CORKER UNLOADS: He would NOT support Trump again; says Trump NOT a role model; won’t say if he trusts Trump w nukes https://t.co/oAGIWVZ8P9 — Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 24, 2017 Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee might have delivered these accurate, critical remarks earlier; it’s still worth hearing them now.
Politics
City, Culture, Local Government, Politics
The Same Ten People Problem (Revisited)
by JOHN ADAMS •
In a presentation from September on the state of the city (really meaning the state of Whitewater’s municipal government), City Manager Cameron Clapper tackled again the ‘Same Ten People Problem’ (STPP), where only a few people participate in municipal meetings, etc. One can find the full video presentation below; Clapper’s remarks on the STPP appear…
Comedy, Conway, Politics, Trump
Kate McKinnon as Kellyanne Conway
by JOHN ADAMS •
Over at Saturday Night Live, Kate McKinnon’s in a sketch where she plays Kellyanne Conway as though Conway were the monster Pennywise from Stephen King’s It. She’s portrayed Conway before, but here her especially well. (The full sketch is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlt3rA-oDao – the embed above starts part way in.) In the sketch, Conway, speaking from…
Alt-Right, Bigotry, Politics, Russia, Trump, Trump-Russia, Tyranny
Their Friends Are America’s Enemies
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s not easy to stand up to Vladimir Putin, just ask Alexei @Navalny – a look at life in Russia’s opposition pic.twitter.com/FhUNDB963u — The Guardian (@guardian) October 10, 2017 It’s no surprise, truly, that white nationalists who returned to Charlottesville chanted three main slogans: ‘You will not replace us,’ ‘Russia is our friend,’ and ‘the South will…
America, Culture, Education, Politics, School District
The Erosion of Political Norms (Part 3 in a Series)
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Local Government, Planning, Politics
The Erosion of Political Norms (Part 2 in a Series)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater, as with other Wisconsin cities and towns, has a Planning Commission. Like some towns (but not others), Whitewater by practice places a member of one commission (let’s say, Parks & Rec) on another commission (let’s say, Planning): a representative of one commission to another. So a person might be appointed to serve on the…
America, Local Government, Open Government, Politics
The Erosion of Political Norms (Part 1 in a Series)
by JOHN ADAMS •
This is the first in a series about the erosion of local political norms. In a recent essay on national politics, E.J. Dionne Jr., Norm Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann write of How the GOP Prompted the Decay of Political Norms (adapted from their book One Nation After Trump): President Trump’s approach to governance is unlike that…
Law, Politics
Podcast: Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s a new podcast from Atty. Preet Bharara, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. I’ve embedded the first episode, below, and readers can subscribe to this and future episodes via iTunes or Stitcher. On March 11, 2017 President Donald Trump fired US Attorney Preet Bharara. Preet tells the story in…
Foreign Affairs, Politics, Trump, Writing
Lauren Duca humbly presents…
by JOHN ADAMS •
Chris Cillizza, formerly of the Washington Post, presently of CNN, eternally a buffoon, wrote today that he thought Trump’s United Nations address was “much more poetic” than Trump’s prior speeches. From this, one can say that CNN wastes at least as much money as Cillizza’s salary & benefits. (There are, probably, vile limericks that are…
Alt-Right, America, Authoritarianism, Politics, Trump, Trump-Russia
The Premature Question
by JOHN ADAMS •
Over at the Daily Beast, Joy Reid asks What’s Going to Happen When the Trumpists Realize the America They Yearn for Is Gone? It’s an interesting question, perhaps, but more importantly it’s a premature one. We’ve a long road ahead before Trumpism is finished, and you’ll excuse me if the time for pondering life after…
Alt-Right, America, Babbittry, Bigotry, City, Culture, Liberty, Local Government, Politics
The Existential (Imagined and Real)
by JOHN ADAMS •
It was Michael Anton (writing as Publius Decius Mus) who exactly one year ago famously declared that 2016 was “The Flight 93 Election,” an existential fight for survival for state-loving conservatives: 2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it…
Politics, Trump
What’s Left
by JOHN ADAMS •
It was Secretary Clinton who, during the campaign, controversially but memorably asserted that “[t]o just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables,’” Hillary Clinton said at a New York fundraiser on Sept. 9. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it. And unfortunately, there…
Local Government, Politics, Trump
Trump’s the Failure We Always Knew He Would Be
by JOHN ADAMS •
Writing in the Journal Sentinel, Craig Gilbert finds that Donald Trump has squandered chance to broaden base, increase popularity, polls show: “He’s done nothing to expand his base and, if anything, he’s sort of where he was, or experiencing greater erosion,” says Lee Miringoff, who conducted polls this month for NBC/Marist in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that showed Trump with…
City, Local Government, Politics
Three Tiers of Public Communication
by JOHN ADAMS •
Local government – and here I am thinking primarily of a small town’s local government – has three tiers of communication: saying nothing, saying something, saying the right thing. (In the third tier, right refers to a full and fair means of communication, and not right as merely agreeable and pleasing.) Saying nothing. Common enough…