"Trouble Ahead" - Trump and the GOP Senate

Fracturing the "Nothing Can Stop Him Now" Nightmare

Since he doesn't understand how "being President" works,

we can assume that he doesn't understand how "dealing with the Senate" works, either.

In these dark moments when we've allowed our worst expectations to gain an unwarranted inevitability, we've imagined that the machinations of the Trump Administration will be effortlessly herding one legislative nightmare after another through a vengeful, gloating clutch of obediently greedy Senate plutocrats. Although the reactionaries are now firmly in control of ALL branches of the government, things may not be "singing" along in an ebullient chorus of victory, plunder and prizes for the salivating Trumpkins.

Normally, one would anticipate that the Republican controlled Senate would assume the historical tradition of its mindless, unanimous lockstep. This is hardly an exaggeration. We've watched this for years now. Still, when there is no essentially other possibility of hope -- as is the case now -- our gloom may have obscured a faint glimmer of unexpected optimism lurking patiently in the Senate chamber's cloak room.

Now, immediately dispatch any furtive expectation that the Senate Republicans are going to somehow act in the interests of the country or the old democracy. They haven't done anything similar to this for decades. But -- MeanMesa sees a faint possibility that, while continuing to consistently embrace their absolute highest priority of further enriching themselves and their billionaire handlers, these old, white GOP Senators may possibly have an even less legitimate interest scurrying around in their dark dreams -- revenge.

"Legitimate?" Don't forget the now antiquated theory that the Senate "serves" the interest of the common people of the country, and that doesn't mean "serves them up as meaningless pork chops on a plate of deregulated, Senatorial, get rich quick schemes."

We can be quite certain that, should the Senate Republicans deny Trump any of his "election bling," they won't be doing it because of their love of democracy. Republican Senators do, in fact, "love $omething," but it's not democracy.

 Possible "Bad Weather" Ahead In Trump's GOP Senate

"Bad weather?" Let's just say "Bad Feelings" -- plenty of them.

An inexperienced, under informed, naive President

 and the geriatric Senate's GOP, anti-democracy, expert "meat grinders"

They won't even need their proverbial "long knives" for this one.

The Senate of the 115th Congress [the current one] is 54-R to 44-D with 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. That leaves the "operational tally" at 52-R vs 48-D.

Unimaginably, we are now looking to 3 Republicans to stand up for the democracy -- of course, following some weird, inexplicable Republican motives for such a move. Realistically setting the possibility of any actual, unseen Republican patriotism aside, our hopes now reside squarely with the prospect of "Republican political revenge" -- entombed somewhere in the mix with the now suddenly checkered prospect of having to compete with the White House Trumpkins over the traditionally successful Senatorial looting operations -- presenting "priorities" which might sway what, otherwise, appears inevitable.

Let's take a look at a few examples of some of the possible Senate "storm clouds" quietly drifting toward the Oval Office and the new President's legislation.

Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah

Trump, Senator Orrin Hatch and the Mormons

Mormons have the cultural scars, bruises and grave stones of "PR problems" from a century ago. Not only are the rank and file LDS sensitive to such matters, it is very good politics to also be sensitive, yourself, if your constituency happens to be in Utah. Orrin Hatch doesn't like criticism of Mormons. He really didn't like Trump's "Mad Hatter" humiliation of Mitt Romney. Regardless of Orrin's personal sentiments, the politics of "stump the Trump" will play well at home. Utah, in general, is already less than ecstatic with The Donald's "pussy grabbing" even if they were somewhat less upset with his string of multiple wives and simultaneous, extra-marital "sweet hearts."

Senator Marco Rubio, R-Florida

Trump, "Little Marco," the Cubans and the GOP's "Young Guns"

Marco Rubio was heavily bruised during the GOP Primary debates. He had already established his own political comic meme with the frantic water guzzling while "rebutting" an Obama State of the Union speech.  Trump chewed up Rubio alive with a string of insults which continued in standard "Trump style" -- always met with histrionic doggerel screams during his rallies -- even long after the Primary had ended [leaving Rubio embarrassingly conflicted with his Senatorial future] and The Donald had plunged deeply into his strange, surreal Presidential campaign.

