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Meanwhile, below the radar

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Recently Mitch McConnell let it be known that he would not let a bill designed to protect the Mueller investigation get to the floor. In this I think he erred, and I’m not speaking from the perspective of a person who cares about the Constitution, but from the perspective of a right wing Republican who wants to destroy the middle class, the environment, Social Security, Medicare, public schools, etc. You know, the perspective of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the Republican Party.

If the genius had set out to choose the most unqualified people to fill his cabinet and other federal posts, he could not do better than what he has done. Let’s start with Robert Redfield, the nominee to head the Center for Disease Control:

>Redfield, a physician and a researcher in HIV/AIDS at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, was investigated in 1993 for allegedly misrepresenting data in a clinical trial as he worked to develop a potential AIDS vaccine. In an era when public health officials were desperate to find an effective treatment for the raging AIDS pandemic, Redfield, an Army officer and researcher at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, even announced positive results at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam in 1992, to great fanfare, according to Laurie Garrett, writing for Foreign Policy.
>The results were trumped up. A US Defense Department investigation concluded that Redfield’s “overstatement” was an error, and the military scrapped the program. “Either he was egregiously sloppy with data or it was fabricated,” Craig Hendrix, a former Air Force officer who was a whistle-blower in the vaccine inquiry, told NPR.
>More troubling, Redfield also helped instigate a compulsory program to test all military troops for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, without allowing for confidentiality. He was also associated with Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy (ASAP), an evangelical Christian group that backed mandatory testing and isolation for those who were infected.

via [The Boston Globe](http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/04/18/controversy-shadows-trump-pick-cdc-director/PEYTDOB8UhtZHwtZgzZtWL/story.html)

Not only are his appointees dedicated to serving the interests of the most despicable elements in our society, they are also totally corrupt as they do so. Add this to the well known examples of Scott Pruitt and Ben Carson (not to mention the genius himself):

>A broadband deployment advisory council created by the FCC to help shore up the nation’s broadband coverage gaps has been plagued by scandal, resignations, and accusations of telecom sector cronyism.

>When he first took office, Trump’s FCC boss Ajit Pai breathlessly and repeatedly claimed that one of his top priorities as agency head would be to shore up broadband availability gaps and close the digital divide.

>“I look forward to working with my fellow Commissioners on this aggressive agenda to connect Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide, to allow broadcasters to innovate and better serve viewers, and to reduce unnecessary regulations,” Pai said in a Medium post early last year.

>…

>Pai’s panel this week also made headlines when one of its former chairs was arrested for a scam that bilked investors out of $250 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Ann Pierce, who served as CEO of Quintillion Networks, was charged with wire fraud after investigators discovered a fiber deployment scam built largely upon forged contracts.

>Pierce, who was charged with wire fraud and surrendered this week in New York to FBI agents, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Pierce was was appointed by Pai last April to chair the committee, resigned from her role as Quintillion CEO last August , and stepped down from her chair position on the BDAC last September.

>”The Commission was fortunate to have an excellent and deep pool of applicants to serve on the BDAC,” Chairman Pai noted when he appointed Pierce last year. Apparently, that well wasn’t quite deep enough.

via [Motherboard](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdqdx/ajit-pais-broadband-advisory-panel-plagued-by-corruption-accusations)

Then there’s the [CIA pick ](http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/04/17/trump-cia-pick-faces-rocky-confirmation-over-torture-role/fkwTGFXgfjjSUgQbjxutyI/story.html)who mocked a prisoner as he was tortured.

Everywhere you look there is self dealing, depravity, and corruption. It is pretty much impossible to name an appointee who is not dedicated to subverting the mission of the agency to which he or she has been named.

