Saturday 30th of March 2024

the trumperator...

trumper

erosion of the political landscape...

Donald Trump said the survival of the west was at risk, as he lashed out at hostile forces ranging from Islamic terrorism to Russia, statism and secularism, during a speech in Poland.

At the start of a four-day trip to Europe, the US president gave a highly nationalist address in Warsaw suggesting that a lack of collective resolve could doom an alliance that had endured through the cold war.

“As the Polish experience reminds us, the defence of the west ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail,” Trump said at the site of the 1944 uprising against the Nazis. “The fundamental question of our time is whether the west has the will to survive.”

Trump, who delivered the speech on Thursday before flying to Hamburg for the G20 summit and bilateral meetings with the leaders of China, Russia and Germany, painted a picture of the west facing existential challenges in the effort to “defend our civilisation” from terrorism, bureaucracy and the erosion of traditions.

Trump pointed to Poland, which in the last century endured Nazi and Soviet occupations, as an example of resolve. “The story of Poland is the story of a people who have never lost hope, who have never been broken, and who have never forgotten who they are,” he said.

In a nod to the conservative values he shares with Poland’s controversial ruling Law and Justice party, Trump also called on the west to defend its traditions.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/donald-trump-warn-future...

 

Let's not forget that the Yanks and Ruskies made a deal on the carve-up of Europe after WWII...

protests...

Strangely, it could appear that Trump and the Hamburg protesters were on the "same side" — against free global trade which the Europeans support...:

 

HAMBURG, Germany — The Europeans have stopped trying to paper over their differences with President Trump and the United States.

Traditionally respectful of American leadership and mindful of the country’s crucial role in European defense and global trade, European leaders normally repress or soften their criticism of United States presidents. Europeans were generally not happy with President Barack Obama’s reluctance to involve the country in Libya and Syria, for example, or his tardiness to engage in what clearly became an international confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, but their criticism was quiet.

But here at the Group of 20 summit meeting of the world’s industrialized nations, public splits with Mr. Trump were the order of the day. Those rifts have been reflected in European domestic politics, too, from Britain and France to Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Europe must “take our fate into our own hands” and stop “glossing over” clear differences.

The new French president, Emmanuel Macron, whose election has given renewed confidence to the Europeans, said bluntly: “Our world has never been so divided. Centrifugal forces have never been so powerful. Our common goods have never been so threatened.”

Mr. Macron, who waved his iPhone around during the meeting as a symbol of global trade, sharply criticized those like Mr. Trump who do not support multilateral institutions but push nationalism instead.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/world/europe/donald-trump-europe.html

Meanwhile to pope is also opposed to the G20...:

https://www.rt.com/news/395722-pope-g20-harms-migrants/

 

the centrist delusion...

Less than a year into Trump’s presidency, Washington is already witnessing nascent cries for the establishment to return.

In both his op-ed, “A Call to Revive America’s Political Center,” and July 5th on-air interview with C-SPAN, political commentator Morton Kondracke spoke in post-Trumpian terms but failed to grasp the spirit of the political revolution that was the 2016 US Presidential election. Kondracke argued that “the left and the right are tearing the country apart.” Nothing is blatantly incorrect about that sentiment. He spoke of the “polarization and paralysis” which prevents anything significant from getting done in Washington. Nothing factually wrong with that either. As a solution, he proposed a campaign to get elected many, many “moderates” who would fight for “centrist” and “bipartisan” policies. Again, nothing wrong with that sentiment per se: Moderation is a virtue.

But the who, not the what, is where his argument falls apart and where most anti-Trump political commentators have got it wrong. Who are Kondracke’s “moderates”? As he casually stated in his C-SPAN interview: “You know [if] you had Colin Powell and Bill Gates and [Facebook’s] Mark Zuckerburg and [Starbuck’s] Howard Schultz and Condi Rice… and all these people systematically advocating for centrist policies, we would get somewhere.” In his article he provides an even longer list of politicians, military officials, and businessmen who are firmly part of the establishment that the American electorate clearly turned away from in the most recent elections, and who Kondracke thinks now ought to get involved in funding and executing a “centrist revival,” which presumably would save America.

