Trump

Josh Marshall: Feel The Propaganda, Feel the Hate

April 22, 2017 by Michael Boyle

Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo about the core deceptions at the heart of the administration’s twin crime and immigration policy stances.

We’re familiar with President Trump’s dystopian vision of an America in chaos, preyed on by foreigners and awash in citizens violated by feral criminals and “illegals.” Through last year’s campaign and into this year, Trump has repeatedly lied about the national crime rate, murder rates and much more. Here though is a case where anti-immigrant policies continue to be justified by at least deliberately misleading statements and what can only be called incitement. […]
There’s not much more to say. If this were one deception it might be dismissed. But of course it is not. It is a single illustrative example of deception as policy, one peep in a symphony of lies that President Trump, Attorney General Sessions and all their fellow travelers and appointees use regularly to sell their anti-immigrant crackdown and attempt to return to the ‘tough on crime’ policies of the past.

Source: Feel The Propaganda, Feel the Hate

Lizza: The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal

April 22, 2017 by Michael Boyle

Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker on the scrambling reaction to unprovoked and made-up Tweets from President Trump about how he had supposedly been surveilled the the previous administration. Strong stuff.

The intelligence source told me that he knows, “from talking to people in the intelligence community,” that “the White House said, ‘We are going to mobilize to find something to justify the President’s tweet that he was being surveilled.’ They put out an all-points bulletin”—a call to sift through intelligence reports—“and said, ‘We need to find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower.’ And I’m telling you there is no way you get that from those transcripts, which are about as plain vanilla as can be.” (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Source: The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal – The New Yorker

Afghans Who Worked With U.S. Forces Told They Can No Longer Apply For Special Visas

March 12, 2017 by Michael Boyle

Really? Seems like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, no?

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced that it expected to run out of special visas by June 1. The visas are for Afghans who are in danger because they assisted the U.S. mission.

Source: Afghans Who Worked With U.S. Forces Told They Can No Longer Apply For Special Visas – The Two-Way – NPR

The winning argument Democrats have against Trump

March 11, 2017 by Michael Boyle

This is an optimistic article, but there are already conspiracy theories that Obama is running a “shadow government” and derailing everything Trump tries (or not) to do. So it’s not clear to me that this administration can’t insulate itself from such practical but mundane problems.

What President Trump has done and said in his short time in office is bad enough. But Democrats may find that it is what Trump has failed to do — and is likely to continue to fail to deliver — during his tenure that provides the most powerful case against him.

Source: The winning argument Democrats have against Trump – The Washington Post

FP: The Shallow State

February 23, 2017 by Michael Boyle

Another interesting article from Foreign Policy:

The shallow state, on the other hand, is unsettling because not only are the signs of it ever more visible but because its influence is clearly growing. It is made scarier still because it not only actively eschews experience, knowledge, relationships, insight, craft, special skills, tradition, and shared values but because it celebrates its ignorance of and disdain for those things. Donald Trump, champion and avatar of the shallow state, has won power because his supporters are threatened by what they don’t understand, and what they don’t understand is almost everything.

Source: FP: The Shallow State