But the fact is these stories come and go, because Trump, and the Mueller investigation, are like shiny objects that distract the national press from what’s going on beneath the radar. If you really consider the nature and quality of Trump’s appointees, along with the fact that he has no interest in policy and no fixed principles of any sort, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion but that Michael Pence is the genius’s Dick Cheney. So long as Trump continues to distract, Pence and his ilk can continue to impose the Koch agenda, with a dash of fundamentalist imposition of religion on the rest of us. True, they may pay a price at the ballot box, but the damage will be done by that time, damage they may not have been able to do with a less distracting fellow in the White House. So, they have an interest in keeping Mueller in place, so we can all talk about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and Russia, while forgetting all about Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, Robert Redfield, Betsy DeVos, and all the other appointees that are systematically destroying our country.

So Mitch, rethink your position. So long as Mueller sticks around, you can continue to destroy the country and rest assured that the national attention span will assure that no one really takes notice.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Republicans | | Comments (0)

What I wouldn’t give for a real satisfying wallow

Monday, April 16, 2018

In my younger years, I spent many happy hours wallowing in Watergate, and I must confess that today’s news about Sean Hannity revived those happy feelings, if only for a while. But that was then, and this is now, and no thinking person can sustain a good wallow.

This is mainly because back in the days of Watergate, anyone with a brain knew that it was going to end up in satisfying fashion. Once I heard that Nixon had been taping himself, I knew with certainty that 1) the tapes would be wrested from his grasp, 2) they would prove beyond doubt that he was guilty, and 3) he would be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate, or, (and I really preferred he be impeached), he would resign. I’ve compared it in the past to a Greek tragedy. You know from the start that things are fated to go bad for the protagonist; it’s only the details that the play explores.

I’m not claiming that I was specially insightful. I think lots of people could see how it would play out. But the key point is that we could be certain that the votes to convict in the Senate would be there, even though that meant a number of Republicans would have to turn against Nixon. In those days, while Republicans were still the bad guys, they were not (at least not all of them) the evil guys, and there were many of them that wouldn’t hesitate to put their country over their party. So it was a sure thing that once the facts were in (because everyone knew Nixon was guilty) he would have to go, and he would be made to go.

Similarly, we all know that Trump is guilty of something, in fact, of a lot of things. It’s better than even odds that he and his gang conspired with the Russians to tamper with the election. (Good article on that here) Beyond that, we know that he was involved in all manner of other illegal activities, with money laundering being pretty much a sure thing. On the surface, at least, things are spinning out of control for him, and if ever there was a time to wallow, this is it. I’ll admit, on days like this the urge to wallow is hard to resist, but something always pulls you up short from a truly complete wallow. When Nixon fired his prosecutor, the reaction, even from his own party, was such that he was forced to appoint another one as dogged as the one he fired. That won’t happen when Trump fires Mueller. Sure, people will take to the streets, but Trump will ignore them and the Republicans will, almost to a person, observe that really he shouldn’t oughta have done it, but what can you do? His criminality will go unchecked, and even if the Democrats take over the Congress and Senate and summon up the guts to impeach him, it’s highly unlikely that a single Republican will vote to convict. 

So, this is not going to end up well. At this point, we can only hope that it doesn’t end up as badly as it might. So, wallowing just isn’t the pleasure it was in the good old days.

Filed in Dysfunction, Republicans, The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music

Friday, April 13, 2018

For several years I posted a music video every Friday. The rules were that it had to be something I liked, and it had to be a non lip synced actual concert version. After a while I stopped, because, quite frankly, it was getting harder and harder to find good stuff that I hadn’t put up before.

Well, a few days ago I was browsing through Youtube and I decided that there’s a whole bunch of new stuff out there, so I’m going to try to reactivate this feature. For all I know, I’ve put this one up already, but I thought I’d start with it, because it’s striking that at this point the guys that Randy is talking about, the ones who were “the worst that we’ve had” are now, not only “hardly the worst that this world has seen”, but no longer “the worst that we’ve had” to the point where they hardly stand out.

While I’m at it,here’s Randy with an even more timely tune:

 

Okay, if I keep this up, I’ll try not to repeat Randy for a while, but the fact is he’s one of the great ones, and vastly under appreciated.

