with excellent government.

Maybe I come pre-programmed to distrust all things where a US politician seems especially enamored of another nation. Maybe I just have too much suspicion regarding an entity that has weaponized lying. But I will say that I do kind of agree with Michael Hayden, in this instance, when he uses the term "useful idiot" for Trump. The "idiot" is a guarantee. And I suspect by now even Russia has had reason to pause over how useful he is.

I've been a bit adrift posting these Grab-bags because I'm trying not to make more of them than they are--stories, somehow, and maybe not even very-well sourced stories (although I try to keep my links tied to legitimate sources, not fake news mills), but things that are real enough to help construct a timeline and a narrative. I want to help a picture shape up--but I also know I am biased so I try to refrain from all but logical commentary. I am aware fake news exists and that tasty nuggets might not be all they seem--also, some stories are just too obvious. I've eschewed posting some recent news as a "Grab-Bag"because it is just boring-- Nigel Farage is a Person of Interest?

Of course Nigel Farage is gravitating to whatever power and money he can find. That seems like his natural depth. And regarding recent interviews with Vladimir Putin, of course he tries to deflect responsibility for hacking the US election. What else should he do?

And if you want proof, there seems to be proof that Russia wasn't just being APT 20-something in the DNC's email but influencing US voter offices.  A lot. And then you get news like the piece where the NSA got word that Russia even tried hacking not just our election, but the actual voting. Courtesy a certain person charmingly named "Reality Leigh Winner"--now arrested.

It is too much! It is too damn much. But it is, apparently, our reality. It could turn out to be misleading--but why is there so much even misleading info connecting the Trump campaign to Russia--and Russia to influencing the 2016 elections?

Just Not Presidential

The above string of Tweets show the President right away using a terror event to justify his "Travel Ban", rail against "political correctness", and make a half-assed NRA point. He's not even being terribly original and, in slamming Mayor Sadiq Khan, he shows a lack of understanding and sensibility that is wholly inappropriate.  He will now, after having been a massive ass on social media, golf and think of how this tragedy can be used as a photo op.

He's an embarrassment.

My Thoughts are With London

Latest updates on the deadly vehicle attack and stabbings in London: https://t.co/AuMADn4QtM pic.twitter.com/Yo0fpjN8v8

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 4, 2017

I offer condolences to those affected by these appalling attacks--violence is not signal but noise. It wreaks confusion and sorrow and anger, it can end lives and take away solace, but it can not build. It can not create. And it can not endure. Following on after the attack in Manchester, there may be those who believe that divisive, segregating, punitive acts need to be done against people of a certain faith or ethnic background to bring an end to this senselessness and hurt. But bigotry is no cure for bigotry, and violence is no cure for violence, and injury against innocents is no corrective answer to violence against innocents. There is only justice against those who did this monstrosity, and letting others know they can never win against free, strong people. Terrorism is a dead end. The greatest revenge against it is carrying on.

Terror in Manchester Targets Youth and is Immeasurably Disgusting

Islamic State supporters celebrate Manchester attack online, no official claim https://t.co/mY2SzJtMqV pic.twitter.com/djpLb3lEis

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 23, 2017

The latest news out of Manchester indicates that explosions at an Ariana Grande concert were deliberate, involved shrapnel bombs, just like the Boston Marathon attack here in the US, and have taken the lives of 19 people and wounded 50 or more others. The people of Manchester have risen admirably to the tragedy as details are still unfolding, which highlights something I have said about the use of terror before, and still think is meaningful--

It's useless. It conveys nothing but the willingness of the perpetrator to kill, and conveys nothing about the hopes, the concerns, the world the perpetrator wants to see. It is a desperate shriek for help spoken in gibberish. It's nihilism, and indifferent from the wreckage wrought by a drunk or a mentally ill person. Whoever had done this attack may have had some ideology in their fevered brains, but what have they accomplished? A terrifying and tragic time for concertgoers and their family and loved ones? But what does it say?

Nothing at all. This stupid wasteful act says nothing, but reminds us all of how precious life is, how much we desperately love those we love, how much we abhor acts of terror and violence. My thoughts are with those affected by this tragedy. This violence is not our humanity, what we do in the face of it is. And I refuse to assign ideology or politics or religion to this senselessness. It remains that: senseless, the self-negating act of people who no longer gave a shit for their humanity, and my agnosticism almost yearns for a hell for them to understand what they have rejected.

Trumpworld Grab-Bag

You know what? I feel like I could play "connect the dots" with all the weird gush of Trumpworld stories that seem to be connected, but it's kind of tiring. I don't have the mental focus for stuff like this. I am working on crocheting a lovely purple, white and lavender bedspread. I have a full-time job and a spouse. I'm finally getting around to reading the Anne of Green Gables series. I could choose life. I've already substituted about 60% of my previous wine consumption with soothing tisanes. I don't want to be the weirdo in the basement with the wall of tantalizing "dots" connected with yarn.

