Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Something to Know 30 May




Once in a while, I come across an article that is transformative, and worth spending a few hours taking it all in.  Matthew Stewart's "The 9.9 Percent is the new American Aristocracy" in this month's Atlantic reflects on the changes in our nation's social and economic well and not-so-well being.  He takes us from his great-grandfather Colonel Robert Stewart's unethical affairs in the Teapot Dome scandal to the present and our current president.   The accumulation of wealth and power, and the politically created 1% has created the 9.9% and the games played to preserve the aristocracy the resulting monster of resentment. Resentment is what propelled Trump to where he is today.   Here are a few phrases from the article for you now:

  The raging polarization of American political life is not the consequence of bad manners or a lack of mutual understanding. It is just the loud aftermath of escalating inequality. ......... Wealth always preserves itself by dividing the opposition......The defining challenge of our time is to renew the promise of American democracy by reversing the calcifying effects of accelerating inequality.

​Sorry, but this is too large to be a cut-and-paste piece.​


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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson





Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Andy Borowitz

White House in Panic Mode After TV Star with Racist Twitter Feed Loses Job

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The White House was reportedly in panic mode Tuesday afternoon, shortly after news broke that a television star with a racist Twitter feed had been fired.

According to a White House source, Donald J. Trump immediately huddled with close advisers to discuss the firing, which, staffers agreed, "set an ominous new precedent."

"We've been living under assumption that a TV personality could tweet out as many racist things as he or she wanted with no consequences," the source said. "Now, all of a sudden, our worst nightmare has come true."

White House staffers are reportedly combing through Trump's thirty-seven thousand tweets, searching for ones that could be deemed fireable offenses, and have so far flagged more than thirty-six thousand of them.

Many on Trump's team are urging calm, however, claiming that the dismissal of one racist TV star could be an "isolated example."

"The only people who can fire Donald Trump right now are congressional Republicans, and they don't have the high moral standards that TV executives have," the source said.



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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson





Saturday, May 26, 2018

Something to Know - 26 May






The stampede and reckless destruction of the administrative state by the current administration is unsettling.  We will get through this is about the only vestige of hope we can muster at the present time.  This story from the Los Angeles Times is but one of many examples of casualties that are tossed on the side of 45th street.  A good judge ends his career in a disillusioned state as he looks back in horror at what he has done:

'I have presided over a process that destroys families' Judge can't reconcile values and the law
Crackdown on illegal immigration takes its toll on a federal judge with an unparalleled sentencing record.
Crackdown on immigrants takes a toll on federal judge: 'I have presided over a process that destroys families'

JUDGE Robert Brack, shown last week in his chambers in Las Cruces, N.M., sees himself as a cog in a U.S. immigration system that he says is unjust. (Andres Leighton For The Times) 
By Lauren Villagran

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Day in, day out, immigrants shuffle into Judge Robert Brack's courtroom, shackled at the wrist and ankle, to be sentenced for the crime of crossing the border.
The judge hands down sentences with a heavy heart. Since he joined the federal bench in 2003, Brack has sentenced some 15,000 defendants, the vast majority of them immigrants with little or no criminal record.

"See, I have presided over a process that destroys families for a long time, and I am weary of it," said Brack one day in his chambers in Las Cruces. "And I think we as a country are better than this."
Brack's court in rural southern New Mexico is swollen with immigration cases, the migrants brought to his courtroom by the dozen. They exchange guilty pleas for "time served" sentences, usually not more than two months on the first or second offense. They leave his court as felons.
For years, federal authorities in this area along the New Mexico border have taken a distinctively hard-line approach to enforcing immigration law, pursuing criminal charges rather than handling cases administratively.

Essentially, authorities here have already been carrying out the "zero tolerance" policy Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions unveiled in April, when he announced that all immigrants who cross the border will be charged with a crime.

Together, the Border Patrol and U.S. attorney's office in New Mexico bring charges against nearly every eligible adult migrant apprehended at the state's border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That amounted to 4,190 prosecutions last fiscal year.

