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Stop Giving Republicans and Trump the Benefit of the Doubt

One of the phenomenons that drives me to distraction is the false equivalency much of the news media gives to the Republican agenda and the contortions engaged in to give the GOP leadership and Donald Trump in particular the benefit of the doubt.  One need only look at the history of today's GOP and the career of Trump in New York City, replete with Mafia  connections and other sordid alliances to know that these are NOT nice or decent individuals who have a shred of concern for average citizens.  Sure, their talking points will claim that they are, but actions speak louder than words and in Trump's case, ties with despicable people speaks volumes. A column in the New York Times looks at this reality and the need for the media - and everyone else - to stop giving these individuals the benefit of the doubt.  Their motivations are not good or well intended and they are not honorable.  Here are column highlights:

After Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December, a number of companies gave their employees one-time bonuses, ostensibly sharing their new corporate windfall. As a PR stunt, these checks were a savvy investment; they allowed the companies to pander to the administration and made themselves look beneficent without incurring any long-term obligation to their workers.

Critics of the new law tried to point out that one-time bonuses are not the same as pay increases, and that the overwhelming majority of corporate savings from the tax cut was likely to go to shareholders. Nevertheless, in parts of the media, the idea that Republicans had been vindicated took hold.

Five months later, everything liberals said about the tax bill turned out to be true. Contrary to Republican claims, wage growth has been anemic. Instead of sharing the wealth with employees, companies have spent record amounts of money buying back their own stock. The tax cuts are creating larger deficits than Republicans predicted, and those deficits are now being cited as a pretext for cutting spending on the poor. They remain unpopular. Republicans in some districts have abandoned them as an election issue.

Watching this unfold should have helped inoculate commentators against Trumpist bamboozlement. It has not. In March, Trump spontaneously accepted an offer, conveyed to him by a South Korean envoy, to meet directly with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korea has sought a one-on-one meeting with a sitting American president for years, believing it would legitimate it as a global power, but previous administrations have refused.

Nevertheless, credulous commentators praised Trump for bringing North Korea to the table, as if a seat at the table wasn’t what North Korea wanted all along. And pundits, including some who are broadly critical of the president, hectored us to give him credit.

Due to Trump’s ignorance and vanity, South Korea’s dovish leader, Moon Jae-in, has been able to manipulate him into a position where he might make concessions to North Korea that no other president would dare. Given the risk of war, Moon’s maneuvering has been admirable. “In South Korea, it’s basically an open secret that this whole thing is flattering Trump,” Kelly said. “It kind of amazes me that Trump’s staff hasn’t picked up on this.”

Now, three weeks away from a summit that may or may not actually happen, reports show [Trump] a president terrifyingly unprepared for high-stakes diplomacy.  . . . “Mr. Trump’s aides have grown concerned that the president — who has said that ‘everyone thinks’ he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts — has signaled that he wants the summit meeting too much,”. . . . it’s now the American president who craves legitimation from the North Korean dictator.

Even a casual newspaper reader — which, of course, Trump is not — knows that when North Korea talks about “denuclearization,” it doesn’t mean unilaterally giving up all its nuclear weapons. A hastily arranged meeting between two bellicose egomaniacs, premised on a basic misunderstanding, is unlikely to resolve one of the world’s most intractable geopolitical conflicts; a flimsy agreement that roughly preserves the status quo seems like a best-case scenario. Yet for weeks, the pull to give Trump pre-emptive credit for a hypothetical victory has felt like a cultural undertow; you had to plant your feet firmly to resist it. . . . . Trump, whose only real talent is the manipulation of reality, exploits this impulse.

Of course, we all have a motive in playing along with the fiction that Trump has achieved a Korean breakthrough — it might stop him from starting a war. But it’s one thing to humor our idiot president, and another to let the gravitational pull of presidential power, and the deep desire for a minimally competent leader, warp reality. We all want to be open-minded, but con men should never be given the benefit of the doubt.

How Democracy Dies: The Constitutional Crisis Is Here

Day after day we see Donald Trump behaving little better than a loud mouthed school yard bully - or more appropriately, like a banana republic or African dictator from years ago.  Lies, boasting, and seeing the government apparatus as merely existing to protect and appease him alone.  No one else has rights and concerns for constitutional government and the rule of law are of no consequence.  Indeed, Trump views himself as above the law - a trait demonstrated throughout much of his real estate career - as he tries to torpedo an investigation into his own wrongdoing sparked in no small measure by the sleazy and possibly treasonous minions that he used to staff his 2016 campaign.  Manafort, Page and Gates were ALL on the FBI radar long before they joined the Trump campaign.  In the case of Page, years before Trump ever announced his candidacy.  If anyone is to blame for the investigation, it is Trump himself through his poor choices and, as we have learned, his sycophants' efforts to collude with foreign powers.  Now, Trump, to protect himself, is moving to destroy the rule of law and ultimately democracy in America.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this dangerous crisis.  Here are excerpts:

Stop waiting for the constitutional crisis that President Trump is sure to provoke. It’s here.

