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USA

Friday February 26, 2021

March 5, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 26, 2021

CPAC and the New Republicanism

The golden statue of the former president being wheeled through the halls of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday may have been a touch on the nose, considering the obvious Old Testament allusion.

February 4, 2021

But if you were looking for clues about the direction of the Republican Party after the Trump years, an effigy of Donald Trump in an American flag bathing suit may be as symbolic as any golden calf.

In recent years, CPAC has evolved from a family reunion of Republican libertarians, social conservatives and a hawkish foreign policy establishment into Trump-chella.

This year has been no exception, with speaker after speaker focusing on the pet issues of the former president. “Are your votes being distorted?” one ominous video asked, flashing photos of President Biden on the big screen. Mr. Trump plans to address the crowd on Sunday and anything he says about his future political ambitions will inevitably overshadow the entire event.

Yet, the former president may not end up running again — continuing legal issues could kill his bid — but there’s little question that he leaves the party reshaped in his image. Even though Mr. Trump often failed to articulate a comprehensive policy doctrine, he has fundamentally remade what being a Republican means.

That shift was made strikingly clear in the remarks of politicians who hope to lead their party into the future — with or without Mr. Trump.

October 12, 2016

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a rock star in conservative circles right now, laid out a pretty concise summary of the new conservatism in his speech on Friday: Anti-“adventurism” abroad, anti-big technology companies, anti-immigration, anti-China and anti-lockdowns.

“We cannot — we will not — go back to the days of the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear,” he said, proclaiming Florida to be an “oasis of freedom” in a country suffering from the “the yoke of oppressive lockdowns.”

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who opened his remarks with a jokeabout his much-criticized trip to a Cancún resort, cast conservatives as Jedi “rebels” against the “rigid conformity” of the socialist left — a call to arms at an event steeped in complaints of cultural victimhood. This year’s conference is titled “America Uncanceled.”

But Mr. Cruz also had a message for members of his own party.

March 24, 2015

“There’s a whole lot of voices in Washington that want to just erase the past four years, want to go back to the world before,” he said.“Let me tell ya right now: Donald J. Trump ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

Josh Hawley, a junior senator from Missouri, after defending his efforts to contest the election results as “taking a stand,” proclaimed a “new nationalism” that included breaking up technology companies, standing up to China and tightening borders. The “oligarchs” and “corporate media,” he said, want to divide Americans with “lies” like systemic racism. Hours before his speech, Mr. Hawley announced legislation requiring a $15 minimum wage for corporations with revenues over $1 billion.

None of the men, it’s worth noting, made any reference to Mr. Biden, a sign that the party continues to lack any cohesive line of attack against the new administration. 

But what was equally striking is how far the speeches differed from traditional Republican ideology. A party that has defined itself as defenders of the free market now believes big technology companies wield too much power and the government needs to put more restrictions in place. Concerns about interventionism abroad have replaced hawkish doctrine as the driving foreign policy force. Nativism has gone mainstream and the politics of cultural grievance, focused heavily around race, dominate among conservatives that once delighted in mocking sensitive liberal “snowflakes.” (Continued: NYT) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2021-08, Conservative, Donald Trump, GOP, hostage, January 6, Mike Pence, party, Proud Boys, QAnon, Republican, Ted Cruz, Trumpcult, uprising, USA

Tuesday February 23, 2021

March 2, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 23, 2021

Biden to meet virtually with Trudeau on Tuesday in first meeting with a foreign leader

U.S. President Joe Biden’s first official meeting with a foreign head of government will be a virtual encounter on Tuesday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

January 26, 2021

“The president will highlight the strong and deep partnership between the United States and Canada as neighbours, friends and NATO allies,” the White House said in a statement on Saturday.

The Prime Minister’s Office said meeting agenda items include the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery, job creation, maintaining cross-border supply chains, climate change, energy, defence and security, and diversity and inclusion.

The U.S. president’s Keystone XL pipeline cancellation is expected to come up but will not likely be a main focus of the meeting. 

June 24, 2020

The detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China is also expected to be raised by Trudeau, according to a source who spoke to CBC News confidentially.

Biden has already had a series of phone conversations with a number of leaders, starting with Trudeau, shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

The new administration has signalled its desire to improve relationships with traditional American partners by scheduling his first calls, and now a first meeting, with the country’s democratic allies. 

Biden has already had a series of phone conversations with a number of leaders, starting with Trudeau, shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

June 22, 2019

The new administration has signalled its desire to improve relationships with traditional American partners by scheduling his first calls, and now a first meeting, with the country’s democratic allies. 

