Mr. Luce again brings his cliche ridden cogitations to the agonizing dilemma of the ‘Trump Question’. E. g.: ‘The guns of August are cocked and ready.’ Would historian Barbara Tuchman forgive? The root of the whole affair is the wounded ego of the utterly corrupt New Democrat Hillary Clinton.  Who in the face of the Wikileaks string of the revelations about her  party , attempted to change to subject from the corruption of the New Democratic political machine, to the Trinity of Co-Conspirators  Comey/Putin/Assange. The Great Victimizer transmogrified into a Martyr, there is nothing the courtier press won’t repeat as true, because its all about access journalism.

As for Robert Mueller filling the role in this melodrama as ‘incorruptible’ look to the record of first the FBI:

On the record of  the incompetence The FBI Crime Lab., read this 1998 book review from The New York Times:

Like a lot of myths about the F.B.I., the image of its criminal laboratory as a cutting-edge forensic unit has frayed rather badly in recent years, as internal Justice Department investigations disclosed problems ranging from sloppy evidence handling to doctored reports. In ”Tainting Evidence,” John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne continue the assault, showing how the lab’s ineptitude played out in a series of high-profile cases like the bombings at the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City Federal Building and the mail bomb assassination of Robert Vance, a Federal appeals court judge.

Kelly, who was the principal investigator for ”The Bureau,” a 1995 PBS television series, and Wearne, a freelance journalist based in London and Brussels, make Frederic Whitehurst, a chemist at the F.B.I. lab, their protagonist. They portray top Federal Bureau of Investigation managers as creaky bureaucrats who turned on Whitehurst. He had been showering them for years with memos complaining about the lab and examiners who worked there. His superiors greeted his criticisms with shrugs of complacency — and then a demotion in the form of a transfer. In the end, Whitehurst’s whistle-blowing worked: it was largely responsible for forcing the Justice Department to investigate the lab. After an 18-month inquiry, however, in April 1997 the department’s inspector general issued a 517-page report dismissing Whitehurst’s charges that lab examiners fabricated testimony, but confirming important allegations of testimonial errors, substandard analytical work and poor practices at the lab’s chemistry-toxicology, explosives and material analysis units.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kelly-evidence.html

On the 2001 Anthrax attack, still  unsolved, see this portion of the National Academy of Sciences review of that FBI investigation:

In what appears to have been a response to lingering skepticism, on September 16, 2008, the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct an independent review of the scientific evidence that led the agency to implicate U.S. Army researcher Bruce Ivins in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001.^[8] However, despite taking this action, Director Mueller said that the scientific methods applied in the investigation had already been vetted by the research community through the involvement of several dozen nonagency scientists.^[8]

The NAS review officially got underway on April 24, 2009.^[160] While the scope of the project included the consideration of facts and data surrounding the investigation of the 2001 Bacillus anthracis mailings, as well as a review of the principles and methods used by the FBI, the NAS committee was not given the task to “undertake an assessment of the probative value of the scientific evidence in any specific component of the investigation, prosecution, or civil litigation”, nor to offer any view on the guilt or innocence of any of the involved people.^[161]

In mid-2009, the NAS committee held public sessions, in which presentations were made by scientists, including scientists from the FBI laboratories.^{[162][163][164][165]} In September 2009, scientists, including Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University, Joseph Michael of Sandia National Laboratory and Peter Weber of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, presented their findings.^[166][167] In one of the presentations, scientists reported that they did not find any silica particles on the outside of the spores (i.e., there was no “weaponization”^{[citation needed]}), and only that only some of the spores in the anthrax letters contained silicon inside their spore coats. One of the spores was still inside the “mother germ”, yet it already had silicon inside its spore coat.^[19][168]

In October 2010, the FBI submitted materials to NAS that it had not previously provided. Included in the new materials were results of analyses performed on environmental samples collected from an overseas site. Those analyses yielded evidence of the Ames strain in some samples. NAS recommended a review of those investigations.^[169]

The NAS committee released its report on February 15, 2011, concluding that it was “impossible to reach any definitive conclusion about the origins of the anthrax in the letters, based solely on the available scientific evidence”.^[170] The report also challenged the FBI and U.S. Justice Department’s conclusion that a single-spore batch of anthrax maintained by Ivins at his laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland was the parent material for the spores in the anthrax letters.^{[169][171][172]}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#National_Academy_of_Sciences_review

Placing ones faith in the competence of Robert Mueller or the FBI is a fools errand. John Kennedy once opined: ‘The three most overrated things in the world are The State of Texas , the FBI and mounted deer heads.’

(https://books.google.com/books?id=Sb8W_Ba3jkkC&pg=PA376&lpg=PA376&dq=two+things+are+overrated+the+FBI+and+deer+hunting&source=bl&ots=g3X7pL_QgT&sig=0fZ9MaNPAi7TJ1wcobWLEWS_imo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk3Yuw66nVAhWIrFQKHfqTDG4Q6AEIKzAA#v=onepage&q=two%20things%20are%20overrated%20the%20FBI%20and%20deer%20hunting&f=false)

And as for Trump’s attacks on Sessions:  Trump is an arch manipulator, as demonstrated in his television Circus ‘The Apprentice’. He thrives on pitting himself against others, in an environment of manufactured ‘crisis’, by way of accusations of personal/political affront. In that regard he is utterly transparent. The pressing question, can the reader assume that Sessions is in league with Trump? The problem with Mr. Luce’s political prognostications, and his superficial examination of the Trump operative psychology is that it is viewed through his own self-serving myopia.

