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RSN | Measuring McCain: Political Judgments in the Age of Trump Print
Wednesday, 05 September 2018 12:02

Jacob writes: "Unprincipled decisions by the left to give voice to disgraced figures of US security only serve to further disorient an already bemused American populace trying to interpret political events under the ever-chaotic Trump's strategy of distraction."

Former Sen. John McCain. (photo: Getty)
Former Sen. John McCain. (photo: Getty)

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Measuring McCain: Political Judgments in the Age of Trump

By Edwin Daniel Jacob, Reader Supported News

05 September 18

 

olitics has always concerned itself with making judgments among competing alternatives. The extent to which policy alternatives can be articulated – and, perhaps more importantly, distinguished from one another – is the degree by which progress is ultimately measured. Hegel could thus identify freedom as the “insight into necessity.” Americans, however, rely on moral sentiments and abstract symbolism – instead of material interests – when judging policies. The mystical veneration of Kennedy, despite his horrid foreign policy that quite literally brought the US to the brink of a hot war with the Soviets, and, more recently, the NFL controversy, stand out as prime examples of this phenomenon whereby political situations are reduced to moral symbolism. Yet a new, more odious form of this has entered the political landscape in the age of Trump, as exhibited by the exaggerated and under-analyzed coverage of Senator John McCain’s passing.

McCain had an iron will, an unyielding code of principles, and battle-tested bravery and honor that few can match. At his best, McCain served as a political gadfly of sorts against the most radical elements within his party. This was reflected in his vociferous condemnation of the torture practices introduced by Bush and his band of neo-conservative chickenhawks following 9/11 as well as his co-sponsoring of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which eliminated “soft money” from national campaigns before it was stripped down in the landmark Citizens United case. But these cases were general exceptions for the Arizona senator who has filled Barry Goldwater’s seat for the last three decades.

John McCain has been the recipient of undue praise simply for his (symbolic) opposition to Trump. Never mind that despite his opposition to repealing “Obamacare,” he voted for Trump’s agenda in kind, including Trump’s 2018 tax bill, which gutted the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. What was worse, though, was his unprincipled selection of Sarah Palin to join his 2008 ticket against Obama, who rightly noted that a straight line could be drawn between the former Mayor of Wasilla and the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Palin was the prototypical modern Tea Partier, whose anti-intellectualism was equally matched by her homespun approaches to domestic and foreign policies alike. A skeptic of expertise and a critic of cosmopolitanism, this torchbearer of traditional American values set the table for what would ultimately become the modern Republican Party of Trump.

There is no doubt as to the personal bravery of John McCain, who chose to suffer years of torture at the Hanoi Hilton even though his captors offered the admiral’s son an early release. But contrary to American attitudes, politics is not about a political person’s character – it is about the policies they embrace. And what of McCain’s policies? McCain was a hawk’s hawk who, like his Senatorial bestie, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), never met an intervention he did not encourage. Who can forget his classic rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann,” which substituted “bomb” for Barbara and “Iran” for Ann? Worse, he never reconsidered the staggering costs of the Iraq War he championed, which cost the US thousands in blood and trillions in treasure. This is, of course, to say nothing of the million Iraqis who paid the ultimate price, or the geopolitical reconfiguration of power that culminated in not only the rise of ISIS but also the abysmal ongoing state of affairs in Syria.

McCain’s domestic politics did not fare much better. McCain was more in line with Republican doxy than his so-called “maverick” status would suggest. He was in favor of (unequal) tax cuts, even as he opposed a federal minimum wage, and encouraged privatization of social security funds a decade before the 2008 financial crisis disrupted his already faltering presidential bid. A deregulator, McCain ultimately came to regret his (prudent) vote for Sarbanes-Oxley, while he voted against the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

All of this speaks to an ever greater phenomenon: an extreme rightward shift of the discourse since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The mainstream liberal media and the Democratic Party have unceremoniously wedded with neo-conservative elements of the “never Trump” movement out of unprincipled expediency. Sharing a collective enemy in Trump has effectively domesticated the strategically failed and morally bankrupted Bush regime, whose neo-conservative luminaries are now held up as exemplars of democratic virtue in Trump’s America. The rightward shift of popular political discourse is evidenced by tuning into Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC, Bill Maher on HBO, or any other progressive voice of one’s choosing to see the likes of a Bill Kristol, David Frum, or Max Boot being legitimated by their former political rivals in terms of (rightly) vilifying Trump.

Unprincipled decisions by the left to give voice to these disgraced figures of US security only serve to further disorient an already bemused American populace trying to interpret political events under the ever-chaotic Trump’s strategy of distraction. Politics, as I suggested at the outset, is the art of distinguishing between alternatives. But with Trump as the ultimate point-of-reference for today’s not-so-bifurcated American political system, judgments have been generated in an antinomic fashion. Judgments, in other words, are based upon their relation to Trump and Trump alone. This situational criterion has resulted in an ever-reduced standpoint by which to make sense of contemporary society and political culture, leaving Americans aimlessly wandering in Hegel’s night in which “all cows are black.” And, as John McCain himself was fond of appropriating Mao: “It is always darkest before it is totally black.”