Vigorous enforcement in New Mexico is a result of ample bed space in the state's border county jails and a fast-track system that prosecutes nonviolent migrants quickly. The state also doesn't face the volume of illegal crossings that south Texas does, for example.
"It is an efficient process," says U.S. Atty. John Anderson of the District of New Mexico. "That is one of the key features that allows us to implement 100% prosecutions."
For Judge Brack, it's a punishing routine. And it has been building for a long time. Back in 2010, the judge had been on the federal bench for seven years, his docket overloaded with immigration cases, when "at some point I just snapped," he said.

He sat down to compose a letter to President Obama to call for a more compassionate approach to immigration, one that would keep families together and acknowledge that the demands of the labor market drive immigration:
I write today because my experience of the immigration issue, in some 8,500 cases, is consistently at odds with what the media reports and, therefore, what many believe.
I have learned why people come, how and when they come, and what their expectations are. The people that I see are, for the most part, hardworking, gentle, uneducated and completely lacking in criminal history. Just simple people looking for work.
He didn't get a reply.

No other federal criminal court judge comes near Brack's sentencing record.
In the five years through 2017, Brack ranked first among 680 judges nationwide for his caseload, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks court data. He sentenced 6,858 offenders — 5,823 of them for felony immigration violations.
It's a dubious honor for a man who is a devout Catholic and makes plain his moral dilemma in public hearings. He takes seriously his oath to uphold the laws of the United States. But he is a cog in a system he believes is unjust.

Johana Bencomo, director of organizing with the Las Cruces immigrant advocacy group Comunidades en Acción y Fe — Communities in Action and Faith — calls criminal prosecution of migrants "dehumanizing."
"We're just this rural community with some of the highest prosecution rates," she said. "That is Brack's legacy, no matter how you spin it."
Advocates of stronger immigration enforcement counter that prosecutions are a crucial element of border security and have contributed to today's historically low rates of illegal immigration.
"Criminal charges turn out to be one of the most effective tools for dissuading people from trying [to cross] again," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for tougher border enforcement.

The effects of this enforcement play out at the five-story, copper-colored federal building in Las Cruces, about 47 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Brack's chambers are on the top floor.
In windowless cellblocks on the bottom floor, migrants from Mexico, Central America and Brazil wait to make their initial appearance in a federal magistrate courtroom.
The same scene repeats again and again: The immigrants crowd five broad benches, the juror's box and the swivel chairs meant for attorneys. They wear the jumpsuits of the four county jails where they are being held: a sea of orange, navy, dark green, fluorescent yellow.
They hear their rights and the charges against them. They eventually plead guilty, to benefit from New Mexico's fast-track process. Within a month or so, they will find themselves in Brack's court for sentencing and within days they'll be deported.

The border used to be wide open, but now it is closed, Brack tells each migrant at sentencing. There are more Border Patrol agents than you can count. Immigration used to be handled as a civil offense, but now it is criminal: a misdemeanor on the first attempt, a felony on the second.
"Everyone gets caught and what's worse, everyone goes to jail," he told one migrant, a Mexican woman named Elizabeth Jimenez Rios. "That is not how it has always been, but that is how it is now."
Their fate is sealed, but Brack still asks the public defenders to tell each migrant's story.
Elías Beltran, an oil field worker from Mexico, with no criminal history, tried to return to his wife and two kids, U.S. citizens in eastern New Mexico. He lived there for 15 years before he was deported.
Andres Badolla Juarez, a farmworker from Mexico, wanted to pick strawberries in California to support his wife, toddler and new baby — all U.S. citizens — in Arizona. He lived in the U.S. for 16 years and got deported after an aggravated DUI. It was his fourth failed attempt to cross the border.
Rosario Bencomo Marquez, a 52-year-old maid from Mexico, with no criminal history, hoped to return to her daughter and grandchildren in Santa Fe. She lived in the U.S. for 19 years before she was deported.
Brack also sees migrants charged with drug offenses or long criminal records and is unsparing in their punishment. But they are a minority, he said.
"I get asked the question, 'How do you continue to do this all day every day?' I recognize the possibility that you could get hard-edged, you could get calloused, doing what I do," he said. "I don't. Every day it's fresh. I can't look a father and a husband in the eye and not feel empathy."