American Writer

https://www.ft.com/content/15120db2-71d7-11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c

@@lphaOm3ga @StephenKMackSD

@@lphaOm3ga,

Thank you for your comment. There are many and varied reasons that a reader of The Financial Times might use a screen name. Most likely because many readers are from the professional classes, all having to do with maintaining ones status as employable and not given to stirring up controversy, in sum a ‘team player’ rather than a ‘trouble maker’. The latter status can ruin a career, to state the obvious. There is a second reason to maintain ones anonymity, as that status allows the commenter to attack either the writer, or the person who comments on a particular news story/ essay/editorial/opinion piece without personal consequence. That screen name is a license to engage in defamatory comments, like the ones you direct at me. To apply some much needed white wash to your comment, I am non compos mentis. You enjoy at least three allies as I write my reply.

Some considerations : I might be subject to that malady, but also what I wrote might just be out of you intellectual/political grasp? E.g.  The reference to Barbara Tuchman, who wrote a history of pre- WWI  Europe called The Guns Of August! The history of the incompetence of both the FBI and  Mueller are utterly relevant to the unfolding political melodrama, that Luce seeks to explicate in his capacity as Pundit. Trump’s status as ‘Ringmaster’ of this fiasco with help from the politically wounded Mrs. Clinton, and her party apparatus, still in thrall to its mendacity and corruption are political facts, no matter your maladroit attempt at critique of my comment.

Your screen name extemporizes on the idea of ‘Alpha and Omega‘, which in the Christian Tradition has a very specific meaning :

alpha (Α) and omega (Ω) are the first and last letters, respectively, of the classical (Ionic) Greek alphabet. Thus, twice when the phrase “I am the alpha and the omega” appears it is further clarified with the additional phrase, “the beginning and the end” (Revelation 21:6, 22:13). The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet were used because the book of Revelation is in the New Testament, which was originally written in Greek.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_Omega

Did you realize the actual set of meanings that attaches to your screen name? Or was it just your attempt at being clever? In closing, I sign my name to all my postings, always have. Its about integrity and honesty!

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

The Financial Times as the in-order-too of not investing too much time or newspaper space to the bad news that Neo-Liberal Lite Golden Boy Macron is suffering from the political malady diagnosed as ‘popularity plummets’. They have produced a 2:37 second video, so as to demonstrate that they report the news, but relegate the bad news to a slickly produced video, so as not give it full attention. The Financial Time editors and pundits choose to ignore the spoiled ballots, white ballots and abstentions that amounted to 33.4% of the final vote in the French election. Not to speak of the the very same phenomena in the preliminary rounds of voting!

(Source:CNN)

The Financial Times uses the montage as the simulacrum of actual reporting, instead of  relying on facts, figures and heavy injections of speculation. They have employed the considerable talents of Mr. Jamie Han who produced and edited  this montage from footage by Reuters and photography by AP and Bloomberg. This montage provides glimpses of the Macron in various civic settings, with both sound and silent film/video, and photographic stills. Also video of street demonstrations, of Sarkozy and Hollande and a man, who I do not know, speaking to the Legislature, and the resigned General Pierre de Villiers. Mr. Han has effectively used the montage method to evoke emotion,  as the flow of images succeed each other, we barely time to just recognize each before we are exposed to the next image, or set of images: but are attention is directed to the title cards that appear beside each set of images. This is reminiscent of the silent movie device, that provided plot and dialogue. But in this case it resembles the cartouche or balloon that the writers and artists who produced comic books used for the same purpose, as silent film makers. Because we are viewing propaganda, these title cards are used to frame the debate, and to reduce the terms of that debate, about important civic issues vital to any discussion of political action in the Republican tradition of France! Nothing less. The falling popularity of Macron means that The Financial Times’ unstinting advocacy for the Neo-Liberal Project is in danger. The rise of The Populist Spirit in France is a clear and present danger to the project of Austerity, that is the calling card of Neo-Liberalism. That Neo-Liberalism is about the Market being the central conception/practice that rules the whole of the human endeavor: it is, in sum, nihilism without apology.  Even though it’s practice has produced catastrophic failure where ever it has been tried.

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/video/c9ae4d01-713d-4385-adab-ffbdce46740d?playlist-name=latest&playlist-offset=1https://www.ft.com/video/c9ae4d01-713d-4385-adab-ffbdce46740d?playlist-name=latest&playlist-offset=1

Headline : The battlefield is everywhere in the digital age

Sub-headline: This new world order means China and Russia can subvert the west’s military strength

Note that the headline writers at The Financial Times are still in the thrall of Huntington’s paranoia of the Other that is the foundation of his ‘Clash’. And its myriad uses and its political permutations in the Western Imperial mind set, and its role in   Anti-Terror rhetoric . The production of usable Western political propaganda, against the ever-present danger of that Other, is the paranoia of the The Cold War writ large, by the National Security state operative Samuel P. Huntington. To serve the demands of  a Hegemon, in an advanced state of political collapse. Everyone is subject to suspicion!

