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You can’t joke about the genius

Saturday, May 2, 2020

So this afternoon my wife saw on her twitter feed that Al Franken had said this:

It turns out he was joking. But Al, you can’t joke about the genius this way. My first reaction was to believe it, and why not? I only confirmed it was a joke by doing a search on my RSS app and finding that no one else had reported it. After all, it’s totally on a par with suggesting we drink Clorox. The line about Brix was spot on as well, since it’s basically what she’s been saying to cover for the guy every time he spews disinformation.

If people start showing up at the ER with blistered hands, Franken has no one to blame but the stupidity of a large percentage of the American population. But that doesn’t relieve him of responsibility, because anyone telling such a joke should bear that stupidity in mind.

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Nobody could have known

Friday, May 1, 2020

I just got a new Ipad, and found to my distress that the blog editor I’ve been using for years is “no longer in the App Store”, meaning that when I copied by backup to the new Ipad, that App was nothing but an icon. I am now back to WordPress, which I haven’t really used for years.

It have been fooling around with it for about an hour, and finally stumbled upon “block editing”, which I think will enable me to work with relative ease. I believe, for example, I’ve figured out a way to post the video below, which reminds us how nice it was when we had a president you might disagree with sometimes, but you knew was interested in doing his job.

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Sometimes I think they do it on purpose!

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Yesterday Mike Pence made a jackass out of himself by going to the Mayo Clinic and refusing to wear a mask. Naturally, every sane person in the country piled on. His initial excuse was that he was tested regularly, so he is exempt from wearing a mask, and is free to shake hands and do all the things that his Administration (in it’s saner moments) recommends that Americans refrain from doing.

Today, he gave an even stupider excuse:

Now Mike Pence has managed to make it even worse for himself. He’s claiming that he didn’t wear a mask because he wanted to be able to look people at the hospital in the eye. That’s cute, except you don’t wear the mask over your eyes. It’s not a blindfold. Pence is getting ripped to pieces for it.

On CNN, Don Lemon put on a mask and then sarcastically asked the audience if they could still see his eyes. On MSNBC, Brian Williams said that if Pence has his mask over his eyes, he’s doing it wrong. Mike Pence has managed to take something that was already going to play horribly for him, and make it even worse.

I’m about to show my age. This brought to mind a line from one of the Firesign Theatre albums. A woman in a faux radio commercial for a laundry detergent complains about the stains in her sons’ underwear and exclaims “Sometimes I think my kids do it on purpose!”

It’s hard not to suspect that the Trumpers, beginning with the guy at the top, say these stupid things on purpose, because you’d have to be monumentally stupid to say them in all seriousness. Even if we concede that Trump himself meets that criteria, it can’t possibly apply to all of them, can it?

We are long past the point where it has become true that you couldn’t make this stuff up. Even if someone wrote a Hollywood comedy about a bumbling president the idea that he would suggest ingesting Lysol would be rejected as far too absurd. That’s just an isolated example of the many things this Administration has done that would not make the cut.

So, the question arises. What do people like Pence hope to gain by competing with the genius for stupidest remark of the day? Surely they needn’t do it to please their base, and it’s hard to believe that even in the United States this level of stupidity isn’t peeling off some of the voters they managed to hoodwink in 2016. So we must conclude, though it boggles the mind, that they don’t do it on purpose.

We are really in trouble.

UPDATE: Speaking of stupid, here’s another question. Check out this article recounting a New York Times opinion piece making the point that Trump and company engaged in a cover up of the virus’s threat in February. Here’s a bit of it:

Goodman and Schulkin conclude that the public statement of Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the CDC’s authority on respiratory diseases, made on Tuesday, Feb. 25, is the key to unlocking the subsequent cover-up, because it was the actual catalyst of the administration’s response.

