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The election is over, time to complain about Democrats again

Saturday, November 10, 2018

So, today there was this:

Sunday marks 100 years since the end of World War I, the supposed “war to end all wars” that caused the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians.

Leaders from across the globe are in France to commemorate the centennial. German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined French President Emmanuel Macron at the site of Germany’s 1918 surrender on Saturday. British Prime Minister Theresa May and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also honored the fallen.

President Donald Trump, who departed for Paris on Friday, was also scheduled to visit a cemetery that contains the remains of thousands of U.S. troops who were killed in World War I.

That is, until there was a chance of rain.

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump cancelled their Saturday plans to honor Americans who were killed in service to their country due to the weather.

Bear in mind that the whole point of his trip was to commemorate the end of the First World War.

Here, I must pause, and repeat yet again that rhetorical question: What would have happened had Obama done something similar? We all know what would have happened, as surely as we know that Obama would never have done anything similar, though the folks at Fox may have made something up implying that he did.

Do you remember Clinton fatigue? It was a real thing, and probably cost Al Gore the 2000 election. People simply grew tired of the endless attacks on the man, and despite the fact that they may not have believed any given attack,in the end there was a pervasive feeling that they wanted to leave him behind, and Al Gore paid the price. So did Hillary, years later.

Here we have a so called president who couldn’t be bothered to “support the troops” because he didn’t want to deal with a light rain. Instead, as I understand it, he’s spent his time tweeting and watching Fox. Since this is yet another example of Trump being Trump, the media will forget it after tomorrow, approximately 364 days sooner than they would have forgotten it (if they forgot it at all) had Obama done it. Why the longer memories in the case of Obama, or any Democrat for that matter? In large part because the Republicans would never allow anyone to forget. They would mount sustained, coordinated attacks. They mounted such attacks constantly against both Clinton and Obama, usually mendaciously. The Democrats would have the luxury of mounting attacks that were based on actual (as opposed to alternate) facts. But they won’t do it. It’s true that they don’t have their own TV network, so it would be a bit harder for them than for the Republicans, but they could still pound this, as well as multiple other issues, harder than they will. The Republican methods for manipulating the press and public opinion are out there for everyone to see. 

It wouldn’t hurt for the Democrats to do all they can to exacerbate the Trump fatigue that has, with virtually no help from the organized Democratic Party, set in wherever rational people reside. If that means stealing from the Republican playbook, then steal they should.

But they won’t.

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A few thoughts on the election

Friday, November 9, 2018

I finally have a few minutes to get back to this blog, the election, and my involvement therewith, having taken up a lot of time, including more than 2 hours standing in the rain and wind holding a sign. Does that sort of thing really change any minds? 

Anyway..

When I went to bed Tuesday night, Lamont was behind, but unlike that horrible night two years ago, there was hope, considering where the ballots were uncounted, that things would turn around. And they did. Ned will have a Democratic legislature, which should make life a little easier for him. I’ve heard from some folks that Ned doesn’t project a strong enough image, etc., but I think he’ll have more steel than people expect. It was Ned, after all, that stepped up and took on Lieberman, when no one else would do it, and it’s thanks to him that we finally saw the back of Lieberman. It’s an extra bonus that besides taking pleasure in Tuesday’s Democratic victories, we can wallow in schadenfreude at the thought of how pissed Lieberman must be at the thought of Lamont in the governor’s chair while he is reduced to bleating out bothsiderisms.

On a purely local level we did pretty well here in Groton, winning both state rep seats, and hopefully seeing the last of former one term state rep John Scott, who specializes in mud slinging campaigns. Unfortunately, Heather Somers, our incumbent Republican State Senator, was re-elected by the gun toting yahoos (Heather is an NRA fave) in the northern part of our district. Here in her home town of Groton, where we know her well, she lost to her far superior opponent, Bob Statchen.

The good people of Groton also surprised in another respect. A proposed charter revision, which would have allowed for mandatory multiple budget referenda every year, was voted down rather decisively. The proponents were a group of, for the most part, tea party types. Had it passed it would have been particularly bad for the schools, whose budgets were the main targets. Those of us on the “No” side had a tough job of it, since the “Yes” side could make their argument on a bumper sticker: “It’s your money, you deserve a vote”, while the “No” side’s argument was that political loser: nuanced and complicated. It’s always a stunning surprise when the right side wins in one of these situations, so it was one of a number of satisfactory outcomes on the local level.

