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Now more than ever, follow Orwell’s rules

Friday, June 14, 2019

George Orwell posited six rules for good writing:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Today’s paper brought rules ii and iii to mind when I read this about Sarah Huckabee’s departure:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, is leaving the Trump administration after a turbulent tenure marked by attacks on the media, dissemination of false information, and the near-disappearance of the daily press briefing. (Emphasis added)

And this:

While Sanders proved a more effective and composed carrier of Trump’s message than Spicer, she maintained the administration’s publicly antagonistic approach to reporters and regularly ran afoul of the facts. (Emphasis added again)

There is a three letter word that means the same thing as “dissemination of false information” and “ran afoul of the facts”. It begins with the letter “l” and ends with the letter “e”, with another vowel in between. (Okay, I just broke the rules too).

It would behoove the press to use that word more often. Keep in mind, 1984 was intended to be a description of a dystopia, not a utopia.

Just to be clear, I don’t believe rule vi is relevant here.

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

A challenge for the Democrats

Thursday, June 13, 2019

It appears that polling is looking very bad for the genius. He loses against everyone. 

So, this brings us to the perennial question:

How can the Democrats blow it and drive the final nail into the coffin of the American Republic?

There are a number of approaches they can take.

They can nominate a candidate who will inspire zero enthusiasm among young voters, thereby suppressing turnout in that demographic.

They can nominate a candidate who has a history of taking anti-abortion positions and who has advocated denying contraceptive coverage for women while Obamacare was being fashioned.

They can nominate a candidate who is delusional and believes the Republicans will have a come to Jesus moment if they lose an election. You know, like they had in 2008 and 2012.

They can nominate a candidate whose platform consists of “centrist” nostrums designed to perpetuate the status quo of gross inequality and worker powerlessness. You know, the kind of guy who makes a billionaire like Howard Schultz secure in the knowledge that the plutocrats have nothing to fear and he has no need to revive his quixotic candidacy. Maybe even the kind of guy that might give the Koch Brothers additional incentive to invest in perverting the Democratic Party.

They can nominate a candidate who is prone to saying stupid things, knowing that the press can’t stop itself from obsessing about a Democratic gaffe while looking the other way when the genius allows that he’d probably commit more crimes if it would help him win an election.

They can nominate a candidate who, even if he wins, will give the Republicans all the ammunition they need to sweep in 2022 and return to absolute, and likely permanent, power in 2024.

Can they find such a candidate? It’s a tall order, but I think they can do it. In fact, I think the troops are lining up behind him and the press is busy anointing him. Can that candidate win anyway? Maybe. I’d vote for him, but then, I’d vote for Tim Ryan or Seth Moulton if my choice were between one of them and the genius. It’s not the people that vote who will decide the next election. It’s the people who stay home.

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Another in an endless series of modest proposals

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

It appears that William Barr is about to be held in contempt of Congress, but, this being an era in which our judiciary is now overflowing with rightwing ideologues, it is highly likely that it will take years for court battles to enforce the citation to play out, by which time he will either be out of office, or we will have comfortably settled into a dictatorship with the trappings of a Republic, much like Rome in the days of Caesar. (See my most recent post).

It occurs to me that there is a way to get some form of immediate sanction imposed on Barr. Though it is unlikely to have much legal efficacy, i.e., it will not result in his being fined or jailed, it nonetheless would have some propaganda value.

I don’t know what state issued Barr’s law license, but assuming it’s one in which the legal profession still believes in the rule of law, his license to practice law could be revoked. It seems to this now retired lawyer that a refusal to honor a lawfully issued subpoena would be sufficient grounds for disbarment. The federal courts would, or should, have no say in the matter, though I wouldn’t put it past the current federal judiciary to come up with a “just this time and this will never apply to Democrats” ruling to try to block the disbarment.

Still, something to think about. Of course if he’s licensed in someplace like Alabama the bar would probably rather give him an award.

Filed in Corruption, Modest Proposals | | Comments (0)

Hail Donald!

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

This is something that has occurred to me on numerous occasions. It occurred to me again as I read about the toddler in chief making an idiot of himself in England.

It now appears more likely than not that future historians (history is written by the winners, after all) will give the genius credit for delivering the final blows that brought down the American republic and replaced it with a dictatorship or autocracy. He may well be our Julius Caesar. Certainly there were Romans (Sulla comes to mind) that helped pave the way, just as there were Republicans here, but it was Julius who delivered the final blow.

