Donald Trump list of really crazy ideas and Republicans must know what "crazy" looks like! Impeach Trump NOW

Democracy Dies in Dumbness

"A person who is slow at learning, a stupid person"

Echo opinion by Bret Stephens published in The New York Times.

It used to be common knowledge — not just among policymakers and economists but also high school students with a grasp of history — that tariffs are a terrible idea. The phrase “beggar thy neighbor” meant something to regular people, as did the names of Senator Reed Smoot- Utah Republican (b. 1862- d. 1941) and Representative Willis Hawley. (Co-sponsors of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act)

Americans broadly understood how much their 1930 tariff, along with other protectionist and isolationist measures, did to turn a global economic crisis into another world war. Thirteen successive presidents all but vowed never to repeat those mistakes.

Until Donald Trump. Until him, no U.S. president had been so ignorant of the lessons of history. Until him, no U.S. president had been so incompetent in putting his own ideas into practice.

That’s a conclusion that stock markets seem to have drawn, as they plunged after the Trump triple whammy:

• First, tariff threats against our largest trading partners, spelling much higher costs;
• Second, twice-repeated month long reprieves on some of those tariffs, meaning a zero-predictability business environment;
• Finally, his tacit admission, to Maria Bartiromo of Fox (aka "Fake") News, that the United States could go into recession this year and that it’s a price he’s willing to pay to do what he calls a “big thing.”

In short, a willful, erratic and heedless president is prepared to risk both the U.S. and the global economy to make his ideological point. This won’t end well, especially in a no-guardrails administration staffed by a how-high team of enablers and toadies.

What else isn’t going to end well, at least for the Trumpzi administration? Let’s make a list.

1. The Department of Government Efficiency won’t end well. It is neither a department nor efficient — and “government efficiency” is, by Madisonian design, an oxymoron.
2. A gutted I.R.S. work force won’t lower your taxes; it will delay your refund.
3. Mass firings of thousands of federal employees won’t result in a more productive work force; it will mean a decade of litigation and billions of dollars in legal fees.
4. High-profile eliminations of wasteful spending (some real, others not) won’t make a dent in federal spending; they’ll mask the untouchable drivers of our $36 trillion debt: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense.

The threats to our allies won’t end well.

It might seem sophomorically funny, sort of, to troll Justin Trudeau, just once, as “governor” of “the great state of Canada.” It’s grotesque, horrifying and idiotic to contrive phony pretexts to embark on a relentless trade war against our friendliest neighbor — not least because it has suddenly boosted the political fortunes of Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, at the expense of the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre.

It is reasonable to try to push Chinese companies out of the Panama Canal. But threatening to overturn a Senate-ratified treaty to reclaim the canal by force is bound to seed permanent distrust of the United States. It’s intriguing to contemplate the lawful and voluntary purchase of Greenland. It is Putinesque to threaten, in an address to Congress, to take Greenland “one way or the other,” thereby threatening the NATO ally that is the territory’s sovereign. (Sheer craziness❗😖😝😢

The outreach to the European far right won’t end well. Not least among the problems with parties like Germany’s AfD or France’s National Rally is that they are haters of all things American: our vulgar culture, revolting fast food, rapacious capitalism and imperial pretensions. Perhaps the greatest single achievement of the 20th century was the destruction, both physical and spiritual, of German militarism and the threat it posed to Germany’s many neighbors.

But an America that walks away from NATO while empowering those anti-American parties won’t achieve greater security for anyone, including ourselves. It will lead to a Germany once again led by fascists and willing to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

The Ukraine negotiations won’t end well. If the Trump administration wants to bring about a lasting end to the war, it would do everything it can publicly to support Kyiv, including a friendly meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, more rapid delivery of arms, negotiations over a long-term U.S. security guarantee and membership in the European Union. It would also do everything it can to oppose Moscow, including by seizing Russia’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine’s military purchases. Then it would use that leverage to get Zelensky to accept a settlement that involves the loss of Ukrainian territory.

What team Trump has achieved is the opposite: a Russia that sees even less reason to settle, a Europe that sees more reason to go its own way, a China that believes America will eventually fold and a once-again betrayed Ukraine that will have even less reason to trust international guarantees of its security.

There’s more of this: Sunday’s arrest and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia, may even get pro-Israel civil libertarians to defend his rights while making a martyr of him on the far left. But the pattern is clear. Ignoring the political corollary to Newton’s Third Law of Motion — that every action has an equal and opposite reaction — the administration will now reap precisely what it should avoid.

Trump’s critics are always quick to see the sinister sides of his actions and declarations. An even greater danger may lie in the shambolic nature of his policymaking. Democracy may die in darkness. It may die in despotism. Under Trump, it’s just as liable to die in dumbness.

Trumpzism is a euphemism for racism of all kinds including the rise of antisemitism

A Worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Bret Stephens.

