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The Death of Irony

Thursday, October 17, 2019

A long, long time ago..I can still remember..I embarrassed myself on this blog by misquoting Shakespeare, for I asserted that someone was hung by his own petard, when he should have been hoist by his own petard, whatever a petard happens to be. Today I risk misusing a word again, for is irony the right word in this context? Anyway, I’m going with this title.

Today we learn this about the guy who claims (without evidence, of course) that Joe Biden was corruptly trying to help his son when he demanded that the Ukraine get rid of a corrupt prosecutor:

President Trump has awarded the 2020 Group of Seven summit of world leaders to his private company, scheduling the summit for June at his Trump Doral golf resort outside Miami, the White House announced Thursday.

That decision is without precedent in modern American history: The president used his public office to direct a massive contract to himself. The G-7 summit draws hundreds of diplomats, journalists and security personnel and provides a worldwide spotlight.

…

Eric Trump, the president’s son and the day-to-day leader of Trump’s businesses, did not immediately respond to questions about how much the president’s company would charge the U.S. or foreign governments during the event. He also did not immediately respond to questions about whether the Trump Organization would ask taxpayers to pay for upgrades to the site. One obvious concern for next year: There will be at least eight world leaders coming to this event, but at present Doral has just two “presidential suites.”

That would be the Eric Trump who complained that there was a double standard at work and he could never get away with the level of corruption in which the Biden’s didn’t engage. The irony will be lost on a nation whose media has long since put these things aside as merely Trump being Trump. It will be forgotten by tomorrow. Come with me now to an imaginary world where Obama did such a thing, a year has passed, and it is still talked about.

Trump is steering foreign money his way. Here’s what the constitution has to say about that:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

According to the DC court of appeals, it’s up to Congress to put flesh on the bones of this clause. Thinking like a lawyer, I can imagine his defense might be that the money isn’t a present, since he’s forcing them to pay. Thinking like a judge, I wouldn’t buy it. Thinking like a Congressman, I’d add it to the bill of particulars in the impeachment. It is probably the most corrupt act ever committed by an American president, and that’s saying something, since Trump has been president for almost three years.

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I think I already know the answer to this question

Monday, October 14, 2019

The DSCC has put its finger on the scale in Democratic Senate races, though perhaps not so brazenly as the DCCC has in House races. Incumbent protection, particularly when the incumbent in question is a DINO, is the order of the day.

I have been wondering where Chuck Schumer’s finger has been in the current Senate primary in Massachusetts where Joe Kennedy has challenged progressive Edward Markey. I’ve seen no sign of incumbent protection in this race. Kennedy’s challenge lacks any political justification; there’s not much breathing room between their ideological positions, except that Kennedy apparently feels the seat belongs to his family. Could it be that it’s hands off when the incumbent is a real Democrat? As they used to say at Buzzflash: Just askin’.

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Reading tea leaves

Friday, October 11, 2019

Some good news today. Sort of. An appeals court voted 2 to 1 that Congress has the right to get Trump’s financial information. Is it a surprise that the 1 was appointed by a certain very stable genius? That single vote is probably the real news, though it will be overlooked for the most part.

Before Individual-1 started residing in the White House, we were already part way toward a judiciary ready and willing to interpret the law to benefit one political party over the other, more specifically to create a body of law that implicitly declared that there was one set of laws for Democrats and another for Republicans. We saw it recently when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gerrymandering, which has overwhelmingly been used as a device to entrench Republican minorities as majorities in state legislatures and Congressional delegations.

We are going to see this more and more. Congressional power wielded by Republicans will be absolute; Democrats will be reduced to impotence. The same will hold for presidents. On the other hand, the judiciary will be impotent when it comes to restraining Republicans, but all powerful in the case of Democrats.

The case involving Trump’s tax returns is a no-brainer, as are the many cases that will be filed and litigated regarding Congress’s power to obtain evidence in an impeachment inquiry. It may be that Roberts will feel the need to throw Trump under the bus that is already on top of countless folks Trump threw there. I’d say the chance of the appeals court ruling being upheld is 50%, when it should be 100%. But looking forward, once the court does not have to deal with the antics of a man who continually confesses to his own criminality, it will be free to impose a bipartate system of laws. We can expect to see it in full flower should the Democrats take both houses and the presidency in 2020. Medicare for All, if passed, will be found unconstitutional, and questions will be left hanging about Medicare for Some and Social Security. Presidential directives and administrative regulations will be squashed. If the Republicans make a comeback in 2024, deference to the coequal branches will suddenly be back in fashion, brought to you by absurd distinctions even Antonin (“this case cannot be cited again”)Scalia would have trouble stomaching (though he would). We have gone through this before in our history (see the Supreme Court’s fight against progressivism in the first three decades of this century, not to mention the transfer of the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment from the freed slaves to corporations), though I tend to doubt that there has ever been the level of intellectual dishonesty we are going to see in the years ahead. That dissenting vote in the Trump tax case is just one of many harbingers of things to come.

