PMC Commentary

Other notes on Biden's pardon

The anti-Trump crowd has flaunted its virtue once again. The Democratic jury of commentators is in, and its verdict is as self-righteously upright as a Star Chamber ruling: President Biden is stupendously guilty for having issued a pardon for son Hunter.    

Was his a political mistake? Of course it was. A handful of accused amoral, unethical contrarians like myself will argue that Biden, at long last, thrust his middle finger in the face of Trumpers, simultaneously braying that two can play this game, even though his is nothing of their magnitude. Still, the assessment of a political mistake holds true.

But not for the tediously redundant reasons that nearly every commentator has poured out in ink over the last 24 hours. Biden erred politically in the sense that he did what he did while lacking a party with even a modicum of loyalty. He's not the first Democratic president to inherit a supposed sympathetic commentariat that nevertheless revels in attack. That, you see, demonstrates their virtue by proving their mindful independence.

This would be righteous if the aforementioned game were not so bloody one-sided. In the eyes of their base, their congressional allies and their commentating mouthpieces, Republican presidents can do no wrong. They bask in unending glory. Meanwhile, Democratic presidents must suffer not only regular assaults from Republicans but those routinely deployed by their "friends" as well.

The potential, practical outcome of this bilateral savaging is that the electorate might well see an unscathed GOP POTUS — damn, he must be doing a pretty good job — and a universally besieged Democratic prez — hum, no one seems to care for this guy; hell his own people see no recourse from pointing out his assorted stumbles. And the ultimate outcome? We get stuck with a Trump.

History will treat Biden's presidency as the most successful in domestic policy achievements since Lyndon Johnson, possibly FDR. Yet how many voters were aware of this? His own side has assailed him from virtually the get-go as too moderate or too progressive, too timid or too forceful. (This commentator has skewered him over his foreign policies — there, I had no choice. On Ukraine and Israel, his missteps have been unmistakable and legion. That, I could not ignore.)

Another matter surrounding the pardon that really galls is the almost monolithic sermonizing of but. Jonathan Chait's piece is exemplary. After ripping Biden from various angles he concludes; "It would be tempting, but unfair, to draw a simple equation between Joe Biden’s situational ethics and that of his successor. A willingness to evade the rule of law is the foundation of Donald Trump’s entire career in business and politics, not a nepotistic exception." That's true. But, Chait's piece and all others like it heavily contribute to the "simple equation" being drawn. They make the inaccurate case for it and then sternly warn about its consequence. 

Moving along, Tom Nichol's argument against Biden's pardon is that it will haunt Dems into 2026. Nonsense. Where has Tom been? A political story — a political outrage — is lucky to survive 48 hours. Voters will neither remember nor care in 2026 what paper Biden signed in 2024. If there's a theme at all to the midterms, it will be the monumental crimes that Trump has amassed in merely two years — despite, possibly, his forever adoring, always supportive party.

Finally, there's this element of my contrariness concerning Biden's pardon. He's friendless. We've witnessed an unequaled feeding frenzy by commentators and the press — doubtless the greatest amount of blood in the water since his inauguration. I rebel when I see the one being so heartlessly pounded by the many; I'm compelled to jump in and join the fray — to the utter contempt of the vast majority. About their preening virtue, I don't give a shit. Joe Biden needs a friend. This is politics. Not a fucking church.  

Joe, you really made my day

Thank you, Joe, for the laughs you have given us. Indirectly. Your pardon of son Hunter has "congressional Republicans and conservative commentators rag[ing]," reports the Daily Beast — and I swear their rages and indignation have sparked my first real guffaws since Election Day.

Damn did I ever need this. These clowns, these utter buffoons, these dimwitted court jesters are evidently capable of fiercely denouncing the pardon of a presidential son whom their president-elect has sworn to persecute in each conceivable and yet-to-be-conceived manner for the next four years in violation of every rule of law and principle of justice. 

My absolute favorite entry in the Beast: James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, "called the charges against Hunter the 'tip of the iceberg'—although his lengthy investigation into both the president and his son’s finances resulted in no recommended charges for either Biden." 

I say that's my favorite. But I confess it's the only one I read. I figured nothing else in the Beast's story could top it — the incongruity was that splendid in its Comeresque stupidity. Why continue reading, I reckoned, only to be disappointed?

Still, my biggest laugh is yet to come. Or at least I hope it will come.

Joe, I'm waiting for you to pardon everyone on Donald Trump's lengthy, consummately illicit hit list — plus all their family members, friends, and any acquaintances they've made in life. And that you'll do so in the same "sweeping" way you did for Hunter.

Do that, Joe, and I might just laugh all the way to 2028, because "congressional Republicans and conservative commentators" will rage every day until then, and with 10 times the force. As my laughing will be.   

"The rise of an inexperienced lackey." At this we're shocked?

On the February 1933 occasion of Adolf Hitler's first public appearance since his appointment as Reich Chancellor, Joseph Goebbels delivered opening remarks, warning the anti-Nazi press — the Lügenpresse, the "lying press" — to be especially careful, for emergency decrees were in place. "Now the Nazis will show them how [my official position] can really work, with a government behind it."

