The Carpentariat

And now - a dimwitted political gangster as director of national intelligence

The president has named an ambassador, political thug and Trumpism fanatic, Richard Grenell, as the acting director of national intelligence, bypassing, once again, a Senate confirmation, and installing the most perfectly unqualified candidate in this critical post. No qualified candidate was a candidate, since a qualified candidate would know, and would have said many times, that POTUS is an idiot.

As Trump's ambassador to Germany, Grenell was, predictably, an international calamity. Early in his undiplomatic career he publicly announced, "I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe. I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left." He also parroted POTUS' idiotic repudiation of President Obama's highly efficacious Iran nuclear deal, imperiously instructing German firms to "wind down operations [with Iran] immediately," or suffer American sanctions. This too failed to grab any favorable attention.

Germany's highest-ranking Social Democrat politely informed Grenell, "I know you are still quite new at your post, but it is not part of the job description of an ambassador to interfere in the politics of his guest country." And the European Parliament's former president said Grenell saw himself as less an ambassador than a "far-right colonial officer."

So naturally, having embarrassed himself and the United States, and being in possession of absolutely no national-intelligence experience whatsoever, the aggressively nasty Grenell is Trump's logical choice to thoroughly bollix the most important, nonpartisan intel position in all of government — putting millions of American lives at risk, and all for nothing but the greater glory of the Supreme Leader, Lawgiver, and Lout.

And the Trumpeteers cheer — themselves being in possession of absolutely no shame, no interest in competence, no regard for expertise, and no brains. Just like their idiotic idol.

Is there any question? Pardon this Trumpian criminal, too.

Roger Stone was found guilty of lying to Congress and threatening a witness.

He did it to cover up for Trump. His sentence is justified.

It should go without saying, but to pardon Stone when his crimes were committed to protect Trump would be a breathtaking act of corruption.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 20, 2020

Mr. Schiff, your point being?

Bloomberg's post-debate punch

Owning and operating a business is excellent training for many another job, other than president of the United States. Prima facie White House evidence: Warren Harding, publisher; Herbert Hoover, mining king; Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer; George W. Bush, parasite; and, of course, Donald Trump, swindler, money launderer, tax cheat, enormous debtor and multiple bankrupt.  

Nevertheless, and however grudgingly, you've got to give last night's political catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg, credit for perhaps the best post-debate rejoinder ever:

Anyone? pic.twitter.com/xqhq5qFYVk

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 20, 2020

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination, he or she would be nuts not to hire Bloomberg's ad people. They're geniuses.

Mexico closes the border against Trump's criminals

The New Yorker labels this, "Not the News." It should be.

A Nevada brawl, a Bloomberg bomb, a Biden revival

For a man who's spent hundred of millions on television ads, you'd think he'd have thrown someone a couple bucks to prepare him for last night's debate. Instead, a poorly rehearsed Mike Bloomberg probably flushed a sizable fortune down the toilet through hesitation, prickliness, awkward defensiveness, while nevertheless radiating an off-putting air of superiority. His in-person, TV political debut ended in a priest's crossing himself after a 10-count.

Bernie Sanders' most telling moment came when asked about a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that showed 67 percent of voters opposed to a socialist presidential candidate. Proving again that there are lies, damn lies and statistics, Bernie countered that he led the Democratic field in that poll. He did. With 27 percent. So in fact he's supported by only a quarter of Democrats while facing the disapproval of roughly 87 million voters — 24 million more than voted for Donald Trump, whose inability to be straight with voters has rubbed off on Bernie.

Adding to that charge is that Bernie now thinks a delegate plurality should rule at the convention, though in 2016, against Hillary's delegate plurality, he believed the opposite.

Elizabeth Warren had an excellent night, managing to powerfully stay on the Bloomberg offensive while also criticizing Bernie's Medicare-for-all plan without having to defend her own, especially its enduringly mysterious cost. The most admirable aspect of Warren's performance was that she revitalized her progressive base, which was slipping — and so the greater progressive base will remain split, harming Bernie.

Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar spent much of the evening knifing each other. Their fight, with an often adolescent slant, was a draw, and both were left bloody. Decision? A double TKO and total waste of time by both.

Coming as no surprise is that, this morning, political journalists appear to be airbrushing Joe Biden out of the race — again. They're invested in weeks of this shallow narrative, hence they ain't gonna change it. But Biden had his best night yet; he was forceful, clear, and adult.

In most Super Tuesday polling, Sanders and Bloomberg have approximately tied to date, with Biden coming in third. After Bloomberg's Wednesday bomb, however, his numbers may largely evaporate, seeping into Biden's column instead. It would then be a two-man race once again, but with Biden, not Bloomberg, vs. Sanders.

