DECLINE OF AMERICAN POLITICS

START OF THE DECLINE IN AMERICAN POLITICS
I'm not sure when the modern decline in American politics started.  Maybe it started with the Democrats overturning Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987* that seems to have inflamed Republicans ever since.  As a Civil Libertarian, I agreed with the Democrats, but Bork said that all the accusations against him were wrong.  I don't know, but the Democrats seemed to be right.  At any rate, perhaps that is when the decline started, but it could be when Republicans developed their southern Strategy with Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater.**

Note added June 18, 2017: A better start is with Newt Gingrich suggested by conservative David Brooks: How did all this intemperate language in politics start.  I now believe it goes back to Newt Gingrich, in the early 1980s as suggested by conservative David Brooks and forward who even published a list of combative words to use (Included in the references are several articles in addition to lists of words to use.).***   Just a few words from Gingrich's list are betray, corrupt, and hypocrisy.
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2017/06/rep-scalise-shot-now-what.html

THE NEXT BIG STEP: BENGHAZI
Another BIG step in decline occurred when Mitt Romney decided to politicize Benghazi and spawned 13 investigations!  I can't forgive him for this.  Prior to this, political disagreements ended at the shores of America.  When Ronald Reagan endured two major embassy bombings (including one ambassador being killed as in Benghazi) plus the Marine Barracks disaster in  Lebanon where 241 were killed  Democrats kept mum and never tried to make political hay out of it though there was one investigation.  The Beirut embassy bombing under Reagan killed 17 people * George Bush's administration suffered maybe 13 incidents in which 4 Americans total were killed including 3 diplomats with no resulting investigations.***

Now in American politics, EVERYTHING is on the table.

REPUBLICANS USE "FULL COURT PRESS" AGAINST DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTS
The next step started with the election of Bill Clinton as president where the Republicans started out of the gate with a "full court press" to destroy his presidency.  They attacked him on everything and anything, even when he fired the travel office, something he had every right to do as president.  Unfortunately, in his second term Clinton gave them some fodder with his relationship to Monica Lewinski resulting in his impeachment but not conviction.  The intensity seemed to even escalate with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency with some added racial factors.  I feel it is a triumph that Obama even was able to finish two terms without being assassinated.

REFUSAL TO TAKE UP SUPREME COURT NOMINATION
Yet another step involved the refusal of the Republican Senate to even consider the Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court - Merrick Garland.  I have to wonder if the Bork incident many years before had something to do with it.  Curiously, the Garland nomination was the opposite of the Bork nomination.  Bork would have replaced a "moderate" Democrat where "moderate" Garland would have replaced a Republican.  The Supreme Court is supposed to be non-partisan, but we all know it is the ultimate partisan body.

THE MOVE TO PHYSICALITY
During Donald Trump's run for President, he spoke of "get 'em outta here" about protesters in which they were shoved and yelled at in a Kentucky rally.****.  At an Arizona rally, a protester was punched and kicked as he was being led out of the rally.  Then there was Trump's comment at a rally in Nevada about a protester, "I'd like to punch him in the face, I tell you."  And " They's be carried out on a stretcher, folks." in the old days.****  Though Trump says the protester was throwing punches, The conservative Weekly Standard "was just over exaggerating."

I hope another step has not been taken with the physical attack by a Montana congressional candidate on a news reporter.  I heard the tape of the incident, and it was hard to hear what ticked off the congressional candidate.  I'm somewhat reassured by the candidate's lengthy apology, though I find it disturbing that some of his voters liked his his getting physical.  I'm afraid there are many militants in the Republican Party that would like to get physical.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork_Supreme_Court_nomination
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
*** http://www.snopes.com/u-s-embassy-attacks-compared/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/the-four-american-narratives.html
****http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/02/politics/donald-trump-lawsuit-incite-violence-kentucky-rally/index.html
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2016/03/20/trump-supporter-charged-with-assault-following-scuffle-at-arizona-rally/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/protester-would-be-carried-out-on-a-stretcher-in-the-old-days-trump-reminisces/article/2001211

SORRY BUT THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN

I started to watch Morning Joe, this morning, but all the talk, for some reason, was about Susan Rice and her unmasking of names of Americans inadvertently caught in intelligence reports.  It is not unusual for a Security Adviser to do this, but the claim is that she did it for political purposes.  If that is so, she was remarkably unsuccessful.

