NBC says staffers allied with Jared and Ivanka have made a bunch of seriously damaging leaks about Kelly.
They say he called Trump an idiot more than once, that he got into a shouting match demanding Trump abandon the idea of withdrawing all American military from Korea, that he bullied Trump into abandoning his deal with the Democrats on DACA and immigration and forced him into a harder line, that Kelly has tried to stop him pushing on the Wall, that Kelly constantly opposes the president and harasses him into acceptance of Kelly's policies, and more.
Thing is, if the story is true then Trump's instincts are to pursue the kind of isolationist foreign policy he spoke of during the campaign, and globalists and "the deep state" are indeed stopping him doing that.
So why is the pro-globalist NBC undermining that effort?
If he goes Jim Mattis is the last one standing.
At the same time, Trump is still allegedly talking to Steve Bannon and increasingly impatient with people who oppose that same campaign agenda of Buchananism.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Not in more than 50 years . . .
. . . have I been bicycling.
I've ridden a motorcycle since then, but not a bike.
Just bought this Schwinn, but green and with the handlebar more nearly horizontal, online through Dick's a couple weeks ago.
I took it to their local store for free assembly.
It's too big (43 pounds) for a trunk or roof rack - a hitch rack would work but the hitch and rack together cost more than the bike (almost twice the price ), and then there's the cost of installation - and the front wheel does not pop off, but it's a nice hybrid bike all the same.
Oddly, a lighter bike would have cost nearly as much as that hitch and rack.
I've been riding it around the circle at the entrance to Bird Park off Cedar Boulevard, with an occasional side trip up the trail into the park, to get used to the controls and brush up on my skills before trying it out on any of the local bike trails.
I did check with my doctor before buying it (I'm 69 years old) and he encouraged me.
Bicycling is a heck of a lot more exercise than walking for the same length of time.
Particularly since my usual walk is indoors at a mall.
So that's totally flat and zero-grade, of course.
Riding anywhere nearby involves an actual grade - this is a Pittsburgh suburb, after all - , and I do feel it in the legs.
Beautiful day for it, today.
63 degrees F and sunny.
No-sweat biking.
Update 05112018.
Since writing the above I have twice driven to a Montour Trail entry point in Upper Saint Clair - free parking near an elementary school - and biked from there to an entry point in Bethel Park.
A marker near the USC entry point says that's the highest point along the trail, 1223 feet in elevation, so it's a slight downhill grade from there to Bethel Park and uphill all the way back.
The trail is about a car lane and a half wide and has benches - few and far between - and mile markers.
Along that stretch you are mostly enclosed on both sides by woods, but here and there the trail runs along behind the back yards of several houses in a row.
The surface seems to be hard-packed light gray crushed rock, not as easy to ride as actual blacktop.
The interactive map says the surface at Bethel Park is dirt and the surface at Upper Saint Clair is asphalt.
Wrong both times.
The surface is the same in both places, and as I have described it.
I've ridden a motorcycle since then, but not a bike.
Just bought this Schwinn, but green and with the handlebar more nearly horizontal, online through Dick's a couple weeks ago.
I took it to their local store for free assembly.
It's too big (43 pounds) for a trunk or roof rack - a hitch rack would work but the hitch and rack together cost more than the bike (almost twice the price ), and then there's the cost of installation - and the front wheel does not pop off, but it's a nice hybrid bike all the same.
Oddly, a lighter bike would have cost nearly as much as that hitch and rack.
I've been riding it around the circle at the entrance to Bird Park off Cedar Boulevard, with an occasional side trip up the trail into the park, to get used to the controls and brush up on my skills before trying it out on any of the local bike trails.
I did check with my doctor before buying it (I'm 69 years old) and he encouraged me.
Bicycling is a heck of a lot more exercise than walking for the same length of time.
Particularly since my usual walk is indoors at a mall.
So that's totally flat and zero-grade, of course.
Riding anywhere nearby involves an actual grade - this is a Pittsburgh suburb, after all - , and I do feel it in the legs.
Beautiful day for it, today.
63 degrees F and sunny.
No-sweat biking.
Update 05112018.
Since writing the above I have twice driven to a Montour Trail entry point in Upper Saint Clair - free parking near an elementary school - and biked from there to an entry point in Bethel Park.
A marker near the USC entry point says that's the highest point along the trail, 1223 feet in elevation, so it's a slight downhill grade from there to Bethel Park and uphill all the way back.
The trail is about a car lane and a half wide and has benches - few and far between - and mile markers.
Along that stretch you are mostly enclosed on both sides by woods, but here and there the trail runs along behind the back yards of several houses in a row.
The surface seems to be hard-packed light gray crushed rock, not as easy to ride as actual blacktop.
The interactive map says the surface at Bethel Park is dirt and the surface at Upper Saint Clair is asphalt.
