Tearing down a legacy.

 Jerry Falwell, Jr. says that Donald trump has the chance to be the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. I am not sure how he plans to achieve that feat, but apparently he thinks that the best way to do it is to tear down everything that Barack Obama built up.

"Washington (AFP) - Brick by brick, the demolition job has begun: since taking office less than a year ago, Donald Trump has launched an all-out assault on the legacy of Barack Obama.

Climate, free trade, health care, immigration, foreign policy -- the 45th US president has set about undoing just about everything done by the 44th.

All new presidents, of course, break with their predecessor once in the Oval Office, especially if they come from a rival political party.

But what is striking is how systematic the hammer blows to Obama's legacy have been.

And rather than throw his weight behind new policies or projects, Trump has shown a willful desire to unpick, shred and erase everything his predecessor accomplished.

It's worth noting that each time he buries one of the reforms of the man who sat before him at the "Resolute desk," Trump sounds more like a candidate than a president.

- 'Ridiculous trade deals' -

The Trans-Pacific Partnership? Within days of taking office, Trump signed an order pulling America out of the free trade accord, the fruit of eight years of negotiations between 12 Asia-Pacific countries, from Chile to Canada and Japan.

"We're going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country, and it's going to be reversed," Trump said.

Paradoxically, in signing off on the project's demise, Trump was aligning himself more with the left wing of the Democratic party than with the Republican mainstream.

The Paris climate accord? Obama played a leading role in attaining that milestone in the effort to combat global warming.

Trump pulled out of the agreement signed by 195 countries, claiming that it "punishes the United States" and declaring: "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."

What about Obamacare, the signature legislative achievement of Obama's first term? After trying in vain to get Congress to repeal it, Trump is now working to bring about its collapse through the regulatory process.

And the Iranian nuclear accord? The bid to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon in return for a lifting of sanctions more than any other bore came to represent Obama's approach to world affairs.

"This deal will have my name on it," the Democratic president said shortly before it was concluded. "Nobody has a bigger personal stake in making sure that it delivers on its promise."

While Trump has stopped short of tearing up the Iran deal, as he threatened on the campaign trail, on Friday he warned he could do so "at any time," raising doubts about the fate of an accord born of years of painstaking diplomacy.

- A break at any price -

How to explain the fixation on destroying Obama's legacy at all cost?

Trump has held high his determination to fulfill his campaign promises, and give form to a simple slogan: "America First."

And his team recalls, with reason, that Obama acted by decree many times when thwarted by Congress. What has been decided by the stroke of a pen can be undone by the stroke of a pen.

Historian Jeffrey Engel, however, sees no equivalent in recent decades to Trump's systematic application of the simple principle that "if the other guy liked it, it must be bad."

To Engel, the explanation is that Trump's electoral base "never accepted fully Barack Obama as their president."

"There was a move among Obama's opponents to delegitimize him and to say that this man is not really president and consequently anything that he did, Trump's base is ready to get rid of," said Engel, who heads Southern Methodist University's center for presidential history in Dallas, Texas.

A notable fact: Obama has until now remained largely silent as his legacy is demolished.

American tradition, which is generally respected, holds that a former president should remain above the fray.

But, in thinking about his place in history, Obama is also playing the patience card.

"I think that Obama understands that his legacy ultimately will be defined by how America reacts to Trump in the long term and how Trump's successors act," said Engel.

On November 7, 2016, on the eve of the US elections, Obama warned voters "it all goes out the window" if they were to send Trump to the White House.chasing

That attempt to rally Democratic voters now seems prophetic." [Source]

 

I sure hope trump knows what he is doing. He seems to be more skilled at harassing women than he is at legislating and running government. But apparently his minions believe in him. And therefore, at least for now, that's all it seems to take.

 

 

We all saw it coming.

 I now give you a terrific article from David Remnick.

The Field Negro education series continues.