Bernie's Nevada malarkey

I'm not a member of Team Bloomberg, certainly not as long as Joe Biden has a reasonable chance of taking the nomination and thus sparing his party — with nominee Sanders — its most devastating loss since George McGovern. And that chance is still realistic; placing in Nevada and winning in South Carolina could well put Biden back on top.

Tonight, Bernie will relentlessly assault Bloomberg rather than Biden, as we all know, screaming, as he does on the stump, Billionaire! Billionaire! — the former mayor is trying to buy the presidency. I do hope someone — Mike would be the logical choice — points out tonight that Bernie, with his massive hauls of quarterly cash, is doing precisely the same. If Bernie himself had a billion or two, he'd be spending every last dime of it on buying the airwaves, social media, and the nomination. 

"Make die Juden cry again!"

The sloganeering gentleman below has been, in part, successful. We do indeed cry at the immense ignorance and seemingly innate (certainly not cerebral) proclivity toward the authoritarianism of Trump and his rallying mobs and hate-filled voters. On the other hand, as today's small-r republican voters, liberals cannot help but laugh at Republican idiots who destroy perfectly good sweatshirts by imprinting such a childish cri de coeur. Does this particular boobeoisie really believe it hurts our feelings?

This is some serious shit, though. Trump, it would seem, is the only one who swims in his mass sewer with any level of actual thought, however infinitely destructive his thinking may be. Writes professor and journalist Thomas Edsall: "More than any of his [2016] competitors for the nomination, Trump understood the underbelly of the white Republican electorate…. [And] more than anything, Trump intuitively understood how polarization, and with it, the intense hatred among legions of Republican voters of liberal elites and of the so-called meritocracy could be a powerful tool to win elections."

To the historically aware, sound familiar? The soft-headed underbelly of an electorate, intense hatred, fanatical legions, the official detestation of society's meritorious citizens and the educated — whom, for tub-thumping, intellectually insecure reasons, soft-headed fanatics call "elites."

If those clues are too unclear for the obliviously authoritarian among us, perhaps two observations (quoted by Edsall) from scholars Thomas Mann of the non-partisan Brookings Institute and Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute will help. In their revised edition of It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, they note that "the GOP has radicalized into an anti-system party that does not accept the legitimacy of its opposition and enables a slide toward autocracy. Very dangerous times for [any] democracy."

How have everyday Republicans responded to this blinding and breathtaking threat to American democracy? By wearing t-shirts and sweatshirts imprinted with MAKE LIBERALS CRY AGAIN! Their garments might as well be stamped with the obsessive, single-minded hatred of DER EWIGE JUDE, "the eternal Jew."

Is that clear enough for them?

"A View to a Kill"-ing difference

I've never seen this show, but in a tweeted clip I just saw of its panel, three of them (one off screen) were prattling simultaneously. It's my understanding that "The View" is now regarded by many as a political "talk" show, meaning audio mayhem, video ghastliness, unbearably raised voices, and of no information or enlightenment value.

The program may be a trifle worse than one's garden-variety political teeeveee show, but that's about it. Which I observe only for having just read this, in New York Magazine:

"Those in Obama’s close political circles say he doesn’t mind being featured so prominently [in Democratic candidates' TV ads], but that he’s been amused by all the attempts by candidates to associate themselves with him after numerous early primary-season discussions about the shortcomings of his presidency.

"He has no plans to note that irony, though, or even to reach out to the campaigns blasting out his image. It’s not like he sees the ads all that much, anyway — not even the seemingly inescapable Bloomberg spots. Obama’s aversion to TV news hasn’t abated.... If he’s in front of a television, they say, he’s probably watching sports." Which is to say further, he reads.

Lord do I miss that man.

As opposed to this TV-addicted, self-adoring toddler:

The continuing perversions of America's éminence dis-grise

Sometimes his colossally disgraceful hypocrisy leaves you nearly speechless, and unquestionably dumbfounded.

Is corrupt Bloomberg News going to say what a pathetic debater Mini Mike is, that he doesn’t respect our great farmers, or that he has violated campaign finance laws at the highest and most sinister level with “payoffs” all over the place?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2020

I have no idea what level of debate expertise Mike Bloomberg possesses, though I will tonight. I do know what level Trump possesses, and he showcased it with no variation whatsoever during the 2016 campaign: none. His concept of debating is merely schoolyard taunting, no more and no less.

I also know that Trump's respect for "our great farmers" resulted in an eight-year high of farm bankruptcies, a 20 percent jump in 2019 alone, thanks principally to his devastatingly stupid trade wars.

We all know he has flagrantly violated campaign finance laws from candidacy to presidency — and it will get worse — plus "payoffs" to porn stars for one's personal advancement is something only his very closest allies, evangelical Christians, consider less than "sinister."

