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Some good news

Monday, November 29, 2021

I know it’s not much, but it’s the best I can do, good news-wise:

It’s hard to recall a former politician who was showered with more free media attention than Chris Christie this month as he peddled his new book, “Republican Rescue.” Invited to appear on a carousel of shows, Christie was all-present as journalists lined up to interview him. CNN even dedicated an entire primetime hour to him, treating the in-your-face Republican as one of the most important political voices in the country.

Consumers aren’t buying it.

A senior publishing source with access to the industry’s BookScan tabulations tells me that “Republican Rescue” sold just 2,289 copies during its first week in stores, which constitutes a colossal publishing flop. That figure does not include digital copies of the book, but based on industry sales patterns, given Christie’s weak showing in stores he likely sold only a few hundred digital ones. (On Sunday, “Republican Rescue” was ranked 15,545th at Amazon’s Kindle Store.)

…

It confirms that the deeply unpopular former New Jersey governor remains, first and foremost, a media creation. For years, he’s been propped up by the press as a populist Straight Shooter, but he left office with an approval rating in the teens, and failed spectacularly when he tried to run for president in 2020. That explains why CNN’s Christie special was a ratings disaster, coming in a distant third place among the three cable news channels that night. (During the show, CNN’s Dana Bash never once asked Christie about the BridgeGate scandal that ended his political career.)

It says a lot that the media turned to Christie, who was a sycophant of the first order during the Trump years, to serve as their new Republican anti-Trump. As to the book sales, who could have known that thinking people on the left wouldn’t buy what Christie was selling, and that there aren’t enough Republicans waiting to be rescued to make a dent in the Amazon best seller list. Most people who buy books are reasonably well informed, except the people who buy and don’t read the books from right wing imprints. Unlike the media (apparently) they are fully aware that Christie is a hypocrite of the first order. Unfortunately, it seems likely that Christie got a huge advance from some idiotic publisher, so he’ll likely do okay money-wise, though this can’t be good for his massive ego.

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It’s contagious!

Saturday, November 27, 2021

I thought this kind of crazy was confined to Republicans here in the States, but apparently it’s as contagious as the latest COVID variant:

A British member of Parliament claimed this week that men are being forced into committing crimes because fictional male characters like James Bond and Doctor Who are being replaced by women.

During prepared remarks on Thursday, Tory MP Nick Fletcher made the assertion that “men need to have their own identity.”

“Everywhere, not least during the cultural sphere, there seems to be a call from a tiny yet very vocal minority that every male character or good role model must have a female replacement,” he complained. “One only needs to look at the discussions surrounding the next James Bond.”

“And it’s not just James Bond,” the MP continued. “In recent years, we have seen Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Luke Skywalker, the Equalizer all replaced by women.”

Fletcher went on to insist that most male role models are now villains.

This sort of crazy started here, but it’s spreading to the Mother Country!!! Who knows where it will go next! Back in the olden days, when I was just a lad, sickness of this sort only spread by personal contact. It was the nature of contagion back then. Now it apparently spreads via Facebook and Twitter. You have to hand it to Fletcher. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene have nothing on him. Stay tuned to see if the infection spreads to the rest of the Tories, as it has spread to all the Republicans. My sources tell me that developing a vaccine for this affliction will make the development of the COVID vaccine look like a piece of cake.

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Some things won’t fit in a memory hole

Monday, November 22, 2021

At the dawn of 2020 I made some predictions about the coming year. Some of them have stood the test of time, others have come true, but not in the way I predicted. For instance I predicted that Chuck Shumer and Joe Biden would preserve the filibuster. I didn’t see Joe and Krysten coming. On the other hand, in the same paragraph I accurately predicted that the failure to deliver on a truly progressive agenda would wind up costing the Democrats.

But ever since January of 2021 I’ve felt the prediction I felt most confident about was precisely the one where I erred the most, to wit:

On January 21, 2020 Donald Trump will be consigned to the memory hole, like his most recent Republican predecessor, and the media will rush to proclaim that the Republican Party has been purged and is now, once again, the responsible party they knew and loved before the Trumpian aberration came along. Lindsay Graham won’t remember anything about the man. Both siderism, which has begun to be in a bit of a bad odor lately, will see a new rebirth.

