Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Political Rants

Like old times.

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I don’t know if it was at the start of this week or at the end of last week, but at some point recently I wondered aloud what became of the Trump administration’s coup plan in Venezuela. It seemed to have fizzled rather badly, despite their best efforts … but then this week it sprang back to life like Frankenstein’s monster. Washington’s hand-picked maximum leader of that unfortunate country, Juan Guaido, appeared in a cell-phone video surrounded by what appears to be a handful of soldiers, declaring himself president once again. This is, of course, not a coup, we’re told, because officials of the United States government have decided that Guaido is the legitimate president of Venezuela. Nothing screams freedom more than leaders selected by the regional hegemon.

Worse than neocons. Old-school imperialists.

Naturally, our execrable National Security Advisor John Bolton and our equally fragrant Secretary of State Michael Pompeo are behaving as if whatever they say randomly just has to be true. Pompeo claimed to CNN that Maduro had a plane ready to fly to Havana, but was talked out of it by the Russians. This doesn’t appear to be anything near the truth, it will surprise you to hear. Let’s just say these gentlemen have some serious credibility issues. As ham-fisted as they are, though, it’s hard to overstate the pressure that the United States can apply to a country like Venezuela. We basically control the international financial system, and Caracas has been cut off from the banking, loans, etc., since Trump applied sanctions in 2017. They are making the economy scream, as Nixon/Kissinger did with Chile in 1973, and this could bring the roof down eventually. (See the Center for Economic and Policy Research paper on these sanctions for more.)

We know from the Iraq debacle, and other comparable debacles before and since, that craven policy makers like Bolton, Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams can break a country in half, if we let them. What they’re not so good at is putting it back together (not that possessing that particular skill would make it in any way a worthy enterprise). There’s a better than fair chance that they will succeed in crushing the Maduro government, but very likely that will not be the end of it. Venezuela may be plunged into a bloody civil conflict that could last for years, perhaps decades. Not that such an outcome would be any skin off of Bolton’s ample nose, nor Abrams’. They’ve come through their previous disasters without a scratch. That’s more than I can say for their targets.

The only thing that can stop them is us. We need to raise our voices on this now, before it’s too late.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Standing upright.

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This one is for Ilhan Omar, who is currently bearing more than her share of attention from Donald Trump’s racist, xenophobic campaign to re-elect his sorry ass on the bodies of brown people everywhere. It’s hard to know where to begin, but I think it needs to be said first that Trump appears to be deliberately inciting violence with his various ignorant statements and tweets regarding this first-term congressmember. He may be an ignoramus, but I suspect he knows what effect his words can have on the disturbed, the deranged, and the prone to violence among his supporters and admirers. We have seen the results in Pittsburgh, in Florida, and elsewhere. Targets of Trump’s tirades are descended upon by legions of social media trolls, including some trigger-happy bottom-dwellers like would-be pipe-bomber Cesar Sayoc.

Rep. Omar is an ideal target for Trump, as many have pointed out. She’s (1) a Muslim, (2) black, (3) an immigrant / refugee, (4) someone from “a shithole country”, (5) a woman, and (6) defiant, outspoken, and unafraid. He is on a hyper-tear regarding Israel-Palestine, probably owing to the recent election campaign in Israel, so Ilhan Omar’s comments about AIPAC – nothing the likes of which hasn’t been said by Thomas Friedman, without sanction – become a source of joyous rebuke for the orange-faced menace. When he hits Rep. Omar, he’s hitting all of these things at the same time. The fact that his venomous denunciations are further amplified by Murdock-owned media should come as no surprise. Neither should the pusillanimous behavior of many of Ilhan’s colleagues in the Democratic party.

The bigot-in-chief and his principal target

Seriously, people like Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Max Rose, and to some extent even my own recently elected representative, Anthony Brindisi, act as enablers in this hate campaign against Omar. They roundly criticized her over the AIPAC comments, and went so far as to draft a resolution condemning antisemitism that was clearly aimed at her. Even now, as she receives credible death threats from crackpots worked up by Trump and his allies, they say little or nothing. Max Rose complained about the CAIR speech on MSNBC, sounding as though he roughly agrees with the president that Ilhan was somehow being disrespectful of those lost on 9/11, a claim based literally on nothing. When they do this shit, they open the door to demonization and death threats.