Conversely, Biden has de-emphasized relationships with non-democratic figures that had been cozier during the Trump era.

The White House has said Biden would not deal directly with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman because the crown prince is not officially the country’s ruler. It also said Biden planned to speak with allied leaders before figures such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, though he did eventually talk to Putin in the second week of his presidency. (CBC) 

 

Posted in: Canada, USA Tagged: 2021-07, begging, Canada, covid-19, diplomacy, Joe Biden, pandemic, summit, USA, virtual meeting

Friday February 19, 2021

February 26, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 19, 2021

Texas, Land of Wind and Lies

Politicians are neither gods nor saints. Because they aren’t gods, they often make bad policy decisions. Because they aren’t saints, they often try to evade responsibility for their failures, asserting either that they did as well as anyone could have or that someone else deserves the blame.

October 3, 2014

For a while, then, the politics surrounding the power outages that have spread across Texas looked fairly normal. True, the state’s leaders pursued reckless policies that set the stage for catastrophe, then tried to evade responsibility. But while their behavior was reprehensible, it was reprehensible in ways we’ve seen many times over the years.

However, that changed around a day after the severity of the disaster became apparent. Republican politicians and right-wing media, not content with run-of-the-mill blame-shifting, have coalesced around a malicious falsehood instead — the claim that wind and solar power caused the collapse of the Texas power grid, and that radical environmentalists are somehow responsible for the fact that millions of people are freezing in the dark, even though conservative Republicans have run the state for a generation.

This isn’t normal political malfeasance. It’s the energy-policy equivalent of claiming that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a false-flag Antifa operation — raw denial of reality, not just to escape accountability, but to demonize one’s opponents. And it’s another indicator of the moral and intellectual collapse of American conservatism.

The underlying story of what happened in Texas appears to be fairly clear. Like many states, Texas has a partly deregulated electricity market, but deregulation has gone further there than elsewhere. In particular, unlike other states, Texas chose not to provide power companies with incentives to install reserve capacity to deal with possible emergencies. This made power cheaper in normal times, but left the system vulnerable when things went wrong.

Texas authorities also ignored warnings about the risks associated with extreme cold. After a 2011 cold snap left millions of Texans in the dark, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission urged the state to winterize its power plants with insulation, heat pipes and other measures. But Texas, which has deliberately cut its power grid off from the rest of the country precisely to exempt itself from federal regulation, only partially implemented the recommendations.

And the deep freeze came.

January 31, 2019

A power grid poorly prepared to deal with extreme cold suffered multiple points of failure. The biggest problems appear to have come in the delivery of natural gas, which normally supplies most of the state’s winter electricity, as wellheads and pipelines froze. Nor was this merely a matter of the lights going out; people are freezing too, because many Texas homes have electric heat. Many of the homes without electrical heat rely on, yes, natural gas. We’re looking at enormous suffering and, probably, a significant death toll.

So Texas is experiencing a natural disaster made significantly worse by major policy errors — and the officials who made those errors should be held accountable.

Instead of accepting responsibility, however, officials from Gov. Greg Abbott on down, backed by virtually the entire right-wing media complex, have chosen to lay the blame on green energy, especially wind power.

November 29, 2018

Now, it’s true that the state generates a lot of electricity from wind, although it’s a small fraction of the total. But that’s not because Texas — Texas! — is run by environmental crazies. It’s because these days wind turbines are a cost-effective energy sourcewherever there’s a lot of wind, and one thing Texas has is a lot of wind.

It’s also true that extreme cold forced some of the state’s insufficiently winterized wind turbines to shut down, but as I said, this was happening to Texas energy sources across the board, with the worst problems involving natural gas.

Why, then, the all-out effort to falsely place the blame on wind power?

The incentives are obvious. Attacking wind power is a way for both elected officials and free-market ideologues to dodge responsibility for botched deregulation; it’s a way to please fossil fuel interests, which give the vast bulk of their political contributions to Republicans; and since progressives tend to favor renewable energy, it’s a way to own the libs. And it all dovetails with climate change denial.

But why do they think they can get away with such an obvious lie? The answer, surely, is that those peddling the lie know that they’re operating in a post-truth political landscape. When two-thirds of Republicans believe that Antifa was involved in the assault on the Capitol, selling the base a bogus narrative about the Texas electricity disaster is practically child’s play.

