The weekâs news was dominated by the summit meeting between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. Going in to the big meeting, Ryanâs staff had an office pool:
The GOP feels that the boys will paper over their differences:
After the meeting, the Very Reverend Elephant abandoned his scruples:
Trump now says that the GOP is behind him:
Donaldâs General Election strategy is to promise only what fits on a ball cap:
When the US president travels, he is accompanied by the âNuclear Footballâ, a briefcase containing the nuclear launch codes. Here is a photo of the Football:
The Football allows him to order nuclear war despite being away from the White House or away from a US military installation. It is beyond ironic that Mr. Obama will be visiting Hiroshima Japan as part of the G-7 Summit meeting, and will bring along the Nuclear Football to his May 27th tour of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Obama will also bring a political to Hiroshima. No sitting American president has visited the site of the only nuclear weapon dropped in anger. The question is should he apologize for America dropping the bomb? What should he say to survivors and victim’s relatives?
And back home, what would he say to the veterans and their families who gave and lost so much?
Conservatives are revving up the âApology Tourâ meme. It gives them a free shot at Hillary, while allowing Trump to tout his truculence, by telling us once again that he ânever apologizes.â
The Asahi Shimbun English (on line version) is making it clear that Obama will not apologize while in Japan. In fact, although he will be accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Abe, there will be no major speech, and no meeting with the Japanese A-bomb survivors. According to White House Press Spokesman Josh Earnest, there will a wreath-laying and remarks underlining a âlook backâ at the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So, the political football will be how Obama tip-toes between the natural human reaction to so much innocent death, and his role as Commander-in-Chief of the worldâs most powerful military, the one that caused all that death 70 years ago.
Obama makes this an issue by going to Hiroshima. There would seem to be no point to the visit unless he intended to use it to make a gesture, such as indicating some level of regret or expressing sympathy for the victims (he should express sentiments short of an apology) and/or to speak about the need foster peace going forward.
Without a clear political or diplomatic objective, his visit merely reopens a long-festering wound in Japan. Although the Japanese have plenty of blood and atrocities on their hands, our use of nuclear weapons is an order of magnitude worse than anything the Japanese did.
The nuclear airburst was a deliberate targeting of civilians with the most powerful weapon ever created, for the sole purpose of fostering civilian terror. Obama could restate that no country should ever consider using nuclear weapons against civilians again, even if he cannot provide an apology.
We set a terrible precedent with the first use of nuclear weapons. Those attacks have enshrined our place in history as the first, and only nation ever to use these weapons in war. Itâs a miracle that we have survived the false alarms and crises that could have easily led to nuclear exchanges between the US, its allies and the USSR. We still live under a cloud of potential devastation that could result from nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan. And yet, we are now busy modernizing and upgrading our nuclear weapons (long after theyâve been recognized as having no essential military value).
Nobody can say for certain that the decision to bomb Hiroshima did or did not bring about a faster end to the war. But we can say that the Americans firebombing Tokyo or the Brits firebombing Cologne or Dresden, all of which caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, are not morally equivalent to dropping nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Obama will speak at Hiroshima. He will probably offer thoughts as a father, acknowledging the horror that occurred at an earlier time in the history of conflict between the two countries. It is important, as is the acknowledgement that the countries have been allies for what is now a very long time. They now have a common competitor in China, and their joint future is more important than their history in WWII.
Obama will attempt to square the circle, saying that use of nuclear weapons is a terrible, immoral thing, but he canât forswear their future use without damning Hillary to second place. He canât apologize for the US dropping nukes without turning the US military against the Democrats.
During his flu-mandated confinement last week, Wrongo read a 1990 Vanity Fair profile of Donald and Ivana Trump. 1990 wasnât the best year for The Donald, he was up to his armpits in debt. Some of his real estate ventures were under water and his marriage was coming apart. He was involved in a very public extramarital affair with Marla Maples, whom he later married and still later, divorced.
The Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner, was written in the midst of all of that:
Trump isolated himself in a small apartment on a lower floor of Trump Tower. He would lie on his bed, staring at the ceiling, talking into the night on the telephone. The Trumps had separated. Ivana remained upstairs in the family triplex with its beige onyx floors and low-ceilinged living room painted with murals in the style of Michelangelo. The murals had occasioned one of their frequent fights: Ivana wanted cherubs, Donald preferred warriors. The warriors won.
