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Yet another stupidity defense

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

I was just checking in at Crooks & Liars, and ran across this post, in which I learn that a Fox News host, Steve Hilton, of whose existence I had no prior knowledge (I do so thank the non-existent god that I don’t own a TV), is urging Trump to stuff not only Giuliani under the bus, but also Joe diGenova, Victoria Toensing, and John Solomon, the last person in that list being someone of whom, as a non-Fox viewer, I have also been blissfully unaware. He is, apparently, a regular Fox talking head who re-spouts Giuliani/diGenova/Toensing conspiracy theories.

I won’t rehash the contents of the post, but I will observe that poor Mr. Hilton is forced to tie himself in knots to make his argument, which boils down to an assertion that the four under-bus dwellers are grifters who are grifting the genius. In order to make his case, he has to explicitly assert that the entire Ukrainian conspiracy theory is ….. you know …. that stuff that comes out of male bovines, thus undercutting one of the genius’s other defenses. On top of that, he must implicitly concede that Trump was stupid enough to believe those conspiracy theories, in spite of what all of his intelligence officials have told him.

So, the defense comes down to this: Trump is a stupid man (despite being a genius) who, despite being a champion grifter himself, can’t spot a grift when he’s the victim, who is more sinned against than sinning (though, again the implication is that he did sin) and who, although he did commit criminal acts, did so because he was tricked into doing them and had no idea that what he was doing was wrong.

Now that last part is probably true. I worked with a client once, who, I was convinced, couldn’t tell right from wrong. He would suggest doing something inappropriate, and we would explain to him that what he was suggesting was wrong, and he would accept what we told him, though he clearly couldn’t see why it was wrong. Trump is like that, which is why he needs people around him to tell him when he is doing something wrong. Unlike my long ago client, however, he doesn’t tolerate being told he is wrong, and so he has, over the course of the past three years, gotten rid of anyone around him who will tell him he is wrong.

This “he was an innocent dupe” defense, is, of course, only one of the many defenses the Republicans and/or Fox have floated in the past several months. All have one thing in common: the implicit presumption that the genius is no genius. More than that, he never was one!

Addendum: Added bonus to anyone who can spot the Gilbert & Sullivan reference in the last paragraph. I couldn’t find an appropriate link.

Addendum the Second: Relevant to the foregoing discussion, Josh Marshall complains:

I just heard – to my great chagrin and distress – one of my favorite CNN hosts say “clearly President Trump doesn’t think he did anything wrong.” Not only is this not “clear” it is almost certainly false. We shouldn’t say this because it’s not true. He certainly knows he did something wrong. He simply doesn’t care.

It may be slightly inconsistent with my previous statements, but I don’t think he knows he did something wrong, because in his worldview, it can’t be wrong if he did it. It is simply a form of mental illness.

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In which I look on the bright side

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Today we learned, and its does not come as a shock, that 53% of Republicans think Trump is a better president than Lincoln. This is no surprise inasmuch as the Republican Party is now the American Nazi party, and Lincoln is not exactly a favorite of racists. After all, he bears a lot of responsibility for the 13th Amendment, among other things. The real surprise is that 47% of Republicans disagree with their racist brethren.

There may be a bit of good news, mathematically speaking, behind this outrageous statistic. This postat the Palmer Report comes close, but I think there may be more to it. Palmer says:

There are roughly 32 million registered Republicans in the United States. 53% of that is roughly 17 million. So we’re talking 17 million people, out of the 250 million Americans who are of voting age. In other words, this poll tells us that not much more than 5% of Americans think Trump is a better president than Lincoln. Even if you want to quibble with registration numbers, you’re still going to end up with a single digit number.

That’s right so far as it goes, though he implicitly rejects the possibility that there may be some Independents and even (shudder) Democrats who agree with their racist fellow citizens.

But I suspect there’s even more to it. As I understand it, pollsters rely on self-reporting to determine a person’s political affiliation. If one called me I could tell him or her that I was a Republican, and that’s how they’d rank me. I think we may be seeing something of a reverse Bradley effect here. Many registered Republicans may be rejecting the label.

