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Are the Dems getting a collective spine?

Monday, August 5, 2019

It’s been said that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. We’ve been subjected to a lot of ill winds lately, particularly in the last couple of days during which there have been two massacres, at least one of which appears to have been inspired by the monster currently desecrating 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But perhaps this wind will blow some good, in that these events may be a turning point, not only in the fight against the NRA, but in the continuing and seemingly permanent inability of the Democratic Party to take control of the narrative, not just on guns, but on everything.

It has been obvious for some time that many of these killers were inspired by Trump and those he condones. Previously, the Democrats, if they have made that connection, have done so only tepidly. It would be impolite, after all, to do otherwise, and they wouldn’t want to be criticized by the folks on Fox or the both siderist pundits. Attacks of that sort are the sole preserve of Republicans, from whom it is expected, and therefore tolerated, despite the fact that their attacks are usually—-sorry, always—- mendacious.

Perhaps the El Paso killer (we don’t know about the Dayton guy yet, except I believe we know he’s white-of course) pushed the Democrats over the edge. We can only hope they’ll stay there. Beto O’Rourke has been putting responsibility for these terrorist acts just where it belongs, (see here, hereand here) as has Julian Castroand even the DINO Tim Ryan. My impression is that they’re not the only presidential candidates doing so. This is a refrain in which all the candidates should join, along with the entire congressional delegation. It’s time we sang in unison about something, and nothing is truer than the claim that Trump has been encouraging and validating this type of behavior.

It needs hardly be said that the dedicated gun nuts do not vote for Democrats. It therefore stands to reason that we should not try to appease them. It will do no good. Better to appeal to the far more numerous segment of the population that would rather not be shot if they venture out in public. Yes, they are not single issue voters like the gun nuts, but an appeal to sanity on multiple fronts cannot help but have a cumulative effect.

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Chaos at the DCCC

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

I get calls from the DCCC on almost a weekly basis. Like a lot of other scam callers, they use phone numbers that are allegedly from towns near me. The last one was (supposedly) from Canton, I believe. I never give, because since the days of Rahm Emmanuel and even before that, they have favored right wing DINOs over actual Democrats. If anything, it’s gotten worse under Cheri Bustos. Wander around the posts over at Down with Tyrannyfor details.

Seems like the DCCC is in disarray, and there’s always the slim hope that Pelosi will step in and hand it over to some actual Democrats (don’t hold your breath):

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) saw a mass departure of senior staff late Monday amid outcry over the lack of diversity within the committee’s top ranks under Chairwoman Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.).

Communications director Jared Smith, political director Molly Ritner, deputy executive director Nick Pancrazio, top communications aide Melissa Miller and the committee’s diversity director Van Ornelas all resigned by Monday evening.

The exits come on the heels of the resignation of the committee’s executive director, Allison Jaslow, which she announced at an all-staff meeting earlier on Monday.

Jaslow’s exit followed complaints about the lack of diversity in the senior management positions from Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) and Filemon Vela (D-Texas).

Gonzalez and Vela said in a statement Sunday that the committee was in “complete chaos.”

Bustos returned to Washington on Monday despite the August recess to deal with the growing outcry from black and Latino lawmakers over diversity.

The episode underscores the level of discontent with Bustos throughout the House Democratic ranks. According to one House Democrat, Bustos made promises to lawmakers of all stripes in her bid to take the reins from Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and those competing pledges are a major reason for the fallout she and the committee are experiencing only seven months after she took over as chair.

Under Bustos and her predecessors the DCCC has taken sides against Democrats in favor of DINOs in primaries involving open seats or seats held by Democrats. Recently the DCCC threatened to steer business away from any consultant who worked for a primary challenger, a move meant especially to protect uber DINO Dan Lipinski from a challenge by Marie Newman, who almost beat him two years ago. Lipinski, who inherited his seat from his equally reprehensible father, represents a deep blue Chicago district but votes deep red.

I guess it’s good that some people at the DCCC think there should be more diversity there. Personally, I think the primary focus should be on getting more Democrats.

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An easy prediction

Sunday, July 28, 2019

There is a strain of thought among so-called never-Trumpers that there is a thing called Trumpism, and there is the Republican Party, and that they are two separate and distinct entities. The thinking, apparently, is that deep in the soul of the Republican Party there is a core of people who are not racists, not religious bigots, not fascists. 

