Quotes Of The Day -- The Most Dangerous World Since WWII

 

"Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child’s play and the post–Cold War world like paradise. In fact, this new world will look a lot like the world prior to 1945, with multiple great powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less, because the open access to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases that Americans have enjoyed will no longer come as a benefit of the country’s alliances. Instead, they will have to be contested and defended against other great powers." -- Robert Kagan, The Atlantic (via Digby), echoing what Charlie Dent and others are saying about the peril America finds itself in, thanks to unchecked and unhinged Putin asset Malignant Fascist. The MF's assertions of primacy over the Western Hemisphere, his extra- Constitutional use of force abroad, and his bullying threats against our long-term allies and friends will leave us not as "America First," but as "America Alone" -- the price you pay when you elect a mad moron to the presidency.

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"... Here on this continent (with Canada and Mexico), Americans have to sort out whether we will allow a madman to demand that the western world accede to his demands for obeisance lest he throw over the game board. That is, if there are enough of us with the right stuff to fight back against Trump and his gang of thieves.

"We too have operated under a comfortable fiction that America’s stability over the years was built on our constitution, our laws, and our democratic traditions. Trumpism ripped that veil away to reveal how much the entire edifice of Exceptionalism was built on 'norms.' It was only a gentleman’s agreement that our leaders behave like gentlemen, until the country fell for a con man and cult leader. Not once, but twice. Trumpism ripped the masks off neighbors who wave American flags, boast of their real Americanness, and loudly profess faith in Jesus, not Christianity as a system of values but as an authoritarian agenda. It was so much vapid branding.

“'America isn’t the way it is because [Trump is] president. He’s president because America is the way it is,” as Canadian journalist David Cochrane explained two weeks ago. He seems to have anticipated Carney’s Davos speech.

"The American challenge going forward is to examine our weaknesses, acknowledge them honestly, and adapt. There is no going back. Norms have failed us. We have failed ourselves. Barbarians are not at the gate. They are in the Oval Office and in the streets of Minneapolis. They are staged to invade Greenland.

"Canada has figured it out. Americans seem the last to know." -- Tom Sullivan, "What Now, America?" at Digby's Hullabaloo.  Nothing will be the same as it was before.  As David Cochrane said above, "America isn't the way it is because [Trump] is president.  He's president because America is the way it is."  De-Nazifying America will be the work of many generations.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.

This is going to be an historical week in Congress, for good or bad.  Ellen Ioanes describes what's at stake:

On Monday, Democrats will start one of the most chaotic legislative sprints in recent memory. With a potential government shutdown looming, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Saturday that three key bills, including President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, “must pass” in the coming week.

That timeline means the next week could be make-or-break for Biden’s legislative agenda, but all three bills face a complicated road ahead in Congress.

“The next few days will be a time of intensity,” Pelosi said in a letter to her caucus on Saturday. “We sent a CR to the Senate and are awaiting their action to avoid a shutdown. We must pass the BIF to avoid the expiration of the surface transportation funding on September 30. And we must stay on schedule to pass the reconciliation bill so that we can Build Back Better.”

The proposed continuing resolution, or CR, would fund the government until December, heading off a shutdown in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. Democrats have also attached a crucial measure to increase the debt ceiling to that resolution.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, or BIF, which passed the Senate last month with the support of 19 Republicans and every Democrat, includes $550 billion in new spending and would direct much-needed funding to roads, public transit, rural broadband, and other areas. And a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, which Democrats have branded the Build Back Better Act, includes major parts of the Biden agenda that were dropped from the bipartisan deal. If passed in its proposed form, the bill would fund new social programs like universal pre-kindergarten, create green jobs to help combat climate change, and expand a child tax credit that has already lifted millions out of poverty.

Deals will be cut because this is the sausage- making phase of the legislative process.  We all must be prepared for "haircuts" on some our favorite elements and must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

On that subject, Harold Meyerson reminds Democrats that implementing major legislation requires a timing reality check:

This means that Democrats won’t have a lot they can point to before the midterm elections.

For context, when the Democrats originally enacted Medicare in 1965—a much bigger undertaking than any of these programs—it was up and running within one year.

There’s no mystery why major infrastructure projects and policy expansions take time, of course. The expansion of child care and creation of universal pre-K in the reconciliation legislation, for example, will require the recruitment and training of a new workforce and the upskilling of many in the existing workforce. The recruitment part requires setting pay and benefits at a level commensurate with the needs and expectations of millions of workers, which is certainly not the case today. The training and upskilling of workers also requires a significant expansion of the teacher training workforce and facilities.

As for infrastructure, progressives need to grapple with their own handiwork. The expansion of government frequently collides head-on with the procedures of clean government that hears out the concerns of stakeholders. This was not the case during the New Deal, when Franklin Roosevelt’s administration managed to put millions to work on public projects in a matter of weeks.