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas

Trump, "Lyin' Ted" and the "nearly out of breath" Texas Evangelicals

The reason that Ted's evangelicals are "nearly out of breath" is because they had been forcibly "pigeon holed" into approving Trump's decidedly "non-evangelical," wildly public, profligate behavior. If you are familiar with "the biblicals," the real problem is that the "other guy" is black.Ted Cruz grudgingly "made up" with the tyrant in a depressing bid to be chosen for the cabinet but received his own "Romney style" humiliation instead. Trump's crazy allegation that Cruz's hyper-pious father had helped assassinate JFK struck an impressive resonance with the hillbillies in the raucous crowds at the Trump-fests, but left just about everyone else staggering toward the nearest vomitorium. [Trump Accuses Cruz Father/POLITICO]

Senator John McCain, R-Arizona

Trump, Senator John McCain and the angry war mongers

The Donald began his pointed irritation of the geriatric war monger by "firing a shot across the bow" with his weird crack about McCain's POW experience. [Trump Slams McCain for being captured/WashPOST]  This "love affair" has plunged into deeper water since then. McCain became even more upset when Trump lurched after McCain's "buddy," Senator Lindsey Graham.

Senator Lindsey Graham,
R-South Carolina

Trump, and "lost boy," Senator Lindsey Graham
 -- "looking for love -- practically everywhere"

Lindsey Graham may not have garnered many votes in primary campaign support, but he still has a Senate vote and even something of a strange loyalty from his own voting block "caucus" comprised of other Confederate state, Senatorial throw backs. Trump easily absconded with Lindsey's historical segregationist base of Southern racists with an endless string of "white supremacist" innuendos in his campaign speeches which most erstwhile "Lindsey backers" found almost as delightful as either bad religion or bad narcotics.

"You ain't washin' this one off!"
[image]

The Republican Establishment -- "Hey, brokers, lobbyists and hedge fund billionaires have feelings, too."

The damage already inflicted by the Trump "experiment" has inflicted fundamental damage to the Republican brand. Worse, this kind of damage is almost certainly politically permanent. The US has experienced two un-elected Republican Presidents in this Century. The first one was horrendous. This one appears quite ready to re-brand that last nightmare into the imaginary dust of "the good old days."

Choices: another Republican depression,
 WWIII or both? That question is too
complicated for the hillbillies. [image]

The American Electorate is Terrified

Now that the Inauguration is complete, an actual majority of Americans -- including the 55% who didn't bother to vote -- are officially frightened. For the past couple of months those with a "more whimsical - less realistic" comprehension of matters were desperately seeking "someone" who could "fix" this. We're on the train. We're going where the tracks go. There isn't anyone left in power except Republicans. Take it from there.

There are plenty of "ego bruised" Republicans beyond this short list of examples. Happily, many of them are seated in the Republican controlled Senate.

During a more typical Republican Primary candidates would have been recruited from the various Red State Governors, but this nomination process found a depressing majority of Red States as "Federal hand out parasites" and the corresponding "Red State Governors" as petulant, ill advised, incompetent ideologues. As a result those FOX News "debates" were packed with Republican Senators -- literally an indigestible poison pill for the Party's hordes of beer soaked racists terribly upset after being bushwhacked by Washington "insiders."

Worse, the GOP Governors couldn't politically maneuver well at all while dragging their instate collection of "fetchy" oil billionaires around behind them -- so the Koch Brothers  and Goldman-Sachs won. What the GOP Senate seems to be doing day by day as of this posting may look relatively innocuous, but every action -- on practically anything -- is now the result of "orders coming down" from the big boys on the far end of the campaign checks.

The rowdy GOP House caucus is chuck full of amateur looters, but the GOP Senate is, on the other hand, chuck full of surgically professional GOP looters. The extremely well fed, Republican banksters and hedgies who currently own these Senators, while probably appreciating the exciting business opportunities of becoming utterly unregulated, are far less enthusiastic as they watch huge tranches of the "peoples' money" sliding out of their grip and into the hands of Trump's lobbyists, billionaires and other Goldman-Sachs "swamp dwellers."