Former Massachusetts governor William Weld is now putting that notion to the acid test. A few days ago he addressed the NAACP convention and said this:

Donald Trump is a raging racist, Okay? He’s a complete and thoroughgoing racist. And he made that choice, a choice a long time ago, when he was engaged in the housing business in New York with his father,” Weld said, speaking at the NAACP convention in Detroit on Wednesday.

He added: “The national Republican Party, has a choice. And a lot of them like to think that it’s a political choice. But it’s not a political choice. It’s a moral choice.”

Weld is casting his campaign as the last chance for the Republican Party to turn away from the racism (I don’t know if he is concerned about the drift toward fascism) about which Trump is so open. Those of us who’ve been watching know that the dog whistles began blowing in 1968, but let’s put that aside for the moment.

It strikes me that Weld is right. He’s offering Republican voters a choice between “Trumpism” and the mythical Republicanism of fantasists like David Brooks.

I would hazard a prediction that Weld won’t get more than 10% of the vote in any state, even Massachusetts, even if Trump’s crimes have been fully exposed by the time the primaries roll around. If he gets that high, it will be because most Republicans won’t bother to vote in the primaries simply because there’s no real threat to Trump, so his theoretical 10% would actually represent perhaps 5% of Republicans.

So, that brings us to the ultimate question. Will the punditry finally acknowledge that there is no distinction between Trumpism and Republicanism, once Weld finishes the primary season without a single convention delegate? Or will the mythical Republican Party live on in the mindless drivel penned by people like Brooks?

I really wish there were someone stupid enough to bet that the punditry will change its tune. I could make a lot of money betting against that person.

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Back from the shadows again

Friday, July 26, 2019

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, as I am on vacation in the wilds of Vermont, going to the same places we go every year. Once again, we went to the Hapgood “Eatery” in Peru (that would be the Peru in Vermont, just down the road from the Bromley ski area), and once again, Paul McCartney failed to show his face. He was there years ago. I know that because his picture is on the wall, and the menu notes that he had the vegetarian pizza. But apparently he avoids the place when we’re there.

Enough carping. I have barely been following the news, but I know it has followed a predictable course. Robert Mueller has testified, and he confirmed that Trump is a crook, but much of the media just yawns, because it’s old news. It was all in his report, which is quite true, except when the report came out, they didn’t bother to read it and report its substance. Yada, yada.

Anyway, enough has been written about Mueller, and it does look like the Democrats are looking to conduct a well timed impeachment inquiry, to give the impeachment vote maximum political impact, while rendering the Senate’s verdict an after-election afterthought.

At least we can hope that’s the thinking.

A few random observations.

While we are distracted by the Trump’s criminality, our corporate overlords continue to reap the benefits of that criminality. The now almost totally corrupt Justice Department has okayed the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, the result, in part, of T-Mobile’s excessive patronage of Trump’s hotels. The U.S. already has pretty horrible cellular service, in comparison to other developed countries, but we can now look forward to even worse service at even higher prices. This, of course, has taken place largely under the radar.

On to Moscow Mitch. It is a fact, though not widely bandied about, that McConnell has been the beneficiary of Moscow’s largess, and has done good service for his puppet masters, such as when he prevented Obama from warning of Russian attempts to tamper with our election. He has, in the last few days, prevented the Senate from taking up elections that might prevent a replay of 2016, something Mueller warned about in his testimony. This is only to be expected, of course. So far as Republicans are concerned, all’s fair if it helps them get elected. The preservation of a republican form of government (when it has a small “r” it bears no relationship to the capitalized version) is not a priority. In fact, the destruction of republican forms is a feature, not a bug. This morning, as I understand from Crooks & Liars, Joe Scarborough spent 15 minutes excoriating “Moscow Mitch”. It hardly needs saying that the Democrats will not pick up on this, though they should. Repetition is key, something the Democrats never seem to get. If they keep repeating that phrase, particularly since it is well grounded in fact, they might just be able to at least get him to back down on letting the Russians steal the next election, and they would, in any event, plant something in the public mind that would spill over from the already loathed Mitch to his Republican enablers. But alas, that is not to be. This too will be forgotten in a few days, because the Democrats will allow it to be.