Okay, so I was slightly wrong when I said that as go the Red Sox so go the Democrats. The Red Sox actually did better than the Democrats. I guess, geezer that I am, I can’t quite grasp that this is a new century, and the storied losers have changed their ways. Anyway, despite the fact that we didn’t win the long shot races that would have been delicious, such as the Texas Senate race, we did do about as well nationwide as could be reasonably expected, especially considering the degree to which the vote is suppressed in so many states.

Now the Democrats face a daunting task. It has been an honorable Democratic tradition for many decades now for the Democrats to get the shit beat out of them in years ending with zero, so that they are faced in as few places as possible with the moral question of whether they should engage in the same sort of gerrymandering that has enabled the Republicans to get into position to destroy the Republic. They will want to keep that purity intact. The odds are stacked against them. Trump will be running for reelection, and the odds are he’ll be even more hated then than he is now. We will quite likely be in a recession. It will be well nigh impossible for the Democrats to lose big time in 2020. But I have faith. They can pull it off. Unlike the Red Sox, they have not changed.

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Friday Night Music: Where is P.F. Sloan when we need him?

Friday, November 2, 2018

Or, Bob Dylan for that matter.

Little did we know at the time that it was more like the early morning of Destruction. I know it’s a small part of things, but we could use a song like this in the present day. It’s a shame Sloan’s no longer around to update the lyrics. If it’s not Destruction’s eve, it’s approaching midnight. Still, there’s always hope….Until there’s not.

Anyway, make sure to vote Tuesday. We still might be able to push the clock back a few minutes.

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Good, so far as it goes

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

So far as I know Paul Krugman is the only voice in the mainstream that calls out whataboutismand bothsiderism. His columntoday seems like a polite channeling of the always on target rants of Driftglass, a blogI highly recommend. 

There’s a major difference, however. See if you can spot it in the excerpt below:

False equivalence, portraying the parties as symmetric even when they clearly aren’t, has long been the norm among self-proclaimed centrists and some influential media figures. It’s a stance that has hugely benefited the GOP, as it has increasingly become the party of right-wing extremists.

You might have thought that the horrifying events of recent days would finally break through that norm. But you would have been wrong. Bothsidesism is, it turns out, a fanatical cult impervious to evidence. Trump famously boasted that his supporters would stick with him even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue; what he didn’t point out was that pundits would piously attribute the shooting to “incivility,” and that Sunday talk shows would feature Fifth-Avenue-shooting advocates and give them a respectful hearing.

This needs to stop, and those who keep practicing bothsidesism need to be shamed. At this point, pretending that both sides are equally to blame, or attributing political violence to spreading hatred without identifying who’s responsible for that spread, is a form of deep cowardice.

The fact is that one side of the political spectrum is peddling hatred, while the other isn’t. And refusing to point that out for fear of sounding partisan is, in effect, lending aid and comfort to the people poisoning our politics. Yes, hate is on the ballot next week.

Unlike Driftglass, who calls out the hypocrisy with exhaustive documentation, when it comes to the media, Krugman names no names. This may be because prime examples dwell alongside him on the editorial pages of the Times, exemplified by a man whose name sort of rhymes with “kooks”. Maybe it’s just not the thing to explicitly criticize fellow journalists for enabling Trump, though, again, in a prime example of what Krugman is talking about, there is no reticence among the alleged journalists at Fox when it comes to criticizing actual journalists. Krugman has raised these issues before, often making veiled references to that rhyming fellow I mentioned above, but I’ve noticed that he never gives concrete examples of media bothsiderism. 

If we’re going to shame them, as Krugman recommends, we have to name them. We’ve come to a point in our history when we can’t afford to be polite.

As a sort of afterthought: there’s a good chance we’ve arrived at this bothsiderist point precisely due to the fact that the press was subjected to years and years of pointed and explicit criticism by the right for having an alleged liberal bias, whenever it reported the facts. That criticism had at least something to do with the emergence of bothsiderism. The fact that there was no pushback from the left (except from people like Driftglass, who they can safely ignore) and there continues to be no pushback (looking at you, so called Democratic leaders) means that bothsiderism is a safe harbor for media figures more interested in their salaries than truth.

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Friday Night Music, Something a bit different

Friday, October 26, 2018

I was trolling around at youtube trying to find something to put up tonight, when I chanced upon this video, which appears to be from a tribute to Mel Brooks, probably at the Kennedy Center. It’s a fun video, but also liked the fact that it brought back memories of a time when the President of the United States appreciated the arts, and the artists appreciated the President of the United States.

I will never forget the first time I watched the Producers (the film) and they started singing Springtime for Hitler. One of the funniest things I ever saw. Brooks is brilliant.

