Not American Democracy But The Republican Party Is Ending

This country will never again see a Republican president.

Latinos

Latino early voting is up 100 percent in Florida, 60 percent in North Carolina and up 25 percent in Colorado and Nevada.

Clinton is on track to capture 79 percent of the Latino vote. 

Latino turnout could be the difference maker for Clinton in swing states like Nevada, North Carolina and Florida. 

FBI: Home To Male Chauvinism

It would seem that basically everyone at the FBI is leaking their sides of various internal disputes and turf wars, largely tied to various investigations of the Clintons or attempts to start investigations of the Clintons. That alone paints a picture of Director James Comey as having totally lost control of the organization.

The upshot, from Barrett's reporting, is that basically everyone at the Justice Department thought the investigators didn't really have anything. Seemingly, that opinion was shared among senior officials at the FBI. But the agents, who seem to have started the digging basically on their own, were sure they did. They were repeatedly told to move on, they didn't have anything. But they seemed to keep pursuing it regardless.

there's very little to shake Democrats of their longheld belief that the rank and file of the FBI has a strong Republican lean (like most law enforcement, to be fair) and that that not infrequently bleeds out in high profile public corruption probes - especially when it comes to the Clintons.

 a pretty toxic situation with FBI agents pursuing probes prosecutors believe have little merit, leaking to congressional Republicans and finding various ways to force their probes into the public.

Dark Trump

Donald Trump is coming down the final stretch with just a few final conspiracies about Hillary Clinton he hopes will push him over the edge.

Trump was as rambling as ever Saturday, grabbing a baby from the audience who he called a future construction worker

Trump Has Been Clear On What He Will Do

we don’t have to wonder what the first 100 days of a Trump presidency would look like. Trump has given a clear picture of what he plans, and the rest would be filled in by events beyond Trump’s control.

 a trade war with China and Mexico, a restarting of Iran’s nuclear program, millions losing their health insurance, the start of mass deportations, a possible military standoff with China in the South China Sea and North Korea, the resumption of waterboarding, the use of federal agencies to go after Hillary Clinton and other Trump critics, the spectacle of the commander in chief suing women who have accused him of sexual misconduct and a constitutional crisis as the president of the United States attempts to disqualify the federal judge in a fraud suit against him because the judge is Latino.

Recession would come within a year — unless further economic shocks bring about a 1930s-style depression.

He would, on his first day, begin the deportation of more than 2 million “criminal illegal immigrants.” The liberal Center for American Progress calculates this would cost $20.1 billion, and there’s only enough funding currently to deport 400,000 per year.

The backdrop for these economic shocks: international chaos. Many Trump early-days promises — halting immigration from terrorist-prone countries, renegotiating NATO terms and the Iran nuclear accord, pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate-change agreement — would open rifts with allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Republicans: Not Innocent

Republicans, led by Donald Trump but by no means limited to him, are engaging in kind of termite-level assault on American democracy, one that looks on the surface as though it’s just aimed at Hillary Clinton, but in fact is undermining our entire system.

Pro-Trump FBI agents now seem to becoordinating with Trump surrogates to do maximal possible damage to Clinton.  

There is a growing movement among Republicans in the Senate to simply refuse to approve any nominee appointed by a Democratic president to the Supreme Court, leaving open any and all vacancies until a Republican can be elected to fill them.

State and local Republican officials are engaged in widespread and systematicefforts to suppress the votes of African-Americans and other groups likely to vote disproportionately Democratic; in many cases officials have been ordered by courts to stop their suppression efforts and they have simply ignored the court orders.

The agents, in an atrocious violation of FBI policy against injecting the Bureau into an election, begin leaking dark innuendo to reporters. That convinces the FBI director that he has no choice but to go public with the fact that the Bureau is looking at some emails that might or might not have something to do with Clinton, though no one has actually read them. That news lands like a bombshell, despite its complete lack of substance.