"Early last November, just before Election Day, Barack Obama was driven through the crisp late-night gloom of the outskirts of Charlotte, as he barnstormed North Carolina on behalf of . He was in no measure serene or confident. The polls, the “analytics,” remained in Clinton’s favor, yet Obama, with the unique vantage point of being the first African-American President, had watched as, night after night, immense crowds cheered and hooted for a demagogue who had launched a business career with blacks-need-not-apply housing developments in Queens and a political career with a racist conspiracy theory known as birtherism. During his speech in Charlotte that night, Obama warned that no one really changes in the Presidency; rather, the office “magnifies” who you already are. So if you “accept the support of Klan sympathizers before you’re President, or you’re kind of slow in disowning it, saying, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ then that’s how you’ll be as President.”

 

Donald Trump’s ascent was hardly the first sign that Americans had not uniformly regarded Obama’s election as an inspiring chapter in the country’s fitful progress toward equality. Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, had branded him the “food-stamp President.” In the right-wing and white-nationalist media, Obama was, variously, a socialist, a Muslim, the Antichrist, a “liberal fascist,” who was assembling his own Hitler Youth. A high-speed train from Las Vegas to Anaheim that was part of the economic-stimulus package was a secret effort to connect the brothels of Nevada to the innocents at Disneyland. He was, by nature, suspect. “You just look at the body language, and there’s something going on,” Trump said, last summer. In the meantime, beginning on the day of Obama’s first inaugural, the Secret Service fielded an unprecedented number of threats against the President’s person.

 

 

And so, speeding toward yet another airport last November, Obama seemed like a weary man who harbored a burning seed of apprehension. “We’ve seen this coming,” he said. “Donald Trump is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party for the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. What surprised me was the degree to which those tactics and rhetoric completely jumped the rails.”

 

 

For half a century, in fact, the leaders of the G.O.P. have fanned the lingering embers of racial resentment in the United States. Through shrewd political calculation and rhetoric, from Richard Nixon’s Republican Party” to the latest charges of voter fraud in majority-African-American districts, doing so has paid off at the ballot box. “There were no governing principles,” Obama said. “There was no one to say, ‘No, this is going too far, this isn’t what we stand for.’ ”

 

Last week, the world witnessed Obama’s successor in the White House, unbound and unhinged, acting more or less as Obama had predicted. In 2015, a week after Trump had declared his candidacy, he spoke in favor of removing the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s capitol: “Put it in the museum and let it go.” But, last week, abandoning the customary dog whistle of previous Republican culture warriors, President Trump made plain his indulgent sympathy for neo-Nazis, Klan members, and unaffiliated white supremacists, who marched with torches, assault rifles, clubs, and racist and anti-Semitic slogans through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. One participant even adopted an isis terror tactic, driving straight into a crowd of people peaceably demonstrating against the racists. Trump had declared an “America First” culture war in his Inaugural Address, and now—as his poll numbers dropped, as he lost again and again in the courts and in Congress, as the Mueller investigation delved into his miserable business history, as more and more aides leaked their dismay—he had cast his lot with the basest of his base. There were some “very fine people” among the white nationalists, he said, and their “culture” should not be threatened.

 

 

Who could have predicted it? Anyone, really. Two years ago, the Daily Stormer, the foremost neo-Nazi news site in the country, called on white men to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.” Trump never spurned this current of his support. He invited it, exploited it. With Stephen Bannon, white nationalism won prime real estate in the West Wing. Bannon wrote much of the inaugural speech, and was branded “The Great Manipulator” in a Time cover story that bruised the Presidential ego. But Bannon has been marginalized for months. Last Friday, in the wake of , Trump finally pushed him out. He is headed back to Breitbart News. But he was staff; his departure is hardly decisive. The culture of this White House was, and remains, Trump’s.

 

When Trump was elected, there were those who considered his history and insisted that this was a kind of national emergency, and that to normalize this Presidency was a dangerous illusion. At the same time, there were those who, in the spirit of patience and national comity, held that Trump was “our President,” and that “he must be given a chance.” Has he had enough of a chance yet? After his press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower last Tuesday, when he ignored the scripted attempts to regulate his impulses and revealed his true allegiances, there can be no doubt about who he is. This is the inescapable fact: on November 9th, the United States elected a dishonest, inept, unbalanced, and immoral human being as its President and Commander-in-Chief. Trump has daily proven unyielding to appeals of decency, unity, moderation, or fact. He is willing to imperil the civil peace and the social fabric of his country simply to satisfy his narcissism and to excite the worst inclinations of his core followers.

