The president is paying very close attention to an impending storm this week, and by that, I mean Paul Manafort’s cooperation with the Mueller investigation.
Manafort was candidate Trump’s campaign manager in the summer of 2016. If there was Russian collusion, he would likely have been in the loop. But that’s just the thing we know. This cooperation could potentially produce a long list of shady activities we wouldn’t have even known to ask about.
I won’t speculate any more about that, but if Mueller is cutting a deal, he must be getting something in return. What say you, Shakespeare?
Some say he’s mad; others that lesser hate him
Do call it valiant fury; but, for certain,
He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause
Within the belt of rule.
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
Fear: Trump in the White House by clearheaded Bob and the calculated anonymous Times article mark the last stretch of this hurt lifeless vision.
John McCain, a war hero turned public servant, passed away yesterday at the age of 81.
From across the political spectrum, tributes too numerous for me to list or link poured in over old media and new media alike. In a moment of apartisan solidarity, I retweeted a touching sentiment from Sarah Palin:
Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life – and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self.
The current president’s tweet was a bit terser: “My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!”
Brit Hume, of all people, reacted “Still not a kind word about McCain himself.” Indeed.
From Othello:
He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
He may sulk, hit hay at a giant he feels humiliated by.
This website has been very critical of President Trump. And that’s why I hope it won’t be taken lightly when I support and endorse his vision to add a sixth branch of the United States military: The Space Force.
Politics aside, space really is the final frontier, and we have always been a people of exploration. Militarizing space sounds bad, but even Gene Roddenberry, whose Star Trek universe painted a picture of interplanetary cooperation and peace, had a military fleet paving the way. The United States should take the lead on this, and right now. I have some thoughts as to how we might go about it, to maximize the impact a U.S. Space Force could have.
First of all, we need a fleet of space ships. And we need to develop the technology to create them. The first step should be to increase funding to NASA so they can get right on that. It will take several years before the space fleet is ready, so we can use the intervening time to build our capacity to create the finest space force the world has ever seen.
As President Trump understands, the appearance of a successful project is often more important than the actual success, at least in the early stages. So to keep our numbers up, all men and women in America will be automatically conscripted into Space Force. When other countries understand that our space force is several hundred million stronger than theirs, they will finally show us the respect we deserve, and maybe even ease up on some of those tariffs.
Once everyone in America is in Space Force, they will immediately begin receiving a universal basic income and health insurance. President Trump supports the troops, and this will prove it to everyone. We will construct large barracks to house the Space Force across the country. At first, we won’t have room for everyone, so the barracks will be used to house and feed those who currently do not have another residence. That should get the ball rolling.
We should immediately set up a home base where Space Force will be located. It should ideally be someplace warm. You may recall that the Challenger disaster happened because Florida was too cold, so we’d have to choose someplace warmer than Florida. For the United States, that will probably mean the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Now, they were recently hit with a hurricane and things are kind of messy there, but we can easily go in and rebuild their infrastructure and get everything ready for our Space Force base. In return for their hospitality, we would forgive their debts. Big wins all around, and all thanks to President Trump.
As the Space Force will be large, we will want to set up some kind of public broadcasting system to facilitate communication, as well as a national public radio station. Alternatively, we can simply increase funding to existing systems that serve the same functions. We’ll also want to take immediate steps to reduce global climate change, to ensure that our base in Puerto Rico remains temperate. But that’s just common sense.
Since we have a few years before the fleet is ready, we can start building capacity in our younger Space Force members, by increasing funding to public education, particularly in programs dedicated to science, technology, math, and engineering. Of course, a crew that is tasked with long-term space missions must be composed of men and women equally (for reasons that President Trump would certainly understand), and so we must ensure that boys and girls have equal access to these programs. Curricula should expose students to a variety of cultures, to better prepare them to make contact with alien races. Young Space Force members who want to go to college will, of course, have the opportunity to do so tuition-free. This will strengthen our talent base, so that when Space Force becomes operational, it will be the envy of the world! It might even be the envy of the galaxy; we won’t know until we get out there!
All of this sounds expensive, but we can pay for a lot of it by rolling back the most recent round of tax cuts. I know that sounds tough, but trust me, it will all be worth it when you see how awesome the U.S. Space Force looks as it’s tearing across the cosmos!
The fleet should be constructed by February 2021, at which point President Trump (assuming he wins re-election) can approve Phase Two of the plan. But in the meantime, there is plenty that we can get started on right away. As they say in the Space Force: Be Best!
The Republican president has repeatedly referred to the press as the “enemy of the people,” a phrase most commonly associated with Stalin, but one that has a long history.
This is extremely dangerous. A free and impartial press is an essential element to our democracy. We already know that he labels any negative news about him as fake news, and counts on his blindly loyal supporters to believe him.
But calling the press the enemy of the people takes it even a step further. This is so beyond the pale, that CNN’s Jim Acosta gave Sarah Huckabee Sanders a chance to walk this back in the press briefing. She chose not to do so, and her defensive answer was filled with lies and distortions.
The last thing she said was true. She’s there to speak on behalf of the president when he makes his opinions clear, no matter how repugnant or inflammatory they may be. I imagine it’s a difficult job.
From Coriolanus:
First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people.
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
May I cut in, cue felicity from a White House spokesperson?