This isn’t about politics in the narrow sense. This is about standing up for what’s right. And in that sense, #IStandWithIlhan all the way.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Fear and favor.

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The Trump Administration almost gleefully declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization this week, setting a new precedent in this overtly imperial practice of terror designation by applying it to a branch of the armed forces of a sovereign nation. The first question that came to my mind was, did Trump do this at this particular moment as a last-minute favor to Netanyahu or as a sop to his buddy Mohammed bin Salman? Only Trump’s hairdresser knows for sure.

Not that the president’s penchant for prioritizing his personal interests is the sole motivation here. As the execrable Pompeo said, this is part of their strategy of placing “maximum pressure” on Iran, another step toward making military conflict with the Islamic Republic all but inevitable. Trita Parsi pointed out on Democracy Now! that one of the most serious effects of this decision would be to forestall any future opportunity to reduce the level of confrontation with Iran by effectively criminalizing any contact with large swaths of the Iranian government or civil society. It will also make reconciliation far more politically costly for future, hopefully more sane American leaders, while strengthening the hardliners in Iran. This strikes many as ironic, but it isn’t, really – this is similar to what the Bush II administration did with Mohammed Khatami. Republican presidents in particular much prefer hot-headed Iranian leaders like Ahmadinejad because they’re easy to demonize. This policy practically guarantees another hot head in Teheran.

The neocon lobe of Trump's tiny brain.

The frankly laughable Pompeo took the occasion of his announcement to rattle through a litany of Iran’s terroristic offenses over the decades, such as the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, carried out by a nascent Hezbollah. Naturally, every action taken by Hezbollah is attributed to Iran, but just to focus on this one example – in 1983, the U.S. was supporting Saddam Hussein in his then 3-year-old invasion of Iran, a conflict that killed upwards of 900,000 Iranians over eight years. Hezbollah had risen in opposition to the invasion of Lebanon by Israel, which was essentially supported by the United States. Say what you like about the bombing, we were not simply minding our own business in those days. Add to that the fact that we worked with British intelligence to bomb a mosque in Lebanon around that time, and then ask … who’s the terrorist?

One thing to remember with the Trump administration: there’s the personal venality and self-dealing of Trump himself, and then there’s the craven policies of the institutional Republican party. Often those things intersect in toxic ways, and I think this terror designation is one of those instances.

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jp

Political Rants

Them-ism.

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This week started with our president, Donald Trump, threatening to close our southern border, from the Gulf to the Pacific, to keep brown people from entering the United States. There’s nothing surprising about this display – immigration is Trump’s signature issue, specifically the demonization of anyone attempting to emigrate from what he would term as “shit hole” countries. And yet, he seems hell-bent on policies that are practically guaranteed to increase the flow of migrants and refugees from south of the border rather than stem it. The recent increase in apprehensions of undocumented immigrants is illustrative of this.

Of course, part of the increase is simply due to the time of year – people are trying to cross before the summer heat sets in. But I think it’s pretty obvious that Trump’s hateful and aggressive policies and rhetoric on this issue are prompting desperate families and individuals to attempt the crossing between ports of entry, which have effectively been closed to asylum seekers. Bear in mind that it is completely within their legal rights to present themselves for an asylum claim wherever they cross, whether it’s at designated points of entry or in-between. By making it impossible for migrants to present their case in an orderly and timely fashion, the administration is leaving them no alternative to making the crossing at some other point. These are people who have no home to return to. Many have friends, family in the U.S. Threatening a total closure of the border only increases the urgency.

That wall makes your ass look big.

I think Trump’s policies may reflect a view of these migrant families as something akin to animals. It’s as if they don’t expect these people to have human concerns or any level of perception. Migrants are, in fact, reacting in understandable ways to the threats being hurled at them. Is it possible that Trump doesn’t understand that?

Call me a cynic, but I think the administration knows that their policies and rhetoric increase undocumented immigration. They want to create a sense of crisis so that their voters will remain in a state of frenzy over the impending invasion of caravans of brown people. Though I suspect they may be a little reluctant to follow through on their threat to close the border “100 percent”, as Trump has said. As much as he affects not to like NAFTA, it is the law of the land, and as such, there’s a tremendous amount of cross-border commerce, supply chain activity, etc., not to mention many, many thousands of people crossing back and forth on a daily basis. Closing the border would effectively shut down large sectors of our industrial base, throwing a monkey wrench into what is literally Trump’s only substantive argument for re-election: the supposedly strong economy. (Strength is a relative thing. It’s stronger than it was, but mostly to the benefit of the wealthy.)

