RUTHFULLY YOURS

From Gilbert and Sullivan “Iolanthe”

When in that House M.P.s divide, If they’ve a brain and cerebellum, too,They’ve got to leave that brain outside,And vote just as their leaders tell ’em to.

Like any good caricaturist, Private Willis exaggerates, but in exaggerating reveals something essential. When we step into the topsy-turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan, we are not only taking a holiday from the pedestrian concerns of everyday life: we are also entering a world in which those concerns are accurately, if comically, anatomised.

The great matter concentrating the attention of New Yorkers these days—and not only New Yorkers—is the 2016 presidential primary. The prospect of hanging in a fortnight, Dr Johnson remarked, does wonders to concentrate the mind. The New York primary, with a prize of ninety-five delegates to the Republican National Convention in July, takes place just about a fortnight from the moment I write. At stake is not the fate of a single neck, but the collective noggin of the United States. And as one looks around, one wonders whether the topsy-turvy extravaganza of this primary is any more absurd than the world dramatised by Gilbert and Sullivan.

In one corner we have an unreconstructed Stalinist battling an as-yet-unconvicted felon whose campaign focuses heavily on “women’s issues” but whose philandering husband almost destroyed his presidency and put an entire generation off cigars when his dalliance with a White House intern became the talk of the town. Whatever you can say about Bill Clinton from the waist up, in the other direction he ostentatiously embraces Strephon’s mortality. Looking over the receipts of the Clinton Foundation or contemplating Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees—between them, they’ve raked in more than $153 million since 2001—one longs to enlist them to join in Iolanthe’s March of the Peers (“Bow, bow ye lower middle classes …”).

But of course the real show this season is the Donald Trump Cavalcade. In Iolanthe, the Queen of the Fairies engineers Strephon’s ascension from piping shepherd to powerful MP. Through the intercession of the fairies,

Every bill and every measure
That may gratify his pleasure,
Though your fury it arouses,
Shall be passed by both your Houses!

Explains one fairy: “We influence the members, and compel them to vote just as he wishes them to.” “It’s our system,” says another. “It shortens the debates.”

If Donald Trump were to be believed (in Latin, that would be a contrary-to-fact conditional), he would be like Strephon, magically enlisting hoi polloi (that’s Greek) to catapult him to a position of irresistible eminence. The Mexicans would pay for a wall along America’s Southern border. The Chinese would stop making all the things American workers want but wouldn’t be able to afford if they were manufactured in the United States. The Iranians would buy their missiles from the United States and when they discovered they did not work as advertised, Trump would tell them that was just too bad and he had already cashed the cheque.

It’s counterintuitive, but we’re beginning to wonder if all of those protesters showing up at Donald Trump rallies aren’t secret supporters. They couldn’t possibly be doing more to persuade millions of Republicans to vote for him, if only to defend the right to free speech and association.

The protests are picking up in volume and disruption as the candidates campaign in California ahead of the June 7 primary. Protesters blocked traffic, punched vehicles and cursed Trump supporters in Costa Mesa Thursday, and hundreds blocked the entrance to the GOP convention in Burlingame on Friday. About two dozen people tried to rush barriers near the Hyatt Regency, and Mr. Trump and his aides had to get out of their cars and walk into the convention.
“I think it’s going to get worse if he gets the nomination and is the front-runner. I think it’s going to escalate,” Luis Serrano, an organizer with California Immigration Youth Justice Alliance, told the Los Angeles Times. “We’re going to keep showing up and standing against the actions and the hate Donald Trump is creating.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Abedin handles everything for her boss, from classified emails to booking hair appointments and answering her cellphone.

In 1996, two young, ambitious women worked at the Clinton White House. One was assigned to the West Wing—the presidential wing—and became known for her stained blue Gap dress, a sordid manifestation of Bill Clinton’s baser appetites. The other served in the East Wing, where the first lady’s offices are situated. This is the story of the second one, whose selfless servility and uncanny knack for predicting what the boss wants have put her closer than almost anyone to the most powerful woman in American politics.

