Trump Appointees and Family Show They Are Clueless About Average Americans

"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." While the phrase is commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette, there is no record of her having said it.  Indeed, the first attributions did not arise until the 1840’s and was used by pro-democrat factions against the reign of Louis Phillipe. That said, the derogatory phrase could well apply to Donald Trump who suggested that grocery stores would “work" with unpaid federal.  See how far that gets you at your local Walmart, Kroger, Food Lion or Publix.  And his arrogant out of touch family members and political appointees are no better and have made it clear that they have no clue of real life for the vast majority of Americans.  A column in the Washington Post by former Republican Jennifer Rubin looks at the out of touch batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

The Trump cohort is living up to its reputation as a gang of heartless rich people who don’t care about the pain of others. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross declared on Thursday that he couldn’t understand why unpaid federal workers were resorting to food banks. (Because they have no money?) This follows equally clueless and uncaring comments by Lara Trump (“This is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country”), and economic adviser Kevin Hassett, who explained the shutdown was like having a long vacation. (Minus the money to pay for the vacation. And if you are designated as essential personnel, minus the time off.)

Meanwhile, the shutdown’s effects on critical parts of society — such as air travel — get more and more perilous. . . . A group of former Homeland Security secretaries, including John F. Kelly, warned that the shutdown is threatening public safety and impairing border protection.

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) went to the Senate floor to excoriate the commerce secretary. “Those comments are appalling, and reveal the administration’s callous indifference towards the federal workers it’s treating as pawns. Secretary Ross’ comments are the 21st-century equivalent of ‘let them eat cake,’” he said. “Many of these federal employees live paycheck to paycheck. Secretary Ross, they can’t just call their stock broker and ask them to sell some of their shares. They need that paycheck.”

Schumer continued . . . We support stronger border security. President Trump believes the best way to do that is an expensive and ineffective wall. We disagree sharply over that — but there’s no reason we can’t negotiate and figure it out.” [Trump’s] package, which included $5.7 billion for a wall, impediments for asylum seekers, and only temporary help for “dreamers,” bombed in the Senate. . . . . The 52-to-44 vote wasn’t enough to reach the 60-vote cloture threshold, but it’s an indication that Trump’s party is sliding away from him.

It would be a bitter pill for the anti-immigrant zealots and for Trump’s pride, but, without caving, the shutdown goes on, inflicting more pain and risking a calamity of some type. The damage to Trump and the GOP may not dissipate after this is over.

In 2020, be prepared to hear a lot about the Republican Party’s cruelty and contempt for the concerns of ordinary Americans. There will be plenty of ammunition, but none more powerful than the GOP’s conduct during the shutdown. Listen, if Republicans can’t keep the lights on and don’t much care about the harm they cause, why should they have the Senate majority and White House? 

 Mortgage companies, grocery stores and landlords do NOT cavalierly give away products or waive payments.  These horrid individuals who are so clueless should never been in positions of power in governing the country.

An Out of Touch Criticism of "Call Me By Your Name"

It seems that increasingly many younger gays are utterly oblivious to the reality that many of us older gays grew up in.  They seem oblivious to the reality that for many of us up until 2003, even having a physical same sex relationship put one at risk of a felony conviction.   They also appear oblivious to how much religion has lost its grip over the lives of Millennials compared to those of my generation growing up.  In a recent post, I praised the movie "Call Me By Your Name."  Indeed, Gay Star News, a British LGBT outlet, rated the film as the top LGBT film of 2017.  Similarly, every gay man of my age that has seen the movie has loved it.  Yet in a commentary in The Advocate, the case is made by a young writer who from what I can discern is considerably younger than my youngest child, argues that this exceptional movie isn't a "gay movie" since the main characters do not display a "gay identity."  Here's a sampling of what in my opinion is utter bullshit from someone who is clueless of what life was like for so many of us:

The film is typical of our fetish for straight-acting romance, here presenting a sort of country house fairy tale in which the two leads just happen to be men. It is a summer-affair flick, but with two cocks instead of one. . . . . in its high-class, pastoral isolation, Call Me by Your Name depicts an enchanted utopia where the social realities of gayness cannot intrude.

For gayness itself — gayness as a way of feeling, a way of engaging the world, an identity, a community threatened by disease and violence — has been carefully pushed into the closet. . . . . It is reckless to praise this move as a progressive step toward a post-gay cinema, a stance that toes the line of homophobia. Are AIDS and bullying and fem affect mere distractions from some imagined purity of straightened-out desire? These so-called distractions are simply too gay. They uncomfortably remind us that we are more than our “sexual orientation” alone; we are a community, a subjectivity, a culture, an identity.  

A cosmopolitan, intellectual milieu fills the sun-bathed, Fascist-era villa of Call Me by Your Name as bits of Greco-Roman art, German literature, and Italian cooking decorate the frame — but the queens are for sure locked in the closet.