…

What did the administration do in response to Dr. Messonnier’s very public, very embarrassing warning? They lied, intentionally and knowingly. Trump’s rationale? He didn’t want to “upset” the stock market. A full-blown pandemic was likely to sink the only thing holding his reelection chances above the water line. He decided instead to concoct a panoply of phony assurances, and his collaborators, Kudlow, Esper and Azar, were only too happy to oblige. That very afternoon, just hours after Messonnier’s statement, Azar held a press conference, stating that “Thanks to the president and this team’s aggressive containment efforts,” the novel coronavirus “is contained.”

Isn’t it rather stupid to engage in a cover up of something that, inevitably, can’t be covered up? It doesn’t take a very stable genius to see that it would be to your long term political advantage to get in front of the thing when it’s inevitable. They had to know that their lies could never make it so, and that in the end, they’d be exposed. If they were intentionally trying to undermine their own political standing, they couldn’t have hit on a better strategy.

Caveat: This doesn’t mean Trump will lose the election. Recall what H.L. Mencken is reputed to have said.

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Stockholm Syndrome

Friday, April 24, 2020

I am beginning to suspect that our national media suffers from a variant of Stockholm Syndrome. Not precisely the same, but somewhat. Perhaps we should call it What-If-Obama-Had-Said-Or-Done-This-Itis. The media has reacted to constant abuse from a certain stable genius by refusing to acknowledge the obvious, and pretending that his insanity is just Trump being Trump. For example, his constant lying and misleading is just Trump drawing conclusions that aren’t necessarily supported by the facts.

Yesterday the President of the United States (so-called) suggested that we could inject people with sunshine and/or that we should inject or consume disinfectants in order to cure or ward off the corona virus.

Here’s the reaction at the Palmer Report, which I would say puts the matter mildly:

Donald Trump wants you to know that there’s a way to inject sunlight into the body so it’ll kill coronavirus. That was his overriding message during his press briefing today. Unfortunately for Trump, even his own experts weren’t willing to side with him on this bizarre nonsense.

…

Trump also suggested ingesting disinfectant directly into the body as a coronavirus miracle cure. To be clear, not only will this not help you, it could kill you. Disinfectants such as hand sanitizer and isopropyl alcohol are poisonous if ingested. In fact, 99% isopropyl alcohol is so dangerous, you can burn your skin just by touching it. Trump continues to offer phony medical advice that can prove fatal if you listen to him.

It goes on in this vein, leaving no doubt that the man is a nutjob.

Let’s step back a bit. The sunlight injection thing is so absurd even a six year old would reject it. As to the disinfectant injection, again, six is about the age when you can be pretty sure your kid won’t think to swig some Clorox. Yet here is a grown man, who holds the world’s most powerful position, suggesting that such things are not just feasible, but promising as treatments for the plague that his incompetence has amplified in this country. Such things should set off alarm bells in the media, for isn’t it the media’s job to keep us informed of looming dangers?

The Boston Globe ran a Bloomberg article, which quotes experts advising against following the recommendations of the prescriber in chief. That’s okay, so far as it goes. The Times also informs us that the genius’s prescription may not work, even passing along the information that disinfectant manufacturers felt called upon to issue a warning to other people who may still be in an infantile mental stage:

The maker of the disinfectants Lysol and Dettol also issued a statement on Friday warning against the improper use of their products. “As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” the company said.

What these stories both share is the underlying assumption that it is simply normal for the President of the United States to make suggestions that have no logical, scientific, or rational basis, and which are so ludicrous that a kid in grammar school would flunk a science test if he or she suggested any such thing. There is no attempt to convey the fact that the President of the United States is a seriously mentally ill individual who is a clear and present danger to this nation and this world on multiple levels. Would it be so difficult to say something like: “Trump embraces another bizarre corona virus cure”, just as a lead in? Getting back to my original sentence, one must wonder if this media reluctance is a result of the fact that the genius constantly attacks them, and has effectively browbeaten them into a complicit silence.