Kash Patel: "We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied.... We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board: "The Senate, and the country, needs to hear ... Patel explain [himself], because responsible law enforcement officials do not talk like this, with claims of criminal retribution against their perceived enemies." 

Neither do responsible U.S. presidents talk like this: "They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!"

Trump added that Comcast, NBC News and "in particular MSNBC ... should be investigated for its 'Country Threatening Treason.'" The statutory price: death.

Other than sheer disgust at even the notion of a thuggish toad like Patel leading the FBI, there are two ways to look at this scandalous affair. David Frum offers one. "The firing of Wray is the real outrage. The obnoxious nomination of Patel slathers frosting and sprinkles on the outrage."

After the abuses of J. Edgar Hoover, in 1976 Congress established a 10-year term for FBI directors so as to remove the position from politics. Trump has now twice violated the spirit of the congressional act.  

The other way to look at the Patel scandal is the way I've looked at every predictable scandal since 5 November. Pace Frum, there's nothing outrageous about Wray's imminent sacking or the thug's nomination. Nor can there be outrage at an ambassadorial appointment of a felon (Jared Kushner's father), or a conspicuously brain-damaged anti-vaxxer as secretary of Health and Human Services, or an illegally blond bitch heading up the Justice Department. 

Since Election Day I've watched this serial filth roll on in the same way Charlie Sykes has, which he concisely wrote up a couple days ago: "These are all merely footnotes to history, a mere gloss on the voters’ decision to elect a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist to the presidency."

Thus outrage is inapplicable. Above, I wrote "nor can there be outrage,' not "nor should there be." As Cambridge Dictionary notes, outrage springs from a shocking development, or, it's a feeling of anger and shock. Both were nullified and rendered impossible when voters decided "to elect a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist to the presidency."

What did voters expect? Nominations of America's finest? True professionals with experience? (This post's title comes from The Atlantic's August profile of Patel.) Even just law abiding citizens? Also by definition, such isn't the game plan of a muthafugging presidential malefactor. So any claims to be angrily shocked and therefore outraged are indeed "mere gloss" — cover for having knowingly put a criminal in the White House.  

Now at that I am outraged, and its seething, underlying anger will never fade. In effect, voters gave Trump a pass on his contemptible nominations as well as all his legal felonies to come (see: Supreme Court ruling on immunity). Because we did this to ourselves, we willingly handed the keys to the entire U.S. government to a known criminal and sociopathic demagogue.

We stripped ourselves of the ethical right to cry foul.

Where to go from here? One suggestion.

Anthony Rendon, a former California Assembly speaker who helped lead the early Resistance Movement, tells Politico Playbook that "the Trump focus took Democrats’ eyes off the ball on what voters truly cared about: the economy." Playbook adds that "some Democrats now concede [that] was a mistake.... Look closely and there are small signs Democrats are straying from the first resistance blueprint." 

I'm among them. For eight years we invested heavily in bashing Trump. That paid off with his return to the White House. Our "focus" on him was accurate and even meritorious, yet politically it was a loser. We smugly believed that being right would double as what voters were thinking or would come around to think (if that's the proper verb).

And we blew it. A small plurality of voters chose to see a healthy, thriving economy as a poor one, in part because their grocery tabs were higher and in larger part, I'd argue, because Republicans convinced them that the economy was lousy. We knew that, we knew what voters were saying, but as in 2016 we couldn't conceive that the vast merits of our Trump-bashing would fail to overcome those outstanding temptations to vote for the fearmonger.     

After all, we were right — and we were the politically wholesome ones. Both true, but losers nonetheless. And politics is all about winning. Thus when Playbook writes that "Democrats are straying from the first resistance blueprint," that goes straight to the bleeding heart of what I've been agonizing over since the election.

I rebel at the thought of spending another four years decrying each and every Trumpian foul. I would if it paid dividends but it didn't. I would if it might pay dividends four years hence, but the empirical evidence says no. Besides, what have I not written about Trump in the past eight years that still requires airing? Nothing. Not a thing.  

The same holds true for every anti-Trump writer on the internet. And yet I look around, and what do I mostly find? The selfsame Trump-bashing that proved to be politically useless this year. By and large, the left and center-left are persisting in what they know didn't work.

Why? Why would they continue shrieking rabid anti-Trump sermons when their True Believers already know the virtuous substance and those other True Believers aren't listening? Simple. None of us has known what else to do. We're in a habitual rut. Plus, slicing up Trump is exceedingly easy. When we're stuck for something different and nothing comes to mind, there's always that fallback. It writes itself.        

Doubtless I'll plunge into the same trap from time to time; on occasion I already have. And that's OK, for bits of Trump-bashing remain a mindful necessity. But I've tried to avoid the chronic trap since Election Day. I've instead concentrated on attacking from the edges, flanking the main enemy by critiquing the cowardly press, revisiting the awful Electoral College, gaping at cabinet picks, assessing the far right's clueless youth, analyzing demagoguery in the abstract and devoting too many posts to depression.  