Ah, but what a falling off is there. We should truly be ashamed that a man as mediocre as the genius will take us down. Before he became a dictator, Julius was a successful general. Contrast that with the genius, who was a failed businessman. Julius was an accomplished writer, who wrote, all by himself, what is considered at least a minor classic. The genius has never even reada book. Julius was at least a man of substance. Our guy is a snake oil selling buffoon, and we are still letting him destroy our Republic.

One other thing. When Julius met his well deserved end, it was at the hands of the Senators of Rome, who were making a last ditch attempt to stave off the inevitable. The majority of our Senators have enabled our child emperor at every turn.

No doubt historians of the future, like Fox “journalists” of today, will find a way to make him out to be a great man, but they’ve got their work cut out for him. Shame on us for choosing such an idiot to bring about our downfall.

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

Mueller Time

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

This morning I got an email from my wife, who was at work, telling me about the upcoming Mueller appearance, and suggesting I watch it. My first reaction was negative, as I told her I was afraid he was going to cop out, by which I meant that he would simply repeat what we already knew and that he would be circumspect, etc. 

In the end, I did watch, and my basic reaction was that he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. I wrote to my wife and told her it was a “dud”.

An hour or two later I pulled up my RSS reader, and lo and behold, I found that my point of view was not widely shared. Josh Marshal gave it a rather tepid reception, but apparently the mainstream media felt differently. Even the folks at Fox, according to the folks at Crooks & Liars, interpreted his comments as a implicit call for Trump’s impeachment. Somehow, the mere repetition of what we could already read in the report was a game changer. For instance, it is now news that he would have absolved Trump of any criminal liability if the evidence supported such a move, but it didn’t. That is more or less a direct quote from the report.

The Prince of Denmark once said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. Mueller’s statement could have been dismissed in much the way Josh and I dismissed it, but apparently there are folks that thinkit makes a difference if you say something in front of a camera that you’ve already set down in black and white. They happen to be the people that matter, the talking heads that appear on our television screens and the people who write newspaper headlines. Maybe Mueller was smart enough to see that was the case. In any event, it appears that his little speech will push the country further toward supporting the idea of impeachment, thereby putting more pressure on Pelosi to commence impeachment proceedings. I believe that Pelosi is perfectly happy to be pressured. I personally don’t care if they ever actually impeach, but I do think they should be investigating relentlessly. Using the impeachment process makes it all the harder for the genius’s judicial enablers to prevent that investigation. Even Kavanaugh would have a hard time (not saying he won’t anyway) coming up with a reason why the constitutional power to impeach does not carry with it the constitutional right to gather evidence.

We’ll have to see what the future brings, but maybe Mueller’s humdrum little speech might have started something.

Filed in The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (1)

Who could have guessed that Biden would be uninspiring?

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Let me start by saying that I would vote for anyone with a D after his or her name in the 2020 presidential race. I desperately want us to win. In future posts, I may not so preface, but it should always be assumed.

That being said, I tremble in fear at the thought of a Joe Biden presidency. Here, Atrios points out that Biden’s inability to attract crowds is a problem, either with the candidate himself or with his campaign staff.

His staff may be partly to blame, but I think it’s Biden. Perhaps there are people in this country who are actually enthusiastic about the prospects of a Biden presidency, but they are few and far between. He is up in the polls partly due to name recognition, and partly because people who don’t really think too deeply think he’s the guy to beat Trump. And the latter is partly because he’s been anointed by the same people who anointed Hillary, and they figure that when all is said and done, he’s what they’ll be getting. Can anyone even articulate what Biden would do as president, or what he would like to do, other than not be Trump? All the other candidates are not Trump too, but they also have (except for the Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan DINOs) policy objectives that they articulate. We need for people to come out and vote, and they will not be inspired to do so by Joe Biden.

As a candidate, he will be his own worst enemy At least Hillary grasped most of the realities of the political landscape in which she was operating. That is, she understood that Republicans would take no prisoners and give no quarter. Biden is delusional. It is inevitable that, if nominated, he will make a fool of himself time and again, and the press will do to him what it does to all Democratic candidates: concentrate fire on him while giving Trump a “Trump being Trump” pass (Remember Al Gore, the alleged liar, and John Kerry, the alleged flip-flopper, and Hillary’s emails?). They’ll do it to whoever gets the Democratic nomination, but they’ll have so much more to fire at with Biden. Or maybe I should say “fire with”, since he’ll be giving them the ammunition. If anyone with a reasonable shot at the nomination can depress Democratic leaning turnout, it’s Joe Biden.

