The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Politics on twitter: not always depressing!

    By artappraiser on Sat, 10/13/2018 - 2:09am |

    Comments

    The politics of Max Boot and his characteristic "type" are always and forever depressing. 


    by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 10/13/2018 - 11:31am

    I think people should be praised for becoming open-minded and especially for encouraging others to do so.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/14/2018 - 12:39am

    Yeah, me too. As a rule, like all rules necessarily meant to be occasionally broken, I would agree with your sentiment and try to apply it in most cases. Boot says he has changed his political party but has he actually changed his mind about what a political party should strive to do?  You apparently think Boot has become open minded? Maybe ne has, but his self-serving platitudes claiming his own lately achieved wisdom published with glowing reviews in the same venues which gave place and praise for a shining spotlight on his murderous prescriptions they called wise in the past don’t prove it to me.

    Edited to note that this was intended go reply to AA. 


    by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 10/14/2018 - 12:17pm

    yeah,he's changed, I've seen him often enough on MSNBC and the like to believe that. One doesn't get the self-serving platitudes impression from his in-person appearances. Rather he's always the one that seems to be the most mild mannered on any panel, and actually tries to temper polemic and spin from the others and really get discussions to a point of fruitful honest talk. Not biting or sarcastic at all, either, more like extremely thoughtful and genuinely interested in communication, works hard at getting people to cut the crap.

    First time I saw him on TV since Trump was president, I didn't know it was him right away, didn't recognize him and there were no identifying chyrons. And I reacted like this: wow, who is that guy? he is really different from the usual. To paraphrase another comment I just made: really good at soothing savage breasts in discussion and introducing points that make people think rather than debate more.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/14/2018 - 12:30pm


    by artappraiser on Tue, 11/06/2018 - 12:01am

    Interesting review, party because the reviewer is of the variety who has had feelings of being booted from the left for being pro-Israel and partly because he includes many details of Boot's early life from the book:

    Max Boot wrote a great new book. Here's my review---hint: Trumpists won't like it. Boot gets it totally right:https://t.co/HOcjJ6DwYa

    — Ron Radosh (@RonRadosh) October 17, 2018

    Trumpism is really causing a lot of people to rethink where they fit


    by artappraiser on Wed, 10/17/2018 - 11:52am

    FFS - "He tells us that he might have become a Democrat if the party remained centrist; instead, he sees its drift to Bernie Sanders style left-wing extremism." - like what "drift"? There's always been more centrist and more left wing. What cabbage patch did this guy just crawl out of? And that left wing was readily rejected in most primaries (and we're still wondering what happened in Michigan -2x - and other practice collusion states). People really are this troubled w comprehension, aren't they. And what was the "radical" he was worried about if he grokked global warming? A livable wage? (Tied to corporates actually paying taxes) Health care for all? I bitched about fighting TPP and trade in general that brings down poverty - not so unusual. Making banks follow laws? Did he get distracted w making Israel show some restraint and good faith towards peace? Did he Obama screwed up in Ukraine or Syria? Or let in too many Mexicans? Hard to say what his issue is.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/17/2018 - 1:12pm

    For those who like this sort of thing (not my cup of tea, but whatever get's you thru the night), here you've also got the Boy Scout White Hat Truth Justice and American Way Shining City on a Hill Ronnie's Rolling over in His Grave thing:

     

    The United States should be a shining light for the world, modeling a democracy that values truth, respects free press, protects human rights, and stands against murderers, oppression, and bigotry. Trump and the Republican Party are dimming that light.

    — James Comey (@Comey) October 20, 2018

     

     

    “Men will not cease to be dishonest, merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it.” — Reinhold Niebuhr, “Moral Man And Immoral Society” (1932)

    — James Comey (@Comey) October 20, 2018

    We need a balance of power, badly. https://t.co/iYZoqbwLtS

    — James Comey (@Comey) October 17, 2018

    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 5:22pm

    Is it too much o just ask for sane & normal? I'm a little bit sick of being torn between DIck Dastardly and Dudley Do-right, with Sweet Polly Purebread as some kind of MeToo stomping grounds. I mean sure, if being tied up to railroad tracks is her thing, go for it, but...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 7:42pm

    if you prefer getting a grasp on what's going on in the real world from sleazy fixer types as opposed to elite pundits, here's a major one giving free advice:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 5:25pm

    Max Boot proves his changes in allegiance more than real:

    This nation is at the mercy of a criminal administration

    Op-ed by Max Boot @ WashingtonPost.com, May 3

    [....]  Barr’s jaw-dropping performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday dispelled any lingering confidence in the impartial administration of justice — the bedrock of our republic. He actually testified that if the president feels an investigation is unfounded, he “does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course. The president could terminate the proceeding and it would not be a corrupt intent because he was being falsely accused.” Given that no president has ever felt justly accused of anymisconduct, this means that the president is above the law. Barr is endorsing the Nixon doctrine: “Well, when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”

    The administration makes clear that this is precisely its intent with its scandalous stonewalling of Congress. Barr himself refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Trump is suing to prevent his accountants and financial institutions from sharing his business records with Congress, while his treasury secretary is refusing to comply with a lawful demand for his tax returns. Trump is also blocking numerous current and former officials, including former White House counsel Donald McGahn, from testifying about his misdeeds. His conduct is redolent of the third article of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon for failing “to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas” from Congress.

    While conferring legal immunity upon himself, Trump is eager to weaponize the legal system against his opponents. The Mueller report documents three separate occasions when Trump demanded a Justice Department investigation of Hillary Clinton. Now, the New York Times reports, Trump and his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, are attempting to instigate a criminal probe of his leading 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, on what appear to be trumped-up charges of corruption. In one of the more chilling exchanges during his Senate testimony, Barr would not say whether “the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested” that he open an investigation. If the answer were “no,” he would have said so.

    It is hard to think of any president in the past 230 years, including Nixon, who has ever sabotaged the rule of law so flagrantly or so successfully to protect his own hide. And, sadly, it is hard to imagine that anything can be done about it before Nov. 3, 2020. The House could try to compel compliance with its subpoenas, but the Justice Department will never file criminal charges, and the courts could take years to decide a civil suit. The House could vote to impeach Trump or Barr — which they richly deserve — but that would be a purely symbolic act and could backfire politically because Senate Republicans, like the O.J. Simpson jury, would vote to acquit regardless of the evidence.

    So for the next 18 months, at a minimum, this nation is at the mercy of a criminal administration. I am in despair as I have never been before about the future of our experiment in self-rule. Before Mueller filed his report, it was possible to imagine the president being brought to justice. That fantasy is no longer tenable. Instead we are left with the dismaying likelihood that the president will now feel emboldened to commit ever greater transgressions to hold onto power — and thus delay a possible post-presidential indictment.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/04/2019 - 12:59am