The personal downside of this approach is rather obvious. Most anti-Trump readers want to read those still-fashionable yet otiose grillings of Trump; they care less about press critiques and political abstractions. Hence my tentative approach will cost this site even more readers. But that too is OK. I'd rather set myself on a more productive path than hunt a larger readership by feeding its ineffective wants.

Where am I headed with all this? You see that guy in the upper left corner of this site? No not me, the other guy. That's Sen. Chris Murphy, in my estimation the smartest guy in Congress and perhaps the smartest person in all the Democratic Party. He's also done with the usual; he's now a self-proclaimed "alarmist"  who's preaching a near-eschatologic gospel that Democrats must "do a rewrite in the way the left is organized and the way that we message."  

At the end of this writing I'll post a video of a Sam Stein-Bulwark interview with Sen. Murphy. I encourage you to watch it. I believe you'll be thankful you did. But reading is faster than watching, so here I'll touch on the main arguments he makes for those of you who prefer the quicker method of "getting the point" — or, just haven't the time for a half-hour interview. You may also detect where Murphy is headed with all this — the essential point I'll finish with. 

First he frames what's coming. "I’m getting prepared for the worst," says Murphy. "Which is, you know, arrest warrants for members of Congress, shutdowns of not-for-profit organizations that are trying to cross Donald Trump. I’m legitimately worried about that.... I’m crossing my fingers that we will be in some normal world in which I can find some narrow areas of agreement with Trump. But I’m spending most of my time thinking and preparing for dystopia."

That might sound defeatist. It's anything but. For the contradiction of his four-year frame comes from Murphy himself. Rather than spending most of his time preparing for dystopia, he's ideating ways in which Democrats can overcome — and prevail. A review of where the party has gone wrong further frames his overview of how it can right itself. 

"We spend probably ... 80 percent of our time explaining the solution, telling people that you should feel good about the reforms we passed,” says Murphy to Stein. "Trump spends all his time complaining; and almost no time solving the problem." Yet that's what voters wanted to hear: the complaining; or as the cliché has it, someone sharing their pain. "Democrats have to learn from that," says Murphy. "You have to kick the ass of the elite and then solve the problem."

The political problem? Democrats' concept of markets — that they're the solution. If you assume that markets work, then you merely make some adjustments to those markets. (Murphy uses drug prices as an example.) And that "leaves markets in charge." Dems must instead "confront the consolidation of economic power." In brief, Murphy advocates "pugilistic messaging about who's screwing consumers."  

For the next four years, the primogenial screwers will be Trump, his cabinet and his administration as they "hand our entire government over to billionaires and corporate interests." While dwelling on trans using bathrooms, Trump Inc. will "rob you blind," take your money and give it to the super wealthy. Then, following their tax-cutting budget destruction, Republicans will insist that "cuts have to be made" to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  

The thrust of Murphy's argument is "the destruction of corporate power." Otherwise, Democrats are left to defend the status quo. Though I'm a trifle uneasy about his theme of "economic populism," I understand its political appeal. "This is not about small fixes," he says, and the term "economic populism" conveys that.   

I asked earlier where I'm headed with all this. The pertinent question is where Murphy is headed with all this. I believe I know. He's laying the foundation of a presidential run — which I have urged for quite some time. I asked in the title, Where do we go from here? I suggest we rethink our Trump fixation and follow Sen. Murphy's lead.

My assumption of his presidential aspirations seems almost self-evident. He has largely avoided the usual networking of politicians, until now. He did the Bulwark interview, below, and recently I heard him in a talk with law professor and commentator Harry Litman. This morning he was a guest on "Meet the Press."

I suspect we're going to see a lot of Sen. Murphy over the next couple years. My hope is that — by early 2027 he will have established himself as the voice of Democratic leadership; in the ensuing primaries, he'll be the one left standing; the combination of voter disgust with Trumpism and presidential nominee Chris Murphy's "kicking ass" and "pugilistic messaging" will then catapult the senator into the White House.     

But let us congregate, bow our heads, and begin with the holy gospel:

The Hitler Youth, rebranded

I should probably desist in making comparisons between Trump's corps of youthful supporters and the Hitler Youth, for in these bizarrest of times — an era pathologically contaminated by populism-cum-neofascism — these young Americans might find the comparison not only creditable, but praiseworthy.

Being as ill-schooled in history as they are in politics, this immature voting bloc harbors no informed conception of the Hitler Youth's evils. To them, a modern-day spinoff of the American variety is merely that of a brotherhood in which "bonding" takes place — or rather, takes the place of their shiftless, empty lives.

Here they can be led, and their existence, given meaning. Their rootless upbringing, stripped of impeccant values, created a tabula rasa on which their leaders — from Trump to the also youthful, equally benighted Charlie Kirk and others — can now write. And no more than among Hitler's youth are they capable of discerning the evils ingested. Enlightenment will come only with their abject ruination, as it did in 1945.    