If any doubts remained about the motives of the Amsterdam thugs who last week terrorized and assaulted Israeli soccer fans in droves, an investigation in The Wall Street Journal should settle the questions.

It wasn’t merely a reaction to provocative behavior by some of those fans. It wasn’t just overflowing anger over the war in Gaza. It was something altogether darker.

“Maccabi supporters had traveled to the Dutch capital for a match with local team Ajax on Thursday night,” the newspaper reported, referring to the Tel Aviv club. “Little did they know that, earlier in the day, they had become a topic of discussion on popular messaging apps, where users were calling for a Jodenjacht, or ‘Jew Hunt.’”

Jew hunt:✡️ Grotesque as the phrase is, it can no longer surprise.

• It is what the graffiti on a wall in an Oslo metro station promises: “Hitler started it. We finis[h]ed it.”
• It is a wave of antisemitic hate crimes in Chicago, including “anti-Semitic flyers with rat-poison like pellets” found in Lincoln Park, in April, 
• A Jewish man shot while walking to his synagogue in West Rogers Park, in October;
• And two Jewish students at DePaul University assaulted by masked men last Wednesday.

It is a long succession of assaults — sometimes with sucker punches, other times with cars, more recently with an attempted child abduction — against Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn.

It is the alleged gang rape near Paris in June of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by teenage boys “uttering death threats and antisemitic remarks,” according to a report from Agence France-Presse.

It is the arson attack on Monday on an Amsterdam tram — a follow-up to last week’s mayhem — with rioters in black yelling “Kanker Joden” — “cancer Jews.”

It is what a Hamas terrorist was doing on Oct. 7, 2023: “Dad, I’m calling you from the phone of a Jew. I just killed her and her husband, with my own hands I killed 10.”

Notice what these attackers aren’t saying. They aren’t expressing themselves in the faddish language of anti-Zionism. They aren’t denouncing Israeli policy or speaking up for Palestinian rights. They aren’t trying to make careful distinctions between Jews and Israelis. They are, like generations of pogromists before them, simply out to get the Jews — a reminder, if one was needed, of the truth often attributed to Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Which makes it even more remarkable how strenuously some people initially tried to obscure the nature of the Amsterdam pogrom. The media are rarely shy about calling out certain kinds of hate crimes as racist. Yet for days the word “antisemitic” was either put inside quotation marks or attributed to Dutch officials when talking about the violence. The identity of the attackers has been treated as a mystery, or a secret, beyond delicate references to people with “a migration background,” in the words of Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.

A great deal of attention has also been paid to some Israeli fans who pulled down a Palestinian flag, vandalized a taxi and, in Hebrew, chanted ugly anti-Arab phrases. There’s no excuse for any of that. But rowdy English soccer fans in Germany have been known to celebrate German war casualties. Somehow it doesn’t lead to a frenzy of organized violence.

Nor does it add any light to provide the “context” of the war in Gaza as a way of trying to understand what happened in Amsterdam. No decent person would explain anti-Asian attacks in the United States by observing that attackers might be angry about, say, China’s human-rights abuses or its biosafety standards.

Yet so many supposedly decent people are quick to try to account for the evil that is done to Jews through reference to the evil (as they see it) that Jews do to others. As Leon Wieseltier pointed out years ago, this type of reasoning is not an explanation for antisemitism. It’s the essence of antisemitism.

Antisemitism in Europe has reached the point where the future of many of its Jewish communities is seriously in doubt. I’m not sure most Europeans understand what a civilizational catastrophe this represents — albeit less for Europe’s Jews, most of whom will find other places to go and thrive, than for Europe itself. The fate of societies that become “Judenfrei” — free of Jews — has not, historically, been a happy one.

The United States is still a long way from this point, thanks to a larger and more politically confident Jewish community, along with a national culture that traditionally has generally admired Jews. But that culture is also under growing threat today, whether from Hamas’s fellow travelers in the Ivy League and the publishing world; Louis Farrakhan’s admirers in the Black community; or the alt-right inveighing, with a sinister wink, against “globalists” and “neocons.”

Americans (and not just Jews) should beware: If we stay on this path, the Jew hunt of Amsterdam may be upon us, too, and sooner than we think.

Republicans show no signs or symptoms to demonstrate political competence

 The Republican Meltdown Shows No Sign of Cooling Off

Echo "Conversation" opinion feature published in The New York Times:

Gail Collins: Bret, when we started our conversations, you generously agreed to stick to domestic issues. I’ve always steered away from commenting on foreign affairs because I have so very many colleagues who know so very much more about them than I do.

But I know you’re weighed down by the situation in the Middle East. I’m gonna hand off to you here so you can share your thoughts.

Bret Stephens: Thanks for raising the subject, Gail. And since I’ve written a column about it, I promise to keep it brief so we can talk about marginally less depressing things, like the increasingly plausible prospect of a second Trump term.

