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Proof positive. He really is stupid

Monday, September 14, 2020

These are hard times for part time bloggers like me. There’s an outrage an hour, but, for the most part, there’s nothing new to say about any given outrage, and how many times can you make the inevitable observation that had Obama committed said outrage it’s shelf life in the mainstream would have been longer than the hour or so that a Trump story lasts.

Anyway, a few thoughts on Trump’s latest self reported triumph.

Before getting there, a few preliminary thoughts. There is a lot of legitimate debate about whether Trump is mentally ill and/or stupid and/or senile, or alternatively a crafty political genius who knows how to manipulate the electorate. There’s a lot of truth in the first three, and a little bit of truth in the last, as he’s been a successful grifter all his life and he can still feed his base the red meat they like, though he doesn’t understand that he can’t win with the base alone. But, as to stupidity, well that’s a no-brainer.

We all know that Trump’s campaign has made much of the fact that he’s been nominated for the Noble (sic) Peace Prize by a rightwing Scandinavian, a nomination that will go nowhere. It is to be fervently hoped that when Greta Thunberg gets it, we will not have to be too smugly satisfied, as Trump will be pouting about his loss as someone about to exit stage right, and off to jail at that.

So, we all know about the “Noble” Prize, but how many of us knew that, as he recently announced, he has already taken home the non-existent yet much coveted “Bay of Pigs” Award. Read all about it here. This is where he totally makes the case for his own stupidity. And yet, ironically, it’s an award, if it did exist, of which he would be totally worthy, given his record in office. The Bay of Pigs was a minor glitch compared to his disastrous presidency. But even here, we must pause. JFK took full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs disaster, though truth to tell, the planning began under Eisenhower. Trump has never taken responsibility for anything, except things he claimed happened, but didn’t.

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A Good Samaritan

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

This is not about politics. It’s the only way I can express my appreciation to someone who did an extraordinarily good deed for me today, appreciation I failed to adequately express at the time. It’s also an admission that while I continue to have nothing good to say about organized religion it is also the case that some people are truly inspired to do good by their religious beliefs.

I’m writing this from Maine. We drove here this morning. I was driving my wife’s car in the leftmost of three lanes on 495 just north of Lowell when I ran over something, I’m not sure what, which left a three or four inch gash in my rear tire. There was no room to pull over from the left hand lane so I had to cross over to the breakdown lane on the right, which was itself a rather unpleasant task.

I managed to get the “spare” tire out of the trunk, a mammoth job considering it was situated underneath a pile of stuff we were bringing here to Maine. It was one of those temporary tires, but I figured it would be good enough to get us to a tire store to get a replacement.

Let me back up a bit and say that situations like this tend to be stressful. It’s no fun trying to change a tire when cars and trucks are whizzing by at 70 miles an hour. It’s even worse when your tires are outfitted with wheel locks. Getting the locked nut off the wheel is not easy, particularly if you’ve never done it before and really aren’t quite sure how you’re supposed to do it. As a result, you tend to be a little agitated. Make that a lot agitated.

It was when I was trying to figure out the wheel lock issue that a young African American guy pulled up behind me and got out of his truck. He said, and these are his words as best as I can recall, “Brother, I don’t know if your a praying man, but this morning I prayed that God would give me the opportunity to do good to someone, and when I saw you get that flat tire I thought that god had answered my prayers.”

He had been driving somewhere close behind me. After seeing me get the flat, he couldn’t stay behind me, given the traffic flow, so he had taken the next exit, looped around and found me and stopped to help. I needed it too. He figured out the wheel lock issue, we got the flat tire off the car, and the temporary tire on.

I offered him money, but he wouldn’t take it. I suspected he wouldn’t. I was so frazzled that I couldn’t think of any other way to express my gratitude, except with an effusive “thank you” so I’m doing it in this small way as well. Truly a good person. Far better than me, for if I had seen the same thing I would just have kept on driving.

Postscript: I fully realize that the fact that my benefactor was an African American should be entirely irrelevant to this little story. But this is America in the year 2020.

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Housekeeping

Monday, September 7, 2020

I just discovered that somehow comments were closed on this blog. I’m not sure how that happened. I have set them to be open again, but it will only apply to new posts. This post is just an experiment to make sure it works.