The attitude of this piece may ring true with young, often self-absorbed young gays who never experienced what those of us in older generations lived through - and which many closeted gays in red states continue to live through.  Go to any gay hookup app and you will find large numbers of still closeted gays married to women who still cannot accept a gay identity as a result of religious brainwashing, fear of job loss, or a financially ruinous divorce from the opposite sex spouse they deal with.  And this true in 2018, so imagine the realty for so many thirty-five (35) years ago when the movie's story is set. 

As the name of this blog underscores, I did not "come out" until mid-life (in fact, I was 49) and even then it took a considerable period of time to achieve a "gay identity."  Like so many of my current circle of gay friends, I married (some friends married more than one woman), had children and only after years of denial faced the reality of our sexual orientation.   For many of us, the story line in the movie is what we felt but never acted upon.  I hope that Call Me By Your Name will secure a wide heterosexual audience and that just perhaps, it will help to further open minds and hearts. 

Meanwhile, those, like the youthful author enjoy the benefits others achieved for them (and from my experience based on my local community often do little to support the larger LGBT community) while lacking any perspective  on what times were like thirty five years ago or what will be viable outside of theaters in major urban centers in blue states.   It is noteworthy that many of the comments on The Advocate article take the author to task as I do.  

I would urge every LGBT individual to encourage their straight friends to see the movie.  It underscores how there is so much more to love than mere physical connection and it might give cause them to think about the harm that an anti-gay society needlessly does to so many.

Totally Out of Touch HRC Says Obama Should Nominate an LGBT to SCOTUS

The seemingly clueless Chad Griffin

Recently I wrote about Michelangelo Signorile's frustration over the cluelessness of self-anointed leaders in the LGBT rights movement who have no plan as to how to counter the anti-gay legislation sweeping many states in the wake of the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling in Obergefell.  Now, in an op-ed in The Advocate, HRC president Chad Griffin proves he is truly delusional in my opinion by urging Barack Obama to nominate an out LGBT nominee to fill the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme formerly occupied by Antonin Scalia.  One would think that anyone not living in a complete fantasy world would realize that an out LGBT nominee has probably ZERO chance of approval by the U.S. Senate.  Rather, Obama needs to nominate a gay-friendly judge from a lower federal court who has previously passed Senate approval by a wide approval margin in order to make it far more difficult for Republicans to make good on their planned obstructionist efforts.  

Reading Griffin's piece which ignores any shred of political reality, in my view, he apparently puts "boldness" ahead of President Obama securing the approval of an LGBT ally on the Court.  Instead, Griffin would rather run the risk that such an Obama nominee would be blocked by the GOP controlled Senate leaving the door open so that, if a Republican wins the White House in November, LGBT Americans are utterly screwed when 1 to 3 conservative justices end up on the Court over the next few years.  Of course, Griffin  is among the LGBT elite who lives in gay friendly Washington, D.C. and doesn't need to worry about the anti-gay legal framework that many of us face on a daily basis.

I'd argue that it is time for Griffin to get his head out of his ass (pardon my French) - or even better, resign from his position as HRC president so that someone living in objective reality can take the helm.  As of tomorrow, my HRC bumper sticker is coming off of my car and and the donations to HRC stop completely.  I am frankly over HRC and its failure to advocate for things that will realistically help a majority of LGBT Americans while its leadership very lives comfortably in gay-friendly Washington, D.C. (Griffin made $429,411.00 in 2013) and calls for things that are utterly unrealistic based on my nearly 25 years of political activism.

I hope President Obama ignores ever word of Griffin's, in my view, lunatic op-ed piece.

Jeb Bush’s Plutocratic Fantasy Land

Bush vacation "compound" Kennebunkport, Maine - Meanwhile, Jebbie wants us to "work longer hours"

Not to beat a news item to death, but Jeb Bush's statement that working Americans suffering from declining wages need to "work longer hours" underscores just how out of touch he is from reality, especially the reality most Americans live in.  Making matters worse, Jebbie supports more GOP voodoo economic measures that will benefit the very wealthy and screw over average Americans even more.  A piece in Salon lays out the case that Jebbie is living in a "plutocratic fantasy land."  Here are excerpts:

It’s possible that you can forgive Jeb Bush for not knowing about regular people, when in an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader on Wednesday, he demonstrated a complete lack of appreciation for how hard Americans work — and for how little. Perhaps you can also forgive him for not recognizing that, in fact, Americans work more than their counterparts in other industrialized countries, that we get less vacation time, less maternity leave, and retire later than most anyone else, and that that trend is only intensifying. He’s from a family of millionaires, after all, whose parents were the millionaire children of yet other millionaires before them. It’s an unfortunate reality that the elite who enjoy that sort of privilege simply don’t have the means to understand the lives of those above whom they reside in luxury.

So perhaps you can think of him more like a prince than a former governor: Princes perform their princely duties to uphold the family’s prestige. That’s just the way it goes.