Let’s start out by stipulating that pretty much every American knows that Lincoln is considered the greatest president in American history, and it requires a special blend of stupidity and racism to tell anyone, even a complete stranger, that you think the very stable genius is superior to the ultimate American icon. The fact that 53% of self identified Republicans are that racist and stupid tells me that the number of people who self identify as Republicans is decreasing. After all, you can be a registered Republican and no longer consider yourself a Republican when the pollster calls. My wife and I have acquaintances who were registered Republicans for years who just recently switched, provoked wholly by the genius. They are by no means unique and I think it’s quite likely that lots of registered Republicans no longer identify as Republicans, though they haven’t gotten around to switching or don’t see the need to do so.

So I think that one thing this poll reveals is the extent to which the rational are being squeezed out of the Republican Party like toothpaste out of a tube. Okay, so the switchers apparently don’t eat at diners, at least not so as the New York Times can find them, but they’re out there, particularly in the suburbs.

I realize that the above is absolutely inconsistent with my normal cynicism, but as the good poet said: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself”.

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They just can’t help themselves

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Let me start out by stating the obvious: I’m no fan of John Bolton’s. Still, it seems as if Bolton has stuff to say about the genius that the genius might rather we not hear, so, as they say, the enemy of my enemy is (at least temporarily) my friend. But as anyone following events knows, Bolton has been playing games about testifying. Today this happened:

Bolton re-emerged on Twitter this week and charged that his absence was due to the White House refusing to return access to his Twitter account.

Last night, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs lobbed a softball to Press Secretary (and obvious liar) Stephanie Grisham that all but asked her to shoot down Bolton’s accusation: “Ambassador Bolton today, with this nonsense about Twitter, wanting his dedicated, you know, handle. That was never in the possession of the White House, was it?

So, naturally Grisham did what she always does: she lied (or misled) and said that:

Somebody who is of an advanced age may not understand that all you have to do is contact Twitter and reset your password if you’ve forgotten it. So I’ll just leave it at that.

As the linked article goes on to state:

Bolton had turned over control of his account to the White House. He was no longer able to access that account shortly after tweeting his accusation that Trump had lied about firing him. According to the Times, the White House had evidently changed his password and verifying email address.

Starting a new account was possible of course, but he had almost a million followers on the old one (don’t ask me why) so you can see why he would want to keep it.

Now, here’s what I don’t understand. If someone has dirt on you, and you’d rather they keep it to themselves, wouldn’t it make sense to go out of your way not to get them mad at you by calling him a senile old man? What exactly is the upside for Grisham or for Trump in provoking Bolton now?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she did it. Anything that prods Bolton into driving another nail into the coffin is fine by me. Still, it makes you wonder if everyone over at the White House flunked psychology 101. 

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Yet another modest proposal, this time to help the Republicans

Thursday, November 21, 2019

First of all, I want to make clear that I had the germ of the idea for this post before I read Gail Collins column this morning, in which she suggests it’s time for the genius to throw Rudy under the bus. Parenthetically, the underside of that bus is now so crowded that Rudy would have to be squeezed in.

But I digress. Well, that’s what “parenthetically” sort of means, doesn’t it?

Also, I want to make clear that, obviously, given the above claim and the chronology involved, I did not get the idea after reading that Fox and Friends might have read Collins column and agreed with it, though I’m guessing they didn’t mention a bus.

Anyway, I’m not suggesting that Rudy join all those other guys under the bus, though that would certainly be a good move on the part of the genius. I’m suggesting that maybe it’s time for the genius to join his friends under that fabled means of conveyance.

The standard disclaimer applies. The following assumes that the Democrats don’t do something to blow it in 2020, which would render the following unnecessary.

Let’s look at the facts on the ground. After the testimony this week, and the facts that will be coming out over the course of an impeachment investigation that we can only hope will consume a fair amount of time, Susan Collins will not be the only Republican facing a fatal conundrum: abandon Trump and lose the base, or stick with Trump and lose the sane. Polls continue to show that the sane are a significant (about 55%!) share of the American electorate. You can’t win without at least some of their votes, and any Republican that sticks with Trump and echoes his idiotic talking points puts him or herself at substantial risk. Even McConnell is facing a tough race, in a state where the sane are a far smaller percentage of the electorate than nationwide.

The question, of course, is how does one install the genius under the motor coach without pissing off the base?

