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Back from the shadows again

Friday, July 26, 2019

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, as I am on vacation in the wilds of Vermont, going to the same places we go every year. Once again, we went to the Hapgood “Eatery” in Peru (that would be the Peru in Vermont, just down the road from the Bromley ski area), and once again, Paul McCartney failed to show his face. He was there years ago. I know that because his picture is on the wall, and the menu notes that he had the vegetarian pizza. But apparently he avoids the place when we’re there.

Enough carping. I have barely been following the news, but I know it has followed a predictable course. Robert Mueller has testified, and he confirmed that Trump is a crook, but much of the media just yawns, because it’s old news. It was all in his report, which is quite true, except when the report came out, they didn’t bother to read it and report its substance. Yada, yada.

Anyway, enough has been written about Mueller, and it does look like the Democrats are looking to conduct a well timed impeachment inquiry, to give the impeachment vote maximum political impact, while rendering the Senate’s verdict an after-election afterthought.

At least we can hope that’s the thinking.

A few random observations.

While we are distracted by the Trump’s criminality, our corporate overlords continue to reap the benefits of that criminality. The now almost totally corrupt Justice Department has okayed the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, the result, in part, of T-Mobile’s excessive patronage of Trump’s hotels. The U.S. already has pretty horrible cellular service, in comparison to other developed countries, but we can now look forward to even worse service at even higher prices. This, of course, has taken place largely under the radar.

On to Moscow Mitch. It is a fact, though not widely bandied about, that McConnell has been the beneficiary of Moscow’s largess, and has done good service for his puppet masters, such as when he prevented Obama from warning of Russian attempts to tamper with our election. He has, in the last few days, prevented the Senate from taking up elections that might prevent a replay of 2016, something Mueller warned about in his testimony. This is only to be expected, of course. So far as Republicans are concerned, all’s fair if it helps them get elected. The preservation of a republican form of government (when it has a small “r” it bears no relationship to the capitalized version) is not a priority. In fact, the destruction of republican forms is a feature, not a bug. This morning, as I understand from Crooks & Liars, Joe Scarborough spent 15 minutes excoriating “Moscow Mitch”. It hardly needs saying that the Democrats will not pick up on this, though they should. Repetition is key, something the Democrats never seem to get. If they keep repeating that phrase, particularly since it is well grounded in fact, they might just be able to at least get him to back down on letting the Russians steal the next election, and they would, in any event, plant something in the public mind that would spill over from the already loathed Mitch to his Republican enablers. But alas, that is not to be. This too will be forgotten in a few days, because the Democrats will allow it to be.

Time to return to vacation mode.

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Fake News is a real thing sometimes

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

This has happened before, and it supports something the genius has been saying: there’s a lot of fake news out there. The fact is that most of the fake news supports him.

Yesterday CNN had a panel of Texas female Republican. They were presented as representative of 2016 Texas females who voted for Trump. Nothing he has done, they all said, has made them change their minds, and of course its the Democratic congresswomen that are the real racists.

What was not disclosed?

Although CNN didn’t disclose this, Google tells me that Dena Miller is the national director of Trumpettes for America, a network of socialites who work to gin up support for Trump in the media. Well done, Dena!

Gina O’Briant, Geni Manning, and Kathleen Lieberman are members of the Texas Women for Trump Coalition. So they’re not your typical housewives, either.

Republican Cami Dean ran for Congress (TX-3) in 2014.

These are not ordinary Republican women. These are people who are deeply invested in Republican activism, and their appearance here tells me they can’t come up with enough mainstream Republicans for this focus group. They’re only talking to the true believers — which makes Trump look more popular than he really is.

I take issue with that last quoted paragraph, in that I don’t believe for a second that CNN went looking for a representative sampling of Republican women. It looked for what it got, women who would say that nothing Trump does could ever shake their faith. Reminds me of the fact that you’re not allowed to eat in a diner in the Midwest unless you still support the genius.

This is a common trope for our media. Consider this article from the Washington Post, which was reprinted in this morning’s New London Day (though I couldn’t find a workable link there). The gist of it is that Trump’s racist rant will only help him politically. After all, he’s firing up the base.

