Indeed, there are different rules for Democrats, in large part because the Democrats fail to demand that the rules that apply to Republicans be applied to them. The Republicans have gotten the coverage they want by constantly accusing the media of being biased against them. This, even though an entire network is a Republican propaganda machine. Why aren’t the Democrats demanding that the networks stop covering Trump’s shitshows? It is obvious to everyone that they are full of self serving and self aggrandizing lies spewed by the genius, interspersed with attacks on the press. Those attacks serve their purpose: they keep the press coming back for more, because to do otherwise would somehow prove that they were biased. Since the Democrats demand nothing, giving them nothing shows no bias.
This Democratic failure to work the refs may very well lead us to defeat in 2020, thereby assuring the collapse of the Republic, ands it’s not the only problem with Democratic messaging.
I read a fairly authoritative blog post recently (can’t remember where, and too lazy to look) to the effect that the Biden people have made a conscious decision to soft pedal any criticism of Trump’s disastrous incompetence with respect to the plague now afflicting us. Why? Because the American people don’t want that right now. Were the situation reversed, the Republicans would be on the attack day and night, and it would work out just fine for them. It doesn’t matter what the American people might say they want, what matters is the stimulus to which they’ll respond, and attacks work quite nicely. The situation reminds me of the geniuses who advised John Kerry not to respond to the Swift Boat attacks. That worked out just great, didn’t it? Biden will get minimal coverage unless he’s out there attacking Trump for incompetence, and the press for enabling him, and he needs back up from a chorus of other Democrats. All of this is self evident, yet it is also self evident that it won’t happen.
National Security Analyst Samantha Vinograd laid into Trump for firing Inspector General Michael Atkinson yesterday. IG Atkinson was doing his job, and doing it well, when he received and acted on a whistleblower’s report that Trump’s administration was withholding Congressionally-approved aid in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden and his son. This report led to Trump’s impeachment, and he is hell-bent on destroying anyone he can who played a role in it. Vinograd was beside herself.
Apparently Trump admitted that he did in to punish the guy for doing his job and reporting his criminal behavior with respect to Ukraine.
We now have a President who openly admits that he is playing favorites in the distribution of vital medical supplies in order to further his own political ends and admits to wreaking vengeance on government employees who, in the course of doing their jobs, make him unhappy. He have a media establishment that has come to terms with this behavior, essentially taking the position that this is Trump being Trump, and while, had Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama done any of these things the uproar would last months, with Donald Trump there is no uproar and the story is good for, if that, half a news cycle.
As the Liar in Chief continues the destruction of the American Republic, one must wonder if Susan Collins thinks he has learned his lesson. Tom Tomorrow has the answer for us:
My wife and I subscribe to the Boston Globe, though we are more than a stone’s throw from that fair city, for reasons that, if not already known to the reader, will become obvious in the course of this post.
The Globe’s coverage of the genius has, compared, for example, to the New York Times, been pretty good. It’s reporters are not immune to both siderism or the tendency to normalize our Narcissist in Chief, but they’ve tended to be much less in the tank than the likes of Maggie Haberman.
Their editorials have been uniformly fair to the genius, in that they have called him out for exactly what he is. This recent editorial has attracted a fair bit of attention, because it quite bluntly points out that the genius “has blood on his hands”. A criminal indictment (which really should be coming down on January 21st) could not set forth the damning facts more thoroughly.
Full Disclosure: My first born son, who is twice as smart and twice the writer I am (Okay, that might not be saying much) is a member of the Globe Editorial Staff, and though I have no way of knowing, I prefer to think that he wrote every word of this editorial. We need more of the non-Fox media to tell it precisely how it is.
It seems that the folks at Fox are at least a bit worried that they might have some legal liability for spreading disinformation about COVID-19. For a number of reasons I think the chance of such a suit being successful is low, given the First Amendment. I seem to recall that Fox defended a suit in Florida by arguing that it had a constitutional right to lie, and I believe it won. Oh, here’s a link. Looks like the court ruled on narrower grounds, because the judges were probably too ashamed to put their names on a decision that out and out said it was okay to lie, but they basically green-lighted it.
As I’ve mentioned before, I keep a daily journal. Samuel Pepys and Anais Nin, among others, rest easy as they perceive no threat to their reputations from this quarter, but, putting my literary deficiencies aside, what the app does do is show me what I wrote on “this day” in years past, and just recently one of my entries reminded me of how effective the Parkland kids were at hitting Fox where it hurts the most: advertising dollars.
I haven’t seen that anyone with a national audience has suggested that Fox advertisers be targeted anew for supporting a network that is literally lying to us about a plague. The fact that they are repeating presidential lies is of no moment, because everyone else at least points out those lies (labeling them anything but “lies”, of course), while Fox both amplifies and endorses them.
I don’t have much of an audience, and, as I have no television, I can’t even identify the offending advertisers, but here’s hoping someone with some national oomph will take the lead on this.
Many years ago my then quite young son and I went to see Me and My Girl at the Weston Theater in Vermont. We had a great time and I subsequently bought the CD of the then recent Broadway version. Yesterday one of the songs from the show popped into my head and it occurred to me that it’s exactly the song we should all be singing “to counteract an attack of the [pandemic] blues” because, after all, as the song goes “after all is done and said…”.
Unfortunately, the Broadway version is not on YouTube, at least not with a respectable video, but I thought this one would do:
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted what was once a regular Friday night feature, but today I stumbled on this Paul Simon video and I couldn’t resist.