On Sunday, via Twitter, Trump demanded that the Justice Department concoct a transparently political investigation, with the aim of smearing veteran professionals at Justice and the FBI and also throwing mud at the previous administration. Trump’s only rational goal is casting doubt on the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which appears to be closing in.

Trump’s power play is a gross misuse of his presidential authority and a dangerous departure from long-standing norms. Strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin use their justice systems to punish enemies and deflect attention from their own crimes. Presidents of the United States do not — or did not, until Sunday’s tweet:

“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Rather than push back and defend the rule of law, Justice tried to mollify [Trump] the president by at least appearing to give him what he wants. The Republican leadership in Congress has been silent as a mouse. This is how uncrossable lines are crossed.

The pretext Trump seized on is the revelation that FBI source Stefan A. Halper made contact with three Trump campaign associates before the election as part of the FBI’s initial investigation into Russian meddling.

The informant was not embedded or implanted or otherwise inserted into the campaign. He was asked to contact several campaign figures whose names had already surfaced in the FBI’s counterintelligence probe. It would have been an appalling dereliction of duty not to take a look at Trump advisers with Russia ties, such as Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, when the outlines of a Russian campaign to influence the election were emerging.

This conspiracy theory has so many holes in it that it’s hard to know where to begin. But let’s start with the glaringly obvious: If the aim was to make Trump lose, why wasn’t all the known information about the Trump campaign’s Russia connections leaked before the election, when it might have had some impact?

The truth appears to be precisely the opposite of what Trump says, which is not uncommon. The record suggests that Justice and the FBI were so uncomfortable investigating a presidential campaign in the weeks and months before an election that they tiptoed around promising lines of inquiry rather than appear to be taking a side. . . . . we had no idea that such a mature investigation of the Trump campaign was underway.

Now that the Mueller probe has bored into Trump’s inner circle — and federal authorities have raided the homes and office of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen — [Trump] the president appears to be in a panic. The question is whether he sees this “spy” nonsense as a way to discredit Mueller’s eventual findings, or as a pretext for trying to end the investigation with a bloody purge akin to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”

The Justice Department answered Trump’s tweeted demand by announcing that an existing investigation by its inspector general will now “include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation” by the FBI. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein may hope that is enough to avoid a showdown. I fear he is wrong.

None of this is normal or acceptable. One of the bedrock principles of our system of government is that no one is above the law, not even the president. But a gutless Congress has refused, so far, to protect this sacred inheritance.

Trump is determined to use the Justice Department and the FBI to punish those he sees as political enemies. This is a crisis, and it will get worse.

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Time to Target Pro-NRA Politicians for Defeat

Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans support gun control reform, including but not limited to universal background checks, longer waiting periods, ending the gus show exceptions, and stricter licensing.  In Florida, slight movement for change happened after the Parkland massacre, but in Congress, Republicans have blocked all efforts at reform, fearful of offending the NRA and gun manufacturers who give generously to their campaigns.  Rather that any real change, this politicians mutter bullshit comments of "thoughts and prayers' and obfuscate the real issue  by citing mental illness and every other imaginable excuse other than the obvious one: Americans have too many guns and little is done to seriously impose liability on gun owners and gun manufacturers.  While I do not advocate single issue voting, a politicians stance on gun control needs to be much more important if common sense change is to occur.  A column in the New York Times looks at the issue.  Here are highlights:

The school shooting has become an American motif, a previously unthinkable option for the odd, the alienated and the spurned, a way to find voice through violence.

We had yet another one last week in Santa Fe, Texas, where a student killed 10 people and injured 13 others. After the shooting, Paige Curry, a student at the school, offered a chilling assessment of our current predication.

A television news reporter asked: “Was there a part of you that was like, ‘This isn’t real, this would not happen at my school?’ ” Paige responded, shaking her head, an uncomfortable, reflexive smile on her face that mocked the naïveté of the question: “No, there wasn’t.” The reporter pressed: “Why so?” Paige continued: “It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too.”

Schools across the country are preparing for this morbid eventuality. According to a 2015-16 Crime and Safety Survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, 92 percent of public schools have a written plan describing procedures to be performed in the event of an active shooter . . . 

These preparations — sheltering in place, ducking for cover, running for your life — have become a routine part of our children’s educational experience. This is not normal and must never be accepted as such. Neither are these shootings normal. This is all insanity.

We have too many guns in this country, including too many based on combat weapons, and as a result we have too many shootings and deaths.

Many of us know this. We also know that legislators in Washington, as well as Donald Trump himself, are so beholden to the National Rifle Association that little to nothing will be done to stem the real problem: Guns and their availability.

Instead, politicians talk about tangential issues like the mentally ill, the “hardening” of soft targets like schools, and putting even more guns in people’s hands, like the lunacy of arming teachers.

Trump promised in his inauguration speech to end this “American carnage,” but “gun deaths are up over 12 percent year-over-year. Firearm injuries are up nearly 8 percent. The number of children under the age of 12 shot by a gun has increased by 16 percent . . . . Yes, gun violence is actually on the rise.