Republicans hate her for telling the truth about Benghazi (that it started because of a negative movie trailer about Mohammad).  Later it turned into a terrorist attack.  No matter that there have not been anti-Mohammad books, Koran burnings, or movies since and there have been no embassy or consulate attacks.  At any rate, I’ve heard all those lies before that have been kept up for years.  Why don't Republicans focus on the two Embassy attacks under Ronald Reagan (Lebanon and Kuwait), both of which were much bigger with more deaths than Benghazi,  to say nothing of the Marine base Beirut bombing from which Reagan cut and ran.  Oh, that's right, Reagan is Sainted.  This is where I came in so I deleted my recording of Morning Joe and haven’t listened to a political TV program since.  I deleted my recording of Andrea Mitchell  without looking at any of it.

Whatever happened to the Russian involvement in our presidential election?

Apparently the House Intelligence Committee wants to  interview Susan.  Well, I guess I can't blame Kevin Nunes because he foresees his role as defending the President, and he seems to be doing a good job of it.  He has even got some Democrats sidelined on the Susan Rice business.

You know that the Trump group may just have noticed the Russian misinformation campaign and thought it would make good political fodder so they used it.  No one claims that what you say in an election campaign needs to be true so that would be no crime.  I've heard that things said in political campaigns may not be even admissible in court. If so, why doesn't the Trump administration just say so and get it over with?  I guess because it does go far beyond that.  The latest involves Betsy DeVos's brother Erik Prince.   Why do all Trump roads lead to Russia?

Has anyone noticed that Trump doesn't seem to like democracy?  He won't say a bad word about Putin, he shakes hands with the dictator of Egypt but not the leader of the Western World Angela Merkle, and, in the past, he has even said what he thinks are some kind words about the dictator of North Korea (strong leader).

Well at least one good thing has come out of all this from our standpoint in that Trump hasn't dared to get rid of the sanctions against Russia.

Wake me if there is anything new on the Russian interference in our recent Presidential election.

BENGHAZI - WHO CARES?

Well it turns out that that there is still a Benghazi committee in congress.  There was a committee long ago that made 29 recommendations to the Secretary of State.  Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary at the time, said that she was accepting all recommendations.  Maybe because of this or other reasons, there have been no more embassy, consulate, or other foreign service locations since then and now 3 9/11's have gone by without incident.  Of course it turned out that the spark for the Benghazi attack was the anti-Mohammad movie trailer after all.*  Although the Benghazi attack was probably not the State Department's finest hour, it was one of the smaller attacks as attacks on State Department and DOD facilities go.*

Of course, now  it is leaked that the committee's true function is to hurt Hillary Linton's presidential bid.***

For other comments on Benghazi, see**

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-was-movie-trailer-after-all.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/potpourri-medical-expenses-benghazi.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/05/benghazi-irs-associated-press.html
*** http://time.com/4055534/kevin-mccarthy-hillary-clinton-benghazi/

SOME MYTHS HELD BY CONSERVATIVES

Perhaps the biggest myth held by conservatives is that denigrating  Muhammad was not the trigger for the diplomatic outpost attack in Benghazi even though there were demonstrations throughout Islamic nations.  We have had two 9/11s since Benghazi that appear to have been peaceful.  Where are the embassy attacks since Benghazi?  Besides, the sainted President Reagan had two embassy attacks, both worse than Benghazi and also had the Marine Barracks disaster to boot; yet conservatives forgive him for these.

Another myth is that if we had left 10,000 or 15,000 troops in Iraq everything would be fine there.  They are apparently unaware that President Bush did exactly that in Afghanistan when he pivoted to war in Iraq.  The Taliban had been pushed into Pakistan where they regrouped and came back stronger than ever.  Only a brutal dictator can keep Iraq together.

Then there is the Red Line in Syria over poison gas.  When Obama drew the Red Line in Syria if Assad didn't comply he would bomb Assad's retreat.  Assad offered to give up his poisons weapons in exchange for not bombing him and Obama accepted it.  If conservatives wanted to say that just getting rid of the poisonous gases was insufficient, they would have a valid point, but they feel that bombing Assad would gotten rid of him.  Though undoubtedly we could have destroyed many buildings, killing Assad was unlikely.  He undoubtedly would have been in a bunker  And if we did kill Assad, wouldn't ISIS take over?  We have the example in Libya of what happens if we aid a mob in helping take out a brutal dictator.  At best you have chaos and ISIS sympathizers seem to be taking over Libya.  President George H.W. Bush realized this when he had Saddam's troops on the run in Iraq in the Kuwait War and stopped the U.S. advance.