Time to return to vacation mode.

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Fake News is a real thing sometimes

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

This has happened before, and it supports something the genius has been saying: there’s a lot of fake news out there. The fact is that most of the fake news supports him.

Yesterday CNN had a panel of Texas female Republican. They were presented as representative of 2016 Texas females who voted for Trump. Nothing he has done, they all said, has made them change their minds, and of course its the Democratic congresswomen that are the real racists.

What was not disclosed?

Although CNN didn’t disclose this, Google tells me that Dena Miller is the national director of Trumpettes for America, a network of socialites who work to gin up support for Trump in the media. Well done, Dena!

Gina O’Briant, Geni Manning, and Kathleen Lieberman are members of the Texas Women for Trump Coalition. So they’re not your typical housewives, either.

Republican Cami Dean ran for Congress (TX-3) in 2014.

These are not ordinary Republican women. These are people who are deeply invested in Republican activism, and their appearance here tells me they can’t come up with enough mainstream Republicans for this focus group. They’re only talking to the true believers — which makes Trump look more popular than he really is.

I take issue with that last quoted paragraph, in that I don’t believe for a second that CNN went looking for a representative sampling of Republican women. It looked for what it got, women who would say that nothing Trump does could ever shake their faith. Reminds me of the fact that you’re not allowed to eat in a diner in the Midwest unless you still support the genius.

This is a common trope for our media. Consider this article from the Washington Post, which was reprinted in this morning’s New London Day (though I couldn’t find a workable link there). The gist of it is that Trump’s racist rant will only help him politically. After all, he’s firing up the base.

Which leads me to a question I’ve ranted more than once to my long suffering spouse. How come it’s always good for the Republicans when they play to their base, but if the Democrats play to theirs it will always hurt them?

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A suggestion

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Dave Collins, a columnist for the New London Day, lately covered himself in glory by exposing some shenanigans related to a proposed development, to be called Smiler’s Wharf (developers always name things after what they’re destroying), in Mystic. Former terrible Congressman Rob Simmons, now terrible Stonington first selectman, and Heather Somers, who I am ashamed to say represents this district in the State Senate, both had their fingerprints on some fairly suspect things. Somers, for instance, was pushing for a $10,000,000.00 subsidy in the form of state bonds for the project. Obviously coincidentally, the developers were contributors to her campaigns. Collins’ series of columns provoked a widespread public reaction, all strongly against the project, and the developer has now pulled the plug on it. Let’s hope the plug stays pulled. 

Collins has not always covered himself with glory. Back in 2016 he announced that political candidates should have to pass the “Trump Test” in order to earn anyone’s vote. In order to pass the test a candidate had to reject Trump, but somehow, though all our local Republicans failed the test, that fact never reached a large part of Collin’s audience, and Somers has continued to be endorsed by the Day, in spite of the fact that we have fielded superior, and obviously Trump-test passing, candidates against her.

So here’s a suggestion for Dave, as both a follow up for his Smiler’s Wharf accomplishment and as redemption for his Trump Test failure. The Republican Party in Connecticut still pretends that it is somehow different than the racist national Republican Party. There is, they like to imply, still some Rockefeller Republicans out there if you just look for them. For that reason, they keep the dog whistles down to a fairly low pitch, so low that even the dogs sometimes can’t hear them, until they blow them over and over. On the other hand, I haven’t heard any condemnation of the racist in chief from any of them. Now that he whose name I refuse to preface with the word “president” has blown a dog whistle than everyone can hear, it would seem appropriate for Dave to canvas our local Republican legislators and ask them for a reaction to Trump’s loud and proud racism. Granted, Somers probably won’t talk to him, as he exposed her seamy little deal, but he should still try. I, for one, would like to see what dodge she employs to refuse to answer the question. Will it be the “Democrats are the real racists because they were racist back in 1868” or some variant, or would it be an ad hominem attack on Collins. In any event, it’s a line of questioning to which every elected Republican in the country should be subjected, and no one better to do it in our neck of the woods than Collins.

Just noticed that Collins makes a start here, but not good enough. Get them on the record, Dave.