And if you’re expecting any change in the policies that helped cause this disaster, don’t count on it — at least as long as Texas remains Republican. Given everything else we’ve seen, the best bet is that demonization of wind power, not a realistic understanding of what actually happened, will rule policy going forward. (New York Times) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2021-07, climate change, Don’t Mess With, electricity, energy, fossil fuel, gas, Mother Nature, nonrenewable, oil, profit, Texas, USA, wealth

Thursday February 11, 2021

February 18, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 11, 2021

White House says Biden is too busy to pay much attention to Trump impeachment trial

The historic second impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump was already draining the oxygen from the air of political Washington on Monday, one day before it began. But one important viewer is making a point of saying he won’t tune in.

November 14, 2020

President Biden will be too busy this week to catch much of his predecessor’s Senate impeachment trial, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. He’ll be focused on pushing his pandemic relief package, visiting the National Institutes of Health, touching base at the Pentagon and tackling his other duties at a time of crisis, the White House says.

On Monday, Biden declined to comment on what is arguably a central question facing the country — how and whether his predecessor should be held to account for his role in encouraging a mob that sought to overturn his election loss.

“Let the Senate work that out,” Biden replied when asked by reporters.

“He has a full schedule this week,” Psaki said when asked about Biden’s plans as the Senate trial unfolds amid what is likely to be bitter partisan acrimony. “I don’t expect that he’s going to be, you know, posturing or commenting on this through the course of the week.”

February 4, 2021

But it is unclear if the White House will, or even can, be as removed from this political drama, as Biden and his aides suggest. No sitting president has ever had to contend with the impeachment trial of his predecessor unfolding during his own presidency, let alone in the crucial opening weeks that often present the best opening for getting things done.

Besides siphoning off the attention of the public and lawmakers, the trial, which is expected to last until at least the middle of next week, could delay Biden’s agenda and the confirmation of top appointees. Vice President Harris could be summoned to cast tiebreaking votes on procedural issues.

More broadly, Biden has spoken for two years of “restoring the soul of America” and moving beyond the Trump era. Yet in making it clear he will distance himself from the Senate trial, Biden is removing himself from the highest-profile effort to grapple with Trump’s legacy.

“The closest comparison, but it’s not direct, is Ford trying to figure out what to do with Nixon,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian who has written about impeachment. “Ford needed to find a way to turn the page.”

November 17, 2020

Then-president Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, ensuring he would not face criminal charges for the wrongdoing of the Watergate scandal, arguing that the country needed to move past a bitterly divisive period.

“I understand why Gerald Ford did what he did. But I think there was a cost to turning the corner as quickly as he did,” said Naftali, the former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “And I worry that, through an understandable concern about the pandemic, Joe Biden may be turning the corner too quickly.”

Trump was impeached for allegedly inciting an insurrection, a charge that stems from his encouragement of a mob that assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, forcing Congress to suspend the process of tallying the electoral college votes that showed Biden to be the victor in the November election.

Biden has said his focus is on tackling the crises facing the country, including the pandemic and the economic collapse, which are disrupting — and sometimes ending — the lives of millions of Americans. (Washington Post) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2021-06, cleanup, Donald Trump, impeachment, Joe Biden, Oval Office, painting, restoration, United States, USA

Thursday February 4, 2021

February 11, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 4, 2021

Republicans Pledge Undying Loyalty to Trump Three Weeks After His Failed Coup

January 20, 2021

In the wake of the deadly attack on Capitol Hill incited by former president Donald Trump, a few top Republicans read the room and decided it wouldn’t be a great look to condone violence or the instigator of said violence. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy proclaimed. Speaking on the Senate floor, Lindsey Graham told his colleagues, “Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey,” but “all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.” Now, in a turn of events that should shock exactly no one, they’ve gone from “Trump did something really bad and we’re done with him” to “Hey, big guy, my flight lands at 11 a.m., hope to be by your place before noon! Can’t wait, missed you tons! You want me to pick up anything on my way? Bottle of Diet Coke? Dessert? I know how you love those Little Debbie snack cakes.”

Yes, three weeks after the 45th president of the United States incited an insurrection against the U.S. government, one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress who could, if he wanted to, decide to consign Trump to the scrap heap of political history is…meeting with him at his private club. Probably over lunch. A date for which they had to fly 1,000 miles in the middle of a pandemic. (Continued: Vanity Fair) 

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2021-05, barnacle, Donald Trump, galleon, GOP, parasite, party, Republican, ship, USA, water
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