Wrong both times.
The surface is the same in both places, and as I have described it.
Bait and switch? Well, a little
But the article is equally a pretty good take-down of an absurd celebration of Marxism published today by the NYT.
Marxist philosopher Jason Barker has an op-ed in the New York Times celebrating Marxism, a philosophy, he claims, that has been proven entirely correct.
Marxist philosopher Jason Barker has an op-ed in the New York Times celebrating Marxism, a philosophy, he claims, that has been proven entirely correct.
After many celebratory words, Barker does briefly concede, 15 paragraphs in, that Marxism has run into a few snags translating its ideals into practice.
“The subsequent and troubled history of the Communist ‘states,’” he concedes, leaves “a great deal to be learned from their disasters, but their philosophical relevance remains doubtful, to say the least.”
It is philosophically irrelevant that every nation-state founded on Marxist philosophy almost immediately metastasized into a repressive tyranny, he breezily insists.
It is philosophically irrelevant that every nation-state founded on Marxist philosophy almost immediately metastasized into a repressive tyranny, he breezily insists.
Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the parties that ruled them all shared a common philosophy, and that this philosophy identified within their society an oppressor class whose political rights could and should be eliminated?
No, no, reply the Marxists.
All these real-world examples of governments attempting to actualize Marxist principles tell us nothing about Marxism.
The same process of abstracting away real-world failure can be seen in American conservatism.
Unlike right-of-center parties found in other countries, the American right has never accepted the basic legitimacy of the New Deal.
It has hysterically opposed every extension of government since the 1930s, and the failures of either their apocalyptic predictions to come true, or of right-wing politicians to roll back these dastardly extensions of federal power, have not inspired any wholesale rethinking of their creed.
Like any strain of fanaticism, American conservatism sustains itself on the premise that it has Never Been Tried.
Bareknuckle, low government capitalism was tried in the US right from the beginning, the only departure being slavery, abolished in 1865.
The experiment was at its peak in the Gilded Age, and so horrific were its results that it gave birth to the Progressive Movement and the construction, over many decades, of the regulatory and welfare states so hated by American conservatism.
. . . .
Decade after decade, they [conservatives] have attributed their failures to the fecklessness of their leaders.
Bareknuckle, low government capitalism was tried in the US right from the beginning, the only departure being slavery, abolished in 1865.
The experiment was at its peak in the Gilded Age, and so horrific were its results that it gave birth to the Progressive Movement and the construction, over many decades, of the regulatory and welfare states so hated by American conservatism.
. . . .
Decade after decade, they [conservatives] have attributed their failures to the fecklessness of their leaders.
It has never occurred to conservatives to question the viability of their absolutist free-market philosophy itself.
Conservatives continue to celebrate Ronald Reagan’s urgent warning in 1961 that the establishment of Medicare would lead first to the government telling doctors how many patients they could treat and where they would live, and ultimately to the total dissolution of freedom in the United States — “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”
The moment of crisis of the welfare state never comes, but it simply moves further and further into the future.
The fact that conservative voters themselves have no interest in eliminating or even paring back Medicare is not factored into the equation.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Dread is entirely in order
Will Trump attempt a coup?
I ask as I contemplate the copy of Fascism: A Warning that sits, so far unread, on the low bureau beside my bed.
Update, the following day.
Update, the following day.
And as I read about his speech in Michigan.
There is video of the entire speech at RCP.
View at the risk of despair.
Or maybe a panic attack.
There is video of the entire speech at RCP.
View at the risk of despair.
Or maybe a panic attack.
Chapter 32
From the outside, love is madness, possession by hormones, utterly stupid.
From the inside, it is the redemption of life.
Provided the beloved does not turn out to be unworthy.
Lord Jim.
Whatever else he was, Conrad was a romantic, to use his own word.
Well, everyone would just admit the peace prize has long been a load of crap
As Maureen Dowd pretty much has.
Trump: Our Cartoon Nobel Laureate
“The guy who said he could be as presidential as any president except for Abraham Lincoln is instead about as presidential as Yosemite Sam,” says his [Trump's] biographer Tim O’Brien.
“I really think of him as Yosemite Sam — just hopping around in anger, firing his gun wildly, sometimes at his own foot. He was so unhinged and ranting in that call to ‘Fox & Friends’ this week that even the hosts couldn’t wait to get him off the air.”
Yet Lindsey Graham, who once labeled Trump “a kook,” “crazy” and “unfit for office,” told Fox News on Friday: “Donald Trump convinced North Korea and China he was serious about bringing about change.
We’re not there yet, but if this happens, President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.”
And here’s the part that would drive Trump haters into a frenzy: If he could pull off denuclearizing North Korea, he would deserve it more than Barack Obama did when he had that bouquet thrown at him seconds into his presidency.