Note that I committed a typo on the original quote, I meant January 21, 2021.

I couldn’t have been wronger, and I know that “wronger” is not a word. About the memory hole, that is, both siderism is running strong.

But today I read over at the Palmer Report that at least some Republicans are belatedly trying to shove Trump down that very memory hole.

While plenty of Republicans have embraced Donald Trump because they support his hateful agenda, others have gone along for the ride mainly because of political calculations. However, with the political climate changing and the midterms less than a year away, many from this latter group are desperate to figure out a way to distance themselves from Trump without drawing attention to the fact they have skated on the wrong side of history for years.

A new strategy taking hold is about looking toward the future. This sounds good if you say it fast. The problem is these Republicans who have closely associated themselves with Trump are now trying to have it both ways, requiring everyone to look forward with selective amnesia about the past, as if the recent horror show of the Trump administration and the continuing threat to democracy is of no consequence. How convenient.

“I think… people are in the present and want to vote on what they see going on now,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told attendees at an event in Kentucky on November 8. “So, I think the election will be about the future, not about the past,” he added.

I’ve seen rumblings about this elsewhere as well. The question is, can they shove him into the memory hole at this point? I’ve complained ad nauseum in these pages about the Democrats failure to learn from the Republicans ability to all sing from the same hymn book, but the fact is that when it comes to Trump, any Republican attempt to sing in harmony will be unsuccessful if that song ignores the genius. Had they shoved him into the hole in January of 2021, and for that matter had they made clear prior to that date that he was fated for that destination, it likely would have worked. But they chose instead to acquiesce, in one form or another, to his attempts to steal the election, and that carried with it the subsequent need to cater to the true believers.

So, it’s a bit late in the game now. They’re stuck with him. If people are actually allowed to vote he will likely be a liability, which is one of the many reasons Republicans are working so hard to suppress the vote. Still, the Republicans can’t distance themselves from the guy, for if they do, a lot of the true believers will just stay home. The real question is whether the Democrats will figure out a way to truly turn the situation to their advantage.

Alas, we all know the answer to that question.

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Is he a grifter, or is he crazy?

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

We learn at Crooks & Liars that Mike Lindell is mad at the Nazis at Fox (his characterization) for not covering his latest fever dream:

Mike Lindell went on Steve Bannon’s podcast to piss and moan because the media, not even Faux News, is covering the lawsuit he wants to take to SCOTUS on the day before Thanksgiving. Lindell apparently wants us to forget all his other predictions about the election being overturned, because this time it’s for real or something like that.

…

Lindell also claims that some Democratic Attorneys General have also signed on to his lawsuit, but refused to name them. Most likely because they don’t exist except in his swamp-fevered brain.

I’ve written about Lindell before, here and here, and I’ve always assumed that he was simply a grifter, using his Trumpian activities as a way to sell pillows to the Trump crowd. But at this point it’s hard to believe that he’s doing pillow sales much good.

Assuming he’s somewhat sane, he must realize that the Supreme Court is not going to do as he’s predicting, and in a week he’s going to have to acknowledge that. I suppose it could be the case that the faithful will believe whatever pivot he comes up with after nothing happens by Thanksgiving. After all, I understand that the folks who waited for JFK Jr. to appear in Dallas still believe that he will resurrect in some other fashion. But what I haven’t seen is any indication that Lindell has been able to monetize this grift, so you have to wonder: if the best he can do is get on Steve Bannon’s podcast, what’s the point?

Alternatively, he may be seriously mentally ill and believe all this stuff, but I’m of the opinion that some enterprising journalist should do some research and let us know how much Lindell is siphoning out of the pockets of the brain dead.

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Another one bites the dust?

Sunday, November 14, 2021

It would be awful if I were to say that I wouldn’t mind at all if this guy ended up coming home in a box.

So I won’t say it.

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An easy prediction

Friday, November 12, 2021

The Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill, a piece of legislation that would have been considered uncontroversial 20 or 30 years ago and at any time in any sane country, are receiving death threats, said death threats being encouraged by their fellow Republicans in Congress.

Liz Cheney has been vocal about the need to get to the bottom of the insurrection, an insurrection that was planned and encouraged by her fellow Republicans. She claims to believe that Donald Trump represents a threat to democracy. She’s even come out for censuring Paul Gosar for his tweet threatening AOC. She’s well aware that should the investigation into the insurrection be delayed by court actions, etc., it will be stifled should the Republicans take back the house in 2022.

