All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Trumpty together again.
That ole tyme nursery rhyme is now much more understandable seeing the man perched on top of the wall at the present time. And by the way I do not refer to the Mexican wall.
According to some like Charles Krauthammer Trumpty is playing Daffy Duck while others in command positions on his staff are acting like a grown up Donald Duck. The grown ups including the generals and secretary of state travel from country to country explaining Daffy Trumpty does not mean what he says but he is just acting as a demented fool to please his supporters. As Bannon his Rasputin noted Trumpty made his promises to his supporters and he is, as I have previously noted, a man of his word. So he will stick to his promises while the grown ups on his staff assure others such as our European allies or Mexico that it is just Trumpty being Trumpty. That nothing is really changing other than people’s perceptions. Trumpty is sort of like the Wizard of Oz.
By the way you did notice how many faulted President Obama for not using the words “radical Islamic terrorists.” The criticism was sort of inane being based on the suggestion that failure to use those words made him incapable of understanding the enemy. When it came to President Obama logic got lost.
You also may have noticed how Trumpty right out of the box was eager to use those words to the mighty cheers of his followers. He continues to do so as if this advances the fight against ISIS. Yet in the corridors where the battle must be fought the sane leaders avoid using that term. The new intelligence chief H. R. McMaster has told his staff not to use that term. He has no time for silliness. McMaster recognizes these barbarian-type groups have perverted Islam in the same way a guy like Hitler born a Catholic perverted his faith. Who would ever have called the Nazis radical Christian terrorists?
Krauthammer told how Trumpty is the “crazy dangerous” leader in the mode of a Nixon madman who acts a little loony tunes to get what he wants. His grown-ups in his national security team – defense, state, CIA, etc – are the men in white coats assuring others that as long as he takes his weekly golf pills they have him under control. He points to some examples where this seems to be working although it is a stretch thinking that by threatening to release the panting, drooling pit bull against a nation will make it compromise what it perceives as its national interests.
You may have recognized that Kim Jung-un just upped the ante against South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. His possession of and use of the world’s most toxic nerve gas, VX nerve agent, to murder his brother as is now reported I suggest was for the purpose of telling these nations to tread softly or they face unimaginable consequences.
Krauthammer tells us: “the combination of radical rhetoric and conventional policy may induce better behavior both in friend and foe.” Then he recognizes: “Alas, there is also a worst-case scenario. It needs no elaboration.” How then does the game of “mad man” or “Daffy Duck” turn out when each side has a mad man in control? There is no one the grown-ups can run to behind the scene and tell that the leader was only ranting and is not to be taken seriously
In that case Dumpty Trumpty’s wall of protective serious men shilling for him will break and he’ll bring about a great fall. Unlike in the nursery rhyme it may not just be Dumpty Trumpty who “could never be put together again.”
Tadzio : I recollect that E. Howard Hunt testified before Watergate concerning his admitted altering of State Department cable traffic to the Kennedy White House about the Diem assassination. This seems to speak well of JFK, who had already stepped up to the plate to take Bay Of Pigs on his shouders despite having been only half-fledged in its conception, and indicates just how wickedly industrious The Company was, as ever. Henry Sabotage seems to have played many a pinstriped character close to his Yankee breast in his political lifetime. 🙂
Tadzio: I had wondered about that. If it was probably his Son then we did not encounter the Eminence Grise himself, but his Son’s deportment had a good deal of dignity. It was an interesting moment!