Brenner continued:
For days, Trump rarely left his building. Hamburgers and French fries were sent up to him from the nearby New York Delicatessen. His body ballooned, his hair curled down his neck. âYou remind me of Howard Hughes,â a friend told him. âThanks,â Trump replied, âI admire him.â
It is a very long piece, and provides insight and important history. In a follow-up article in 2015, Brenner gave us bullet points about the Trump character and elements that have remained true through the years:
In 2011, WaPoâs Richard Cohen recalled Brennerâs original Vanity Fair article: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
American political life [today] is [about] doing away with the back story. Increasingly, politicians are becoming religious types, Eagle Scouts who mastered all the knots, a monasticism leavened only by the occasional martini. They do not stray. They avoid midlife crises. They came out of the womb with certainty, avoided acne, married the first girl they dated and went on to make a fortune in something or other.
With Trump, itâs all back story. We know his flops. We know he curses. We know he fools around, that he isnât religious. We know he lies. We know he has bad taste â in buildings, in ties, in associates (the late Roy Cohn, for instance, and now, Roger Stone). We know about his support for Birtherism.
Heâs all these things, and he knows thereâs no bad publicity.
He even exaggerates his exaggerations, which is what all people in real estate do. After all, every condo in the building is sold, and the apartment you want already has a ton of offers.
How will that style work with Putin? With President Xi of China? Does The Donaldâs experience with borrowing money and then letting his projects go bankrupt animate his thought about welshing on our National Debt?
This from David Remnick:
Trump is no longer hustling golf courses, fake âuniversities,â or reality TV. He means to command the United States armed forces and control its nuclear codes. He intends to propose legislation, conduct Americaâs global affairs, preside over its national-intelligence apparatus, and make the innumerable moral and political decisions required of a President.
No, we are not in a Seth Rogen movie. That was North Korea. The movie we are in includes televised assurances of adequate genital dimensions. This is our political moment, a fact-free time where insults and bigotry are acceptable. Remnick reminds us of a story: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
When Howard Kaminsky of Random House called on the real-estate developer and self-marketing master Donald Trump at his office on Fifth Avenue. Kaminsky brought along a cover design for âTrump: The Art of the Dealâ. Trump seemed reasonably happy. Just one thing, he said. âPlease make my name much bigger.â
The Republican Party, having spent years courting the basest impulses in American political culture, now sees the writing on the wall. It reads âDonald Trump,â in very big letters.
Wrongo spoke today with a blog reader. His view was that the end game is set up for Trump, and that he canât lose. If he wins in the General Election, he wins. If he loses in the General, he still wins.
Regardless of the outcome, Trump wins, but, apparently, we the people will lose.
Wrongo came back from Europe with the flu, and he is still playing hurt. Maybe this week will bring a cure. There were good cartoons this week, however.
The GOP spent millions over the past 30 years building their Get Conservatives Elected machine, only to have a gifted amateur seize the controls and eviscerate their strategy. Take a look at the GOPâs monster love child:
This week, Trump had his way with the GOP:
Trump repeats story about Ted Cruzâs father from the âNational Enquirerâ:
Bernie plans to wait till the, well you know. Hillaryâs dismaying weakness with Democrats is something to worry about. Bernie is likely to win at least 20 state primaries:
State of the art in todayâs electronic voting:
(Mr. Wrong and Ms. Right are in Bordeaux. Next, we visit the Normandy Beaches)
RIP Prince. âWhen Doves Cryâ was a personal favorite:
Wrongo didnât appreciate when Prince was so popular, how gloriously filthy some of his mainstream songs were when you watched MTV, or heard them on the radio. The web has few Prince live performances because of his tenacious control over his artistic product. Check out this video from his 2004 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Apparently, the guitar that Prince used in the video was a cheap Telecaster knock-off. The Diminutive One tosses it into the audience as he finishes. Rolling Stone reports that it almost didn’t happen: George Harrison’s widow, Olivia, wanted the performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to be limited to people who knew George â unlike Prince, who later claimed he had never even heard the song before it was sent to him to learn for the performance.