Which leads me to a question I’ve ranted more than once to my long suffering spouse. How come it’s always good for the Republicans when they play to their base, but if the Democrats play to theirs it will always hurt them?

Filed in Media, The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

A suggestion

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Dave Collins, a columnist for the New London Day, lately covered himself in glory by exposing some shenanigans related to a proposed development, to be called Smiler’s Wharf (developers always name things after what they’re destroying), in Mystic. Former terrible Congressman Rob Simmons, now terrible Stonington first selectman, and Heather Somers, who I am ashamed to say represents this district in the State Senate, both had their fingerprints on some fairly suspect things. Somers, for instance, was pushing for a $10,000,000.00 subsidy in the form of state bonds for the project. Obviously coincidentally, the developers were contributors to her campaigns. Collins’ series of columns provoked a widespread public reaction, all strongly against the project, and the developer has now pulled the plug on it. Let’s hope the plug stays pulled. 

Collins has not always covered himself with glory. Back in 2016 he announced that political candidates should have to pass the “Trump Test” in order to earn anyone’s vote. In order to pass the test a candidate had to reject Trump, but somehow, though all our local Republicans failed the test, that fact never reached a large part of Collin’s audience, and Somers has continued to be endorsed by the Day, in spite of the fact that we have fielded superior, and obviously Trump-test passing, candidates against her.

So here’s a suggestion for Dave, as both a follow up for his Smiler’s Wharf accomplishment and as redemption for his Trump Test failure. The Republican Party in Connecticut still pretends that it is somehow different than the racist national Republican Party. There is, they like to imply, still some Rockefeller Republicans out there if you just look for them. For that reason, they keep the dog whistles down to a fairly low pitch, so low that even the dogs sometimes can’t hear them, until they blow them over and over. On the other hand, I haven’t heard any condemnation of the racist in chief from any of them. Now that he whose name I refuse to preface with the word “president” has blown a dog whistle than everyone can hear, it would seem appropriate for Dave to canvas our local Republican legislators and ask them for a reaction to Trump’s loud and proud racism. Granted, Somers probably won’t talk to him, as he exposed her seamy little deal, but he should still try. I, for one, would like to see what dodge she employs to refuse to answer the question. Will it be the “Democrats are the real racists because they were racist back in 1868” or some variant, or would it be an ad hominem attack on Collins. In any event, it’s a line of questioning to which every elected Republican in the country should be subjected, and no one better to do it in our neck of the woods than Collins.

Just noticed that Collins makes a start here, but not good enough. Get them on the record, Dave.

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Covfefe!

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

This post is only marginally about politics, but since this is my blog, and no one reads it anyway, I feel that I am justified in bloviating about a pet peeve.

The only game I play against others on my phone and tablet is Words with Friends. I continue to play it even though the folks at Zynga constantly bombard me with ridiculous announcements. Why should I care if I just played the final letter in “shithead” or some other arbitrary word? I’m trying to beat my opponent, and I’m certainly not going to play a letter just to complete an arbitrarily Zynga selected word.

But I stray from my intended rant.

If you play the game you know that there are a lot of acceptable “words” that are not words. This is particularly irritating when your opponent plays them for large scores, though it is only justice when you play one in return. Recently the two letter words Vuand Jahave been legalized. According to the Words with Friendsdictionary vuis a preposition meaning “in view of”. Use it in a sentence, I dare you. Today I played the word “Squiz”, scoring big against my brother in law, who deserves it because he’s always beating me. “Squiz” apparently means the same thing as “squint”. The game also accepted “outweep”, for which I again scored big, as it is a seven letter word. It’s rather arbitrary, you can stick “out” in front of a plethora of verbs; some it takes; some it won’t. There’s no rhyme or reason.

Which brings me to today’s word of the day, which led to this post. I’m not really sure what to make of it. On the one hand, the whole point is that it’s not a word. On the other hand, maybe we owe this to some dictionary wordmeister toiling away in the coding rooms at Zynga, doing his or her small but laudable part to resist a certain stable genius. Here’s a screenshot:

 

The thing is, if my brother in law played it against me, I’d still be pissed, all politics aside. But then, maybe if I played it against him…

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Covfefe!