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Covfefe!

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

This post is only marginally about politics, but since this is my blog, and no one reads it anyway, I feel that I am justified in bloviating about a pet peeve.

The only game I play against others on my phone and tablet is Words with Friends. I continue to play it even though the folks at Zynga constantly bombard me with ridiculous announcements. Why should I care if I just played the final letter in “shithead” or some other arbitrary word? I’m trying to beat my opponent, and I’m certainly not going to play a letter just to complete an arbitrarily Zynga selected word.

But I stray from my intended rant.

If you play the game you know that there are a lot of acceptable “words” that are not words. This is particularly irritating when your opponent plays them for large scores, though it is only justice when you play one in return. Recently the two letter words Vuand Jahave been legalized. According to the Words with Friendsdictionary vuis a preposition meaning “in view of”. Use it in a sentence, I dare you. Today I played the word “Squiz”, scoring big against my brother in law, who deserves it because he’s always beating me. “Squiz” apparently means the same thing as “squint”. The game also accepted “outweep”, for which I again scored big, as it is a seven letter word. It’s rather arbitrary, you can stick “out” in front of a plethora of verbs; some it takes; some it won’t. There’s no rhyme or reason.

Which brings me to today’s word of the day, which led to this post. I’m not really sure what to make of it. On the one hand, the whole point is that it’s not a word. On the other hand, maybe we owe this to some dictionary wordmeister toiling away in the coding rooms at Zynga, doing his or her small but laudable part to resist a certain stable genius. Here’s a screenshot:

 

The thing is, if my brother in law played it against me, I’d still be pissed, all politics aside. But then, maybe if I played it against him…

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Covfefe!

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

This post is only marginally about politics, but since this is my blog, and no one reads it anyway, I feel that I am justified in bloviating about a pet peeve.

The only game I play against others on my phone and tablet is Words with Friends. I continue to play it even though the folks at Zynga constantly bombard me with ridiculous announcements. Why should I care if I just played the final letter in “shithead” or some other arbitrary word? I’m trying to beat my opponent, and I’m certainly not going to play a letter just to complete an arbitrarily Zynga selected word.

But I stray from my intended rant.

If you play the game you know that there are a lot of acceptable “words” that are not words. This is particularly irritating when your opponent plays them for large scores, though it is only justice when you play one in return. Recently the two letter words Vuand Jahave been legalized. According to the Words with Friendsdictionary vuis a preposition meaning “in view of”. Use it in a sentence, I dare you. Today I played the word “Squiz”, scoring big against my brother in law, who deserves it because he’s always beating me. “Squiz” apparently means the same thing as “squint”. The game also accepted “outweep”, for which I again scored big, as it is a seven letter word. It’s rather arbitrary, you can stick “out” in front of a plethora of verbs; some it takes; some it won’t. There’s no rhyme or reason.

Which brings me to today’s word of the day, which led to this post. I’m not really sure what to make of it. On the one hand, the whole point is that it’s not a word. On the other hand, maybe we owe this to some dictionary wordmeister toiling away in the coding rooms at Zynga, doing his or her small but laudable part to resist a certain stable genius. Here’s a screenshot:

 

The thing is, if my brother in law played it against me, I’d still be pissed, all politics aside. But then, maybe if I played it against him…

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Feeling anxious lately? Here’s why!

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Lately I’ve been feeling highly anxious, but until today I wasn’t sure why.

I considered a number of possibilities, among them:

  • The fact that the president of the United States is a narcissistic authoritarian bent on making himself a dictator even as he declines into senescence.
  • The fact that the same president has stocked the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, with ideologues who will give a stamp of approval to anything he and Republicans do while they chomp at the bit to overturn existing progressive legislation, precedent that favors the rights of women and minorities, and anything that manages to pass in the unlikely event the Democrats take the presidency and the Senate in 2020.
  • The fact that the Democrats appear likely to nominate Joe Biden in order to guarantee that the courts won’t need to bother to overturn progressive legislation after 2020 because there won’t be any.
  • The fact that our constitutional system appears to have arrived at the point where its internal contradictions (e.g., a Senate where Wyoming has the same representation as California, an Electoral “College” less able to pick a reasonable president than the people at large, etc.) will result in the destruction of our formerly republican form of government.
  • The fact that our press, when not in the business of actively propagandizing for the forces of plutocracy, is busily normalizing those forces instead of calling them out for what they are.

