Hasta La Gadget!

Today the UK votes on whether it will remain a part of the EU or go off on its merry way. The vote gives people the choice between two storied British traditions: meddling in the affairs of its continental neighbors (Remain) and annoying the French (Leave). I hope the UK chooses to remain and, for that matter, continue meddling.

Much of the campaign waged by the “Leave” camp centers on the issue of migration, as one British friend told me once “this is essentially a referendum on immigration.” But, it isn’t about migration, it is about EU membership, of which migration plays a small role that, often, has nothing to do with what Leave campaigners are talking about.

For example, Leave, has made a big fuss about the issue of migration from Turkey, which is not an EU member. When faced with this obvious truth they mentioned a possible visa-waiver program that was being negotiated between the visa-free Schengen zone and Turkey. Only problems with that argument are that England isn’t part of the Schengen zone, so this doesn’t apply to Turkish travelers to the UK who would still need a visa, the agreement in question isn’t likely to be approved and the overt racism inherent in the argument.

Again, Leave campaigners weren’t deterred. They argued that Turkish travellers could sneak into the UK from the EU. It is unclear how voting to Leave would stop that from happening though as control of travel to Britain by non-EU citizens is already within the UK government’s control.

The other arguments by the Leave campaign focus on taking back “control” from Brussels (the EU’s capital). It’s never exactly clear what they would take back “control” of… besides, of course, control over immigration. They scream and shout about how “unfair” and “undemocratic” the EU is but, ironically, UKIP, the most pro-Brexit political party, has only ever won an election when it came to voting in the EU’s parliament (they only have one seat in the UK parliament).

What about the economy?

That’s where the Leave campaign is weakest. In a good case scenario a decision to Leave the EU would undoubtedly weaken the UK’s economy. Uncertainty about what comes next will defer investment and hiring decisions and when the dust settles many companies will likely “onshore” a lot of functions to the EU. The best part about this is that for the UK to retain access to the EU’s common market and not weaken its economy if it leaves, it would have to guarantee the “freedom of movement” (aka immigration) that the Brexiters are so angry about… a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario.

Facing unanimous expert opinion that a Brexit would hurt the British economy the Leave campaign has decided to dismiss experts and encouraged voters to not be afraid of these doomsayers…

In the extreme scenario that a Brexit vote would lead to the slow disintegration of the EU (something pro-Brexiters not-so-secretly hope for) that would be even more calamitous for the UK’s economy as both the UK and its biggest trading partner would go through years of uncertainty.

So… to sum up the Leave argument:

• Brexiting will reduce immigration from countries that have nothing to do with the EU for reasons we can’t explain.
• We need to take back control of things that are so important to us that to articulate them would blow our mind.
• The EU has no democratic legitimacy except for the fact that it is composed of a number of democratically elected government and it gives us, Brexiters, our only democratic avenue for complaining about how un-democratic it is.
• Don’t listen to experts who say Brexiting might hurt the economy because experts suck.
• Don’t be a coward and vote for Brexit.

When faced with that impenetrable wall of “coherent and logical arguments” it should come as no surprise that I am not swayed.

But voting to Remain in the EU shouldn’t just be about why the Leave campaign has failed to make a solid argument for exiting. On balance the EU is a force of good, for the UK, Europe and the world. True a bureaucratic, terribly-accented, often contradictory force of good but a force of good nonetheless.

Look at it this way, between 1870 and 1945 Germany invaded France three times. In the 70 years since then that has happened a grand total of zero times. I like to think the EU played a small role in making sure that was the case.

Some people like to say that the EU isn’t a complete success because, I don’t know, not every European is born into a gilded birthing pool. But when you think about where Europe started from then the EU really is a smashing success.

Imagine for a second that Africa created a new African Union and that caused it to be the most peaceful continent on Earth with the highest standards of living whose biggest concern was whether the finance minister of Burundi wears a tie and how to incorporate all the Brazilians that are suddenly flocking to its shores… well, that would be a success no?

This isn’t to diminish the rough decade that the EU has had. Low growth and depression era unemployment stats in Southern Europe and former industrial regions are nothing to scoff at but that doesn’t justify discrediting the entire EU.

In fact, instead of arguing whether the UK should stay in the EU the argument should be about how much more involved should the UK be. The UK can offer Europe a third path between German style austerity and French style “Je don’t give a fuck” approach to economics and social inclusion. It can offer leadership in areas like monetary policy, innovation, law and, ironically enough, integrating lots of immigrants.