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A blogger’s woes in the era of the Very Stable Genius

Friday, October 26, 2018

Back in the long ago days when we spent our time blogging about the loathsome Joe Lieberman, GWB, and the rest of them, you could normally wait until the evening to post some words of wisdom about the current state of affairs. Things are moving way to fast these days, and unless you are constantly at the keyboard, it’s impossible to say anything that hasn’t been said before. Not just once, but a million times.

Consider this. It turns out, (and who could have predicted it ?) that the person behind the bombings was precisely who we thought it would be. A white male Trumper.Could it have been a person of any other description? Not just any white male Trumper. He’s a guy who plastered his van with threats against the folks who have been receiving those bombs.

A few minutes ago I pinboarded the above link and figured that in a short while I’d post something predicting that the conspiracy theories would seen be flying on the right, and, that most likely, Fox would find a way to excuse this guy. After all, white guys who do criminal things can generally be forgiven due to mental illness or the misery attendant upon being a loner, whereas the rare person of color who commits such a crime has done so because, as a person of color, they are inherently evil.

Anyway, within minutes I saw that the conspiracy theorizing has begun.This is the type of thing that trickles up these days. We’ve seen Republicans who are supposedly responsible buying into ridiculous conspiracy theories, so we can expect them to be buying into one or more of the theories percolating up from the whackjobosphere (I just made up that word, but I am giving it away for free). 

Okay, it wouldn’t have been a particularly original insight anyway, but still, couldn’t they have waited until the ink dried on the guy’s booking sheet?

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So far, so good

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

A while back I suggested that the fate of the Boston Red Sox and the Democratic Party might be mysteriously linked this year, victims or beneficiaries of some cosmic force that survives on a diet of irony. I observed that the Democrats were the Red Sox of baseball, always capable of blowing it in the end. And yet…

And yet, hope springs eternal in the human breast. So I submit that, just maybe, the fate of the Red Sox and the Democrats are inextricably entwined. If the Red Sox manage to go all the way, then so too, shall the Democrats. This year, the gods of baseball and the gods of politics have made a pact. As the Red Sox go, so goes the nation. Democrats: prepare for the worst.

But the Red Sox have not yet blown it! They trounced the hated Yankees. They did the same to the Astros, who we neither hate nor love; they simply exist in a part of the baseball universe that we ignore for 95% of the season. Now only the Dodgers, the Brooklyn castoffs, stand in the way. Is it possible that the Sox are going to pull us over the line?

Here’s a sign of hope. How delicious would it be if the biggest asshole in the Senate (and that is a difficult title to earn) were beaten in the red state of Texas. I’m not saying this is going to happen, but there appears to be hope. Consider that yesterday was the first day of voting in Texas, and turnout was huge (people waiting in lines) in blue leaning areas.

Now it’s true that, Texas being Texas, we can’t know how these people are voting, but consider again: would you turn out early and wait in line for Ted Cruz?

It just may be that the Dems and the Sox will both cross the finish line this year. At least we can still hope, though we must never forget the failures of which both are capable. I don’t know if Bill Buckner is a Democrat, but he should be.

Addendum: I feel sort of bad about that last sentence, as I have always maintained that Bill Buckner should not have been blamed for that disastrous loss. He was playing injured and should not have been in the game; the manager was counting Red Sox chickens without considering that they might not (given we’re talking Red Sox, probably would not) hatch. I well remember saying out loud, before that inning began, that of course Buckner would be removed for defensive purposes and Dave Stapleton would replace him, but this obvious move did not take place. Anyway, the pitchers were in the process of blowing the game, so Buckner merely hastened the process.

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A year ago today

Friday, October 19, 2018

I keep a journal on my Ipad, and every day it displays entries from previous years. Besides chronicling my own boring life I’ve been making note of the doings of the very stable genius. Among other things I noted the following a year ago. The quotes in the entry below are from some internet source; I failed to insert a link in the journal, which I usually do. Anyway take my word they were written by someone at the time, and given the subject, it hardly matters who:

Finally, it what can only be considered a Supreme Irony, it looks like there may be an actual Benghazi lurking in the Niger episode, where four servicemen got killed. Of course it will come out only over the dead bodies of several Republican Congresspeople, but in fact, that may happen (figuratively):

Let’s get back to the real issue: What happened to those troops in Niger, and why isn’t the administration talking about it? Just like in Benghazi, terrible things happen. Trump’s refusal to address it may indicate something else — or it may simply represent his inability to accept responsibility for anything that isn’t a victory.

And McCain, who has nothing to lose, and may be looking to burnish his reputation, doesn’t appear to want to let it go:

Even Defense Secretary James Mattis and Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate’s Armed Forces Committee, don’t have the clarity they want.