Hutch : He was not known by his political peers as Henry ” Crafty ” Lodge for nothing. Not very fragrant behavior on his part to be sure! I met him in early nineties , very briefly. He was ancient. I waa walking across Mass. Ave from the subway over to the newstand , holding my five year old Son firmly by the wrist as was my rush traffic safety mode. As we stepped up on the sidewalk he was standing stock still and staring fixedly at us with a look of absolute beaming benignity. He had a label with his last name affixed above his breast pocket. I surmised he had been one of the luminaries that day at a Harvard political event. He was a very interesting guy of the distinctly Brahmin type. I must say. 🙂
You likely saw his son George, as Henry passed in 1985. After the assassination of Pres. Diem of Vietnam many on the right called him Henry Sabotage. First saw him at the GOP state convention in Worcester in 1958. Very handsome. The ladies swooned when he walked in and down the center aisle to the podium. Met him a few times. Very amiable. My favorite story of him is how he delighted a southern Senator whose name escapes. The Senator hated white shirts but didn’t dare wear anything else. He was overjoyed when Sen. Lodge appeared on the floor of the Senate in a pin striped shirt so the Southerner knew it was acceptable. Must of been thin blue stripes on white, not a modern variety. Lodge was always well turned out.
Arbenz dies in poverty and obscurity, exiled in {mexico]; Henry Cabot Lodge dies in peace at Beverly Farms after refusing to take Arbenz’ phone call to the UN Security station when Guatemala “invaded” by US (United Fruit] backed forces. After leaving UN Lodge continues his post on the BOD UF. Nice work.
Aware of Mosul, Khalid, reading of Che’s exploits in Guatemala circa ’53ish when Everette Howard Hunt and The Company were busy deposing Jacobo Arbenze. Guevara took sanctuary in Argentinian Embassy. it was decisively formative in fixing in stone his hatred of the United Fruit ” Corporate Octopus ” types. This from Chris Hitchens’ essay …Che Guevara : Goodbye To All That ….wherein he relates that Guevara can be placed as a founding figure in Gabriel Garcia Marquesa’s et al MAGICAL REALISM due to Che’s tour of South American leper colonies in the early 50’s as written about in Guevara’s MOTORCYCLE DIARIES. Ernesto was a young medical student at the time. He celebrated his twenty fourth birthday at one such colony, as Hitchen’s relates, in the Peruvian Amazon. Che wrote a very …. surreally beautiful account of this. Thus … MAGICAL REALISM.
The CIA and Bolivian military allies chopped off Che’s hands to make A+ fingerprint comparison with records in Argentina : The preserved hands were later returned to Cuba by a defector from La Paz .
It is a big World. Better or ill, he was one serious monkey and a True Believer. I recommend Hitchens’ essay. 🙂
After all the chicken-hawk bullshit, and, patriotic crap, that comes out you guys, not a one of you is watching the fight in Mosul. It figures.
Trump has pushed just about every button on the angry white man console. Now it looks like those damn pot-smoking kids are finally going to get a federal thrashing (no problem with overregulation here!). So it’s really no surprise that white men approve of the job Trump is doing. Trouble is, the American people don’t approve of Trump. For a president who’s just starting out, his numbers are a disaster. So sad.
“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.” – VP Spiro Agnew in a speech given in San Diego 11-SEP-1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Spiro_Agnew
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Nabobs_natter_about_the_passing_of_William_Safire_1929-2009.html
Ah! What is old is new again!
BAGHDAD: Two Iraqi officials say that after a day of fierce fighting, Iraqi forces have secured half of Mosul’s airport and most of a sprawling military base next to it on the city’s southwestern edge.
A federal police officer and an official overseeing the operation said Friday that troops also secured key infrastructure as they advance to rout ISIS from western Mosul.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Iraq’s federal police, special forces and the army are taking part in the battle, which started Sunday.
Iraqi authorities declared Mosul’s eastern half “fully liberated” in January and afterward largely paused operations to prepare for the fight for the city’s west.
The United Nations estimated that about 750,000 civilians are trapped in western Mosul.
To whom it may concern: Here’s another example of how the New York Times blatantly lies, claiming recent Forest Fires were the worst in history. In fact, Forest Fires in the 1930s exceeded today’s by 4 fold, and historically (pre-Industrial age) were many times worse. Of course, the culprit is always “climate change” according to the NYT. We know how intense climate change was in colonial times and the 1930s.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2016/04/18/new-york-times-caught-lying-yet-again/
Absurdity is defining all those you dislike, examples – Trump and Putin, as insane. Reminds me of my mum’s tart observation, “Everyone is queer but me and thee, and lately even thee seems a bit odd.” The point is that you may be the one who has careened off the rails.