It could be that conservatives actually know all the above and are just using their arguments for political purposes, but I suspect many really believe these myths.

AFRICAN WAR ON TERROR

Since posting the Drones Of War* just yesterday( I have read a most important article about the war in Africa 'How 'Benghazi' Birthed The New Normal In Africa.**  I find this article to be a MUST READ!  It not only gives credence to what is said in The Drones Of War, but adds considerably to it.

A rapid response team seems to have saved an embassy attack in South Sudan, for example

Here is an excerpt:
"While daily US troop strength continent-wide hovers in the relatively modest range of 5,000 to8,000 personnel, an under-the-radar expansion has been constant, with the US military nowconducting operations alongside almost every African military in almost every African country andaveraging more than a mission a day."

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-drones-of-war.html
** http://www.thenation.com/article/179883/how-benghazi-birthed-new-normal-africa?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20%28NEW%29%2020140515&newsletter=email_nation_tuesday

BENGHAZI (SIGH)

As we all know, on September 11, 2012, there was an attack (actually three attacks) on the American Consulate and CIA compound in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city.  Except for political purposes, there is no more tired news than Benghazi.  After all the four deaths in the Benghazi attacks were small compared to other attacks on our diplomatic missions,* only unusual in that an ambassador was killed; however, Charley Rose had the Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, on his program on April 3, 2014, that I found to be interesting and worth a listen.**  It should be noted that there has been a 9/11 since Benghazi with no published activity.

Morell's thought is that the original attack was by a group of extremists, maybe including some al Qaeda members, who wanted to go into the Consulate and cause some mischief  like their Egyptian compatriots did earlier.***  There were two other attacks and each picked up steam compared to the previous one.  The second attack was actually against the CIA compound, and they picked up some heavier armaments along the way.  The third attack was the most vicious and had the heaviest armaments.  Two of the deaths were actually at the CIA compound.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-was-movie-trailer-after-all.html
**  (http://video.tvguide.com/Charlie+Rose/Michael+Morell/21826147/tvo-194941-season-22-episode-156 primary=Shows&show=Charlie%20Rose&display_mode=details&length=fullepisode)
*** In Egypt, 2000 Salafist activists protested against the film Innocence of Muslims at 5pm EET (11am EDT) at the US embassy in Cairo. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack)

BENGHAZI (RIP)

Now that a couple Senators have shown their ill manners to Hillary Clinton over Benghazi, maybe this issue can be put to rest.  Maybe congress will supply more funds for security (If it is a real issue.) or maybe they won't.  A number of Republicans insist on trying to make Benghazi a huge political issue, but it didn't work in the presidential election and it is not working now; they just can't get public notice in spite of much media support.  But I'm sure the issue will come up again if Hillary runs for president in 2014.

I thought that in her testimony it was interesting that closing the consulate in Benghazi had been discussed, but the option had been discarded by the ambassador and Clinton because it was felt that some contact was needed with the "home" of the group that has taken hold of the country in spite of its dangers.  In view of this, perhaps more security should have been provided, but just how many has never been discussed that I know of.  Since the attacking force was estimated to be a couple of thousand, it seems to me that the security would at least have had to be in the hundreds, which probably would have been impossible.  I suspect that though the area was known to be dangerous, no one expected such a large force to attack the consulate.  This turned out to be wrong, of course, and is unfortunate.  But life moves on.

Ronald Reagan had an embassy bombing and the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon and an embassy bombing in Kuwait; yet, many feel he was a great president.  So I suspect that in the end, Clinton will be forgiven what turned out to be a  bad choice in a distinguished career.

Some people seemed to be surprised that Hillary could fight back against ill manners, but they don't know the group of women who came of age at the beginning of the women's rights era.  They may have had a velvet exterior, but, if that didn't work, they were all nails underneath.   I saw it in geology.  Though a trickle of women geologists already existed, those in the 60s and 70s were still pioneers. And they had to have a lot of determination and iron will to go into "man's" fields.  It would be wise to remember this.