 

 

This latest outrage has disheartened Trump’s circle somewhat; business executives, generals and security officials, advisers, and even family members have semaphored their private despair. One of the more lasting images from Trump’s squalid appearance on Tuesday was that of his chief of staff, John Kelly, who stood listening to him with a hangdog look of shame. But Trump still retains the support of roughly a third of the country, and of the majority of the Republican electorate. The political figure Obama saw as a “logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party” has not yet come unmoored from the Party’s base.

 

 

The most important resistance to Trump has to come from civil society, from institutions, and from individuals who, despite their differences, believe in constitutional norms and have a fundamental respect for the values of honesty, equality, and justice. The imperative is to find ways to counteract and diminish his malignant influence not only in the overtly political realm but also in the social and cultural one. To fail in that would allow the death rattle of an old racist order to take hold as a deafening revival." [Source]

 

*Pic from atlantablackstar.com

One more for Rushmore?

Every self- respecting man with a sartorial sense should subscribe to GQ Magazine. He should do it  not only for the fashion tips; the magazine features some excellent writing as well. The editor, Jim Nelson, is one of the best writers in America.

With that in mind, I would to leave you with the following article he penned recently about our soon to be departed president, Barack Obama.

"Something is dawning on us—it’s almost too soon for us to admit, but it’s there, a half-considered thought only now blooming in our brains. Maybe we dismiss it with one of those quick cognitive fly swats. Nah, too early to say or I hate that guy. But the truth is coming, and it sounds like this: Barack Obama will be inducted into the league of Great Presidents.

Wait. One of the Greatest? you ask, your thumb emoticon poised to turn up or down on me. The guy haters love to hate with their very best hate game? Like 20-Dollar Bill great? Like Mount Rushmore great?

Yep. (We just won’t build Mount Rushmores anymore.) In so many ways, Obama was better than we imagined, better than the body politic deserved, and far, far better than his enemies will ever concede, but the great thing about being great is that the verdict of enemies doesn’t matter.

Get one year of GQ for only $15! Click here to subscribe

In fact, and I say this as a Bill Clinton fan, I now feel certain that, in the coming decades, Obama’s star will rise higher than Clinton’s, and he’ll replace Bill in the public mind as the Greatest Democrat since FDR.

This has to do with the nature of Obama’s leadership, which is to play to legacy (and Clinton’s impulse, which is to play to the room). Bill Clinton will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the presidency. He’s simply bigger than Bill.

More to the point, Obama’s legacy is the sort that gets canonized. Because the first rule of Hall of Fame-dom: The times have to suck for the president not to. Civil wars, World Wars, depressions and recessions. You got to have ’em if you wanna be great. That’s why we rate the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Roosevelts over That Fat Guy with the Walrus Mustache. Like Obama, these Great Men were dealt sucky hands, won big, and left the country better off than it was before.

But it’s also why we downgrade the Jimmy Carters and Herbert Hoovers. Were they as bad in real time as we remember them in history? Probably not. But they were dealt sucky hands, only played one round, and left the country feeling worse off. Legacy Game over. (Hoover reminds me more and more of Donald Trump! Elected with little political experience, Hoover was a rich bastard whose central theme was that government was wasteful. His answer to the Great Depression was to start a trade war and build a massive project called the Hoover Dam. The dam turned out to be a giant wall that did not stop or solve larger problems. Déjà vu, thy name is Trump Wall!)