Israel occupies such a big place in the public imagination that people often forget what a small country it is. When an estimated 700 Israelis (a number that is sure to grow, out of a total population of a little over nine million) are killed in terrorist attacks, as they have been since Hamas’s rampage began Saturday morning, that’s the proportional equivalent of around 25,000 Americans. In other words, eight 9/11s.

I know some of our readers have strong feelings about Israeli policies or despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

But, what we witnessed on Saturday was pure evil. Habitual critics of Israel should at least pause to mourn the hundreds of young Israelis murdered at a music festival, the mothers and young children kidnapped to Gaza to be used as human shields, the Israeli captives brutalized, the thousands of wounded and maimed civilians who were just going about their morning on sovereign Israeli territory. And the critics should also ask whether the version of Palestine embodied by Hamas, which tyrannizes its own people even as it terrorizes its neighbor, is one they can stomach.

Gail: Horrific stories like the music festival massacre make it flat-out clear how this was an abomination that has to be decried around the globe, no matter what your particular position on Palestine is.

Now I will follow my own rule and dip back into domestic politics.

Bret: OK, and I will have lots more to say about this in my regular column this week. I also know you’re raring to talk about those charming House Republicans who ended Kevin McCarthy’s speakership last week. But first I have to ask: How do you feel about Build the Wall Biden?

Gail: I knew you were going to head for the wall! Couple of thoughts here, the first being that the money was appropriated by Congress during the Trump administration for his favorite barrier and President Biden was right when he asked for it to be reallocated to a general migration-control program.

Which, of course, didn’t happen. I still hate, hate, hate the wall and all it symbolizes. But also understand why Biden didn’t want to give Republicans ammunition to claim he wasn’t trying to control the immigration problem.

Now feel free to tell me that you differ.

Bret: It ought to be axiomatic (Maine Writer- ahhh, a fancy word means "unquestionable"....) that you can’t have a gate without a wall. 😔😒 (Who knew?)

If we want more legal immigration, which we both do, we need to do more to prevent illegal immigration. It’s also a shame Biden didn’t do this two years ago when he could have traded wall building for something truly constructive, like citizenship for Dreamers and a higher annual ceiling for the number of political refugees allowed into the United States. Now he just looks desperate and reactive and late to address a crisis he kept trying to pretend wasn’t real.

Not to mention the political gift this whole fiasco is to Donald Trump, who now has a slight lead over Biden in the polls. Aren’t you a wee bit nervous?

Gail: Impossible not to be a wee bit nervous when Trump’s one of the options. But I still think when we really get into all the multitudinous criminal and civil trials, it’s going to be very hard for the middle-of-the-road, don’t-ask-me-yet voters to pick the Trump option.

Bret: I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that front. For so many Americans, Trump’s indictments have gone from being the scandal of the century to just so much white noise on cable TV, like all of Trump’s other scandals. The only thing millions of Americans care about is whether they are better off in 2023 than they were in 2019, the last full year under Trump that wasn’t affected by the pandemic. And the sad truth is: Many believe that they aren’t.

Gail: I will refrain from veering off into a discussion of how the Trump tax cuts caused the deficit to surge. Or mentioning the latest jobs report, which was really good.

Bret: Shame about the high gas prices, rising mortgage rates, urban decay, a border crisis and all the other stuff my liberal friends keep thinking is just some sort of American hypochondria.

Gail: It’s settled — we disagree. Time for us to get on to those embattled House Republicans. Anybody in contention for speaker of the House you actually like?

Bret: You’re asking me to pick my poison. 💀😒 I’d say Steve Scalise, the majority leader who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” is still better than Jim Jordan, but that’s because almost everyone is better than Jim Jordan, the former wrestling coach. Republicans don’t have particularly good experiences with former wrestling coaches who become speakers of the House.

Admit it: You’re sorta enjoying this G.O.P. meltdown, right?

Gail: At the moment, absolutely. Once again, this is a Trump creation. He was the one who engineered the nomination of so many awful House candidates that the Republicans couldn’t get the usual postpresidential election surge in the out-party’s seats. They’re not even a majority if you subtract the total loons, like our friend Matt Gaetz.

But I’m not looking forward to a government shutdown, and I doubt these guys will be able to get the votes together to avoid one next month.

Bret: We are in agreement. All the clichés about lunatics running the asylum, letting the foxes in the henhouse, picking the wrong week to stop sniffing glue and really futile and stupid gestures apply. A government shutdown will accomplish exactly nothing for Republicans except make them seem like the party of total dysfunction — which, of course, is what they are. Not exactly a winning political slogan.

Gail: Can you make dysfunction a slogan? Maybe: Vote for this — total dys!

Bret: Our colleague Michelle Goldberg got it right last week when she said that centrist Republicans would have been smart to team up with Democrats to elect a unity candidate as speaker, someone like Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican. But of course, that would have meant putting country over party, a slogan that John McCain ran for president on but hardly exists today as a meaningful concept.