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Trumpers in the hands of an angry god

Saturday, September 5, 2020

As I’ve mentioned often, and also just recently, I have a degree in theology from Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, so I am totally qualified to speak on all matters of religion, and though I don’t actually believe in God anymore, I’m going to grant His existence for purposes of this post, for I hereby declare that there is no explanation for this other than the judgment of an angry god:

When you look at Donald Trump’s terrible approval rating numbers, it’s easy to see that he’s broadly unpopular across a wide swath of the American population. But for whatever reason, Trump seems to be popular with people who own small boats. We’ll have to dive into the psychology of that on another day. For now, it’s enough to know that Trump’s boat parade is sinking – literally.

It’s now being reported by the CBS and ABC affiliates in Austin, Texas that several boats in the Trump boat parade have sunk. The local sheriff’s office has confirmed that it’s responded to several boats in “distress.”

Now you may remember when Pat Robertson declared a hurricane or some other natural disaster to be a sign of god’s displeasure about our society’s tolerance of gays, but we theologians rejected that interpretation because in order for that to be so 1) god was wreaking his vengeance on gay haters and gay lovers alike, which hardly sent a coherent message, and 2) he was wreaking his vengeance in the South, while most of the gay tolerant folks are here in the North. That’s not how god works. In the Bible he showed his displeasure with the Sodomites by destroying Sodom. I.e., the message was clear. He didn’t destroy some random, unoffending little hamlet somewhere else to send a message to the Sodomites.

So it follows as the night the day that those boats didn’t sink without reason. Only Trump lovers got hit. This is the judgment of an angry god. Yes, I realize that I’ve used the adjective “angry” twice to modify the term “god” in this post (and once again in the title-a tip of the hat to Jonathan Edwards), but that’s because we’re talking here about the Old Testament god who was angry pretty much all of the time, not the new and improved “loving” god of the New Testament. The fact is, god has a bit of a split personality. He’s got his angry side and his all loving side, though when he sends a message to us folks on earth, it’s usually from the angry side.

I could go on, but that’s enough for today’s sermon.

Update: Something my wife just found.

Update 2. Even the pagans are getting into the act.

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Holy Hypocrites!

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

I sometimes wonder if there are any actually religious religious people out there. They appear to be nothing but grifters from top to bottom. Latest, but by no means principal exhibit, this guy:

The officiant of a now-infamous wedding in Millinocket gave a defiant sermon during an indoor church service on Sunday, just a day after Maine’s CDC announced it was investigating a coronavirus outbreak among those affiliated with the Sanford church.

Todd Bell, the pastor, portrayed Calvary Baptist Church, which he leads, as being on the front lines of a culture war, battling against a “socialistic platform’’ that mandates mask-wearing and distance learning in schools.

…

Bell’s comments echoed some of the political talking points that President Trump and others on the right have used to decry coronavirus restrictions. At a rally in New Hampshire on Friday night, for example, Trump lamented that Democrats “don’t believe law-abiding citizens can go to a church together. You can’t go to church anymore.’’

The Aug. 7 wedding at which Bell officiated in East Millinocket has been linked to 123 coronavirus cases in Maine, the largest outbreak in the state, as well as to the death of Theresa Dentremont, an 83-year-old woman who did not attend the event. Many of the participants in the wedding, including the bride and groom, went silent as the fallout grew, switching their social media accounts to private.

I find his attack on socialism rather puzzling.

First, lets define the term. In this country “socialism” is a pejorative term used by Republicans for “things we don’t like”. American socialists, on the other hand, are essentially 1960’s liberals, who believe that the fruits of our society should be more evenly spread among the people, and that government has a role in making people’s lives better. Public ownership of the means of production is rather passé, don’t you know.

As faithful readers know, I have a degree in theology from Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, and though I no longer consider myself a Christian, I do have more than passing familiarity with the teachings of Jesus. I’m with Tom Paine on Jesus: he wasn’t a god, but his moral teachings were, for the most part, exemplary. It’s just a shame that Christians have a 2 millennium old habit of ignoring those teachings.