And then it turns out that these agents are basing their investigation on a book called “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer. Schweizer is the president of theGovernment Accountability Institute, an organization co-founded and chaired by Steve Bannon. Who is the CEO of the Trump campaign.

But as he has in so many ways, Donald Trump takes every ugly impulse Republicans have and turns it up to 11, and just about the entire party follows him down. So now they are making it very clear that from literally the day Hillary Clinton is inaugurated, they will wage total war on her. There will be no rule or norm or standard of decency they won’t flout if it gets them a step closer to destroying her, no matter what the collateral damage.

Something is seriously breaking down.

Populist International

They share ideas and ideology, friends and funders. They cross borders to appear at one another’s rallies. They have deep contacts in Russia — they often use Russian disinformation — as well as friends in other authoritarian states. They despise the West and seek to undermine Western institutions. They think of themselves as a revolutionary avant-garde just like, once upon a time, the Communist International, or Comintern, the Soviet-backed organization that linked communist parties around Europe and the world. Now, of course, they are not Soviet-backed, and they are not communist. But this loose group of parties and politicians — Austria’s Freedom Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom, the UK Independence Party, Hungary’s Fidesz, Poland’s Law and Justice, Donald Trump — have made themselves into a global movement of “anti-globalists.” Meet the “Populist International”: Whoever wins the U.S. election Tuesday, its influence is here to stay.

they want to radically overthrow the institutions of the present to bring back things that existed in the past — or that they believe existed in the past — by force. Their language takes different forms in different countries, but their revolutionary projects often include the expulsion of immigrants, or at least the return to all-white (or all-Dutch, or all-German) societies; the resurrection of protectionism; the reversal of women’s or minorities’ rights; the end of international institutions and cooperation of all kinds. They advocate violence: In 2014, Trump said that “you’ll have to have riots to go back to where we used to be, when America was great.”

opposes homosexuality, racial integration, religious tolerance and human rights.

The Populist International holds these goals to be more important than prosperity, more important than economic growth, more important than democracy itself. Like the parties that once formed the Comintern, they are eager to destroy existing institutions — from independent courts and media to international alliances and treaties — to obtain them. 

All of the populist parties and newspapers use the narratives put out by Sputnik, the Russian news service that serves as an endless source of conspiracy theories and fake news. 

Xi Jinping: Reformer?

There is intense speculation that Xi Jinping's recent move to become "Core Leader," a title awarded posthumously to Mao, hints that he might stay beyond 10 years and might pull a Gorbachev on China. Fundamental political reform is the only way out for the straitjacket China finds itself in. A total attempt to keep the lid tight would only lead to some kind of an implosion, sooner or later. Reform would be the patriotic thing to do. China, after all, has become the largest economy in the world. Reform would be the responsible thing to do.

But the Gorbachev metaphor might not be a good one. Gorbachev hastened democratic reforms and that is to his great credit. He got called Person Of The Century by some for that. Thankfully the Cold War was over. But he neither thought through the demise of communism nor its replacement. But it is perhaps too much to ask one person to do all three things.

While Gorbachev presided over a bread lines economy, the Chinese economy is an envy to the world (minus the Beijing smog). Xi does not have to say it is not working. But he does have to say this is what is next. It can be bold reforms that are well thought out and there is a smooth transition. He has played it wise. He has concentrated tremendous power in himself. That is a lot of political capital with which to carry out reforms.

Step one would be to completely halt any and all persecution of the Falun Gong and release all the detained practitioners. Step two would be to institute free speech and freedom of religion into the Chinese constitution. Step three would be for the party to offer two candidates for each office like president, governor and mayor. The people pick one through direct vote. That could go for 10 years. Then the constitution should be ammended to allow other political parties. But China should take care to keep money out of politics. All parties should be state funded, getting money in direct proportion to votes they collect. That is something American progressives only fantasize about.