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Don’t hold your breath

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

According to Vanity Fair, Mitt Romney is secretly plotting to lead the Republican pro-conviction forces in the Senate. (Fun fact: the Senate doesn’t impeach, it convicts):

According to people close to Romney, he’s firmly decided against primarying Trump, an enterprise he believes to be a sure loser given Trump’s enduring GOP support. Romney has also told people that, as an unsuccessful two-time presidential candidate, he’s the wrong person to take on Trump. Instead, a Romney adviser told me, Romney believes he has more potential power as a senator who will decide Trump’s fate in an impeachment trial. “He could have tremendous influence in the impeachment process as the lone voice of conscience in the Republican caucus,” the adviser said. “Romney is the one guy who could bring along Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Ben Sasse. Romney is the pressure point in the impeachment process. That’s why the things he’s saying are freaking Republicans out.” (Romney, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.)

GOP elected officials and donors are privately war-gaming what an endgame for Trump would look like. “It’s clear the House is going to impeach,” the prominent Republican told me. Making matters worse for Trump, a policy wedge has opened up between Trump and the Republican Senate at a moment when he needs its support most. Trump’s surprise decision to pull back American troops in Syria and allow Turkey to take on our Kurdish allies has enraged Trump’s closest GOP allies, including Lindsey Graham. “The Syria decision is a much bigger deal,” another former West Wing official said. “No one on the inside can hold Trump accountable. The Senate Republicans are the only check on power right now.”

It is marginally possible that Romney will actually vote to convict, though I doubt it. He could easily politically survive such a vote, since Trump is not all that popular among the Mormons, since, giving them their due, they are a bit more put off by his lack of morals than their evangelical cousins. But Susan Collins, for example, is a sure vote against conviction, though I’m sure she will express her profound disappointment in the genius. Susan has painted herself into a corner. A vote for conviction would be seen by those Mainers ready to vote against her as the act of desperation it would be: a vain attempt to recover her never deserved reputation as a “moderate” voice of reason in the Republican caucus. It would likely recover very few votes for her from that sector of the electorate, for, after all, Kavanaugh is still on the court. It would, however, lose her plenty of votes from the brain dead, the base of support she must keep solidly in her corner. 

There’s a lot of talk these days about the possibility that by the time the trial is held, Republican Senators will feel a lot of political heat to vote for conviction. It would be nice if that were true, but I doubt it, though I hope I’m wrong. Every Senator, especially those up for reelection in 2020, will be facing the same dilemma as Collins. A vote for conviction sacrifices the base without gaining much on the other end.

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No chess player he

Friday, October 4, 2019

I believe I’ve noted in the past that the genius is no chess player, being totally incapable of thinking more than one move ahead. Nothing proves this more than his relentless attempts to destroy Joe Biden, who he obviously sees as his probable opponent in 2020, because that’s what he’s told by Fox News and/or the conventional wisdom. 

It has apparently never occurred to him that he would be far better off having Biden as an opponent than almost any of the other Democrats with a reasonable chance of getting the nomination. This would require thinking a move or so ahead.

At the very least he should have withheld fire until Biden got the nomination, if he ever does. In the meantime, he should be doing all he can, surreptitiously of course, to assure that Biden is the eventual nominee. At the moment he is diminishing Biden’s chance of being the nominee (or trying to) when it is in his interest (looking more than one move ahead) to enhance those chances.

For Joe is the Democratic equivalent of Jeb Bush, the Democrat most likely to be incapable of responding to the schoolyard bullying tactics Trump deployed against his Republican rivals in 2016. Joe has proven over and over that he is stuck in time, sometime in the 1970s, and is incapable of dealing with the political tactics that will be unleashed on him should he capture the nomination. The same cannot be said for Elizabeth Warren, the likely alternative, who has proven her ability to deftly counter attacks. (Example here)

If we’re lucky, Trump’s tactics will hurt himself (his poll numbers are sinking faster than the Titanic) and Biden, leaving us with a candidate who will not only know how to deal with Trump in the weakened state he will be in as a result of impeachment revelations, but who will also eschew Biden’s program of assuring the plutocrats that “nothing will fundamentally change”. If it’s one thing this country needs, it’s fundamental change. It’s not a sure thing, but it may be that Trump’s inability to think strategically may deliver the country into the hands of a progressive.

We can always hope.

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A good idea

Friday, October 4, 2019

A while back I made a modest proposal to the effect that Bill Barr should be disbarred. I am pleased to report that someone in Congress had the same idea (No, I don’t claim to have inspired him).