Obama of Arabia meets up with his homies:
Tubman on the $20 bill gives new meaning to new money:
Irony anybody? A 2-term President who was a soldier, a lawyer and served in Congress both in the House and Senate, and a Democrat, is replaced by a pro-Lincoln freed slave who worked for the US Army and was a Republican? And the guy responsible for it is a Democrat!
Trump and the GOP get ready to play delegate football:
Trump told the GOP he was gonna be a new man in the General Election:
Trump thinks the GOP is trying to keep him from scoring The Deal of the Decade, or as the rest of us know it, the GOP nomination. Here is the predictable reaction in TrumpWorld from todayâs New Yorker:
Wrongo got to spend time with the owner of his local PC repair company today. During the work on the PC, the talk turned to politics. The owner said quite a few things that everyone in America seems to feel, that politicians canât be trusted, that they do nothing to solve Americaâs problems, and are just there to line their pockets.
He is a two-time voter for Obama, but is leaning this year towards Donald Trump. Two issues are fueling his thinking: First, that illegal immigration is a real issue, and that our economy, and to some extent our society, are being harmed by a large flow of immigrants. We live in Connecticut. Our county has the lowest population density of any county in Connecticut and is geographically, the state’s largest county. We are the whitest county: The 2010 census shows our county to be 94% white, and 1.3% black or African American. People of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 4.5% of the population. So, we enjoy little diversity, although many of our lawn and construction workers are Hispanic.
My computer guy points to a neighboring city in another county which has had large increases in black and Hispanic populations since 2000, now with 25% of its population Hispanic, and 8% black, both up dramatically.
Second, he thinks that Obamacare hurts his business. Never mind that his healthcare comes through his wifeâs job, and that he has less than 5 employees, so his business isnât paying for health insurance.
He also gives Obama no credit for Americaâs recovery from the Great Recession, saying that it took a really long time to recover, and the economy probably would have recovered on its own.
He is concerned that Trump would be an inappropriate president, a guy who canât speak civilly to foreign leaders. He isnât sold on Trumpâs foreign policy either.
It is a sample of one. A two-time Obama voter who doesnât think he has anywhere to go in November. He doesnât think Hillary is the one; he thinks Sanders is a fringe player, right along with Trump.
Heâs looking for a leader, and wonders why nobody who is truly great wants the job.
But thatâs easy to understand. Too many people pin their hopes on getting âthe right personâ in the presidency, not realizing that it takes much more than just the leader to get the wheels of change moving.
Without courage and support from both houses of Congress, government wonât move an inch. Trump or Sanders could win, and be completely unable to steer the ship of state anywhere but where the oligarchs choose for to go.
Connecticut will be a reliable state for the Democrats in the fall, but they need to think again if they plan to use the same old interest group song and dance that worked to elect Obama in 2008 and 2012.
My PC guy isnât gonna buy it.
Itâs doubtful that heâs alone.
Over the next few months, Wrongo will be writing an extended series of columns about the 2016 presidential election, called “The Pant Suit vs. The Pant Load”.©
The starting premise is that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, and whoever gets the Republican nomination will be the designated Pant Load.
Pant Load #1 is of course, The Donald. Pant Load #2 is Ted âCanadaâ Cruz.
That leaves Pant Load #3, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who todayâs NYT tells us, is running very fast, all the while saying he is not interested. It says a lot about the leadership of the GOP when their leading candidates for the Presidency make Paul Ryan look like a good idea.
Some Republicans who are hoping for a more âmoderateâ answer to Pant Loads #1 and #2, think that Ryan, possibly with Rubio as his VP candidate, will turn 2016 into a GOP presidential win. However, anyone who thinks that Paul Ryan is a moderate, needs to take the time to read what his plans are for programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and tax reform. He would rip up the social contract and shred the safety net, leaving us in a societal Hobbesian nightmare.
Anyway, the GOP is very nervous, and possibly for good reason. Pollster Stan Greenberg has evidence that groups that were core to the Obama wins are now becoming much more engaged than they were in 2015. A few of Greenbergâs findings:
An âearthquake election.â Take all that with a grain of salt, since his firm (which includes James Carvelle) is very partisan. The survey took place March 17-24, 2016. Margin of error is +/-3.27 percentage points at 95% confidence. 65% of respondents were reached by cell phone.