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Dems plot surrender

Friday, April 13, 2018

If this be true, then it is further proof that the Democrats have already started wresting defeat from the jaws of victory:

Democratic leaders in Congress reportedly have a contingency plan in place if President Donald Trump fires Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—a decision that was rumored on Friday to be due at any moment. Their brilliant plan: Don’t do anything!

In a meeting with Democratic members, Senator Mark Warner reportedly told his colleagues not to do anything drastic if and when Trump fires Rosenstein, but instead to chill out for awhile, according to the National Journal:

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, told a group of Democratic colleagues on Wednesday that they should adhere to a one- or two-day cooling-off period if Trump fires Rosenstein, according to three congressional sources. Rosenstein met Thursday with Trump amid reports that the White House is preparing an effort to undermine the deputy attorney general’s credibility.

“The first 24 to 48 hours, if and when that happens, we should stay calm; we should do our best to reach out across the aisle and talk to our colleagues and say, ‘Seriously, we cannot allow this to happen.’ Just don’t go immediately to DEFCON-1,” said a member of Congress who attended the meeting but asked for anonymity to discuss it candidly. “We should not say anything—let the dust settle for a minute. What I took from it is it’s better to build a coalition across the aisle than just to come out guns a-blazing saying, ‘We’ve got to impeach him now.’”

via Splinter News

I actually agree that the Democrats shouldn’t necessarily be screaming about impeachment. But I find it amazing that Warner actually believes any good can come by “reach[ing] out across the aisle and talk[ing] to our colleagues”. It has been abundantly clear that his colleagues don’t give a damn about the rule of law, the constitution, or the democratic process. All they care about is maintaining power and enriching the rich. Warner, like so many of his Democratic colleagues, appears to be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. The idea of a “coalition across the aisle” is, in this day and age, absurd. There are no more Howard Bakers or Bill Cohens in the Republican Party. Again, I’m not necessarily saying they should be pushing for impeachment, but the proper response is to get out in front of the demonstrations that are sure to spring up everywhere. There’s really no such thing as leading from behind, and a luke warm response will hardly energize the Democratic base. Rather than “working across the aisle”, the Democrats should be loudly accusing their esteemed colleagues of enabling Trump’s criminality. It’s what the Republicans would do, and it’s about time the Democrats learned some lessons from a party that has managed to take over three branches of government while simultaneously screwing the vast majority of the people in this country.

I should point out that the Democrats, including in this case Jim Himes and Elizabeth Esty, are already doing all they can in another policy area to dampen enthusiasm and convince our base that the situation is hopeless.

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The Con-man bows out

Thursday, April 12, 2018

The big news yesterday was Paul Ryan’s decision to retire so he could “spend more time with his family”, an excuse so hackneyed that it is amazing anyone still uses it, inasmuch as it is practically an admission that the actual reason is something other than a desire for familial bliss. 

Here in Southeastern Connecticut the New London Day chose to reprint a truly incredible puff piece from the Washington Post, in which once again we are asked to believe that there is a distinction between Trumpismand the standard ideology of the Republican Party. We are also treated to more of what should be the mystifying insistence on the part of the mainstream to refuse to acknowledge the fraud that Paul Ryan is and was for the entirety of his political career. That fraudulence has been extensively documented by Paul Krugman, and is well summarized here.

It will, perhaps, be the work of future historians to explain how he managed to perpetrate his fraud so successfully throughout his career.

The Post’s puff piece portrays Ryan as a reluctant Trumpie:

But the praise did little to remove the shadow Trump casts over the end of Ryan’s career now that he has decided to forego a campaign for reelection. The Trumpian revolution, which Ryan had long resisted, appeared to have claimed another victory, dispatching another occasional critic and reaffirming the president’s growing hold on a shrinking electoral coalition.

“Speaker Ryan is an embodiment of a particular kind of optimistic, pro-growth, pro-free market inclusive conservatism,” said Michael Steele, a former top adviser to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “And that is a very different feel and tone of where the party is going under President Trump.”

