Prairie Weather

Could we be a little more intelligent here? Or...

Or must we obey the whimpers of trumped up fear and smug racism, not to mention outright inhospitality, coming from "America's heartland"?  Some heart, right? 

And how about stupid, really stupid!

Strategists will tell you that it is a mistake to fight the battle your enemies want you to fight. You should impose your strategy on them, not let them impose theirs on you. These lessons apply to the struggle with the leaders of ISIS. We have applied pressure upon them in Syria; they have replied with atrocious attacks in Ankara, Beirut, and now Paris. They are trying to provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with the Crusader infidels. We should deny them this opportunity. ...MichaelIgnatieff,NYRB

The solution?  Be the real America, the country whose largest population is made up of refugees -- from pilgrims to present day. For no good reason, President Obama is keeping the doors closed.  At this point, our country is "behaving like a bemused bystander, watching a neighbor trying to put out a fire, it can then put pressure on allies and adversaries to make up the shortfall in funding for refugee programs run by the UNHCR and the World Food Program," Ignatieff writes.  And, he goes on to say, we need to put sticks in sides of Russia and China who help not at all.

The Chinese have done little or nothing for refugee relief in the Middle East, and the Russians are energetically creating more refugees with their bombing campaign while contributing a paltry $300,000 to the UNHCR Syria appeal. As for the Saudis, the richest state in the region, they have contributed less than $3 million. ...Ignatieff,NYRB

None of us has any defensible right to refuse to help. Even if you don't like the idea of accepting more  refugees, you'd be downright stupid to allow your inhospitality to feed resentment. "If Europe closes its borders," Ignatieff concludes,"if the frontline states can no longer cope, the US and the West will face millions of stateless people who will never forget that they were denied the right to have rights. In a battle against extremism, giving hope to desperate people is not charity: it is simple prudence."

Paris attacks; US politics

A few days after the [Paris] attacks, Politico reported the firm convictions of party stalwarts, who confidently asserted, "The reemergence of foreign policy atop the Republican agenda will force voters to reevaluate the outsider candidates, particularly as both [Donald] Trump and [Ben] Carson display a lack of knowledge about national security and the terrorist threat."

But that, it turned out, was wishful thinking. Far from sobering up the Republican electorate, the attacks served instead to ­intensify its state of frothing rage. A poll showed that the candidate Republicans trusted most to handle terrorism, and the candidate who found his overall lead in the polls rising again after an autumn sag, was none other than Donald J. Trump. And, indeed, this development may have been predictable. From the standpoint of a Trump skeptic, it makes no sense to entrust the task of addressing large policy problems to a buffoonish demagogue; post-Paris, it makes even less sense to entrust one with solving problems now revealed to be even larger.

From the standpoint of a Trump fan, however, things look quite different: The country desperately needs a strong leader who can assure it of victory and who will look after its people without being held back by diplomatic niceties or moral decency, goes the thinking. ...JonathanChait,NYMag

Peace and that all that crap like "moral decency" is fine for fags and Democrats, but not for Real Americans.

Republicans try f*cking and sh*tting their way to the White House

Trump's language is being imitated now by other candidates, including the holier-than-thou Rand Paul.

Senator Rand Paul called any proposed trade-off between safety and liberty nothing but “bull,” before adding a syllable. ...NYT

And...

“Rand totally admires and worships Mr. Trump and copies anything he says,” said Corey Lewandowski, the Trump campaign manager, in an email....NYT

They're behaving like resentful teenagers, not like grown-up candidates for the presidency.

Lower-polling candidates in the Republican field have gravitated instead toward a Trump-like tactic: Insult rivals, add a dash of profanity, end with a rhetorical question.

“You’ve got the No. 2 guy tried to kill somebody at 14, and the No. 1 guy is high-energy and crazy as hell,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on MSNBC last month, referring to Ben Carson, who has said he tried to stab a friend as a teenager, and Mr. Trump. “How am I losing to these people?”

Even the mellow Mr. Carson has participated, gingerly.

