Blow On Her And She Falls Over

"Worst still, those who were openly abusive about Trump now pretend to be his friend," Nigel Farage, the brazenly anti-immigrant leader of the right-wing Independence Party in Great Britain, wrote Tuesday in Steve Bannon's old rag, Breitbart News.

Reflecting Farage's unabashed support of him for President of the USA, Trump on November 21 had tweeted "Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!”

Evidently, Trump knows how to deal with the easily intimidated prime minister Theresa May, who herself had not commented on the composition of a democratically-elected government of an ally. When May's call became the tenth- tenth- taken by the victor following the election, Trump  told her "If you travel to the U.S., you should let me know."

She got the message. Trump's shot across the bow, followed by his show of contempt for what is arguably the United States' closest ally, already has paid dividends.  The Washington Post reports that in an e-mail statement

British Prime Minister Theresa May condemned a blunt speech this week by Secretary of State John F. Kerry on the state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an unusual move that boosted Britain’s relations with the incoming Trump administration at the expense of President Obama.

The rare diplomatic spat between Britain and the United States, which was met with surprise by the State Department, highlighted the fast-collapsing influence of the lame-duck White House. It also pointed to a vast reordering of international affairs expected after Donald Trump takes office in three weeks, as U.S. allies position themselves to curry favor in the new order.

It may not be surprising, given that the incoming President has sharply criticized Kerry's thoughtful, comprehensive speech, that some governments would criticize the position staked out by the lame-duck Obama Administration. However, the Post adds

May’s government acted as a key broker between U.S. and Palestinian interests ahead of a U.N. Security Council vote last week to declare Israeli settlement construction “illegal.” British diplomats worked as go-betweens in shaping the measure to ensure that the language was acceptable to the United States, Britain’s Guardian and Israel’s Haaretz newspapers reported this week.

Great Britain worked on the resolution upon which the United States abstained, thereby enabling its passage, and which Kerry defended in his apparently offending speech. And Great Britain- as a member (permanent, as it were) of the U.N. Security Council- voted for the measure, days before it criticized the American Secretary of State's speech defending it.

In its e-mailed statement, the office of the Prime Minister additionally commented

we are also clear that the settlements are far from the only problem in this conflict. In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long.

They appear to have missed Kerry stating "We have repeatedly and emphastically stressed to the Palesinians that all incitement to violence must stop We have consistently condemned all violence and terrorism, and we have strongly opposed unilateral efforts to delegitimize Israel in international fora." Even more clearly, he had noted

President Obama and I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership countless times, publicly and privately, that all incitement to violence must stop. We have consistently condemned violence and terrorism, and even condemned the Palestinian leadership for not condemning it.

But perhaps the best example of chutzpah- as it would be recognized were the Israeli government not on the opposite side- is May's claim "we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally."  Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of publicly recommending the appointment to an office not vacant, British ambassador to the USA. Now P.M. May has given what the Times' describes as "an olive branch both to Netanyahu and to President-elect Donald Trump," individuals who railed against the Obama Administration's failure to veto a resolution actually supported by Great Britain.

The Secretary of State's office responded to Theresa May's cowardice by explaining

We are surprised by the U.K. Prime Minister's office statement given that Secretary Kerry's remarks- which covered the full range of threats to a stwo-sate solution, including terrorism, violence, incitement and settlemetns- were in line with the U.K.'s own long-standing policy and its vote at the United Nations last week.

They have a right to be surprised; annoyed, even angered. It is a measure of "no drama Obama" that, under the circumstances, his State Department has reacted as calmly as it has. Over the next four years, perspective and serenity will be in short supply in Washington, and Great Britain will find itself among the nations which long for their return.













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Not Often True At All

Responding to President Obama's announcement of sanctions against Russia, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, counselor to incoming president Donald Trump, stated

“I will tell you that even those who are sympathetic to President Obama on most issues are saying that part of the reason he did this today was to quote ‘box in’ President-elect Trump,That would be very unfortunate if politics were the motivating factor here. We can’t help but think that’s often true.”

Evidently, she is referring to the likes of Rudy Giuliani, who when asked if Obama was attempting to “box in” Trump, replied "of course he is.” That would be the Rudy Giuliani who once remarked "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America." Otherwise, Conway might argue, Giuliani is just fine with Obama.