I still believe, or want to believe, that he’ll fade, but the truth is that given the gigantic field out there, if he keeps his numbers in the high teens, and the good candidates split the informed vote, we could end up sleep walking toward a replay of that awful night in November, 2016. 

Filed in Presidential Politics | | Comments (2)

We could use this here

Saturday, May 25, 2019

The British Labour Party suffers from some of the same defects as its American cousin, the Democrats. There is a cadre of right wing alleged Labourites holding it back, and it is easily intimidated by right wing bullshit. But they’re not all like that. I saw this video on Crooks & Liars and I felt I had to pass it on. We could use some of this on this side of the puddle.

My only criticism is that he doesn’t know how to pronounce “shit”.

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Meanwhile, as always, under the radar…

Monday, May 20, 2019

One of the many unfortunate side effects of the blatant criminality emanating from the White House and Attorney General is the fact that the regular run of the mill corruption that is the hallmark of this administration goes largely unremarked. One of the most corrupt of our regulators is Ajit Pai, the FCC Chair. Today he okayedthe proposed T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint, which everyone with a living brain realizes will result in an increase in the already outrageous cost of mobile phone service.

Now Pai says, despite all the evidence, that this will be good for consumers because the merged company has promised to deploy a 5G network and has also agreed not to raise rates for three years. But…, as you might expect:

Industry watchers doubt whether Pai’s FCC would enforce conditions given the agency’s unwillingness to stand up to major carriers on a litany of subjects, ranging from the foot-dragging on implementing robocall tech, casual treatment of consumer location data, and repair delays in the wake of hurricanes in both Florida and Puerto Rico.

This may not rise to Scott Pruitt levels of corruption, at least not obviously, but rest assured that if and when we get our country back Pai will be handsomely rewarded for his fealty to his former employers. All of the carriers benefit from this decision, because it will green light rate increases across the board, as the linked article discusses. Every carrier knows and Pai knows that he won’t enforce the conditions on the merged company so none of the other companies will be under competitive pressure to provide US consumers with a phone network on a par with that in other countries.

Indeed, that’s the way it works in this country and everyone knows it. Corporations say what they need to say to get the governmental action they want and then simply don’t do what they promised, especially now when they know that each and every regulatory body will look the other way.

Consider what Amazon is now trying to do to the town of Braintree, Massachusetts, where Amazon recently sued the Town over a requirement that “ delivery vehicles going to and from a warehouse that Amazon plans to build must carry signs identifying them as such.” It was a condition the Town Planning Board imposed on approving the facility in the first place in order to assure compliance with a traffic management plan to which Amazon agreed in order to get the zoning approval. At that time Amazon’s attorney said the requirement “makes sense”. The town relied upon that to grant the zoning approval in the first place. Had the attorney opposed the requirement, Amazon would likely not have gotten the approval. Now Amazon is suing to overturn that requirement, given that it has the approval safely in hand. If it were a federal regulatory issue, at this point in time, Amazon would not even bother to sue; it would simply ignore the requirement secure in the well founded belief that nothing would come of it. 

Filed in Corruption | | Comments (0)

Joe Biden was in a coma for eight years

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

If there were a god I would be imploring him/her to save us from this man:

In New Hampshire, Joe Biden predicts that once President Trump is out of office, Republicans will have “an epiphany” and work with Democrats toward consensus.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 14, 2019

The Republicans thrive in the minority, but only if they oppose everything. Look at the poor NRA, which is losing money because they can’t claim their guns are threatened. But I am adding evidence to a case already made. Where was Biden when McConnell said his only objective at the start of Obama’s presidency was to assure that he was a one term president. Where was he when the Republicans refused the offered chance to destroy social security solely because they didn’t want to work on anything with Obama, even on an objective they’ve cherished for over 60 years. Where was he during the Merrick Garland debacle? The coma theory is the only one that gives the man the benefit of the doubt.

I’ll vote for him if I have to, but he’s a sure ticket, should he win (and I don’t think he will), to a Republican sweep in 2024.

Oh well, maybe I’ll be dead by then.

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No one could have predicted this!

Monday, May 13, 2019

Boy, this is a shocker. No one could have predicted it:

A source close to the Florida man who raised over $22 million on GoFundMe in the “We The People Will Build the Wall” campaign just revealed today that the money has been diverted to pay for a ‘million dollar’ yacht and high-flying lifestyle.

Well, maybe some people could have predicted it. I wonder if the genius of the very stable variety is getting a cut.

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