Some weeks the shit's piling up so fast you have to get the shovel out a few days early. I have little doubt that there will be this much more by the weekend. Less sure I have the time and energy to keep up the pace.
Some scattered links this week in the Trumpiverse:
Glenn Kessler/Michelle Ye Hee Lee: Fact-checking President Trump's address to Congress: The "fake news" media was, of course, much taken with Trump's tone ("so presidential"), which as far as I can tell means he refrained from pooping on stage and flinging it at the Democrats (and for good measure Paul Ryan).
More on the speech:
Peter Certo: There Was Nothing Moderate About Trump's Speech to Congress
Matt Lewis: Trump, So Presidential You Won't Believe It, Delivers a Kinder, Gentler Bannonism
Dana Milbank: Do vigilantes see Trump giving them a wink and a nod? Well, all he needs is "plausible deniability." And all that really takes is a pliant and gullible press that won't hold him accountable.
Sophia Rosenfeld: The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Trump's Appeal to Common Sense Is His Dismissal of It: "The president's taste for fact-free fantasy is based not in traditional American populism but in authoritarianism."
William Saletan: Unpresidential Address: "Trump's speech to Congress was as amoral as the man himself."
Michael Tomasky: Donald Trump Finally Sounds Presidential. For 60 Minutes.
Trump said great things in the speech about infrastructure. But all that we've seen so far is an infrastructure plan that's a joke. He said something nice about immigrants, but his ICE people are out rounding up people who are beloved in their communities. He said nice things about innovation and research, but the real-life implications of what we've seen of the budget will have no money to speak of for any of those kinds of things.
Betsy Woodruff: In His First Address to Congress, Trump Demonizes Immigrants -- With a Smile
Matt Yglesias: Trump says "nobody knew that health care could be so complicated" -- "actually everyone knew that."
Michelle Chen: Donald Trump's War on Science: Mostly focused on environmental science, which is a big enough subject, but most likely nowhere near the sum. Stiff upper lip at the end: "At the dawn of the Trumpocene, even under a regime fueled by contempt for truth, facts will still matter." Even more so laws of physics, such as the one that points out that every molecule of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere increases the amount of heat from sunlight that is retained by the atmosphere.
William Greider: Is Our President Bonkers?: Maybe, but he came up with a clever con and sold it to just enough Americans.
Fred Kaplan: Money for Nothing: Trump is following through on his campaign promise to increase Defense Department spending, submitting a $54 billion increase over Obama's 2016 budget. Other pieces on the Defense budget:
Michèle Flournoy: Trump is right to spend more on defense. Here's how to do so wisely. Flournoy was Undersecretary of Defense under Obama, and most often projected as Hillary Clinton's Secretary of Defense. So it's clear here where her loyalties lie, even if it's typical that the Democrats would insist that they'd be smarter at force feeding the already engorged war goose.
Jonathan Freedland: Trump wants 'peace through strength' -- but this budget is a recipe for war
Sean McElwee/Brian Schaffner/Jesse Rhodes; How Wealthy Donors Drive Aggressive Foreign Policy
Ishaan Tharoor: The Trump presidency ushers in a new age of militarism: E.g., "Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany did not conquer territory for the thrill of it; their leaders acted out of perceived desperation, believing that they were losing a ruthless competition for power and status." Although the more conventional explanation -- that their leaders were evil self-aggrandizing sociopaths -- does little to allay our fears about Trump.
Anne Kim: Why Trumpism Is Here to Stay: The author's antidote is "broadly shared economic expansion," as this "puts more Americans in a generous mood." But isn't that one thing that we can be sure will not happen under Republican rule? After all, their prime directive is to increase the concentration of wealth among the already rich, even if that means producing less of it overall. You'd think that Trump (if not Trumpism) would lose all credibility soon, but for now they seem to figure they can hang on by decrying the "fake news" that might rat them out.
Daoud Kuttab: US and Israel join forces to bury Palestinian statehood: A point made clear by Netanyahu's very early visit to see Trump, who knows little about the conflict, has no respect for America's customary (albeit hapless) advocacy of international law, nor any concern that the world view the US as a fundamentally friendly world power. Still, could be worse: in 2008 Israel feared that Obama might make a serious effort to pressure Israel into accepting a two-state partition, so started a war against Gaza. Netanyahu knows better than to fear Trump, who's so eager to please he's willing to do things that Israel only says they want (tearing up the Iran deal, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem) that he needs to be gently nudged back to sanity. Still, Netanyahu has a problem: for the next four years, no one will look toward the US to ineptly muddle up the "peace process" -- the idea that Trump will be "an honest broker" is beyond laughable -- but in the meantime people (especially in Europe) will see Israel as it actually is: a deeply racist society and unjust oppressor state.
Also see: Aaron David Miller: Trump's New Ambassador to Israel Heralds a Radical Change in Policy; Jonathan Cook: Trump shows his hand on Israel-Palestine.
Jessica Lipsky: Ben Carson, Rick Perry confirmed to Cabinet posts: On the same day, two of Trump's more ridiculous picks.
Lachlan Markay: Big Steel Sees Gold in Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross: Well, of course: after all, Ross made his billions in big steel.
