Some Minor Business (News Of Today).

Tucker Carlson gave a splendid interview to a Swiss daily Die Weltwoche, I think it is very much worth it to read it. Tucker is realist and he is ready to face facts. I do not agree with some of his positions, but his assessments of  Trump are spot on. 

Apart from asking these very important questions has he really achieved nothing?

Not much. Not much. Much less than he should have. I've come to believe he's not capable of it.

Why should he be not capable?

Because the legislative process in this country by design is highly complex, and it's designed to be complex as a way of diffusing power, of course, because the people who framed our Constitution, founded our country, were worried about concentrations of power. They balanced it among the three branches as you know and they made it very hard to make legislation. In order to do it you really have to understand how it works and you have to be very focused on getting it done, and he knows very little about the legislative process, hasn't learned anything, hasn't and surrounded himself with people that can get it done, hasn't done all the things you need to do so. It's mostly his fault that he hasn't achieved those things. I'm not in charge of Trump.

Then he proceeds with a good thought on the current situation:

Have you ever seen this amount of discontent and aggression here in your lifetime?

No, I've never seen anything like this. What's so striking is that [chuckles] this is really... The radicalism is not on behalf of people who are actually suffering, fellow Americans who are suffering, on behalf of the 70,000 people who died of drug ODs last year, or on behalf of the people displaced by automation in GM, or whatever, on behalf of those dying American low class, it's really on behalf of theoretical goals. They're saying that I [Tucker Carlson] am saying naughty things that shouldn't be allowed to be expressed in public. Basically, it's a totalitarian movement. Totally unhelpful. I would say childish. What they're really doing is defending the current order. They're the shock troops of the elites actually. Actually, what you're seeing is something amazing, you're seeing for the first time in history a revolution being waged against the working class. When does that happen?

It is a huge issue in itself and the roots of this are in the Cold War 1.0. We ain't seen nothing yet. He astutely notes.

If you leave Washington and drive to say Pittsburgh, which is a manufacturing town about three and a half hours to the west, you drive through a series of little towns that are devastated. There are no car dealerships, there are no restaurants. There's nothing. They have not recovered. I remember driving out there one day, maybe eight or nine years ago and thinking, boy, this is a disaster. Rural America, America outside three or four cities is really falling apart. I thought if you're running the country, you should have a sense of that. I remember thinking to myself, nobody I know has any idea that this is happening an hour away. That's kind of strange since we're the capital city in charge of making policy for everybody else... Massive inequality does not work in a democracy... You become Venezuela. 

So, read it. It may help in tying together all these crazy events happening right now, including a disaster of the American (rather her "elites") foreign policy run by neocon ignoramuses, who are not qualified to ran a local hardware store. Speaking of which, Daniel Larison laments what he fails to understand IS the level of American "elites" (which echoes Tucker's opinions on them)--they are massively ignorant and incompetent. But I stood on this position for many years now. Not only they are a danger for the world, they are dangerous to their own (???) country. 

There are multiple reports that Trump is expected to choose State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to be the new ambassador to the U.N. This is the report from Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump has decided to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to three people familiar with the decision. Nauert, 48, is an unorthodox choice for the UN role given that she had little experience in government or foreign policy before joining the administration in April 2017 after several years as an anchor and correspondent for Fox News, including on the “Fox and Friends” show watched by Trump.

Nauert’s nomination was in doubt as recently as last week, and there were reports that Trump had been considering other candidates, including Michigan Senate candidate John James. It now appears that Trump’s original preference for the unqualified Nauert has won out. Outgoing U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had insisted that her position remain a Cabinet-level one, but it is likely that it will be downgraded again according to Pompeo’s preferences. Nauert isn’t qualified to be U.N. ambassador, but then neither was Haley, and Pompeo wasn’t and isn’t qualified to be Secretary of State. Everyone responsible for guiding U.S. diplomacy under Trump has been and will continue to be unsuited to the jobs to which they have been appointed. The appointment of Nauert just underscores that Trump has no interest in diplomacy or expertise, and he just wants people willing to recite nonsensical talking points.

Can we finally say it out loud--there is NOBODY out there who is qualified to govern competently. The Ivy League and political clubs' "elite-manufacturing" machine is broken long ago--it was bound to happen when one teaches instead of real history a collection of fairy tales. The system is broken and it will take some incredible effort and mind(s) to figure out how to fix it without unleashing a bloodshed. Facing reality could be a good start.