It is for all these reasons that I hope the UK votes remain in today’s referendum.

-Tewfik Cassis

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Back in the Cold War days, a big debate among the nation’s think tanks was how to deal with communist countries: Was it better to isolate them? Or were dialogue and engagement more likely to bring about positive change?

Decades later, policy wonks face the same question about presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“This is not your normal ‘Oh, we have a more extreme candidate.’ This is a person who’s unsuited and unqualified and frankly, undemocratic,” said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. “I haven’t heard of a single person from a major think tank joining the Trump team. That’s very unusual.”

For many of Mann’s think tank colleagues — and particularly for conservatives –engaging with Trump risks legitimizing him and his numerous controversial statements while simultaneously damaging their own reputations.

“There’s a lot of people who believe that Donald Trump is the most serious threat to American democracy we have seen in the modern era,” Mann said. “I think it will be very hard finding serious, honest experts [to] join in.”

Of course, experts hoping to isolate Trump have found a willing accomplice in Trump himself.

“He just doesn’t seem to be interested,” said the American Enterprise Institute’s Ramesh Ponnuru. “Nothing he has done is suggestive of any interest in policy.”

By this point in a presidential campaign, nominees have typically established alliances with like-minded think tanks. While the groups cannot endorse candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status, their researchers provide the detailed analyses and intellectual heft that inform and support a candidate’s policy proposals.

“It’s fairly clear, for the most part, the kinds of Republican experts who would be all on board with a presidential campaign at this point — with task forces, and policy proposals and meetings and so forth — are not,” said Norm Ornstein, who is also with the AEI. “You could convene his policy team in a bathtub.”

[Trump] just doesn’t seem to be interested. Nothing he has done is suggestive of any interest in policy.
Ramesh Ponnuru, American Enterprise Institute

Trump’s campaign did not respond to The Huffington Post’s requests for comment on this story. Over the months, the real estate mogul has downplayed his need for expert advice, citing his own “very good brain” as evidence. On dealing with the self-described Islamic State, for example, Trump said that he knew more about the terror group than the military commanders fighting it.

Ponnuru said his colleagues are divided on whether it’s better to stay away from Trump or get close to him, but a consensus has emerged that Trump is not likely to take their advice anyway. “The prevailing sentiment is that he’s going to do his thing, and he’s going to continue to do his thing,” Ponnuru said.

Trump’s attitude does offer the benefit of not having to justify the position of a candidate that you might not agree with, he conceded. “It’s a little bit liberating, being able to say you’re completely independent from the nominee.”

One notable exception has been Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore, who has been open about his support for Trump. Moore, a longtime proponent of supply-side theory, with its emphasis on lower taxes for investment income, is particularly pleased with Trump’s tax proposal. “It’s going to be a blockbuster. It’s going to be the best tax cut plan since Ronald Reagan,” said Moore, who hastened to point out that his views are his own, and do not represent the Heritage Foundation’s position.

Moore said he doesn’t share Trump’s views on trade policy or immigration, although he does understand why those messages have resonated with many Republican voters. “If Trump wins, there will be kind of a change in Republican dogma on both economic policy and foreign policy. No question about it,” he said.

But even some beneficial influence is better than none, Moore argued. On trade, for example, Trump hasn’t spoken about a 45 percent tariff on Chinese products ever since Moore and others advised him against it, he said. “Most people I talk to are like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re working with Trump. Maybe you can push him in a good direction.’”

Yet that view is a lonely one. Helping Trump isn’t easy, given his general lack of interest. And the groups that do lend their names to his cause should be prepared for scrutiny.

Most people I talk to are like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re working with Trump. Maybe you can push him in a good direction.’
Stephen Moore, the Heritage Foundation

The Center for the National Interest learned this firsthand when it hosted Trump’s foreign policy speech in April. A researcher there was fired after writing a blog post that criticized the think tank’s decision to host what he called a “booster rally” for Trump.

And the very day of the speech, Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the think tank’s magazine, wrote an article for Politico Magazine explaining his decision to invite Trump. Heilbrunn said that he wasn’t signing up to support Trump, but was glad for the chance to hear his views. “I think he is having a salutary effect in forcing open a long-overdue debate in the GOP over foreign policy,” Heilbrunn wrote.