So, the desperation is rising. Nancy Letourneau writes today about Grover Norquistâs plan to turn this around for the GOP:
Into this breach comes Grover Norquist withâŠwhat can I sayâŠa âcreativeâ solution. He has identified six new voting blocs that have developed over the last 30 years that wonât want Hillary Clinton in the White House. Between the lines, his contention is that she is just so out of touch with what is happening in the world that sheâs missed them.
Here are Norquistâs six voting blocks that will challenge the Rising American Electorate:
Norquist thinks the Republicans can tap these groups in order to stop Clinton in November. Wrongo isnât sure, but Norquist’s ideas seemed to make more sense when we were at Burning Man on peyote. But now that our clothes are back on, it all seems dubious. This is micro targeting for no apparent gain.
For example, would a vaping Uber driver (with a concealed carry permit) who home-schools his/her children be Grover’s (and the GOPâs) ideal target? The size of that demographic approximates the number of American unicorns.
And who out there thinks that the home schooling bloc are not already voting Republican? Something like 95% of school-age kids are in traditional public schools, despite all the press that charter schools and homeschooling get, so we are not speaking of a huge demographic.
And how many fracking workers can there be? Arenât most of them in Texas, and Oklahoma, not exactly swing states?
Those who have a concealed carry permit are most likely also already voting for the GOP.
Ya gotta love the smell of conservative desperation in the springtime.
This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tore her Republican colleagues a new one in the pages of the Boston Globe:
For seven years, through artificial debt ceiling crises, deliberate government shutdowns, and intentional confirmation blockades, Senate Republicans have acted as though the election and reelection of Obama relieved them of any responsibility to do their jobs. Senate Republicans embraced the idea that government shouldnât work at all unless it works only for themselves and their friends. The campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the next logical outgrowth of the same attitude â if you canât get what you want, just ignore the obligations of governing, then divert attention and responsibility by wallowing in a toxic stew of attacks on Muslims, women, Latinos, and each other.
If Senate Republicans donât like being forced to pick between a bullet and poison, then hereâs some advice: Stand up to extremists in the Senate bent on sabotaging our government whenever things donât go their way.
Warrenâs anger is righteous anger, it is well directed and well-spoken. But, politicians who make it in our political system are those who hide most of their anger (righteous or not) under a veneer of unctuous civility. She chooses to give as good as she gets from the frat boys in the GOP. Maybe, after another 4 or 8 years of federal failure, that kind of anger will resonate with the American electorate.
Cartoons this week reflected the general coarsening of our society and politics. The bathroom habits of certain minorities made news in North Carolina. Apparently, they should pee in Virginia:
Mississippi made similar news:
The NY Dem primary will be fought out on the sidewalks of NY:
The NY primaries have both parties looking for some room:
The Panama Papers tell us once again that we live in two Americas:
Of course, Tax Day this week is mostly for the little people:
Last week Andy Newman died. You need to be as old as Wrongo to know who he was, but itâs likely you have heard the 1969 song âSomething in the Airâ, or of the group who recorded it, Thunderclap Newman. Back then, if you werenât on the LBJ/Nixon Establishment team, you wanted change. Wrongo was discharged from the US Army in 1969. 1969 was Woodstock, the first man on the moon, Vietnam, the Manson family, the Black Panthers, and the 500,000 person march on Washington,
The song captured a moment.
The group was the idea of Pete Townshend, and he plays bass on âSomethingâ. The guitarist was Jimmy McCulloch, who went on (in 1974) to be the lead guitarist in Paul McCartneyâs band, Wings, and compose the song âMedicine Jarâ for the album âVenus and Marsâ. Â McCulloch died at 26 from a morphine and alcohol overdose.
This is a blip in rock and roll history, but the track survives. It was covered by Tom Petty. Wilco has performed it live for years. Steely Dan performs it live on tour as well. The song has been used in many movies, including The Magic Christian (1969), Almost Famous (2000) and The Girl Next Door (2004), and in commercials for Coca-Cola and British Airways.
It was written by Speedy Keen, who had been Townshendâs chauffeur. Andy Newman was the piano player for Thunderclap Newman, the nickname coming in high school from his heavy-handed playing style. He did not have a long career in music. After this one-hit wonder, he became an electrician.