[W]hat shouldn’t be forgiven is when someone like Jeb Bush, entirely ignorant of how the rest of us live, seeks to tell us what we’re doing wrong; when he blames us, indicts us and thereby makes demands. And what’s most egregious is when it’s in the service of his fellow elites, when telling us to work even harder and longer is precisely what fills the pockets of his wealthy friends and supporters. It shifts the blame from the banks and the job off-shorers onto everyone else, and then presents the solution as something that hurts us more and pads the profits of those very same culprits.

[Bush is seemingly] unaware of how U.S. worker productivity has risen some 80 percent since the 1970s, or that we’re actually the most productive workforce in the world, yet with little in the way of commensurate wage and salary increases since the time his father joined President Reagan in the White House in 1980.

Jeb? I seem to remember a Wall Street crisis in the last year of your brother’s tenure, and millions of people losing their jobs because of it, but I don’t remember any sort of “productivity crisis” or “laziness crisis” on our end. I saw a crisis of financial capitalism in which the capitalists wrecked the ship and we lost our jobs. We didn’t abandon them. We’ve been taking care of our end of the bargain, us workers. It’s your lot that’s dropping the ball.

Mr. Bush. You have a multimillion-dollar vacation estate built by your great-grandfather. Your campaign donors are a who’s who of corporate elites. A career spent with some of the biggest banks in the world and your own private equity firm has people comparing you to Mitt Romney. And now you’re telling us that we’re the problem. Please proceed, Governor.

He and his ilk aren’t the problem, goes his logic, but rather that “high-sustained growth means that people work 40 hours rather than 30 hours.” You don’t know why Americans are kept working 30 hours per week? How can you not know that? They don’t choose to work less, it’s that their employers (you know, your buddies) have weekly thresholds that determine full-time work, and full-time work means that the company must provide benefits in addition to wages.

The blame he assigns to workers is moral, though: We choose “being dependent on government,” he says, “rather than getting in line.” It’s a moral failing that he’s comfortable assigning to us in what was supposed to be an attempt to mend the mistake he’d made earlier. 

It’s still our fault, according to Bush. A dynastic front-runner of the GOP, swimming in millions and millions in corporate and Wall Street elite donations and literally swimming at his vacation estate, tells us that we’re the problem, that we’re living too easy. 

I'm sorry, but Bush is an arrogant, despicable ASSHOLE.  We do NOT need him in the White House. Hillary has her faults, but at least she grew up in a normal American household and still remembers where she came from.  Unlike Jebbie, she is not utterly out of touch with reality.

 

Jeb Bush: "People Should Work Longer Hours"

Like so many others born with a silver spoon in their mouth who have NEVER known the financial struggles and what life is like without a financial safety need has a message to hard working Americans: you need to work longer hours.  Many of us are maxed out time wise and don't have the luxury of finding jobs falling into our laps because of who are daddy or granddaddy are/were.  The man is an asshole - not to mention hostile to gay rights, including employment non-discrimination protections. Message to Jebbie: Americans already work longer hours than citizens of advanced countries and we have crappy health care coverage and now less social mobility than in Europe.  Talking Points Memo looks at Jebbie's statement which I hope will go down with Mitt Romney's 47% remark as symbolic of how clueless Bush and his entire family are to the concerns and neeeds of regular working Americans.  Here are story highlights:

In an interview with the Manchester Union-Leader, the first-in-the-nation primary state's most-read paper, former Florida Gov Jeb Bush insisted “people should work longer hours", as a key part of his plan to drive higher economic growth.

The comment is already being treated as a gaffe. But it is actually an accurate if perhaps over-candid explanation of his economic plan, which seeks to combat stagnant or declining wages by getting people to work more hours.

Bush has argued that his economic plan could allow the US to achieve average growth rates of 4% "as far as the eye can see", a figure most economists believe is unrealistic for a mature economy like the United States. The "longer hours" comment was in reference to the historically low labor force participation rates the United States has seen in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis.

But numerous public opinion surveys and economic studies have shown that US workers log more hours than workers in any other industrial economy. The majority of Americans already work more than 40 hours a week. In fact, a 2014 Gallup poll found that 40% currently work more than 50 hours a week. The average American worked 11 hours per week more in 2006 than they or the equivalent worker did in 1979.

In response to criticism from Democrats, Bush's spokesperson replied: "Only Washington Democrats could be out-of-touch enough to criticize giving more Americans the ability to work, earn a paycheck, and make ends meet."

Under Bush's plan we will be further along the way on the GOP plan of returning America to the evils of the Gilded Age when the few had fabulous wealth and the rest of us worked our asses off to scrape by.  The Sun-Sentinel has this on target quote from the DNC chair:

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said Florida knows Jeb Bush best, having watched him as governor.  

 "Jeb Bush only looks out for himself and people like him. He never has, and never will, fight for middle class families,'' she said, portraying him as an uncompromising political bully who "always thinks he's right'' and would be incapable of breaking the logjam in Congress.

"We used to call him King Jeb,'' said Wasserman Schultz, who served in the state Legislature during part of Bush's governorship.  "No matter what the voters, or the Legislature, or the courts say, at the end of the day Jeb Bush is going to get things his way, come hell or high water.''