The president’s $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by retaliatory tariffs is facing criticism from his fellow Republicans, even as his own Agriculture Secretary laments that the payouts won’t be enough to contain the damage.
From Macbeth:
Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enough about you; here you’ll sweat for ’t.
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
Trump’s trade war hobby’s been unhelpful to the zone of vehement folks who – on no fence – elect him.
He then uses our checkbook to fix the kink in a hokey plan to make America great again yet.
On Thursday, the AP reported that a number of immigrants who joined the US military as part of a special program are being abruptly discharged.
The program is called MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to National Interest) and it allows for non-citizens to enter our armed services if they fill gaps that we urgently need, such as foreign languages or medical skills. In the process, they may become citizens. It sounds like a win-win to me, and indeed the program has been highly successful, enjoying support from both sides of the aisle.
But as the New York Times describes it, some of these valuable specialists are now “being cut even as the Army has been unable to meet its 2018 recruiting goals.” Some are even in danger of being deported.
Margaret Stock, the former West Point law professor who won a MacArthur fellowship for, among other things, leading the development of the MAVNI program, estimated in September that hundreds of recruits could be affected by this policy shift:
“It’s a dumpster fire ruining people’s lives. The magnitude of incompetence is beyond belief,” she said. “We have a war going on. We need these people.”
These are not Trump’s rapists and murderers pouring in from Mexico. They are not drug runners smuggling contraband from Central America. They are not even the dangerous PG-13 gang members who are still being held in cages at the border. These are people who are here legally, who we asked to be here, and who trusted our word that they would be protected.
All of the pretenses for why we need aggressive immigration reform have now been dropped.
It’s been a rough week for us liberals, and there’s a lot going on in the county right now. But for today’s anagram, I want to focus in on just one thing that I think deserves more attention than it has been getting. We’ve all heard about the children in cages, but I want to focus on the process that makes it possible to put children in cages without losing your political supporters or facing consequences of any kind.
Last Friday, the Republican president held a press event featuring families of the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He calls them “Angel Families,” which is a term coined by him to describe this very specific and highly selected group of people.
Now, I was brought up Jewish, and in my religious education, we learned how scapegoating was used to turn European populations against the Jewish people during the Diaspora, most notably in Nazi Germany. This was something we were always taught to be on the lookout for, but I honestly never thought I’d see it to this degree in America during my own lifetime.
Trump’s display last Friday was not only disgusting, but frighteningly dangerous. I certainly empathize with the genuine grief of the families, but parading them up on stage to exploit that grief for cynical propaganda is an abomination. You could cherry-pick victims of any group and put their families on the dais. What if the families were selected because they had lost their loved ones at the hands of black people? Or Christian fundamentalists? Police officers? How about families of people who were killed at Walt Disney World?
Imagine how you might be made to feel if the president gathered up the families of all of the people who died in vending machine accidents. (It’s a thing; the stuff doesn’t come out, they shake the machine, and it falls on them.) Family member after family member gets up to share how their lives have been torn apart by loved ones lost to vending machines. Given enough time, you might come to feel that vending machines are an existential menace, one that must be immediately addressed with urgency and ruthlessness. Using this technique to vilify an entire class of people should earn you a special place in hell.
The matter has been well researched. Immigrants (both documented and undocumented) commit crimes at a lower rate than the native born. As Paul Krugman points out, this is not a poor solution to a pressing issue; it’s an entirely manufactured issue:
What’s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it’s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren’t happening. They’re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.
This is where checks and balances are supposed to kick in, but the Republicans control both houses of Congress, and are currently abrogating that responsibility. We can all agree that stoking hatred toward minorities is not what America is supposed to be about, but we should also remember that it is not even what the Republican party is supposed to be about. Take a look at the 1980 Republican primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The two future Republican presidents are asked about illegal immigration and both respond with empathy and compassion.
Seriously, what the hell happened to you guys? Even as late as the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was criticized for being too tough on immigration from all sides (even from Trump!). Republican pundits were warning that the 2016 candidate had to be better on the issue or Latino voters would bury them. And look at what happened. Republican voters went all in for the candidate spewing the most vile racist rhetoric. This is what they voted for, and Trump is happy to fulfill the insane promises he made to them. Krugman (again) puts it best:
On the other side, the party’s base really does love Trump, not for his policies, but for the performative cruelty he exhibits toward racial minorities and the way he sticks his thumb in the eyes of “elites.” So any Republican politician who takes a stand on behalf of what we used to think were fundamental American values is at high risk of losing his or her next primary. And as far as we can tell, there is not a single elected Republican willing to take that risk, no matter what Trump does.
We knew what Trump was when he was elected. But to be honest, I thought there would be more Republicans of conscience to keep him in check. Once this is all over, and it will end eventually, I think it will be a long time before the Republican party will be able to regain its credibility.
And I know this moral outrage is hardly unique to my own personal sensibilities. Many, many people are saying the exact same things. But it was important to me that I be one of them. And now that I have, let’s get back to the real business of this website and do a Shakespeare anagram.
Today’s selection is from a well-circulated passage that Shakespeare wrote for Sir Thomas More. I’m only going to anagram the end because the shorter anagrams are harder and therefore (in my mind) more impressive. But I’m also including a video of the speech in its entirety, because it speaks to the present moment as well as anything does, and once again, Shakespeare reminds us of what it means to be human.
From Sir Thomas More:
This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.