Kondracke also touts Country Forward as an example of a supposedly “bipartisan” group, a super PAC with a “centrist policy agenda” which is trying to get “moderates” elected. And who has Country Forward enlisted to help write its policy agenda? Bill Kristol, yet another elite whose influence was most felt in Bush 43’s administration disastrous decision to invade Iraq. Kondracke excitedly adds (with curious naïveté) that “former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been invited to participate [in Country Forward].” Tony Blair, of course, is a former British leader who to this day is wildly hated by ordinary Brits for how excitedly and uncritically he jumped on the bandwagon to invade Iraq.  

Kondracke’s arguements are, in short, not a call for a centrist revival, but a plea for a royalist revolt, a request for the elites to return to the power which they presumably are entitled to hold. Several of the names of the “moderates” he mentions were floated by then-candidate Clinton as potential VP picks. Furthermore, Kondracke writes his article as if the fifteen years preceding the 2016 elections—the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq; the government-induced dot-com and housing bubbles which ultimately burst and led to the great recession; the endless Afghan war; the questionable Libyan intervention-had never happened; as if names such as Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Bill Kristol, and Tony Blair today command respect among ordinary Americans. Yet these names have become associated, in the public conscience at least, with bloody interventions that have cost thousands in lives and trillions in borrowed dollars. His ideas seem tethered to a different era, perhaps the 1990s. I’m surprised Kondracke did not call Alan Greenspan to be appointed as, say, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Kondracke misses what the 2016 elections were all about. It wasn’t about Republican versus Democrat, or conservative versus liberal. It was the elites versus the anti-establishment. In essence, it was about one candidate, Donald Trump, deciding to take on the entire machine: an entrenched political elite whose campaigns were funded by the financial elite and who had the ideological backing of the national security elite, which duly published numerous “open-letters” opposing Trump in a pretentious display of delusional arrogance, as if anyone outside the Beltway actually knew who these national security officials were or cared about their views enough to be swayed in their vote. These open letters, of course, were meant to send a signal to Clinton, who at the time of their publication was supposed to become the President, that she could deal with them, if not as an ally then as a partner or a friend.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/an-establishment-call-to...

yes we know he is mad but...

Several prominent professors of psychiatry affiliated with prestigious American universities have written an open letter to the US Congress asking for the “lawful” removal of US President Donald Trump.

In an open letter to Congress published by the Huffington Post, the five eminent professors observe that the current US president is unfit to serve, based on what they state is Trump's mental "unraveling," the Washington Times reported.

The letter from the psychiatry notables is uncharacteristically blunt.

"The power of the presidency has accentuated Mr. Trump's failings with devastating effects," the letter states, adding that the president's "psychological isolation — including his tenuous relationship to reality — has led to the dangerous isolation of the United States from the rest of the world."

"Our Constitution has provisions for removing any president who is unable to discharge the duties of office," the professors observe.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/art_living/201707161055582346-trump-aint-right-s...

Yep... But the good psych-profs should have called on all the presidents from Reagan to Obama to be removed as well. These past Presidents cheated and, to some extend, one can say their behaviour was far more dangerous than that of trump who shoots willy-nilly from the hip with half a brain... Where were these amateur Freud flower pots when G W Bush launched his attack on Iraq, obviously under fake pretences? Nowhere but applauding the coming biffo?  

made in the empire...

Donald Trump has declared this week “Made in America” week. According to the White House, it’s an opportunity for the president to showcase “products that are made in America”.

Unfortunately for Trump, that description would rule out many of the products he and members of his family have made and sold. From Donald J Trump Collection clothing to Trump Vodka to Trump: the Game, the president has a track record of not making things in America.

The week was scheduled to kick off at the White House on Monday, with Trump walking around some tables looking at products made in all 50 states. So in honour of the president’s communist-dictator-esque photo opportunity, here’s a look at some not-made-in-America Trump gear.

Alcohol

Trump Vodka (“The finish is disappointingly harsh” – InternetWines.com) was an ill-fated attempt by Trump to branch into the spirits world. The vodka (“No discernable flavor” – Chicagoist) was manufactured in the Netherlands by a company called Wanders Distillery and launched in the US in 2006.

But the beverage (“My taste buds unfortunately associate the flavor with the smell of paint” – VodkaBuzz) failed to sell. The trademark was abandoned in 2008, according to Rolling Stone. By 2011, Trump Vodka was “out of circulation”.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/17/made-in-america-week-don...

made in yamerika...