The GOP's Out of Touch Presidential Contenders

Despite the Republican Party's claims that it is a "big tent" welcoming to all, the reality is that unless one is a far right religious conservative of near fanatic proportions, a white supremacist with a mentality well suited for KKK membership, or a greed driven plutocrat, there really is little room in the GOP tent for you.  This lack of inclusiveness and obtuseness toward modernity and the nation's changing demographics is demonstrated by the substance of what the GOP's would be presidential candidates pontificate about on the campaign trail.  Any window dressing of inclusiveness is just that, window dressing.  A column in the New York Times reviews how the GOP remains out of touch with those who do not fit within the narrow requirements for inclusion in the party.  Here are highlights:

For all the party’s self-congratulation about a field of official and unofficial presidential candidates who depart from the fusty norm, the truth is that they don’t depart nearly enough.

Yes, they’re a racially diverse group, including Bobby Jindal, who is Indian-American; Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who are Cuban-American; and Ben Carson, who is African-American.

Yes, Rubio and Bush speak Spanish, as Bush did in Miami on Monday during his formal campaign announcement, which had the multiethnic flourish of a Coca-Cola Super Bowl commercial.

Yes, Cruz and Rubio are both under 45. Rubio in fact looks young enough to be Bernie Sanders’s grandson. He advertises an affinity for hip-hop and rap. He name-checks Pitbull and Nicki Minaj.

[B]eneath their playlists and campaign choreography, [the GOP candidates] aren’t so impressively in touch with the times either.

Although more than 70 percent of American adults under 35 support same-sex marriage, not one candidate in the sprawling Republican field has explicitly taken that position, and most have expressed impassioned opposition.

Although an increasing fraction of American adults, including about a third of those under 35, now pronounce themselves religiously unaffiliated, there’s no sense of that drift in the emphatic religious testimonials of most of the Republican candidates, including Bush, Rubio and Scott Walker, who introduces himself as a preacher’s son.

Almost all of them are at odds with young Americans’ belief in climate change and stated desire for immigration reform.

And none of the leading contenders has a pitch that strongly reflects a recent Gallup poll’s finding that more Americans label themselves socially liberal than at any point in the last 16 years. These Americans finally match the percentage of those who call themselves socially conservative.

Where’s the Republican presidential contender for them?

Where’s the Republican candidate who can enter into an important, necessary debate about the size, role and efficacy of government without being weighed down by a set of statements and positions on social issues that seem tailored to placate the religious right and to survive the primaries, not to capture voters in the center?

[T]here’s a void, and Hillary Clinton and her advisers have certainly noticed it. That awareness informed her own speech on Saturday, on Roosevelt Island, where she made many references to young Americans, to L.G.B.T. Americans, to minorities, to working women. Her remarks constituted a road map of the precise terrain that Democrats want to keep — or put — beyond Republicans’ reach.

Bruni: On Same-Sex Marriage, Catholics Are Leading the Way

Despite the efforts of the bitter old men in dresses - a significant number of whom are likely self-loathing closet cases - the Catholic laity is leading the way in advanced nations in supporting same sex marriage.  It goes without saying that I find a delicious irony in this.  I also see it as a result of the Church hierarchy's own doing through the protection of sexual predator priests, to meddling in matters sexual that they know nothing about, to the continued subordination of women to men.  The official Church position may still hold sway in ignorant, backward parts of the world but it simply doesn't sell in modern parts of the world where Catholics look to their consciences first and increasingly ignore Vatican fiats.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are some highlights:

Take a look at this list of countries: Belgium, Canada, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, France, Uruguay, Luxembourg and Ireland. Name two things that they have in common.

They don’t share a continent, obviously. Or a language. But in all of them, the Roman Catholic Church has more adherents, at least nominally, than any other religious denomination does.

And all of them belong to the vanguard of 20 nations that have decided to make same-sex marriage legal.

Ireland, obviously, is the freshest addition to the list. It’s also, in some ways, the most remarkable one. It’s the first country to approve same-sex marriage by a popular referendum. The margin wasn’t even close. About 62 percent of voters embraced marriage equality.

Irish voters nonetheless rejected the church’s formal opposition to same-sex marriage. This act of defiance was described, accurately, as an illustration of church leaders’ loosening grip on the country.

But in falling out of line with the Vatican, Irish people are actually falling in line with their Catholic counterparts in other Western countries, including the United States.

They aren’t sloughing off their Catholicism — not exactly, not entirely. An overwhelming majority of them still identify as Catholic. But they’re incorporating religion into their lives in a manner less rooted in Rome.

We journalists too often use “the Catholic Church” as a synonym for the pope, the cardinals and teachings that have the Vatican’s stamp of approval.

But in Europe and the Americas in particular, the church is much more fluid than that. It harbors spiritually inclined people paying primary obeisance to their own consciences, their own senses of social justice. That impulse and tradition are as Catholic as any others.

Catholics in the United States appear to be more, not less, progressive about gay rights than Americans in general are. . . . about 60 percent of Americans who called themselves Catholic said that they approved of same-sex marriage, versus about 30 percent who didn’t.