Trump may be an idiot, but he’s probably not enough of a fool bring the economy to a screeching halt in an effort to rile up his bigoted base of supporters. We shall see.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Empire news.

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Brazil’s fraudulently elected president Jair Balsonaro visited with the marginally less detestable Donald Trump this past week – a reported love fest in which Trump not only announced Brazil’s new status as a “non-NATO ally” (which means lots more weapons for Balsonaro to use against his own people) but breezily suggested elevating Brazil to full NATO membership …. which is a little strange, and may have taken Trump’s advisors somewhat by surprise. The two pretenders also discussed the ongoing U.S. attack on Venezuela, which Balsonaro is happy to join in on. Of course, that would only make him like most of our political class here at home, which has openly supported the coup attempt by right-wing Venezuelan politician Juan Guaido … as have much of our corporate media.

Just to single out a particularly egregious recent example, NPR’s insipid Morning Edition ran a piece by one-time journalist Phillip Reeves about the crisis in Venezuela. The framing of the piece was typical of Reeves and NPR – through the lens of U.S. historic role in the hemisphere; that of a hegemonic power. “How is the president of Venezuela still in power?” asks host Steve Inskeep in the intro, adding that the U.S. is “moving to choke off the oil revenue that supports the socialist government.” First of all, that revenue has already been “choked off.” Second, NPR always characterizes these siege-like sanctions as only punishing the government, not the people of Venezuela. Finally … “socialist”? What the hell kind of socialist country has as many wealthy people as Venezuela does? Yes, the government controls the oil industry, but that pre-dates Chavez. The neo-colonial economy of the country is one based principally on export of petroleum – that’s largely why the economy is in turmoil.

NPR: Giving Venezuela the Iraq treatment

Reeves’s story suggests an opposition under pressure, but what he’s describing is a self-proclaimed president, Guaido, who is still functioning inside the country, openly calling for intervention by the hemispheric superpower … and yet, still not incarcerated by this supposedly very oppressive government. Every mention of Maduro or the government emphasizes the label “socialist” and paints the regime as dictatorial. Chavez, Reeves writes, was Maduro’s “socialist mentor” who “took power in 1999” (i.e. won the first of several elections). Reeves talks to several Guaido supporters, most English-speaking, but only one Maduro supporter, whom he describes as “a lifelong communist” who lives in a “ramshackle home.” This sixty-five year old man, Reeves reports with seeming disbelief, is “convinced the U.S. is at war with Maduro to seize Venezuela’s oil.” Where would he get THAT idea? (Well … from Trump himself, from John Bolton … from recent and not-so-recent history.)

Pretty amazing stuff to run on the 16th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq – an anniversary that Morning Edition didn’t see fit to mark in any serious way. You’d think that any outlet that was as flat-footed as NPR was in the run-up to the Iraq War might have learned enough from the experience not to mindlessly serve the interests of a bellicose administration set on regime change. And you would be disappointed.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bad gig.

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There’s been a lot of crowing about how great the economy is now, with low unemployment, marginally rising wages, etc. (Sure, only 20,000 jobs were gained last month, but what the hell … rich people are making a lot of money, and that brings the average up.) Every administration takes any opportunity to exaggerate their accomplishments, but this claim of “full employment” is frankly laughable and doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. What lurks behind the seemingly strong job numbers is the fact that many, many of these “jobs” are not really jobs at all. I’m referring to the vaunted “Gig Economy”, which currently employs about 36% of all American workers – a staggering statistic.

Unemployed

This isn’t a Trump-only thing – the gig phenomenon really got going under Obama, and they presented these “jobs” and part-time employment as evidence of their success, just as the current administration does (though with a bit less verve). Anyone who has worked as a contractor knows what total bullshit this is. As one who worked in the original “gig economy” – the music industry – I can tell you that, aside from the amount of effort involved, it’s the furthest thing from having a real job that you can get.  You have no security. You receive no benefits. If you get sick, it’s your hard luck. You are, in large measure, perpetually unemployed, always scraping for the next gig. Sure, some people thrive in this type of arrangement, but most struggle with very little reward.