Democracy Asks For Eternal Vigilance

Democracy is a wonderful thing, but it asks for eternal vigilance. Previous generations have gone to war to protect it. If this generation can't even be bothered to show up to vote to protect it, it does not deserve it.

It is like having to eat again and again. Having to sleep night after night. Physical exercise has to be regular. It is like that. You have to actively want it. Or it can be gone.

Trump is Lucifer himself lunging for the nuclear code. This guy will start a war his first year in office.

The Republic Is In Danger Of Collapse

an openly proto-fascist cult leader has emerged to forge a popular movement that has taken over one of the major political parties, eroded central norms of democratic life, undermined American democratic institutions, and now stands on the brink of seizing power in Washington

this republic is in serious danger.

his disturbed, unstable, and uncontrollable psyche.

He seems to have no close friends, because he can tolerate no equals. He never appears to laugh, because that would cede a recognition to another’s fleeting power over him. He treats his wives and his children as mere extensions of his power, and those who have resisted the patriarch have been exiled, humiliated, or bought off. 

His relationship to men — from his school days to the primary campaign — is rooted entirely in dominance and mastery, through bullying, intimidation, and, if necessary,humiliation. His relationship to women is entirely a function of his relationship to men: Women are solely a means to demonstrate his superiority in the alpha-male struggle. Women are to be pursued, captured, used, assaulted, or merely displayed to other men as an indication of his superiority. His response to any difficult relationship is to end it, usually by firing or humiliating or ruining someone. His core, motivating idea is the punishment or mockery of the weak and reverence for the strong. He cannot apologize or accept responsibility for failure. He has long treated the truth as entirely instrumental to his momentary personal interests. Setbacks of any kind can only be assuaged by vindictive, manic revenge.

He has no concept of a non-zero-sum engagement, in which a deal can be beneficial for both sides. A win-win scenario is intolerable to him, because mastery of others is the only moment when he is psychically at peace. (This is one reason why he cannot understand the entire idea of free trade or, indeed, NATO, or the separation of powers.) In any conflict, he cannot ever back down; he must continue to up the ante until the danger to everyone around him is so great as to demand their surrender. From his feckless business deals and billion-dollar debts to his utter indifference to the damage he has done to those institutions unfortunate enough to engage him, he has shown no concern for the interests of other human beings. Just ask the countless people he has casually fired, or the political party he has effectively destroyed. He has violated and eroded the core norms that make liberal democracy possible — because such norms were designed precisely to guard against the kind of tyrannical impulses and pathological narcissism he personifies.

He sees the judicial system as entirely subordinate to his political and personal interests, and impugned a federal judge for his ethnicity. He has accused the Justice Department and FBI of a criminal conspiracy to protect Hillary Clinton. He has refused to accept in advance the results of any election in which he loses. He has openly argued for government persecution of newspapers that oppose him — pledging to open up antitrust prosecution against the Washington Post, for example. He is the first candidate in American history to subject the press pool to mob hatred — “disgusting, disgusting people” — and anti-Semitic poison from his foulest supporters. He is the first candidate in American history to pledge to imprison his election opponent if he wins power. He has mused about using nuclear weapons in regional wars. He has celebrated police powers that openly deploy racial profiling. 

His favorite foreign leader is a man who murders journalists, commits war crimes, uses xenophobia and warfare to cement his political standing, and believes in the dismemberment of both NATO and the European Union. Nor has he rejected any of his most odious promises during the primary — from torturing prisoners “even if it doesn’t work” to murdering the innocent family members of terror suspects to rounding upseveral million noncitizens to declaring waron an entire religion, proposing to create a database to monitor its adherents and barmost from entering the country.