Brack, 65, is the son of a railroad-worker father and homemaker mother and earned a law degree at the University of New Mexico. He served as a state judge before being named to the federal bench by President George W. Bush.
In his chambers, above a shelf stacked with books on jurisprudence, Bible study and basketball, hang framed pictures of his forefathers: men who immigrated to the U.S. from England and Prussia. Brack grew up in rural New Mexico, where immigrants — whatever their status — were viewed as "valuable co-workers," not a threat, he said.
After that first letter to Obama in 2010, he wrote another. And another. As the nation periodically heaved toward the possibility of immigration reform, only to leave the issues — and lives of millions — unresolved, Brack continued to write letters to the White House.

He told more heart-wrenching stories about families divided. He kept it up for four years. He pleaded for a civil debate: "See what I see, hear what I hear. Be wary of the loudest, angriest voices."
He signed each letter with prayer: "May God continue to bless all those who serve our great nation."
He never got a response. He stopped writing.
And now, after so many grueling years and thousands more immigration cases, Brack has decided enough is enough. He takes "senior status" in July, effectively stepping aside to serve part time. President Trump will name his replacement.

Villagran writes for Searchlight New Mexico.

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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson





Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Something to Eat - 23 May

The Duchess of Lunchmeat is in the Royal Court while Prince Phillip is busy trying to locate the the Duke of Rye, The Baron of Sourdough, and the Earl of Sandwich.  And who said that the Brits had boring tastes in food?    All we need is to add the Marquees de Mayo, the Viscount of Moutard, and His Royalness of Pumpernickel to round out this party.


​Don't forget the Keg of Royal Crown Cola​

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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson





Monday, May 21, 2018

Andy Borowitz

Public Demands Investigation of Why F.B.I. Infiltrators in Trump Campaign Failed to Prevent Him from Being Elected



WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Americans are demanding an investigation into why, if F.B.I. operatives managed to infiltrate the 2016 Trump campaign, they utterly failed to prevent a nightmarish despot from being elected.

In interviews across the country, Americans expressed dismay and, in some cases, despair at the news that F.B.I. infiltrators might have had a golden opportunity to prevent the nation's current unspeakable nightmare from unfolding but did not get the job done.

"The thought of F.B.I. infiltrators being inside the Trump campaign but not sabotaging it is, in a word, devastating," Carol Foyler, of Akron, Ohio, said. "If it turns out to be true, I will totally lose my faith in F.B.I. infiltrators."

Harland Dorrinson, of St. Petersburg, Florida, agreed. "If F.B.I. infiltrators were in a position to derail the most heinous threat to democracy in American history but didn't succeed for some reason, that would be bigger than Watergate," he said.

Tracy Klugian, of Denver, Colorado, said that a "full and exhaustive investigation" is needed to "determine why our system of F.B.I. infiltrators preventing a horrific proto-fascist menace from taking office somehow broke down."

"We need to find out what went wrong and fix it before the 2020 election," he said. "I won't be able to sleep at night until I know that F.B.I. operatives are infiltrating Trump's reëlection campaign and irreparably crippling it."