On the other hand, when the guy who led chants of "Lock her up" accusing former Sec of State Hillary Clinton of treason turns out to have accepted a smidge over half a mill to work on behalf of Turkey, and it seems that the Trump campaign (and later, the Trump administration) seems to have known about it and had no trouble with it--that's weird. It's not really just a matter of "paperwork" as Press Secretary Sean Spicer alleges--see, in my current job I, too, would have to fill out paperwork if I was moonlighting outside of my day job. If I was working in my present capacity, and also for an accounting firm, let's say--that's not okay. If, when I was working for Staples, Inc., I also took a job at Office Depot, that too, would be really frowned on. But somehow Gen. Flynn was working for Turkey and a US presidential campaign and as a future/current NSA. That's weird. It's also super coincidental that Flynn paid a retired FBI agent involved in the October Clinton email kerfuffle for research related to his Turkish consulting gig.

I can't really compute the math on that--but, what are the odds?

Roger Stone--there's another guy whose storyline seems a little hinky.  Was he in contact with Guccifer 2.0?  Or did he have a perfectly cromulent back channel connection with WikiLeaks?  It's sort of a puzzlement, but I've never really felt that Stone was far removed from the Trump campaign, and, like Rudy Giuliani and RT, Stone seemed to be apprised of what was fixing to drop (WikiLeaks or FBI leaks) before it actually did.

But why have backdoor connections to Wikileaks when you can just show up at the front door of the Ecuadoran embassy like Trump's good buddy Nigel Farage just did. And he seems to have had ties with Assange going back for some time.

See--weirdness. I don't want to connect the dots--I'm using my yarn for an afghan. But it is pretty odd.

In other oddness, Steve Bannon, man of no fixed address, apparently pretended to live with his felonious ex to commit tax fraud and/or voter fraud.  The residence had padlocks on the internal doors and acid destroyed the bathtub, which sounds really freaking interesting, but I feel like, since we can't establish that he was living there, I also can't entertain the possibility that people were being locked up in his rented house or that bodies were being dissolved in the tub there or anything. Shame, because that really would be interesting. Not good. But lurid AF. (Less luridly, he was all kinds of allegedly violating campaign finance laws during the Trump campaign, which is more related to Trumpworld.)

Also Paul Manafort may have had people killed.  Yeah. I've literally got nothing there. Ripping good story though.

There's an awful lot of WTF here, is all I'm saying. But I'm not crafting a conspiracy narrative. Not me. Nuh-uh.

UPDATE: Also this weird server between the Trump Organization and possibly Alfa Bank, which was sort of considered bullshit in October? Is apparently now a not-exactly bullshit thing. So weird.

Sacramento Stabbings Strike me as a Disturbing Sign of the Times

That a neo-Nazi rally turned into a melee where several people were stabbed strikes me as a very disturbing sign of the times. One of the spokescretins from the Traditionalist Workers Party, Matthew Heimbach, had previously made a stir by shoving a peaceful protester at a Trump rally, earning him a Washington Post profile calling him the "next David Duke".

This seems so superfluous to the Trump endorsement bona fides, which include the actual David Duke, as well as other "unwanted" white supremacist types. And yet it's kind of hard to divorce the upsurge in racially motivated violence from a campaign that has given so many jack-booted thugs hope.

It's also hard for me to separate "Trumpism" from the naked racism reported in the UK post-Brexit vote.

People act on what they see, and if they see it's "okay" (normalized in the media) to hate your neighbor, some simply will. They will act out. Leadership is understanding these forces, and not encouraging them. Violence like this is a sign of leadership abdicated, and loaded guns of rhetoric placed in the hands of emotional toddlers.

Anti-fascists were willing to take a blade today--think about this, anyone with any real power at all: what would you take to not have this kind of hateful idiocy be in your future? Because if it is permitted, it simply happens. If it is excused with words like "economic uncertainty" or "taking our sovereignty back"--it will engulf people who let it happen as well.

You are either anathema to racism, violence, and anti-intellectual thuggery, or you are taking part. There is no "sides". We have coexistence, or hate. "Mere tolerance" is just a thin grease of civility bound to erode or combust.

I am sick of how we ignore the real intolerance by trying to play "both sides" about it. It isn't a form of fascism to be "PC" and decry actual racists and Nazis. Calling racism what it is, or fascism what it is, and recognizing that both have a strong populist aspect, aren't  It isn't reverse racism when white supremicists are called what they are. It's just a descriptor, and racists crying about it are dripping with crocodile tears for their own guilty understanding that what they are about is despised, and yet here they are.

Is there a remedy for being called a hater when one actually hates?  Like, maybe not obviously hating?