Obama has a few other edges in the long haul of history, beyond specific hurrah moments like Obamacare, rescuing the economy, and making America way more bi-curious. Being the first black president of course secures a certain legacy. But what now feels distinctly possible is that, just as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, over time he may be judged less for the color of his skin than for the content of his character. That character came across every time haters or Trumpers or birthers tried to pull him down into the mud or question his American-ness. He just flew above it all. And, luckily, he took most of us with him. He was the Leader not only of our country but of our mood and disposition, which is harder to rule. At a time when we became more polarized, our discourse pettier and more poisoned, Obama always came across as the Adult in the Room, the one we wanted to be and follow.

Ironically, one of the lock-ins to his Hall of Fame Greatness was originally supposed to be his Achilles’ heel, the shallow thing critics loved to smear him with: his eloquence, his “reliance” on speeches and teleprompters (Sarah Palin once famously screeched, “Mr. President…step away from the teleprompter and do your job!” while herself reading from a teleprompter), as if addressing the country as a whole, trying to unify or inspire people, were a superficial thing. But pivotal words at pivotal moments are not only how we come to admire great leaders, it’s the primary way we remember them. The first thing most people can recall about Lincoln? The Gettysburg Address. FDR? Fireside chats. George Washington? His amazing Snapchats. (George was first with everything.)

With Obama, each thoughtful step of the way, from his soaring acceptance speech (“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep…”) to his epic speeches on race and religion, his responses to the shootings in Tucson and Newtown, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the opening of Cuba (“Todos somos Americanos!”), and countless other momentous occasions, he knew how to speak to our better angels at a time when it was hard to locate any angels.

Lastly, there’s the arc of history, bound to bend downward. As our unity becomes more frayed, more tenuous, and the ability for any politician to get anything done more unlikely, the job of president will become less LBJ tactical and less FDR big-dealer. The job will largely be to preside. To unify where and however we can. In this way, too, Obama pointed the way forward.

It may be hard to imagine now, but in the face of rising chaos, we’ll crave unity all the more, and in future years whoever can speak most convincingly of unity will rise to the top. (It’s also hard to imagine many beating Obama at the game.) This year’s carnival election, with Trump as a kind of debauched circus barker, only makes the distinction clearer.

The absurdity and car-crash spectacle of it all have already lent Obama an out-of-time quality, as if he were a creature from another, loftier century. Whatever happens next, I feel this in my bones: We’ll look back at history, hopefully when we’re zooming down the Barack Obama Hyperloop Transport System, and think: That man was rare. And we were damn lucky to have him." [Source]

As president-elect trump continues to surround himself with the most conservative, male, white, and  ideologically pure group since Hoover, we will see in the coming years just how much Americans will miss Barack Obama.

I will leave you with the words of Bobby Womack:

"If you think you're lonely now, huh
Wait until tonight, girl
(If you think you're lonely now)
I'll be long gone
(Wait until tonight, girl)
And you'll find another man that'll treat you right..."

I have a feeling that Donald J. trump will not be that man.

*Pic from GQ.com

From Russia with love.

Donald trump is mad at the White House and Obama again, and here is why:

"Today during a press conference, President Barack Obama responded to a reporter who asked if he is uneasy about President-elect Donald Trump‘s close ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin. Obama responded that

He began by addressing the intelligence report that indicates Russia had a hand in influencing the election, then moved on to what that meant for politics in America.

This is part of what I meant when I said we gotta think about what’s happening to our political culture here. The Russians can’t change us or significantly weaken us. They’re a smaller country, they’re a weaker country, their economy doesn’t produce anything that anyone wants to buy except oil and gas and arms. They don’t innovate but they can impact us if we lose track of who we are. They can impact us if we abandon our values. Mr Putin can weaken us just like he’s trying to weaken Europe if we start buying into notions that it’s okay to intimidate the press or lock up dissidents or discriminate against people because of their faith or what they look like.”'

Donald doesn't like it when you bad mouth his guy. I mean his on his fourth leg of his victory tour now thanks to comrade Putin. But, sadly, for Donald, everyone except the most tone deaf wingnut now believe that the Russians were all in when it comes to getting trump elected.

Of course, if you are trump, this is the last thing you want to hear, and it is the worst thing that you could do to his huge ---but very fragile--- ego.