But as politicians in Washington have made clear that they have no desire to address this issue, no desire to stand up to the N.R.A., no desire to stop treating these deaths as collateral damage, those seeking change must change tactics.

People seeking common sense gun control must become single-issue voters on gun control. Support for more restrictions may not be the only reason to vote for a candidate, but it must be sufficient to vote against one.

We have to stop waiting for politicians to display courage and instead start to instill fear in them.

As an individual voter, you don’t need to have a slate of reforms in mind, you only have to vote consistently for candidates who are committed to reviewing the issue and advancing smart, effective policy.

This is now about the long game. The N.R.A. didn’t amass its clout overnight, and the building of a contingent of politicians committed to gun control also won’t come overnight. But it can, and indeed must, be done.

Students like Paige shouldn’t simply assume that one day a fellow student will show up with a gun and an appetite for death, and that there is nothing Washington is willing to do to prevent it.

Most candidates have websites that will state their positions.  Check them out.  Any candidate that says they are states they are strong advocates of the 2nd Amendment needs to be targeted for defeat. It is really that simple. Oh, and let them know why you will vote for their opponent.  

Homophobia is Alive and Well in Non-Urban Virginia

Nichols Hardware, scene of purported anti-gay tirade.

While Virginia's urban areas for the most part are moving into the 21st century, rural areas and Republican strongholds continue to year for the 1950's and segregation and when gays remained mostly invisible.  Things are the worst in Southwest Virginia, but even in the outer exurbs of Washington, D.C., a longing for the ugly days of the past.  A case in point is Purcellville in western Loudoun, County, home of  right wing Christian Patrick Henry College which has a "statement of faith" for both students and faculty that (i) requires the teaching of creationism, and (ii) pretty much excludes all but white evangelical Christians.  As the Washington Post reports, an employee of Nichols Hardware when on an anti-gay rant while waiting on an Eagle Scout candidate.  Apparently, the Scouts' policy of accepting gay scouts was too much for the man.  Here are story highlights:

A historic hardware store in Purcellville, Va., is at the center of a community controversy over allegations that one of its employees used an anti-gay slur after refusing to help a Boy Scout asking for donations for a service project.

The alleged incident happened Friday afternoon at Nichols Hardware, a family-owned store that was founded more than 100 years ago and is a “trip back in time,” according to a Loudoun County history organization.

After the boy and his father were turned away, Carlyn Hamilton, who was finishing up her purchase, said the employee turned to her and said, “You know they let homos in, right?” He was referring to the Boy Scouts. “And he said, ‘We do not support homos around here, I can tell you that,’ ” Hamilton said Sunday.

When contacted Sunday by The Washington Post, a manager at Nichols who would identify himself only as Glenn called the allegation “hearsay.” He said he would talk to the employee Monday. “I won’t put up with it,” he said. “If it turns out to be true, he will be terminated.”

The allegations marked another clash in what has become a nationwide culture war over the Boy Scouts of America’s rapid expansion of rights to gay members. In 2013, the organization ended its prohibition on openly gay youths, and in 2015, it ended its ban against openly gay scout leaders. Last year, the organization announced that it would accept transgender children who identify as boys.

The group also announced last year that it would welcome girlsfor the first time. Beginning in February, it will be known as Scouts BSA.

The moves were unpopular among some religious conservatives, many of whom had viewed the Boy Scouts as a paragon of traditional values. Earlier this month, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches that gay relationships are immoral, ended its century-long relationship with the organization.

Hamilton said she was waiting for her receipt when the bell at the door chimed, and the teen entered the store with his father. “I noticed how handsome he looked,” she said. “Well-pressed Boy Scout uniform. He looked very proud, and maybe a little nervous.”

He asked the three men behind the counter for help with his project. Immediately, one of them told him, “ ‘Absolutely not,’ ” Hamilton said. “ ‘There is no such thing as the Boy Scouts anymore.’ ” The boy froze, she said, uncertain. “And he was like: ‘Did you hear me? We don’t support your organization. You allow in gays.’ ”  The employee pointed at the door, she said, and the boy lowered his head. “Thank you for your time,” the boy said.

“It broke my heart,” Hamilton said.  Then she got mad. She went onto Facebook and wrote a lengthy recap of what had happened. “How dare you demean an innocent child?” she wrote. “SHAME on you Nichols!” The post immediately caught fire, igniting more than 300 comments and calls for a boycott.

“Time for all those old guys to retire,” one woman wrote.  “Absolutely disgusting!” another woman wrote. “Never getting my business. Probably racists too.”

The store’s manager said he was worried about what the drama might mean for the store.  “It’s costing us business,” he said. But he said there was no way he would know what was happening online. “I don’t use the Internet,” he said. “I don’t know how to use the Internet.” 

The one comment is likely accurate - they are likely racists as well.  A recent issue of Virginia Business contained an article that looked at the difficulties of securing health care providers for rural regions in Virginia.  Given the presence of this kind of bigotry, it's not a surprise that educated people avoid such areas. 

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