TPM Reader RM responds to John Judis:
I disagree with John Judis’ analysis regarding the terrorist attack in Europe. I think he conflates issues in the Middle East with those of the Muslim community living abroad. I don’t think the two are linked as closely as he assumes. I also think he conflates terrorism (a tactic) with the ideology of militant Islamic fundamentalism.
After you read this, you might miss Dick Cheney’s credulous legalisms, squirmy rationales, and unconvincing denials on torture.
From John Judis ...
Another terrorist attack, this time in Brussels. I don’t see an end to these, and at the same time I don’t think Americans or Europeans will accept a strategy of letting them play out on the grounds that less people die in terrorist attacks than in highway accidents or bathtub electrocutions. They will strengthen the hand of interventionists, but not sufficiently so that the threat can finally be eliminated rather than exacerbated. They will draw the United States and Europe into a conflict that it is not prepared to fight to the end, which would involve not just the military, but unprecedented diplomatic moves that would undo 150 years of Western intervention in the Middle East and North Africa.
Several points here:
Michael Levi, the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of THE POWER SURGE, is hosting a live chat on all things related to energy security. Topics can include climate change, energy policy, weapons of mass destruction, science and technology in the Islamic world, energy security and nuclear terrorism. Drop your questions in and join us on Thursday!
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I’m not sure anything better captures the GOP’s inability to grasp what’s happening to it than the House Freedom Caucus wrestling with how to grapple with the rise of Donald Trump and how to resist his candidacy. Donald Trump is the Freedom Caucus. You might even say, in the beginning was the Freedom Caucus. And then the Freedom Caucus became flesh and walked among us. And his name was Donald Trump.
Meet the archeo-Trump, hair helmet and all: the man who brought you O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Colbert, Trump and so many others. Meet Wally George. Here’s his story.
The #NeverTrump non-movement has taken a blow, as Rick Perry has apparently taken himself out of contention as the standard bearer of a #NeverTrump third party conservative ticket. A deeper issue is that, remember, Rick Perry was basically drummed out to the 2012 and 2016 elections as something close to a laughing stock. In 2016, he barely rose to the level of a laughingstock since no one was even paying attention. This isn’t meant as ridicule. It was a more a matter of expectations: the million term governor of the biggest red state in the country, couldn’t even make a respectable showing in a run for president. #NeverTrump looks very much like a vehicle with which DC power brokers take the guys they wanted in the first place but couldn’t get through primary process and nominate them by acclamation through what amounts to a GOP in exile.
Flagged by TPM Reader MS, the man charged with assaulting a protester at a Trump rally in Tucson on Saturday night, Tony Pettway, is an airman stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
I want to tell you a weird story about the Trump campaign. Only this one starts before Trump ever announced his candidacy, actually before he even became the national media figure he’s been for decades.
Let’s go back to the early 1980s in Southern California, a very different place from what it is today. I know it well because I grew up there. Back in the very early 80s, when I was 12 or 13 or 14, I and a number of friends were big fans of a guy named Wally George. George was the originator of what was once called ‘combat TV.’ His show briefly went nationwide. But he was overtaken by imitators who were more polished, less odd and ungainly. The late and much-better-known Morton Downey Jr successfully took George’s schtick nationwide and himself become the pioneer of tabloid daytime talk shows like Geraldo and Jerry Springer. He and especially George also paved the way for Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, O’Reilly and more. In a sense, Stephen Colbert – in his Colbert Report persona – was a direct lineal, if parodic, descendent of Wally George.