And yet, interestingly, the qualms that certain public figures have about same-sex marriage are routinely explained — by the media, and sometimes by those people themselves — as ineluctable consequences of their Catholicism.

But seldom does anyone point out that this explanation puts these men in the minority, not majority, of Catholics in the United States. Their stances win them more political favor among Baptists than among Catholics.

For this large and diverse group in the United States and other Western countries, same-sex marriage has rapidly gained favor and Catholic leaders’ expressions of protest, such as firing employees who marry same-sex partners or speak up for marriage equality, are becoming untenable.

I wonder, especially in light of comments by Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin, after the Irish referendum. He noted “a growing gap between the culture of Ireland” and the church, which, he said, “needs to take a reality check.” He meant that its leaders do, and they can turn not just to Ireland but to many other densely Roman Catholic countries to gauge the hearts and souls of Catholics today.

The GOP’s Branding Problems

The husband and I attended a fundraiser for Hampton Roads Pride  last night in Virginia Beach where I had an opportunity to talk with that city's Republican mayor who complained that the Republican Party "just did not get it" on the issue of gay rights and that he wished the party would come around to reality.  The mayor's comments were but one example of the GOP's branding problems as it begins the run up to the 2016 elections.  On a host of issues, the GOP is out of synch with where modern America is headed and at times it seems that the GOP goes out of its way to alienate everyone other than spittle flecked, ranting evangelical Christians and open white supremacists.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's problem:

If Republicans are baffled by Hillary Clinton’s persistent lead in the polls despite months of bad publicity, they need only examine the tensions on display in their party over the past few days.

It would be hard to conceive of a worse stretch for Clinton than a period that began with scrutiny of her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state and moved to saturation coverage of the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising.

Nonetheless, there was the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Monday, showing Clinton ahead of both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio by six points, Scott Walker by 10 and Rand Paul by three.

The New York Times/CBS News poll, released a day later, showed what the GOP is up against: Only 29 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the Republican Party, while 43 percent had a positive view of the Democrats. 

The survey also documented a steady but little-noticed trend: Americans are becoming less conservative.  

Republicans and conservatives have a brand problem. Their presidential campaign will only aggravate it as candidates are forced to double-down on an ideology that is in danger of decline. Moreover, the next year is likely to intensify deep stresses inside their coalition.

If Democrats have a problem with white working-class voters, Huckabee brought home how Republicans have challenges of their own. While the GOP’s candidates fall all over themselves to cater to ultra-rich donors whose taxes the Republican hopefuls promise to cut, the party’s rank-and-file have reason to wonder what’s in all this for them. 

The big-money groups, starting with Club for Growth Action, went to work immediately to knock Huckabee aside. Raising the class contradictions inside the GOP coalition — as both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich did with Mitt Romney — is the last thing the party’s billionaire caucus wants.

Republicans typically try to keep their working-class voters onside by appealing to them on social issues and immigration. That’s why Clinton’s sideswipe at the Republican field on the immigration issue was a sophisticated form of wedge politics.

Her goal was to put pressure especially on Rubio and Bush. They hope to shore up the GOP share among Latino voters, who went 71 percent for President Obama in 2012. But both are in a box because, while 57 percent of all Americans favored a path to citizenship in the latest Times/CBS poll, only 38 percent of Republicans did.  

Republicans hope that if they can just stir up enough doubts about Clinton, one of their candidates will make it through in 2016. Perhaps this can work. But their anti-Clinton focus will do little to resolve the underlying weaknesses of an ideology and a party that, even against a 67-year-old Democrat, do not look like the wave of the future.

4 Reasons Why Putin Is Already Losing in Ukraine

As noted yesterday, after speaking with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin by telephone, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Barack Obama that Putin did not seems to be in touch with reality.  Such is the way of tyrants and one need only look at figures such as Hitler and Stalin who harmed millions while living in their own insane, paranoid alternate worlds.  The irony in Putin's case is that - if Russia and the world are lucky - he may be hastening his own ultimate demise.  A piece in Time looks at four things that are occurring which despite Putin's initial military success may spell long therm disaster for this dangerous egomaniac. Here are article excerpts:

In the coming days and weeks, Putin will have to decide how far he is prepared to take this intervention and how much he is prepared to suffer for it. It is already clear, however, that he cannot emerge as the winner of this conflict, at least not when the damage is weighed against the gains. It will at best be a Pyrrhic victory, and at worst an utter catastrophe. Here’s why:

1. At home, this intervention looks to be one of the most unpopular decisions Putin has ever made. The Kremlin’s own pollster released a survey on Monday that showed 73% of Russians reject it. In phrasing its question posed in early February to 1,600 respondents across the country, the state-funded sociologists at WCIOM were clearly trying to get as much support for the intervention as possible: “Should Russia react to the overthrow of the legally elected authorities in Ukraine?” they asked. Only 15% said yes — hardly a national consensus.