This is great news for business owners who use contractors of various descriptions. Contractors cost a lot less than employees. There are few enforceable responsibilities employers have toward informal workers. And particularly with these app-driven companies like Uber, etc., when one gigger doesn’t work out, there are many more ready to take his or her place. That makes it hard to organize, hard to demand better wages or working conditions. In short, these are not jobs; they are contracts, and as such, ones in which all of the obligations point one way – toward the gig worker. This is why wages have remained pretty much flat for a very long stretch, though there has been some small upward movement this past quarter.

All of you gig workers out there: you have my sympathy. You deserve better than this type of “full employment”, as do we all.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Old time religion.

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When I listen to mainstream reporting on the standoff in Venezuela, I come away with the strong impression that the press has not learned anything whatsoever from their failures in the run-up to the Iraq war back in 2002-03. I know – I shouldn’t be surprised. Ironically, Trump’s targeting of the mainstream press rings a vague bell with many who recall their catastrophic support for Bush’s big middle eastern adventure. As is often the case, the Orange Disaster  approaches being right on this issue from entirely the wrong direction. (The same might be said of his current policy on North Korea, though that might actually result in something positive, unlike his targeting of journalists.)

Do not adjust your television

From an institutional perspective, it makes total sense that MSNBC, CNN, and the major networks would be almost totally on board the Trump train as it steams towards Caracas. These outlets are owned by corporations that are deeply vested in the imperial enterprise. Their news organizations are run by people who can’t see this crisis in any kind of equitable, non-interventionist fashion. And it’s not like they haven’t had a lot of helpful hints thrown at them, like the hiring of notorious war criminal Elliott Abrams to run the Venezuela desk, or execrable John Bolton’s crowing about how American oil companies can do good business with a Guaido-run government. Even when the quiet parts are said out loud, the media hews to the official line.

I think it’s fair to say that our two-party political culture effectively sets the parameters of debate within which our mainstream press operates. So when the leadership of the Democratic party in essence agree with the Republican president that this extreme right-wing opposition legislator who declared himself president of Venezuela should be seen as just that, no major newspaper or broadcast outlet is going to step outside of that political boundary. That is why, for example, there is no better method of determining where the center of power is in America than listening to an hour of news programming on NPR. It is why corporate-fueled media so worship bipartisanship, calls for civility, and “reaching across the aisle.” It is why television news show hosts are the primary constituencies for Howard Schultz’s toy presidential campaign.

They still got religion, my friends. They have learned nothing in the last 18 years.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Tragedy, then farce.

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The Trump administration has been pushing the sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, according to a report from the House Government Oversight Committee, now functional once again since the Democratic takeover of that body. Some pretty good reporting on this from ProPublica suggests, predictably, that Trump’s family would benefit materially from such an arrangement, in the form of lucrative Saudi contracts for the now bankrupt nuclear plant designer Westinghouse, which has garnered Trump friend Tom Barrack as a major investor. ( I believe the consortium is eyeing Jared Kushner’s 666 building for office space.) Barrack wants to be part of a crackpot “Marshall Plan” for the Middle East that will involve building dozens of nuclear reactors in Saudi. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the same things that have gone wrong on previous occasions when we have moved in this direction. Oh, yes … we have been here before, though perhaps without the craven self-dealing that Trump adds to virtually every initiative. In the 1960s, we were pushing the “atoms for peace” program, and at one point we were working with the British to help Iran (under the Shah) develop nuclear weapons – this according to longtime Labor party leader the late Tony Benn. In the late 1980s, George H.W. Bush was planning to send nuclear scientists over to Iraq for talks with Saddam Hussein’s government. And we have, of course, looked the other way with regard to Israel’s nuclear program, which remains unacknowledged, even though it continues to affect regional politics.

Now, there are historical and institutional reasons why our relationship with Saudi Arabia is unlikely to go south in a way similar to our little imperial dance with Iraq or Iran. But it’s hard to predict what will happen to any despotic regime. I’m sure back in the 1960s U.S. policymakers thought Iran would remain within the fold for the long term. My sense is that on this issue, like other foreign policy issues, Trump is being driven around like a little toy car by his advisors. People like Bolton, Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams work their strategies through people like Trump, who has little or no interest in international politics and is really only focused on what is best for him, his children, his son in law, his cronies. In a place like Saudi, they can all get what they want even if their goals are divergent from one another.

We live in dangerous times, to be sure. There’s nothing more dangerous than a useful idiot.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

False outrage.