Gail: You know, my first real covering of a presidential race was the one in 2000, and McCain was my focus. I followed him around on his early trips to New Hampshire. He’d drive to a town and talk to some small veterans’ gathering or student club or anybody who’d ask him. And his obsession was campaign finance reform.

It was pretty wonderful to watch up close. Later, he got a bill passed that improved the regulations. Can’t think of a current Republican candidate who is super-focused on driving out big-money donors.

Bret: I thought McCain was wrong about campaign finance reform; he would often be the first to admit that he was wrong about a lot of stuff. But politics was more fun, more functional, more humane and more honorable when his way of doing business ruled Congress than it is with the current gang of ideological gangsters.

Gail: So true.

Bret: Speaking of our political malfunctions, our colleague Alex Kingsbury had a really thoughtful Opinion audio short talking about how violent Trump’s rhetoric has become. Trump had suggested that Gen. Mark Milley had behaved treasonously and said shoplifters deserved to be executed. One point Alex makes is that a second Trump term would very likely be much worse than the first. Do you agree, or do you think it will be the same Spiro Agnew-Inspector Clouseau mash-up we had last time?

Gail: You know, a basic rule of Trumpism is that he always gets worse. ❗Alex’s piece is smart, and his prediction is deeply depressing.

Bret: The scary scenario is that Trump 2.0 makes no concessions to the normal conservatives who populated the first administration — people like Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster and Scott Gottlieb. So imagine Stephen Miller as secretary of homeland security,  😓😒😟Tucker Carlson as secretary of state, Sean Hannity as director of national intelligence and Vivek Ramaswamy as vice president. This could be an administration that would pull the United States out of NATO, defund Ukraine, invade Mexico and invite Vladimir Putin for skeet shooting at Camp David.

Gail: As I’ve pointed out before, this is one reason people watch football.

Bret: Just wait until Steve Bannon somehow becomes N.F.L. commissioner during the second Trump term.

Gail: One last issue: I know you’re not in favor of bringing up global warming when it’s time to admire the leaves, but whenever the weather gets bad now, I worry that it’s a hint of more dire things to come. This winter, if it’s colder than usual, I’ll be miserable because it’s … cold. But now I can’t really feel totally chipper if it’s warm, either.

Bret: I really am concerned about the climate. But, hey, we may as well enjoy some nice fall weather while we still can.

Gail: You totally win that thought. Look for the good moments whenever you can.

Here you generally conclude with a poem or a nod to a great piece you read. Particularly eager to hear it this week.

Bret: Did you know that one of Shakespeare’s sonnets touches on climate change? Here is another gem my dad had the good sense to make me memorize:

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

President Joe Biden is Ukraine's hero

Echo opinion by Bret Stephens published in The New York Times.

On Ukraine, Biden Outshines Macron, Scholz — and DeSantis

To President Emmanuel Macron of France, a suggestion:

Vladimir Putin intends to eliminate Ukraine

If, as a report in The Wall Street Journal suggests, you are convinced the war in Ukraine is destined for a bloody stalemate, and would like to encourage Ukraine to enter “peace talks” with Moscow that would leave Russia in possession of large tracts of conquered territory, why not lead by example? 

Publicly suggest the return of Alsace to Germany ❗as evidence that you, too, believe that territorial sovereignty should be negotiable.

To Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, another suggestion:

If you’re going to dangle the prospect of closer ties between Ukraine and NATO (but not full membership) as a way of pushing Kyiv into a diplomatic settlement with Moscow, why not invite several battalions of Russian armor to the vicinity of Berlin? That would demonstrate that you, too, are willing to adjust the verdict of 1991 to mollify the Kremlin’s resentment, greed and paranoia.

These are preposterous suggestions. That’s the point. 

Those who now argue that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine needs to be “realistic” or “pragmatic” (❓)— 

(HELLO?  What about Vladimir Putin's distorted reality?)

)

that is, that he should stop short of pursuing a complete Russian withdrawal from all occupied Ukrainian territories — are proposing a solution they would never countenance for their own countries under ordinary circumstances, let alone during a struggle for national survival.

That’s why, as the war in Ukraine enters its second year, I feel grateful for Joe Biden. 

Fault him all you want on many issues, particularly his gradualist approach to arming Ukraine, but on the most consequential question of our time he has the big thing right. “Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased,” he said last week in Warsaw. “They must be opposed.”

That’s not a voice of fusty morality. It’s one of experience, foresight, military realism and political prudence.

Experience, because the world has come to know Vladimir Putin very well over his 23 years in power. We know he does not honor the terms of any agreements to which Russia is bound, from the Cold War-era I.N.F. Treaty to the more recent Minsk agreements. We know that he has launched unprovoked invasions in the past and will, if not checked, launch them again in the future.