That seems astounding in light of all the brainwashing Russians have faced on the issue of Ukraine. For weeks, the Kremlin’s effective monopoly on television news has been sounding the alarm over Ukraine. Its revolution, they claimed, is the result of an American alliance with Nazis intended to weaken Russia. And still, nearly three-quarters of the population oppose a Russian “reaction” of any kind, let alone a Russian military occupation like they are now watching unfold in Crimea.

Monday’s survey suggests that the influence of Putin’s television channels is breaking down. The blatant misinformation and demagoguery on Russian television coverage of Ukraine seems to have pushed Russians to go online for their information. And as for those who still have no Internet connection, they could simply have picked up the phone and called their panicked friends and relatives in Ukraine.

Even the adherents of the Communist Party, who tend to feel entitled to all of Russia’s former Soviet domains, said with a broad majority — 62% — that Russia should not jump into Ukraine’s internal crisis.

In Monday’s survey, 30% of respondents from Moscow and St. Petersburg said Russia could see massive political protests of the kind that overthrew the Ukrainian government last month. Putin’s only means of forestalling that kind of unrest is to crack down hard and early. So on Feb. 28, Russia’s most prominent opposition activist Alexei Navalny was put under house arrest less than six months after he won 30% of the vote in the Moscow mayoral race. Expect more of the same if the opposition to Putin’s intervention starts to find its voice.

2. The economic impact on Russia is already staggering. When markets opened on Monday morning, investors got their first chance to react to the Russian intervention in Ukraine over the weekend, and as a result, the key Russian stock indexes tanked by more than 10%. That amounts to almost $60 billion in stock value wiped out in the course of a day, more than Russia spent preparing for last month’s Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. The state-controlled natural-gas monopoly Gazprom, which accounts for roughly a quarter of Russian tax revenue, lost $15 billion in market value in one day.

The value of the Russian currency meanwhile dropped against the dollar to its lowest point on record, and the Russian central bank spent $10 billion on the foreign-exchange markets trying to prop it up. “This has to fundamentally change the way investors and ratings agencies view Russia,” said Timothy Ash, head of emerging-market research at Standard Bank. At a time when Russia’s economic growth was already stagnating, “this latest military adventure will increase capital flight, weaken Russian asset prices, slow investment and economic activity and growth. Western financial sanctions on Russia will hurt further,” Ash told the Wall Street Journal.

3. Even Russia’s closest allies want no part of this. The oil-rich state of Kazakhstan, the most important member of every regional alliance Russia has going in the former Soviet space, put out a damning statement on Monday, marking the first time its leaders have ever turned against Russia on such a major strategic issue: “Kazakhstan expresses deep concern over the developments in Ukraine,” the Foreign Ministry said. “Kazakhstan calls on all sides to stop the use of force in the resolution of this situation.”

Every single state in the former Soviet Union, from Central Asia to the Baltics, has a large Russian-speaking population, and this statement means that Russia reserves the right to invade when it feels that population is threatened. The natural reaction of any Russian ally in the region would be to seek security guarantees against becoming the next Ukraine.

[I]n the course of one weekend, Putin has spooked all the countries he wanted to include in his grand Eurasian Union, the bloc of nations he hoped would make Russia a regional power again.

4. Russia’s isolation from the West will deepen dramatically. In June, Putin was planning to welcome the leaders of the G-8, a club of Western powers (plus Japan), in the Russian resort city of Sochi. But on Sunday, all of them announced they had halted their preparations for attending the summit in protest at Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. So much for Putin’s hard-fought seat at the table with the leaders of the Western world.

In recent years, one of Russia’s greatest points of contention with the West has been over NATO’s plans to build a missile shield in Europe. Russia has seen this as a major threat to its security, as the shield could wipe out Russia’s ability to launch nuclear missiles at the West.

[A]fter Russia decided to unilaterally invade its neighbor to the west this weekend, any remaining resistance to the missile-shield project would be pushed aside by the renewed security concerns of various NATO members, primarily those in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Whatever hopes Russia had of forestalling the construction of the missile shield through diplomacy are now most likely lost.

No less worrying for Putin would be the economic sanctions the West is preparing in answer to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Depending on their intensity, those could cut off the ability of Russian companies and businessmen in getting Western loans and trading with most of the world’s largest economies. Putin’s allies could also find it a lot more difficult to send their children to study in the West or to keep their assets in Western banks, as they now almost universally do. All of that raises the risk for Putin of a split in his inner circle and, potentially, even of a palace coup. There is hardly anything more important to Russia’s political elite than the security of their foreign assets, certainly not their loyalty to a leader who seems willing to put all of that at risk.

The Russian people deserve better than Vladimir Putin and I for one hope his days in power are numbered.  It would be a sweet irony if Ukraine does become his Waterloo.