Or she may be referring to John Bolton, US amabassador to the United Nations under Bush 43. He did maintain on Fox and Friends "what this last burst of activity has to do is hard to say. I do think it's intended to try and box the Trump administration in. I think it will fail." At the same time the Obama-sympathetic Bolton contended "The Russians have walked all over the Obama administration for eight years. It's really been a pathetic performance."

Three days earlier, before the President's announcement but after the U.N. vote,  he had charged "Obama dislikes American exceptionalism; he dislikes Israeli exceptionalism." Seven months earlier, Bolton had written "Obama’s narcissism, his zeal for photo opportunities with him at the center, whether in Havana or Hiroshima, too often overcomes lesser concerns—like the best interests of the country. He puts his vanity before our nation’s pride,”  Big fan.

Giuliani and Bolton, unlike Conway, stressed that Obama's actions have come late and may be insufficient.   There was no such principled (if misguided) argument from Conway, who would  be loathe to admit that the Administration didn't release much information about the Russians in October when it

was probably afraid of looking like it was tipping the scale in Hillary Clinton’s favor, especially in an election that her opponent repeatedly described as rigged. Though Obama stumped for Clinton around the country, the administration didn’t want to open him up to attacks that he unfairly used intelligence to undermine Trump’s campaign, the Post reported.

Instead, top White House officials gathered key lawmakers—leadership from the House and Senate, plus the top Democrats and Republicans from both houses’ intelligence and homeland security committees—to ask for a bipartisan condemnation of Russia’s meddling. The effort was stymied by several Republicans who weren’t willing to cooperate, including, reportedly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

President Obama hesitated in order not to swing the election on the basis of a finding by a consensus of intelligence officials that Putin's allies were trying to move American public opinion toward Trump. Yet, Conway remarks "we can't help think that's often true" that the "motivating factor" is "politics."

As a master propagandist, Kellyanne Conway may currently have no equal.  As a truly loathsome individual, she has a few- and  oops- here she is (was) with one:












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Netanyahu, Not Israel, Is An Obstacle

If he deserves credit for anything- and probably he does- Benjamin Netanyahu deserves credit for evidently having read Albert Camus. In The Myth of Sisyphus, the great French philosopher and author writes

For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human....

In Wednesday's response to John Kerry's brilliant speech on the status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israeli Prime Minister maintained

the decisions that are vital to Israel’s interests and the future of its children (will) be made by the government of Israel around the negotiating table, making them on behalf of the one and only Jewish state, a sovereign nation that is the master of its own fate.

Notwithstanding Camus, if Israel were the master of its own fate, it wouldn't be fate, but something else, which illustrates an aspect of the answer to the question of why the American Secretary of State chose to make this speech only on his way out the door.

Obviously, the Secretary is clearly setting the Administration on the side of every Administration since President Carter, in contrast to the obvious perspective of the incoming Trump crew. Additionally, however, circumstances have changed, and not because of the USA or Israel's foes.

Secretary of State Kerry explained that the current policies of the coalition government heading Israel are

leading towards one state. In fact, Israel has increasingly consolidated control over much of the West Bank for its own purposes, effectively reversing the transitions to greater Palestinian civil authority that were called for by the Oslo Accords.

I don’t think most people in Israel, and certainly in the world, have any idea how broad and systematic the process has become. But the facts speak for themselves. The number of settlers in the roughly 130 Israeli settlements east of the 1967 lines has steadily grown. The settler population in the West Bank alone, not including East Jerusalem, has increased by nearly 270,000 since Oslo, including 100,000 just since 2009, when President Obama’s term began.

He later added

Palestinian structures in Area C that do not have a permit from the Israeli military are potentially subject to demolition. And they are currently being demolished at an historically high rate. Over 1,300 Palestinians, including over 600 children, have been displaced by demolitions in 2016 alone – more than any previous year.

So the settler agenda is defining the future of Israel. And their stated purpose is clear. They believe in one state: greater Israel. In fact, one prominent minister, who heads a pro-settler party, declared just after the U.S. election – and I quote – “the era of the two-state solution is over,” end quote. And many other coalition ministers publicly reject a Palestinian state. And they are increasingly getting their way, with plans for hundreds of new units in East Jerusalem recently announced and talk of a major new settlement building effort in the West Bank to follow...