There is an obvious answer: Lie to them. They’ll believe anything, provided the lies are properly sourced. What better source than Fox? It seems to me that now is the time for Mitch and the other slime to go to Fox and tell them to start propagandizing against Trump. All they have to do is get a head start on the line they would otherwise have started peddling if Trump were to lose in 2020: that he was never a real conservative and he’s actually part of some Democratic conspiracy. After all, before he incarnated as a right wing Republican, he gave money to Democrats, supported legal abortion, and actually once said he was for single payer. He is obviously a Democratic double agent, who infiltrated the Republican Party with the intent to destroy it from within, with the help of his Russian accomplices. The base loves to be told that it’s been or being victimized, so frame it that way and before you know it, they’ll be backing his impeachment. Are there contradictions involved in this? Of course, but if it’s one thing the base can live with it’s contradictions, just like Walt Whitman!

Some might say that this is more than just a “Hail Mary” and that it’s more like a whole rosary. But such people should be reminded of the wisdom that Connecticut Native Charles Barnum never actually uttered, but is nonetheless true: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” And remember, in this case, you only have to underestimate the intelligence of people who watch Fox, which is totally impossible.

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Really, there was no need to rush

Friday, November 15, 2019

There’s an excellent article at Talking Points Memo which purports to explain:

what the rush of activity was to get Vladimir Zelensky to kick off and publicly announce these investigations. After all, during the key events the US election was well over a year away.

The article is well worth reading,and I guess in one sense there was some urgency, from the genius’s point of view, in getting the reluctant successor to a corrupt and ousted leader to confirm that he would go along with the corrupt bargain made by his predecessor. Still, it seems to me that the whole thing was needlessly rushed, and the genius would have been far better off had he waited and exerted pressure say, in September of 2020, if it proved necessary.

The only explanation for trying to take Biden down now is that the genius and his enablers believe that Biden is the probable nominee and that he represents the greatest threat to his reelection. Not being a Fox watcher, I can’t say if Fox has spoon fed this to him or not, but out here in the real world, many of us have a far different take. I’m not alone in making the argument that Biden would be one of the easiest credible candidates for Trump to beat. If the genius had any brains (is that an oxymoron? Well, not in Trump’s case.) he would be easing Biden’s path to the nomination and holding fire until Biden is the nominee, if that ever happens.

Timing is everything in another respect. Trump was looking for an announcement from the Ukraine right away, meaning it would precede the election by more than a year. There is so little substance to the story on the merits that even the New York Times would likely not give it the coverage during the campaign that it would likely give it if it was initially sprung during the campaign. The Times, like most of the mainstream media, is ever on the look out for a story it can use to pound Democrats, in order to prove its evenhandedness. Everyone knows about Hillary’s emails, for example, though the Trump Univerity story is still largely unknown. Even had a whistleblower come forward in the context of an ongoing campaign, that whistle, assuming anyone heard it, would quickly be drowned out be other campaign noise, and would certainly not generate impeachment proceedings, given the timing.

In sum: the genius should wish for a Biden candidacy and should have held fire until that wish was granted, at which time the media would have salivated at the prospect of a Biden corruption story, no matter how baseless.

There is one possible logical explanation for the undue haste. Trump’s leverage over the Ukraine consisted of the aid money. Had he demanded simply a promise to announce an investigation at the opportune time, he would have had to release the quid before he got the quo. In this case his grifter’s reluctance to trust his mark might have been well placed. The announcement might never have come. But that presumes the Ukraine would risk losing future aid, should the genius be reelected.

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Meanwhile, under the radar

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

If I were a Republican consoling another Republican about the unraveling of the Trump administration, I’d probably start off by telling him or her to “always look on the bright side”. After all, while the impeachment drama holds everyone’s attention, it’s even easier for the ideologues operating in the bowels of the administration (and I do mean bowels, because they’re mostly pieces of shit) to go about their dirty work of destroying what remains of our democracy. Sure, their depredations don’t go completely unnoticed, but they don’t garner the attention they deserve, since they are so swiftly overtaken by yet more criminality or by the exposure of same. Consider this:

The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking.

A new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, titled Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could consider an academic study’s conclusions. E.P.A. officials called the plan a step toward transparency and said the disclosure of raw data would allow conclusions to be verified independently.

“We are committed to the highest quality science,” Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, told a congressional committee in September. “Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.”

The measure would make it more difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements. And, unlike a version of the proposal that surfaced in early 2018, this one could apply retroactively to public health regulations already in place.

It is glaringly obvious that they don’t need this data. The studies they are attempting to undermine were conducted using accepted scientific methodology. There is no need to disclose personal information in order to analyze the underlying data. The whole point is to prevent the formulation of any new regulations that actually protect the public health and provide a justification for junking current regulations that provide such protection. Only the affected industries support this approach.