In fact, once Trump was elected, Ryan jumped at the chance to use Trump and the House and Senate majorities to enact his Randian agenda, an agenda no different that Trump’s, except that it was not as explicitly racist. Of him, it can be said more truly than it could of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern that he “did make love to this employment”.

Speaking of employment, Ryan now goes to his reward. Will it be a lucrative lobbying gig, or will it more likely be a sinecure at a Koch funded “think” tank, where he will be paid for spouting earnest sounding nonsense for the remainder of his days? After all, it pays handsomely to be a Koch employee, for after retirement from Congress, where the pay is pretty good by ordinary standards, a good boy who comes through for the .01% can be assured of doing far better while doing far less. Who can blame him for hopping on the gravy train now?

By the way, I don’t really blame the idiots at the Day for going with the Post’s piece, rather than, for instance, the more balanced article in the New York Times. They have completely bought in to every mainstream meme out there, so how could they be expected to be aware that Ryan is a lying fraud? That would require a little thought and research, and that’s expecting far too much.

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With friends like these

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

In the past I’ve noted the fact that there exists a host of griftersthat prey on suckers on the right. A lot of these grifters are of the unofficial sort; direct mailers that claim to be raising money for a cause or candidate, when in fact most, if not all, of the money goes to the grifters.

We don’t have similar grifters on the left, but that is not to say that we don’t get grifted. (I will not swear that “grifted” is a word) But we can be forgiven, for the grift is from those we have every right to trust. The worst grifters of them all work for the DCCC.

The DCCC is doing pretty well in fundraising these days, drumming up contributions from energized progressives, who it then proceeds to stab in the back.

In defense of the folks who are sending their hard earned money to the DCCC, they have every right to believe that the DCCC is on their side, and they are encouraged in that belief by the endless emails the DCCC sends out, claiming to support progressives and, well – – , you know, actual Democrats.

Some Democrats are beginning to take notice. In Syracuse, the DCCC has attempted to force a candidate, Perez Williams, on the locals, and they don’t like it:

Last week, Perez Williams entered the race. She told The Citizen Thursday night that it was her decision to run for Congress and believes she is the best candidate to challenge U.S. Rep. John Katko, a two-term Republican.

The statement from members of central New York progressive groups doesn’t mention Perez Williams. But they do question why the DCCC would intervene, especially this late in the process.

“Right now, they are paying people to pass petitions to get their handpicked candidate on the ballot,” the activists wrote. “The DCCC is imposing its priorities and decisions on local residents. Instead of fostering a collaborative relationship with grassroots organizations, they are using their funds to erase our work.”

It’s not just the activist types. The four county Democratic chairs have also spoken out against the DCCC’s interference in the race. It goes without saying, by the way, that the DCCC’s chosen candidate is significantly to the right of the candidate chosen by the locals. The DCCC has no problem with anti-abortion, pro-NRA candidates, but it’s totally allergic to candidates that support Medicare for All.

If we take either or both houses, our chances for future success will depend on our ability to show the people that we can deliver stuff that they want if we are given the chance. If we pass progressive legislation, most of which is very popular, we will get credit for trying, even if Trump vetoes everything, or we can’t get it through a Senate still in Republican hands. But we will inspire nothing if, as has been the case, the tail of right wing Democrats continues to wag the dog of the majority of the caucus. Give the Republicans their due: they demand and get fealty from the near-not-insane members of their caucus. The Democrats are precisely the opposite. They bow and scrape before the Blue Dogs and New Dems, and, this year, have gone out of their way to recruit more of them. As a result, assuming we don’t totally blow it, and we do take the House, we’ll demonstrate to the people of this nation that we are nothing more than the party of not Trump, and we have nothing of substance to offer them, thereby dampening enthusiasm in 2020. I suppose we can expect nothing else, since the Democrats have an aversion to winning big (or at all) in years ending in zero, because then they might be able to prevent the Republicans gerrymandering them out of existence.

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Bolton v. Putin?

Monday, April 9, 2018

It was almost exactly a year ago today that Trump bombed Syria, earning plaudits from the likes of Fareed Zakaria, who famously declared that Trump had become president. It quickly became known that Trump and/or his people had given the Russians (and therefore the Syrians) a heads up so far as the target was concerned, in order to make sure that no one got hurt.