On the other hand, this budding youth of soft Hitlerism is scarcely a readership component of this site. So I'm free of encouraging any propensities they might have toward applauding that ugly title of yore. Instead I can gape with historical disgust at other soft dopplegängers of European origin, such as this Goebbelslike pronunciamento from a Trump official: "Embracing and providing access to people that are informing millions of people has to be an important part of our overall strategy, for sure." 

The quote might seem harmless — until you see who these "informative" people are, the ones addressing "millions" of U.S. youth, virtually all male. They "look a whole lot more like the media consumption habits of the American voters of today versus the 1980s," continued the Trump official. And they'll constitute, at least in part, the "strategy and the press briefing room" of Trump's White House.  

Who are they by name? They're the once-deservedly obscure Joe Rogan (an internet jack of all trades)), the Nelk Boys ("YouTube pranksters"), Theo Von (a "stand-up comedian"), and "the guys from 'Bussin’ With The Boys,'" whoever those guys are. Explains Politico: "They were the podcasters and social media influencers who helped mobilize a new generation of Trump voters, using their platforms with hundreds of millions of viewers combined to talk to young voters about issues like illegal immigration, while making it socially acceptable to support Trump."  

As noted, "these types of new media influencers will be a factor in the Trump White House’s broader messaging strategy," reports Politico. In addition to the above personalities, look for "influencers" like Benny Johnson and, already noted, TurningPointUSA's Charlie Kirk. The former has 3.1 million Twitter followers, the latter — a 31-year-old junior college dropout who has devoted his life to far-right politics without the least schooling in its history; he simply parrots the Trump line by changing hours — 4.2 million followers.   

The "broader messaging strategy" hailed by Trump insiders will include the campaign's "flood of content from the influencers that resonated with viewers — like videos of pranks that promoted Trump and conservative policies." (Strike "conservative.") Much of it was banned from sites like YouTube for hustling disinformation. Accordingly, it's anything but informative, sober and honest. Said the quoted Trump official: "It’s not like, 'Hey, we’re talking about immigration policy today. Here’s why illegal immigration is bad for the economy.' It’s just, here’s some fucking hilarious skit."

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of "The Charlie Kirk Show," (yes, he's on TV too), told Politico that "You can’t just put on a camo hat and have a relationship with that audience. You have to embody the values of that audience. You have to have a connection." Kolvet almost nailed it. The connection is made by a dedicated avoidance of serious thought and rational analysis of issues. This works because "that audience" is itself bereft of serious thinking and "values" to be embraced. Instead, the contorted, contemptible values of Trumpism are fed to the audience as those of manly virtue. 

And repetition is king — as is always the case with demagogues. John Shahidi, whose internet platform houses the programs of far-right podcasters, said this to Politico: "Bypassing traditional media ... was critical to [Trump's] success, and we hope to visit him in Washington, D.C. soon to celebrate his epic victory." Enter said repetition. Trump has been pounding the message on social media that his electoral victory was a "landslide" — alternatively labeled epic by Shahidi.

There was of course no landslide, nothing even close. Trump won by 1.6% of the vote. President Biden won in 2020 by 5.1% of the vote, which earned him articles such as Politifact's, titled "How narrow was Joe Biden's victory over Trump?" and FactCheck.org's "No 'landslide' for Biden." Dear Trumpers, if 5.1 is no landslide, then 1.6 can't be — even you can grasp that. Nevertheless, on Twitter this morning, Trump was indeed peddling his victory as a landslide — to be expected. The point, though, is that all the rubes on Twitter were likewise naming it, all of them chiming in about his landslide victory.

That tells us what America's Trump Youth are learning from their leaders: distortions, contortions, misinformation and disinformation — all of it hammered over and over from ahigh. And yet the membership youth of this corps is utterly unaware of the mendacity involved, for they know nothing of politics or the truth of current affairs. The quoted Trump official said more than he realized: "It’s not like, 'Hey, we’re talking about immigration policy.... It’s just, here’s some fucking hilarious skit." 

Although the primal Hitler Youth were fed nothing hilarious, the repetitious lies they were taught to embrace as virtuous truths ultimately unfolded as a national nightmare. Doubtless, once entrenched in the White House, the Trump regime will serve up similarly counterfeit virtues to its similarly clueless youth; which is to say, the lessons taught will careen evermore serious — nothing hilarious or mildly amusing, for fascism is a serious business.

Once funny skits morph into the substantive stuff of Trump's quasi-Nuremberg messaging — as must occur; otherwise there's no point to it — will the regime lose the attention of its frivolous young? I don't know, a guess is all I could offer, a useless venture. But at least his Hitler Youth will retain the freedom to wander off, disappointed as they might be in having so much sternness thrown at them. Or, they'll willingly eat it up, believing that they have become serious thinkers.    