Edwin Daniel Jacob is a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Relations with the Department of Political Science at Arkansas State University. His unique edited collection on security, Rethinking Security in the Twenty-First Century, was published with Palgrave MacMillan in 2017.


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Get Sick, Go Bankrupt and Die Print
Wednesday, 05 September 2018 08:27

Krugman writes: "The G.O.P. can't come up with an alternative to the Affordable Care Act because no such alternative exists."

Economist Paul Krugman. (photo: Getty Images)
Economist Paul Krugman. (photo: Getty Images)

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Get Sick, Go Bankrupt and Die

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times

05 September 18

 

et’s be honest: Despite his reputation as a maverick, John McCain spent most of his last decade being a very orthodox Republican, toeing the party line no matter how irresponsible it became. Think of the way he abandoned his onetime advocacy of action to limit climate change.

But he redeemed much of that record with one action: He cast the crucial vote against G.O.P. attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That single “nay” saved health care for tens of millions of Americans, at least for a while.

But now McCain is gone, and with him, as far as we can tell, the only Republican in Congress with anything resembling a spine. As a result, if Republicans hold Congress in November, they will indeed repeal Obamacare. That’s not a guess: It’s an explicit promise, made by Vice President Mike Pence last week.


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White Man Hopes to Land Job Without Background Check Print
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>   
Tuesday, 04 September 2018 12:53

Borowitz writes: "A fifty-three-year-old white man from Washington, D.C., is hoping to land a six-figure job for life without being subjected to a thorough background check, the man confirmed on Tuesday."

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his Supreme Court nomination hearing. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his Supreme Court nomination hearing. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)

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White Man Hopes to Land Job Without Background Check

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

04 September 18

 

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."


ASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A fifty-three-year-old white man from Washington, D.C., is hoping to land a six-figure job for life without being subjected to a thorough background check, the man confirmed on Tuesday.

The man, Brett Kavanaugh, said that he was “pretty chill” about his upcoming job interview because he had been assured that “anything super damaging” had been removed from his H.R. file.

“There’s some stuff in my past—especially, like, from the nineties—that would be kind of heinous if anyone looked into it,” Kavanaugh said. “Fortunately, I know someone in H.R. and he took, like, a hundred thousand pages out of my file.”

The Washington native said that he had been assured that his job interview would be led by a group of other white men who “won’t ask me anything too hard.”

“They were, like, ‘Just smile a lot and nod your head and you’re in, dude,’ ” he said.

Kavanaugh said he was “blown away” when he learned about the benefits package that comes with his prospective job. “When my friend in H.R. told me it was $255,300 a year for life, even after you retire, and no background check, I was, like, ‘You have got to be shitting me,’ ” he said. “I don’t care who you are. That’s sweet.”


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RSN: Convicted Trumputin Consigliere Paul Manafort Linked to Ohio's Stolen 2004 Election Print
Tuesday, 04 September 2018 12:01

Excerpt: "The infamous Trumputin consigliere Paul Manafort worked with the GOP operatives who stole Ohio's 2004 presidential election at the same time they teamed up to install the Kremlin's chosen mafia don in Ukraine."

Paul Manafort. (photo: Getty Images)
Paul Manafort. (photo: Getty Images)

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Convicted Trumputin Consigliere Paul Manafort Linked to Ohio's Stolen 2004 Election

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

04 September 18

 

he infamous Trumputin consigliere Paul Manafort worked with the GOP operatives who stole Ohio’s 2004 presidential election at the same time they teamed up to install the Kremlin’s chosen mafia don in Ukraine.

Manafort is Donald Trump’s former campaign manager. He’s been convicted of a wide range of high-profile crimes by a jury evaluating charges brought by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Manafort also worked in Ukraine following the 2004 popular Orange Revolution with Ohio-based IT specialist Michael Connell and Tennessean Jeff Averbeck to install the Putin-backed Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine. Connell and Averbeck have been deeply implicated as being among the chief architects of the stolen Ohio 2004 vote flip that gave George W. Bush a second term in the White House.

Craig Unger, in his essential book House of Trump, House of Putin, places Manafort in Ukraine in “late 2004.” Manafort worked out of a small six-to-eight-person office at 4 Sofievskaya Street in Kiev. Over the next decade, Manafort made 138 trips to Ukraine, according to Unger.

Yanukovych’s alleged 2004 “victory” was so riddled with fraud that the US State Department officially condemned it. A popular uprising called the Orange Revolution forced the election results to be reversed.

Connell died under mysterious circumstances in December 2008. But in 2010, Averbeck and Manafort conspired to put the Kremlin-sponsored Yanukovych in office again. Despite widespread charges of election rigging, Yanukovych this time held power ... for a while. He was later overthrown by a US-sponsored coup involving a far-right phalanx that included many outspoken fascists.

