In June he had a very normal state visit to England with no real gaffes. For the Fourth of July he gave a speech that liberals and progressives expected to be pure and ugly politics, but wound up being, again, pretty normal. His reactions to criticisms such as a new allegation of sexual assault were pretty mellow by his standards, and his brief walk into North Korea came off as a good bit of diplomacy, despite handwringing among North Korea hawks.I'd point to two recent Twitter blurtings as counterweights to these. There was the business about calling Amash "disloyal." Telling term. It has that Mafia-boss / I-expect-my-ring-to-be-kissed connotation about it. Then there is Trump's choice to call Paul Ryan a "baby" who "didn't know what the hell he was doing," and a followup indulgence of his signature braggadocio and winner-loser formulation:
They gave me standing O’s in the Great State of Wisconsin, & booed him off the stage. He promised me the Wall, & failed (happening anyway!)......Granted, Amash had called for Trump's resignation, and Paul Ryan had unloaded to Politico's Tim Alberta in the course of Alberta's writing of a book about Trump not caring about being unprepared to address various issues. And a US president is not expected to be immaculately above the fray. Still, these responses are unprecedented. Trump thinks his insults wipe the record clean regarding Amash and Ryan having established themselves as intelligent, principled conservatives who have thought deeply about the scope of state power vis-a-vis individual sovereignty.
Recall that Trump called Charles Krauthammer a "dummy" in a tweet in 2016. Need I say more?
Gentlemanly restraint just ain't in the Very Stable Genius's wheelhouse.
Which brings us to his tweets about the radical House freshmen:
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......
....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....
5:27 AM - 14 Jul 2019
....it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
5:27 AM - 14 Jul 2019Those who parse the uttering of their political enemies are going to have a field day with this point:
The series of tweets carried with it the suggestion that these women “go back” to the countries from whence they originated. AOC, Tlaib, and Pressley were all born in the United States, while Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia.The absurdity is going to get plenty of titters, but the phrase "go back" is what's going to provide the Left with its real ammunition. At a moment when a truly well-crafted expression of outrage at the truly America-hating sentiment that these four House freshmen ooze would have been immensely helpful, the VSG lets loose with a major backfire. Anyone else now pointing out the poisonous nature of what these four routinely say is going to come in for a response along the lines of, "Yeah, 'go back to where you swarthy types came from' is what you right-wingers always really mean when you come after brown-skinned people."
Of course, none of this matters to Trump's slavish base. They think this sort of thing is a hoot. They see no reason to care one subatomic particle what anyone at any point on the left side of the spectrum is thinking. To that base, as long as the Left is trampled over come the first Tuesday in November 2020, it's mission accomplished. No matter that the embers of America-hatred will continue to glow and smolder, ready to reignite. And that will be because they weren't truly doused with sound refutation.
No, the pivot to normalcy remains a dream in the minds of those who, I guess admirably, want to see something more redeeming in what is probably going to occur in a year and four months than the cyclical trimming of the Left's sails. We'd all like real victory, but let's be realistic about what can deliver it and what - and who - can't.
This morning this moronic Republican President demanded an apology from the 4 apes. To our country, Israel (as if he's that country's bouncer) and the offce of President (as if reapect is required even of vermin if they occupy the White House).
ReplyDeleteI almost feel like I dare not even let the thought "Don't make it worse, Squirrel Hair" cross my mind, because it seems to have a jinxing effect.
ReplyDeleteHe said a lot of people liked what he so falsely and maliciously muttered. Well, men and women of color say they hear this damnable dribble a lot in their country of birth.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what to do with a broad-brush statement like that ("men and women of color say they hear this damnable dribble a lot in their country of birth"), though. Some kind of reliable study would have to be conducted to prove that.
ReplyDeleteYou never believe what you don't want to hear.
ReplyDeleteJust google "go back to where you came from" and you'll find plenty of testimony from people of color in America. Same for "police brutality" and "racial profiling." Still you won't believe. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest...
ReplyDeletehttps://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2017/09/28/the-national-anthem-protests--do-facts-matter-n2387546
ReplyDeleteOut of the 965 people killed by the police in 2015 (as of Dec. 24), the Post reported (on Dec. 26) that "less than 4 percent" involved an unarmed black man and a white cop, the fact pattern most commonly referred to by anti-police activists like Black Lives Matter. Last year, The Washington Post put the number of unarmed black men killed by the police at 17, less than the number of blacks likely struck by lightning. Twenty-two unarmed whites were killed by the police. Any death that results from police misconduct is one death too many, but the point is that police killing of a suspect is rare, no matter the race of the suspect or the cop. And a police shooting of an unarmed black male is still more rare.
But aren’t blacks routinely “racially profiled” by cops? Not according to the Police-Public Contact Survey. Produced every three years by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, the survey asks more than 60,000 people about their interactions with the police. It asks respondents’ to provide age, race and gender. It asks them whether they had any contact with the police in the last year; what was the experience like; how were your treated; was there a use of force and so on. Turns out, according to a September 2017 National Review article, black men and white men are about equally likely to have a contact with a cop in a given year. As to multiple contacts, defined as three or more with the police in a given year, 1.5 percent of blacks vs. 1.2 percent of whites fall in that category. Not much difference.
There’s also the National Crime Victimization Survey, which questions victims of crimes, whether or not the criminal was captured, as to the race and ethnicity of the suspect. It turns out that the race of the arrested matches the percentage given by victims. So unless victims are lying about the race of their assailant, unconcerned about whether he gets caught, blacks are not being “overarrested.”
A reasonable discussion about blacks and police practices cannot take place without acknowledging the disproportion amount of crime committed by blacks. According to the Department of Justice’s “Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 2009,” in the country’s 75 largest counties, blacks committed 62 percent of robberies, 45 percent of assaults and accounted for 57 percent of murder defendants.
The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young white men is accidents, such as car accidents. The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is homicide, usually committed by another young black man, not a cop. In 2016, according to the latest data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, 7,881 blacks were killed.
The courageous Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, who writes extensively about police practice, asked: “Who is killing these black victims? Not whites, and not the police, but other blacks. In 2016, the police fatally shot 233 blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous. … Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative, the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police. In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer.”
I never ran a study on it, but mine and many people's perception is that a disproportionate amount of crime is indeed committed by blacks. I'm surprised it's not higher than the #s cited in your linked article. This explains a lot. I wonder why this is so?
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