Postscript: I know I’m a little late to the game commenting on this insanity when so many non-media folks (twitter is good for something, after all) have done so. Hopefully, I’m making a different point than most.

UPDATE: I didn’t even catch this in the Times article.

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One of life’s mysteries

Thursday, April 23, 2020

I know all these people must be smarter than me. For instance, I never could have masterminded the theft of an election like Brian Kemp did. But even I have noticed that more than one person who has loyally done as Trump asks has had reason to echo these lines from Paul Simon’s Paranoia Blues:

I got some so-called friends
They’ll smile right to my face
But, when my back is turned
They’d like to stick it to me
Yes, they would

I mean, is anyone surprised by this:

Well, that was fast. Between Wednesday morning and Wednesday evening, Donald Trump went from celebrating that “Our Country is starting to OPEN FOR BUSINESS again” to criticizing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to reopen businesses, including hair salons and gyms, starting Friday. Making Trump’s about-face even more interesting is that in a Tuesday evening phone call, he reportedly told Kemp he supported the move.

The timeline is this: Kemp announced his decision on Tuesday, with resistance from local officials and business owners building on Wednesday. A source tells CNN that on the Tuesday evening phone call, both Trump and Mike Pence praised Kemp. Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted “States are safely coming back. Our Country is starting to OPEN FOR BUSINESS again. Special care is, and always will be, given to our beloved seniors (except me!). Their lives will be better than ever…WE LOVE YOU ALL!” Then, at Wednesday evening’s press briefing, Trump said, “I want him to do what he thinks is right, but I disagree with him on what he is doing. I think it’s too soon.” Hmm. What do you think Trump was told between Wednesday morning and Wednesday evening?

Trump claims he told Kemp not to do it, but we know, without even having been there, that that’s a lie. Kemp knows it’s a lie, unless he is capable of doublethink. Trump’s modus operandi is out there for everyone to see. He will stick it to anyone, whenever it suits his purposes. He expects blind loyalty, and gives nothing in return. Yet people like Kemp continue to do his bidding, even when it would appear obvious to any sane person that doing so is contrary to their own self interest. Kemp won’t miss a beat, he’ll march to Trump’s drum until the crack of doom.

Why do all these Republicans think that they are the exception to the rule, even after he’s stuck it to them once or twice? It would be funny, except that it is just one more example of the enabling that is allowing the genius to subvert the Republic.

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A look ahead, revisited

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

One of my readers (my only reader?) emailed to ask me if, in light of the Trump amplified corona virus, my predictions for the years ahead had changed since this New Year’s day post. Inasmuch as I find that commenting on the daily events, all of which seem so predictable that any intelligent comment seems too obvious to bother to scribble about, I thought it would be a good idea to answer by way of a post, since I actually pay for this space in cyberspace, so I might as well use it.

First of all, this post will assume that the Republicans are unable to steal the election. I would say there’s about a 50% chance that they will, and if they do, all my predictions become inoperative.

So, with that caveat, lets take it paragraph by paragraph, since I’m stuck here at home anyway with nothing else to do, with my daily bike ride behind me.

First paragraph:

Somehow, the dark side will prevail on the Democratic side of the ledger, and Joe Biden will emerge as the Democratic candidate. The media will immediately feel an obligation to make an issue out of his son Hunter and Giuliani’s conspiracy theories, despite the fact that there is no actual evidence to support them. They will do this in the interest of both siderism.

First sentence: check. As to the rest, it’s too early to tell, but there’s at least a reasonable possibility that the press will be distracted by the fact that we’re in the middle of a plague. However, we shouldn’t underestimate either the Republicans’ ability to control the press narrative or the press’s predilection to always go where the Republicans have gone before. If it’s not the Hunter thing, it will be some other conspiracy theory that will catch their fancy.

But the good news is that Biden will likely still eke out a narrow victory because by then Trump’s dangerous mental illness will be even more apparent, and the over 50% of the electorate that wants him out of office will have grown somewhat larger, and will hold its collective nose and vote for Joe. Even the Senate will likely change hands.