I will now, utilizing my in depth knowledge of religion, take it upon myself to show that wearing a mask is the right thing to do from a Christian point of view, and that Jesus was a 1960’s liberal at the least, therefore a socialist by today’s standards.

It’s hard to fit “mask wearing” into the American socialist’s definition of socialism, or any other coherent definition of the term, so let’s go with what is presumably Bell’s definition: something he doesn’t like, particularly now that he is being held responsible for something he helped cause.

Jesus said that you should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. We don’t wear masks to protect ourselves; we wear them to protect others. Any sane person (very possibly Bell doesn’t qualify) would prefer that a person who might infect him or her with a disease wear a mask if doing so would prevent, or lessen the chances, of that infection. It’s called doing unto others, etc.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

Now, on to socialism. Here’s what Jesus had to say about the criteria and process for determining who spends eternity in eternal bliss, or ends up burning in Hell forever and ever, Amen:

Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

“Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’

Now, before I go on, let’s stipulate that we have to forgive Jesus for putting the righteous on the right hand side; the French Revolution hadn’t even happened yet, and, as I mentioned above, he wasn’t actually god, so he couldn’t be expected to know about political terminology 2000 years after his death.

But the rest of that quote sure makes Jesus out to be a bit of a socialist, doesn’t it? Republicans are constantly telling us that it’s positively sinful to feed the hungry, who should all go out and get jobs whether they exist or not, or help the sick, who should all just die if they can’t afford to pay for the world’s most expensive (and not the best) medical care, or, perish the thought, welcome the stranger, who should all be put in concentration camps, separated from their own children. Then there’s the other little story where Jesus advised a rich guy to give all his riches to the poor if he wanted to get through the eye of the needle, whereas Republicans believe that rich people have a sacred obligation to pervert the political system in order to make sure that the rich get richer and the rest of us eat shit, whereas we socialists believe the rich ought to pay their share and that they actually have a moral obligation, and should have a legal obligation, to those they are grinding underfoot.

There probably are people in the religion racket who agree with Jesus, but they tend to keep their mouths shut, and defer to the Reeds of the world.

Anyone who has gotten this far is probably thinking: this is all so obvious, it’s not even worth saying. You may have a degree from Our Lady of Sorrows, but it doesn’t take a theologian to see that Republicans and Evangelicals are, in the words of Jesus, like the Scribes and Pharisees, “.. hypocrites! for [they] are like to white washed sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”

All I can say is, if that’s the case, why is hardly anyone pointing it out?

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One thing to expect

Monday, August 31, 2020

I don’t think there is any doubt but that the Republicans are planning to steal the 2020 election. If they succeed, my guess it will be done so that it is plain sight, but nonetheless deniable enough to pass muster in the present partisan Supreme Court. It will be the end of our constitutional system if it happens, but maybe that’s the point.

I don’t think they’ll take a one size fits all approach to what will definitely be a conspiracy. (Remember, if they accuse others of something-and they’re always accusing the left of conspiring-they’re doing it themselves. Besides the multitudinous things I can’t predict, the mails will be a part of it, as will shutting polling places, etc.

Given recent events in places like Kenosha and Portland, and a bit of past history in previous elections, it seems like a good bet that armed right wing “militias” will show up at selected polling places to intimidate Democratic voters, and that little or nothing will be done to stop them. The only question is whether they will be left to their own devices to pick their spots, or whether the Trump campaign will coordinate with them. I’m betting that there’ll be direction from the Trumpers. After all, if they manage to pull it off, they won’t have to worry about being criminally prosecuted, and if they don’t pull it off, a lot of they were going to go to jail anyway.

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We’ve seen this before

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Apparently there is a survey our there making the case that Trump is behind in the polls because his supporters are ever so shy about disclosing their preferences to telephone pollsters.

I think it is well debunked at the linked article, but I think it should also be pointed out that this may be one more hopeful sign of the eventual outcome should the Republicans not succeed in stealing the election. It reminds me of the poll skewing we were hearing about in 2012, when the Republicans grasped at the theory that somehow the polls were skewed in Obama’s favor. The thinking was somewhat similar:

“I don’t think [the polls] reflect the composition of what 2012 is going to look like,” Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said in an interview.