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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson





Friday, May 18, 2018

Something to Know - 18 May

To experience the changes brought on by the Trump Mafia into our form of Government and all matters pertaining to our ethics and sense of values, there is a daily push back by all who decry what is happening.   The "Supreme Tangerine" is doing more than just being a Buffoon.  No need to make cases in point and enumerate the destruction to our standing in the world, and the destruction to the office of the President, and all other matters pertaining to the trashing of human lives and the work of others to ensure domestic tranquility , provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to all and our posterity.  Those of us who grasped the theme and teaching points of George Orwell's "1984", can appreciate the subtle changes made as government agencies quietly erase, replace, or entirely eliminate words and the actions of government.   Hopefully, and soon, we will be able to walk all of this back and correct and repair the damage.  However, we should be vigilant and remain as active as we can to ensure that the Fascism that lurks quietly in the tracks does not extend itself to eliminate Orwell's book.   Today's Los Angeles Times provides this opinion piece:

Words the Trump administration hates
By Karen J. Greenberg

While we were barely looking, the terminology of American democracy has been quite literally disappearing down Donald Trump's equivalent of George Orwell's infamous Memory Hole.

One example hit me in a personal way. At an annual national security conference in New York City, aimed largely at law students, the organizers invited presenters from the Department of Homeland Security and other U.S. agencies. The bureaucracy was punishing: The government withheld the names of possible participants until the last moment, they couldn't be recorded (which led to a decision to bar recordings at all the conference sessions), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement demanded the word "refugee" be removed from the conference program.

ICE claimed that bit of censorship would speed the approval process so that its members could participate in the conference. The organizer reluctantly agreed. I understood his plight, having myself put together similar events on such hot topics as torture, Guantanamo detainees and targeted government killings. Sometimes a Bush or Obama administration invitee would beg off or say no to meeting with the audience after a panel. But no one ever asked me to change the language describing an event, or to wipe a word or phrase out of the program. The very idea violates the independence of educational institutions, the sanctity of free speech and the democratic principle of open debate. But that, of course, was in the era before Donald Trump became president.

The edited national security conference is a minor incident in the scheme of things, but it catches the essence of the current administration's take-no-prisoners approach to what can and cannot be said. One well-known term to be avoided: "climate change." The Department of Agriculture's act of erasure was typical. Shortly after inauguration day, agency officials made it clear they wanted the words "climate change" to be replaced with "weather extremes." They preferred the phrase "reduce greenhouse gases" to "increase nutrient use energy."

Other alterations have been no less notable. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials read the tea leaves and edited their mission statement accordingly. Out went "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender" "fetus" — and even "evidence-based" and "science-based."

At U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the label "nation of immigrants" was dropped from the mission statement, which now defines the agency's role not so much as serving newcomers but merely "efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values."
Along the same lines, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, led by Ben Carson, has ditched "free from discrimination," "quality homes" and "inclusive communities" in favor of "self-sufficiency" and "opportunity." In other words, the onus is put on the individual, not the government.

Trump is hardly the first president to discover the importance of language as a political tool. President Obama, for instance, all but banished the term "war on terror" for the United States' unending post-9/11 conflicts, and "radical Islamic terrorism" as a term for our enemy , though nothing much had changed in the war zone. Still, the current president may be the first whose administration hasn't hesitated to delete terms tied to the foundational principles of the country, among them "democracy," "honesty" and "transparency."

The State Department deleted "democratic" from its mission statement as it backed away from the notion that the department and the country should promote democracy abroad. Similarly, the U.S. Agency for International Development no longer cites as its goal "ending extreme poverty and promoting the development of resilient, democratic societies that are able to realize their potential." Now it wants to "support partners to become self-reliant and capable of leading their own development journeys."

The idea of protecting civil liberties has simply taken a nosedive. Trump's first appointee to head the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, Rear Adm. Edward Cashman, for example, took "legal" and "transparent" out of the prison facility's mission statement. The Department of Justice has conveniently excised the portion of its website devoted to "the need for free press and public trial."

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also disappearing basic factual information. The White House missed a May 1 deadline for reporting on civilian casualties resulting from U.S. drone strikes — a yearly requirement established by Obama in 2016. A representative explained that the tally was "under review" and could be "modified" or "rescinded."

