Tag: Trump

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folly ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies

CNN, You’ve Been Trolled

CNN, Trump, meme

The Cable News Network, known popularly and un- as CNN — and satirically as the “Clinton News Network” and “Fake News” — so hysterically hates the president that it has become completely unhinged.

Well, unhinged from decency and journalistic standards, anyway.

The latest slips downward? 

First, some pseudonymous guy* on Reddit created a little gif** that placed a CNN-​logo on the head of a wrestler whom Donald Trump “took down” in some weird bit of nonsense publicity the entertainer-​entrepreneur was prone to, pre-​presidency. Trump then retweeted a version of the gif, calling CNN (once again) “fake news.” This made CNN look silly,*** so CNN tracked the originator down and pressured him to make a humiliating apology — for it and other, more tasteless contributions. He deleted most of what he had done on Reddit.

CNN looks petty: a bully. And clueless about the free-​for-​all that is the Internet. 

The Twitterverse erupted against the news outfit.

This went super-​viral on July 4, the same day that CNN tried to humiliate Mr. Trump by tweeting a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.” 

How apt!

And yet … Lincoln did not say it. Not exactly. The “fake news” network faked a presidential quote.

CNN apparently doesn’t understand that responding to trolls feeds the trolls and makes you look bad, to boot.

I suppose you could blame Trump for all this. His ridiculous tweets and whoppers have so corrupted the culture that his enemies (CNN being the obvious media leader) have adopted his methods.

But I won’t. Not this time.

Just blame the people at CNN.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* He referred to himself as a “shitposter,” which is what satirists and trolls on the Web are called.

** A “gif” is an image file, and has been around since the beginning of the World Wide Web. Nowadays, when we talk about “gifs” we usually are referring to brief animated gifs.

*** Frankly, it made the president look silly, too.

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CNN, Trump, meme

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

A Handy Evasion

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor, Obama, Trump, Russia, spying, surveillance

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor in President Barack Obama’s administration (2013 – 2017), is being picked on, she speculates, for reasons pertaining to her race and gender.

Handy evasion.

At issue is not her infamous prevarication in the Benghazi affair. We are used to being lied to about foreign policy, so that was barely a shock.

What is news now? The Trump-​Russia story. 

Background: Ever since her defeat to Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has provided the very model of how to deflect attention from one’s own defects. She’s blamed FBI Director James Comey, the vast right wing conspiracy, and, of course, Russia.*

Amusingly, the Russia biz still boils down to how Russian hackers, apparently directed from high in the hierarchy of the Eastern warlord state, illegally liberated information from private servers. Those revealed emails showed Mrs. Clinton and her campaign in a negative light. Excuse-​makers call this “hacking the election.”**

It turns out, the biggest crimes committed during the campaign, and somewhat regarding Russia, were engaged in by the Obama Administration, perhaps especially by Rice herself. She is accused of illegally surveilling the Trump campaign and those around it by “unmasking” their identities in the course of surveillance reports, which are legally required to be anonymous … when catching in the net folks tangential to the target. 

The law requires FISA court go-​aheads for such identifications. And the Obama administration was roundly reprimanded by a FISA court for not following protocols.

In any case, the idea that only women and African-​Americans are hounded by opposition parties and the press does not hold up to scrutiny.

Nixon, anyone?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Her team has also blamed President Barack Obama

** A private server was hacked, not an election.

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Accountability incumbents insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies term limits too much government

Most Hated

John Tyler, Trump, hated, leverage, elites, Ted Cruz, Paul Jacob, despised, term limits, unpopular

I was once “the most hated man in Washington.”* Why? For my work on term limits.

I wore the appellation as a badge of honor.

Last year I noted that Ted Cruz had taken up the mantle, but now, certainly, it’s President Donald Trump’s.

Has ever a president been as hated? 

Thomas Jefferson was characterized as the Antichrist. Andrew Jackson made many enemies in overthrowing the Second National Bank. But John Tyler is the most interesting case. 

President Tyler was a Jeffersonian democrat who took up the office from William Henry Harrison, who died several weeks after being sworn in. Tyler was never accepted as legitimate by — get this — the Whig Party that nominated him. He was dubbed “His Accidency.” After opposing a revival of the national bank notion, there were riots, and his party expelled him. He received hundreds of death threats in the mail. Later he was almost impeached. 

Admittedly, Republicans haven’t abandoned Trump — yet. But the Democrats have opposed him from the beginning. And the Entertainment Industrial Complex never ceases to wage a culture war against him. What should the most hated man do?

Make the most of it.

One of his promises was to put congressional term limits into the Constitution. Congress is reluctant. But Trump can do what I couldn’t: use all the powers of the presidency — from the bully pulpit to the veto pen — to leverage those in Congress into proposing a constitutional amendment.

It won’t make President Trump any less hated in Washington, but will win support everywhere else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* That was in days of yore, the 1990s, and it was Bob Novak who gave me the appellation. Politicians, lobbyists and other government insiders hate term limits.