Foresight, because a negotiated settlement would create more problems than it would solve. Iran would see that nuclear blackmail works. China would draw the lesson that, if there are limits to what America and our allies are prepared to do for Ukraine (which fights for itself and shares a land border with NATO), there will be much sharper limits to what we are prepared to do for Taiwan. 

Russia would conclude that, fumbled though its invasion was, it nonetheless gained territory, froze the conflict in place, and could still have another go at Ukraine in a few years.

Military realism, because the lesson of the first year of war is that Moscow can be defeated. The Russian Army was beaten in the battle for Kyiv, the counteroffensive near Kharkiv, and the fight for Kherson. The Ukrainians did all this, without the benefit of Western tanks, Predator drones or fighter jets. Imagine how swiftly they could win if they had all three in adequate quantities.

As for prudence, musing openly about the need for eventual negotiations harms Ukraine’s solidarity and morale, both key factors for its survival and success. An overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want to retake all the territory seized by Russia, including Crimea. How is it pragmatic or realistic to demand that Zelensky ignore the wishes of his own people, forsake their sacrifices, and abandon the Ukrainians still living under Russian occupation?

Calls for negotiation also undermine public support for Ukraine in the United States. When it comes to foreign policy, Americans will sooner pay heavily for great causes and high principles than they will for smaller causes and realpolitik. To arm and finance Kyiv in its fight for freedom and independence against an evil tyrant is a great cause. To arm and finance it for the sake of a shaky cease-fire is a small one.

That political fact should weigh on the minds of Biden’s foreign policy team. Public support for Ukraine is eroding, particularly among Republicans, and conservatives who know better, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are shamefully hedging their bets.

President Biden likes to say that the United States will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. But that promise could expire on January 20, 2025, if he doesn’t win a second term. He owes it to his own legacy not to hazard what is potentially the most historic accomplishment of his presidency on next year’s race.

That’s why it makes no sense for the administration to slow-roll arms deliveries to Ukraine or drop heavy hints that Ukraine is unlikely ever to retake Crimea. Biden’s goal for 2023, should be clear and direct: victory for Ukraine. He can accomplish it through the rapid delivery of game-changing military equipment combined with a diplomatic offensive in which we propose Ukrainian membership in NATO if Russia doesn’t withdraw. Maybe that could even give Putin his off-ramp for surrender.

After a year of war, I’m more confident than ever that Biden will make the right choice. That’s more than can be said for Macron, Scholz and the other pale shadows of what passes for statesmanship in the free world.

Fixing the world with one conversation at a time

If only partisan extremists could read, understand and converse! A refreshing feature in The New York Times.

(Hey Marjorie!  Please call on me!) 

Marjorie Taylor Greene Didn’t Like What She Saw

Opinion conversation echo published in The New York Times by Gail Collins and Bret Stephens:

Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are Opinion columnists. They converse every week.

Gail Collins: So Bret, Joe Biden’s been on a roll. Economy good, State of the Union speech good — made even better by those Republican boobirds.

Republican boobird aka MTG!

Any complaints?

Bret Stephens: The economy is a mixed bag, with positive signals, like falling inflation and historically low unemployment, but also some worrying ones, like a labor-force participation rate that’s too low and big layoffs in Big Tech. I thought the speech was a mixed bag, too, with a feisty performance that will please liberals but not endear him to the majority of Americans, who still disapprove of his job performance by a seven-point margin.

But on the subject of Republican hecklers, what a disgrace. Never mind the geriatric president; the real danger is the prepubescent opposition.

Gail Collins: Well, if I ever want to make a good impression on a group, I’ll try to recruit Marjorie Taylor Greene to scream at me that I’m a liar.

Bret: Being called a liar by Greene is like being accused by Donald Trump of having a low I.Q. I believe that’s what Freudians call projection.

Gail: The Republican leaders were certainly better behaved. But they did seem desperate to reject any suggestion that their party wanted to cut back spending on Social Security and Medicare. I thought that was part of the plan all along. Wasn’t it?

Bret: Not as far as I’m aware, unless you mean Senator Rick Scott’s nonstarter proposal to sunset all federal legislation every five years.

Gail: Well, Scott was head of the Republican Senate re-election effort at the time.

Bret: Even Mitch McConnell dismissed Scott’s brainstorms out of hand. But if it means trying to save both programs from looming insolvency, then yes, you could say some Republicans are for that.

The other thing I found striking about the speech, Gail, is that it was probably the most unapologetically liberal State of the Union any Democratic president has delivered since Lyndon Johnson in the ’60s. I know you like a lot of the proposals, but will it win Biden a second term?

Gail: Which part do you think an average American voter would have hated? An assault weapons ban? Abortion rights? A tax on the superrich?


Bret: Well, abortion rights is a winning issue for Democrats, thanks to the terrible Dobbs decision. On the other hand, the billionaires’ tax is probably unconstitutional and also ineffective, since ultrawealthy people are pretty good at shielding their assets. And as our own polling guru Nate Cohn pointed out last summer, gun control is one of those issues that always seem to poll well but rarely decide elections.