POTPOURRI: MEDICAL EXPENSES, BENGHAZI, & INSULTING ISLAM

I wonder how many people who want to control medical costs have supported compulsory ultrasound before abortion.  I'm not sure just how many states have compulsory ultrasounds before abortion, but I have seen 8 referred to and 22 have some sort of ultrasound regulation with 11 more states having them on the docket (http://bangordailynews.com/2012/02/27/news/nation/more-states-moving-to-require-ultrasound-before-abortion/).  Usually the woman has to take two trips to the physician, one for the ultrasound and another for the abortion itself.  All this raises the costs of care, of course.

Now it seems to be coming clear that the opposition to Susan Rice becoming Secretary of State by John McCain is that she had some harsh things to say about him in the 2008 presidential battle.  Lindsay Graham's opposition seems to be related to the Democrats opposition to John R. Bolton's nomination as Ambassador to the United Nations by George W. Bush in 1980 (but he was appointed as a recess appointment).  So it seems the opposition to Susan Rice really has little to do with her statements that the Benghazi, Libya, disaster  in which a U.S. Ambassador was killed was a spontaneous demonstration that escalated.  The usual question being asked is why wasn't more protection provided to the Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  Of course protection to Embassys is supposed to be provided by the home country, which proved inadequate in this case.  But since so much effort is placed on Benghazi (Libya's second largest city), there are a couple of questions that seem relevant.  Why wasn't the Consulate closed?  After all there had been a previous attack on the Consulate with a hole blown through the protection wall, and the Brits had closed their operation there because of all the unrest in the area.  The second question of interest is why did our ambassador go there in the first place?  Don't know that we will ever hear the answer to these questions.

We seem to think it is important that the Benghazi incident had nothing to do with the insulting movie trailer that was critical of Muhammad.  The attack on the consulate may have been planned as a 9/11 al Qaeda commemorative event, but the movie trailer probably added something to it as demonstrations were done throughout the Muslim world (Egypt,Iran, Israel, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, and Palestinian) particularly after the Friday prayers.  If we think, however, that when we do or say things that are insulting to the Islamic religion, it does not incite a hot head group to physical violence, then there is no hope of our reconciliation with Muslims.  In addition it also increases the anti-American attitude among a large group of Muslims who are more peaceful.  Now it is known that an Egyptian court has put a death sentence, in absentia, on seven Egyptians thought to be involved with the movie trailer should they return to Egypt (http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/28/world/meast/egypt-anti-islam-film/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_world+(RSS%3A+World)).  Of course there have been many other incidents in the past such as our burning of Qur'ans in Afghanistan in which four of our soldiers were killed.

I ALREADY MISS THE GOOD OLD DAYS

I already miss those good old days, not that long ago actually, when all we had to worry about was important things, people like Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, a couple of middle aged 4-star generals and a topless FBI agent (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).  Don't you?

Now it is ugly as an "over-the-hill" Senator, who once was a rational force in the Senate but now is after one last hurrah, pursues something known as Benghazi that everyone has lost interest in except for him and a few of his colleagues.  You know, that violent demonstration/terrorist attack in which an ambassador was killed along with three of his "troops" in some backwater consulate in Lybia where violent acts in the vicinity are almost an every day occurrence (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/09/you-can-rationalize-anything.html).  Senator Feinstein has commented, "My biggest concern is, there are literally hundreds of threat warnings in the material that has been accumulated," Feinstein said. "There were five attacks during the year, one prior attack on the consulate itself. The question I have is ... why wasn't something done about it?"  But this doesn't seem to be the serious question which our dear "over-the-hill" Senator says is why did our ambassador to the U./N. - Susan Rice - say, five days after the event, that the violence was a demonstration that got out of hand?

Personally, I never thought this issue could last until the late-elections, but some - including the news media - want to keep it going and are demanding a "Whitewater" type investigation.  And apparently Susan Rice was only parroting the declassified information on the topic.  This misinformation, if it matters, was seemingly done because the FBI or someone thought they were hot on the trail of the organizing perpetrators and didn't want them to know.  Instead what they did was what is known as "hanging Susan Rice out to dry."

So far as I am concerned, if the American Benghazi Consulate attack was the best Al Qaeda could do to "celebrate" 9/11, they are weak indeed, hardly even a shadow of the real 9/11.  It was even far away from the embassy in Tripoli.  Somehow, forgotten in all this is that an estimated 30,000 Libyans demonstrated against the attack and the militias involved in the attack (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).