Note that in The War on Terror and its various evolutions,  Mr. Thornhill point of departure is the ‘The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit is a terrifying piece of military kit.’ What can ‘stealth bomber’ offer to a ‘war’ fought on the ground against Jihadists? It is a guerilla war and this weapon is simply a more sophisticated form of the drone: a weapon used to spread terror among various civilian populations, in the ‘West’s Thirty Years War’! Mr. Thornhill after this celebration of American technology, and its staggering costs, he points instead to Cyber Warfare as the challenge that faces ‘The West’.

The reader then ends up with the speculation of Mr.  Thornhill :

Such murkiness is perfect for those keen to subvert the west’s military strength. China and Russia appear to understand this new world disorder far better than others — and are adept at turning the west’s own vulnerabilities against it.

Note the change of political scene from Russian revanchism in Crimea and Ukraine, or even the potential threat to its European neighbors. And the Chinese ‘territorial adventurism’ in The South China Sea, to the Cyber Warfare Front. The ‘as if’ here is that the ‘West’ ,defined as Europe and America, are somehow innocents in the Cyber Warfare game: recall Stuxnet?

Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm, first identified in 2010 but thought to be in development since at least 2005, that targets industrial computer systems and was responsible for causing substantial damage to Iran’s nuclear program. Although neither country has admitted responsibility, the worm is now generally acknowledged to be a jointly built American–Israeli cyberweapon.^[1][2][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

Or the less sophisticated policy of the  murdering of Iranian scientists by Mossad?

Four Iranian nuclear scientists—Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan—were assassinated between 2010 and 2012. Another scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder.^[1][2] Two of the killings were carried out with magnetic bombs attached to the targets’ cars; Darioush Rezaeinejad was shot dead, and Masoud Alimohammadi was killed in a motorcycle-bomb explosion.^[3] The Iranian government accused Israel of complicity in the killings.^[3][4] In 2011 and 2012, Iranian authorities arrested a number of Iranians alleged to have carried out the assassination campaign on behalf of Mossad (the Israeli intelligence service). Western intelligence services and U.S officials reportedly confirmed the Israeli connection.^[5][6][7] In June 2012, the Iranian government was confident that it had arrested all the assassins.^[4]

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement, but Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’alon said: “We will act in any way and are not willing to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. We prefer that this be done by means of sanctions, but in the end, Israel should be able to defend itself.”^[8] The assassination campaign was reportedly terminated in 2013 following diplomatic pressure from the United States, which was attempting to negotiate restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities.^[9][10]

MEK are also among suspects. Two US senior officials confirmed that MEK was “financed, trained, and armed by Israel” in killing Iranian nuclear scientists.^[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists

When all else fails, America and its surrogates use what ever means necessary!

Just one example of Cyber Warfare allied to the use of murder as weapons of war,  that we know of , and an utter inconvenience to Mr. Thornhill’s paranoia mongering. But Mr. Thornhill must pay obeisance to America’s feigned ‘innocence’ in the matter of interference in the domestic politics of other countries: The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 established the hemispheric dominance, that was simply expanded as need be, but especially in the post 9/11 World.

Russian strategic thinkers have also widened their conception of force. Moscow has used traditional military hardware in recent conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine. But it has also launched cyber attacks against both countries as well as Estonia and stands accused of hacking the US presidential election.

More broadly, it has been intensifying its KGB-derived “dezinformatsiya” operations as part of what Professor Mark Galeotti has called “the weaponisation of information”. According to Dmitry Kiselyov, the Russian television anchor and Kremlin propagandist, information wars have become “the main type of warfare”.

It isn’t that America, and its surrogates haven’t used propaganda, using electronic media like Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and The Interpreter magazine, founded by The Atlantic Council for that very same purpose. Michael Weiss was the editor of the Interpreter magazine, before joined The Daily Beast, as its  New War-Monger-In-Chief  :

Notes: Interpreter Mag (IM) was founded by the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting cooperation between the United States and Europe. IM was originally founded to translate articles from the Russian press into other languages. Its stance has changed significantly since then, according to its About page:

“Little did we realize then that the Interpreter would devote as much energy to covering what the Russian Federation got up to outside of its own borders.”

Today IM covers, as stated, Russia’s involvement in international affairs, primarily focused on Syria, Crimea,  and the war in the Ukraine. They also have a daily podcast covering the same range of topics. The articles are well written and factual, with a noticeable anti-Putin and Russian government stance.  IM does have a small amount of U.S. Related news although it is primarily about the investigations of Russian involvement in the election. (D. Kelley 3/6/2017)

Source: http://www.interpretermag.com/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-interpreter-magazine/

Mr. Thornhill then calls Trump,  in so many words, a ‘Russian Appeaser’ in the Old School jargon once favored by the Nixon/Mundt/McCarren/McCarthy Axis, of the Old Cold War. And then closes his with this- call it premature triumphalism?