The G.O.P.’s Immigration Delusion

As previously noted, the GOP leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives has floated some supposed principles for immigration reform.  Like most GOP ideas nowadays, the principles have many serious defects, not the least of which is that it would create a permanent non-citizen underclass.  A column in the New York Times looks at other problems with the GOP principles as well as the continued civil war that any sort of so called amnesty would fan with the ever more white supremacist GOP base which views any member of a non-white racial minority as undeserving of citizenship and as not "real Americans."  Here are column excerpts:

THE debate over immigration reform, rekindled last week by House Republican leaders, bears a superficial resemblance to last fall’s debate over the government shutdown.

Again, you have establishment Republicans transparently eager to cut a deal with the White House and a populist wing that doesn’t want to let them do it. Again, you have Republican business groups and donors wringing their hands over the intransigence of the base, while talk-radio hosts and right-wing bloggers warn against an imminent inside-the-Beltway sellout. 

A reasonable compromise, for instance, would condition amnesty for illegal immigrants on substantial new enforcement measures, to ensure that this mass legalization would be the last. But the bills under discussion almost always offer some form of legal status before enforcement takes effect, which promises a replay of the Reagan-era amnesty’s failure to ever deliver the limits on future immigration that it promised.

A reasonable immigration compromise would also privilege high-skilled immigration over low-skilled immigration, given the unemployment crisis among low-skilled native workers and the larger social crisis that threatens to slow assimilation and upward mobility alike. But the House leadership seems to favor an approach that would create a permanent noncitizen class of low-wage workers and expand guest-worker programs — a recipe for looser labor markets, continued wage stagnation and fewer jobs for the existing unemployed.

  [A] big push for immigration reform would not be as straightforwardly idiotic as shutting down the government without clear goals or plausible demands. But it would probably have some of the same political effects: it would divide the G.O.P., perplex the public, and let the White House reap immediate political benefits no matter how the push turned out.

 

So why are Republican leaders flirting with the idea? In part for principled reasons — libertarianism, pro-business sentiment and “compassionate conservative” impulses all align to make comprehensive reform seem like an obvious good to many figures in the party, and to obscure its downsides and its risks.

But it’s also hard for G.O.P. elites to let go of the idea that there’s a simple, one-fell-swoop solution to their electoral difficulties. The entire post-2012 immigration reform push was born out of this hope — that a single policy shift could deliver the Hispanic vote, save the party from its demographic crisis, and (perhaps most important) make other reforms and innovations unnecessary.

This conceit was always a fond delusion, not least because most Hispanics are not single-issue voters, and their leftward tilt has always been related to broader socioeconomic concerns. So with them, as with most Americans, the problem for Republicans in 2008 and 2012 was much bigger than the immigration issue: it was a platform designed for the challenges of 1980, and rhetoric that seemed to write off half the country as layabouts and moochers. And any solution for the party, in 2016 and beyond, would have to offer much more than the same old Reagan-era script with an amnesty stapled at the bottom.

Obviously, the GOP effort at rebranding itself isn't working - especially since other big issues are off the table given the insanity of the GOP base.

An Out of Touch Congress: Off 239 Days This Year While Workers Are Guaranteed Zero Days Off

Last evening Rachel Maddow was reviewing all the legislation that has not been passed by Congress this year - including routine legislation like a Farm Bill, Water Bill, Defense Bill, etc. - even as the GOP controlled House voted on the symbolic repeal of Obamacare roughly four dozen times.  House Republicans like to chide the poor to get a job and be responsible for their own security, yet Congress most assuredly is NOT doing its job.  But then, it's hard to do your job when you have more than two-thirds of the year off from work.  The gulf between the lives of professional politicians in Congress and average Americans has never been so stark.  Think Progress looks at this out of touch Congress.  Here are highlights:

Congress has just eight days on the job between now and the start of the next session on January 7, with the House coming back on Monday and adjourning for the year by December 13 and the Senate returning on December 9 only to most likely adjourn for the year on December 20. In total, the House will have had 239 days off this year with even more scheduled for next year. 

Certainly members of Congress have work to do when they’re not required to be in D.C., including meetings with constituents, running their other offices, talking to local community leaders, and doing media interviews. Some may also use those days off on other jobs for supplemental income, but most make side money by owning businesses or from investments.

The picture is very different for the rest of Americans, however. The country doesn’t guarantee its citizens any paid vacation or holiday time off, unlike 20 of its developed peers. All European Union countries guarantee workers at least 20 paid days of vacation a year, with France going so far as to lock in 30, the United Kingdom mandating 28, and Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden guaranteeing 25.
Of course, many American employers still give their workers paid vacation time and holidays off. But that holds true for fewer and fewer workers. . . . . The biggest drops have come for those who work part-time — a position more and more find themselves in — or for employers with fewer than 100 workers.

The U.S. also lags developed peers in other kinds of paid time off. It is the only one out of the top 15 most competitive that doesn’t guarantee paid sick days, which leaves 40 percent of private sector workers out of paid leave. Those who do get paid sick days also get fewer of them than two decades ago. The country is even more lonely when it comes to maternity leave to take care of a new child, joining just three countries out of 178 in failing to guarantee paid time off. Fathers similarly get no guarantee of paid time off when a new child arrives.