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

This post is only marginally about politics, but since this is my blog, and no one reads it anyway, I feel that I am justified in bloviating about a pet peeve.

The only game I play against others on my phone and tablet is Words with Friends. I continue to play it even though the folks at Zynga constantly bombard me with ridiculous announcements. Why should I care if I just played the final letter in “shithead” or some other arbitrary word? I’m trying to beat my opponent, and I’m certainly not going to play a letter just to complete an arbitrarily Zynga selected word.

But I stray from my intended rant.

If you play the game you know that there are a lot of acceptable “words” that are not words. This is particularly irritating when your opponent plays them for large scores, though it is only justice when you play one in return. Recently the two letter words Vuand Jahave been legalized. According to the Words with Friendsdictionary vuis a preposition meaning “in view of”. Use it in a sentence, I dare you. Today I played the word “Squiz”, scoring big against my brother in law, who deserves it because he’s always beating me. “Squiz” apparently means the same thing as “squint”. The game also accepted “outweep”, for which I again scored big, as it is a seven letter word. It’s rather arbitrary, you can stick “out” in front of a plethora of verbs; some it takes; some it won’t. There’s no rhyme or reason.

Which brings me to today’s word of the day, which led to this post. I’m not really sure what to make of it. On the one hand, the whole point is that it’s not a word. On the other hand, maybe we owe this to some dictionary wordmeister toiling away in the coding rooms at Zynga, doing his or her small but laudable part to resist a certain stable genius. Here’s a screenshot:

 

The thing is, if my brother in law played it against me, I’d still be pissed, all politics aside. But then, maybe if I played it against him…

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Feeling anxious lately? Here’s why!

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Lately I’ve been feeling highly anxious, but until today I wasn’t sure why.

I considered a number of possibilities, among them:

  • The fact that the president of the United States is a narcissistic authoritarian bent on making himself a dictator even as he declines into senescence.
  • The fact that the same president has stocked the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, with ideologues who will give a stamp of approval to anything he and Republicans do while they chomp at the bit to overturn existing progressive legislation, precedent that favors the rights of women and minorities, and anything that manages to pass in the unlikely event the Democrats take the presidency and the Senate in 2020.
  • The fact that the Democrats appear likely to nominate Joe Biden in order to guarantee that the courts won’t need to bother to overturn progressive legislation after 2020 because there won’t be any.
  • The fact that our constitutional system appears to have arrived at the point where its internal contradictions (e.g., a Senate where Wyoming has the same representation as California, an Electoral “College” less able to pick a reasonable president than the people at large, etc.) will result in the destruction of our formerly republican form of government.
  • The fact that our press, when not in the business of actively propagandizing for the forces of plutocracy, is busily normalizing those forces instead of calling them out for what they are.

All or any of these things seemed plausible, and yet… I couldn’t help thinking that there was something else… that this feeling; this sense of impending doom had some other source. How can I describe it? I felt like I was bracing for some kind of disaster.

Thank the non-existent Lord for the New London Day, which cleared it all up today with this front page headline:

Retailers, shoppers brace for plastic bag tax ahead of ban! (Exclamation point added)

This cleared it all up! What more fearful impending doom than the prospect of paying ten cents a bag should I forget to bring my reusable bags into Stop & Shop? Why for ten cents you can buy two Hershey bars, assuming, of course, you are charged what they cost 50 years ago. I now realize that I’ve been bracing myself for this day of disaster ever since the Connecticut legislature put environmental considerations above the convenience of our corporate overlords. Now that I know the source of my anxiety, I will just have to figure out a way of dealing with it.

If you, too, have been feeling anxious about the state of our world, now you know why. My advice: follow the philosophy of the dear departed Alfred E. Newman and don’t worry. It will be alright. Sure, you’re going to miss those plastic bags, but in a few years some federal court will probably strike down state laws banning them as violations of the commerce clause, and you can get them right back! 

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Some things in life are bad…and now we’re losing MAD

Saturday, July 13, 2019

It’s almost enough to make you swear and curse.

All things must pass, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Grieve with me then, for the passing of MAD Magazine, which is about to publish its last monthly issue.

