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Saturday, July 16, 2016

A Time for Stable Leadership not a bad Joke

I sure hope this is the message Americans are getting.

President Obama has made this point repeatedly: this is a real job and it requires a certain level of seriounses

We've seen the UK already basically fall for a bad joke-that even the jokers like Boris Johnson and Nick Farage never expected to happen. David Cameron too thought Brexit was a joke he could manipulate for short term gain.

 But there is something about 2016. A lot of strange things are happening. A lot of disunity. We noticed this first in the GOP-which had become such a mess that they couldn't even choose a Speaker. Then they nominated Donald Trump.

This was the race where the reasonable candidate was Ted Cruz, the guy who deliberately shutdown the government in 2013.

But when you look at Europe, a lot of their countries also have tremendous division. The GOP you can argue is no longer a party. But this is also the worry of the entire nation of Britain-the chance that they could disintegrate is real-though maybe with Theresa May's victory, that's been taken off the table for now. For the short term anyway.

Every day there is another outrage in the US with a video of the police being accused of police brutality of African Americans.

We seem to have another mass shooting every few days.

There seems to be another terrorist attack every few days.

As for ISIS, I truly have become convinced that ISIS actively is rooting for President Trump-as is Putin and North Korea.

Of course, it'd be terrible for out country and Trump's deranged rantings would be a great recruitment tool for ISIS.

Now we have the Turkey coup. Some Neoconservatives like Krauthammer were cheering on the coup last night.

But the people worthy of listening to, like Shad Hamid, were pretty disgusted by that.

"Embarrassing that some US pundits supported a coup that shed Turkish blood. That happens when hatred of Islamists animates everything you do."

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/754129236470984705

Again, this is someone who actually knows what he's talking about-rather than simply shooting from the hip, a la Trump.

Yes, Erdogan is a guy who has arrogated to himself a lot more power than he should. Of course, this happens all the time. Putin did the same thing and Hugo Chavez who was also initially democratically elected later tried to make himself another Fidel Castro.

If Iraq proved anything, it's that we can't go around cheering for every wanna be tin pot dictator.

In any case, it would be a foreign policy disaster for the US if the coup had succeeded. Thank goodness that it hasn't.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/turkey-coup-erdogan_us_57898e6fe4b03fc3ee5107c0

What was notable about this is that all parties in Turkey opposed the coup-even a leftist party which Ergogan has oppressed.

"2013 saw brave Turks opposing Erdogan's authoritarianism in Gezi Park protests. Today they opposed effort to remove him undemocratically."

"As I told @bwilliams on @MSNBC, when tanks face off against citizens in the Middle East, tanks almost always win. This time they didn't."

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/754163369280667648

"This is an argument for the importance of norms. Norm against coups in #Turkey has entrenched itself, including among secular parties."

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/754147367042056196

Speaking of stable leadership, here is Hillary Clinton:

"Hillary Clinton on Friday evening expressed support for the "democratically elected civilian government" in Turkey following a coup attempt by the military."

“I am following the fast-moving developments in Turkey tonight with great concern. We should all urge calm and respect for laws, institutions, and basic human rights and freedoms — and support for the democratically elected civilian government. All parties should work to avoid further violence and bloodshed, and the safety for American citizens and diplomatic missions must be ensured,” the presumptive Democratic nominee and former secretary of state said in a statement that echoed President Barack Obama's earlier remarks.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-turkey-coup-225644#ixzz4EZv0UeWQ

Meanwhile, Manafort has locked Trump out of his Twitter account again.

"The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has yet to comment on the unfolding international incident involving a NATO member and American ally that came as a surprise to U.S. policymakers and just days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-turkey-coup-225644#ixzz4EZvBh4Pp

Manafort and friends have figured out that the best response from Trump in times like this is to say nothing. Sure, he'd be great in a crisis.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/15/12204176/turkey-coup-trump-response


9 comments:

  1. Mike, another domino falls: Steve Berman (in my view the most annoying writer at TheResurgent.com) comes out with the the world's worst Hillary endorsement, yet it is a grudging Hillary endorsement nonetheless (though he doesn't use that word), and for that I'll give him props:
    http://theresurgent.com/the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-enemy/

    Speaking for myself alone–I realize some conservatives who find Trump to be loathsome will still support him to keep Hillary Clinton out of office–I think the option is to save at least one party to live on in some form, and that means Trump losing. I prefer The Samson Contingency, which is a Trump loss in all 50 states while preserving down ballot races in the Senate and House for the GOP.

    Still waiting on one from Erickson himself. I think it was the crushing defeat of #FreeTheDelegates that brought him to this point.

    Steve makes an excellent point for deep seated Hillary haters, who nonetheless aren't fully HDS (Hillary Derangement Syndrome), i.e. people who know Trump is utterly unacceptable: No matter how you slice it, you're better off seeing Trump defeated while preserving GOP control of the house or house and senate than your are seeing Trump win.