And Trump certainly would deserve it more than Henry Kissinger, who won the prize in 1973 for his efforts to end the Vietnam War, after privately persuading Richard Nixon to keep it going for years and while secretly bombing Cambodia.
If he won, President Trump would be within his rights when he claimed it as a personal victory since he decimated the State Department to the point that we wondered if interns in Foggy Bottom were crafting North Korea policy.
It would be a paradox: The man so many Americans loathe as a villain taming a charter member of the Axis of Evil.
Trump: Our Cartoon Nobel Laureate
“The guy who said he could be as presidential as any president except for Abraham Lincoln is instead about as presidential as Yosemite Sam,” says his [Trump's] biographer Tim O’Brien.
“I really think of him as Yosemite Sam — just hopping around in anger, firing his gun wildly, sometimes at his own foot. He was so unhinged and ranting in that call to ‘Fox & Friends’ this week that even the hosts couldn’t wait to get him off the air.”
Yet Lindsey Graham, who once labeled Trump “a kook,” “crazy” and “unfit for office,” told Fox News on Friday: “Donald Trump convinced North Korea and China he was serious about bringing about change.
We’re not there yet, but if this happens, President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.”
And here’s the part that would drive Trump haters into a frenzy: If he could pull off denuclearizing North Korea, he would deserve it more than Barack Obama did when he had that bouquet thrown at him seconds into his presidency.
And Trump certainly would deserve it more than Henry Kissinger, who won the prize in 1973 for his efforts to end the Vietnam War, after privately persuading Richard Nixon to keep it going for years and while secretly bombing Cambodia.
If he won, President Trump would be within his rights when he claimed it as a personal victory since he decimated the State Department to the point that we wondered if interns in Foggy Bottom were crafting North Korea policy.
It would be a paradox: The man so many Americans loathe as a villain taming a charter member of the Axis of Evil.
The undeserving sick and socialized health insurance
You want the government deciding you don't deserve proper medical attention?
What, because that million it would cost could be better spent in a tax cut disguised as a program to straighten teeth on a thousand kids (the kids are already getting their teeth fixed)?
Medicare for all means the government has a monopoly on the health insurance business and will absolutely start making calls like that.
Already there are plenty of people whining that money spent on health care for the old, livers for ex-alcoholics, hearts and lungs for ex-smokers and the like is money spent on the undeserving sick.
Whines that fold in wonderfully with the agenda of Republicans as tax cutters and saboteurs of government, providing softening up propaganda for efforts to cut costs by cutting coverage.
Recall how much they, led by such heroes of ordinary people as the Bozo in the White House and Paul Ryan, bellyached about Obamacare's coverage requirements for policies to be sold through the exchanges or qualify for subsidies.
And that they already have insured no government program will pay for an abortion, and have tried their best to cut out coverage even for birth control, all allegedly in deference to the moral sensitivities of Evangelicals and Catholic nuns.
It's a lot easier to resist such pressures when public health insurance programs aren't providing coverage for most Americans, let alone all of them.
Create a socialist monopoly in health insurance and just watch how fast secularist Democrats will join the Christian clericalists of the GOP in deciding the devil can take the old, the weak, the most vulnerable, the most beset and needy, along with all those slutty women baby-killers.
And they will all the while dress up the whole sorry, greedy business as an heroic effort to preserve scarce resources for the young and the deserving, for the children, for God's sake.
Oh, the moral ago of the New York Times.
These are liberals talking like this, people.
Injecting Drugs Can Ruin a Heart. How Many Second Chances Should a User Get?
What, because that million it would cost could be better spent in a tax cut disguised as a program to straighten teeth on a thousand kids (the kids are already getting their teeth fixed)?
Medicare for all means the government has a monopoly on the health insurance business and will absolutely start making calls like that.
Already there are plenty of people whining that money spent on health care for the old, livers for ex-alcoholics, hearts and lungs for ex-smokers and the like is money spent on the undeserving sick.
Whines that fold in wonderfully with the agenda of Republicans as tax cutters and saboteurs of government, providing softening up propaganda for efforts to cut costs by cutting coverage.
Recall how much they, led by such heroes of ordinary people as the Bozo in the White House and Paul Ryan, bellyached about Obamacare's coverage requirements for policies to be sold through the exchanges or qualify for subsidies.
And that they already have insured no government program will pay for an abortion, and have tried their best to cut out coverage even for birth control, all allegedly in deference to the moral sensitivities of Evangelicals and Catholic nuns.
It's a lot easier to resist such pressures when public health insurance programs aren't providing coverage for most Americans, let alone all of them.
Create a socialist monopoly in health insurance and just watch how fast secularist Democrats will join the Christian clericalists of the GOP in deciding the devil can take the old, the weak, the most vulnerable, the most beset and needy, along with all those slutty women baby-killers.