Trump has never been famous for sharing.

ISIS: Latest GOP "Word Twisting" and Other Mischief

 Peering Into the Murk

If you don't believe the DoD, there's always still ISIS.

The "caliphate's leadership" has clearly heeded the hard lessons learned from autocrats who have too generously allowed the media too close to, shall we say, some of their bad habits. While we might at first be thinking of opaque dictatorships such as North Korea, the example followed by the ISIS leaders was observed at a much closer proximity.

Frankly, there is almost no chance that the same people who are directing ISIS weren't watching the US military do roughly this same thing with the embedded reporters during the Iraq occupation. They learned the importance of image management and control of on site reporting from the American invaders in Iraq.

Given this, we can look at the carefully engineered image ISIS has chosen to propagate, and we attempt to discern what they are trying to accomplish with it. We can also take a look at exactly which voices in the world beyond ISIS are helping them develop this image.

Obviously, we should start with the loudest, creepiest and funniest examples available to us anywhere in the Western social culture. That would be the Republicans in the Congress.

The Mechanism of Terror

It takes two to tango.

Make that - it takes at least two.

The mass executions, rapes, abductions, forced marriages, forced conversions and ethnic genocide comprising the the ISIS "terror propagation" strategy has actually worked fairly well in an appreciable number of cases in the past, for example, terrorizing the Iraqi regular army units supposedly defending Mosul into a frantic retreat. Further, these accounts are not fuzzy third hand tales of grisly decapitations travelling as gossip, they are well produced videos.

The image construction desired by ISIS is that all the rebel fighters are just like the nut case sawing through the reporter's neck on the video. That would be military propaganda aimed at terrorizing and demoralizing the specific troops stationed in the path of its opportunistic advance. The usefulness of this tactic is abundantly clear.

But another part of the terrorism program is slightly more sophisticated. In that process the "terrified and demoralized" are far away and more or less quite safe from the Sunni fighters in the desert. The point of this post is precisely this feature of the ISIS program. Those crafty insurgents have managed to terrorize and demoralize some of the safest people on the planet -- US House and Senate Republicans.

But...is this really what is happening? Are these millionaire politicians with staff, Capital police, DC police and probably even the Secret Service -- not to mention the US military -- at their beck and call actually terrorized by the ISIS troops slicing off heads at a distance amounting to a quarter of the way around the planet? [The distance from Washington DC to Baghdad is 6,192 miles.]

Of course not.

It's politics.

And, it's hilarious.

It's also cravenly cynical. ["Cynical" means always expected the worst of everyone.]

No problem. The educationally challenged hill billies and bigots making up the Republican Party base love it. For the GOP's politicians, it's simply another day of politics -- business as usual, to hell with the nation.

Let's have a look at just how the clown car is exploiting the absolutely delectable political "opportunity" offered up by ISIS terror.

The "Word Twisting"

All The Interesting Specifics

Here we can resort to an expedition in MeanMesa's "Special Word Use Dictionary."

Degrade

The President has used this term, in this case, to appropriately set the scope of his military intervention plans. With the term "degrade" he describes the process through which the capacity of ISIS to do things will be decreased. The ability of ISIS to do things now will be less after its capacity to do those things has been degraded. The mechanism to be used to degrade ISIS capabilities will be air strikes which will gradually deprive ISIS of the use of assets which currently allow it to do things it is doing now.

Destroy

The Republicans have used this term to describe a mythical process after which ISIS will no longer exist. The problem is that ISIS, even with all its warts and wrinkles, exists in the hearts and minds of those currently participating in its program. This use of the term "destroy" implies the elimination of what is in the hearts and minds of these participants which is presently "keeping ISIS going." The loudmouth Republicans have "skipped" the part of this equation which suggests any possible solution other than "terminating" the hearts and minds in which this is currently located.

Recognizing this, ISIS has adopted the predictable, asymmetric response of insinuating these particular hearts and minds into the midst of millions of civilian non-participants who would also be "terminated" by such a process. Republicans have chosen this term and concept specifically because it represents a tactical impossibility for this reason.