Jennifer Rubin: Why Jeff Sessions is in deep trouble: Sure, he met with Russians, and sure, he lied about it. The former bothers me far less than Nixon's efforts to sabotage Vietnam War negotiations in 1968, or even Reagan's ploy to keep Iran from releasing hostages to Jimmy Carter. After all, what Trump's people were telling Putin is "keep your cool and don't overreact to Obama's sanctions -- when we win we'll be more reasonable." There are innumerable things wrong with Trump and his posse, but his Russia stance was actually saner than what Obama and Clinton were offering. Of course, it's hard not to applaud any scandal that undermines Jeff Sessions, but I'd rather focus on real reasons for getting rid of him, like Sophia Tesfaye: Jeff Sessions drops DOJ lawsuit against discriminatory Texas voter ID case, reverses 6 years of litigation. Not that I condone his lying, but it's no victory for progressives if the only lying anyone gets sacked over is offending the neocon anti-Russia lobby (cf. Flynn, Manafort, etc.) -- in fact, it's fucked up.
By the way, see Glenn Greenwald: The New Yorker's Big Cover Story Reveals Five Uncomfortable Truths About US and Russia. Number one on that list is how much more hawkish against Russia Clinton was than Obama. Way back I argued that she would lose if people came to perceive her as the more dangerous warmonger, and I think that's a big part of what's happening. Of course, her fans didn't think that, nor did more critically balanced observers like myself, but all of her campaign talk about "the Commander-in-Chief test" and her obsession with nuclear launch codes may well have unnerved less informed voters. In any case, until Democrats get over their obsession with vanquishing foes abroad and focus on the real ones that are robbing us bind, they won't be able to mount a credible defense against the class war the rich are still winning within America.
Reihan Salam: Paul Ryan Could Kill Donald Trump's Political Future: "If the president accedes to congressional Republicans' wishes to slash the social safety net, he'll pay a very hefty price." While lots of liberal-leaning pundits have been imploring the so-called sane regular Republicans to rein in the patently insane president, I've been saying all along that the most ominous threat comes from empowering Ryan and his ilk in Congress -- a perception that is finally beginning to sink in. For all their bluster, conservatives have always had to fall back on the promise that their crackpot theories would ultimately be good for all (well, most) people -- and not just the 1% (give or take a little) they shill for. Still, now they have enough power to do some real damage, and the more they exercise that power the more they will discredit themselves.
Richard Wolffe: Steve Bannon lifted his mask of death at CPAC; also Sarah Posner: How the Conservative Movement Went All in for Trumpism.
Matthew Yglesias: What Trump has done (and mostly not done) from his first 100 days agenda
Also a few links less directly tied to the ephemeral in America's bout of political insanity:
Juan Cole: Sorry, Trump, China's cut-back on Coal Dooms Industry: A few years ago China was poised to build so many coal-fired electricity generators that it became likely that one nation, at the time a nation in complete denial about global warming, would wind up frying the rest of us. Since then at least half of those coal plants have been canceled. Since then, it's become clear that if you consider the externalities -- which for China includes the good will of other nations fearful of being fried -- coal is already an inefficient energy source. That's increasingly obvious in the US as well, even though thanks to fossil fuel industry clout most of those externalities go uncharged. And the trendline for coal is getting worse, even with the President and Congress securely in the industry's pocket.
Stanley L Cohen: Jim Crow is alive and well in Israel: The analogy hits closer to home than "apartheid" (although that was merely the South African term for a legal code of segregation inspird by and borrowed from America's Jim Crow laws). Of course, the analogy is not quite precise: the US and SA systems were meant primarily to preserve a low worker caste their respective economies were built on, whereas the Israeli system seeks to make Palestinian labor (hence Palestinians) superfluous, and as such is an even more existential threat. Article does a good job of reminding you not just that separate is inherently unequal but that segregated systems are sustained with violence and injustice.
Cohen also wrote Trump's 'Muslim ban' is not an exception in US history, rubbing it in a little when it might be more effective to explain how such bans are inimical to American ideals even if they've recurred frequently throughout American history.
Mark Lawrence Schrad: Vladimir Putin Isn't a Supervillain: This seems like a fairly realistic evaluation of Russia, after first positing two strawman arguments and showing how neither is all that true. I'll add that there are a few countries what once had larger empires and have never quite shaken the mental habit of thinking they should still be more powerful than they are: this is true of Russia and China, would-be regional powers like Iran and Turkey, and several ostensible US allies (notably Britain, France, and Saudi Arabia), and if you possess the ability to look cleary in a mirror, the United States as well. (Germany and Japan were largely cured of this by the crushing weight of defeat in WWII, although you see glimpses in, e.g., Germany's role in breaking up Yugoslavia and Japan's weird dread of North Korea.) What has thus far passed for Russian aggression has so far been limited to adopting breakaway regions of now independent former SSRs -- Crimea from Ukraine, Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. On the other hand, the US has been extending its NATO umbrella into previously neutral former SSRs, building up its Black Sea fleet, installing anti-missle systems focused on Russia, and imposing sanctions to undermine the Russian economy, and trying to influence elections in places like Ukraine and Georgia to heighten anti-Russian sentiments. Given all this, who's really being aggressive?
Of course, were I a Russian, I'm quite certain that I'd have no shortage of political disagreements with Vladimir Putin. But the US doesn't have (or deserve) a say in who runs Russia. At best we can refer to standards of international law, but only if we ourselves are willing to live by them -- which, as was made clear by Bush's refusal to join the ICC we clearly are not. An old adage is that you should clean up your own house first, and that's the thing that American politicians should focus on.