It goes without saying that threatening the lives of Democrats and any Republican who strays from the party line will become standard operating procedure on the right. In fact it already is. Finally, it is already clear that the Republicans are ready, willing, and probably able to steal the 2024 presidential election, which, by any definition, is a threat to democracy. In fact, it’s more than a threat, it’s a death blow.

So, imagine a situation in January 2023. Liz Cheney is, surprisingly, still in Congress, as are some of the Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill. The party split is close. The Republican outliers could be the Joe Manchin’s of the Republican Party, threatening to vote to keep Pelosi in charge or simply threatening to not vote at all when the vote for Speaker is held.

What are the chances that they would do the right thing and vote to save democracy. If you answered “no chance at all” you are right on the money.

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Where we are headed

Friday, November 12, 2021

I have read about this particular story before, but it is definitely not widely known, and, as the linked article points out, it should be a story that is widely publicized.

It demonstrates the increasing predominance of the right in our courts, and the failure of our media to cover abuses perpetrated by both our courts and the corporations to which those courts defer:

Famed indigenous human rights lawyer Steven Donziger had already been under house arrest for over 800 days when he reported to prison on October 27 to begin a six-month sentence. His crime: winning the largest single pollution judgment in history, $9.5 billion, for the Cofan people of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

Was the human rights hero jailed in Brazil or China? No, he was sentenced to prison in the USA.

Just a sample of the egregiousness of what happened to this man after he asked that :

When the judge ordered Donziger to turn over his personal computer to Chevron — the company claimed Donziger was was hiding funds — Donziger asked for an unbiased expert to protect confidential information about his clients.

For Donziger’s temerity, the judge charged him with criminal contempt and placed Donziger under house arrest — an unprecedented punishment for an attorney.

It gets worse: when the Justice Department failed to prosecute Donziger, the judge hired, at public expense, a private lawyer to prosecute Donziger. And still worse: the attorney worked for a firm that that represented Chevron!

Once again, Donziger, despite facing jail time, was denied a jury trial.

Read the whole thing. Once again, the New York Times, our paper of record, failed to cover this story as it should have, but that’s to be expected.

We are now well stocked with Trumpian judges, and I think the sort of judicial misbehavior (we’re seeing it on the state level in the Rittenhouse case) will become the norm, with the press carefully looking the other way. In a few years, I’d guess, we’ll have courts going after the media (except Fox) and the press will openly wonder how things ever came to such a pass.

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At the risk of repeating myself…

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

I get about 100 fundraising emails a day. Today I noticed the subject line on one, which read: “The media is not on our side”. It was from a group called No Dem Left Behind and the text went on to acknowledge that the subject line was no news to anyone. The argument put forward was that the media likes Republicans, particularly Trump and the Trumpists, because their outrageous behavior makes for good ratings. There’s more than a bit of truth to all that.

But there’s another reason the media feels licensed to beat up on Democrats. For years the Republicans worked the refs, constantly complaining about a pretty much non-existent “liberal bias”. The predictable result was that the media has often bent over backwards to be “fair” to Republicans, and a good argument can be made that the “both sides” narrative was one of the end results of the Republicans’ constant complaints. It’s a strategy that worked, and it would quite likely work for the Democrats if they would only employ it.

Every once it a while there’s a feeble Democratic attempt to go after the media. Lately, for instance, there’s been some whimpers about the fact that the media hasn’t covered the contents of the bills the Democrats have been working on, including the one that Joe and Krysten actually let them pass. If anyone has complained about the fact that the media has made out the recent election to be an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats, while ignoring positive news for the Democrats, such as their success in Georgia, those complaints have been similarly muted

Also, only Democrats are ever in disarray, and, according to the media, they are in disarray pretty much always. Somehow, despite all in plain sight evidence to the contrary, Republicans are never in disarray, nor do Democrats try to portray them that way.