Among the most troubling illustrations of this point has been the proliferation of settler outposts that are illegal under Israel’s own laws. They’re often located on private Palestinian land and strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible. There are over 100 of these outposts. And since 2011, nearly one-third of them have been or are being legalized, despite pledges by past Israeli governments to dismantle many of them.

Now leaders of the settler movement have advanced unprecedented new legislation that would legalize most of those outposts...







The Prime Minister of Israel- similarly to the incoming President of the United States, whom he (currently) adores- seems bent on antagonizing as many people and nations as possible. Ask not, therefore, why Secretary of State John Kerry decided to give this comprehensive speech less than four weeks before he, and the President he serves, leave office. Ask why the Prime Minister of Israel has decided to do what he can to upset the delicate balance which could serve as a bridge toward a final status agreement in greater Israel.







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Tasteless

Touting Israel as the only country in the Middle East congenial to Christians and urging people to visit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers his wish for a "Merry Christmas. Happy New Year."







It's a good bet the American President is not on his Christmas card list.

That is still Barack Obama, much to the consternation of Netanyahu and ambassador to the USA Ron Dermer.  The Security Council of the United Nations on Friday unanimously (14-0) passed Resolution 234 (2016) blasting "continuing Israeli settlement activities (which) are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967 lines."

Exorcised by the USA's decision to abstain rather than veto the measure, Netanyahu summoned the ambassadors of  the 10 of the 14 countries (and later, US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro) with diplomatic relations with Israel... on Christmas Day.

Nice touch that. or as a senior diplomat in Jerusalem and a Western diplomat noted "What would they have said in Jerusalem if we summoned the Israeli ambassador on Yom Kippur."  Even Terry Pegula waited until two days after Christmas to fire Rex Ryan in Buffalo.

Dermer told CNN's Don Lemon "It’s an old story that the United Nations gangs up on Israel. What is new is that the United States did not stand up and oppose that gang up. And what is outrageous is that the United States was actually behind that gang up.”

While the White House's deputy national security adviser maintained "we did not draft this resolution; we did not introduce this resolution," Dermer claimed he had evidence to the contrary, which he would present to the next Administration.

Haranguing ambassadors (some of them Christian) on Christmas, charging your most steadfast ally with conspiring against you, and treating an incumbent American President as if an ex-President seem like someone intent on working out resentment at the expense of his own nation.  No one can know for sure why Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to give, Trump-like, a middle finger to the United Nations and the United States for passing a non-binding resolution which is likely to backfire on Israel. However, Yousef Munayyer, executive director of US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, suggests an interesting, albeit completely unproven, motivation when he contends

And, you know, when you consider the fact that Ronald Reagan allowed 21 different United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, including criticizing the bombings of Beirut and the siege of Beirut throughout the 1980s, and Barack Obama had various opportunities during the sieges of Gaza and the bombardments of Gaza that took place under his watch to do so and didn’t, you know, these accusations against President Obama somehow being uniquely anti-Israel really raise questions about whether or not those accusations are not about something else that is unique about President Obama.







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Not In A Landslide, He Wouldn't Have

Writing for historians of the future, Matthew Yglesias in Vox explains

Historians looking through the archives of stories published in November and December of 2016 will find billions of words published on the nature of Trump’s appeal to voters who liked him. These takes, whether accurate or not, are important pieces of sociological exegesis that shed light on the nature of our political debates.

But in terms of what actually drove the election result, people who liked Trump were not the key decisions-makers. Not only did he lose the national popular vote, but even in crucial swing states he was mostly viewed negatively.

Yglesias persuasively argues, "research from Gallup indicates that emails dominated what voters heard about Clinton all throughout the campaign" (word cloud, below). He concludes

Even at the time, some of us found it hardly credible that a decision as weighty as who should be president was being decided on the basis of something as trivial as which email address the secretary of state used. Future generations must find it even harder to believe. But the facts are what they are — email server management, rather than any deeper or more profound root cause, was the dominant issue in Donald Trump’s successful rise to power.

Notwithstanding Jim Comey's effect upon the ultimate outcome of the election, the exact impact of the email scandal (largely a contrived scandal, but still a scandal) is virtually impossible to determine, but probably was the dominant issue in the demagogue's successful rise to power,

Every argument has its flaw, however, and Yglesias' is a relatively trivial one, and at most, tertiary to his point.

