Diagones

I have ben surfing the liberal media trying to find an honest Trump accuser who, after some soul searching, has had an change of heart in response to Mueller’s exoneration of Trump in the fake Russian collusion charges. You would think that, given Trump’s clean bill of health, some stand-up Democrat would realize that it might be a good idea to get contrite and on the right side of history ... maybe some recently-elected representative from a purple district?

Despite scant evidence of such clear-eyed honesty, I have found only one liberal who has sidled up to this embarrassing moment — David Brooks, opinion writer for the New York Times. He has conceded that the media needs a little self-examination as a result of the Mueller findings ... see: NY Times OpEd.

But I don’t expect a tsunami of such half-hearted attempts at honesty.

Afterthought:  The Mueller witch-hunt was really not in vain ... the Dems did win the House last Nov.

Headlines

Comey memos will remain secret for now, judge says

China accuses US of 'Cold War mentality' with new nuclear policy

Gov't set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year ... 84% jump ...

Three fatal AMTRAK crashes in 49 days ...

Goody: Nunes memo has no affect on Russian probe

Syrian rebels down Russian warplane, [then] killing its pilot

[Brady] Wins his third NFL MVP ...

Steve King memo warning:Watch closely for Obama's fingerprints

Trudeau will 'walk away, if there is a bad NAFTA deal

Stock market loses nearly $1 trillion on the week

David Brooks urges fellow Democrats to 'tjink' extreme abortion position

Trump vindicated by memo, says Russian investigation is an 'American disgrace'

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from the Drudge Report?

Republicans flee from McConnell in 2018 primaries

DOJ deals blow to liberals, okays appointment to lead finance regulator

Trump and TIME dispute 'Person of the Year' plans ...

David Brooks: Blames Trump for 'polluting our national culture'

Van driver tries to cut into Trump's presidential motorcade

Dem insider says his party's list of POTUS candidates is chock full of divas

Battle erupts over control of Manson's remains, estate ...

Report: Self-driving cars will have to decide who dies during crash

Want to know why Roy Moore might win? Blame the media.

Florida jury's verdict thrown out because they weren't tested for homophobia

George H.W. Bush becomes longest living president in history ...

Centuries-old [English] church bells silenced after single complaint

As Good as it Gets

Like a heart on its way out, the Left is fibrillating over Trump's presidency ... trying any and all analogies to express its dismay over what is happening to our country. Conservatives were equally morose when Obama was elected ... but I don't recall this same apocalyptic ranting. Anyhow, the Left's weaver of word tapestries, David Brooks of the New York Times, has just put forward his vision of how our world is to crumble under Trump's "unhinged" guidance. Rather than settling for pedestrian appraisals of what we are in for, may I suggest the following premier tale-telling: What a Failed Trump Administration Looks Like.

Here is a particularly nasty passage:

The first conclusion is obvious. This administration is more like a medieval monarchy than a modern nation-state. It’s more “The Madness of King George” than “The Missiles of October.” The key currency is not power, it’s flattery.

The corollary is that Trump is ripe to be played. Give the boy a lollipop and he won’t notice if you steal his lunch. The Japanese gave Trump a new jobs announcement he could take to the Midwest, and in return they got presidential attention and coddling that other governments would have died for.

If you want to roll the Trump administration, you’ve got to get in line. The Israelis got a possible one-state solution. The Chinese got Trump to flip-flop on the “One China” policy. The Europeans got him to do a 180 on undoing the Iran nuclear deal.

Vladimir Putin was born for a moment such as this. He is always pushing the envelope. After gifting Team Trump with a little campaign help, the Russian state media has suddenly turned on Trump and Russian planes are buzzing U.S. ships. The bear is going to grab what it can.

This is as good as it gets in trying to eviscerate the Donald. Are you swayed?

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites.

Stocks best week since 2011 ...

Some illegals already leaving the country ...

The sequel: Chelsea Clinton being groomed to run for Congress

Sidney Blumenthal: 'Right wing' FBI agents took down Hillary in a 'coup d'etat'

David Brooks: Trump will resign or be impeached within a year

Huma weeps in street ...

Trump calls slain cop's widow to offer condolences ...

[Lena Dunham] ... cops out on pledge to move to Canada

ESPN's viewership is tanking

Charles Barkley to angry NBA crowd: 'Give Trump 'a chance'

People burning New Balance sneakers  to protest company's Trump support

Yet another journalist calls for Trump's death

Who He?