Finally, Jamelle Bouie has a article in Slate.com that is causing some folks to cry foul. Something about him comparing Dylann Roof.

Personally, I think there is a lot of truth to what he wrote. But hey, what do I know? I am just your friendly neighborhood blogger.

Understanding conservatives.

Before I drop tonight's cut and paste job, I have to mention a couple of stories that had me scratching my very bald head today.

They really make me question the sanity of some people.

The first one has to do with Donald Trump Jr. accusing Barack Obama of plagiarizing some of his speech. Think about that for a minute. The young Trump actually lifted the same lines from the president who used them long before his daddy decided to run for president, and yet he has the audacity to accuse the president of lifting his lines. Unbelievable!

"Melania Trump, the elder Trump’s wife, came under fire last week when it was revealed that she had plagiarized from a speech first lady Michelle Obama delivered at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. 

Inexplicably, Trump Jr. appears to be trying to spark similar outrage by claiming the president stole material from him. 

He has failed, largely because the line he’s claiming to have coined wasn’t even his ― elected officials, including Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, have been using it for years." 

Then there is Bill O'Reilly, a popular conservative talk show host who actually had the nerve to declare on his popular talk show that slaves were well fed, and had proper  lodging while they built the White House.

It's nothing new, of course, conservatives have a long history of trying to delegitimize  the stain and pain of slavery. But to see one of them do it so openly and without hesitation was shocking.

Now, of course, after all the backlash, he is trying to clean up his statement.

 "As any honest historian knows, in order to keep slaves and free laborers strong, the Washington administration provided meat, bread and other staples, also decent lodging on the grounds of the new presidential building. That is a fact. Not a justification, not a defense of slavery. Just a fact. Anyone who implies a soft-on-slavery message is beneath contempt."'

Bill, that is a "soft on slavery message", and you are beneath contempt. But we all already knew that; your history, both professionally and personally, proves it.  

So on to the must read article of the day:

"It is not Barack Obama’s fault that Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, any more than the proverbial hurricane is the fault of the proverbial butterfly. But just like the butterfly and the hurricane, the fact that Trump’s ascension comes at the end of the Obama era is hardly a coincidence — and it’s hard to imagine one without the other.

More specifically, Obama’s election helped pave the way for Trumpism: not the idiosyncratic and often incomprehensible campaign that Donald Trump himself is running, but the anti-immigration, anti-trade, "law and order" populist sentiment that he’s brought back into the American mainstream and that will probably outlast his (probable) loss in November.

One of the reasons Trumpism has surprised political and media elites with its passion and strength is that it draws from a deep well of anxiety about America losing its culture and values in the face of (among other things) multiculturalism.

The idea that America is being both overrun and taken over by people with different values is partly inspired by reminders of difference in everyday life: seeing people in the streets who "look like" unauthorized immigrants; having to press 1 for English. But it’s also reinforced by the media, and by who represents America on the world stage.

And for the past eight years, that’s been a man of Kenyan ancestry — with, as Obama himself said during his 2004 convention speech, "a funny name."

Obama’s election was the result of the underlying demographic changes that have provoked so much anxiety that something’s being lost in America. But it was also a symbol of it.

More importantly, it offered a way for people to express those anxieties under the banner of disagreement about politics — which is acceptable in polite company — instead of under the banner of "complaining about nonwhite people," which is generally considered racist and frowned upon discussing openly.

Accusing African Americans or immigrants of being un-American or disloyal is a longstanding theme, but it’s not a polite thing to say. But asking whether President Obama was really born in America anyway, or saying he has a "Kenyan anti-colonialist" outlook because of his father, or darkly hinting that he is more sympathetic to America’s Islamist enemies than its allies because he has something in common with them? All of those are pretty strong and ugly criticisms, but they’re criticisms of a politician — of the most powerful man in the world, in fact. That makes them more acceptable than if they were about someone else.

Birtherism, of course, is the issue that made Donald Trump a conservative hero in 2011. The swell of support he felt then was almost enough to tempt him into a run in 2012, and it was definitely enough to tempt him into a run in 2016.