Mann, of Brookings, said it would be tempting for experts — particularly at lesser-known think tanks — to offer support in exchange for access in a potential Trump presidency. “I don’t doubt there will be some think tanks we’ve never heard of from which individuals emerge to advise Trump,” he said.

But Mann hopes they’ll avoid the temptation. “This, in some ways, will be a test of whether individuals and organizations merit their labeling,” he added.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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As I write this, a protest is occurring on the floor of the House of Representatives. Democrats, led by John Lewis, Jim Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi (and many others), are staging a “sit-in” to protest Republicans’ refusal to even hold a vote on any gun control legislation. Their battle cry is “No bill, no break” — a veiled threat to keep the protest going right into the next one of those too-frequent vacation weeks Congress regularly awards itself. Whether the protest is ultimately successful or not, it shows a renewed vigor in the Democratic Party to push back against the do-nothing party in the majority. This could bode well for their chances to retake control of both chambers of Congress this fall, in fact.

This protest comes the week after the ninth-longest filibuster in Senate history, launched by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, on exactly the same subject. Murphy forced the Senate Republicans to allow votes, and although no bill has yet passed, compromise legislation is still a possibility. This shows that on both sides of the Capitol, Democrats are willing to use extraordinary measures to spotlight the refusal of Congress to even attempt to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists. It could even be called the “Occupy Congress” movement.

The tide may be turning on the politics of gun control, but it’s really too early to know this for sure. Gun control is still a sticky subject for Democrats, because in recent decades it has been a big loser for them at the polls. When Democrats passed the last round of significant gun control legislation in the 1990s, they promptly lost control of both the House and Senate (to be fair, there were other reasons for the so-called “Republican Revolution” as well). This gave rise among Democratic politicians (those old enough to remember this era) to a certain amount of “once bitten, twice shy” feelings. If gun control is unpopular with the voters, they figured, then why go out on a big political limb for it?

Of course, that was several dozen massacres ago. The San Bernardino and Orlando shootings seem to have changed attitudes, both among Democratic politicians and among the public at large. Hillary Clinton, to her credit, got out in front of the issue early on in her campaign and has shown some real strength in challenging the National Rifle Association’s sway over the legislative process. And now congressional Democrats also seem eager to tackle the issue.

It was always a glaring loophole — Congress, immediately after 9/11, essentially rewrote large chunks of the Bill of Rights, in the sacred name of “national security.” But they left a few things untouched, and the most obvious one was the Second Amendment. Terrorists wouldn’t be allowed to fly on airplanes, but allowing them to buy high-powered guns was still perfectly OK. This loophole has existed now for 15 years, but this is really the first time it has become a political hot topic. That’s one measure of the stranglehold the N.R.A. has had over the debate, in fact — few politicians have even talked about this loophole until very recently.

Democrats seem to have learned one big lesson about gun control proposals, and that is to be very selective about which laws to propose. As Pelosi stated in her press conference today: “85 percent to 90 percent of the American people support the background checks and the ‘No Fly, No Buy’ legislation.” That is a pretty good political strategy — focus first on the issues that an overwhelming majority of the public agrees with. Shine a spotlight on how reasonable the proposals are, which will in turn also draw attention to how Republicans won’t even take steps most of their own constituents agree should be taken.

To this end, Democrats have whittled their wish list down to just two specific issues: ending the “gun show loophole” and their new “No Fly, No Buy” attempt to deny weapons to suspected terrorists. If neither one of these passes both houses of Congress (which seems the likeliest outcome), then Democrats are signaling loud and clear that they are going to make it an enormous issue in the upcoming campaign season.

Which is why putting on a bit of political theater right now is so impressive. It’s kind of hard to ignore the minority party when they have shut down both houses of Congress within the past week. The House group swears they’re not going anywhere — they’re going to keep up this sit-in until they are allowed a vote on the two proposals. Pelosi pledged today: “all day we’ll be there, as long as it takes, every day.” The longer it goes on, the more attention it will get from both the media and the public. Since the two bills aren’t likely to pass (in the current Congress, at any rate), the entire exercise is a political one anyway — Democrats are planning to use this on the campaign trail, and the more attention they get now, the easier that case will be to make.

