zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — despair or certain hope? ]
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Under the headline The White House Has No Plan for Confronting the Mueller Report, we read (upper panel):

An Urban Dictionary entry captures the sense of helplessness..

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Carrie Underwood‘s song, from which the phrase “Jesus, take the wheel” is drawn, uses driving too fast and spinning out of control on black ice as its example of a situation where that prayer arises, setting the scene with the despairing line:

she was running low on faith and gasoline

In her despair, she finds surrender:

Jesus, take the wheel
Take it from my hands
‘Cause I can’t do this on my own
I’m letting go
So give me one more chance
And save me from this road I’m on
Jesus, take the wheel

The car comes to rest on the shoulder of the road, and —

And for the first time in a long time
She bowed her head to pray
She said I’m sorry for the way
I’ve been living my life
I know I’ve got to change
So from now on tonight

Jesus, take the wheel..

Listen:

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For reasons outside my control, when I first played this song it was followed automatically and much to my surr[prise by this, from Handel, and apt for the season:

Perhaps there’s an answer here to the White House staffers’ despair — speaking of the Christ child, Handel, quoting Isaiah, instructs us:

And the government shall be upon his shoulders

The government..

[ by Charles Cameron — not exactly a knife (or sayf) to a gunfight, but .. ]
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Here:

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The obvious MBS DoubleQuote is with Jared Kushner, as in the Medium article, Two Princes: Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman. Prince Hamlet offers a third and more ambiguous choice..

When the wind is southerly, Hamlet [Act 2 Scene 2] says, I know a hawk from a handsaw — but tell me, who knows whence [John 3.8] the wind blows?

[ by Charles Cameron — Donald Trump and Joy Reid. meet CP Cavafy ]
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Donald Trump has been repeating a mantra tying Dems to the word mob recently — here’s one example:

“Democrats produce mobs, Republicans produce jobs!” @realDonaldTrump

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 19, 2018

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Belay that! For Trump “the mob at the gates” might equally, scarily, be that “caravan” in Mexico, making its way up to a confrontation with US troops at the border, and no doubt paid for their troubles by George Soros —

Take your camera. Go into the middle. You’ll find MS-13. You’ll find Middle Easterners..

Hold it: that’s a powerful image.

But Joy Reid saw the mob differently:

The mob are WOMEN.

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Democrats, the caravan, women — take the mob at the gates as you will, there’s a considerable force, on the outside, massing and pressing to come in. And poetry has something to say about that (recurrent) situation. In the words of CP Cavafy‘s celebrated poem, Waiting for the Barbarians:

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

But I’ll invite you to read the answer to that question, and the rest of the poem, powerful as it is, on the Poetry Foundation site..

Cavafy has one possible outcome — but there may be as many as there are mobs, or people perceiving them.

In any case, enjoy the poem, and vote.

[ by Charles Cameron — and a few ppl whose views on trump’s strategy document I’d also like to read ]
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Tim Furnish, Trump’s New Counter-terrorism Strategy: The One-Eyed Man is Still King

Trump, 2018, National Strategy for Counterterrorism

Obama, 2011, National Strategy for Counterterrorism

Tim Furnish, Sectsploitation: How to Win Hearts and Minds in the Islamic World

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I wanted to draw your attention to our blog-friend and sometime contributor Tim Furnish‘s post, which offers a lucid introduction to the Trump administration’s National CT Strategy paper, situating it in contrast to the Obama admin’s version, and linking it to a very helpful breakdown of what we might call (remembering William James, but in mostly lower case) the varieties of Islamic experience.

Let me just say that from my POV:

1) Tim Furnish has a way superior understanding of the said varieties than John Bolton ever will have — plus he has a taste for pop culture asides!

2) that the key issue to be further explored could be expressed in terms of the overlaps, Venn diagram-wise, between “literalist”, “mainstream” and “authentic” Islams.

That’s a project I’ve been circling for more than a decade, and the closer I get, the more subtleties arise to be considered. Still circling in..

Thomas Hegghammer, JM Berger, Leah Farrall, Adam Elkus, Will McCants and John Horgan are others whose varied voices and opinions regaarding the new CT Strategy text I’ll be watching for.

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Tim’s essay and associated matters: Warmly recommended.

Zen — pray chime in.

[ by Charles Cameron — following on from Metaphors, more iv, featuring Oliver Roeder & Chris Cillizza ]
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Trump’s War on the Justice System Threatens to Erode Trust in the Law:

It is a once-unimaginable scenario: Sometime soon in an American courtroom, a criminal defense lawyer may argue that the prosecution of an MS-13 gang member is a politically motivated “witch hunt” built around a witness who has “flipped” and taken what the lawyer calls a plea deal of dubious legality.

He will be quoting the president of the United States.

That is potentially the gravest danger of President Trump’s sustained verbal assault on the country’s justice system, legal experts say. In his attempt at self-defense amid the swirl of legal cases and investigations involving himself, his aides and his associates, Mr. Trump is directly undermining the people and processes that are the foundation of the nation’s administration of justice.

The result is a president at war with the law.

at the end of a week that featured criminal conviction for Paul Manafort and a guilty plea by Michael Cohen, President Trump over the weekend took aim at the FBI. The president tweeting out new accusations against Hillary ..

pick up the ball ..
this is really a base play..

Winners and losers from the Arizona and Florida primaries

The story of the 2018 primaries usually centers on President Trump. And there’s plenty of that narrative in Tuesday’s gubernatorial, Senate and House primaries in Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma: For another week, Trump is in our winner’s column. But liberal Democrats are an even bigger winner, for reasons we’ll get into. Here are the winners and losers from some of the most consequential primaries of the year.

Trump spars with Andrew Gillum, the surprise Democratic nominee in Florida’s governor’s race

President Trump and Andrew Gillum, the surprise Democratic winner of Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, exchanged barbs on Wednesday morning, underscoring the role the president is expected to play in a marquee race this fall.

The life and character of John McCain in his own wordsBy Steve Almasy and Nicole Chavez, CNN

After he was awarded the National Constitution Center’s annual Liberty Medal in 2017 for his lifetime of sacrifice and service to the nation, he delivered a pointed speech.

“I’ve had the good fortune to spend 60 years in service to this wondrous land. It has not been perfect service, to be sure, and there were probably times when the country might have benefited from a little less of my help. But I’ve tried to deserve the privilege as best I can, and I’ve been repaid a thousand times over with adventures, with good company, and with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a bit player in the extraordinary story of America. And I am so very grateful.”

whether sen shumer is playing a 3-dimensional chess here ..
unscrupulous golfing ..
there may be a lot of balls in the air ..

The greatest sports achievement in my lifetime?

Football players seem even more like gladiators when they play in short sleeves in a winter storm, and baseball players who don’t wear batting gloves feel like throwbacks to a more rough and tumble era. What category of admiration should we reserve, then, for someone who ascends a sheer rock face of 3,000 feet using only a pair of climbing shoes and a bag of chalk?

“He is under an attack like no president has faced,” DeSantis said. “The last thing I want to do is go up there and lob hand grenades at the president.” ..

Maxine Waters (D-CA) is at again, this time saying she has “taken off the gloves” to fight President Donald Trump ..
whatever he does himself, he assumes others are.. [katy tur]
it’s like reading every fortieth page of moby dick .. [check when transcripts are available
Ohr says Steele told him Russian intel believed they had Trump ‘over a barrel’
every thread has three other avenues we want to go down ..
so far they’re batting 1,000, and that’s pretty good ..
where do you think .. if you had to put it on a hundred yard field .. ?