I grew up with MAD, and I owe the gang of idiots a debt of gratitude for helping to steer me in the right direction, politically. For a subtext of all that satire was a distinctly liberal world view. I remember, as a ten year old, wondering why they seemed to love to make fun of Richard Nixon all the time, even after he lost the presidential race in 1960. Sure, I was a Kennedy fan, since I came from a Democratic family, and besides he was a Catholic, and at that point in my life I was still holding fast to Pascal’s wager. But back then there were good people who were also Republicans. I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I was too young to remember the Checkers speech, or the red-baiting, but thanks, in part, to MAD, by the time 1968 rolled around, and we were faced with the prospect of a Nixon presidency, I knew that he represented an existential threat to our republic. Obviously, many of my non-MAD reading contemporaries did not. Sure they made fun of JFK too, but not in the barbed fashion in which they went after Nixon and his ilk.

It wasn’t just Nixon, of course, Beneath all the satire was an underlying philosophy of tolerance and mutual acceptance. Everyone was equally absurd. They made fun of everyone, but they hated no one, except people like Nixon, of course. After all, neither the White Spy nor the Black Spy was the good guy. They were both idiots. My guess is that their target demographic was males between 10 and 14, and my guess too is that I’m not the only one whose left wing leanings were reinforced by MAD. I subscribed to the magazine for years, and I think I was better for it.

I’m not fourteen anymore, of course, but, believe it or not, I’m currently a subscriber to the electronic edition. Two years ago I saw a print copy at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. There on the cover was Alfred E. Newman making fun of Donald Trump, and I decided that the gang of idiots had to be supported if they continued to proselytize for a liberal point of view. Of course, satirizing Trump was difficult for them, since he does it himself so skillfully, and I will confess that I haven’t read it too often, because, as I said, I’m not fourteen anymore, but it’s important that present day fourteen year olds have all the advantages I had at that age.

Alas, MAD will be no more. The world has lost a force for good.

CAVEAT: My statement that MAD’s target audience was males between 10 and 14 was by no means intended to denigrate those of the female gender. One of life’s mysteries, at least as I have observed life, is the inability of people with two X chromosomes to appreciate fine humor such as that delivered by the Three Stooges and even, incredible as this may seem, Monty Python. I don’t know why women don’t appreciate the humor when Moe bonks Curly or Larry (or both) over the head, but they don’t. I suspect that this genetic deficiency extends to appreciation for the work of the gang of (all male) idiots at MAD. But look at it this way. Imagine how much worse off all of us would be if those idiots hadn’t helped deflect at least some white males away from Trumpism (I’m assuming here that black male MAD readers didn’t need that particular push).

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A twitter mystery

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

I am not a prolific Twitter user. Most of the tweets I read are second hand, reproduced in blog posts or mainstream media. Still, I understand that it can be a useful tool if used judiciously and well. But here’s what I can’t understand. The following is not an unusual series of events when a prominent person finds him or herself in hot water.

Alex Acosta, the Secretary of Labor, who, as a US Attorney, gave Jeffrey Epstein a highly suspect deal that essentially let him off the hook for abusing scores of young girls, took to Twitter today. It’s too much work for me to embed tweets, so I’ll just quote them.

The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific, and I am pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case on new evidence.

Now that new evidence and additional testimony is available, the NY prosecution offers an important opportunity to more full bring him to justice.

Let’s review the facts, shall we. These are ably set outby Michelle Goldberg in this morning’s Times:

Among the mysteries of the Epstein case are why powerful prosecutors of both parties treated him with such leniency. Alexander Acosta, now Trump’s labor secretary, was the federal attorney who oversaw the deal Epstein received in 2008. Though facing potential federal charges that could have put him away for life, Epstein was allowed to plead to minor state charges instead, an arrangement that was kept secret from his victims. He served 13 months in a county jail, where he got to spend six days a week in his office on work-release. In February, a judge ruled that Acosta’s team’s handling of the case violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. (Naturally, Acosta still has his job.)

After Epstein served his time, he had to register as a sex offender. Inexplicably, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, under Democrat Cyrus Vance Jr., asked a judge to downgrade Epstein’s sex offender status from Level 3, the most serious, to Level 1, the least. The judge, stunned, refused. “I am a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this,” she said.