Some might see this as setting a bad precedent for politics in general — refusing to let the House conduct business could generate some blowback both now and in the future. But in the near-term this isn’t all that likely, if the Democrats are right about the “9 out of 10 people support this” statistic. If the public truly does want these commonsense laws passed, then Democrats are likely to gain support from most of the public for their protest. In the long term, Democrats risk the same strategy being used against them (at some future date when the House is back under their control). But if that were to happen, Republicans would also have to choose their issue carefully. If they launched a protest of their own without the support of a wide majority of the public, it would likely fizzle on them or generate public backlash. The Tea Party’s “let’s just shut down the government” tactic didn’t exactly work wonders for the party, to put it another way.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is now in a bind. It’s completely up to him what legislation gets floor votes, and his refusal to allow any gun control measures to even be voted on is going to get more and more uncomfortable if the sit-in continues (and garners significant public support). He won’t want to look like he’s caving in to Democratic demands, but not even allowing a vote is going to look pretty intransigent to the public (who currently has nothing but disgust for the way Congress refuses to get anything done). Ryan was supposed to be leading the news stories today (by releasing his vague, specific-free “replacement plan for Obamacare”), but his grand achievement now looks like it’s going to get buried under the sit-in news. That’s got to be annoying to Ryan, to put it mildly (especially after most everybody has ignored all his other grandiose white papers for the past few weeks).

Democrats are not likely to see any of their proposals pass this Congress and make it to President Obama’s desk. They knew this all along. Instead, they are strongly making the case to the voters to elect more Democrats so that such commonsense laws can get passed on a regular basis, instead of the continuing “Party of No” obstructionism from the Republicans. In a normal election year, this case would be made on an individual basis by Democratic candidates for the House and Senate. But such dilution means not speaking with one unified voice, to a national audience. That is precisely what the whole “Occupy Congress” movement is now doing. By standing up and saying “We’ve had enough!” in such a clear fashion, Democrats can much more easily make that case to the voters from now until November. And the longer the sit-in goes on, the easier that case will be to make. Political theater should always be judged on two qualities — is it attention-grabbing, and is it effective? Some manage the first without achieving the latter. But occupying Congress may wind up being a winner on both yardsticks.

Chris Weigant blogs at:

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These recent news cycles, lo, they have not been kind to presumptive GOP nominee and cursed blood pudding Donald Trump. With national poll numbers cratering, money in unprecedentedly short supply, and a staff in chaos, anxious Republican elites who have bought in to his candidacy are looking for Trump to demonstrate that he’s going to start taking his presidential bid seriously and right his suddenly foundering campaign.

Good news, then! Trump will respond to the jangled nerves of his worried supporters by … pissing off to Scotland on Thursday. Cool, cool. That should do the trick.

See, while Beltway Republicans are waiting, and hoping, for Trump to finally make his vaunted general election pivot, the candidate himself is more concerned with divots. He’s making this trip to bonnie Scotland to celebrate the grand reopening of his golf course, Trump Turnberry. It’s almost as if he is more serious about tending to his portfolio of business interests, and perhaps launching new ones, than he is about actually starting his general election campaign.

Trump — whose mother hailed from Tong, a wee village in the Outer Hebrides — has long claimed to feel a native affinity for Scotland, and he has expressed that affection by stamping a pair of golf courses on the nation: Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire, and Turnberry, in South Ayrshire. As with all things Trump, the mogul’s sporting interests were pursued with his trademarked brand of care and diplomacy. As The Atlantic’s David Graham related:

Trump had bought a portion of the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire two years earlier with the intention of building a golf course and resort there. But the area included sand dunes that were a protected site. He was eventually able to win approval—over the reservations of local residents and government — and construct the course. Ultimately, Scottish officials decided the economic benefit outweighed the environmental degradation. That didn’t stop Trump from whining throughout the process that the government was going hard on him despite his plans to invest vast amounts of money in the country. “If somebody else had applied, they would have gotten it a lot easier than me,” he said. “The celebrity and all of this media and craziness is probably a liability for me. But it’s an asset for the area and for Scotland. Everybody is talking about this course all over the world.”

More recently, Trump has made himself famous in Scotland for his epic row with former Scottish First Minister and current member of Parliament Alex Salmond over the wind farms the Scottish government approved off Scotland’s northeast coast, which Trump considered to be a terrible eyesore for the swells he’d hope to attract to Trump International. Trump’s war on wind, fought mainly on Twitter, wended all the way to Scotland’s highest court before Trump lost. 