The Growing Gulf Between the Vatican and American Catholics

As the last post illustrated, the changing social views on gays and other issues is increasingly threatening the strength and political influence of far right denominations and falsely named "family values" organizations.   A prime example is the Roman Catholic Church which, but for the influx of Hispanic immigrants is losing members at a significant pace.  What ought to be equally disturbing to the bitter old men in Rome is that more and more American Catholics simply ignore the Vatican's pronouncements entirely. One can only hope that the trend accelerates.  A piece in the Wisconsin Gazette looks at the ongoing phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Frank Ferri made peace with God years ago. Last month, Ferri defeated the Roman Catholic Church.

The openly gay state representative led the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in what may be the most Catholic state in the most Catholic region in the U.S.

In early May, Rhode Island became the sixth and final northeastern New England state to allow gay couples to marry. The Democratic-dominated Legislature, led by an openly gay House speaker, overcame years of successful lobbying by the Catholic Church.

Ferri's victory marked the Catholic Church's most significant political defeat in an area where more than 40 percent of the population is Catholic.

Perhaps more problematic for the church is that state-by-state setbacks on gay marriage illustrate a widening divide between the church hierarchy and its members that may be undermining Catholic influence in American politics.

The disconnect plays out in polling.  In March, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that a majority of Catholics, 60 percent, felt the church was out of touch with the views of Catholics in America today.

A CBS News/New York Times poll in February found that 78 percent of Catholics said they were more likely to follow their own conscience than the church's teachings on difficult moral questions.

That poll highlighted several areas where most Catholics break with church teachings: 62 percent of American Catholics think same-sex marriages should be legal, 74 percent think abortion ought to be available in at least some instances and 61 percent favor the death penalty.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a member of one of the most storied Catholic families in American politics,   .  .  .  . says the church's political influence will continue to wane unless it adapts.

"Gay marriage is part of a larger refusal on the part of the church to listen to, and to understand, the people in the pews,'' said Townsend, who regularly attends church and wrote the book, ``Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way.''  Church officials in Washington, D.C., Boston and Providence declined to be interviewed for this report.

Silk suggested that some Catholic leaders in the United States may be eroding their influence by ``jumping up and down'' to fight gay marriage despite strong public support.

If the Vatican truly wants to regain any credibility, the first thing it needs to do is clean house of bishops and cardinals who participated in the worldwide conspiracy to cover up sex abuse and to protect predator priests.  That, of course, is never going to happen.

How Out of Touch is Today's GOP?

As a former Republican I shake my head in dismay almost daily when I see the den of insanity and bigotry that the GOP has become.  And the transformation of the GOP, in my view, traces directly back to the rise of the conservative Christians - those I call the Christofascists - who have brought their unique forms of hate and bigotry to the GOP.  Adding to the problem is the fact that these folks are not only hostile to the rights of other Americans, but also utterly detached from objective reality.  The result has been a Republican Party that increasingly lives in its own bubble/fantasy world and which is increasing out of touch with mainstream America.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the results of a new survey that finds the GOP increasingly in la la land vis-a-vis the majority of Americans.  Here are highlights:

I already touched on today’s new Post poll this morning, but there are a bunch of numbers in here that really deserve their own post..

To wit: It finds that only 23 percent of Americans — that would be fewer than one in four — believe the Republican Party is “in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today,” while 70 percent believe that it is “out of touch.” Among independents, those numbers are 23-70. Among moderates they’re 20-75.

By contrast, Americans say by 51-46 that Obama is in touch. Among moderates that’s 56-42 (he fares worse among independents, 44-53, though far better than Republicans).

At the same time, the poll finds the public siding with Obama and Democrats on many major issues surveyed. Americans disapprove of the sequester cuts, 57-35 — cuts that Republicans are describing as a “victory” for them. Americans support a path to legality for illegal immigrants by 64-32. In fairness, the poll doesn’t test citizenship specifically, so this finding is somewhat inconclusive, but a new CNN poll finds that 84 percent back a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have a job and pay back taxes.

Meanwhile, on guns, the new Post poll finds that Americans support a law requiring background checks on gun sales at gun shows or online by 86-13. A majority, 55 percent, believes it’s possible to make new gun control laws without interfering with gun rights.

At what point does failure to support proposals designed to address the problems facing the country — ones backed by majorities — create a serious enough general problem for the GOP, by contributing to an overall sense that the party has simply ceased being capable of compromising on solutions to the major challenges we face? The GOP’s awful “in touch, out of touch” numbers would seem to get at this.

But is there any point at which the party’s overall image — and its unpopular stances on specific issues — actually do begin to matter in some concrete way? Is there any point at which it becomes clear that the current GOP strategy — make a deal with Democrats on immigration, but nothing else — is insufficient?

Obviously, what needs to happen is that many who have continued to vote for the GOP out of habit or support for one specific issue need to realize that they are beginning to actively harm the country by empowering an insane and dysfunctional party.  The GOP needs to be punished at the ballot box for its wrong headed policies.