Gail: One thing Biden’s speech demonstrated was how good a liberal agenda sounds to nonliberals when it’s presented by a guy who seems so mellow. People always looked down on Biden as a presidential candidate because he reminded them of somebody’s chatty great-uncle. Turns out, that these days, a nice great-uncle who wants to put a cap on drug prices is just what we’re looking for.

AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins, with AARP volunteers and Senators. Amy Klobuchar, left, and Debbie Stabenow, right, calls on Congress to pass the bill to lower prescription drug prices.

Bret: Our friend Frank Bruni had the best line on the same point in his newsletter last week. “For Donald Trump,” he wrote, “we needed noise-canceling headphones. For Biden, hearing aids.” It’s particularly sharp because the age question is only going to become more acute for Biden. Some of his fumbles, like calling Chuck Schumer the Senate minority leader, are going to stick in people’s minds.

Um, awkward segue here, but we really should talk about Senator John Fetterman.

Gail: So sorry to hear he was briefly hospitalized — and to learn, in a story by our newsroom colleague Annie Karni, that his long-term physical problems have made it difficult for him to deal with his work. Lesson No. 1: Joining the United States Senate is not the best possible agenda for a man who’s recovering from a serious stroke.

Bret: Obviously we wish him a full recovery ….

Gail: Fortunately, the Pennsylvania voters who chose him last year over Mehmet Oz — by nearly five percentage points — weren’t overly focused on Fetterman’s health situation. Lesson No. 2: These days, when it comes to congressional elections, the overriding issue is simply which party will control what.

Thanks to Pennsylvania, the answer in the Senate this year is the Democrats, and even if Fetterman can’t perform all his day-to-day duties as well as he’d hoped, as long as he can show up for votes, he’s fulfilling their most important mandate.

Bret: OK, total disagreement on this one. Being a senator isn’t just about voting a certain way. There’s also important committee and constituency work. If Fetterman’s doctors think he will eventually recover, then he should stay. But voters also deserve more transparency about his health than they got during the campaign or than they are getting now. If he can’t meet the demands of the office, he owes it to Pennsylvanians to step down and let Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, select his replacement.

Gail: Now Bret, on a totally different matter: I’ve always appreciated your willingness to go along with my foreign-affairs avoidance. But China has, I guess you could say, floated into domestic territory. Tell me if you have any new balloon thoughts.

Bret: What really gets me about the balloon caper (I am withholding judgment about the three U.F.O.s we shot down over Alaska, Canada and Lake Huron until the little green men send me further instructions) isn’t the threat to national security. The Chinese can surely get most of the surveillance they need from orbiting satellites. It’s the nerve. The Chinese government thought it could get away with it on the eve of Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing. If they are that rude, stupid and cocky, what else do they think they can pull off?

Gail: Kinda' wondering if the Xi government did it just to look tough to their own people.

Bret: Well, we probably popped that balloon. My fear is that the Chinese regime, or elements inside it, may be spoiling for war. Have I mentioned that we need to start spending more on defense?

Gail: I’m very, very worried this is a prelude to a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan. While we should do everything we can to keep that from happening, there’s no way I would want to go to war over it.

Bret: I disagree, but you’re speaking for a lot of Americans, including a growing share of Republicans.

Gail: As far as our defense budget goes, I think we could get whatever money is needed by cutting costs someplace else in the Pentagon.

But just between us, if I rooted for higher military spending, would you oppose risking the lives of American troops over Taiwan?

Bret: I’m with President Biden on this one. The defense of Taiwan is a vital American interest, and not just because it’s the superpower of microchips. If Beijing conquers Taiwan, it will just whet its appetite for aggression against our other allies, including Japan and the Philippines. So trying to stay out of it will only make our problems larger, not smaller. I also think our commitment to Taiwan’s freedom is akin to President Harry Truman’s stands for West Berlin and South Korea. Those sacrifices in blood and treasure paid long-term dividends for global freedom and American prosperity.

But speaking of long-term threats to the country, Gail, I was shocked but not surprised to read that two-thirds of American fourth graders are not proficient in reading. What a disaster. Thoughts on fixing?

Gail: Nothing more important to worry about than reading skills. But you don’t want to encourage an obsession over tests. There’s way too much of that already — even preschools are drilling their kids in preparation for kindergarten entrance exams.

Bret: On this point, Gail, we agree. The endless testing is turning kids into nervous wrecks. And clearly it’s not helping them get any better at reading and math.

Gail: Let’s focus on early childhood education — if it’s the right quality, kids will move on to grade school with skills in problem solving and critical thinking that make the next level so much easier.

That, of course, would require a lot more money. Jill Biden has made it one of her top crusades, and cheers to the first lady for that.