What it takes is what the Democrats have always failed to do: they need to mount a coordinated campaign calling out the media’s biased coverage. It’s not that hard, all they have to do is review a little recent history and refashion the Republican “liberal media” campaign. Of course we’re unlikely to get a propaganda network of our own, like Fox, but it would be nice if CNN, et. al., could be pushed at least to the point where they identify the center where it actually exists, populated by supporters of the Democratic agenda, many of whom are unaware of that agenda because the media fails to inform them. Instead, the media approved definition of “center” has had an ever rightwards trajectory, while polling suggests that it has, if anything, moved a trifle to the left.Indeed, the definition of “center” now carries with it a political requirement: those politicians fighting for what Americans want, like the Build Back Better Act, must “compromise” (read “surrender”) to Republican extremists in order to satisfy the press that they have reasonably accomodated the “centrists”.

By the way, I know I’ve said all this before, but some things need repeating.

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Looking on (or for) the bright side

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Not such a great day yesterday, given the outcome in Virginia, where yet another fascist will assume a governorship. Speaking of which, why is it that Republicans bandy about the term “socialism” (if only it were true) while Democrats shy away from the extremely apt term “fascist”.

But I digress. Look at the title, I’m supposed to be talking about the bright side.

In this case, it’s sort of local. We had local elections here in Groton yesterday, and the outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Democrats, who were riven by internal disputes (which I personally kept out of and about which I do not intend to further bloviate), caught on the wrong side of a sort of NIMBY local issue, dealing with a dirty campaign (what else could be expected) by the Republicans, with our leadership constantly being attacked by an allegedly Democratic leaning newspaper columnist who preferred to hear only what he wanted to hear about the internal disputes to which I referred earlier.

A further digression about the NIMBY issue. The present town council, which consists of all Democrats, okayed a development deal for property in Mystic that was formerly the site of a school for the deaf. It is in a single family residential area, but the proposal was for pretty dense apartments, that would have increased traffic in what is already a tourist infested area. The property was essentially owned by the town,and of course the deal essentially handed the land over to the developer along with a tax break. Having been on the Town Council, I suspect the deal was presented to the councilors by town planners as a great deal. Planners love to plan and develop, they don’t really care about what people in the area might think. The Council probably didn’t vet the deal as well as it should have, and, to put icing on the cake, the town attorney advised the Democratic candidates, including those that were not incumbents, that saying anything negative about the deal on the campaign trail should be avoided as it might constitute a breach of contract. Apparently that advice applied only to Democrats. In fact, the deal is now all but dead, but that salient fact was not widely acknowledged during the campaign. Luckily, the issue resonated in only certain parts of town, since Groton is more balkanized than the Balkans.

Despite all that we came out of the election with flying colors, though admittedly we did lose one seat. We’ll still have an 8 to 1 majority, dominate the RTM (representative town meeting), and the Board of Ed. To add icing to the cake, former state representative John Scott, the Republican Town Chair, Town Council candidate and renowned plagiarist, who seems to have directed some of the nastiest attacks, got fewer votes than any other town council candidate.

So, there is a bit of a bright side, even while we trudge toward fascism.

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You sometimes need a weathervane

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Bob Dylan famously wrote that you don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have a weathervane, and here’s a case that may give us an early indication of just how much Donald Trump’s judicial picks have warped our legal system:

The AP reported, “Former President Donald Trump is trying to block documents including call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from his chief of staff relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection from being released to the committee investigating the riot, the National Archives revealed in a court filing early Saturday.”

This should be a legal no-brainer. Trump does not have executive privilege, and the White House tapes case would seem to be conclusive precedent, even if one puts aside the fact that Trump, no longer being president, has no right to claim executive privilege. At least he wouldn’t if he were a Democrat.

In retrospect, Nixon’s crimes seem almost quaint compared to what Trump was up to.

I hope I’m wrong, but my pessimistic dread of the coming faux-democratic autocracy leads me to conclude that the courts may in fact carve a “those cases no longer count unless you’re a Democrat” exception for Trump.

Even if they don’t rule for Trump, that’s no proof that the rule of law is secure. They might decide that they can ditch Trump while advancing their own goals of undermining democracy at every turn. After all, if they rule against Trump, all the pundits will use it as proof that the courts are being even handed. Then they can go about the business of upholding Jim Crow and insuring that Republicans maintain control of the levers of government while garnering a minority of votes actually cast, not to mention an even smaller share of the vote were everyone allowed to vote.

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