America's youthful corps of twisted minds would then authentically become America's Hitler Youth, rebranded. Their future, not nearly as dire as their predecessors, but still devastating — to them more than others, once the Trump regime is also pulverized and liquidated. Its destiny will out, as did its predecessor's.  

I'd use #s 2 & 6

I missed putting this up for Thanksgiving. But family Christmas dinners are nigh, so tuck away Andy's advice and spring it on your MAGA relatives later. 

How to Gaslight Your Trump-Voting Relatives This Thanksgiving

Stuck with MAGA relatives around the table today? Gaslight them by pretending you’re a convert to their movement! Just slip these surefire talking points into the conversation:

1. Matt Gaetz would have been a great Attorney General. No one cares more about America’s children.

2. I can’t wait for Trump’s tariffs. I’m sick of paying so little for everything.

3. American education is a mess, and that’s because we’ve never had someone in charge of it with professional wrestling experience.

4. The fact that a worm ate half of RFK Jr’s brain means he won’t have as many thoughts distracting him from his job.

5. If you ask me, Kristi Noem’s dog was asking for it.

6. Thank God Trump is kicking out all those undocumented workers! If I want fruit and vegetables I’ll just pick them myself.

Who's afraid of the New York Times?

Had Thomas Jefferson been edited by The NY Times, his first draft of the nation's founding document would have read, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, it appears that all men are created equal." (This assumes the Grey Lady's editors stopped short of a second alteration: "We seem to hold these truths to be self-evident.")

I'm unclear on precisely when the Times developed a fear of straightforward declarative sentences, but that it plays to Donald Trump's advantage, I'm quite certain. For this fear — or whatever the cause of its reportorial indirectness might be — produces an irresponsible softening of the scofflaw's untoward realities.

The failing may be limited to Trump. I've not gone back to look, but I doubt the Times ever reported, for instance, that convicted felon Bernie Madoff's business activities don't appear to have been legal. And yet the paper of record reports that in this week's transition proceedings, Trump's ethics plan "does not appear" to "address his own conflicts of interest."        

There's a more informative way of reporting the story, which even the cowardly Washington Post managed to pull off: "[His plan] does not include an ethics pledge for the president-elect." The Times could not have been unaware of this unequivocal fact; after all, the plan is online. Moreover, the Times linked to it.

Why, then, would the paper report that said plan does not appear to include the president-elect? There's more. In the same story, the paper writes that "the plan may run afoul of the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that such plans detail how a president-elect himself will address his own conflicts of interest."

If the Transition Act mandates this detailing, which it does, then Trump's averting the detail runs afoul of the act, full stop. So again we must ask, why would the Times report that his omission may run afoul of the act?   

Of these two journalistic transgressions, the second is more severe. Though running afoul of an unenforceable statute is a relatively insignificant malfeasance, in Trump's case it is characteristic of his chronic wrongdoing and thus the first of his own declarations of independence from statutes on the books. And they too will become more severe once he's in office.      

As Trump proceeds to commit one incontrovertibly criminal or unconstitutional act, it appears The NY Times will be there, reporting that each blatancy may have run afoul of the law. In answer to my own questions of why, I must confess, I'm at a loss.

As for the question I posed in the post's title, I do have answer. It sure as hell isn't Donald Trump. 

I'm thankful for Nikolay Patrushev, aide to V. Putin

Yes, I am. I'm thankful for Putin presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev for telling America the truth about our president-elect. 

"The election campaign is over," said Patrushev to the Russian news agency Tass on 11 November. "To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them."

And no doubt he will. 

The moment the Trump campaign knew it would win

At great and imminent risk to himself, an anonymous source has provided this writer several seconds of film footage shot at a secret focus-group session conducted 28 October, a mere eight days from the presidential election.

The group in attendance was invited surreptitiously by the Trump campaign, which, just prior to completing the filmed session, had been in something of a panic. Pollsters in its employ were picking up — or so they believed — some rumblings of voter discontent with the Republican nominee's proposed economic plan, specifically his intention to slap higher tariffs on friend and foe alike.

Was electoral unhappiness with Trump's economic idiocy a real thing? Was it, in fact, emerging throughout the electorate, especially among the much-prized 18-25 bloc? Was the discontent factor sizable enough to threaten The Second Coming of America's most blockheaded presidency? Fast intel was in need.

And Team Trump knew just what to do. Stage a focus-group session. Once convened, its leader-organizer would review with those in attendance at least some historical background on the known domestic effects of hefty tariffs imposed by the profoundly unknowing. For what the Trump campaign deeply desired to learn were the answers to two questions:

Was the focus-group leader needlessly, almost insultingly reminding these voters of what is, after all, really basic American history; that time roughly a century ago when some other blockheads raised import duties by an average now proposed by Trump? More important, had these voters connected in their minds the fallout from that buffoonish tariff hike to what would come under a second Trump administration?

Just lay it on 'em, these voters; that's what the campaign wanted done.

