Here I am, wide awake at 2 am having gone to bed at 10 pm because I have a very early start Saturday morning. Young Loliyo has a dance competition and I will babysit her younger brother and sister, Simon and Regina, while Lucia goes to watch Loliyo compete. I have to be at Lucia's house at 7 am. OMG!!! That's too early for this old Sasquatch! I was up very early Friday because I was originally told that the competition was Friday. Speaking of Friday, Simon is now officially 2 years old and a little devil. I would like to take he and Regina for a walk but my knee won't take it so they'll have to be content to have a water fight with a soaker gun in the yard. The weather is scheduled to be hot today, around 28 C (80F) so hopefully the water will cool the kids off and run off some energy. Of course I'll have to be careful as we already have water restrictions in force. Please say a prayer for me that I survive the diaper changes. I haven't changed a diaper in 45 years!
Short Takes
CBC — No, Donald Trump is not going to be president, or invade Mexico, or deport all immigrants, or disenfranchise women voters, or drop nuclear bombs in Syria and Iraq.
What he almost certainly is going to do, though, is trigger an enormous disruption of the Republican Party, or even its breakup.
I use the word "trigger" deliberately here, because Trump himself won't actually bring about the end of his party. He's only the catalyst.President Barack Obama was wrong when he snarked at the media last weekend, asking us if we're proud of ourselves for paying so much attention to Trump, whose candidacy, according to Obama, was really just an attempt to boost his hotel business and not worthy of constant coverage.
In fact, Trump's run has been democracy in action.
Creative destruction and all that. A perfect free market solution for a party that adores market forces.
How can we not cheer such a thing? You go, GOP.
Isn't that just a great description . . . Republican self-immolation. There are so many divergent factions within the Republican party — the pseudo Christian fundamentalists, the xenophobic white nationalists, the Tea Party, the corporatists etc — and they don't know how to come together. Trump has said he will unite the party, but his actions and the temperment of the party say otherwise. It will an interesting and chaotic 6 months.
MSN — “I think the real subliminal message Trump is saying is this: The U.S. can afford to survive and prosper without any allies if it was forced to cut off all ties, but the converse isn’t true,” said Chung Min Lee, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul. He added that Mr. Trump was forcing allies “to come up with convincing elevator speeches on the key benefits they bring to the U.S., and thus far, none of them have done so.”
There is no doubt that Trump's vague and off-the-cuff foreign policy pronouncements have set tongues a wagging internationally. And while I might agree that 70% of NATO costs is a bit steep for the US to bear, the US has also, IMO, assumed that cost when it declares itself to be the leader of the free world. Trump talks about negotiations, but he does not have the temperment for international negotiations. He has demonstrated that diplomacy is far from being his forté.
Alternet — You’ll recall that after the last shellacking in 2012, the Republicans famously did an “autopsy” of what went wrong. And they identified a very specific list of problems that contributed to their loss, not the least of which were their problems with young people, Latinos and women. The party’s perceived hostility to these groups or simple lack of interest in their concerns were found to be so severe that unless the GOP changed course and found ways to better appeal to them, it would sink into a demographic quagmire from which it could not recover.
It’s obvious that Donald Trump (and, frankly, the rest of the field as well) has gone in the opposite direction. Trump is working overtime to alienate women, at this point sitting on a 70 percent disapproval rate among that half of the population. A recent poll of millennials conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics revealed 61 percent of young Americans likely would vote for Clinton while 25 percent would support Trump. Only 17 percent have a positive opinion of him.
And since Trump’s signature issue is deportation of millions of Latinos and building a wall to keep them out of the country, it goes without saying that the GOP outreach to that demographic isn’t going too well. He has a 77 percent unfavorable rating.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday that despite the best efforts of Speaker Paul Ryan to do the right thing for once, the GOP Congress is helping Trump alienate Hispanics even more with its inane refusal to help Puerto Rico restructure its debt. (This by Matthew Yglesias at Vox is a good explanatory piece on the issue.)
And the party has not learned its lesson. Go through the motions to identify issues around the 2012 defeat, but Republicans have failed to actively cultivate a change in the party. Instead, they have set themselves up for defeat again like an out-of-control train. This time though, the train is accelerating with Drumpf at the helm. Republicans are going backwards . . . but then, that is nothing new for them.
Alternet — Here are seven things we know about Trump and what his candidacy will likely mean, even as the country heads into new territory led by a crazed super-celebrity billionaire.
1. Trump won’t keep his mouth shut. Any notion of better behavior or a classier act has repeatedly shown itself to be a mirage. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has said that Trump will continue to be Trump, because he is “a person who tells it like it is.” That means building himself up by putting others down, whether it’s attacking Mexicans, Muslims, women who question him or his values, and anybody else for any headline-grabbing reason.
4. He’ll split the party into factions. After Trump won Indiana, Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus called for the party to line up behind the presumptive nominee. That will be much harder for Republican candidates running this fall, who, looking at their own futures, will have to decide if they’ll run with him, in spite of him, or against him. All those shades are already occuring, with many longtime party leaders saying never. These fissures are likely to cost the GOP its U.S. Senate majority.