For most of the past 20 years, Huma Mahmood Abedin, now a vice chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has served as Clinton’s “body-woman”—basically a glorified lady’s maid. But she has also expanded her role and now monitors all access to Clinton. According to her many fans in Hillaryland, Abedin possesses a skill set that cannot be taught: the emotional intelligence to keep big-ego VIPs and other “clutches” (in the argot of Washington, civilians and celebs who overstay their face time with the boss) at bay without making them angry. Also, she wields a black-belt organizing talent that enables her to toggle between directing classified emails to the right people, keeping an eye on how weather is affecting the D.C.-LaGuardia shuttles and knowing which donors need a photo op—all while monitoring Clinton’s meals and hair appointments and cellphone. The perpetually lipsticked and soigné Abedin is elegant and gentle—qualities Clinton sometimes lacks—but also relentlessly obedient, a quality her boss treasures.

An impassioned Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called in to the Mark Levin Show Thursday evening to register his extreme displeasure with John Boehner and Rep. Peter King for making “vile remarks” about his friend, Senator Ted Cruz. Levin gave the angry senator a few minutes of airtime to vent, and Lee really cut loose. “It’s really vile stuff!” he raged, “and what perplexes me about this, Mark, is that these are not words that I hear these gentleman use in response for anyone else.”

I hear John Boeher heaping praise on Bernie Sanders, heaping praise on Hillary Clinton, heaping praise on Donald Trump.

And yet for Ted Cruz? What’s he call him? He calls him the devil! He calls him Satan, he calls him Lucifer. Why? The question is why? Why does he do this? Well, there’s an answer. Ted Cruz actually challenges the system – the very same system that Donald Trump claims to rail against!

This is an insightful moment. First of all, I’m appalled that John Boehner would do this.

I have bit my tongue for years. I’ve held my tongue for years on John Boehner even when I disagreed with him. Because I respected him as a person and respected with his office enough to not call him out on it personally.

I expressed disagreement with his policies, but I’ve never ridiculed him personally. The fact that he has done this is appalling and he should be ashamed of himself and I demand that he apologize!

…This is a wake-up call for people who are supporting Donald Trump thinking that he’s the guy who is going to rail against the establishment. He’s NOT! He is the establishment. He’s the golfing buddy – the texting buddy of John Boehner. The same guy who praises Hillary Clinton — who praises Bernie Sanders. So if you’re out there thinking that Donald Trump is somehow going to be the guy who takes down the establishment, think again because quite the opposite is true.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you so angry,” Levin noted. “This has really fired you up.”

“Trump offers hope that he will faithfully represent ordinary people. Of course he won’t represent those on the left – thinking and unthinking — who would tear down capitalism and traditional Western values. Personally I can find nothing amiss in temporarily stopping Muslim immigration into the US; except for the word “temporarily”. Building secure borders is the first duty of any government. From a US perspective, negotiating better trade deals, and getting those living under a US defensive umbrella to stump up more cash to pay for it instead of freeloading, seems unexceptional if ,as president, you are patriotic enough to put the US first.”

Seemingly poised to seize the Republican nomination, the tycoon elicits more ire than his vulgarity alone warrants. The reason, of course, is that while his stump promises may prove illusory, what he says in pitching them indicts do-nothing professional politicians of all mainstream stripes.
Donald Trump is on track to win the Republican nomination despite the machinations of the GOP political elite and the demeaning deal between his competitors, Cruz and Kasich, to split their efforts to prevent him. He is on a roll. Following his thumping victory in the New York primary (April 19), he easily won all five north-eastern states – Delaware, Pennsylvania, Rhode island, Connecticut and Maryland — up for grabs on April 26. If he were to win Indiana on May 3 it would be almost done and dusted.

The political elite don’t like him. Considering what they have done and are doing to screw Western civilisation that must be a plus. The mainstream commentariat don’t like him. After Trump’s victory in New York, Greg Sheridan writing in The Australian said that many things Trump has said “should disqualify him for from serious consideration from running for the presidency.” The paper’s editorial intoned that “even in New York Mr Trump’s divisiveness was on display.” The evidence adduced for this was that Trump lost Manhattan to John Kasich. The editors couldn’t help themselves by then quoting one unnamed commentator as saying that, “the closer you live to Donald Trump the less you actually like him.” There are cheap shots and then there cheap shots from our only remaining newspaper of any quality.