The fuss being made over Benghazi is interesting when one considers that the diefied Ronald Reagan had BOTH a couple of embassy attacks, including the big one in Beirut, Lebanon, where 17 Americans died (among 63 total) on April 18, 1983 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing) plus another in Kuwait where five people were killed on December 12, 1983 (which by-the-way Reagan refused to call an act of terror) (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror) AND the marine barracks attack where 241 of our troops died on October 23, 1983.  For good measure there was the Korean airliner 007 shot down by the Soviets September 1, 1983 where 269 passengers were killed including a U.S. congressman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007).  Somehow Reagan's admirers forgave him for all of this.  Furthermore, Democrats did not make political hay out of any of this.  But today, everything seems to be on the table for political gain.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE RECENT ELECTIONS

First of all, I am thankful that we had two such fine families running for president.

Then I regret that the American electorate demands such negative campaigning.  Unfortunately if one side does it, the other must also.  The electorate says they don't like it, but they do pay attention to it.  In this regard, the Democrats seemed to be more effective in their negative campaigning than the Republicans.

After all the money spent by outside groups such as Super PACS in the campaign, we ended up having the same Democratic president, an increase in Democratic Senators by two (but not enough to break filibusters) and  an increase of Democratic Representatives by seven (but not enough to take over the House).  The electorate seems to say to our politicians "Make it work!"

Mitch McConnell's first priority of defeating the President didn't work.  Will we face another four years of total obstruction?

Somehow Republicans are going to have to learn how to love Hispanics and quit kicking them in the teeth.  It is going to be very hard for them, but Hispanics tend to be conservative and can be a natural component of a conservative movement.

There are no precedents in our politics anymore.  It used to be that politics was said to stop at the borders, but no longer. The immediate politicalization of the Benghazi attack on September 11 shows that.  I really thought that Benghazi couldn't be made to last until the election proved to be unfounded as the media was more than willing to keep this issue going.  Ronald Reagan suffered both the Lebanese Embassy bombing* in 1983 in which  63 people died was never politicized by the Democrats nor was the Beirut (Lebanon) base bombing in which 299 American and French forces were killed.*  These two disasters have not stopped Ronald Reagan from becoming deified by many Republicans, no doubt by some of those who want to keep the Benghazi issue alive even after the election.

Romney's demonizaton of the 47% who pay no Federal income tax as being lazy dependents may be unfortunate but is a widely held view of many Republicans.  I know this both from Republicans I know and from boards on Motley Fool.  But it also does insult many of the white working class people who vote Republican.  Please remember that 47% of the Households earn less than $47,000/yr which undoubtedly includes many of white workers.  One cause of this lack of Federal income tax payments is the child tax credit where there is a $1000 per child deduction from their taxes, and this deduction was raised under the Bush-43 administration from $500/child to $1,000/child.**

The Romney claim that he knows how to generate jobs is both right and wrong.  Private equity, at least in the short term, eliminates jobs and does not create them.  That is the first thing they do, fire people.  Labor is the elastic component of our system.  However in the beginning of Bain Capital, they emphasized Start Ups which do create new jobs.  Romney switched to private equity because it was a quicker way to make money and that is what Bain Capital is all about.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Whether in the long term private equity creates jobs, I don't know , but suspect that it doesn't.

But weren't start ups what Obama was doing in promoting alternative energy?  In spite of the Solyndra failure, the amount of losses in the Federal government Start Ups program is small.  Even Solyndra, however, served a good purpose because the Solyndra system didn't use the special glass used to solar energy.  Their approach caused the price of the special glass to plummet to make Solyndra uneconomic.  I have not seen any article examining whether the price of glass plummeting has saved more money in solar energy panels than the losses on Solyndra, but over time it might.  Personally I wish the government would have taken Solyndra to production before closing it down.  If you are going to be involved in start ups, there are going to be failures and the emphasis needs to be on the net.

There is a point in saying that the Federal government shouldn't be choosing winners and losers of course; however, the government does this sort of thing all the time.  Think how important the government emphasis by NASA and the DoD on miniaturization of electronics has been not only to producing inexpensive desk top computers but now the tablets and smart phones.  Consider the World Wide Web (WWW) and Geographic Positions Systems (GPS) for just two.  These were developed for military purposes.  The important thing was really permitting these two innovations to be released into the public sector where private industry could promote them for Civilian uses.

*  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

** http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-Child-Tax-Credit