In the realm of “memetic warfare”, as it has been called, the Kremlin would already appear to have won. But before it crows too loudly, Mr Putin’s entourage may reflect that the west depends far less on any one individual or institution than Russia. The US Congress is now pushing tougher sanctions against Moscow for meddling in the presidential election.

Moreover, the Russian president’s domestic opponents are also adopting new strategies. Earlier this year, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny released a slickly produced video highlighting the alleged corruption of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. It has since been watched almost 24m times on social media.

No matter how well versed in the practice, authoritarian states are rapidly losing their own monopoly on the weaponisation of information.

https://www.ft.com/content/0a191800-7048-11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c

Political Observer

The second paragraph of Mr. Sullivan’s latest Political Encyclical is remarkable in that it demonstrates with absolute certainty his obsessive narcissism:

I know, I know. That word — as it has been reverse engineered by the modern GOP — no longer means in America what it once meant across the West, and I should probably stop pretending otherwise. I’m told repeatedly, and understandably, that my support for the long Anglo-American tradition of conservative political thought is quixotic, perverse, and largely counterproductive. Pragmatism, moderation, incrementalism, reform: These might be conservative virtues in principle, but in practice, the American right junked them years ago. I’m told I should admit that, in the current American context, I’m a de facto, Obama-loving leftist. To cheer the collapse of the brutal repeal of Obamacare has not an inkling of conservatism about it.

How many times dose Mr. Sullivan utter the word ‘I’ in the above paragraph? Seven times, in this short paragraph. His self-obsession renders him morally/politically/existentially myopic.  His ‘I’  stands between him and the world made up of superfluous  ‘others’, those persons and events are subject to his evaluation. Does he refer to others except by way of himself? A writer who is engaged with a world made up of other significant thinkers and political/moral actors must look to others as intellectual  and moral reference points, as he does later in this first portion of his political commentary, yet the reader is struck by his focus on himself as sole arbiter.

Mr. Sullivan then moves to four exemplary Conservative thinker/actors:

So let me explain a little why I found this past week so encouraging. It represented, in my view, the triumph of reality over ideology. And conservatism — from Burke and Hume to Hayek and Oakeshott — has always been, at its core, a critique of ideology in favor of reality. The world is as it is, the conservative argues.

The examples of Conservative thinkers who favor ‘reality over ideology’ are Burke, who was saved by a 30,000 Pound bailout by the Crown, and then voted against the Poor Law. Hume , who with Smith endeavored to write a ‘Science of Man’ , in the Enlightenment Tradition-how was he a political Conservative?  Hayek, who believed in voting rights for men over 45 years, and that The Market was the only viable form of knowledge. And Oakeshott who believed that the lower orders, and their political parties and leaders  were only worthy of his withering contempt.

Then there is this:

Any attempt to drastically overhaul it, to impose a utopian vision onto a messy, evolving human landscape will not just fail, it will likely make things worse. To pretend that the present exists for no good reason — and can be repealed or transformed in an instant — is a formula for ruin. The leftist vision of perfect “social justice” is therefore as illusory and as pernicious as the reactionary’s dream of restoring a mythical past. And the great virtue of America’s deeply conservative Constitution is that it throws so many obstacles in the way of radical, ideological change — to the left or right — that it limits the harm that humans can do to themselves in moments of passion or certainty or in search of ideological perfection.

Mr. Sullivan’s long associations with Thatcherism, Neo-Conservatism and an etiolated form of Neo-Liberalism prove without doubt that he is politically addicted to the most pernicious forms of Utopianism, while he attacks ‘The Left’ as prima facae guilty of its own version . This act of political misdirection is the standard trope for Conservative Ideologues. All of this garnished by reference to the ‘deeply conservative Constitution’ .

This is simply the introductory material for Mr. Sullivan to review the Health Care question from a ‘Conservative’ view point, in sum, a potted history of that Conservative position.

And morally, American culture had already dispensed with the cruelty of allowing our fellow citizens to suffer and die because of a lack of resources. Ronald Reagan was in some ways the first to concede this. In 1986, he signed the law that made it illegal for hospitals to turn away the very sick if they could not pay for treatment. Once that core concession was made by the icon of the conservative movement — that the sick should always be treated in extremis — the logic of universal coverage was unstoppable.

The reader with an historical memory longer that the political revelation of Reaganism just has to marvel, again, at Mr. Sullivan’s political/historical ignorance. And morally, American culture had already dispensed with the cruelty of allowing our fellow citizens to suffer and die because of a lack of resources. Ronald Reagan was in some ways the first to concede this. The links that follow demonstrate that the ‘Conservative’ who led the way on Health Care was Richard Nixon. First a comparison of the ACA with the Nixon Plan titled:

‘Nixoncare vs. Obamacare: U-M team compares the rhetoric & reality of two health plans’

President Richard Nixon’s National Health Strategy (1971)

• All employers required to provide basic health insurance, including a range of specific coverage requirements
• Employees required to share the cost of insurance, up to a cap
• Insurance companies can only vary benefit packages to an extent
• Special insurance programs at reasonable rates for self-employed and others
• Replace most of Medicaid for poor families with a completely federal plan open to any family below a certain income level; cost-sharing rises with income.