Today Trump is once again threatening retaliationfor a chemical attack, the same sort of event that drew his manly man response last year. He says he’ll decide by the end of the day, a day which, alas, is the very same day that John Bolton begins his gig as national security adviser.

It’s obviously important that Trump make some sort of gesture to the effect that he will stand up to Russia and that Putin is not calling the shots.

Bolton makes Dr. Evil look like the Good Samaritan, but give the man his due. He wants a war and he wants it now! And he doesn’t particularly care who that war might be with, though maybe Russia is not his first choice.

In any event, it’s practically a sure thing that Bolton will be telling Trump to bomb away, and, judging by past performance, he will not allow views that dissent from his to be presented to the genius. This cannot make Putin happy. The genius will be in the middle. He has far more to risk by listening to Bolton than by displeasing Putin, since Putin has those tapes and a whole lot more. If it’s Bolton versus Putin, put your money on Putin.

So, maybe this situation will produce something good. If Putin lets the genius know that Mr. Bolton must go, then Mr. Bolton will, eventually (and probably fairly quickly), go. Or, perhaps, Mr. Putin will simply let the genius know that in no event should he take Bolton’s advice unless he gets the okay from Putin. Then, Bolton may go on his own.

Putin is an evil man, but at the moment, Bolton is a greater threat to world peace or stability than any other person walking the face of the earth. In the ordinary case, I’d say getting rid of a Trump official is no big deal. For instance, if Pruitt resigns, he’ll be replaced by someone just as bad. In Bolton’s case, there is no one just as bad. So, it’s at least possible that some good may come from this situation.

There’s always hope.

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

Strike a blow for net neutrality

Friday, April 6, 2018

The Republicans in the State Senate blocked the net neutrality bill using a parliamentary trick:

Sen. Paul Formica, R-East Lyme and co-chairman of the Energy and Technology Committee, used his authority to split the committee and allow only the four senators to vote. While Democrats have a majority in the committee when House members are included, the committee has two Senate Democrats and two Republicans.

The resulting vote was a tie, meaning the bill failed. Although Formica held the vote open until 4 p.m., it was unlikely the two Republican senators — Formica and Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield — would change their “no” votes.

The procedural trick is seldom used, but was possible because the state Senate is tied 18-18 between Republicans and Democrats. That means Republicans gained an extra chairman on each committee. Formica used that to his advantage and moved to split the vote, which was raised by a senator.

via The Connecticut Post

Formica is from the 20th District, which neighbors the 18th, in which I reside. Despite his protestations that he considers net neutrality a federal issue, he was clearly doing the bidding of the telecoms, and a disservice to his constituents. But he was doing a tremendous favor to more endangered Senate Republicans, like hypocritical Heather Somers here in the 18th, who gets to pretend she is for net neutrality, but has been saved from actually voting on the issue, for she surely would have ended up voting in the interests of the corporate masters she so craves to please. (Heather’s first act as a legislator was to propose getting rid of public financing, so she could sell herself to ALEC and the Koch Brothers). Formica is considered fairly certain to be re-elected, so the obvious thinking was that he could afford to take the heat.

Still, this could be a year in which no Republican is safe, and it’s incumbent upon us to go after every one of them. Martha Marx (no relation of Karl’s, so far as I know) of New London is a great candidate. She’s still in the process of qualifying for public financing. Help her out, and strike a small blow in favor of net neutrality. You can donate here.

Filed in Local issues | | Comments (0)

Leaves Scott Pruitt Alone!

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Some on the left are all atwitter about the fact that Scott Pruitt got a sweetheart deal on a condo in Washington from a lobbyist for whom he could do favors at the EPA.

The Environmental Protection Agency signed off last March on a Canadian energy company’s pipeline-expansion plan at the same time that the E.P.A. chief, Scott Pruitt, was renting a condominium linked to the energy company’s powerful Washington lobbying firm.