Another sign of mental imbalance is to strike out at those who love you the most. To viciously associate Adolf Hitler with Our Holy Mother the Church as in saying “the same way a guy like Hitler born a Catholic perverted his faith” is insulting to the heritage of nearly a third of the American people. This Marxist tactic of throwing mud on the wall so that some of it will stick is vile. Despite the seeming caveat “perverted” the intended effect is to associate Hitler and Catholicism.
Having read much about Hitler, his books and many of his speeches never once have I noted an appeal to Catholicism as a guiding light. For shame. Your mother in heaven must be weeping , begging forgiveness for this transgression against truth. You stand arms locked with the anti-Catholic slanderer Goldhagen and the rest of his ilk.
There was no enlightening rhetorical reason to drag either the Church or Mr. Hitler into a discussion about the politics of American-Russian relations in 2017. Hitler as a propaganda device is decades past its smell date. News update: World War II is over.
The image of underlings running about covering for the madness of the boss is a common feature of an alien culture. Yuri Avnery, a journalist and former MK, uses this trope frequently. “When the fruit-sellers in the market in Tel Aviv shout ‘The boss has gone crazy!’ they mean that they are selling their merchandise at ridiculously low prices.” Americans argue differently.
Krauthammer wants war and you are his willing shabbos goy. Matt, you’ve gone full bore neocon. They do not put America First. Trump puts America First. Putin puts Russia First. That is as it should be. Neither is insane. A mutually advantageous modis vivendi is in the offing. Peace and prosperity will follow. There is no need for Krauthammer’s war.
“By, Through, and, With, (BTW)” is standing US policy in the war against DAESH; America works through proxies to ensure that Muslim soldiers (Kurds, and/or Arabs), rather than, US soldiers, die in the struggle for Iraqi freedom. Is Glorious Leader about to change that policy?
We continue to disagree. We know Matt and others dislike Trump and disparage him in the worst ways, as John King McDonald describes.
Yesterday DanC quoted a NYT article on immigration. I cited a Heritage article on illegal immigration. We disagreed as to what article was spinning. But at the end of the NYT article, written before the election, the NYT wrote that we’ll see whether the future embraces “the enlightened” view of immigration espoused by Hillary or Trump’s backward view, thus revealing the NYT’s biases.
This is a ridiculous post. Its intent is to ridicule. You laud Obama for obstinately refusing to describe actual Islamic terrorists as such ; his refusal being in the service of some sort of semantic offering to the worldwide Muslim majority. ” Yeah, it’s those guys again, those Allah Al Akbar fella’s again with that Sharia Law core tenet of Islamic teaching Sharia Law hi-jinks again. I think we’re gonna stone some adulteresses to death at halftime of the soccer game in Kabul today! ” But hey, Trump is a nut. To compare him to Kim Jong. loony tunes is apt and shows the respect due his office. The seventeenth century Zaddik Baal Shem-Tov, the revered Hasidic master said once that when you tell a story it should constitute a help in itself. A lame man asked him to tell a story once and as he told it Baal Shem- Tov started hopping and dancing in elation. The lame man spontaneously joined him. He was cured from that point on of his lameness.
You tell a story. It is a sensational, vitriolic exercise in political pique and gross exaggeration. Ir is full of spurious allegations and shallow analogies that sound nifty, but have no intellectual depth. It is a …let me pour some poison in your ear story. It constitutes no help to anyone except its writer. It is not normal to rant so. It is a species of derangement. One can only hope that All The King’s Horses And All The King’s Men can at least sort out the pieces . That, at least, would provide some sense of reality. 🙂
The doomsayers are always with us.
Under Ike, the Doomsday Clock was set at 2 minutes to midnight. Ike left office at age 70; the Critics said he was too old and played too many rounds of golf (100 days a year.) In his last year (1960), the Doomsday Clock was set back to 7 minutes.