Sargent acknowledges "more successful economic policymaking from the Obama administration" might have helped Clinton in the election,  He argues, however, that in the "most significant" state of Pennsylvania "Obama had a 51 percent job approval rating in the state. A majority of voters were okay with the incumbent administration...."

We know this from polls.  However, evaluating the accuracy of pre-presidential election surveys, Huffington Post Senior Polling Editor Natalie Jackson analyzed polling aggregates from all 50 states. She included a graph which

clearly shows there were far more Trump underestimates. But it also shows that the president-elect was underestimated by more than Clinton. HuffPost Pollster underestimated Clinton most in California by about 6 points; FiveThirtyEight and Daily Kos underestimated her most in Hawaii by 8-9 points. Contrast that with the other end of the chart: HuffPost Pollster and Daily Kos underestimated Trump by more than 10 points in seven states, and FiveThirtyEight did the same in nine states.... 

The polls proved unreliable. with significant numbers of voters reluctant to admit they would vote for Donald Trump. They did so even though (publicly or privately) they could- more politically correctly- couch their support for him as opposition to Hillary Clinton, as many did, sincerely or otherwise.

Compare that to pollsters asking people whether they approve of Barack Obama, whom everyone knows is the first black President, and for many is, above all, the first black President. He polls as 51% favorable. Remarkably, the assumption is that the respondents are telling the truth and, in Yglesias' case, that "a majority of voters" are "okay with the incumbent administration."

Okay, yes; pleased, no.  Gallup asked registered voters during the periods of 10/5-10/9, 11/1-11/6, and 11/9-11/13 whether they were"satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time" and found 28%, 37%, and 27% satisfied, respectively.   Extrapolating, we can reasonably estimate that on Election Day 2016, approximately 35% of registered voters were "satisfied" with the course of the country.

If not constitutionally barred from a third term, Barack Obama, if nothing else a better campaigner than Hillary Clinton, probably would have defeated Donald Trump in what already was a very close election won by an unpopular candidate.  However, Trump, one of the original and most dogged of birthers, ran and won with a campaign based on "draining the swamp."  Consequently, pundits, analysts, journalists, and others who tell us that President Obama is a popular guy should answer the question: whose swamp is it Americans wanted to drain?






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The Evil University

Quoting The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch, Steve M. notes Anthea Butler is

A religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a black woman who teaches a class about the religious right in America and has a fiery liberal persona on social media, Butler’s been ridiculed in recent years on primetime TV by the right’s Sean Hannity and called out on AM radio by Rush Limbaugh....

But when a fellow professor contacted her a few weeks ago and told her she’d been placed on a brand new nationwide “professor watch list” intended to help conservatives identify faculty liberals, Butler felt like rising McCarthyism on America’s campuses just surged to a new high water mark.

The watch list [was] created and promulgated by a nationwide youth-oriented conservative group called Turning Point USA....

Steve perceptively recognizes that with the Democrats controlling neither the White House, the House of Representatives, nor the Senate, conservatives will have to look outside government to play the blame game. And

The right never wants the public to believe that Republicans are responsible for what's going on in government, even when they are responsible. So conservatives look for scapegoats in and out of politics, and they talk about them as if they have tremendous power. Recall the amount of effort the right invested in denouncing Ward Churchill, a professor who wrote an inflammatory essay in the wake of 9/11. If you paid attention to the right back then, you might have thought Churchill was the most important academic in America. 

But what was the right supposed to do? There was no Democratic president. Democrats didn't run the House or Senate. So Churchill had to be portrayed as a national menace. The same with liberal-leaning celebrities such as Barbra Streisand and the Dixie Chicks.

But there are at least two other reasons the organization has targeted institutions of higher learning.

After the 2002 election, Bill Clinton famously commented "When people are insecure, they'd rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right." The nation now has elected a big guy who admires  Sadaam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bashar al Assad, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said "I alone can fix it," and is wrong constantly and consistently.








"Hate crimes" appear to have increased dramatically since the election, and it's no surprise that supporters have been emboldened by the election of Donald Trump. He has not been gracious in victory, and neither will they.

This tendency to pile on is refected in an irony Bunch recognizes when he notes

Yet one other troubling aspect of the list is that the majority of the supposed heresies didn’t even take place in a classroom, where critics on the right have long insisted that students are indoctrinated with liberal ideas.  Many happened on Twitter, during televised appearances, in published op-eds or at political rallies.