Looks good, though we should never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to blow things. Right now, for instance, their craven fear of being viewed as obstructionist has prevented them from insisting that any relief bill include voter protection measures or substantial relief for ordinary people. The first of those is critical, though they probably wouldn’t benefit even if they got the second, since they would allow Trump and the Republicans to take credit for something both Trump and the Republicans opposed (see signature on paltry $1,200.00 checks.)

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. Lindsey 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. (Misspelling of Lindsey’s name in original corrected)

I could be wrong here. I think even Fox will dig that hole, but Trump won’t get into it. He’ll continue to hold his rallies, and even start campaigning for another term in 2024. Unless he’s in jail, of course. As to the balance of the paragraph, I don’t think any sentient being can argue with it, except that there’s a reasonable chance (not a probability) that Lindsey will be voted out of office.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg will resign, and Joe will replace her with a conserva-Dem that will get along just fine with Brett and Neal. After all, it’s terribly important that we appoint someone who will get some Republican support, even if we have enough Democratic Senators to shove an actual liberal down their throats. The fact that Republicans would never return the favor is absolutely irrelevant.

{Sigh}. Do I even need to comment on this one?

House Democrats will repass the progressive legislation that has died in Mitch McConnell’s Senate, and it will go to the Senate once again, where it will once again die at the hands of Republican filibusters, the filibuster being preserved at the urging of Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, the latter of whom has not only predicted that the Republicans will have an epiphany and become reasonable once he gets into office but has also gone on record as being in favor of preserving the filibuster should he win. Much to his surprise, he will come to realize, perhaps three years into his presidency, that they had no epiphany. This won’t upset Joe very much anyway, because a lot of that legislation would undermine his campaign promise that there would be no fundamental change on his watch.

Well, the virus will certainly change this, as the House will have to pass legislation that will make the stuff they passed in the last two years look conservative. If we want to get the economy back on track we are going to have to shovel money into the hands of people that will spend it. Those are people who use their money to do things like pay rent, buy groceries, etc. I.e., Jeff Bezos and the rest of the billionaires need not apply. It will be more critical than ever to get rid of the filibuster, because the Republicans have only two political objectives: to get power and to shovel money to the rich. They will care not a jot whether the economy remains in the tank under a Democratic president; they will, in fact, do everything they can to keep it there, while they blame the Democrats. The question is: will Joe and Chuck shake their 1970s mindset and come to terms with the not-so-new reality? The answer is: probably not.

Much to his surprise, the lack of fundamental change will play right into Republican hands. They will score landslide victories in the 2022 elections (I know 2010 was a long time ago, but you can look it up). Democratic turnout will be dampened, while the yahoos will be out in full force, energized by ever louder racist dog whistles that only the punditry cannot hear.

See, the sigh above.

Trump and his partners in crime will escape unscathed, further greenlighting future Republican criminality.

Again, too obvious for further comment. 

The Republicans, in alliance with Fox News, will suddenly declare that the president is subject to the rule of law, and although they will have nothing valid on Biden, they will continue to spin conspiracy theories. William Barr will get a respectful hearing on CNN as he argues that a special prosecutor should be appointed to pursue those theories, and that Joe, seeing as he’s a Democrat, is not entitled to the benefits of the unitary executive theory. Come 2023, when the Republicans have taken back the House, and likely the Senate, they will move to impeach Biden on specious grounds, or at the very least, threaten to do so while conducting interminable investigations to distract from their primary goal of transferring our money to the already rich.

See above.

It goes without saying that the United States will do nothing significant to combat climate change.

See above.

If you’re looking for good news, it’s always possible that the Red Sox will win another World Series.

Not after trading Mookie, they won’t.