Both the E.P.A. and the lobbying firm dispute that there was any connection between the agency’s action and the condo rental, for which Mr. Pruitt was paying $50 a night.

via The New York Times

Some might say there is an appearance of a quid pro quo here, but anyone with a brain can see that’s completely absurd. The pipeline-expansion plan is environmentally destructive, which means that Pruitt would have approved the plan even if he hadn’t gotten the sweetheart deal. That’s what he lives for. So the EPA is telling the unvarnished truth. I think it’s shameful for liberals to imply that Pruitt would have protected the environment had he not been paid to do otherwise. He’s a man of principle, after all.

Filed in Republican Corruption | | Comments (0)

History isn’t always written by the winners

Monday, April 2, 2018


I just finished Ron Chernow’s Grant, a book I highly recommend.One thing the book brings home is the fact that the history of the Civil War, particularly the post-Civil War period, was written, not by the winners, but by the losers. I’ve been a history nut all my life. I remember reading every Landmark book I could get my hands on. For those who don’t remember them, Landmark issued a series of biographies of famous Americans aimed at young readers. I remember reading a biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and I can promise you that I came away from it completely ignorant of the fact that he headed up a terrorist organization or that he engaged in war crimes.

It was a given at that time that so called “Radical Republicans” were the post war bad guys, unfairly victimizing a traumatized South. Grant was portrayed as a weak and vacillating president surrounded by corrupt office holders. Many of his appointees were indeed corrupt, though that was hardly unusual in those days, but Chernow makes a compelling case that he strove against great odds to deliver on the promise of the 13th through 15th Amendment, trying as best as he could against a backdrop of waning political support from Republicans (the party was even then transforming itself into the party of big business) to protect the rights of the former slaves, including, above all, the right to vote, of which they were ultimately deprived by armed white terrorists (otherwise known in those days as the Democratic Party), aided and abetted by a Supreme Court that unduly restricted the protections of the recently passed Amendments and a Republican Party more intent on preserving it’s ever more tenuous hold on power than on making sure that the civil war dead had not died in vain.

The South won the battle of the history books, to the point where its narrative became widely accepted. To give just two examples: Lee was a brilliant tactician; Grant won by virtue of Northern numbers and a willingness to engage in mass murder; and the South was fighting in defense of a noble cause that had little if anything to do with slavery. By 1915, in The Birth of a Nation, usually considered the first great film made in this country, the Klan was portrayed as the good guys, protecting white womanhood from the lustful black man and delivering the South from the clutches of the greedy carpetbaggers.

When I was in college the first tentative steps were taken to wrest history back from the Southerners. I was assigned The Tragic Era, by Claude Bowers, but mainly in order to prepare us for the rebuttal. Still, even today, the view is widely held that it was the “radical Republicans”, “carpetbaggers”, etc., that were the bad guys after the Civil War. John F. Kennedy (or his ghostwriter) glorified the “courage” of the Senator who cast the deciding vote against convicting Andrew Johnson, a racist who spent almost four years trying to undo the results of the civil war by handing the Southern state governments back to the slaveholders. Grant was relegated to the ranks of the lesser presidents precisely because his true claims to greatness, as president, lay in his persistent attempts to deliver equal citizenship to the freed slaves.

I don’t know how successful the attempts by Eric Foner, Chernow and other historians will be to correct the public perception of the historical record, but one has to wonder whether we are living in a period today in which the history of our present times is being pre-written by propagandists for the worst in our nation. Not only must we contend with Fox, but mostly under the radar, local news has been handed to the propagandists at Sinclair, aided and abetted by Trump’s FCC appointee.. It’s vitally important that we don’t let the forces of reaction rewrite history yet again, or, more precisely, that we don’t let them shape the narrative while history is still happening. Unfortunately, if recent history has taught us anything, it’s that the Democratic Party is incapable of pushing any sort of narrative, even if it is totally consistent with the truth, though, as the recent episode here in Connecticut proves yet again, we’re still perfectly willing to form circular firing squads.

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