Rep. Bill Pascrell announced last night that he filed complaints against AG Bill Barr in both Virginia and the District of Columbia to remove his law license.

Pascrell cites the fact that Barr is aiding and abetting Trump’s crime spree, and is using the Justice Department was Trump’s personal lawyer. I cited his refusal to honor a lawfully issued subpoena, but Pascrell’s arguments all have merit as well. Barr is not merely abusing the power of his office, he is a co-conspirator in Trumps crimes.

Now, when will someone do the same for Guiliani, who should be even easier to pick off?

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Mike Pence in a nutshell

Thursday, October 3, 2019

Mike Pence doesn’t know a thing about all that Ukrainian Stuff. Rachel begs to differ.

Shorter Mike Pence:

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Science scores a hit

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Blogging has been sparse lately, my only excuse being that it becomes tedious to repeat oneself, and there are only so many ways of saying that a certain very stable genius is out of his mind. So this post has nothing to do with the genius, and everything to do with me.

I have been on this earth for 3 score and 9 plus years, and in all that time only about one tablespoon of coffee has passed through the portals of my mouth. Not for me that detestable beverage. I am a tea person, and have for years maintained the superiority of this all American (it was a Tea Party after all) beverage over its overhyped competitor. Turns out that I have science on my side:

A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) revealed that regular tea drinkers have better organised brain regions — and this is associated with healthy cognitive function — compared to non-tea drinkers. The research team made this discovery after examining neuroimaging data of 36 older adults.

“Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation,” explained team leader Assistant Professor Feng Lei, who is from the Department of Psychological Medicine at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

The research was carried out together with collaborators from the University of Essex and University of Cambridge, and the findings were published in scientific journal Aging on 14 June 2019.

Anyone who has read this blog would have to agree that I have tons of well organized brain regions. You might even say I’m a stable….wait…forget that.

Back to science. I will fervently believe this study is valid even if it turns out it was bought and paid for by the folks at Lipton (whose detestable tea I will not drink). As further proof of tea’s superiority, I submit the fact that Barack Obama is also a tea drinker (I have this on Pete Sousa’s authority, who I follow on Instagram.) Given his track record, we must assume that a certain individual to whom I have referred previously has never touched the stuff, which, in any event, even I would agree does not go well with McDonald’s cheeseburgers.

CAVEAT: Some might say that a sample of 36 people might be a bit too small to form the basis for such a conclusion. But those people would be wrong, for after all, the New York Times can tell you what “swing voters” think about impeachment by sampling only six die hard Trumpers, which proves that 36 randomly selected people is a massive sample.

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Things that make you swear and curse

Thursday, September 26, 2019

As Eric Idle wrote:

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse

This is one of those swear and curse things.

We all know that the New York Times sends its reporters into diners in the hinterlands to scout out unrepentant Trump voters and present them as salt of the earth bellwethers for our political future. We also know, deep down in our hearts, that non-Trump voters are studiously ignored by the intrepid reporters as they sip their cups of Joe and interview their brain dead favorites. This is already enough to make one swear and curse, but now we find that they have their favorite “swing voters”, all die hard Trumpies, on speed dial, so when, for example, the Democrats move toward impeachment, we can hear that swing voters are not pleased.

The article in question asserts that swing voters, as the reporter alleges in a tweet, are repelled by the thought of impeachment. She scientifically sampled six such voters. One of the “swing voters” (all of whom have been featured in past NY Times articles) has gone to 23 Trump rallies. One has a portrait of Robert E. Lee hanging in his living room. All of them are die hard Trumpers. See the article to which I’ve linked for full details.

This sort of journalistic malpractice has never been practiced in the Times to throw shade on Republicans.

All we can do is swear and curse, though I’m contemplating ending my subscription to the Times.

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It’s easy to see when they’re afraid

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

It’s easy to see when the right wing is afraid of someone. They start engaging in hysterical attacks. We saw it with AOC, we’ve seen it with Elizabeth Warren, and we haven’t seen it with Joe Biden. I’m not talking about digging up dirt, I’m talking about crazy. 

So all hail Greta Thunberg, who has managed to attract the ire of trump apologist Michael Knowles, (who referred to her as mentally ill), Laura Ingraham,(who compared her to characters in a Stephen King film, earning Laura the twittered wrath of her own brother), and Dinesh D’Souza (who compared her to a Nazi because he found a Nazi poster with a braided girl on it).

They don’t fear them because they disagree with her and their other targets merely because they disagree with them. They fear them because they recognize what the Democratic establishment doesn’t: that they present a clear and present danger to the right.

A bit off the topic, but I can’t wait until Greta gets her peace prize. The Trump tweets will be hugely entertaining.

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