Bret: I’m pretty sure the United States spends much more per student than most other countries, only to achieve lackluster results. Different suggestion: Let’s adopt phonics more widely for early reading, give up new math for old math and urge parents to read to and with their children for at least an hour each night.

Gail: Preschool education is one of our biggest fights, so I guess this conversation needs to be continued …

Bret: Before we go, Gail, I hope our readers don’t miss Richard Sandomir’s beautiful obituary for Solomon Perel, a.k.a. Josef Perjell, who died in Israel this month at 97. If you remember the film “Europa, Europa,” you’ll know his story: a Jewish boy who pretended to be an ethnic German to escape being murdered by the Nazis and later got inducted into the Hitler Youth, where he had to hide his Jewishness for the rest of the war. The parting piece of advice he got from his father was, “Always remain a Jew,” while his mother told him, “You must live.”

It seems like contradictory advice, since he had to pretend to be a Nazi in order to survive. But from a Jewish perspective, the advice was actually the same. From Deuteronomy: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse — therefore choose life.”

Maine Writer post script:  This series of conversations published in The New York Times should be required reading for teaching students, and adults about the enjoyment of learning about how to participate in a civil conversations. 

Mar-A-Lago table reserved for evil white supremacy and Holocaust denial

This horrible dinner reservation at Mar-A-Lago is just the worst of Trump's "circling the toilet boil" decisions to corral right wing racism, incite white supremacy and evil Holocaust denial.

Bret Stephens echo opinion published in the San Antonio Express-News:  Mar-A-Lago's anti-Semitic table.

But the table for Trump’s anti-Semitic banquet was set long ago.

Racist Trump with Holocaust denier Ye

Donald Trump dined with white nationalist, Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes

Fuentes, who frequently posts racist content in addition to Holocaust revisionism, was brought as a guest of rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye.

The former president hosted Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. He said it was “quick and uneventful.”

The former president, who is running for his former office, invites to his home one of the most notorious anti-Semites in the United States, who brings along a well-known Holocaust denier. 

So far, to my knowledge, the only member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet to publicly condemn his former boss by name is Mike Pence. 

Nor, with a handful of exceptions, have top Republicans or the major organs of right-wing media, and even for them, the indictment is mainly that Trump was sloppy about vetting his guest list. (OMG!)

If he were to win again, all this would be swept under the rug, just as it was the last time. This is the new normal. We shouldn’t be surprised. The ground for it was laid long ago.

It was laid when Republicans normalized Trump’s various ethnic bigotries. Remember when, during the 2016, campaign, he said he couldn’t expect to get a fair trial in a fraud case from a judge with Mexican heritage, and Paul Ryan, who was then the speaker of the House, called it a “textbook definition of a racist comment”? 

But, unfortunately, Ryan endorsed him anyway.

It was laid when Republicans normalized Trump’s conspiracy theories. His birtherism should have been disqualification enough. But the problem with conspiracy thinking is that one theory always leads to another — and the ultimate conspiracy theory, the secret to the secret to the secret, is that the Jews did it. ❓ (OMG!)

People who can be led to believe anything about anything will eventually believe anything about Jews. ❗ (OMG!)

It was laid when Trump and much of conservative media made Republicans, the party of immigrant bashers, something they emphatically were not when their standard-bearers were Ronald Reagan, the Bushes and John McCain. “You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt,” says the Book of Deuteronomy, which helps explain why the words on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal were composed by the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus. 

Tragically, antisemitism is also why a fanatic murdered 11 Jewish congregants in a Pittsburgh synagogue in a plot to attack immigration.

Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA anti-Semitic murders October 27, 2018

It was laid when Trump called the news media the “enemy of the American people.” It should not be controversial to say the mainstream news media is frequently blinkered by groupthink, liberal bias and self-flattering assumptions about its own goodness. But Trump forewent critique for the demonization of an industry that, along with banks and entertainment, is all but synonymous with “Jewish” among hardened antisemites.

It was laid when the conservative movement came to despise intellectualism of any sort, including conservative intellectuals. Although the moment was long in coming, it arrived when Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly publicly ripped into Washington Post columnist George Will for the latter’s unflattering review of the TV host’s idiotic “Killing Reagan” book, after which Will lost his Fox News contract but retained his honor. (O’Reilly ended up losing both.) 

Moreover, the Trumpian right’s hatred of anything that conveys a sense of erudition (in other words, "somehow being really smart") or culture is not in itself antisemitic, but it has a way of leaning in that direction.

It was laid when “globalist,” another dog-whistle word for “Jew,” became a slur used by the right. The notion that a shadowy group of financiers who share an allegiance to no country are in it only for themselves and will gladly make the working classes suffer for their profits is the theory behind the “Jews will not replace us” chant adopted by the neo-Nazi marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

It was laid when management at Fox News repeatedly stood by its star bigot even as he championed replacement theory, went after the “vulture capitalism” of a prominent Jewish hedge funder and showered praise on Kanye West as a “bold” truth-teller while reportedly editing out Ye’s antisemitic comments.

