The Republican Utopia

[zoogs]

The author is Arthur Herman and the article is entitled 'Confederate Statues Honor Timeless Virtues -- Let Them Stay.' The byline is 'Don't let extremists on both sides destroy honor and valor, even as they seek to destroy everything else.' http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450622/virginia-confederate-statues-robert-e-lee-stonewall-jackson-virtues-honor-sacrifice-valor According to his Wikipedia page, Herman "generally employs the Great Man perspective in his work, which is the 19th Century historical methodology attributing human events and their outcomes to the singular efforts of great men..."

 

But yeah. Every time I see someone invoke the good old-fashioned conservatism, I think it bears mentioning that such a time/ideal is heavily wrapped in stuff like "segregation was bad, but have you seen HIP HOP CULTURE??" 

[knapplc]

"both sides" is quickly becoming the biggest line of BS in American politics. 

[Danny Bateman]

Budget hawks should be foaming at the mouth about this, but of course, they're not.

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

This is... not surprising. 

 

 

[zoogs]

http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/features/a28947/trump-legacy-is-not-temporary/

I agree with this. This isn't some fluke of a nightmare that we'll wake up from one day once a few election results swing the other way. We have to reckon with the fact that we got here.

 

Alex Pareene writes (and I agree) that the "alt-right" will soon translate to the mainstream GOP: "In a decade, state legislatures will start filling up with Gamergaters, MRAs, /pol/ posters, Anime Nazis, and Proud Boys. These are, as of now, the only people in their age cohort becoming more active in Republican politics in the Trump era. Everyone else is fleeing. This will be the legacy of Trumpism...."

 

They will lead. Will we (continue to) follow?

[TGHusker]

19 hours ago, dudeguyy said:

Budget hawks should be foaming at the mouth about this, but of course, they're not.

 

 

Ya butttttt...ttt    Trump doesn't take a salary

• Official government records show three payments were made by the State Department to a car rental agency in Rome on July 18 totaling $117,489.44
• That pales in comparison to the $1,956,949.73 that was spent at the same agency back in May during President Trump's 48-hour trip to Italy
• Two days later Secret Service agents arrived in Portofino to meet Tiffany Trump as she disembarked from a two-week yacht trip on the Tyrrhenian Sea
• The First Daughter and her mother Marla Maples were guests of their good friend Chahrazad Rizk, who is the founder of TEC Interior Design, on Mirage IV 
• Once in Rome, Marla stayed in a reduced-rate hotel suite at the Parco dei Principi Grand Hotel & Spa, which she posted photos of to Instagram
• Tiffany is now back in the United States and will begin law school at Georgetown in September 
  
  
   
• Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4740690/Tiffany-Trump-s-Roman-holiday-cost-taxpayers-100K.html#ixzz4qbOXdYgG
  Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[knapplc]

This is what decades of conditioning of Fox News has done to conservatives. Trump spews hateful rhetoric at our press, and Republicans applaud him.

 

 

[TGHusker]

Trump threatens govt shutdown over the wall.  He threatens NAFTA shutdown -  and the stock market gets the jitters.  NO surprise.   The guy has no clue and acts like

a terrible CEO.  His role however isn't to be a CEO yet he acts like he can make decisions in a vacuum.  

The poll #s Knapp posts are really disheartning as to what happening to the repub party and Trump is making it far worse.  Either the repubs need to detox of the bad

ideas or good people need to leave in droves and start a new party or build up another party - Libertarian, Constitution or just be Independent.  Unlikely to happen of course just wishing out loud. 

[Danny Bateman]

I've long wondered how the Religious Right (particularly Evangelicals) came home so strongly for Trump last year. I consider myself Christian, and no one immediately springs to mind as espousing Christian values and principles in their day to day life LESS than Donald J. Trump.