Of course, despite being the world’s foremost opponent of wind farming — he famously referred to it as “obsolete wind technology [that] will destroy the magnificence and beauty of Scotland” — Trump didn’t miss a beat when circumstances forced him to pander to Iowa voters earlier this year. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump reported, Trump came face to face with a wind supporter at a televised town hall in Newton, Iowa, who asked if Trump supported the wind-farm subsidies that kept her husband employed. Per Bump:

Trump began by saying, “Well, I’m okay with it.” (He then said that he “know[s] a lot about wind,” prompting some tittering in the audience.) He noted that it can be hard for wind to be competitive in energy production particularly when prices for fossil fuels are so low, so “you need subsidies.” (He paused to marvel: “It’s an amazing thing when you think — you know, where they can, out of nowhere, out of the wind, they make energy.”)

Oooh, wind makes energy, fancy that. At any rate, Trump managed to maintain relatively cordial relations with Iowans. The same can not be said of the Scots. Journalist Lesley Riddoch, writing for The Scotsman in 2012, put it rather colorfully:

Donald Trump: an unsavoury blend of Midas and King Canute; an uncomfortable fusion of Simon Cowell and Andrew Neil. It’s hard to think of a less sympathetic character in the eyes of most Scots. Despite all his tartanry and trumpeting of heritage, The Donald is almost the anti-Scot personified.

Left and right, unionist and nationalist, man and woman, young and old — it takes quite a lot to unite the people of this notoriously fractious little country in a collective shudder. But Donald Trump effortlessly manages to strike the wrong note in just about everything he does.

So, it seems like we finally have a non-fallacious way to refer to someone as “No True Scotsman.” 

Animosity for Trump in Scotland has hardly dimmed. As Fortune’s Michael D’Antonio reports, “there is probably no country in the world where he is least welcomed.” Among other things, the Scottish people retain the memory of Trump promising that his resorts would provide a vital economic boost and create some 6,000 permanent jobs. Trump fell about 5,850 jobs short of his projection. And along the way, Trump had numerous occasions to display his patented petulance — especially as he attempted to snap up land for his golf courses. Per D’Antonio:

The political tide began to turn against Trump as Scots learned of how he was bullying the few landowners who refused to sell to him. When Susan Munro rejected his bid to buy her property, she said Trump’s workers built a ten-foot high berm of earth around it, blocking her view. Munro’s neighbor just to the north, David Milne, saw Trump’s men plant evergreens twenty feet from his windows when he refused to sell. To the south, farmer Michael Forbes was attacked – his family lived like “pigs,” said Trump — and the developer’s lawyer approached the local government about taking his land by eminent domain.

Opposition to Trump grew, with rallies and protests. An artist displayed caricatures of the man inside the barn on the Forbes property. Hundreds of people became co-owners of the Forbes land, buying tiny interests in the farm in order to make a transfer of the property extremely cumbersome and costly.

When Trump arrives in Scotland, he will be greeted by locals who’ve endeavored to raise Mexican flags within sight of his properties — and who will have their animosity for Trump well primed by Vice President Joe Biden, who will be firing potshots from nearby Ireland.

The Scottish people have a saying: “Why don’t you go take a running fuck at a rolling doughnut.” Reached for comment, Republican strategist Liz Mair — who, like Trump, is both American and Scottish (but unlike Trump has a more substantial affection for property rights) — was slightly more measured in offering her perspective on Trump’s decision to quit the campaign trail at this heady time.

“With this visit,” said Mair, “Trump is temporarily relocating himself from one country of which he is a national, where his fellow citizens largely hate him, to another country that he appears to be a national of, where he is arguably even more hated. Good times.”

Good times, indeed, unless you are one of the GOP officials hoping to shepherd Trump through a genial convention, onto a sensible general election footing. Instead of Trump addressing his myriad deficits while the attention being paid to them is boiling, he’s going to run at full speed into a hostile territory where there are no electoral votes to be plucked, only more cycles of bad news. It really makes you wonder how Trump’s adult children can be smart enough to rid Trump’s campaign of Corey Lewandowski, and yet not possess the good sense to say, “Hey, I’ll cut the ribbon at your stupid golf course, Dad.”

But hey, the Trump campaign is fine! Everything is fine.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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Jason Linkins edits “Eat The Press” for The Huffington Post and co-hosts the HuffPost Politics podcast “So, That Happened.” Subscribe here, and listen to the latest episode below.

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Google has partnered with Udacity to create an “Android Basics” Nanodegree, an educational program that teaches those with no experience all the basics needed to create their own Android app. The program is designed for those who “have little or no programming experience,” says Google; by the end of the program, those who complete it will be able to create … Continue reading