Twitter is responsible for most  (choose one) a) extremist, b) obnoxious, c) offensive, or) all the above remarks. Yet, the list promulgated by Turning Point USA includes, Bunch explains, "several well-known professors with ties to Penn, Temple, and other local schools among its roster of roughly 200 faculty."

Twitter is not directly attacked.  Colleges (especially of the elite), though, are easy targets because the right perceives them as a hotbed of liberalism. One anti-abortion rights Catholic ethicist, Charles Camosy, argues

campus cultures have strictly (if not formally) enforced dogmatic views aboutt he nature of gender, sexual orientation, a woman's right to choose abortion, guns and the role of the state as primary agent of social change.

Further, he contends, they encourage "the reduction of all disagreement to racism, bigotry and ignorance- in addition to being wrong about its primary source."

Traveling in the world of academe, Camosy is much too polite (or naive) to sugest conservatives are more prone than liberals toward racism, sexism, or class bias.  It is out of necessity that the right sends its children off to university, generally the key to professional success. But to most conservatives, it represents much of what is wrong with society, helps explain Anthea Butler's unwanted attention, and why someone must "make America great again."






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Mission Accomplished

Ariel Dorfman and his wife, we learn in Mr. Dorfman's December 16 piece in The New York Times, were living in Chile in October,1970 when President Salvador Allende was overthrown with an assist from the Central Intelligence Agency and the govenment of Richard M. Nixon it represented.  He "can savor the irony" but "feel no glee" now that a foreign power has successfully intervened in an American presidential election.

He recommends "an independent, transparent and thorough public investigation so that any collusion between American citizens and foreigners bent on mischief can be exposed and punished, no matter how powerful these operatives may be." as well as "an incessant and unforgiving meditation on our shared country, its values, its beliefs, its history."

More critical, less forgiving, and less objectively, Bob Hennelly goes through a litany of sins of the US government over well more than a century of evil-doing.  He quotes late historian Howard Zinn, who maintained after having "seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos," from "1900 and 1933 the United States intervened in Cuba four times, in Nicaragua twice, Panama six times, in Guatemala once, in Honduras seven times."

Zinn also, Hennelly mentions, describes the "covert domestic network of several hundred professors, administrators and graduate students on over 100 college campuses who acted as eyes and ears" for the Central Intelligence Agency in the post-World War II period. At approximately the same time there was, Hennelly chronicled, Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Fidel Castro in Cuba in the 1960s, "duplicity in the Vietnam War revealed in the Pentagon Papers," and all manner of domestic spying on leftist groups.

The history is daunting and Dorfman (to whose op-ed Hennelly links) believes now is the "time for America to look at itself in the mirror, and if ever there was a time of reckoning and accountability, it is now."

Still, as Dorfman understands and Hennelly seems not to, this has jack squat to do with the current controversy of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential  (and congressional) election.  Putin probably is not fixated on American acquisition of the sandy beaches of the Hawaiian Islands. Although in late July less was known and naivete about the Russian President's intent greater, Politico's Michael Crowley and Julia Ioffe noted

While Donald Trump’s budding bromance with Vladimir Putin is well known — the two men have exchanged admiring words about each other and called for improved relations between Washington and Moscow — Putin’s hostility towards Clinton draws less attention.

Former U.S. officials who worked on Russia policy with Clinton say that Putin was personally stung by Clinton’s December 2011 condemnation of Russia’s parliamentary elections, and had his anger communicated directly to President Barack Obama. They say Putin and his advisers are also keenly aware that, even as she executed Obama’s “reset” policy with Russia, Clinton took a harder line toward Moscow than others in the administration. And they say Putin sees Clinton as a forceful proponent of “regime change” policies that the Russian leader considers a grave threat to his own survival.

“He was very upset [with Clinton] and continued to be for the rest of the time that I was in government,” said Michael McFaul, who served as the top Russia official in Obama’s national security council from 2009 to December 2011 and then was U.S. ambassador to Moscow until early 2014. “One could speculate that this is his moment for payback.”

And one could sarcastically remark "you think?"  However, that was in more innocent times, and McFaul was speculating- accurately- at a time when others were unnecessarily cautious.

Now, however, it's clear. The ball is in our court, Congress has it, and the implications are dire.









MERRY CHRISTMAS                                                              HAPPY CHANUKAH


(But in honor of Donald Trump's war against political correctness:  Happy Holidays!)







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