 

However, after reading this article, I'm less suspect. Jerry Falwell Jr., who endorsed Trump shortly before the primaries began in 2016 (and subsequently produced the "Two Corinthians" speech at Liberty of some degree of notoriety), is a grifter, just like Trump. He just hides it better behind a veneer of one of America's pre-eminent faces of Christianity.

 

Quote

In January 2016, when Falwell hosted a speech in Iowa by then-candidate Trump, he engaged in a bit of Trumpian self-aggrandizement, crediting his own wizardry with saving the once troubled Liberty University. “We spent the ’80s and ’90s struggling to survive,” Falwell told the audience in Davenport, referring to the school’s past near bankruptcy and $100 million debt. “One of the things that attracted me to Donald Trump is that I see our country at a stage now where we’re approaching $20 trillion in debt, and it reminds me of where Liberty University was in the 1990s,” he said before endorsing the candidate for president.

 

When Trump came onstage, he returned the favor. “The job Jerry’s done at Liberty University is amazing,” Trump said. “One of the things I noticed the other day looking over numbers … looking at different colleges, and you’re one of the most financially solid, financially sound universities in the entire United States, with a tremendous endowment and tremendous amounts of money,” Trump proclaimed. “You don’t have debt.” (Falwell responded to Trump’s flattery with a caveat: “That’s why I have to make it clear that it’s not Liberty’s endorsement, it’s my personal endorsement—because the IRS would love to get their hands on that, too.”)

 

Liberty University may not have debt, but its students and graduates do. A lot of it. And that’s how the school—and the Falwells—made their money.

 

Liberty bills itself as the world’s largest Christian university—and that’s true. But once you start breaking down its numbers, as Kevin Carey recently did for the New York Times, a much more complicated picture emerges of a place that sells itself as an educational Eden.

 

“Liberty is essentially a medium-size nonprofit college that owns a huge for-profit college,” Carey wrote. Although Falwell boasts that his school has tens of thousands of students, his residential program has only 14,000, a small fraction of the overall figure. Liberty’s online program has about 64,000, nearly four times as many, making it second only to the University of Phoenix in terms of the size of its online student body. On paper, the only difference between the two online schools is that Liberty’s is tax-exempt. In 2015, it received $345 million from federal undergraduate grant and loan programs—more than twice the amount received by the largest public university in the country. “Liberty’s considerable financial success—it has built a $1 billion cash reserve, and Mr. Falwell is paid more than $900,000 a year,” Carey wrote, “was underwritten largely by the federal taxpayer.” That money has blessed the Falwells with a life of considerable plenty, giving them the financial means to, among other things, purchase a $4.65 million property in Miami Beach. (A university spokesperson disputes that characterization but repeatedly refused to speak on the record about the matter.)

 

More on Falwell and Liberty's board to sell a house owned by the school to his son (who also owns the titular hostel in Miami in the piece):

 

Quote

The university says it followed protocol by having its board of trustees vote to approve the sale—a vote ahead of which Jerry Falwell excused himself from the room, university officials tell POLITICO Magazine. But a brief look into the board’s history suggests that the board, not unlike the faculty, serves largely at the whims of Jerry Falwell. For example, last year, Mark DeMoss, a Liberty alum, longtime board member and chair of its executive committee—a man whose dedication to Evangelical Christianity is beyond reproach, as evinced by his years of service to the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, whom he likened to a “second father” and for whom he served as chief of staff—was pushed off Liberty’s board after he voiced his disagreement with Falwell’s endorsement of Trump to the Washington Post. Trump, said DeMoss, does not represent the “Christ-like behavior that Liberty has spent 40 years promoting with its students.” Falwell quickly accused DeMoss—the son of the Liberty benefactor whose name graces DeMoss hall, the main building on campus—of being, in DeMoss’ words, the disloyal “political pawn of a rival campaign.” He was gone about a month later.

 

Perhaps DeMoss is an exception, but his ordeal does suggest that board members, like faculty members who wish to give media interviews, don’t enjoy complete freedom to disagree with Falwell. And in such an environment, the interests of the Falwells and those of Liberty University cannot help but to blur.