Here is the song:
Some lyrics:
Call out the instigators
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
1969 and 2016 are similar. It doesnât matter who wins the presidency this year, there will still be widespread anger and discontent, the populace is no longer willing to accept political lip service instead of solutions. And they want the two Americas that the rich and powerful have foisted on us to be more equal.
Lock up the streets and houses
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
The difference between then and now is that people today no longer believe in the American dream, they are no longer on the same page. Weâve become a strange brew of very narrow interests, all competing for the ears of our politicians, but they never do anything. Back in 1969, many of us wanted change. Today, despite (or because of?) Bernie and The Donald, and the two Establishment parties, we have no change, just political chaos.
Hand out the arms and ammo
We’re going to blast our way through here
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
Different from 1969, we donât have to hand out the ammo, itâs already in most homes.
But, sadly, just like in 1969, we have no answers. Bernie isnât the answer, Trump isnât the answer. The Establishments of both parties do not have answers.
And you know that itâs right
It is always good to know why and how we got where we are. Here is a little history about our military position in the Middle East. From Steve Coll in the New Yorker:
In 1967, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson gave up on the remnants of Pax Britannica. His Labour Government pulled British forces from Malaysia, Singapore, Yemen, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and other Persian Gulf emirates.
At the time, Denis Healey, the British Defense Secretary, said England should not:
Become mercenaries for people who would like to have a few British troops around.
And since nature doesnât tolerate a vacuum, the US decided to leave a few American troops stationed permanently in the Gulf.
Now, 49 years later, American warships still patrol the Middle East. US fighter jets fly from a massive base in Qatar. Over the decades, Republican and Democratic administrations (and Congresses) have colluded to give a blank-check to successive presidents, keeping our troops deeply involved in the ME.
Andrew Bacevich has a new book, âAmericaâs War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History,â which highlights the inexplicable passivity of Congress in our ME wars. He points out that from the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Middle East, while since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except the ME.
After the Cold War wound down in the 1980s, the US began what Bacevich calls the âWar for the Greater Middle Eastâ. As this new war unfolded, hostilities became persistent: From the Balkans to the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, US forces embarked upon a seemingly endless series of campaigns in the Islamic world, without conclusive success.
Actions undertaken with expectations of promoting peace and stability produced just the opposite. As a consequence, phrases like âwar on terrorism,â âpermanent warâ and âopen-ended warâ have become part of our everyday politics. When it came to the ME, despite Congress having the Constitutional duty to declare war, they stopped offering any check or balance to Americaâs continuing ME wars.
It wasnât always that way.
In 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The Congress urged President Lyndon Johnson âto take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggressionâ across the length and breadth of Southeast Asia. LBJ used it as legal cover to ramp up in Vietnam, as well as in Cambodia and Laos.
Fast forward to 2001, and Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). We can consider it to be the grandchild of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Â This directed President George W. Bush:
To use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.
In plain language, it was a blank check. Now, nearly 15 years later, the AUMF remains operative, and has become the basis for military actions against innumerable individuals, organizations, and nations with no involvement whatsoever with the events of September 11, 2001.
And in 2015, when Obama asked Congress for a new AUMF addressing the specific threat posed by ISIS, asking that they rubber-stamp what he had already launched in Syria and Iraq,  Senator Mitch McConnell worried that a new AUMF might constrain his successor. The Majority Leader remarked that the next president will:
Have to clean up this mess, created by all of this passivity over the last eight years…an authorization to use military force that ties the president’s hands behind his back is not something I would want to do.
So, Republicans think the proper role for Congress was to give this commander-in-chief carte blanche so that the next one would enjoy similar unlimited prerogatives. The GOP-controlled Congress thereby has transformed the post-9/11 AUMF into what has now become, in effect, permission for permanent armed conflict.
The illogic astounds: On ME warfare, Republicans collaborate with a president they despise, implicitly concurring with Obamaâs claim that âexisting statutes [already] provide me with the authority I needâ to make war on ISIS.
Something that is at best, extra-Constitutional.
Yet, when Obama is clearly acting in accordance with the Constitution, nominating a new Justice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, they spare no effort to thwart him, concocting bizarre arguments to justify their obstructionism.
How does Congress square shirking its responsibilities in our ME war with its activism against Merrick Gardner?