Ross Douthat is now the conservative columnist for the New York Times (since David Brooks has finally let his inner self have its head) and is a clear find. I plan to start reading him on a regular basis since his political position seems to be very close to my own ... and he expresses it so much better.

I discovered him referenced on the Breitbart Internet news site with the following op-ed snippet. If you want the link, it is  HERE ... but it offers little more than the following burning logic:

The dangers of a Hillary Clinton presidency are more familiar than Trump’s authoritarian unknowns, because we live with them in our politics already. They’re the dangers of elite groupthink, of Beltway power worship, of a cult of presidential action in the service of dubious ideals. They’re the dangers of a recklessness and radicalism that doesn’t recognize itself as either, because it’s convinced that if an idea is mainstream and commonplace among the great and good then it cannot possibly be folly.

Almost every crisis that has come upon the West in the last 15 years has its roots in this establishmentarian type of folly. The Iraq War, which liberals prefer to remember as a conflict conjured by a neoconservative cabal, was actually the work of a bipartisan interventionist consensus, pushed hard by George W. Bush but embraced as well by a large slice of center-left opinion that included Tony Blair and more than half of Senate Democrats.

Likewise the financial crisis: Whether you blame financial-services deregulation or happy-go-lucky housing policy (or both), the policies that helped inflate and pop the bubble were embraced by both wings of the political establishment. Likewise with the euro, the European common currency, a terrible idea that only cranks and Little Englanders dared oppose until the Great Recession exposed it as a potentially economy-sinking folly. Likewise with Angela Merkel’s grand and reckless open-borders gesture just last year: She was the heroine of a thousand profiles even as she delivered her continent to polarization and violence.

This record of elite folly — which doesn’t even include lesser case studies like our splendid little war in Libya — is a big part of why the United States has a “let’s try crazy” candidate in this election, and why there are so many Trumpian parties thriving on European soil.

Of course, next I had to learn a little more about this man ... he has impressive credentials ... see: Wikipedia Bio. I have no clue if he is planning to vote for Trump, but I think he is leaning anti-establishment and therefore just might. But, from what I've read so far, I'm convinced he's "not for her".

The Way That He Said It

Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA Director and a man whom I admire greatly, was on TV this morning and he was asked if he agreed with Donald Trump when he said multiple times that Obummer created ISIS. Hayden replied, to the surprise of the questioner, that yes Obummer's premature departure from Iraq, his "red line" back-down with Syria, and his Libyan fiasco ... all helped to spawn ISIS out of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, he did say that the way Trump communicated this fact was impolitic to say the least and he was not happy with it.

General Hayden was then asked about his recent statement, along with 49 other former intelligence officers, that he would not be voting for Trump ... see: VOA News Story. His response was also encouraging ... that he would not be voting for Clinton either. He also added that neither he nor necessarily the 49 other signers were Republicans. Yes, most served in Republican administrations, but that doesn't mean that they are political. He claimed that he has tried to be apolitical ... I think for good reason.

How do I feel about Trump's way of communicating? Yes, he is often immature and impolitic at his rallies ... and I wish he was more like Hayden. However, he is being heard by vast swaths of the voting public who need these simple messages that speak directly and plainly to them. Trump will never be William Buckley or David Brooks at the podium. But, then again, he will never be nuanced to the point of being taken both ways ... like most politicians. And, in some respects, this is his strength ... perhaps his only strength ... possibly why he is so resistant to changing his approach. For this straight talk, no matter the outcome in November, one must give him credit.

He clearly  will live or die as a populist.

The Template Test

"It's a Barnum and Bailey world, just as phony as it can be" -- E.Y. Harburg and Billy Rose

When the cerebral David Brooks of the New York Times looked over Obummer in 2008, he knew he would make a good president because of "the crease in his pants." Chris Mathews was equally smitten with this candidate because he "sent a tingle up his leg." And Joe Biden was sold on Obummer when he recognized him as a "clean, articulate, bright Aftrican American." (This quip also got him a cushy job for eight years.) These three political decisions were made not on studied judgments ... but on the basis of feelings. Templates were held up to this candidate and he passed their quick profile tests. Unfortunately, these template judgments were wrong. Obummer has been one of the worst presidents in a long unfortunate history of simps, scalawags and scoundrels who have occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Of course, there have also been great men who have been President of the United States. But, using the template test, many of them would not have passed muster. I'm thinking particularly of Harry Truman, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.

