WalnutAndCarrara

“History teaches us of the danger of being afraid to speak truth to power and the risk of failing to defend our values from the rise of the far right. At this challenging time in global politics, it’s more important than ever that we remember that lesson.”

“It’s close to inconceivable that the president, the administration would consider a war with Iran,” said Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a GOP critic of the president. “The president made it clear when he ran for president that one of the worst foreign policy mistakes in American history was the decision to go to war with Iraq. And that we would repeat that [is] unthinkable and something I can’t imagine the president or his senior staff would consider.”

Washington Post provides some help in understanding Trump’s flawed logic: “As we have noted for years, President Trump appears to have little understanding of trade and trade policy, even though it is an animating element of his presidency.” The Washington Post: Fact Checker: The misleading narrative in Trump’s tumble of trade tweets

“....the president might be best described as a half populist. Others may suggest Trump’s reliance on an automated script for his populism warrants the creation of a new label: telepopulist...”

Moreover, the parts of the world considered to be the most “social democratic,” like the Scandinavian countries, are successful by almost any measure: Growth is strong, unemployment is low, their economies are consistently ranked as highly competitive, and the quality of life is extremely high.

People in other countries often wonder why American conservatives no longer consider sanity to be an essential a requirement for an American president. Yet, the lunacy demonstrated by this non-presidential man is just hunky-dory with Republicans, right?

Fox should rebrand itself: Fox NOT News Propaganda “Not Fair, Not Balanced For Those Not Interested In The Truth”

...we gave the supreme prize and ultimate compliment — leadership of the most powerful nation on earth — to a man who wouldn’t know the truth if it raced toward him with sirens blaring, ran over him, then backed up and did it again; whose loyalties stand as firm as a strand of overcooked linguine; whose vanity makes Narcissus look like a mere pretender; and who will sacrifice whatever and whomever he must on the altar of his own spurious magnificence. What he lacks in moral fiber he makes up for in gilt. It sufficed to bring him his treasure and, for 72 years and counting, spare him his reckoning.

Come on GOP let’s have real discussions about real issues facing America and the world. What will you do when, eventually, citizens of your Emperor With No Clothes alternate universe have a startlingly epiphany and realize that you’ve been feeding them a line of cow poo?

Communism isn’t the same thing as “socialism.” Socialism doesn’t preclude capitalist forces or a healthy market economy.

The Journal, which is owned by Trump ally Rupert Murdoch, has been occasionally critical of the president for his remarks in the past. But the right-leaning editorial board has rarely taken such eviscerating shots at the president, whose “cracked history” they wrote “can’t alter that reality” of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

A couple of recent columns nakedly illustrate the moral depravity into which conservatives have descended. It would be easy to mock some blow-dried Fox News bobblehead, but....

Discussing the planned departure of the U.S. from Syria, state TV host Olga Skabeeva pondered why Trump suddenly decided to leave at this point in time: “Americans say, it’s because he is beholden to Putin. Is that logical? Yes, it is.”

“...not a single prominent Republican in Washington has condemned the power grab in Wisconsin, the similar grab in Michigan, or even what looks like outright electoral fraud in North Carolina. Elected Republicans don’t just increasingly share the values of white nationalist parties like Fidesz or Poland’s Law and Justice; they also share those parties’ contempt for democracy. The G.O.P. is an authoritarian party in waiting.”

😢😩😭

Anti-fascists were stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally. Then police tried to charge them One anti-fascist was stabbed in the abdomen by an “unknown [Nazi] affiliate”, according to a CHP report, which included graphic images of the protester’s bloody injuries. But because this individual had a “wooden skateboard” that could be used as a “deadly weapon” as well as a “black bandana” to conceal their face, police recommended more than a dozen criminal charges, including conspiracy, assault, rioting, and disturbing the peace. This person was questioned by police at a hospital. For another victim, stabbed in the pelvis, which was also documented in photos, CHP said it was “unknown” how the individual was injured. The protester’s “medical condition” was severe enough that he was unable to give a statement to police at the hospital. Still, CHP recommended nine charges against him, because he had allegedly “swung his fists” at a TWP member, was “not acting in self-defense”, and had brought a bandanna.