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    1. Erickson has got a major bug up his ass about not being able to vote for anyone who supports Planned Parenthood. He thinks of them as an SS death squad at a Nazi concentration camp (near as I can tell), so I don't expect he'll ever actually admit in print that Trump is worse than Hillary... however it's clear from his writing that's the case. For every sentence he spends trashing Hillary he's writing multiple paragraphs trashing Trump. He often leaves his criticism of her unexplained, saying simply "She's unfit for office" (i.e. she supports PP and I can't go there), while going into great detail about the multitude of reasons Trump is totally unacceptable. Oh well... I'm not holding my breath. Still I think Berman makes more sense than Erick in this case.

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    2. BTW, that phase Berman uses:

      a Trump loss in all 50 states

      is the same one Bill S. uses at RedState.com. I very much like the ring of that, especially since it means that to make that happen (if you're not in a solidly blue state) you need to actually vote FOR Hillary (not a 3rd party). However, no matter how much I like the phrase, I suspect it's a pie in the sky dream. It's delusional to think that Trump will lose all 50 states, unless a film comes out of him molesting children or something, and he flees the authorities to Venezuela where there's no extradition treaty. Even then I suspect he'll take Idaho (some places are just majority HDS).

      BTW, there's nothing I would enjoy more in this world than to listen to Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham and Rush defend Trump (every day) once he's fled to Venezuela to escape child molestation charges, because the evidence was so overwhelming. Maybe hearing Jerry Falwell Jr., Dr. James Dobson and Franklin Graham defend him in those circumstances would be even sweeter music to my ears.

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  2. Great. It seems to me that if anything, if you're a GOPer in Congress, a Hilary win is not so bad in a way.

    You spend the next four years trying to demonize her for everything.

    This is the party of opposition not governing anyway.

    That's probably what Paul Ryan and friends really expects anyway

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    1. Steve essentially admits (as you point out) that the GOP's talent is really obstructionism anyway:

      The media calls the GOP the party of obstructionism, preventing “progress.” Good. We are especially good at that, and if we lose the Senate (which is a looming probability at this point), we lose a whole lot of leverage stopping Hillary. If we lose the House, we’re back to 2008, but much worse. Backing Trump almost guarantees a loss of the Senate–and in 2018, the House.

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  3. O/T: another case in which I wish I could comment at RedState:
    http://www.redstate.com/kylefoley/2016/07/16/pray-isis/
    Mr. Foley prepares his readers for the shock of their good Christian lives, and then admits (drum roll please) that he prays for ISIS!!! (Shocker!!... you mean, he actually does nothing for them? Wow. Just wow!)

    No, I would not leave a comment dripping with sarcasm, instead I'd do my very best to credibly suggest that sitting in the comfort of your middle class home in the USA writing to the world about how good your are to pray for your enemies is NOT what Jesus would do (or Paul or Peter). In fact, they would not be so self aggrandizing about a totally comfortable and passive activity: they would take the good book straight into ISIS territory and preach the good word, without concern for their personal safety. They're calling was not to sit on the couch in their living room telling the world how wonderful they were on their iPad... no, they took spreading the gospel seriously. =)

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  4. Jason Taylor nails it again, telling his readers it's time for their critical thinking skills to kick in:
    http://theresurgent.com/seriously-folks-its-time-for-critical-thinking/

    Trump, growing increasingly desperate as summer moves into fall, becomes more volatile, humiliates himself by being totally unprepared in the debates and tries to “fire’ Pence in favor of a running mate with more zing.

    Trump’s key promise — that he wasn’t connected and beholden to the established powers that be — flies out the window. But everyone who voted for him, because he is independent, a truth teller, self-funding, will fail to notice that none of this is actually true, and vote for him anyway.

    I’d say we get what we deserve, but you know what? I don’t deserve it. I never did anything that bad in my life. And my granddaughter sure as hell doesn’t deserve it either.

    November is a landslide for Secretary Clinton.

    And we all breath a sigh of relief and live to fight another day.


    And there's another suggestion that Trump may fire Pence yet... and like you say, you were ahead of the game on that one Mike!

    I think Jason is one of us Mike. He gets it. He doesn't draw false equivalences. He doesn't disparage RBG like his colleagues and fellow #NeverTrumpers do: instead he quotes her. He's proudly afflicted with TDS like you and I... like we all SHOULD be! (even if he's not a Hillary fan)

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  5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fundraising_us_5789a550e4b03fc3ee510ddb

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  6. Even this extremely critical piece on Clinton (including the outlandish title), ends with "but Trump is worse"
    http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/16/hillary-clinton-promises-gut-first-amendment-within-first-30-days-term/

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