Bonus Prediction: Despite the fact that she’s disturbed that McConnell is fixing the Senate trial in league with the White House, Susan Collins will vote to acquit in the face of all the evidence. We can take some comfort from the fact that the voters of Maine will quite likely send her packing, but never fear, she’ll land a well paying gig on CNN to talk about moderation, both sides, and bipartisanship.

Looking good, so far.

All the above being said, it’s also obvious that the people of the United States will be far more miserable than I could have predicted in early January, not being privy to the information about the virus at the time. We can already see that this epidemic is being used as an opportunity to increase inequality and get more money and political power into the hands of the few. The unemployed of today will return to the even more low paying jobs of tomorrow. Small business persons, who on the whole reliably support Republicans, will be among the biggest losers, but they’ll be totally unable to see that they have been hung out to dry by the party they will continue to support. Our health care system will remain the horror show that it is. 

Okay, that’s it. The above was brought to you by a guy who, every year on Good Friday, advises you to look on the bright side of life.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. 

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What was it that’s the enemy of the good?

Friday, April 17, 2020

A few days ago I wrote about the Biden folks who were continuing to pound on Bernie people, even after Bernie endorsed Joe. It’s only fair that I get around to the Bernie folks who are now far too pure to cast a vote for Joe.

Among my guilty pleasures on my RSS feed is Down with Tyranny, which has, in all honesty, given me some good insights into the darker corners of the Democratic Party, from its perspective as the arbiter of all that is progressive. But this, today, a panegyric agains Biden’s lack of progressive credentials really set me off. It’s not that I disagree with their take on Biden’s inching toward progressive positions. In fact, I’ve made at least one of the same points made in the Tyranny post to which I’ve linked. It was this in the opening paragraph that set me off:

I vote for candidates, not against someone who is worse. Over the decades, the Democrats have taken interpreted progressives willingness to vote for their putrid centrist candidates as an endorsement of putrid, centrist policies. If that’s ok for you, go for it.

There may have been an election in my lifetime in which this purist nonsense was intellectually defensible, but that time is not now. It’s a matter of pure mathematics. If you vote third party, or refuse to vote at all, you are, for all intents and purposes, casting a vote for Donald Trump. You are casting a vote for another Brett Kavanaugh (and maybe more than one) on the Supreme Court. You are, in all likelihood, casting a vote for a permanent change to our institutions, such that we maintain the fiction of a representative democracy while we institutionalize an autocracy. Given the narrow Trump 2016 victories in some critical states, it is not too much of a stretch to say that those victories were delivered not just by the Russians, but by the purists as well.

I don’t know who wrote this particular post, but Howie Klein, who is, I think, one of the top folks at Down with Tyranny, often talks about his background in the music industry. Perhaps the folks there should recall these lyrics from the decade that produced the greatest music of all time:

You can’t always get what you want.
You can’t always get what you want.
You can’t always get what you want.
But if you try, sometimes
Well you just might find
You get what you need.

Update: Noam Chomsky agrees.

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A little alternate history

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Most rational people would agree that had this plague descended upon us during Obama’s presidency, he would have done a far better job of dealing with it. That being said, the question arises, would it have made any difference so far as the outcome? At first blush, the answer is “obviously yes”, but if you think about it, it might be “no”.

There’s no question that Obama would have warned about the plague and attempted to get the various state governments to prepare for it. That warning would no doubt have gone out in January. What would the reaction have been? 

Some state governments, those run completely by Democrats, would have taken preparatory steps. At the same time the entire Fox network would have accused him of lying, making a power grab, exaggerating the threat, etc. In other words, the same charges they’ve made or are making against Democrats now would have been made against Obama. The Federal government would have been better prepared, and the blue states better prepared, but the Red States would quite likely have fiercely resisted taking any steps to prepare, as some still are, while pledging fealty to Dear Leader. Resistance to the idea of social distancing would have been far fiercer in those states.