And that's what the focus-group leader did — or, rather, began doing, until he realized the pollster's suspicion of emerging electoral unhappiness with Trump's economic idiocy was altogether a phantom; that American voters of '24 could no more connect these two phenomena than they could pass a U.S. citizenship test. And he had the film footage to prove it.

Remember when "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" tried to teach us about tariffs and no one was paying attention pic.twitter.com/Yhxh3ky7on

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) November 26, 2024

"Well, it looks like we're going to win, boys," said campaign senior adviser Susan Wiles after 20 seconds of watching the focus-group film.

If this is the Electoral College's best defense ...

Somewhere this morning I ran across a piece referencing a 12-minute video of a college professor's justifications for the Electoral College system. That, I had to see. After watching his apologia for the wholly unjustified I read up on the college at which he teaches, which explained the position that he, Kevin Portteus, takes in the following.

Before getting to the professor's "educational institution," a few notes on his brief lecture.

Most notable right off is that he omits even a mention of the Electoral College's racist origin; how the slaveholding Southern states gained an electoral advantage because of it. I found that ... peculiar. A professor of politics should make note of such historical things.

He also explains what the founders — principally, Hamilton and Madison — had in mind when they devised the EC: that presidential electors not be bound by the will of voters, since that can materialize as little more than the voice of the mob. The founders trusted independently minded electors to choose presidents of "ability and virtue," wrote Hamilton. Soon, however, states began binding their electors to the popular vote. So much for ability and virtue.

Portteus then presents five justifications for the modern EC system. 1. He reverts to the founders and their distrust of majority rule, which arose, he says, from the British parliamentary system (the party with the most seats reigns) and its abusive conduct toward the American colonies. That's far too simplistic. The founders were well-read in history, which provided a much wider and more informed basis for their misgivings about majorities and their rule.

2. He makes the absurd claim that the EC "forces" presidential candidates to campaign nationwide (i.e., smaller states included). As virtually everyone knows, the opposite is true. Every four years the nominees routinely concentrate on only a handful of battleground states. 3. Tragically, no longer would presidential candidates visit "diners." I kid you not. He says this. They'd kick around instead only in heavily populated areas. Like, where most voters are? 

His fourth point is essentially a repetition of the third; he argues that presidential candidates would neglect rural areas. Some might, although the smarter ones would not. About 20% of the population is rural, and its vote translates into 14% of the electorate. Only a fool would neglect such a potentially decisive bloc. Finally, 5. Presidential elections by popular vote, says Portteus, would put "election integrity" at risk. He cites, for instance, the danger of "ballot harvesting." And that should clue you in as to where he's coming from.

You got it — the right. One hopes this presidential election, with Trump eeking out a popular-vote advantage as well as winning the EC, was the authentic black swan we thought his first election was. I suspect the right suspects this will not hold; that from 2028 on, they'll again rely on the EC, as they did in 2000 and 2016. Hence Prof. Portteus' 12-minute propaganda spiel.

Which he delivers at greater length each year to his students at Hillsdale College in Michigan. If one is initially inclined to give the good professor the benefit of doubt, to accept that he preaches the righteous merits of the EC purely out of intellectual objectivity, then learning of the "educational institution" at which he teaches should smother one's continuing inclination.             

Hillsdale is a private, Christian, "conservative" liberal arts college, or so it says — quotation marks applied given the right's deep incongruity with conservatism. As confirmation, it joined the advisory board of the decidedly anti-conservative Project 2025.

Having lost federal funds because of its refusal to abide by Title IX, the college depends on endowments and the private sector. From the latter, one of the college's financial contributors is the right-winging billionaire Timothy Mellon, grandson of banker-industrialist Andrew Mellon and inheritor of vast wealth. (The family is worth about $14 billion, says Forbes.) I mention Timothy because a few years back he pledged a contribution to Hillsdale upon each downloading occasion of his ebook autobiography.    

Let the humor begin. One site wrote this of his self-reflective effort: "Tim's story explores the many ways he has been able to turn theoretical opportunity into productive reality." I looked him up on Wikipedia. And there I found that billionaire Timmy had indeed accomplished the almost theoretically impossible.

For example a small airline he owned was forced out of operation when the U.S. Department of Transportation revoked his carrier certificate "on the basis of lack of financial fitness, poor management oversight, failure to follow federal laws and regulations, and filing false financial data." And there was this: In 1999 he bought a Connecticut airport for $2.33 million; in 2020, he sold it for $891,000.

But back to Hillsdale College. It isn't all bad, in that it requires students to take courses on the Great Books — the literary foundations of Western civilization which have been sidelined and retired at too many non-ideological colleges and universities. Even dead white guys had something to say, though little heard from are they today. 

As for the professor's defense of that other college, the Electoral, I expected more — certainly more than bugaboo warnings about the evils of ballot harvesting and the unbearable loss of presidential candidates dropping by diners. The professor may not know it, but rather than a vindication of America's asinine system of electing a U.S. president, he made the alternative popular-vote system seem all that much more logical.  

It's back in working order, the comment section. 