This type of thing is going on throughout the federal bureaucracy. If the Democrats don’t screw up and we manage to get rid of Trump, it will take his successor years to reverse all the damage they’ve done, and who knows how many of those reversals will be overturned by the most partisan and most extreme Supreme Court in history.

So Republicans bummed out by impeachment should definitely look on the bright side. While everyone is looking in one direction, the massive criminality and corruption that pervades the entire administration is hardly noticed and they come ever closer to their goal of destroying democracy and our environment (a real two-fer!).

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Nothing much to see here!

Friday, November 8, 2019

Here’s another one for the What if Obama (or Hillary) had Done it? file.

A state judge ordered President Trump to pay $2 million in damages to nonprofit groups on Thursday after the president admitted misusing money raised by the Donald J. Trump Foundation to promote his presidential bid, pay off business debts and purchase a portrait of himself for one of his hotels.

….

The settlement, which was finalized last month and announced on Thursday in the judge’s order, included a detailed admission of misconduct that is rare for the president, who has long employed a scorched-earth approach toward fighting lawsuits.

Among Mr. Trump’s admissions in court papers: The charity gave his campaign complete control over disbursing the $2.8 million that the foundation had raised at a fund-raiser for veterans in Iowa in January 2016, only days before the state’s presidential nominating caucuses. The fund-raiser, he acknowledged, was in fact a campaign event. (Emphases Added)

So, the (technically) President of the United States has admitted in writing that he ran a fraudulent charity, basically stealing other people’s money to engage in what were also probably violations of campaign finance laws, not that those laws are ever enforced, and he has been fined two million dollars for doing so. The fine was, as I understand it, more or less something to which he consented, as the judge set the fine based on an agreed statement of facts. I.e., the parties left it to the court to determine the sentence, but the defendant entered his “guilty” plea without knowing what that sentence would be.

There was a time when this would be considered a monster of a story, even if a Republican had done it, never mind a Democrat.

The above quote, from the New York Times, appeared on the bottom of page 1 of the paper edition. You can be sure it will be the last time it is mentioned by the newspaper that couldn’t get enough of Hillary’s emails or of the nothing that was Whitewater. (Yes, I know I’m showing my age with that one).

But the Times beat out the other two papers we get every morning, the Boston Globe and New London Day, both of which tucked the story away on page two. Each of the three had rather subdued headlines for their pieces, none using something appropriate like Trump admits to charity fraud or something of that nature. 

We have a broken media in this country. The wagons are already circling around Elizabeth Warren. She is not likable, how is she going to pay for Medicare for All, she’s so unfair to the rich, yada yada yada. We will hear those drumbeats from now until someone else is nominated, or until the election, whichever comes first. The fact that Trump has admitted in writing that he is a con man will be yesterday’s news by ….well, by tomorrow.

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There’s something happening here…

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Two years ago tomorrow the very stable genius helped to turn the town in which I reside from red to blue. The town council went from 8-1 Republicans to 9-0 Democrats. Last night, we swept again in the Town Council and, I believe, we came within one or two seats of maxing out on our representation on the Representative Town Meeting. Republicans narrowly led the Town Council races in only one district, the fourth, which has a high population of Navy folks from the sub base. My district, which contains the affluent Noank and Groton Long Point sections of Groton, went for the Democrats by a rather sizable margin, which may not be an historical first, but is nonetheless unusual, particularly because the present council sort of shot itself in the foot by taking a position on a local Noank issue that didn’t sit well with the folks here. Even I, true blue guy that I am, was not happy with their actions on that one. My own seat of the pants analysis is that the result was caused by a mix of higher turnout (which always favors the Dems) and a Trump induced rejection of all things Republican.

In our neighboring town of Stonington the Democrats replaced First Selectman Rob Simmons, the former (and may he always stay former) Congressman, with an all Democratic, all female First Selectperson and Board of SelectPeople (Sometimes political correctness makes for awkward wording). I may be wrong, but I believe Democratic dominance of that sort is unusual, if not unprecedented, in affluent Stonington.

If this were simply a Connecticut or even New England phenomenon it might not be very important, but it appears to be happening in places in which the Republican Party can ill afford massive desertions and/or higher turnout. Consider that Delaware County in Pennsylvania is now in the hands of Democrats for the first time since the Civil War, and in Chester County, on the other side of Philadelphia, the Democrats swept all 9 county wide races. They have not held power there in living (or dead) memory.