It’s too early to tell if the “Cares Act”, or, more properly “[We] Cares [More about Corporations Than People] Act” will achieve anything substantial. However, were Obama president, it would never have passed in any form, assuming that the Republicans were in control of the Senate. Not even a plague would have swayed the Republicans from their determination that Obama achieve nothing. It would trouble Mitch McConnell not at all if thousands of people starved from lack of food or died from lack of medical care, for they would not be the people he serves. Even now, as I’ve somewhat noted above, the measures taken are designed to comfort the comfortable more than to assist the afflicted, and some Republicans are saying out loud that a few thousand extra deaths is a small price to pay to keep the Republican money base happy.

It goes without saying that the networks would resist covering daily briefings by Obama, which would, of course, be carried out in a dignified, respectable manner. Obama would actually rely on experts. Maybe MSNBC and CNN would cover his briefings, but that’s questionable, and, of course, it goes without saying that Fox would ignore them, or spend the time accusing him of wasting time he should be using to deal with the plague that, now that it was an undeniable fact, would now be all his fault. They would also accuse him of lying, even though it also goes without saying that he wouldn’t lie.

The sad fact is that we might still rank near the bottom, behind South Korea, et.al., so far as our handling of the virus goes. The probability is that things would be better than they are in the blue states, which could have prepared sooner and would have been the beneficiaries of equitable treatment on the part of the federal government. The lives saved in the blue states might very well be made up in the Red States, where governors like DeSantis and Kemp would quite likely have resisted effective quarantine measures even longer than they did, with even more exceptions. On first blush that might seem like a good trade, but the Red State deaths would likely be overwhelmingly poor blacks, just as is the case in those states now, only there would be more of them.

Ironical Addendum: A Fox regular, Bret Baier, actually went there and wondered how Fox would react if Obama had claimed to have absolute power, as Trump has. He really put his neck on the line there. Maybe he’s thinking of retiring anyway.

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Good Friday Night Music

Friday, April 10, 2020

I have posted this video every Good Friday since I started this humble blog back in 2005, when we thought we had reached a nadir of sorts with the reelection of W. I don’t think it’s ever been so timely as this year, though I’m of two minds about whether Brian should, in fact, follow the advice of his friend on the next crucifix. There may be some who read this blog that might say, with some justice, that I don’t always follow his advice either, but, generally speaking, I think it’s still good. Still, when you’re in the midst of a plague being used by the forces of darkness to destroy a governmental system “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all [people] are created equal”, it’s hard not to “swear and curse”. But, looking on the bright side, there seems to be a better than even chance that we’ll beat the genius at the polls in November (assuming we’re allowed to vote) and take the Senate, and after that there’s a chance that progressives in Congress will force a reluctant President Biden to do what needs to be done. 

End of rant. At least for the moment, I’m looking on the bright side.

‘

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Biden moving a tad left

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Just saw this article. Joe Biden has (somewhat) embraced some progressive positions, albeit not quite all the way there. He’s suggested lowering the Medicare eligible age to 60, and forgiving student debt in certain situations. It’s the latter that I’m wondering about:

The concept I’m announcing today will align my student debt relief proposal with my forward-looking college tuition proposal. Under this plan, I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for debt-holders earning up to $125,000, with appropriate phase-outs to avoid a cliff. The federal government would pay the monthly payment in lieu of the borrower until the forgivable portion of the loan was paid off. This benefit would also apply to individuals holding federal student loans for tuition from private HBCUs and MSIs.

HBCU stands for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and MSI stands for Minority Serving Institutions. 

I’m wondering if there is some legal reason why it might be impossible to extend this benefit to debtors who attended private colleges or universities. I guess one could argue that they voluntarily incurred greater debt as those institution generally cost more, but that seems like a fairly niggling objection. If it’s legal, it should apply to everyone with student debt, particularly given the fact that the folks who meet the income requirements and have greater student debt are not exactly benefitting from their more expensive educations. Extending it to everyone also avoids resentment on the part of the ineligible.

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