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

A Threat We Can’t Refuse

NATO, Angela Merkel, Germany, Europe, Trump, Donald Trump, Russia, defense, war

“Recent days have shown me that the times when we could rely completely on others are over to a certain extent,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told folks in a Munich beer hall last Sunday. “We also know that we Europeans must really take our destiny,” she said, on the heels of the NATO and G7 meetings, “into our own hands.”

Merkel may have designed her comments to elicit shock and dismay among the inhabitants of America. But my shock is that anyone would find anything shocking, at all.*

Merkel’s responding, of course, to President Donald Trump’s censure of European NATO members for not ponying up to their treaty obligations.** This is widely whispered as … rude. Mustn’t upset Germany and other allies, even if only five of NATO’s 28 nations have reached the agreed-​upon two-​percent of GDP goal.

The received wisdom seems to be: don’t embarrass the freeloaders.

I’m often not copacetic with Mr. Trump’s demeanor. But the “threat” that U.S. soldiers might somehow not be permitted to shed their blood to defend deadbeat countries against a feared Russian attack is … just not all that threatening. 

What’s so scary about self-reliance?

It was also announced that German security agencies won’t share intelligence with the U.S. regarding alleged Russian interference in their upcoming election. 

This, too, we can survive.

But, gee whiz, I hope we aren’t banned from the cool countries’ lunch table at the cafeteria in the brand new $1.23 billion NATO headquarters — for which the U.S. pays a disproportionately high 22 percent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* In my judgment, Merkel should have jettisoned “to a certain extent” and put a period after “over.”
** It’s worth noting that Trump is not the first president to marshal this complaint.

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

The First Casualty

Trump, Vietnam, truth, adviser, Johnson, McNamara, lies, war, advice

Former Marine Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s current national security advisor, is the author of Dereliction of Duty, a look at how President Lyndon Johnson conducted the Vietnam War. 

Last Sunday, the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada reviewed the 1997 non-​fiction book, noting that McMaster hadn’t minced words. 

McMaster argues, for instance, that LBJ had a “real propensity for lying.” McMaster also takes Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to task for not telling Johnson hard truths about the war, and going along with what they knew were poor policies. 

Life-​and-​death policies. 

“McMaster explains how a culture of deceit and deference, of divided and misguided loyalties, of policy overrun by politics, resulted in an ever-​deeper U.S. involvement in Vietnam,” Lozada reports. 

Lozada then compares the dishonest bubble within which LBJ made decisions about Vietnam to the people around President Trump today, fearing they too will fail to tell the president inconvenient truths or dare risk his wrath by opposing his policy whims. 

That tilted Trump focus is the 24/​7 obsession of the national press corps. 

But this problem isn’t new with Trump. It’s universal. 

The wise have long understood that truth is the first casualty of war. If not taken out before hostilities even begin.

It is critical to find people of integrity to work at the White House and tell presidents the unvarnished truth. And even more critical is to pick presidents with integrity to tell the American people — the ultimate decision-​makers — the truth. 

It’s long past time that U.S. foreign policies be publicly discussed — and decided — by an informed electorate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Whisper cc photo by Jamin Gray on Flickr

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Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies

An Inconvenient Empire

realpolitik, human rights, dictators, chess, empire, John McCain, Rex Tillerson, Glenn Greenwald, Trump

“Don’t look to the United States for hope. Our values make us sympathetic to your plight, and, when it’s convenient, we might officially express that sympathy. But we make policy to serve our interests, which are not related to our values. So, if you happen to be in the way of our forging relationships with your oppressors that could serve our security and economic interests … You’re on your own.”

That’s Senator John McCain’s New York Times op-​ed mockery of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who recently told State Department employees that conditioning our foreign policy “on someone adopting our values … creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.”

In his op-​ed, entitled “Why We Must Support Human Rights,” McCain recounted the hope it gave him to know America would not abandon him as a prisoner of war during Vietnam. But, of course, Tillerson wasn’t suggesting the U.S. abandon POWs. 

McCain highlighted dissidents throughout the world, urging the U.S. to speak out for them, to provide “hope … a powerful defense against oppression.” 

No fan of President Trump*, the senator is playing up the praise Trump has awkwardly offered despots, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Chinese leaders behind the Tiananmen Square massacre and recently North Korea’s Kim Jong-​un. Still, recent successes in freeing Americans and others from the grasp of tyrants in Egypt, Iran and China suggest some degree of caring by Tillerson, Trump and Co.

The inconvenient truth? American foreign policy has long pursued certain political and economic interests at the expense of extolling human rights. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept: “The list of U.S.-supported tyrants is too long to count.…” 

Hypocrisy alone won’t change that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Very early in the presidential campaign, Trump needled the senator and reacted to McCain being called a war hero, by echoing a four-​lettered Chris Rock routine: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, okay. I hate to tell you.” 

In 1967, McCain was shot down over Hanoi, North Vietnam, on his 23rd bombing mission of the war. He broke both arms and one leg and nearly drowned after parachuting into a lake. Denied medical treatment by the North Vietnamese, McCain spent the next five and a half years as a POW, some of it at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison, where he was tortured.

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