All of this represents a coordinated attack on 250 years of American history and the nation's progress toward inclusion, diversity and equal rights for minorities. It conjures instead racial and ethnic divides, ignorance (rather than science), and the creation of a state of unparalleled heartlessness and greed.

It might be worth reflecting on the words of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister for Hitler's Nazi Party. He had a clear-eyed vision of the importance of disguising what motivated his campaign against truth. "The secret of propaganda," he said, is to "permeate the person it aims to grasp without his even noticing that he is being permeated."

Consider this is a warning. Instead of hurling insults at the president's incompetence and the seeming disarray of his administration, it might be worth asking ourselves whether there is a larger goal in mind: namely, a slow, patient, incremental dismantling of democracy, beginning with its most precious words.

Karen J. Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and the author of "Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State." Samuel Levy, Hadas Spivack and Anastasia Bez contributed research for this article. A longer version of this article appears at TomDispatch .com.
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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson





Wednesday, May 16, 2018

An Andy Borowitz Binge

Obama's Barrage of Complete Sentences Seen as Brutal Attack on Trump


PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT OLSON / GETTY


CHICAGO (The Borowitz Report)—In an appearance at the University of Chicago on Monday, former President Barack Obama unloaded a relentless barrage of complete sentences in what was widely seen as a brutal attack on his successor, Donald Trump.

Appearing at his first public event since leaving office, Obama fired off a punishing fusillade of grammatically correct sentences, the likes of which the American people have not heard from the White House since he departed.

"He totally restricted his speech to complete sentences," Tracy Klugian, a student at the event, said. "It was the most vicious takedown of Trump I'd ever seen."

"About five or six sentences in, I noticed that all of his sentences had both nouns and verbs in them," Carol Foyler, another student, said. "I couldn't believe he was going after Trump like that."

Obama's blistering deployment of complete sentences clearly got under the skin of their intended target, who, moments after the event, responded with an angry tweet: "Obama bad (or sick) guy. Failing. Sad!"

G.O.P. Unveils Immigration Plan: "We Must Make America Somewhere No One Wants to Live"

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty


WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled his party's long-awaited plan on immigration on Wednesday, telling reporters, "We must make America somewhere no one wants to live."

Appearing with House Speaker John Boehner, McConnell said that, in contrast to President Obama's "Band-Aid fixes," the Republican plan would address "the root cause of immigration, which is that the United States is, for the most part, habitable."

"For years, immigrants have looked to America as a place where their standard of living was bound to improve," McConnell said. "We're going to change that."

Boehner said that the Republicans' plan would reduce or eliminate "immigration magnets," such as the social safety net, public education, clean air, and drinkable water.

The Speaker added that the plan would also include the repeal of Obamacare, calling healthcare "catnip for immigrants."

Attempting, perhaps, to tamp down excitement about the plan, McConnell warned that turning America into a dystopian hellhole that repels immigrants "won't happen overnight."

"Our crumbling infrastructure and soaring gun violence are a good start, but much work still needs to be done," he said. "When Americans start leaving the country, we'll know that we're on the right track."

In closing, the two congressional leaders expressed pride in the immigration plan, noting that Republicans had been working to make it possible for the past thirty years.


AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST:

Trump Orders Replica Nobel Peace Prize to Display on His Desk

Photograph by T.J. Kirkpatrick / Bloomberg via Getty


WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump has ordered a replica of the Nobel Peace Prize and is displaying it prominently on his desk in the Oval Office, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.

The replica of the Nobel medallion is mounted on what the White House described as a "tasteful black-velvet background" with an engraved plaque reading, "Donald J. Trump, 2018 Winner."

At the daily White House briefing, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that Trump "took the initiative" to award himself the Peace Prize rather than "waiting around" for the Nobel committee, in Oslo, to bestow it on him.

"What with his successes in Syria, Iran, North Korea, and whatnot, the President already knows he's a lock for the Nobel," she said. "It's just a formality at this point."

The fake Nobel was first spotted by Henry Klugian, a student who was on a White House tour with his seventh-grade class from Bethesda, Maryland.