When asked whether the Trump administration was being up front about the ambush in southwest Niger on Oct. 4, McCain issued a blunt “no” on Wednesday. […] “We deserve to have all the information.”

He’s talking subpoenas. There are rumors about Russian involvement in the operation. If we were carrying water for the Russians that could be explosive, since it could be perceived as a payoff, a perception that would probably be true.

Can you say Benghazi?

You can’t blame McCain for not following up; he was a dying man. But no one followed up, and the entire incident disappeared down the memory hole, along with so much of the other criminality of the current administration. A prediction: a year from now the fact that the current administration countenanced the murder of a journalist who was an American resident will be entirely forgotten.

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The DCCC, an incompetent organization

Thursday, October 18, 2018

A few weeks ago I got a fairly suspicious voicemail from a recorded voice stating it was calling from the D-C-C-C. It did not use the term “Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It advised me that I would soon be getting a absentee ballot and that I should make sure to fill it out and return it right away. Needless to say I found this email somewhat misleading, as I had not applied for an absentee ballot, nor am I eligible to do so. The voice provided a telephone number but I was in no position to write it down so I was unable to call it. I did notify someone I know who works at the secretary of state’s office, as it seemed like voter suppression to me. I figured that even the people at the DCCC couldn’t be so stupid that they’d call a Connecticut resident with information that was clearly inconsistent with Connecticut state law.

Turns out I was wrong. A couple of days ago they called again, this time leaving a voicemail. I have tried to embed it below, and hopefully this will work.

voicemail.wav

I forwarded it to my contact at the Secretary of States’s office, and received a phone call from a nice person there who told me she would follow up. A few minutes ago she called to ask me if by chance I had been registered recently in another state, say, North Carolina. Well, as it turns out I had not been, but a relative, who lives in France but votes in North Carolina has, on occasion, used our address and phone number as a contact. So, in fact, it was the DCCC, calling numbers outside of North Carolina with North Carolina specific information, not even bothering to make that clear and, no doubt, potentially confusing as many people as they might enlighten. How hard could it be to tailor the message in such a way that it would not potentially confuse the legions of non-North Carolinians likely to get this robocall? How hard could it be to notice that there were calls going to non-North Carolina area codes and that might cause a problem? Leave it to the DCCC to counter Republican voter suppression tactics with unconscious voter suppression of their own.

This, of course is only a minor example of the sundry ways in which the DCCC is doing it’s best to blow the upcoming election, or, at the very least, stock the House of Representatives with DINOs that will vote with the Republicans 80% of the time.

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More whining about messaging

Thursday, October 18, 2018

This postat Hullabaloo caught me eye. In it, Digby states the obvious about Republican tax cuts:

It’s a simple scheme, really. Whenever they control the government they immediately pass massive tax cuts and massive increases in military spending, always promising that the wealthy and the corporations will pour all that money back into the economy and it will end up increasing revenues because of all the growth it will stimulate. But it never does.

It’s actually quite brilliant because the real goal isn’t just to give tax cuts to the rich and spend huge sums of money on the military. It’s also to run up the debt so Republicans can turn around and wring their hands over the need to be “fiscally responsible” and force the government to cut spending on programs they don’t like. They are specifically hostile to what they call “entitlements”: the big-ticket items of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It should be a simple matter to come up with a simple, coherent message to expose this con game, particularly because, as Digby points out, they’ve done it again and again with the same results each time. Yet, the Democrats can’t seem to be able to do it. Nor can they come up with a counterattack when the Republicans blame them for failing to deal with the deficits that Republicans created.

This kind of con game goes on at every political level. Last night I attended a debate between our incumbent Republican Senator, Heather Somers, and our candidate, Bob Statchen. Heather has no problem advocating for reduced taxes on the rich (her first move as a state senator was a proposal to repeal the Connecticut estate tax and the business tax), which she takes as a given that we can afford, but immediately whines about our inability to pay for anything, such as paid family medical leave, that benefits normal people. The latter just couldn’t be done, she assured her listeners. To his credit, Bob insisted we could do it, as have so many other states. Of course, Heather insists that increased revenue is off the table. We can’t have tolls, she insists, while she lies about various aspects of that revenue source. And of course, we can’t raise the minimum wage, because it would destroy the state if we stopped exporting the money Walmart is saving by paying slave wages to Arkansas and the pockets of the Waltons. 

But I rant.

This particular race is extremely important, by the way. Heather is vulnerable, and Bob is a good candidate. If the Senate remains tied, or goes Republican, and Lamont wins, the Senate Republicans will do to him what the US Senate Republicans did to Obama. 

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