Frustration that polls are skewed in favor of Obama has escalated among some on the right in recent weeks. One website, www.unskewedpolls.com, recently began re-weighting the mainstream polls to closer track the demographic assumptions of conservative polling outlet Rasmussen Reports. The re-weighted polls all show Romney ahead in the race, with leads of between 3 and 11 percentage points.

We can, perhaps, take comfort in the fact that the Republicans are taking comfort in these fantasies.

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Another (albeit small) brick in the wall

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Yesterday I wrote a sort of review of Kurt Andersen’s Evil Geniuses, which documents the myriad ways in which our country has been hijacked by the ultra-rich, who have succeeded marvelously in either repealing restraints under which they previously operated, or convincing the government and/or the courts to not enforce laws that theoretically restrain them.

Today I stumbled upon this article, covering litigation between Apple and Epic Games. It is one small example of the sort of thing Andersen writes about, behavior that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago.

Apple has expelled Epic from the App Store, as Epic tried to do a work around to deprive Apple of the vig that it extracts every time someone buys something on the App Store. Bear in mind that there is literally no other way to market IOS apps other than in the App Store.

I’m not an antitrust expert, but it’s hard to see how this is not a restraint of trade. Apple has the nerve to say that allowing Epic to avoid Apple’s exorbitant charges (30%, I believe) “ is not fair to all other developers on the App Store and is putting customers in the middle of their fight”. My guess is that most developers would love to see Epic win.

Apple is now worth two trillion dollars, in large part because of the fact that it has been able to get away with restricting access to it’s mobile operating system. Recall that only about 20 years ago, Microsoft was in hot water because it made it difficult to switch default browsers in Windows. It wasn’t really all that hard, and it didn’t cost anything to do it. Apple, years after the introduction of iOS, is finally going to allow customers to switch default browsers in iOS with the next update to the operating system, but it will still get 30% of whatever those browser developers charge.

Needless to say, the ultimate losers are the customers. It doesn’t take a degree in mathematics to figure out that we’d be paying less for apps if Apple couldn’t take such a giant cut, and, just maybe, the ridiculous app subscription model would never have taken off as it has.

My guess is that Apple will ultimately prevail in the litigation. The courts have effectively neutered the antitrust laws and there’s no such thing as an unfair trade practice anymore when giant corporations are involved. If we really want to take our country back, we have to tame these corporations and vigourous enforcement of anti-trust and unfair trade practice laws should be a big part of it.

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Book report: Evil Geniuses

Saturday, August 29, 2020

This past Sunday the New York Times Book Review featured Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen. It sounded good so I ordered the e-book (I use a Kobo so I can buy through my local bookstore. I avoid Amazon as much as I can) and I’ve been reading it over the last couple of days. I highly recommend it.

The book documents the growth of the vast right wing conspiracy to which Hillary so famously referred. It really does exist, though it’s pretty much out in the open, as Andersen documents.

There’s a reason why inequality has increased in America since the 1970s. It didn’t just happen and it isn’t a natural outgrowth of economic laws over which we have no control. It was a matter of policy on a large number of fronts, including legislative enactments, regulatory changes, legal rulings, and the wholesale takeover of the Republican Party, which actually once had honorable people in its ranks. All brought to you by a movement funded by folks like the Koch Brothers following game plans by people like Lewis Powell. Speaking of Amazon, which I mentioned above, it is only because our anti-trust laws are no longer enforced that it has become the worker exploiting virtual monopoly it has become.

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that the right plays the long game, and Andersen documents it rather completely in his book. When I read the Times review I hesitated to buy the book, as it sounded like it was merely a litany of all the things I already knew, and that’s partly true. None of it surprises me, but it’s valuable to have it all in one place and there are a host of little factoids of which I wasn’t aware, though none of them are surprising. If you were paying attention and alive from 1970 to the present, you had to be at least vaguely aware that there were forces out there that were changing our society and skewing things toward the rich, though of course, they were not covered well by our media. Just as one small example, the role of the Federalist Society in warping our judiciary is hardly noticed even today, and it is rare that the financial backers of said Society are mentioned when this right wing horror show is mentioned.