“This is a bunch of crap,” he said at the debate in Boulder, Colo., last month, discussing government regulations.

Some candidates seem to relish the shift in decorum. ...NYT

And don't forget:  they're Christians.

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Meanwhile, the Washington Post reveals the deliberately racist drug policy now embraced by Republicans.  They're separating heroin users for special consideration because heroin users match  the suburban, white demographic of their supporters... as distinct from pot and crack in non-white areas.

More than 40 years after Republican President Richard M. Nixon coined the phrase “war on drugs,” many GOP presidential candidates are calling for an end to one of its central tenets — by agreeing with Democrats to treat low-level drug offenders rather than incarcerate them.

The Republicans are selective, however, about who is deserving of their compassion.

Several GOP presidential contenders have advocated treating the nation’s growing heroin epidemic as a health crisis, not a criminal one. But most stop short of advocating the same approach to other drug laws, notably those involving marijuana and crack cocaine, which disproportionately affect African Americans.

Such views highlight the resonance and reach of the opiate epidemic — but also a persistent racial and geographic divide in American politics. The heroin epidemic has overwhelmingly hit whites. It has also skyrocketed to the top of voters’ lists of political priorities in the same bands of America — rural states, the suburbs and notably the early voting state of New Hampshire — that track directly with where Republicans must perform well to win back the White House next year. ...WaPo

This strategy reminds us of the pre-W Karl Rove data collection that gave the Republicans an edge as much as 15 years ago and has continued to affect elections.

The candidates are walking a narrow but perhaps politically astute line, some say, between making inroads with the ballooning number of suburban and rural voters who have been touched by the country’s exploding heroin crisis — yet not alienating Republican voters who fear that the roiling national debate about race and policing has left law enforcement exposed. ...WaPo

But would you let your kid marry a Trump supporter?

... These people aren’t skinheads. They don’t seem like jerks. Most of them are wearing jeans. There are guys with mullets and satin jackets, and well-groomed young men in blue blazers with gold buttons. There are people with babies and people with canes. There are women in plaid shirts and women in tight dresses and matrons with pearl earrings. There are trucker-hat versions of Trump’s famous Make America Great Again cap, and camo versions, and one in hunting-vest blaze orange. There are a lot of couples. They are, it is true, overwhelmingly white people. Do you have a problem with that?

The other night, at a Trump rally in Alabama, a black protester who shouted “Black lives matter!” was surrounded by white men who punched and kicked him. Far from apologizing for this, Trump is gloating about it: “What an obnoxious, terrible guy that was,” he tells the crowd in Myrtle Beach, who turn around and hiss at the press on his cue. In August, two Boston men said Trump inspired their vicious beating of a homeless Mexican immigrant. This week, a group of civil-rights protesters in Minneapolis was fired upon by four white men in masks and camouflage. ...MollyBall,Atlantic

We cannot allow efforts to clean up government, says White House

It's very simple:  from US brutalities in Honduras to sexual assaults on Peace Corps volunteers to FBI corruption to .... The list continues... 

The White House is unwilling to allow inspectors general to do their jobs."Tensions are common between the watchdogs and the officials they investigate," the New York Times reports, "President Ronald Reagan, in fact, fired 15 inspectors general in 1981. But a number of scholars and investigators said the restrictions imposed by the Obama administration reflect a new level of acrimony."

“This is by far the most aggressive assault on the inspector general concept since the beginning,” said Paul Light, a New York University professor who has studied the system. “It’s the complete evisceration of the concept. You might as well fold them down. They’ve become defanged.”...NYT

Trump finds open brutality appeals to some voters even more than persistent meanness

Whatever is most uncivilized -- most brutal -- gets the applause of millions among us.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Monday he not only would bring back waterboarding, the controversial interrogation technique discontinued by the Obama administration, but also would "approve more than that," even if such tactics prove ineffective.

"Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would — in a heartbeat," Trump said to loud cheers during a rally at a convention center here Monday night that attracted thousands. "And I would approve more than that. Don't kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn't work." ...WaPo