The Establishments of both right and left have had many opportunities to stop him and have failed by spectacular displays of cowardice, narrow self-interest, and bewilderment. The right has been spectacularly craven. Trump has no loyalty to the party apparatus that has elevated him to a possible victory next Tuesday — declaringwar on the Speaker of the House, attackingthe RNC whenever it fails to toady to him, denigrating every single rival Republican candidate, even treating his own vice-presidential nominee as someone he can openly and contemptuously contradict with impunity. And yet that party, like the conservative parties in Weimar Germany, has never seen fit to anathematize him, only seeking to exploit his followers in the vain and foolish delusion that they can control him in the future in ways they have not been able to in the past.

They are nihilist revolutionaries of the far right in search of a galvanizing revolutionary leader. And they have now found their man.

The staggering decision by FBI director James Comey to violate established protocol and throw the election into chaos to preserve his credibility with the far right

The Democrats, with the exception of Obama, have long been unable to marshal emotion as a political weapon, advancing a bloodless rationalism that has never been a match for the tribal national passions of the right. Clinton’s rallies have been pale copies of the bloodthirsty mobs Trump has marshaled and whipped into ever-higher states of frenzy. In every debate, she won on points, but I fear she failed to offer a compelling, simple, and positive reason for her candidacy. Only a party utterly divorced from half the country it seeks to represent could have made such a drastic error of hubris and complacency.

Over the last year, which forces in the GOP have been able to stand up to him? Even his closest aides have been unable to get him to concentrate before a debate. He set up a policy advisory apparatus and then completely ignored it until it was disbanded. His foreign-policy advisers can scarcely be found. He says he knows more than any general, any diplomat, and anyone with actual experience in government. He has declared his chief adviser to be himself. Even the criminal Richard Nixon was eventually restrained and dispatched by a Republican Establishment that still knew how to run the country and had a loyalty to broader American institutions. Such an Establishment no longer exists. 

What is so striking is that this requires no interpretation, no reading of the tea leaves. Trump has told Americans all of this — again and again — in plain English. His own temperamental instability has been displayed daily and in gory detail. From time to time, you can see his poll ratings plummet as revelations that would permanently sink any other candidate have dented his appeal. And then he resiliently and unstoppably moves back up. His bond with his supporters is absolute, total, and personal. It was months ago that he boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would still be with him. And he was right. This is not a mark of a democratic leader; it is a mark of an authoritarian cult. 

If his policies lead to an economic downswing, he will find others to blame and conspiracies to flush out. If there is Republican resistance to his pledges to roll back free trade, he will call on his base to pressure the leadership to surrender. And if one of his first moves is to abandon the Iran nuclear deal, we will be hurtling rather quickly to a military confrontation, as Iran rushes to build a nuke before Trump can launch military attacks to thwart them. That rush to war would empower him still further.

There will doubtless be another incident between police and an unarmed black man under a Trump presidency. Rather than calm the nation, Trump will inflame it. There will be an Islamist terror attack of some kind — and possibly a wave of such attacks in response to his very election. Trump will exploit it with the subtlety of a Giuliani and the brutality of a Putin.

 A political hurricane has arrived, as globalization has eroded the economic power of the white working classes, as the cultural left has overplayed its hand on social and racial issues, and as a catastrophic war and a financial crisis has robbed the elites of their credibility. As always in history, you still needed the spark, the unique actor who could deploy demagogic talent to drag an advanced country into violence and barbarism. In Trump, America found one for the ages. 

we live in a republic, if we can keep it. And yet, more than two centuries later, we are openly contemplating throwing it up in the air and seeing where it might land.

The Right Way To Interview Priyanka Chopra

This is the right way.

No risk of Indian jihad.

She is Bollywood royalty.

People in America think Bollywood is the Indian version of Hollywood. And it is not.

For one it is much bigger. They produce three times as many movies.

Two, Indian fans are much more diehard. The most admired actors have pretty much deity status.

Three, family values are intact. Indians worship Rama, the first human incarnation of Yahweh, or Vishnu. Rama created the family on earth like Jesus created the person on earth.

America and India are twin countries. If not that, at least sibling countries. Democracy is a beautiful thing.