The story is repeated in multiple places. Concentrating on Pennsylvania: If turnout is extra high in those suburbs and the tally in the presidential race is consistent with yesterday’s numbers, then the yahoos in the hills and diners of Pennsylvania can still vote for the genius, but his razor thin 2016 plurality will melt like snow in April. It will take a monumental effort by establishment Democrats to blow it in 2020, and with numbers like this they may simply not be up to the challenge.

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I’m definitely missing something here

Saturday, November 2, 2019

So, it appears that Republican Senators are set to enter the last stage of every Trump defense: sure he did it, but there’s nothing wrong with what he did.

Okay, so maybe I’m missing something, but doesn’t that also sort of undercut the notion that the thing that Joe Biden didn’t do, that Trump wanted investigated, was itself wrong (or would have been wrong, if he’d actually done it). If Trump can hold favorable American action hostage to his personal interests, why can’t Biden? And if that’s the case, why did Trump want him investigated in the first place, since by Republican standards he did nothing wrong.

Of course, we all know the answer to this question: It’s Okay if You’re a Republican.

The thing is, every time they pull this sort of thing, they ask the American people to swallow something even more putrid than the last thing they asked them to swallow. Sure, the yahoos will go for it, but there’s a limited supply of those. I suppose it will matter a lot if the media takes this defense seriously. There are some indications that even the Beltway media is finding it hard to swallow this stuff, and they’ve been the ones most eager to eat Republican bullshit in the past.

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It’s Okay if You’re a Republican, Local Edition, the Epilogue

Friday, November 1, 2019

A few days ago I passed along the saga of David Preka, a Republican candidate for Town Council here in Groton, who doesn’t live in Groton. Some might say that he never should have been nominated, and some might also say that bringing this violation of state and local law to the attention of the proper authorities was the right thing to do, but those who say that would have forgotten that rules are only for Democrats. At least, judging by his reaction, that’s what Ken Richards, the Republican Town chair appeared to think. Anyway, there have been developments.

I didn’t point this out in my first post, but it was clear as day that while Richards immediately went on the attack, he made no attempt to claim that the charge was untrue. I did point out that Connecticut has not yet adopted the soon to be universal federal rule that laws do not apply to Republicans. My guess is that subsequent to the article in the New London Day, Mr. Preka consulted a lawyer who told him as much, and also told him that his violation of state law was glaringly obvious, and that he really ought to cut his losses, for:

David Preka has withdrawn his candidacy for Town Council in Tuesday’s election.
…
Groton Republican Town Committee Chairman Ken Richards said by phone Thursday that it was his understanding that Preka had his residence at his business and also has been for months in the process of obtaining another residence in Groton, but Richards said Preka has received so much negativity that he decided to withdraw.

Now, buried in that comment is an admission that the complaint was well founded. If Preka is in the “process of obtaining another residence in Groton” other than a business address in which he never resided, then he in fact does not reside in Groton.

Richards went on to bloviate:

“This situation has truly shown local Democrats will stop at nothing to maintain one-party power in Town,” he added. “In contrast, Republicans have put forward a diverse slate that is committed to putting People over Politics and ending the kind of hyper-partisanship that has defined the current council’s tenure.”

Um, right. There’s no evidence by the way that Democrats had anything to do with filing the anonymous complaint, though even if that were true, it was a well founded complaint. Wouldn’t you like to get Richards under oath and ask him if he would be fine if a similar complaint had been filed only against a Democrat and the town clerk had done nothing? Oh, I forgot, oaths mean nothing to them either.

I can’t let this pass without commenting on Richards claim that the Republicans put forward a “diverse slate”. Here are pictures of their RTM (Representative Town Meeting) candidates. They all seem to share at least one characteristic, although I’ll admit that while they’re all white, they’re not all men.

Here are pictures of their Town Council candidates. Mr. Preka actually has fairly dark skin, but he’s Albanian and that doesn’t really count, does it. (Also, note that the text touting him states that his company is headquartered in downtown Mystic, while he told the registrar that he resided there.

I can’t find a picture for the Dems, but here’s a bit about the roster of nine:

2 white men.

5 women.

3 African Americans

1 Hispanic.

Also, they’re Democrats in the classic Will Rogers sense. Again, I’d like to get Mr. Richards under oath and have him substantiate his claim of hyper-partisanship. There was plenty of division on the all Democratic Council over the last two years, which alone belies any claim of hyper-partisanship.

Sorry. The horse is dead and I keep beating it.

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