What happens as a result of voters' preference for using templates to pick presidents. Obviously candidates are preened, poked and posed into predetermined templates in the hope of getting elected. A very good example of this is Hellary Clinton. If one compares what this woman was like as Secretary of State ... frumpy, disheveled, detached, almost lazy ... to what she has become today. Clearly her handlers have reshaped her into a slick robotic presidential candidate ... both in appearance, demeanor and rhetoric. This remake is designed to appeal to voters who can't be bothered to look beyond her staged appearance ... her template. To me, this artifice of reforming candidates into templates is so Hollywood, so tinsel town, so Lady Gaga ... that I want to flee to someplace genuine, like a petting zoo.

I think I'll stop here ...

Brooking No Quarter

David Brooks, the New York Times' erudite, measured "conservative" columnist who has had an eight year love affair with Obummer, let go with both barrels in a series of recent op-ed pieces against Donald Trump ... see: Not Trump and The Great Betrayer for some juicy quotes. One of the most cited passages from Brooksie (he was my kids' summer camp counselor and that's what they called him) was:

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa. 

Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.

Does this sound in the slightest bit erudite, measured and conservative? Donald Trump has obviously aroused Brooksie's inner child. This series of screeds against Trump clearly have some merit ... too bad that Brooksie did not find the time and the words to investigate and profile Obummer in the same manner back in 2008. Substitute the word Obummer for Trump in the above quote and it still holds true.

Now pilgrim, if you wish not to be shunned at your next suburban cocktail party, you would do well to memorize some of these Brooksie phrases ... or, better yet the entire quote, and confidently regurgitate it with gusto. You will be the hit of the party.

Wrecking Ball

Rush Limbaugh, when Barack Obama first took office, trumpeted that now famous challenge, "I hope he fails." Unfortunately, President Obama has succeeded beyond I think even his wildest HOPE. He has been a one-man wrecking ball to the many structures that once made the United States the leader of the free world ... and he and his Svengali, Valerie Jarrettt, unfortunately still have a year and a half left to cause even more havoc.

Without getting into the gritty details, this disaster of a chief executive has mortgaged our great-grandchildren's future, corrupted just about every executive department, continually lied to the American people, gutted our military, alienated our allies, cozied up to our enemies, set race relations back generations, pissed on our Constitution, stifled our economy, rewarded failure, punished success, created new entitlements that probably will persist forever, broken numerous laws with impunity, abetted illegal immigration, ransacked our health-care system, elevate pop-culture banality to preeminence, encouraged much of our lap-dog media to ignore these many evil transformations ... and I am sure there are more sins that we will learn about as historians sift through this two-term carnage..

But there is one positive ... as David Brooks once observed, Obama still has a sharp crease to his trousers. The question of the day is ... does Hillary also take equally good care of her pants suits?

Conscription

If I am invited to a gay wedding and choose not to go for whatever reason, should our government force me to attend else I would be accused of homophobic intolerance? David Brooks has an op-ed that deals with the issue of the trade-offs between religious liberty and equality ... all in the light of Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act that has created a firestorm of religious intolerance ... this time spewing from those who normally require tolerance in others ... see: New York Times Op Ed. Like most of Brooksie's writings, this op-ed skates back and forth between the liberal and conservative takes on this religious-freedom controversy, but I think he is really saying that the ham-fisted backlash against Governor Mike Pence of Indiana is overdone. I agree.

"No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" ... this is a frequent sign found at beach-side establishments. It seems to me that business' have certain rational prerogatives when it comes to what are acceptable for employees and customers. Yet these prerogatives have been proscribed so that certain groups are protected from arbitrary discrimination. Besotted drunks can be denied service at a bar, but cross-dressers cannot. Yet women can be forced to sit in the balcony of an Orthodox Jewish temple. Why? Because of the Constitutional notion of religious freedom. The rub obviously comes when such religious freedoms bump up against the latest fashion in protected behavior.

I can understand bakers being forced to cater gay weddings if they are the only game in town. But it seems a little conscripting to force them to violate their religious principles if there are multiple other willing options. Will President and Michelle Obama accede quietly to their girls entering into same-sex relationships? Can cross-dressers claim that no shoes and no shirts are part of their protected costumes? Will Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Computer, ever allow fundamentalists Christians to bring poisonous snakes to work as religious idols? Will a same sex marriage ever take place in a mosque?

This issue is far more complicated than our media is now allowing ...

Afterward: George Will has a nice turn of phrase when he labels those ranting about this new Indiana law (Apple's Tim Cook) as having "selective indignation" ... see: Daily Caller Story. And it also occurred to me that such phobics as Cook also are very quick off the blocks whilst people like Pence are a little more cerebral ... and often unprepared for such media sucker punches.