Nixon’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan (1974)

• All employers must insure all full-time employees, with employee cost-sharing up to a cap, and federal subsidies to aid employers.
• Replace Medicaid with a plan open to anyone not eligible for employee health insurance or Medicare, as well as those who can’t afford their coverage

http://ihpi.umich.edu/news/nixoncare-vs-obamacare-u-m-team-compares-rhetoric-reality-two-health-plans

And then a news item with the headline:

‘Recalling the Nixon-Kennedy health plan’

Ted Kennedy, whom Nixon assumed would be his rival in the next election, made universal health care his signature issue. Kennedy proposed a single-payer, tax-based system. Nixon strongly opposed that on the grounds that it was un-American and would put all health care “under the heavy hand of the federal government.”

Instead, Nixon proposed a plan that required employers to buy private health insurance for their employees and gave subsidies to those who could not afford insurance. Nixon argued that this market-based approach would build on the strengths of the private system.

“Government has a great role to play, he said, “but we must always make sure that our doctors will be working for their patients and not for the federal government.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/06/22/stockman/bvg57mguQxOVpZMmB1Mg2N/story.html

Mr. Sullivan continues to exercise his ability to extemporize on his self-given themes of Nihilist Republicans who were opposed to the stolid, yet virtuous ‘Long Game’ of Obama. The last two paragraphs of Sullivan’s kowtowing to Obama’s ‘Conservatism’ are a model of what political ass kissing, not to speak of ideological propinquity, and resort to a cartoon reference can produce.

Obama, in fact, was the conservative in all this — nudging and amending, shaping and finessing as American society evolved — while the GOP flamed out in a reactionary dead end. But Obama’s conservatism has nonetheless brought about an epochal, defining achievement for American liberalism: a robust American consensus in favor of universal health insurance. Yes, he could.

It is hard to overstate the salience of this victory in Obama’s long, long game — and perhaps we are still too close to events to see it as clearly as we should. But here it is: a testament to the skills and vision and tenacity of our greatest living president, whose political shadow completely eclipses the monstrous, ridiculous fool who succeeded him. Like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, we’ve seen this story many times before in the last eight and a half years. And we also know the ending.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/the-triumph-of-obamas-long-game.html

There are two more subjects to cover in this weekly Sullivan Political Free Association, but at this point in my reading, I must confess, I’ve run out of patience with Andy Divine!

Old Socialist

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/the-triumph-of-obamas-long-game.html

@alesh

Just taking the Reagan question, he being the ‘pioneer’ in the Health Care field of ‘Conservative’ America presidents, as Mr. Sullivan argues it, is just historically wrong. It was Richard Nixon in 1971 and 74! I did not misrepresent him in any  way, I simply pointed out that he was wrong on this issue. This is more evidence of a continuing problem,  that Sullivan is a lazy and superficial ‘thinker’, if not a mendacious one. (I’ve been a reader of Mr. Sullivan’s political commentaries since his days at The New Republic and The Daily Beast.) Better yet he is a political chatterer. Call his weekly essays a chance to unburden himself, of his self-serving historical ignorance, that dovetails conveniently with his ‘Conservative Politics’.

This malapropism I find utterly puzzling as you present it: ‘Right from the start, for a post that did not even try to oppose yours.’ I am utterly irrelevant to Mr. Sullivan’s opinionating, he simply wrote what he wrote. I believe you have the cart before the horse, rhetorically.

I used ‘I’ in the last paragraph to reply to your critique, as a reply which makes sense, not as an indication of my self-obsession, but as a function of the grammar of the English language.  Mr. Sullivan’s sputtering paragraph is awash in his self-obsession.

‘Your sense of having made a fresh discovery is inane.’  The paragraph in question is not just demonstrative of narcissism, it is glaring evidence that leaps from the page, to the attentive reader. Narcissism is the distorting lens through which Mr. Sullivan views the world, to state the jejune fact!

Your reply then switches registers and engages in puerile dismissal: ‘It’s too bad you disagree with him. Boo hoo.’

Thank you for your comment.

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

@alesh, thank you for your comment.

Your 2nd paragraph:

‘Here’s my argument. Your debating style of misrepresenting your ‘opponent’ while ignoring his words is the lowest form of retort, and lower than that is saying he’s the article’s author. Right from the start, for a post that did not even try to oppose yours.’

Your 1st comment in toto:

‘Maybe you’re both Sullivan.

Not that saying that is my debating style.’

I called jack4713 comment worshipful, hardly an exaggeration given that he edited his original post, to excise the extent of his genuflection to Sullivan.

Then what could the reader make of this sentence – is this directed at jack4713 or to me?

That train of thought certainly became derailed when applied to a Sullivan critique.