A never-discussed Theory of TrumpThink

Trump, Trumpism and Trumpomoronics couldn't wait until 20 January. Yesterday they leapt from the mental wasteland of Truth Social, getting an early start on inflicting worldwide chaos and generating domestic trepidation.

"Global stocks are falling, and the dollar is climbing," reported DealBook this morning — all because of Trump's two entries on his social media site, Monday at 5:35 p.m. EST. 

Truth Social Entry 1: "As one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders. This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!"

Truth Social Entry 2: "I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail.... Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America."

These may merely be threats. He pulled similar stunts in his first term and never carried out their intent. We mustn't expect and rely on a repeat of ineptitude interrupted, however; he seems determined to unleash Crazy in all its Trumpian variations this time around. Given Trump's Biden-disqualifying age in the White House, he knows this is his last shot at doing as much damage globally as he's done domestically all his life.

Before proceeding to a discussion of such rack and ruin, there's a consistent feature of his threats and executed actions I wish to point out — an element of Trumpian thinking which, though titanic and thus unignorable (or so it seems to me), I've not seen noted elsewhere. And it is this:

Trump never thinks more than one move ahead. Others' higher-level, more active frontal lobe activity anticipates an opponent's countermove, which influences and often alters the initiating move. Options are conceived, and generally not just one countermove but a series of countermoves in reaction to each further, contemplated move is taken into account. This intellectual process continues until the initiator foresees a winning outcome based on the alternatives ideated. Think chess.  

Like clockwork, however, Trump sees his first, unexamined move as so powerfully devastating to his opponent, no countering is possible, only capitulation. And so he blunders ahead (much to the dunderheaded delight of his hardcore supporters in the gallery). Yet without exception, his opponents are too clever to simply give up the game. They instead respond to his Move #1 with an even more devastating countermove that some analysts of the game are wont to label an "unintended consequence" of the first move.

At least in the objective press, no such labeling is destined to make it to print about the immensely damaging blowback of Trump's tariff threats, as issued yesterday. Analysts in assorted fields — economics, politics, history, international relations — instantly recognized and have written about the wreckage to come from his threats if executed. One assessment made a year from now about the overall global fallout from spiked tariffs has, indisputably, been rendered inadmissible: "We didn't know."

The Wall Street Journal reports that “Mexico, China and Canada are the nation’s top three suppliers of imported goods, accounting for about 42% of imports to the U.S. this year.” That translates into almost $1.5 trillion in annual imports — everything from "high-value goods like cars and electrical equipment to commodities like oil to innumerable grocery items and household goods." The NY Times observes that "adding 25 percent to the price of imported products could make many too costly, potentially crippling trade around the continent."

But there's a twist to Trump's latest Move #1 attack. If ever there were a chance of its success — which there isn't, but work with me here — he botched even that by tying future tariff relief not only to ending  the "Illegal Aliens Invasion of our Country," but to Canada, Mexico and China's success in reducing? eliminating? "the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States." 

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Brooking Institution senior fellow who studies global drug policy, told the Times that "an imposition of tariffs is not going to do anything regarding the flow of fentanyl. In fact, it might undermine the counternarcotics cooperation that the U.S. and China have been doing in 2024 and that came after no cooperation for over two years." U.S. officials have said that this recent cooperation has "decreased substantially" the drug's flow into America. 

Trump would blow it all up. Not only would fentanyl flow into the U.S. at previous levels, American consumers would be stung by draconian price increases on thousands of products sold domestically. Two-point-six is current, yet buyers would soon look back with nostalgia at the 9.1% rate of inflation in 2022, the good old days. 

About fentanyl — put aside Canada and Mexico. China is the key nation involved. Falbab-Brown was being cautious: Trump's tariff's might undermine U.S.-China cooperation in decreasing the drug's flow. I and many others would make book on will undermine, for a quite simple reason. And this is where my above observation — Trump never thinks more than one move ahead — comes into play.

"China is the main source of chemicals used to make fentanyl." That's from the Times, and that is one hell of an inconvenient fact. The fentanyl produced there makes its way especially to drug cartels in Mexico and Central America, but they're middle men. Without the Chinese source, their fentanyl business would be critically hurt. The DEA notes that "India is emerging as a source for finished fentanyl powder and fentanyl precursor chemicals." But "emerging" isn't "dominating," which is China. 

Now let's think as President Xi would think. Trump's hits China's economy with new, higher, multileveled tariff rates — this being the U.S. president's powerfully devastating, unchallengeable Move #1 aimed at ceasing that nation's shipments of fentanyl to America. What — and the answer to this is pretty much unquestionable — what would Xi do in response? What countermove would he make?

There'd be several, but his first would be to remove the chemical compounds used in manufacturing fentanyl from China's list of controlled substances — the imposition of controls being the one move that so recently played the essential part is "decreasing substantially" the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.    

I doubt that Trump is even aware of official actions taken by China to reduce our incoming. If he is unaware, there's certainly no one around him now to educate him. Like all budding and sitting dictators, he has surrounded himself by obsequious toads who know only the words, "You're damn right, Sir."