All or any of these things seemed plausible, and yet… I couldn’t help thinking that there was something else… that this feeling; this sense of impending doom had some other source. How can I describe it? I felt like I was bracing for some kind of disaster.

Thank the non-existent Lord for the New London Day, which cleared it all up today with this front page headline:

Retailers, shoppers brace for plastic bag tax ahead of ban! (Exclamation point added)

This cleared it all up! What more fearful impending doom than the prospect of paying ten cents a bag should I forget to bring my reusable bags into Stop & Shop? Why for ten cents you can buy two Hershey bars, assuming, of course, you are charged what they cost 50 years ago. I now realize that I’ve been bracing myself for this day of disaster ever since the Connecticut legislature put environmental considerations above the convenience of our corporate overlords. Now that I know the source of my anxiety, I will just have to figure out a way of dealing with it.

If you, too, have been feeling anxious about the state of our world, now you know why. My advice: follow the philosophy of the dear departed Alfred E. Newman and don’t worry. It will be alright. Sure, you’re going to miss those plastic bags, but in a few years some federal court will probably strike down state laws banning them as violations of the commerce clause, and you can get them right back! 

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Some things in life are bad…and now we’re losing MAD

Saturday, July 13, 2019

It’s almost enough to make you swear and curse.

All things must pass, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Grieve with me then, for the passing of MAD Magazine, which is about to publish its last monthly issue.

I grew up with MAD, and I owe the gang of idiots a debt of gratitude for helping to steer me in the right direction, politically. For a subtext of all that satire was a distinctly liberal world view. I remember, as a ten year old, wondering why they seemed to love to make fun of Richard Nixon all the time, even after he lost the presidential race in 1960. Sure, I was a Kennedy fan, since I came from a Democratic family, and besides he was a Catholic, and at that point in my life I was still holding fast to Pascal’s wager. But back then there were good people who were also Republicans. I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I was too young to remember the Checkers speech, or the red-baiting, but thanks, in part, to MAD, by the time 1968 rolled around, and we were faced with the prospect of a Nixon presidency, I knew that he represented an existential threat to our republic. Obviously, many of my non-MAD reading contemporaries did not. Sure they made fun of JFK too, but not in the barbed fashion in which they went after Nixon and his ilk.

It wasn’t just Nixon, of course, Beneath all the satire was an underlying philosophy of tolerance and mutual acceptance. Everyone was equally absurd. They made fun of everyone, but they hated no one, except people like Nixon, of course. After all, neither the White Spy nor the Black Spy was the good guy. They were both idiots. My guess is that their target demographic was males between 10 and 14, and my guess too is that I’m not the only one whose left wing leanings were reinforced by MAD. I subscribed to the magazine for years, and I think I was better for it.

I’m not fourteen anymore, of course, but, believe it or not, I’m currently a subscriber to the electronic edition. Two years ago I saw a print copy at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. There on the cover was Alfred E. Newman making fun of Donald Trump, and I decided that the gang of idiots had to be supported if they continued to proselytize for a liberal point of view. Of course, satirizing Trump was difficult for them, since he does it himself so skillfully, and I will confess that I haven’t read it too often, because, as I said, I’m not fourteen anymore, but it’s important that present day fourteen year olds have all the advantages I had at that age.

Alas, MAD will be no more. The world has lost a force for good.

CAVEAT: My statement that MAD’s target audience was males between 10 and 14 was by no means intended to denigrate those of the female gender. One of life’s mysteries, at least as I have observed life, is the inability of people with two X chromosomes to appreciate fine humor such as that delivered by the Three Stooges and even, incredible as this may seem, Monty Python. I don’t know why women don’t appreciate the humor when Moe bonks Curly or Larry (or both) over the head, but they don’t. I suspect that this genetic deficiency extends to appreciation for the work of the gang of (all male) idiots at MAD. But look at it this way. Imagine how much worse off all of us would be if those idiots hadn’t helped deflect at least some white males away from Trumpism (I’m assuming here that black male MAD readers didn’t need that particular push).

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