Then there is your observation that I am somehow an admirer of Nixon over Reagan. I simply stated that it was not Reagan that led the way on the Health Care question, but Nixon. You attribute to me an admiration for Nixon that does not exist. A fact of political history is just that!

But the pièce de résistance in your final paragraph of political chatter, is that it is garnished with this wonderfully evocative apothegm, call you not just a thinker but a sage!

And be wary of dislikes that appear to dovetail… it leads to that lazy superficial thought you mention.

Farewell,

StephenKMackSD

Headline: Emmanuel Macron lays claim to the mantle of de Gaulle

Sub-headline : Like the general, the French president aspires to rule above conventional politics

As always the headline and sub-headline at The Financial Times,  are the all important rhetorical/political framing for its Neo-Liberal Apologetics, Mr. Jonathan Fenby’s  Macron Press Release being its latest example. It will not disappoint the regular readers of this newspaper! His essay makes all the requisite historical comparisons with de Gaulle: the commonality between both leaders is in the exercise of megalomania, with the proviso that de Gaulle had an actual record as War Hero, and political leader. While Macron’s particular politics are defined by the exercise of the arrogance of a political arriviste. The proof of that statement, the idea and practice of a Jupiterian Politics.  Note, that one of the cornerstones of Neo-Liberal political fraudulence is the idea/construct that the Left/Right divide cannot just reach some consensus, a modus vivendi,  but can be subject to a  political/economic emancipation. The Civic dimension is consigned to the scrapheap of the Neo-Liberal Counter-Revolution: The Free Market determines the whole of the human aspiration and endeavor!  

Absent from this celebration of the arrival of Neo-Liberalism à la française is the record of spoiled ballots and abstentions- for a full report on the unaddressed questions of Fenby’s unsurprising hosannas to Macron, read this enlightening report from CNN’s  on the French vote (Updated May 8 2017):

Headline: A record number of French voters cast their ballots for nobody

(CNN) Emmanuel Macron’s triumph over Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election has been hailed as a landslide victory for the centrist candidate and a widespread rejection of his rival’s far-right platform.

But Macron’s mandate may not be as overwhelming as it seems. A record number of French voters were so dismayed by their options that they either skipped the election or cast their ballots for no one at all.

The so-called “ballot blanc,” or white ballot, has a long history as a protest vote in France, going all the way back to the French Revolution. This time around, nearly 9% of voters cast blank or spoiled ballots — the highest ever since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958.

For now, the votes, which are counted towards the turnout, are largely symbolic. But there is a movement underway for the blank ballots to count as a share of the overall election vote. According to a recent Ifop poll, 40% of French voters said they would cast a blank vote if it were recognized under French law.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/europe/french-voters-spoiled-ballots-abstained/index.html

In the graph that CNN provides,  that I cannot reproduce here*,  the percent of both  ‘white’ and ‘spoiled ballots’ stands at 33.4%. Nothing like a mandate for ‘reform’ !  Except to the editors and writers of The Financial Times.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/6298119e-6d5e-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0

(Graph added July 22, 2017 9:13 AM PDT)

*

@Sedro @personal view

@Sedro,

You are not the Bodhisattva, who walked outside the palace wall to experience the real world! You are like the editors of this publication who can’t comprehend the rise of ‘The Rebellion Against the Elites’ once the Party Line of this newspaper. The reasons for the rise of political parties like Podemos, and a once ascendant and unbowed Syriza, is a conundrum that doesn’t register in your political/moral imagination. Sanders,Corbyn, Le Pen, and the vile American Political Monster Trump, and his capos McConnell and Ryan are the players, who remain strategically off stage in your Seattle Idealism. Yours is the world of benevolent Capital and caffeine fueled hipsters and copious self-congratulation, allied to an insufferable smugness.  But the potential for the rise of  popular discontent- you haven’t been in Seattle long enough to have experienced The Battle in Seattle of 1999?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests

The 173 miles that separates Seattle from Portland is such a short distance, south down the Interstate 5. How is that relevant to your Seattle Idealism? The motto of Portland is ‘Keep Portland Weird‘. Is the Portland contagion containable?

@Sedro comment: http://on.ft.com/2tnaJrY

My reply: http://on.ft.com/2uGCAa8

@Sedro

Thank you for your comment.

‘I saw the damage done by the black clad anarchist thugs. Many were arrested and their profiles were similar – drop outs with no education, no employment because they were were unemployable, almost all petty criminals.’ 

Why would the Black Block target the WTO, the G-20 or the IMF and other such organizations, that proclaim the good tidings of Neo-Liberalism? While The Great Unwashed riot in the streets of their chosen cities, or as you frame it: ‘black clad anarchist thugs’…’drop outs with no education’…’unemployable’…’almost all petty criminals’ , in sum its the future your looking at, as ‘an enfeebled’ America’s condition reaches its many plateaus of an ever increasing political crisis.