I remember when this song came out. I though it was great, and that it perfectly caught the tenor of the times. Who would have thought that almost fifty years on every line would still be relevant, except moreso. Back then, the road we were traveling on seemed all wrong, but there was still hope that we could get back to the country in which “we lived so well so long”. Those times, I fear, are past. Today we got a postcard from the Center for Disease Control giving us President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America. As one might expect, it is full of health tips, most if not all of which Trump himself has disavowed or disregarded. But it is proof that our bureacracy, whether willingly or unwillingly, is now prisoner to an unprecedented cult of personality. It would surprise me not at all to learn that the postcard could only be sent if it included this obeisance to Dear Leader. I don’t believe that any other president has ever tried to institute such a personality cult before. Like all the other daily outrages, this one too will go virtually unremarked.
The Republic may not survive our current travails. Say this for the Roman Republic, at least it was brought down by a man of substance, who could both read and write. When the obituary for the American Republic is written, it is quite likely it will be noted that it was brought down by a snake oil salesman.
Anyway, here it is, Paul Simon singing American Tune.
When I watched it this morning it was followed by a promo for a right wing propaganda youtube station. We are surrounded by forces trying to destroy our nation.
UPDATE: A new low in sychophancy. A person with a medical degree alleges with a straight face that the genius is able to both read and understand scientific literature.
A few days ago I noted that the Republicans never let a crisis go to waste. This is probably the biggest domestic crisis we’ve had since the Civil War, so it presents all kinds of opportunities to destroy our institutions. There is no reason to suspend habeas corpus, other than to allow the genius to jail people at will. There is no reason to keep the corporate recipients of bailout money secret, except to cover the corruption of those distributing the money. There is no reason to resist putting money into the “rescue” bill (can’t call it a bailout when Republicans want it) to secure our elections, unless you are planning on stealing them.
It seems pretty clear that their sole objective is to squeeze whatever they can get out of this crisis. I tend to agree with this analysis, that in the end the national emergency will be transformed into a rationale to cancel November’s election and, in the process, transfer more power to the executive. The number of lives lost, and even the economic disruption, are secondary considerations to their need to hold power. I would not be surprised if Brent and Neal are figuring out a legal justification to permit the putsch as we speak.
Has anyone else noticed that all the measures being contemplated to deal with the economic impact of the corona virus, both here and in England (and probably everywhere else) are, not to put too fine a point on it: socialistic?
What else can we call sending free (gasp!) money to people, or paying them for not working, or providing free (if extremely limited) medical care to people?
This is a stunning departure for this country, which has restricted itself to socialism for the rich ever since it put distance between itself and the New Deal.
I expect it’s too much for the Democrats to point out this obvious fact as they vote for the programs for which Trump, McConnell and their ilk will take credit, even though said ilk had to gag while voting for them.
It is beginning to look like Trump, et. al., are, despite their manifest incompetence, winning the PR war, primarily because the Democrats don’t believe in engaging in such things. Besides, the Republicans have told them that this is no time to criticize, just as the aftermath of a mass shooting is no time to talk about gun control. Like good boys and girls, the national Democrats will probably do as they are told, and hold their tongues while Trump, aided and abetted by a compliant media, lies himself into a second term, by taking political advantage of a plague made far more widespread by his own incompetence.
Far be it from me to insist on a modest proposal when I am presented with evidence that there is an even more modest way to achieve one’s ends.
A couple of days ago I suggested that we honor the genius by naming the current era The Trump American Plague, inasmuch as for reasons that I can’t fathom, he himself has not chosen, as he historically has, to name his achievements after himself. He has claimed that his administration has done a great job, so it really boggles the mind as to why he would fail to take full credit.
Anyway, a friend of mine, now confined to “shelter in place” due to his advanced age (he’s a whole year older than me!), having nothing better to do, read the aforementioned post and wrote suggesting an alternative nomenclature for this era, one that, I confess, honors the genius even more, inasmuch as it references his economic expertise. He suggests the Trump Slump. This appellation, I confess, is superior to mine in several ways. As noted, it honors the financial acumen that has kept so many bankruptcy attorneys in the black. It rhymes, and, even better, rolls, as Hamlet said, “trippingly on the tongue”. I’m sure that Democratic candidates, since they are all interested in fairness, would be more than happy to employ this verbiage, for each one of them, honest Democrats that they are, should be more than willing to give credit where it is due.
I’m not suggesting that we drop The Trump American Plague completely. That would be a disservice to a man who deserves credit for assuring that the Italians and Spanish would have nothing on us. Still, I believe The Trump Slump deserves pride of place. Perhaps someone can find a way to blend the two without losing the superior phrasing that The Trump Slump employs. Until then, it’s my go to way to honor our Dear Leader.
It’s a curious thing. The person currently occupying the White House has traditionally named things after himself, yet there’s a fairly obvious thing to which he has failed to attach his moniker. Perhaps, somewhat surprisingly, he has been afflicted with false modesty.
I certainly concede that I don’t like the guy, but I try to give credit where credit is due, so I hereby propose that our current era be known as the “Trump American Plague!”. Let’s face it, we wouldn’t be going through this end of a lifetime once in a lifetime experience to the extent we are, if he hadn’t taken preventative steps to make sure that it would happen. He deserves recognition for this achievement.
Of course, nothing is worth naming after yourself if you can’t make money off of it, so there’s no reason he couldn’t market stuff like Trump American Plague! Hand Sanitizer, or given the inexplicable shortages, Trump American Plague! Toilet Paper, with a picture of himself on every sheet. Personally, I think the latter would be a big seller.
I would hope that the Democrats, in the proper bipartisan spirit, would join in recognizing his achievement. Now is not the time to refuse to recognize his accomplishments, or to play partisan games by trying to deny him credit for his achievements. We are one nation, after all, and when the president steps up to the plate and strikes out hits a homer, he deserves everything he has coming to him.
Caveat: I can’t take credit for this idea, though I can’t see why it didn’t occur to me. My wife suggested it, and as soon as she did I realized that we owed it to the guy to give him this recognition.