Read the rest of the column. It wasn’t just the genius; everyone who knew him was aware of Epstein’s hobby. As the recent search (pursuant to a warrant) also reveals, the evidence was hiding in plain sight. So, Acosta’s tweets are a pile of BS from start to finish.

Now, in the olden days, which some of us graying heads can still remember, a crook like Acosta (and it’s a shame he shares a name with a very good reporter) could have released those tweets as a statement to the press, which would have dutifully repeated them. The only blowback might have been in some opinion pieces, which, depending on timing, may not have come for a few days after the original bullshit was spewed.

Nowadays it’s different. Not only is the blowback immediate, it takes no prisoners, as the linked article demonstrates. Moreover, except maybe on Fox, it’s the blowback that gets most of the attention. Which brings me to my basic question: Why do it? My own lawyerly advice to Acosta would have been that he keep his mouth shut and his head down. Also, of course, he should resign, don sackcloth, and sit in a pile of ashes on the front steps of the Capitol, although, strictly speaking that’s not legal advice, but it might serve to keep his immortal soul from spending eternity in the fires of hell. In any event, he should stay away from Twitter, where the blowback might just make his time here on Earth seem like hell.

Filed in Lies and Lying Liars, Republican Corruption | | Comments (0)

What if Obama had done this, Episode Infinity (Plus One)

Friday, July 5, 2019

According to the AP article as headlined by the New London Day “Trump Flies high in ‘Salute to America’”, the subtitle reading “Staying on script, he honors the military; protestors say Fourth should be about unity”. The substance of the article is basically more of the same. The paper of record (that being the New York Times) has a similar article. I could find no mention in either of the fact that the Idiot in Chief said this:

 

Please note that it isn’t just the airports, which has (deservedly) gotten most of the attention on the internet. Just about ever fact in this video clip is untrue. The Revolutionary army was not named after George Washington and the Fort McHenry incident did not take place during the revolution. If Trump was sticking to the script, the script writers should be fired. More likely, the problem stems from a combination of his inability to read and his senescence, along with his general ignorance. (As an aside, why is it news that Trump allegedly stuck to a script. Isn’t that the least we can expect from an American president?)

Make no mistake, had Obama said any one of these things the grey lady would have taken immediate and prominent notice, as would the AP, and the blather on Fox would go on for weeks. (Incidentally, I’m curious as to whether the folks at Fox will try to put lipstick on this pig, or just ignore it. If lipstick, it will have to go on very thick and red.)

This is yet another step in the normalization of this “presidency”. The press merely looks the other way whenever this sort of thing happens. The headlines should have read: “Trump makes fool of himself on Fourth”, or something to like effect. You know.., the truth.

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Put this kid on the Supreme Court NOW!

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Why waste time? He can get his law degree later.

And it’s criminal that the judge, who was perceptive enough to see that the kid has a future, was criticized for his acuity.

The 16-year-old girl was visibly intoxicated, her speech slurred, when a drunk 16-year-old boy sexually assaulted her in a dark basement during an alcohol-fueled pajama party in New Jersey, prosecutors said.

The boy filmed himself penetrating her from behind, her torso exposed, her head hanging down, prosecutors said. He later shared the cellphone video among friends, investigators said, and sent a text that said, “When your first time having sex was rape.”

But a family court judge said it wasn’t rape. Instead, he wondered aloud if it was sexual assault, defining rape as something reserved for an attack at gunpoint by strangers.

He also said the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades and was an Eagle scout. Prosecutors, the judge said, should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy’s life.

So he denied prosecutors’ motion to try the 16-year-old as an adult. “He is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,” Judge James Troiano of Superior Court said last year in a two-hour decision while sitting in Monmouth County.

No way he won’t get into Yale Law School, and he’ll be on the bench before you can say “Jack’s your uncle”, or whatever else it is you can’t say before something happens.

But Alas! The perceptive judge has been taken to task by his lessers:

Now the judge has been sharply rebuked by an appeals court in a scathing 14-page ruling that warned the judge against showing bias toward privileged teenagers.

Maybe there’s still hope. Maybe he can be sentenced to community service as a clerk for Brent Kavanaugh.

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