Brexit, Pursued by a Bear?

I'm a little bit at a loss as to how to write about the vote of the UK to leave the European Union, because the details of what it meant to the UK economical seemed to be a bit complex and regional and I'm over here on this side of the pond anyway, so it wasn't a thing I followed especially. What I do know is that the UK did not, as a resut of this vote, leave the UN--which some chyron entry person at FOX Mushroom Farm seems to have thought.

What is a bit concerning, though, is the possibility that people who voted for the UK to leave the EU did so without entirely understanding what they were voting for, and that some seem to, the very morning after, regret their vote.  The market freak-out investors faced on the dawn of this new trade reality probably was a bit of bracer that the economic ramifications might actually be extensive (although maybe non-UK traders should cool their jets, alright?)

And the timing is, in world news terms, pretty stunningly offset by the US Presidential election's own bete noire, Donald Trump, landing in Scotland (which voted to Remain) whilst praising the Brexit vote. As you might know, Scotland already thought Donald Trump was a wee daft tangerine bawbag of indiscriminate geography, but post-Trumpian Brexit commentary, they waxed Rabbie Burnsian, and some.  Because, and gather 'round, children, the fact is, Trump does not actually know shit about trade or foreign policy, and what he's saying about US trade policy and what he means to do to it is get "exity". Dissolve current trade deals and singularly negotiate new ones with each place on the strength of the kind of excellent interpersonal skills that made him so beloved in Scotland. Awesome-sauce! See what happened to the British pound on the morning after the vote when there's still the possibility that the MPs (who actually decide) can back out? What happened to markets all over?

Yeah, that bearish to-do will be much larger on the face of the coming of Trump to an economy personal to my actual readers (mostly US-Aians). Which is why I want to reinforce the necessary idea that elections do have consequences, yeah?  The UK might be able to adhere to the schoolyard tradition of "takesies-backsies"--but while I really think Trump's economic plan would be a first 100 days'  constitutional crisis,  he has nonetheless the potential to do real harm because he is, basically, a Thicky McThickerson. You can't even drill down to the bits of brain active enough to take on new info.

So that why I had night-terrors late Thursday--the implications of this kind of vote and what it signifies is not unique to the UK. And that doesn't even get me started on the semi-Fascist and racist parts. But they are there.  And I can't unsee them.

I recommend all US voters get very intimate with successful political-content Googling during this election year--it means a lot.  Don't wait until after the vote, or assume that some responsible pool of voters will just do the right thing so you don't have to. Doing right matters. It always does.

MP Jo Cox was One of the Best

The news that a young, vibrant Labor MP was shot and stabbed by a person who might have hollered "Britain first!" has been shocking, to say the least, especially taking in her spirit of service to other people and the young family she leaves behind. Although the current newsworthy battle regards Brexit in the UK, there's no telling what exactly set Thomas Mair, her alleged killer, off.  But her life of concern for others should outshine whatever dark demons prompted his horrific attack.

In the words of her husband:

'She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn't have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.'

Although it's barely possible that the man who murdered Jo Cox was of unsound mind, it is highly possible that he perpetrated this act due to politics. Politics. A difference of opinion. How terrible that for a difference of opinions, this decent person lost her life! That violence knows no better name than hate. And I think that some of her loves--Oxfam and work on behalf of the plight of refugees, are a good answer to the hate--in her memory, support them with charity. She spoke out for human rights and feminism, keep them in mind.

She was, it seems one of the best. In her memory, let's give our all to fight our worst.

Climate Sunday: The Death of Coal?

I remember in 2012 seeing a handful of signs like the one depicted above saying "Stop the War on Coal, Fire Obama". They might have made a little more sense posted in Western PA than in Philadelphia.  For that matter, I know a house in Mt. Airy that proudly boasts a "No Fracking" sign. President Obama's "All of the Above" strategy has never outright been antithetical to coal, except in tightening emissions. It's really the market that is making coal a bad deal economically as the natural gas boom has just left coal in the, well, dust.

So it doesn't come as that much of a surprise that one thing countries are planning to do to lower CO2 emissions is phasing out coal plants. (They were probably likely to do that anyway.) The UK is planning to switch over to gas-fired plants altogether, although they maddeningly seem to be turning their backs on renewables.  This would be a real missed opportunity, as wind power looks like it has a great future there.

All is not over for coal, just yet, anyway, for those of you who have romantic feelings about black lung: China is, absurdly, still developing coal plants. (China really needs to do a bit better. The link makes China look like if Volkswagen was a whole country. ) As carbon dioxide has come to be 400 ppm or above on a steady basis, this is a damn shame, because the planet might just be more susceptible to CO2 than previously thought.

We need to stop dithering, and switch to clean renewables. Everything is in the balance.


Update: Hollah, Alberta!