ICYMI, neocon former Republican Robert Kagan had a long, widely discussed essay in the Washington Post, "Our Constitutional Crisis is Already Here."   In it, he distills most of the critiques and analyses of the malignant loser and his "zombie" cult/ party only to come to the conclusion that Democrats need to "give anti-Trump Republicans a chance to do the right thing" to form a "national unity coalition." Yes, because we know what spines Republicans have, we expect that any day now.  Regardless of the prescription he ultimately botches, Kagan makes some clarifying points along the way:

First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running.

Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.

Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

Kagan agrees that reforming the filibuster and passing voting rights legislation is the process solution to this existential problem.  But the problem of his cult will continue:

It would be foolish to imagine that the violence of Jan. 6 was an aberration that will not be repeated. Because Trump supporters see those events as a patriotic defense of the nation, there is every reason to expect more such episodes. Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day, insisting that he won in a “landslide,” that the “radical left Democrat communist party” stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the history of our country” and that they have to give it back. He has targeted for defeat those Republicans who voted for his impeachment — or criticized him for his role in the riot. Already, there have been threats to bomb polling sites, kidnap officials and attack state capitols. “You and your family will be killed very slowly,” the wife of Georgia’s top election official was texted earlier this year. Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds. Veterans who assaulted the Capitol told police officers that they had fought for their country before and were fighting for it again. Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, Trump insists “there is no way they win elections without cheating. There’s no way.” So, if the results come in showing another Democratic victory, Trump’s supporters will know what to do. Just as “generations of patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build America, Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to fight” to restore “our American birthright.”

It's a long read, but take some time and judge for yourselves.

Every week, Infidel 753 has the most comprehensive, intelligent round-up of links to interesting Internet posts, and this week is no exception.  There are lots of links to non- political posts if you just want to be otherwise challenged, amused or enlightened.  Bookmark his blog, if you haven't already, so you can check out his essays on a regular basis.

 

Today's Recommended Reads (UPDATED)

Here are some teasers for recommended reading for today!

The Los Angeles Times tells Californians "anybody but Trump":

Democrats are still choosing between two candidates with specific, policy-heavy pitches — Sanders and his promise of sweeping, even utopian change and Hillary Clinton with her more incremental agenda of building on President Obama’s legacy. Meanwhile, millions of Republicans have fallen under the spell of a snake-oil salesman. That’s an indictment of the Republican Party, but it also is a judgment on politics and political discourse more generally.

Robert Kagan tells us "how fascism comes to America":

... In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that lay down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt? 

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

Is Kagan a progressive?  Hardly.  Is he a founding member of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party?  Yes.  In fact, the op/ ed is clearly written with fellow Republicans in mind, and while he calls the party Trump's "incubator," he fails to indict the conservative movement for the Trump phenomenon.  Here's Jeet Heer's correction of Kagan's history:

... Kagan has good reason to want to gloss over the historical roots of Trumpism. Although he will vote for Hillary Clinton this year, Kagan is a neoconservative whose hawkish foreign policy ideas were immensely influential during the presidency of George W. Bush. If we wanted to boil down Trumpism to two historical precedents, they would be the Southern Strategy (which made the Republican Party amenable to Trump’s racism) and Bush’s war on terror (which primed the party to respond to fear-mongering, threat inflation, and bluster).

Both recommended reads.*

Finally, via Lawyers, Guns and Money, this potential Area 51 landing zone for Koch megabucks and #NeverTrump far right- wing purists:

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist David Koch has pledged “tens of millions of dollars” to help bankroll the campaign of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, according to a source within Johnson’s campaign.

Koch’s money will be made available should Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, secure his second consecutive Libertarian Party presidential nomination, the source said.

A swamp of cranks, black helicopter spotters and preppers if there ever was one, the Libertarian Party has attracted the fawning attention of uber nut Glenn "Boo Hoo" Beck, which tells you all you need to know.  But, hey, take those votes away from Rump!

*UPDATE:   Then there were less temperate reactions =cough= filthy fascists =cough= to all this.

Quote Of The Day - The Republican Frankenstein Monster

"... The Republicans’ creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out. For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."  Neocon Robert Kagan in a rather detailed indictment of the Republican Party in the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle.  Worth a read.

"The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."  We'd say that's a pretty good statement on the current condition.

Robert Kagan's Vision

It's been a day now, but getting neocon war whore Robert Kagan's Sunday op-ed excretion washed off takes time and effort. From his comfy office at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (wha?), Kagan surveyed the Iraq landscape from far away and discerned that it's al Qaeda that's causing all the problems, not the sectarian camps themselves. Therefore, we should stay the course with the surge and beyond, and not give in to the Islamofacisto terrists (who wouldn't even be a factor in Iraq had we not invaded it at the urging of neocons like Kagan). Then the same day, seeming to spoil Kagan's insights, along comes a report from Terry McCarthy in Baghdad that says,

"Sunni insurgents have been blowing up Shiite shrines, and Shiite militiamen have responded by attacking Sunnis leaving mosques."

No mention of al Qaeda in the entire report. Not. A. Word. But then, McCarthy's actually there in Iraq, and can't see the forest for the trees. Kagan sees the "big picture" of course, and isn't restrained by such bothersome things as details, and, you know, facts. He also has a war to promote and justify, from a distance of course. (Photo: Kagan researching his next op-ed piece)