Nixon was called “dangerously crazy” yet he opened doors with China (reestablished diplomatic relations with China), and ended the war in Vietnam.
After Reagan’s election, the Doomsday Clock moved up to 3 minutes before Midnight; Reagan was called crazy, senile, and dangerous; yet we had 8 years of peace and prosperity.
Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and he gave us 8 years of war.
Trump’s rhetoric can be hyperbolic and boisterous, at times, but his decisions and policy, so far, are excellent, as reflected in his supreme court and cabinet picks, and his willingness to follow through on campaign promises.
The sky is not falling.
2. ISIS and Al Qaeda purport to act in the name of their religion. They are radical Islamist terrorists.
3. Some people, like the NYT, overtly hate Trump and lie about him. Remember the New York Times article about the beauty queens? A majority quoted said the NYT distorted and lied.
4. Here’s a quote from a good opinion piece on the NYT’s lies:
“The paper’s reporters, editors and columnists—with a handful of exceptions—harbor a visceral hatred for Donald Trump and feel it their higher calling to act on their hate in everything they put in the paper. When it comes to Trump’s ties to Russia, the paper has acted upon the thinnest of evidence to lodge the most sweeping of claims against Trump. Is it lying, or just engaging in reckless hyperbole?”
“However biased the Times’ Trump coverage, the consequences were mild compared to the paper’s record in the run-up to the Iraq War. In the year prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Times published numerous front-page “scoops” based primarily on fake facts leaked to its reporters from Iraqi defectors whose goal was to spur an invasion of Iraq. Judith Miller wrote several stories promoting disinformation from the notorious fabricator Ahmed Chalabi and others in his network; . . . The Times customarily ignored (critics), or buried skeptical voices in small paragraphs deep inside the paper.”
“A year after the invasion, after no “weapons of mass destruction” had turned up, the Times acknowledged in an editor’s note that its coverage was “not as rigorous as it should have been.” It explained that “editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism” failed to do so. In short, the Times had printed a great deal of what might fairly be called ‘fake news.'”
6. I read a New York Times editorial two days ago, where the columnist wrote these words: “Today’s corrupt conservatism.” That’s the Leftist’s corrupt view of opposing views.
7. Today I read CNN write: “Priebus said the New York Times report was “garbage.”” In fact, Priebus said an FBI agent told him the FBI concluded the NYT report was garbage. Priebus then added, that the FBI agent used stronger words than garbage.
Conclusions: The NYT lies. We all have our opinions.
Trump should ignore all foreign policy questions during his first year in office. Concentrate on his domestic agenda. The worst thing he can do is get us into a war with Russia, China, N.Korea or Iran. His emphasis should be on replacing Obamacare, passing a Reagan style tax cut, deregulating the economy, creating energy independence and confirming Gorsuch. Once he takes care of his campaign promises he can look overseas. Avoid military intervention at all costs. 2. Before Trump even announced for the presidency the American public thought the country was on the wrong track. Do the Russians have a beam that they can bounce off the moon and make 60% of the country feel that we are on the wrong path? Or was that judgement arrived at independently of any Russian activity? The Russians are incapable of affecting how Americans think. The claim of Russia hacking the election is Fake News. The leaks of Signals intel and classified material is real and is a crime. The Dems and the media are desperately looking for excuses why they lost. The dogs didn’t like the liberal dog food and find pols who come to DC penniless and after twenty years in government are worth 200 million most unappealing. 3. One commentator on election night correctly stated that the White working class took over the Republican Party. They took control from the Chamber of Commerce and the Corporate elites. Almost all Wall St. money went to Hillary.
Good post. Trump’s teetering. The question of fitness continues to undermine Glorious Leader. I’ll check Vegas, today. It’s all in the odds.
What’s next, Pence, or, a do-over election? Which direction will it go? Constitutional crisis? The FBI won’t play ball with Trump. Comey’s got hand. He could be building a legacy to rival Hoover’s. These are interesting times.