Mini Mike? What of Indictable Donald? whom only vastly extended members of his on-daily-display mob family could love and admire.

Trump and America, FUBAR

"I’m allowed to be totally involved" in criminal investigations, prosecutions and sentencings of political friends and fellow swindlers, said Trump yesterday to a group of reporters who must have felt suddenly transported to Beijing or Tehran. "I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country," he added. By which he meant, he — not the law — is the law of the land.

Many of his defenders remain adamant in expressing astonishment that others see (clearly) that Trump as president is behaving dictatorially, that he's ham-handedly reinventing the central government as FUBAR, that another four years of Trumpism-cum-Castroism or any other one-man-ism will leave 233 years of this American republic in shambles.

His defenders needn't take the word of partisan Trump-haters as the miserable truth. Panicked federal judges appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents alike have "scheduled an emergency telephone conference for this week,… want[ing] to discuss 'plenty of issues that [they're] concerned about.'" Such as a president who believes he is the law. In truest Trumpian fashion, The Lawgiver responded "that the judges should instead investigate misconduct in the Mueller investigation."

That's the response of a monomaniacal megalomaniac. And he's placed himself in charge of what was once an independent judicial system — a system profoundly crucial to the rule of law.

In so doing, he has now pardoned former governor Rod Blagojevich, whose corruption in office was that which Trump had pledged to stamp out, but instead has practiced extensively himself. He has pardoned Michael Milken, whose fraudulence in business was not unlike the president's, and whose pardon came at the advice of three fellow billionaires, one of whom just kicked in $10 million to Trump's reelection campaign.

He has also pardoned former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who, also like Trump, committed tax fraud, and whose advocates included the staggeringly corrupt Rudy Giuliani, a Fox News personality, and a war criminal. Before all this blazing malfeasance, Trump pardoned Lewis Libby as well, a high-ranking Bush administration official convicted of obstructing justice and perjury, two other crimes of which the president is guilty. And soon he may well pardon Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort — all of them criminals radiating a Trumpian stench.

One man who will never see a pardon from Trump? Personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who ratted him out and is doing time for campaign finance violations and tax evasion, crimes for which his boss was just as guilty.

Together, this is more than a national stench; it's a national homicide. One man is now the law, he's unaccountable, he is stupid and indescribably dangerous — and yet for reasons known only to his defenders, he's doing just fine, and is eminently reelectable. Which is unfuckingbelievable.

Hardcore progressives don't really want to win

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, syndicated-cartoonist and leftie-columnist Ted Rall leaves me utterly befuddled:

"The possibility that Mr. Sanders will become the first unreconstructed leftist to claim the presidential nomination of a major party in nearly half a century is as thrilling as a game of high-stakes poker. And it’s just as dangerous.

"It may be shrewder for progressives to see Mr. Sanders lose the nomination to a more moderate sacrificial lamb like Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar — assuming that he or she goes down to defeat in November. A primary loss would allow the progressive movement to blame centrists for another Hillary-style catastrophe. Rather than lose to Donald Trump and strengthen the argument for business-as-usual Democratic centrism, progressivism would retain its theoretical electability."

I and probably you as well have suspected for years that contemporary progressives want nothing to do with actual power, much as the happily soon-dead Rush Limbaugh wants nothing to do with it either. What both really desire is nothing more than the "theoretical electability" of their extremism, so that they can then lie back and simply spitball those who perform the grueling, compromising work of mature governance. The adult contentment of accomplishing whatever pragmatic measures can realistically be had through relentless incrementalism has nothing on the joy of reckless, morally superior outsiderism. 

What astonishes me, however, and has hurled me into a state of almost sympathetic bewilderment, is that leftie Ted Rall has come right out and confessed it.

If nothing else, Bloomberg will have helped Dems in one big way

The Times:

A national poll from NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist [A+] released on Tuesday showed Mr. Bloomberg with 19 percent support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, putting him in second place behind Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who had 31 percent….

Also on Tuesday, Monmouth University released a poll [A+] of Virginia voters showing Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Sanders tied at 22 percent each and leading the field. With 99 delegates at stake, Virginia is the fourth-largest prize on the Super Tuesday calendar....

Bloomberg … decided to skip the first four nominating contests, held in states where campaigns traditionally spend a year organizing supporters ...

… to focus instead on the delegate-rich primaries that take place beginning on Super Tuesday, March 3.

And he won't be the last, is my guess.

Why should any future Democratic presidential wannabe — with significant resources — spend a year or more laboring in, especially, delegate-poor, diversity-vacant Iowa and New Hampshire, visiting every county for little but bragging rights, hiring staff, organizing hundreds of volunteers, and all the while absenting him- or herself from the mass of delegate-loaded, March 3rd states?