After Afterward: I had a analogous thought today ... how is the government forcing a fundamentalist Christian to cater a gay wedding any different from forcing a conscientious objector to serve in the front lines of the military? (Hint, also substitute fundamentalist Muslim for fundamentalist Christian and see if your answer is the same ... see: Louder with Crowder Video.

Shorthand

David Brooks has an opinion piece in this morning's New York Times contrasting two types of columnists ... "engaged" versus "detached" ... read it first at: New York Times.  I hope I am not being too "engaged" when I shorthand his op-ed into one simple sentence: "A detached columnists (such as me) is preferable to an engaged columnist (such as Maureen Dowd)."

Thurston Howell III

David Brooks of the New York Times lifted his hind leg on Mitt Romney this morning calling him Thurston Howell Romney for his comments in Boca Raton, Florida this past May (see: Brooks Opinion Piece). Then and there Romney rightly pointed out that 47% of Americans pay no income taxes and therefore are likely automatic voters for that man who promises to keep writing their government checks. To set the op-ed stage Brooks said, "Even after adjusting for inflation, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown by more than 700 percent over the last 50 years." And yet he implied that Mitt Romney is a 1% elitist with no sympathy for our downtrodden. Somehow, I just can't square this circle (particularly after the testaments to Romney's charitable heart that were shown at the recent Republican convention.) We are a country with starving children and "food deserts," yet we also suffer from out of control obesity. I can't circle this square either ...

Yes, there a great many middle-class WASPs (like me) who receive government transfers. But I still will vote for Romney if he will reduce this fire-hose largess across the board. It's called shared sacrifice. Perhaps he should have said it that way? If we don't do this, we clearly can't survive as a nation.

Maybe David Brooks can find an equally dismissive pejorative for that 1%-er (with the great crease in his trousers) curently living in the White House?

Why I'll Vote for Mitt ...

The RedState blog has a current entry that castigates Mitt Romney as presaging the end to the Conservative movement after he loses to The Barry next year (see: Red State Blog.)  Mitt Romney seems to have legions of detractors within the Republican party: Rush Limbaugh, Erick Erickson (of the RedState blog), Howie Carr, Michael Graham, etc.  There even is a movement called  "Anyone But Mitt".  Most of this distaste arises from serious doubts about his Conservative credentials.  He was for abortions before he was against them; he ushered Romneycare into Massachusetts as a precursor to Obamacare;  etc.  However valid these doubts are, there is one reason, I'll vote for Romney -- he has the best chance of fixing this country's economic malaise.  And I believe that he will assemble around him the kind of people who understand how our economic engine is assembled and what it takes to bring about its overhaul. All else is, for the nonce, unimportant.

Yes, there will be fusillades of opposition TV ads attacking Romney next year (assuming he gets the nomination) about his vacillating on these issues, his Wall Street ties, and many Latter-Day-Saints innuendos.  After all, how will The Barry spend his billion dollar political war chest?  (A friend in the know has even suggested that Romney may have trouble buying TV spots leading up to the election ... since Obama, with all his campaign funds, will have reserved all the premium TV-spot buys.)  But, I have not, nor will I give up on Romney as I think, if he is elected, he will do what it takes to fix things ... like he did with the 2002 Winter Olympics.  Interestingly, David Brooks likes him too for President (see: David Brooks Endorsement) ... perhaps it's, once again, the crease in his pants?  And I also kind of doubt that there will be a Romney bimbo eruption eleven months hence.

By the bye, has anyone noticed the juxtaposition possibilities between Mitt Romney and Stephen Colbert?  Put a pair of rimless glasses on Romney and he could host the Colber(t) Repor(t).

What did he say?!?

Mark Shields was doing his regular end-of-show commentary gig on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer last Friday ... along with David Brooks.  They were opining on the Herman Cain sexual assault innuendo scandal ... and comparing it with Bill Clinton's similar travails before the 1994 elections.  Mark Shields then actually said that, back then, Clinton "was smart enough to lie" about his peccadilloes with Monika Lewinsky.  David Brooks did not blanch.  Jim Lehrer, in disbelief, did not ask for Shields to repeat himself.  This was all on a nationally televised, presumably well-respected, news program (partially paid for by U.S. taxpayers.)

I guess this vignette, as much as anything, typifies the degree of moral degeneration to which this country has sunk.  What comes next ... Caligula?