Trump had been toying with a run for president for decades. And while some of his policy stances have definitely shifted (to say the least) since then, his history as a racial provocateur goes back decades.

But Trump is a good marketer. He understood, when he ran this time, that his ability to make controversial statements was a close relative of the conservative resentment of "political correctness," and the yearning to more openly express certain people’s fears without courting offense or censorship. He saw his time had come." [Source]

"People of color" put up a "firewall".

The Field Negro education series continues.

The following post was written by Denise O. Velez for Daily Kos:

"We, the people of color of these United States of America, are going to be the salvation of this nation. We are the firewall that is standing strong against the travesty that we’ve just seen displayed at the Klanvention convened by Republicans in Cleveland.

Black folks are not buying what Donald Trump and the rest of his raft of Republican racists are selling. Neither are Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans. As the traditional media tries to sell us on a neck-and-neck horse race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—ignoring the electoral college—and as Trump and other Republicans ramp up the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic volume, there is one thing Democrats need to keep in mind: A big part of our voting base is black and brown, and that base is growing.

The coalition that elected Barack Obama twice isn’t shrinking.

President Obama achieved victory by carrying 93 percent of African American voters, 71 percent of Latino voters, 73 percent of Asian American voters, and only 39 percent of white voters

Republicans know that, which is why they are fighting tooth and nail to initiate more voter suppression across the U.S., and have even incorporated those efforts into their platform.

The Republican Party's platform formally endorses laws requiring voters to show identification when they cast ballots. The new provision inserts the national party into a contentious debate over voter access at a time when several states are tightening identification requirements. The party platform, adopted unanimously by delegates in Cleveland on Monday, goes farther than language that had been included in earlier years. The party "support[s] legislation to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote and secure photo ID when voting," the document reads. Four years ago, the GOP platform "applaud[ed] legislation to require photo identification for voting and to prevent election fraud."

 The stronger language comes ahead of a presidential election in which 12 states -- including critical swing states like Wisconsin, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia -- will enforce voter identification laws for the first time."This is part of a broader move to curtail voting rights, which began after the 2010 election, when state lawmakers nationwide started introducing hundreds of harsh measures making it harder to vote," wrote the Brennan Center for Justice, which opposes many of the new laws.

We need to mount every effort possible to not only fight voter suppression, but to increase our GOTV efforts in black, Latino, Asian, and Native American communities.

The good news is the Clinton campaign “gets it” in regards to expanding efforts with black voters.

NBCBLK has confirmed from a Hillary Clinton aid that Hillary for America is expanding its African-American outreach team for the general election.

The Clinton campaign has hired several staffers in an effort to build an already sizable advantage with African-American voters. During the primaries, African-American voters favored Clinton overwhelmingly and a recent poll in Pennsylvania showed Trump's African American vote support at zero.

We should expect to hear from her campaign about ramped up Latino and Asian outreach very soon. However, we can’t just focus on the critical presidential battle. We have to flip the Senate and make inroads into the House, while also beginning to undo the depredations caused by Republican legislatures across the nation. As we fight the battle for victory in November, our eyes have to be on the ultimate prize of dominating midterms, and building our local and state participation. Ignoring the central importance of people of color as the bulwark against white supremacist/fascist ideology and practice imperils us all, no matter your individual race, ethnicity, or gender.
Bear with me as I digress and rant here.

From my perspective as a black Democratic voter, married to a brown Democratic voter, who has been fighting for our voting rights since being inspired by Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer (among others) in 1964, I’m more than a bit ticked off by all the hand-wringing from the white left about white voters and the fantasy that the loss of “the white vote” is going to doom us. Before white Democrats read this and get upset, let me be clear: If you are white and not buying the racism—right on. If you are white and fighting voter suppression—right on.

Democrats lost “the white vote” decades ago. That doesn’t mean “all whites,” but it sure as hell tells us something about the pervasive impact of racism in American politics. [More]

Thoughts?