Defeat

Republicans have used this term to suggest that, at some point in the future, the leadership of ISIS might do something along the lines of "surrender" and "ask for terms." The implied idea is that, if this were to happen, the more or less autonomous militias all across the "caliphate" would simply lay down their weapons while saying "Well, I guess this is over now."

Unfortunately, because ISIS is, generally, driven by what is in the hearts and minds of those in the movement, "surrender" is extremely unlikely and, more likely, an impossibility. The thing was designed to make this the case. It is probably possible to get some parts of ISIS to surrender, but all the rest of it would be just as inclined to continue fighting on an even more autonomous basis than now.

The motivation which drives ISIS fighters and apparently compels them to act as they do is not conditional on the actions of the group's "high command." They are personal.

Troops [aka: "boots of the ground"]

Depending on one's "point of view" the term "troops" has also one which has become defined by convenience. GOP Congressmen are primarily interested in this concept because they are driven by the prospect of again calling President Obama -- who has stated clearly that he had no intention of redeploying US "combat forces" in Iraq -- a liar who is unfit for office and should be impeached.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Impeaching Obama has been their recurring nocturnal wet dream since 2008. During the stagnant interludes between their frenetic ranting episodes, it emerges that they could care less about Iraq, ISIS, the troops or US national security. They care about pleasing the GOP's billionaire bosses, politics and impeaching Obama.

For progressive voices even the remote, fleeting prospect of "reinserting" ourselves into Iraq is horrifying. [Count MeanMesa in on this one.] This bunch has been badgered almost to the point of hysteria with ominously foreboding phrases such as "slippery slope" and "exit strategy." However, the ugly evidence suggests that even progressives have been somewhat influenced by the right wing's propaganda.

Perhaps otherwise optimistic progressives are temporarily forgetting that:

1. We have to trust the President we elected, and,

2. the President is NOT George W. Bush or Richard Cheney.

Unilateral distrust and disgust with our government is a media propaganda product of the right wing think tanks and have very little to offer when it comes to operating the democracy -- which happens to be OUR job.

The GOP, ISIS Terror and the Mid-Term Election

Oh, may as well include the media, too.

The additional capacities made available by the command organization are very useful to the individuals in the militia groups, but these are not the reasons the militia groups continue to fight. The Republicans have set this impossibly "high bar" of defeating ISIS in their rhetoric precisely because it is impossible. The President uses this term to describe what will happen when ISIS is degraded to the point that the actions of individual militias will be reduced to a more tolerable scale.

All the "detail work" in this post may, at first, seem to be a little fidgety, but remember, the Republican strategic maxim is that "the devil is in the details." When a political party finds itself -- more or less permanently -- unable to win elections thanks to a stark paucity of either policies or personalities capable of actually attracting voters, the political "last refuge" will be to unleash a fact twisting torrent of psychologically charged, incendiary, carefully groomed [by think tanks...], over simplified "details."

Within the current Republican Party every effort, as a consequence of now finding itself in this desperate political vacuum, must be directed to inserting these innuendos into the narrative rhetoric which can then be exploited as a substitute for its otherwise vacuous political wasteland of material ideas. When we hear Republican "spokesmen," including media pundits, Congressmen, Senators and other voices from previous, failed Republican administrations being endlessly interviewed on "news" shows, they will all be eerily mouthing their assigned part of this identical narrative rhetoric.

While normal citizens see this as simply another episode of a "not very engaging," endless horror movie about clones or body snatchers, the semi-comatose derelicts in the Republican Party's base consider it to be quite significant, quite substantial, "red meat" information. And, yes, there is a trick -- a method to this media madness.

By establishing "reasonable sounding" goals such as "defeating ISIS" or "destroying ISIS" by relentlessly repeating these specific terms in every "interview" headed out to the air waves, the Republican base begins to tacitly accept them as a "the very least" which should be expected of the Obama Administration's response strategy. All of this just rolls forward painlessly even though most of it -- under practically anyone's definition -- is essentially impossible.

Establishing goals through this endlessly repeated rhetoric which, when considered from a more informed point of view, are essentially impossible is the GOP's psychological template. Presenting them as not only possible and reasonable but also as "Everyone knows that this is the only possible way to do this successfully." is the GOP's "recipe" for preparing its base to accept its gnawing, endless criticism of the President -- even in a time of war.