Before Trump’s clinching the nomination, there were predictions the Senate was ripe for a Democratic takeover. Twenty-four of the 34 Senate seats in play this fall are held by Republicans. Democrats only need to pick up five for a majority. The party has strong candidates in states that turn out blue majorities in presidential years, such as Illinois and Pennsylvania. Trump not only weakens these GOP incumbents, his candidacy raises a question of what may happen in the House, though GOP gerrymandering after 2010’s redistricting still deeply favors House Republicans. Nonetheless, there’s little to suggest that Trump is about to become the great unifier, meaning Republicans could face a historic meltdown and defeat this fall.
Click through for the remaining 5 ways Trump Is About to Turn the GOP into a National Freak Show.
Huffington Post — Former Texas Governor Rick Perry has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and is open to being his running mate, CNN reported on Thursday. …
In July 2015, Perry said Trump’s campaign was a “cancer” to conservatism.
OMG! Perry is at it again . . . thinking he is still relevant.
My Universe —
A poet is born !
All boxed in!
Talk about being fenced in!
Just been shopping and I'm bagged!
7 Responses to “Squatch’s Open Thread 07/05/2016”
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CBC – Nonetheless I suspect that the quality of the Taco Bowls served at Trump Towers is pretty well irrelevant to just about anyone, Latino or not. And, really, does it matter how serious his campaign is or osn't if he is getting free publicity right and left?
MSN – If elected, he will certainly lead us without allies because no official of any foreign power will want to associate with him.
AlterNet I – It isn't so much that the party has not learned its lesson as that it didn't learn the RIGHT lesson. Instead of switching to coffee, say, they have been spending all their efforts trying to convince young people, Latinos, and women, that Kool-Ade Tea is GOOD for them, when they know it is poison. That is in a way a serious effort, but it is not one that flies real well.
AlterNet II – Oh, yeah. And did you see the one about how he based his life script on an episode of Twilight Zone – OF WHICH HE MISSED THE POINT? Shades of Green Eggs and Ham!
HuffPo – Whoever it is – he will be perfect.
Universe – Qte.
I agree with Joanne…and I feel like the last pix–bagged, or at least my eyes are…
CBC: "Republican self-immolation." Good phrase! What a great article!!
MSN: What Joanne said.
AlterNet: Yea, I see a freak show coming, or as they say on GOT, "Winter's Coming".
HP: A running mate for Dump, eh?? I'd rather forget Perry. He did nothing for this state, but I guess he'd do nothing on Capitol Hill too. Ick to both.
My Universe: Cute pics, mine Loves Flip Flops.
Being taken out for Breakfast, so I have to run. Happy Mother's Day to you, Ladies, go and celebrate!!!
Enjoy your day, and Thanks, Lynn.
p.s. Praying for those folks dealing with the Fort McMurray fires. My BIL who lives in Wisconsin, said that air advisories are being televised, and he can see the plumes from when he lives. AND as far south as Florida. 90,000 people evacuated. So sad, and heartbreaking. Prayers up for y'all.
If you get to read this comment, Lynn, you'll have survived a lack of sleep, babysitting two little devils with a busted knee and the dreaded nappy changes. No small feat, so I'll send you some catnaps to compensate for it all and guarantee you some much needed rest.
CBC: I'm a rational being so on a rational level I tend to agree with Neil Macdonald. Then why do I keep feeling this dread at the pit of my stomach? Maybe I'm not convinced that voters are all rational beings who stick to the analysis Neil has given. Democracy is in turmoil everywhere, members of major parties in Great Britain, The Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Brazil and of course America, just to mention a few, are often fighting each other harder than they are fighting the opposition and voters everywhere are at a loss who to vote for in elections.
What Neil Macdonald doesn't mention is the widening rift between progressives and the establishment within the Democratic party. There's no way of telling what de Bernie supporters will do if he doesn't get the nomination. They will not vote for Trump perhaps, but they might not vote altogether or put Bernie's name on the ballot.If Hillary doesn't get to be nominated, the same may happen the other way around, with an additional boycott by the party's establishment, just the way the Republican party establishment does. Both would be very favorable for Drumpf and may put him in the White House after all. Then there's the issue of Drumpf's incredible flip-flopping on issues which may actually draw in some undecided Republican voters. And conservative voters are more likely to close ranks than Democrats, as they've shown in the past, and doggedly pursue any Republican candidate. They only thing that is a certainty is the demise of the GOP when party leadership can no longer reconcile the myriad of extreme view they have been catering to these past decades. The GOP has more than its usual share of clowns, village idiots, extremists, warmongers and crackpots, so it'll implode soon enough.
Alternet: Flip-flop Drumpf is just the culmination of everything that is wrong with the GOP; he is its final product, its epitome. If Drumpf should happen to become president after all, progressives have to live with fact that America apparently got what it wanted, and deserved. As Alternet points out: " Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the coming Trump candidacy is that while he may be taking all of the country and the GOP into the gutter with him, if the past is prologue, there’s a chance Trump and his party will be left in the gutter for years to come."
My Universe: Some cats in a pickle, I see.
Your meta-analysis of the CBC analysis is extremely insightful. You've said some things I've been wanting or trying to say, but couldn't have said as well. Thanks.
Even after 45 years, I can guarantee that there are at least two things that have NOT changed (no pun intended) WRT diapers:
[1] #1s
[2] #2s
It looks like wed were both posting at the sawame time and burning the candle at both ends.
I've been listening ti Republicans on MS-NBC talk about forming a third party. The danger is that they are trying to portray themselves as saviors, when they are the ones that created this monster by courting and embracing the evil hatred Rump Dump represents.
Amen
Bingo!
Agree!
What an Idiot!!
I hope there's Nip in that bag!!