monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

When Donald Trump recently laid a wreath at the tomb of Andrew Jackson, the 45th president was sending a message by choosing a hero.

It is difficult to imagine that this selection was the result of vast reading in presidential history. [difficult -> impossible, adds me]

...George Washington had viewed swagger as a moral failure. Jackson made it an American political virtue. His movement, quite literally, broke china at the White House. It essentially created the idea of congressional party loyalty. It devalued civility. In all these ways, we still live in Jackson’s America.

Jackson was a large, complex figure. (The best starting point to learn about him is Jon Meacham’s “American Lion,” which is brilliant in everything except its reverence for its subject.) But it would be typical of Trump to admire Jackson, not only for his virtues, but for his vices, too. Jackson was the first president who made dueling, gambling and horse-racing parts of his public persona. He was prickly, demanding and mercurial. He was no stranger to sexual scandal. His opponents regarded his presidency as unimaginable, until he beat them.

But Jackson’s vices were not merely personal. Many of the Founders had been internally conflicted slaveholders. Jackson was not one for psychic struggle. Meacham recounts that Jackson once authored an “Advertisement for Runaway Slave” that offered $50 for the return of the slave “and ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him.” Such attitudes were not disqualifying in Jackson’s America.

Trump adviser Flynn paid by multiple Russia-related entities, new records show

Soon after Charla McComic’s son lost his job, his health-insurance premium dropped from $567 per month to just $88, a “blessing from God” that she believes was made possible by President Trump.

“I think it was just because of the tax credit,” said McComic, 52, a former first-grade teacher who traveled to Trump’s Wednesday night rally in Nashville from Lexington, Tenn., with her daughter, mother, aunt and cousin.

The price change was actually thanks to a subsidy made possible by former president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which is still in place, not by the tax credits proposed by Republicans as part of the health-care bill still being considered by Congress.

[...]
So how exactly did a poem, whose author we know nothing about, end up being quoted by the president of the United States as an Irish proverb?

Cody Keenan, a speechwriter for Obama, may have hit on the most likely theory:

And indeed, when you google “famous Irish proverb” the poem is included in the top two sites.

So, long story short: the proverb isn’t a proverb, it’s a poem. It’s probably not Irish, given no one in Ireland seems to have heard of it, but we’re not sure where it came from.

I think that "The Onion" reporters should be in the White House press corps. If Breitbart is there, we need the Onion.

When Mick Mulvaney was a member of Congress, the South Carolina Republican, a founding member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, developed a reputation for almost comical radicalism. Now he's Donald Trump's budget director, where he's proving his critics right.

Just this week, Mulvaney said he believed that the Obama administration "was manipulating the numbers" on unemployment, which is bonkers. Soon after, the OMB chief was caught brazenly lying -- twice -- about basic details surrounding the health care debate.

Yesterday, Mulvaney extremism came into even sharper focus.
Before the Thursday's press briefing got fully underway, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney defended cuts to community programs, like Meals on Wheels, which provides meals to homebound, often elderly, individuals.

Quote:

"We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good and great," Mulvaney said. "Meals on Wheels sounds great. Again that's a state decision to fund that particular portion to it. To take the federal money and give it to the states and say look we want to give you money for programs that don't work. I can't defend that anymore."

Trump's budget director added that cutting assistance to struggling seniors is "one of the most compassionate things we can do," telling skeptical reporters, "You're focusing on recipients of the money. We're trying to focus on both the recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place." He pointed to programs such as Meals on Wheels as initiatives that are "just not showing any results."

The point of Meals on Wheels is to provide food to the low-income elderly. I'm honestly not sure what kind of "results" Mulvaney is looking for...

“Illiberalism” is the permanent fact of life. Moments of social peace and coexistence, however troubled and imperfect, are the brief miracle that needs explaining, and protecting. In this way, Mokyr’s vision of a revolution made by hand retrieves the best side of the Enlightenment, and Voltaire as he really was. An easily overlooked aspect of Voltaire’s thought was the priority it gave, especially in his later life, to practice. Watchmaking, vegetable growing, star charting: the great Enlightenment thinker turned decisively away from abstraction as he aged. The argument of “Candide” is neither that the world gets better nor that it’s all for naught; it’s that happiness is where you find it, and you find it first by making it yourself. The famous injunction to “cultivate our garden” means just that: make something happen, often with your hands. It remains, as it was meant to, a reproach to all ham-fisted intellects and deskbound brooders. Getting out to make good things happen beats sitting down and thinking big things up. The wind blows every which way in the world, and Voltaire’s last word to the windblown remains the right one. There are a lot of babies yet to comfort, and gardens still to grow.

Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue...

Quote:

Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy

It's a very good history of the thing and everyone ought to read it. I have yet to bump into a conservative on boards like this one who use the term (and almost all of them do use it in a deeply unreflective and cliched manner) who knows this history.
.........

Another example is this thread. Because I and others contributing are not Americans, it is not "politically correct" for us to speak negatively about Trump or modern US conservatism. And aside from nationality, just the continuing criticism and satirization of Trump or conservatives violates most right wing contributors' sense of the "politically correct". We offend and we ought not to, they seem to believe and insist. .

I do however reject Blatham's sly and self-serving effort to deflect reaction to his odd and obsessive commentary on internal affairs of another country which have no relation or connection to his own life in Canada

I have no argument with the likely origin of the term politically correct

It arose from an adverse reaction by many people to the politicization of many cultural and social issues by folks who wished to impose their ideas of group identity and values on others

Such behavior is very human, as are other forms of intolerance.

I do however reject Blatham's sly and self-serving effort to deflect reaction to his odd and obsessive commentary on internal affairs of another country which have no relation or connection to his own life in Canada, by pretending it has anything to do with his supposed right wing war on political correctitude.

That is false. It is instead a question of good manners, self restraint and normal discretion.