And they will all the while dress up the whole sorry, greedy business as an heroic effort to preserve scarce resources for the young and the deserving, for the children, for God's sake.
Oh, the moral ago of the New York Times.
These are liberals talking like this, people.
Injecting Drugs Can Ruin a Heart. How Many Second Chances Should a User Get?
Korean reunification?
Please do recall that German reunification was made possible by the abandonment of Communism by the GDR.
You figure Kim is for one second contemplating anything of the kind?
You figure Kim is for one second contemplating anything of the kind?
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Friday, April 27, 2018
The verdict is absurd
Verdict in Pamplona Gang Rape Case Sets Off Immediate Outcry
In a case that was seen as a bellwether for women’s rights in Spain, a court on Thursday sentenced five men for sexually abusing a woman during the bull-running festival of Pamplona, but cleared them of raping her, to the dismay of women’s associations.
Shortly after the verdict, various women’s groups announced that they would lead protests on Thursday evening across Spain to condemn the ruling.
The five men were sentenced to nine years in prison for “continuous sexual abuse,” rather than the almost 23 years in prison that the prosecution had sought for rape and other charges.
. . . .
An 18-year-old woman, whose identity has been protected by the authorities, was attacked in the early hours of the morning by five men, who filmed the assault using a cellphone.
The incident set off mass street protests and a national outcry at the time.
The court on Thursday found the five young men, who are from Seville, guilty of “sexual abuse” of the woman, but cleared them of the more serious charge of rape, which must involve violence or intimidation under Spanish law.
On top of their prison sentence, the men were ordered to pay a combined 50,000 euros ($60,600) in compensation to the woman.
One of the defendants, who was a military police officer at the time, was also fined €900 for stealing her cellphone.
. . . .
Thursday’s verdict followed a long trial that had already set off significant controversy after lawyers for the five men started to portray the victim as a consenting sexual partner who suffered no lasting damage.
The defendants’ lawyers also used a private detective to follow the woman and gather evidence that she returned to a normal life after the assault, but part of that evidence was eventually withdrawn by the judges.
Instead, the woman said that she was undergoing long-term therapy to help her overcome the trauma of the sexual assault.
Following Thursday’s ruling, Soledad Murillo, a former state secretary for gender equality, called for an overhaul of Spain’s criminal code.
The ruling, she said, left the impression that “these guys went a bit too far but didn’t want to hurt.”
Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the main Socialist opposition party, wrote on Twitter: “If what the wolf pack did as a group wasn’t violence against a defenseless woman, what do we then understand to be rape?”
The official spokesman of the Basque regional government, Josu Erkoreka, warned that the ruling would give legitimacy to machismo violence and would not be understood “by the society of the 21st century.”
In a case that was seen as a bellwether for women’s rights in Spain, a court on Thursday sentenced five men for sexually abusing a woman during the bull-running festival of Pamplona, but cleared them of raping her, to the dismay of women’s associations.
Shortly after the verdict, various women’s groups announced that they would lead protests on Thursday evening across Spain to condemn the ruling.
The five men were sentenced to nine years in prison for “continuous sexual abuse,” rather than the almost 23 years in prison that the prosecution had sought for rape and other charges.
. . . .
An 18-year-old woman, whose identity has been protected by the authorities, was attacked in the early hours of the morning by five men, who filmed the assault using a cellphone.
The incident set off mass street protests and a national outcry at the time.
The court on Thursday found the five young men, who are from Seville, guilty of “sexual abuse” of the woman, but cleared them of the more serious charge of rape, which must involve violence or intimidation under Spanish law.
On top of their prison sentence, the men were ordered to pay a combined 50,000 euros ($60,600) in compensation to the woman.
One of the defendants, who was a military police officer at the time, was also fined €900 for stealing her cellphone.
. . . .
Thursday’s verdict followed a long trial that had already set off significant controversy after lawyers for the five men started to portray the victim as a consenting sexual partner who suffered no lasting damage.
The defendants’ lawyers also used a private detective to follow the woman and gather evidence that she returned to a normal life after the assault, but part of that evidence was eventually withdrawn by the judges.
Instead, the woman said that she was undergoing long-term therapy to help her overcome the trauma of the sexual assault.
Following Thursday’s ruling, Soledad Murillo, a former state secretary for gender equality, called for an overhaul of Spain’s criminal code.
The ruling, she said, left the impression that “these guys went a bit too far but didn’t want to hurt.”
Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the main Socialist opposition party, wrote on Twitter: “If what the wolf pack did as a group wasn’t violence against a defenseless woman, what do we then understand to be rape?”
The official spokesman of the Basque regional government, Josu Erkoreka, warned that the ruling would give legitimacy to machismo violence and would not be understood “by the society of the 21st century.”
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