This book should be required reading for young people born after the right achieved so many of the subtle and under the radar victories that brought us to where we are today. They need to know that this country once had a fairly egalitarian society; how it came to be so unequal; and who is responsible. It should also be required reading for Democratic politicians, as, should they take control, a lot could be achieved by simply reversing the legislative and regulatory changes Andersen documents. Remaking the judiciary is another matter of course.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of Andersen’s conclusions about why the country was ready to accept the changes these people brought about. I think he overemphasizes the nostalgic yearning for days of yore that he says arose in the 1970s, but he’s got a point worth pondering.

The one chink in the right’s armor, from my point of view (I haven’t gotten to Andersen’s conclusion on this score) is that in order to maintain control and implement their agenda, they still have to win elections, which means they have to get a substantial number of people to vote against their own interests. They no doubt believed that they could manipulate their base voters forever, appealing to their racism and anxieties, while controlling the process sufficiently so that they could nominate people who would appeal to a broader spectrum of voters, often referred to as the low information voters. Just as a for instance, they surely figured that they could appeal to racists forever with deniable dog whistles, but they failed to see that the base would demand the real thing. In other words, they never expected the loonies to actually take charge, but that may be what’s happening. They certainly never expected to end up with someone like Trump, since they definitely prefer reliable alleged moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney.

Anyway, consider picking up the book. It’s well worth a read.

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It’s perfectly normal when the right does it

Thursday, August 27, 2020

We often read about both siderism in our media: the insistence by the punditocracy and many reporters that both sides are equally responsible for the rot in our political system. But there’s often something more pernicious going on: an absurd emphasis on something when one political party does it (that would be the party beginning with “D” or someone affiliated with that party) while worse transgressions by the other side are ignored or minimized. A good example of that phenomenon here, at Eric Boehlert’s excellent blog, Press Run, which documents both siderism almost as well as Driftglass, without th colorful language.

The phenomenon appears to have a more generalized left-right existence. We are fed a constant diet of stories about anti-police protestors being violent, when often those episodes are fairly trivial or, and this goes mainly unspoken, fomented by right wing “outside agitators”, like the teenager who just murdered two people and whose right wing connections are being soft pedaled as I write. At the same time, things like this go unreported or consigned to the back pages:

The far right in Idaho—which seemingly now includes its state Legislature—has a rule: Free speech for me, none for thee. Protesters from the right are welcome with open arms, but protesters from the left get thrown in jail.

That became manifest Monday in Boise when a horde of anti-COVID-19 restriction activists led by antigovernment figure Ammon Bundy broke into the chambers of the Statehouse, shoving their way past state troopers, pounding on doors, shouting and breaking doors and windows along the way, and then invading committee hearing rooms. But not only was no one arrested, state officials decided to accommodate them. It starkly contrasted with the scene a few years ago, when peaceful protesters seeking equal rights for LGBTQ people were arrested en masse for standing silently in the halls of the building.

…

Bundy—who has been the primary figure in the far-right resistance in Idaho to pandemic-related measures—led the crowd of entirely maskless protesters at the Statehouse steps, who began chanting “Let us in!” after access to the gallery seating in both Senate and House chambers was restricted to half-capacity and seats quickly filled up. First they shoved their way past Idaho State Police troopers standing guard, then they banged on doors and windows demanding entry past the gallery doors on the fourth floor. One of the men, according to the Associated Press, was carrying an assault-style rifle.

Rather than enforce the rules and eject the protesters, Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke chose to allow the gallery to fully open. Lawmakers on the floor pleaded with the protesters to stop the chants and be respectful. Eventually, the crowd quieted down after all the seats had filled to capacity.

So a crowd of angry white men, some armed, physically attacked police officers and invaded a state capitol and legislative session. Not only did the police do nothing, even when the white folks physically accosted them, but the Republicans surrendered to them, which, I suppose, was entirely predictable. Predictable also was the press response to this outrage, which is a far greater threat to our political system than anything street protestors may have done. Something like this should be a front page story in every newspaper. Needless to say, it hasn’t been. Imagine what we’d be reading in our papers and seeing on our televisions if a gang of black men did precisely the same thing. The press is not just normalizing Trump, it is normalizing all right wing criminality. All of this is unlikely to end well.

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