 

“This scenario just feels wrong,” says Kimberly Reeve, an associate professor of business at King’s College and an expert in nonprofit management. She notes that Liberty is in a unique situation: It’s a huge nonprofit organization with significant real estate holdings. For Reeve, the primary question “should be whether or not the sale of this property was in the best interest of the university and helped it fulfill its mission. If questioned, the university should be able to indicate exactly how this sale did that.” Otherwise, such a land sale would suggest that the university was not acting primarily in its own best interests, but instead, acting to the benefit of other parties.

----
Someone could argue that a $225,000 sale is a drop in the bucket for an institution with assets valued in the billions. But that justification misses the point, says Borenstein. “Liberty says they did this transaction correctly, but [POLITICO Magazine] had to uncover it—so there’s smoke. And you don’t know if there are other transactions to ask about. The logical next question is, 'What else has the school left out of its tax filings?'”

 

It blows my mind that these people who take pot shots at the government whenever they can are always some of the biggest recipients of the government "handouts" they claim are killing our country. The American South comes to mind, whose politicians love to crow for the dissolution of Big Government and more states rights, are some of the most federally dependent states. Someone whose biggest financial asset makes that much money off the government certainly make odd bedfellows with the "burn down the federal government" types also in his big tent. 

 

Interesting read, though, if you have time. Interesting that Falwell's list of "reforms" for Trump to make to the DoE are all ones that would coincidentally allow Liberty to make more money...

 

This whole thing exposed the ridiculousness of Falwell and his "mission" to me. What a crock.

[zoogs]

There will be a great gnashing of the teeth from prominent Republican leaders -- Paul Ryan among them -- criticizing Trump in the gnashiest possible terms over the Arpaio pardon.

 

But when it comes down to it, will it cause them to disavow? No. Impeach? No. Stop supporting the Wall? No. Stop supporting ACA repeal efforts? No. Stop voting with Trump nearly all the darn time? No, no, no.

 

This repeated exercise is nothing more than a cynical ritual that allows Trumpites to promote and preserve his presidency while professing the opposite. Don't fall for the charade.

[knapplc]

On 8/26/2017 at 10:34 PM, zoogs said:

There will be a great gnashing of the teeth from prominent Republican leaders -- Paul Ryan among them -- criticizing Trump in the gnashiest possible terms over the Arpaio pardon.

 

But when it comes down to it, will it cause them to disavow? No. Impeach? No. Stop supporting the Wall? No. Stop supporting ACA repeal efforts? No. Stop voting with Trump nearly all the darn time? No, no, no.

 

This repeated exercise is nothing more than a cynical ritual that allows Trumpites to promote and preserve his presidency while professing the opposite. Don't fall for the charade.

 

And honestly, the base doesn't want them to vote against Trump.  This is not a Trump problem, but a Republican problem. 

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

22 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

And honestly, the base doesn't want them to vote against Trump.  This is not a Trump problem, but a Republican problem. 

 

 

 

This reminds me of a question many political folks are kicking around various circles as of late:

Is Trump the problem with the current GOP or is he merely a manifestation of the numerous problems that already existed inside of it?

[BigRedBuster]

I believe it's a combination of both.

 

I believe the extreme right has always been there to varying degrees.  They have basically been relatively quiet because no major politician gave them a voice.

 

Trump is being the exact same Trump he ha always been.  He is an opportunist piece of crap that is going to feed off of these types of groups and their anger.

 

It was like chocolate and peanut butter coming together.  Neither one is because of the other.  It's just that someone finally put them together and it worked......sadly.

[knapplc]

Trump is his own kind of problem, clearly, but he is also just a symptom of the ongoing crisis inside the Republican party.  It's not like there were a bevy of reasonable candidates on the docket for the GOP in 2016.  Trump was just the one that captured the most votes, but the list of crazies was long and concerning. 

 

 

[knapplc]