"I thought it was kind of weird that he'd have something like that made up for himself, but whatever," he said.




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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson





Something to Know - 16 May





Having stirred up responses from readers who have never commented before on the previous posting from the ONION magazine, I am aware that many still read this "thing".   Although the intent and sentiment was from another source, I cannot feign innocence in passing it on.   Why should I?   Wicked satire, even darkly wicked, is intended to provoke and shock.   The piece from the Onion was harsher than what you would normally find in a political cartoon.   Myself, I don't think it showed any more disrespect to the current president, than what he has shown to me or the rest of the world.   Here is something more palatable?

An Indecent Disrespect

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

Image
CreditThe Heads of State

President Trump's rejection of the Iran nuclear deal has unleashed a rare fury in Europe. Following his withdrawal from the Paris climate accords, his tariffs on imported steel, the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the rewriting of international trade agreements and all the other signs of disdain for the priorities of America's traditional allies, many Europeans are furiously proclaiming the trans-Atlantic relationship dead. However palpable the frustration, the question once again is whether Europeans are prepared to, or even able to, stand up to the bully across the sea.

Certainly this is what many Europeans would dearly love to do. Europe must not accept being the "vassals" of the United States, declared the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, whose boss, President Emmanuel Macron, so recently kissed and hugged Mr. Trump in a futile effort to influence him. "We have to stop being wimps," said Nathalie Tocci, a senior adviser to the European Union.

The cover of the German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel reflected a common sentiment in its depiction of Mr. Trump as a middle finger proclaiming, "Goodbye, Europe!" The fiery editorial inside called for "resistance against America."


"The West as we once knew it no longer exists," Der Spiegel's editors wrote. "Our relationship to the United States cannot currently be called a friendship and can hardly be referred to as a partnership. President Trump has adopted a tone that ignores 70 years of trust."

Then there are the hard facts. Europe's trade with the United States is incomparably larger than its trade with Iran, and even if Britain, France and Germany — co-signers of the Iran accord, along with China, the European Union, Russia and the United States — try to maintain the Iran deal and support their companies against so-called secondary sanctions by Washington, many European banks and industries would be wary of defying America's enormous economic clout, and especially the reach of its banking system.

Mr. Trump, who has long complained about Germany's trade surplus and Europe's low military spending, is not overly sympathetic to Europe's economic or security concerns, and even less so with the überhawkish John Bolton now as his national security adviser. In a phone call to British, French and German officials last Wednesday, Mr. Bolton said there would be no sanctions exemptions for European companies.

The anger in Europe, however, is not so much about the cost of renewed sanctions as about the total, humiliating disdain for the Europeans' arguments, and, by extension, for the trans-Atlantic alliance and all it has stood for since World War II. If Europeans allowed other powers, including allies, to make security decisions for them, "then we are no more sovereign and we cannot be more credible to public opinion," Mr. Macron said in a statement that echoed the sentiments of many of his European neighbors.

There have been bitter differences before, notably over the war in Iraq, but to Europeans, Mr. Trump's contempt is of a higher order, an arrogant mind-set that even on matters of paramount global importance, America will do what it wants without giving a damn for the interests of its closest allies.

That was made stunningly clear by a tweet from the new ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, shortly after he presented his credentials last Tuesday, declaring that German companies doing business in Iran "should wind down operations immediately." To the Germans, that was an unacceptable order to fall in line, and Mr. Grenell's subsequent assurances that there would be no trade war did little to temper the outrage.


Roiled by its own internal crises and divisions, Europe lacks the big stick that would compel Mr. Trump to listen to reason. The sweet talk attempted by Mr. Macron has proved equally futile. But that does not excuse Europe, and especially Germany, Britain and France, from standing firm against Washington's bullying and making every effort to keep the Iran deal — and all the other aspects of the international order Mr. Trump has tried to destroy — from collapse.

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Juan
 
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai Stevenson