In 2004, Averbeck and Connell were key to flipping Ohio’s electoral votes – and thus the presidency – from John Kerry to the incumbent, George W. Bush. Connell was a long-time Bush family information technology specialist. Based in Akron, he co-founded the New Media Communications and GovTech IT companies. Along with Averback’s SmarTech, they were deeply embedded in the Buckeye State’s rigged 2004 election process by Bush advisor Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

From 2004 to 2014, Yanukovych’s campaign team centered around Manafort, co-owner with Rick Davis of a Washington DC lobbying PR firm, 3EDC. The company advertised on its website that it had five “strategic partners.” Connell’s New Media Communications was listed as one of them. Another was Averbeck’s Airnet Group, the parent company of SmarTech.

Both Averbeck and Connell were far-right anti-abortion fundamentalists. Averbeck co-founded a Christian publishing house.

In 2004, Blackwell gave Connell a no-bid contract to handle the backup vote-count system for the state’s 2004 presidential contest. Blackwell simultaneously ran the election and served as co-chair for the Ohio committee to re-elect Bush and Cheney.

Connell subcontracted the job with Averbeck’s Smartech. After Ohio’s official supercomputers went down on election night, SmarTech compiled the final tally on servers in a basement of a bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Those same servers handled the e-mail accounts for the Republican National Committee and Bush consigliere Karl Rove.

At 11:14 p.m. on election night, as John Kerry led by 4.2 percent, the Ohio vote count flow went mysteriously dark. When it came back up after midnight, Kerry’s lead had flipped into a 2.5 percent Bush victory. This virtual statistical impossibility, involving the flip of some 300,000 alleged ballots, gave Bush the 20 electoral votes he needed for re-election.

In January 2005, the Ohio Electoral College delegation was officially challenged in the US Congress, the first such certified challenge in more than a century. Connell was subpoenaed and deposed in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell federal case charging voter discrimination. In December 2008, while facing possible testimony before Congress, Connell died in a mysterious private plane crash near his home in Akron. Foul play is suspected by Connell’s family, among many others.

In 2010, Averbeck again conspired with Manafort to help swing Yanukovych into power in Ukraine. Again the “election” was bitterly contested for apparent rigging.

The exact natures of the 2004 Manafort/Averbeck/Connell conspiracy in Ukraine, alongside the Averbeck/Connell flipping of Ohio 2004 and the Manafort/Averbeck rigging in Ukraine 2010, are all still under investigation.

But the links between Trump, Putin, the Kremlin, the Connell/Averbeck/Manafort triad, and the rigged elections in Ohio 2004, Ukraine 2004, and Ukraine 2010 should come as no surprise to anyone following the rapid disintegration of America’s current unelected Idiocracy.

Special Prosecutor Mueller might want to take a deeper look at this piece of the web.


Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman’s Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections is at www.freepress.org where Bob’s Fitrakis Files can be found. Harvey’s Life & Death Spiral of US History and Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth are at www.solartopia.org.

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FOCUS: Democrats Come Out With Guns Blazing at Kavanaugh Hearing Print
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=43327"><span class="small">Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine</span></a>   
Tuesday, 04 September 2018 10:42

Kilgore writes: "Any impression that Senate Democrats were going to roll over and accept Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court was at least temporarily swept aside as the minority party didn't even wait for Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley to introduce Kavanaugh before objecting to the process."

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh listens during the first day of his confirmation hearing. (photo: ABC)
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh listens during the first day of his confirmation hearing. (photo: ABC)

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Democrats Come Out With Guns Blazing at Kavanaugh Hearing

By Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

04 September 18

 

ny impression that Senate Democrats were going to roll over and accept Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court was at least temporarily swept aside as the minority party didn’t even wait for Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley to introduce Kavanaugh before objecting to the process and the withholding (and late production) of documents from the proposed justice’s career. As protesters intermittently protested, Senator Richard Blumenthal pressed for an adjournment so that committee members could review the records released by Grassley last night, and other committee Democrats vocally backed him up.

Grassley struggled to short-circuit the Democratic comments and return to what was expected to be a day of pro forma statements, sputtering frequently and complaining that Blumenthal’s motion was out of order.

The most immediate rationale for Democratic anger was the release last night by a lawyer for George W. Bush of 42,000 pages of documents related to Kavanaugh’s service in the White House. But it built on earlier protests about hundreds of thousands of documents that were not produced, alongside progressive activist concerns about insufficient Democratic resistance to Kavanaugh and an undercurrent of continuing resentment of the double standard set by Republicans who refused Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing but are now racing to confirm Trump’s nominee before the midterm elections.

For the first hour of the hearing, Democrats kept pushing for a vote on Blumenthal’s motion, and Grassley kept demanding that the committee return to the planned schedule. At one point Jon Cornyn sarcastically suggested that the hearing was descending into “mob rule,” which didn’t exactly reinforce the impression that Grassley had control of his committee.

Eventually Grassley cut off discussion and proceeded with his introduction of Kavanaugh and the other planned rituals, with protesters continuing to shout as they were removed from the hearing room. But Democrats have made it reasonably clear that this won’t be a uncontested confirmation.


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