Amazingly, today even the more progressive and rational voices are "very, very realistically acknowledging" that the air strike campaign cannot "defeat" or "destroy" ISIS. This is the extent that the GOP think tanks' meme has penetrated common opinion. Obviously, it is toxic.

As for the Republican base, bear in mind that these GOP base voters were the bunch who were blindly willing and anxious to buy into the W's famous "smoke 'em out" reassurances -- a decade ago. 

MeanMesa dares to presume that every -- every -- American citizen who visits this blog will be voting in November . . . no matter what. The hill billies and bigots will be there.

A Few Examples From the Bottom of the Barrel

Lighten up your day with what's emerged from the "Elephant's Mouth."

Hysteria

Oh, my stars! 

Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey. 

You've just sat down with the mint julep the billionaires bought you, thinking about all sort of Army "man things" and now you have THE VAPORS!

The very, very brave and very, very manly Senator from Virginia, Lindsey Graham, wasted no time at all proclaiming that the "black man's" ISIS strategy was doomed to failure without the dreaded "boots on the ground" addition. [Lindsey finds it strangely less worrisome to send the off spring of other people to war when you're a very, very patriotic single man with no children. He's done this before.]  The pair, Lindesy with the help of his "very, very best buddy," Senator John "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" McCain, have taken the Herculean responsibility of filling today's role as the GOP's "war experts." 

Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks during a campaign stop at American Legion Post 20 on Wednesday, April 23, 2014, in Greenwood, S.C.

Rainier Ehrhardt/AP

Rachel Maddow - MSNBC

Lindsey Graham: We may 'all get killed' by ISIS

[Read the entire article here - MSNBC. Excerpted below.]

Somehow, he’s managed to become even less subtle. On “Fox News Sunday” yesterday, guest host John Roberts asked Graham if he has any faith that President Obama’s plan against ISIS is going to work. “Not much,” the senator replied, adding, “We’re fighting a terrorist army, not an organization. It’s going to take an army to beat an army. And this idea we’ll never have any boots on the ground to defeat them in Syria is fantasy…. It’s delusional in the way they approach this.”

 

And then Graham really let loose.

“[T]hey’re intending to come here. So, I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource our security and this is not about our safety. There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground to go into Syria, to destroy ISIL without a substantial American component. And to destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off their financing and destroy their capability to regenerate.

 

“This is a war we’re fighting, it is not a counter terrorism operation! This is not Somalia; this is not Yemen; this is a turning point in the war on terror. Our strategy will fail yet again. This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home.”

We're not certain about exactly how Lindsey accumulated all this "in depth" knowledge about ISIS and even military combat in general. During the Vietnam war, Senator Lindsey served as a Navy lawyer. He was never ordered to a duty station beyond the borders of his home state of Virginia.


Yes, the Senator's words are as grotesque as usual, but fortunately, the American comedian, John Stewart, took the effort to "put them in their place."

YouTube: John Steward - Lindsey Graham and tha' VAPORS



[For video of the actual interview: 
PoliticusUSA - Lindsy Graham Melts Down]

Sedition

The DailyKOS

Fri Sep 26, 2014

GOP congressman says he's urging American generals to resign rather than follow president's orders

by HunterFollow

 

sedition (n): conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state

 

Rep. Doug Lamborn says he and like-minded House Republicans are trying to destabilize the American military in order to foil American foreign policy abroad. No really, he's bragging about it. 

 

[T]hat is exactly what Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) told a group of voters he wants to see happen, the Colorado Independent reported. 

 “A lot of us are talking to the generals behind the scenes, saying, ‘Hey, if you disagree with the policy that the White House has given you, let’s have a resignation,’” Lamborn said Tuesday, adding that if generals resigned en masse in protest of President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, they would “go out in a blaze of glory.”

Lamborn, it should be noted, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

[Read more here: Talking Points Memo This link provides a video of the Congressman speaking: EGBERTOWILLIS]

This is the "help" the Republican Party is offering to the country.