what Barr tweeted wasn’t an idea. It was a slur.
.. This is not a “double standards” issue.
.. Donald Trump took to Twitteron Wednesday to denounce Disney’s chairman, Robert Iger, for not apologizing to him for the “HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC.” But he’s the ultimate public figure, whereas Jarrett is a private citizen subjected to unprovoked racial attack by an ABC employee. That the president fails or refuses to appreciate the distinction is the thousandth reminder of his unfitness for office.
.. The relevant question here is: What’s the “totality” of Barr’s work, at least when it comes to political and racial questions?
.. John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine, summed it up perfectly when he described Barr as “a boor,” a “notorious believer and propagator of conspiracy theories related to 9/11,” and, in all, “not merely a loose cannon but a MIRVed ICBM ready to go off in all directions at any time.”
.. It’s true the players don’t have the legal right. But they have the moral one, especially when their gesture is dignified, considered and silent (even if I also think it’s mistaken); and when the N.F.L. has aggressively blurred the lines between its commercial interests and the totems of American patriotism. To love freedom is to exercise it. That’s not a function of standing for a song.
.. Dungey and Iger acted despite “Roseanne” being a ratings hit. Something mattered more than a bottom line.
The show was supposed to help explain, and humanize, Trump’s base to a frequently unsympathetic and uncomprehending public. Through her tweet, Barr managed to do so all too well. Perhaps the reason Trump voters are so frequently the subject of caricature is that they so frequently conform to type.
Did the F.B.I. Save Trump’s Presidency?
But the significant question is whether any competent counterintelligence officer would not have seen, in this constellation of facts, serious reason to believe that the Trump campaign was profoundly vulnerable to Russian manipulation, even (or especially) if the candidate himself didn’t know about it. Just imagine if Manafort or Flynn hadn’t had their Russia ties exposed and now occupied positions of trust in the White House. The Kremlin would surely know how to leverage their secrets.
Trump is now taking his usual unbridled umbrage at comments by former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, which the president then misquoted, that he should be glad the F.B.I. was looking into potential Russian infiltration of his campaign. Of course he should be glad: The Bureau has now twice rescued him, first by reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails on the eve of the election, and then by clearing out the Russian stooges in his employ.
That Trump won’t acknowledge this means he’s either profoundly foolish or, in ways we don’t yet understand, dangerously complicit. I still lean toward the former interpretation — just.
Donald Calls Vladimir: The Transcript
You have caused revolution in legitimacy. All that was previously trustworthy and reputable is now disreputable and untrustworthy, and vice versa. You promote crazy conspiracy theory and shift burden of proof to your adversaries. You replace honesty with authenticity and policy with drama and reality with manufactured reality. These are correct moves.
.. President Putin: We believe your most brilliant tactic is when you bait media into nonstop hysteria over your deliberately stupid Twitter comments so that journalists chase ghosts, people stop reacting and nobody sees your true intention. Bury signal in noise: Very clever!
.. President Putin: To be honest, we don’t mind these new sanctions. They are too weak to hurt us, but they feed Russian complex about Western persecution, very useful to me.
In Praise of Globalists
“As a right-wing conservative and founding member of the Freedom Caucus, I never expected that the co-worker I would work closest, and best, with at the White House would be a ‘globalist,’ ” Mulvaney said in a tweet. “Gary Cohn is one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with.
.. Globalist belongs in a class of words (“cuck” is another one, as is “othering”) that tends to say a great deal more about the person who uses it than it does about the person he says it about.
.. To be an anti-globalist, on the other hand, does specify something. It means someone who is convinced that serious business is transacted at conferences like Davos or Bilderberg or Munich, and that 500 or so people run the world at the expense of everyone else.
.. anti-globalism is economic illiteracy married to a conspiracy mind-set.
.. Who in the White House is left to tell the president he’s nuts when he tries to pull out of Nafta?
.. expats are our real globalists, representing the things that make America great:
- adventure,
- engagement,
- commerce,
- openness to new ideas, and
- a love of America honed by a combination of critical distance and a new depth of appreciation.