Your boosterism reads like Babbitt, or even like the rhetoric of that notorious porcine political revolutionary Newt Gingrich. The Stock Market is doing just fine,thank you!  after its thieves were bailed out, with that extra little something, quantitative easing. Yes Keynesianism worked, in an emergency. The Why of the rise of Populism remains outside your ken, while prosperity for the 99% is unrealized. Are you not even acquainted with the work of Piketty and his critics? And your latest reply is, to say the least, patronizing. Your reference to East Germany is just maladroit Old School Red Baiting!

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

The badly bruised and battered ego of Hillary Clinton has nurtured a thousand flowers of New Cold War Paranoia:

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) most recently accused Russia of engaging in warfare.

“I think this attack that we’ve experienced is a form of war, a form of war on our fundamental democratic principles,” Coleman said during a hearing this week at the House Homeland Security Committee.

She lambasted Trump for his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking a panel of experts and former officials what message Trump’s “borderline dismissive attitude” toward Moscow’s cyberattack sends to the Kremlin and other nations.

“I actually think that their engagement was an act of war, an act of hybrid warfare, and I think that’s why the American people should be concerned about it,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.).

“This past election, our country was attacked. We were attacked by Russia,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). “I see this as an opportunity for everyone on this committee, Republicans and Democrats, to not look in the rearview window but to look forward and do everything we can to make sure that our country never again allows a foreign adversary to attack us.”

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/325606-democrats-step-up-calls-that-russian-hack-was-act-of-war

More of the same:

Well before the White House or U.S. intelligence agencies publicly blamed the Russian government for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, two members of Congress did. Back in September, Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a statement accusing Russian intelligence agencies of hacking Democratic Party institutions. “Americans will not stand for any foreign government trying to influence our election,” they declared. “We hope all Americans will stand together and reject the Russian effort.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/adam-schiff-russia-election-hack/511571/

The American indignation over ‘Russian interference’ in an election stands in relief to the historically demonstrated interference led by The Monroe Doctrine of 1823, till the present moment of how many fronts of ‘The War on Terror’ ? Call it the exercise of  hubris and hypocrisy wedded to an unapologetic imperialism: the world encircled in American military bases aided by American NGO’s, which finance political movements that seek to annul any challenge to U.S. power and its rapacious corporatism. We only need look at Chile and the rise of Pinochet, as the economic/political model of the American Way: murderous Coup followed by the Chicago Boys!

Chomsky is right, we are laughed at by a world schooled by the hard lessons of the past and present, of an utterly corrupt  hegemon weeping crocodile tears.

American Writer

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/top-rohrabacher-aide-fired-after-russia-revelations/534288/#article-comments

In answer to Mr. Sandbu’s fulsome praise for ‘Globalization’ framed in a kind of political moralizing, because that framing is all important to the production of usable propaganda:

Headline: An enfeebled America stands alone

Sub-headline: Economic change has affected other countries, but they have managed globalisation

Gerald Suttles, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Chicago and adjunct professor of sociology at Indiana University, offers some valuable  insights on globalization, in an American context, and the Post War Welfare States of Europe with some adjustments to the particulars of each state. His book is titled Front Page Economics (From pages 6&7)

Globalization stands in direct conflict with the social contract and rhetoric worked out during Roosevelt ,Truman, and Eisenhower years. With globalization the industrial contract ( “workplace socialism” it was called at its best ) ends. Labor and capital have no fixed location and the nation becomes a legal rather than a moral community. Patriotism becomes empty rhetoric. That is quite a moral and conceptual leap  to be spliced onto  a rhetoric of understandings and reassurance in which the nation, community, and the community were almost coterminous. Yet, even the critics of the current globalization are in favor of it in principle if  not in practice (James 2001; Soros 1998; and Stiglitz 2002)

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo8612464.html

The reader just might offer this, that Globalization and an utterly failed Neo-Liberalism are the twin manifestations of the post war economic doldrums, exacerbated by American Imperial war making in Vietnam,  and the popularity of the Mont Pelerin Philosopher Kings, and their vulgar pamphleteer ally Ayn Rand.

Although Mr. Sandbu does off some insights on the economic condition of the age, following the 2008 Market Crash, that approximates or simply rehearses the complaints of the unconvinced: The Great Unwashed. But simply acts as historical backdrop to kowtowing to the ersatz Utopianism of Globalization/Neo-Liberalism.

Mr. Sandbu’s praise of the TPP,  as America’s missed opportunity is to put it mildly shallow, but self-serving as propaganda must be. Who wrote the TPP? Not American legislators who could read the document , yet could not take notes, and were barred from discussing its contents with their constituencies. Secret Laws? And what of the ‘Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) or investment court system (ICS)’ that is an outright attack on not just Law, but on the very notion of State Sovereignty, not to speak of Democracy itself. The imperatives of Capital is a Law above all else! The practice of Arbitration, in the world remade by Neo-Liberalism, is to blunt and even usurp the force of Law not enhance its power. Globalization/Neo-Liberalism is, in sum, an attack on the Republican Tradition of the ‘West’ as told in J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment. 

Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) or investment court system (ICS) is a system through which individual companies can sue countries for alleged discriminatory practices. ISDS is an instrument of public international law and provisions are contained in a number of bilateral investment treaties, in certain international trade treaties, such as NAFTA (chapter 11), and the proposed TPP (chapters 9 and 28) and CETA (sections 3 and 4) agreements. ISDS is also found in international investment agreements, such as the Energy Charter Treaty. If an investor from one country (the “home state”) invests in another country (the “host state”), both of which have agreed to ISDS, and the host state violates the rights granted to the investor under public international law, then that investor may bring the matter before an arbitral tribunal.

ISDS is in the mutual interest of the host country and foreign investors, as it protects foreign investors and enforces their property rights, thus encouraging them to invest in the host country.^[1] In the absence of ISDS, foreign investors would be less likely to invest in a given country, because of the uncertain status of their property rights and due to the tendency of countries to discriminate against foreign firms.^[1][2]

While ISDS is often associated with international arbitration under the rules of ICSID (the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank), it often takes place under the auspices of international arbitral tribunals governed by different rules or institutions, such as the London Court of International Arbitration, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre or the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement

This reader can only pronounce Mr. Sandbu’s political intervention as more of the same, from The Financial Times as defender of ‘Free Markets’ by any means necessary, with Trump as the featured villain in this episodic Populist Melodrama.

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/content/5127c9e8-6b03-11e7-bfeb-33fe0c5b7eaa

Where have McConnell and Ryan been? They have had ample time to come up with an alternative to the Heritage Foundation Health Care! Where was a Working Group on Health Care ‘Reform’ , made up of Senate and House Republicans, and their Think Tank allies, that could have produced a Free Market alternative, to the present Free Market version of ‘Obama Care’? The answer to that question is obvious, if viewed historically, The Tea Party mentality that governs the current Republican Party is nihilist in outlook and practice: Sen. Richard Lugar was one of the  last Conservative Republicans who believed in governance as the ‘art of the possible’ was defeated by a Tea Party candidate in 2012.

Could it be this give away to the Insurance Companies, Obama Care, has only one viable political alternative, Single Payer? Was the politically addled Mr. George F. Will prescient? 2018 is just around the political corner. Will the Clinton Wing of the Party miss this opportunity at self-reform, or cling to Hillary-as-Victim narrative?: Hillary as victim of the Comey/Putin/Assange Cabal? Or make way for the New Dealers Warren and Sanders? Or will it take a loss in 2020 to see a tear stained end to Clintonism? Another pressing question, when will Trump utter his infamous tag line ‘Your Fired’ to both McConnell and Ryan? Stay tuned!

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/d8395124-6b5b-11e7-bfeb-33fe0c5b7eaa

Its Monday July 17, 2017 at before 7 AM  PDT, here is a screen capture of an e-mail I received from The Financial Times:

All of these ‘News Stories’ published on July 16, 2017, in order of appearance:

Headline: Theresa May gains Conservative support to sack ministers

Sub-headline: Backbenchers urge prime minister to bring discipline to feuding cabinet

https://www.ft.com/content/31e2193a-6a18-11e7-bfeb-33fe0c5b7eaa?desktop=true&conceptId=2c8c9ff9-a7c8-3e38-9118-dd198dad9d50&segmentId=7c8f09b9-9b61-4fbb-9430-9208a9e233c8#myft:notification:daily-email:content:headline:html

Headline: Philip Hammond accuses cabinet Brexiters of leaking against him

Sub-headline: Hardliners working to obstruct business-friendly Brexit strategy, says chancellor

https://www.ft.com/content/3efb991a-6a0a-11e7-bfeb-33fe0c5b7eaa?desktop=true&conceptId=2c8c9ff9-a7c8-3e38-9118-dd198dad9d50&segmentId=7c8f09b9-9b61-4fbb-9430-9208a9e233c8#myft:notification:daily-email:content:headline:html

Headline: Theresa May’s new Downing Street team emerges

Sub-headline: In the prime minister’s office, officials are clawing their way to the summer break

https://www.ft.com/content/ac1086e6-6721-11e7-8526-7b38dcaef614?desktop=true&conceptId=2c8c9ff9-a7c8-3e38-9118-dd198dad9d50&segmentId=7c8f09b9-9b61-4fbb-9430-9208a9e233c8#myft:notification:daily-email:content:headline:html

The Tory penchant for ‘Referendums’ has been catastrophic to the political careers of both Cameron and May, to state the obvious. The fate of Britain’s membership in the E.U. left in the hands of The Great Unwashed! Where was ‘Political Fixer’ Lynton Crosby?  May now faces a rebellion within her Cabinet as reported in The Financial Times: with each of these ‘Referendums’ the position and power of Corbyn grew exponentially. This newspaper has been active in promoting the Neo-Liberal Agendas of both Tory and New Labour, but with the rise of Corbyn, within Labour, May is the only hope for the survival of that Neo-Liberalism. Yet Gideon Rachman offers more of the same, posed as a question worthy of consideration, as antidote to the Brexit, this of July 17, 2017.

Headline: The democratic case for stopping Brexit

Sub-headline: The question is whether the British public would support a second referendum

https://www.ft.com/content/b3630088-6ac6-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0

Would-be Journalist