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Trump isn’t happy with the compromise plan being served up by the Congressional Conference Committee to Avoid A Second Pointless Shutdown. That’s certainly a good sign. Whenever Trump is unhappy about something, an angel gets her wings. Still, the Trump administration is always about fifty things in any given day, some retreads from previous cycles, some new bullshit, invariably something to get under nearly anyone’s skin. The things I probably found most irritating this week (and that’s always a hot contest) were Trump’s Texas adventure, the big speech at El Paso, and his sloppily calling for Rep. Ilhan Omar to resign. The former of these items was infuriating for obvious reasons; the latter more because it was dog-piling on criticisms of the Congresswoman from a broad swath of people, including many in the Democratic party.

Totally not antisemiticOmar is the perfect target for Trump. She’s a woman, a person of color, an immigrant from Somalia, and a Muslim who, like many Somali women, wears a headscarf. The orange-faced jackass has attacked all of those things separately on many occasions – by attacking Omar, he gets more bang for the buck. Would that he were the only one so eager to jump on her over an anti-AIPAC tweet. Democratic leadership really showed their ass this week, following up on their shameful support of Trump’s Venezuela policy from the previous week. A really poor performance. Still, Trump and Kevin McCarthy both get extra credit for crying antisemitism when their own track records on bigotry are unambiguously offensive. Both McCarthy and Trump made George Soros the bête noir of the mid-term campaign last year. Not subtle.

I don’t know that I would attribute fanatical support of Israeli government policy solely to receiving money from AIPAC, but Omar is right to call the lobbying group out, as they take an extreme right position on just about every aspect of Israel’s various domestic and foreign policy actions. Moreover, politicians from both major parties regularly try to out-do one another in their speeches before AIPAC conferences, trying to establish which of them does a better imitation of Netanyahu or someone further to the right flank of Likud. The problem is more with the politicians than the lobby, and their cravenness on this issue occurs in the context of an American foreign policy that is in lock-step with the Israeli government, regardless of what they do. That’s just bad policy, no matter what government we’re talking about.

Glad to see Omar give Elliott Abrams a pain in the ass. Somebody sorely needs to.

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jp

Political Rants

State of it, 2019.

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I would be remiss not to comment, first of all, on the style and delivery of Trump’s second State Of The Union address this past Tuesday night. Plainly, he is terrible at reading from a teleprompter. I don’t know whether it’s a vision issue or some pathology further back in that thick skull of his, but man goddamn, what a horrible read. Beyond that, though, he obviously did not rehearse the speech to any significant degree. It was a rocky road, prosody-wise, for little lord Trump-leroy from beginning to end. An embarrassing performance all around.

As for the content, just a couple of points:

Really cares about those kids.Immigration. Beyond the same lies, distortions, and barely concealed bigotry that usually erupt from his festering maw, Trump used the well-worn SOTU practice of using guests as rhetorical human shields in his argument for the Wall, greater immigration enforcement, and so on. This time it was family members of a U.S. citizen victim murdered by an MS13 member. Of course, Trump could bring in dozens of such cases if he can find them, and it would no more prove his case than this sorry demonstration. People get murdered in America, including a relatively small number at the hands of immigrants. Crucially, his “get tough” policy makes these victims less safe. By rounding up undocumented aliens by the thousands, Trump’s agents are creating a strong disincentive for members of that community to call the cops when they either witness or become victimized by gang activity. Just more evidence that bigotry is not only wrong and immoral – it’s just effing dumb.

Iran Deal. Trump had just told an interviewer a few days ago that he wanted to keep troops on an American base in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran” – something he apparently failed to discuss with the Iraqi government. Then, in this remarkably poorly-wrought SOTU address, the old man railed against the Islamic Republic, calling it the most prominent state sponsor of terror and accusing it of doing “bad things” in the region. He has adopted the broadly-used imperial rhetoric on Iran, attributing every action carried out by Hezbollah to Tehran. And, of course, they hate Hezbollah because it is an effective fighting force that restricts Israel’s ability to strike  Lebanon at will. That’s what we and the Israeli government call “terrorism”.  Of course, his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord just scotches what was a great deal for the U.S. – a pledge to restrain themselves while we continue to occupy countries on either side of them and threaten them daily. What’s to complain about there?

Oh, right. Obama did it. And John Bolton wants war. How could I have forgotten?

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jp