Given Iowa's image-pummeling debacle this year and New Hampshire's failure to refine the scramble, 2020 could well be the end of the states' preeminent primary status — and good riddance. Being unrepresentative of the Democratic Party's constituencies, the media attention and campaign resources paid to each have become at least borderline embarrassing, and unquestionably stupid.

The GOP is the party of plutocrats, racists, hayseeds, authoritarian personalities and the cerebrally challenged. The GOP can have them and keep them, every last one. But The Democracy is the party of the informed blue- and white-collar worker, the minority, the woman, the educated, the professional — the folks who see autocratic Trumpism as an unAmerican blight, which it is.

And in selecting their next president, Iowa and New Hampshire are no places to start.

Among his autocratic ilk, we've seen many a Trump before

In "The Golden Man," travel journalist Paul Theroux (for the New Yorker) profiled, in 2007, Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov, who had changed his name to Turkmenbashi when the "backwater" Soviet Republic gained its independence in 1991, and Niyazov acquired full authoritarian control.

Theroux described him as one of the "most powerful lunatics on earth," who, having "developed an extreme personality cult," delivered his country into a "reign of insanity."

He treated the nation "as his private kingdom, a land in which everything belonged to him." In some portraits of Turkmenbashi, "he looked like a fat and grinning Dean Martin; in others, he was a truculent C.E.O. with a chilly smile. A common image showed him, chin on hand, squinting in insincere bonhomie, like a lounge singer."

In short, wrote Theroux, Turkmenbashi, "Leader of All the Turkmen," rendered himself unto the people as "the Man of Gold, all-powerful, all-knowing."

His exceptionally peculiar traits, his characterological quirks, his complete self-absorption, messianic complex and even his resemblance are striking.

"Don't Let Democracy Die," by Don McClean, sort of

Progressive knives are being whetted, for Bloomberg's neck

Adam Jentleson, a former Harry Reid staffer and now a strategist for Elizabeth Warren, makes a reasonable argument that enlarges to a national scale the title of my post below, "A Nevada melee." His take on Mike Bloomberg, however, is laughably overwrought, and thus pitiably propagandistic:

"Bloomberg’s record is dicey: He spoke at the 2004 Republican convention, praising George W. Bush and his war on terrorism. His 'stop and frisk' regime was so brutal and discriminatory, it was struck down by a federal court as violating its victims’ civil rights. His presence supercharges the message from Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren that billionaires are buying our democracy. He could win enough delegates to be a player at a contested convention, but it’s unlikely he can win a majority — and if the Democratic Party gave the nomination to a billionaire who supported Mr. Bush, it might as well shoot a big chunk of the Democratic electorate into space and hand Mr. Trump his re-election."

Jentleson omits even a mention of Bloomberg's progressive billions donated to health, such as the World Health Organization, the World Lung Foundation and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, as well as culture and the arts, a smarter immigration policy, education, gun control, community development, and climate-change projects and advocacy.

He's detested by the NRA, coal, tobacco and, naturally, the GOP and its liddle twit Trump, both of whom are fine with a gun in every pot, filthy air, swarthy children in cages, and an American culture as barren as an empty NASCAR track.

As a former Bloomberg city assistant and stop-and-frisk critic writes, "In 2020, I’m a one-issue voter: Four more years of Trump would be devastating for our country. I’ll support the Democratic Party nominee, whoever it is. And if it's Bloomberg, he should get full support from Democrats, including progressives."

Amen — although many, with the vile assistance from Sanders and possibly Warren, will in effect support Trump over the Democratic nominee, "if it's Bloomberg."

A Nevada melee

Friday produced the latest polling in Nevada, whose caucus is Saturday. The results for Joe Biden — whose campaign has longingly looked toward an ethnically diverse state — are in doubt as to a Valentine's Day greeting. The poll was conducted by 538-unrated WPA Intelligence for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which found Bernie Sanders at:

25 percent, followed by Biden, 18 percent; Warren at 13 percent; Steyer, 11; and Buttigieg and Klobuchar at 10 percent.

Why, Sanders is clearly in the lead, you say — at first glance.

The poll's responding race and ethnicity percentages roughly tracked Nevada's, while self-identifying liberals accounted for 48 percent of respondents, and moderates, 36 percent. Yet in Gallup's political-ideology-by-state analysis, 2018, Nevada ranked "about average" — meaning moderates constitute about what WPA Intelligence found, while liberals, in Gallup's estimate, constitute around 23 percent of the population.

While it's true that liberals are likely more motivated than moderates to caucus, the Nevada poll doubled the liberal percentage from the state's approximate liberal makeup. This seems like overkill, and explains, perhaps faultily, Sanders' 7-point lead over Biden, who until this poll had been leading in Nevada.

But with caucuses — which are more a measure of which candidates have the better ground game — who the hell knows?