It was laid when the right repeatedly looked the other way at Trump’s persistent overtures to the radical wing of the party, whether it was tweeting antisemitic images, lying about David Duke or refusing to repudiate white supremacists in Trump’s first debate with Joe Biden — telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” This foul courtship has always been part of Trump’s playbook, which is why his most recent dinner should come as a surprise to nobody.

Evil white replacement theory promoted by right wing extremism on Fox News.

It was laid when pundits on the right justly decried antisemitism on the left — the noxiousness of an Ilhan Omar or a Jeremy Corbyn or the anti-Zionists whose unhinged criticisms of Israel so often mimic ancient anti-Semitic tropes and behaviors — while remaining practically mute to the antisemitism of a Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Viktor Orban and the QAnon right. “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye” may be a Christian phrase, but it behooves a conservative movement to clean up its own house when it comes to antisemitism before it considers the mote in the eye of its opponents.

A final note: I was reluctant to write this column, because I think the former president is a spent political force and because often the best way to defeat a bully is to ignore him. But, the bigotries that Trump has unleashed are not spent and cannot be ignored. And, they won’t be defeated until they are unequivocally denounced by whatever is left of honorable conservatism.

Do not trust Vladimir Putin. Never trust Russia!

The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin catastrophically miscalculated.

Pablo Lobato graphic 

Columnist Bret Stephens echo opinion published in The Seattle Times: Putin wrongly thought that the Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome his marauder troops. 

But, they didn’t. 

He thought he’d swiftly depose Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government. 

But, he hasn’t. 

He thought he’d divide NATO. But, instead, he has united it. 

He thought he had sanction-proofed his economy. Instead he has wrecked it. He thought the Chinese would help him out. They’re hedging their bets. He thought his modernized military would make mincemeat of Ukrainian forces. Amazingly, the strong Ukrainians are making mincemeat out of the Russians, at least on some fronts.

Putin’s miscalculations raise questions about his strategic judgment and mental state. Who, if anyone, is advising him? Has he lost contact with reality? Is he physically unwell? Mentally? Condoleezza Rice warns: “He’s not in control of his emotions. Something is wrong.” Russia’s sieges of Mariupol and Kharkiv — two heavily Russian-speaking cities that Putin claims to be “liberating” from Ukrainian oppression — resemble what the Nazis did to Warsaw, Poland, and what Putin himself did to Grozny, Chechnya.

Several analysts have compared Putin to a cornered rat, more dangerous now that he’s no longer in control of events. They want to give him a safe way out of the predicament he allegedly created for himself. Hence the almost universal scorn poured on President Joe Biden for saying in Poland, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The conventional wisdom is entirely plausible. It has the benefit of vindicating the West’s strategy of supporting Ukraine defensively. And it tends toward the conclusion that the best outcome is one in which Putin finds some face-saving way out: additional Ukrainian territory, a Ukrainian pledge of neutrality, a lifting of some of the sanctions.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?

The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The New York Times’ Carlotta Gall, about her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. 

This caused the Russians to regroup and wipe out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power. (It appears this tactic is exactly what is happening, a déjà vu nightmare, in Kyiv right now.)

Russia's War in Chechnya: Victims Speak Out, in Human Rights Watch:

Chechen flag bearing the image of Akhmad Kadyrov former Head of the Chechen Republic.

 Ask the Chechens about Putin’s playbook: Russian forces showed utter contempt for civilian lives in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Eyewitnesses told researchers about Russian bombs, shells or mortar fire levelling apartment buildings, entire neighborhoods, and single-family homes in Grozny, and hitting civilian areas in outlying villages in Chechnya and in neighboring Ingushetiya. Russian ground forces reportedly opened fire on civilians from a railroad car. Russian forces also destroyed at least two hospitals, and part of a third, an orphanage and several markets areas. They inflicted hundreds of civilian deaths, gruesome casualties and caused an estimated 350,000 people to flee.

Vladimir Putin is Donald Trump's evil soul

Letters editor The Seattle Times

Re: “Ask Chechens about Vladimir Putin’s playbook” [March 31, Opinion]:

Bret Stephens’ scenario about Putin’s intentions seems not only plausible but highly likely. He said that Putin may not have intended to take over Ukraine, but instead had his eye on Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas in Ukraine’s east and the “enormous shale-gas field” in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as his effort to control most of Ukraine’s coastline.

Attacking civilian locations seems a calculated move to gain energy resources by intimidating Ukraine into agreeing to territory control and neutrality on Russia’s border. The devastation of Ukraine’s infrastructure will keep its economy tied up with rebuilding. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. will be putting our resources into caring for the displaced and traumatized refugees. So Russia gets away with all of this by threatening the West with nuclear and chemical warfare. I agree with Stephens that Putin’s crazy like a fox.

Sonja Larson, Mill Creek