Most Republicans on the Hill are being mute about Trump's tariff posts, reports Politico. Even they understand how idiotic they are. But Trump is sure to hear from the little critters on lily pads, croaking on Twitter as newly elected Sen. Bernie Moreno did: "We finally have a president who will fight back & let the CCP know that until they stop flooding our country with fentanyl, there will be consequences!" Well, he got the last part right. 

Imagine (or not) four years of Trumpian "ideas" — countless moves #1 — being tossed from behind the Oval Office's Resolute desk or from the swelling swamp of Mar-a-Lago: thoughts and potential actions such as deploying the U.S. military to Mexico or shooting protestors in the leg. They sprang from his underdeveloped frontal lobe in his first term, but folks were around him then to either let these misty imbecilities evaporate in his brain's wide airy spaces or gently inform him of, let's say, the difficulties involved. Those folks are gone — and barred from his presence.

Endless authoritarian shallowness mired in his absence of impulse control, all of it unmet by logic, experience and even the most rudimentary cyclings of intelligence — every act, each move #1 piled atop mounds of executed decisions lying in national and global ruins. Could at some point Trump be detonated out of office? He could, if his congressional allies ever failed to undergo the paroxysms of fear generated by primary challenges. But that's out, for Trump's hardcore base — primary voters — will forever salute and cheer every cretinous decision and their catastrophic results.

For the time being, we the vast majority are captives of a small electoral bloc of the unapproachably witless — those who also think in terms of only one move: support him at all costs. Such is our circumstance, one to be acknowledged but never accepted. Our turn will come.

***     

Subtext to the drug issue above; some eyeopening background and a personal recommendation. 

Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and, because it's far cheaper to produce, twenty times more profitable to drug dealers than cocaine and other illegal substances. These statistics I read only this morning and they left this impression: No wonder. I read them in the Council on Foreign Relations piece I linked to above, which for your non-searching convenience I'll link to again. 

Its theme struck me as this: Give up. No country will ever succeed in combating the plague of illegal drugs. But there's an alternative to just giving up, which I note at the end of this section.

The background: Chinese criminals — need I add, persons untroubled by laws and the regulation of controlled substances — continue producing fentanyl or its compounds which are then shipped to Mexico and Central America. That won't stop. Another complication in restricting fentanyl's manufacture is that the drug is made synthetically, meaning creative chemists have produced variants of China's controlled substances. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that "because synthetic drugs such as fentanyl are made entirely from artificial substances, the potential manufacturing methods are limitless."

In short, illicit motivations to turn a huge profit with little effort will always circumvent governments' latest controls. So round and round the "war on drugs" goes, destined to be lost in battle after battle. Officials should, but they won't, learn the lesson as spoken artificially in the film Wargames: "The only way to win is not to play."

Or in this case, "fight." Instead, legalize, tax and medically supervise the use of these drugs — all of them, from coke to fentanyl — which would eliminate the criminal element. Then the government turns a profit and those inclined to ingest once-illegal drugs can do so more safely. This is, by the way, an insignificant percentage of the population: Remember, before the 1920s all such drugs were legal, and Americans at large weren't stumbling around stoned out of their minds. The same would be true again.

I'm confident that someday the legalization of all drugs will come. But it won't come before we've squandered tens of billions of dollars more on controlling what cannot ever be entirely controlled: human beings.   

The year's most brazen appeal

My least ability is self-promotion, and closely related is the raising of funds for my own work. This is understatedly ironic, given my long-ago past of raising — in all immodesty — vast sums in the fields of politics and public broadcasting. Indeed my promotional-financing skills, when devoted to others, were in demand.

But when turned inward, that talent has always failed me. At self-promotion/personal fundraising, I stink. There's no more accurate way to put it.

So I'm going to do something I have never before done — steal, plagiarize, outright rip off some words from another site's evidently successful plea for paywalled subscriptions. The latter don't apply to this site, hence while stealing I also altered several original passages and assorted wordings peculiar to that site only. (As would any thief, I've asked not for permission to steal; I'll trust the victimized party to understand.)

What follows is the result — my last fundraising plea of 2024 — which, notwithstanding my alterations, I've put in quotation marks:

"Before I move on to the next post and we all move on to the next year, I want to offer a big and obsequious thank you to the readers of this site, and an even bigger, even more obsequious THANK YOU to its paying contributing readers. This commentary page has turned out to be not just my most consistent but also my most (emotionally) rewarding and ..."

There, right off, my word-theft had to pause. For the supplicant went on to say that his site has also turned out to be his most "(financially) remunerative source of income." I don't see this site's financing as "income"; rather, the funds raised are support for the work produced. Nor has the funding been what one might call "financially remunerative." I absolutely adore every contributing reader and deeply appreciate every dollar — individual amounts having ranged from 10 to hundreds. Still, this site's largest subsidy comes from its composer, thus its finances are more draining than remunerative. Back to thievery:

"But that income only exists because you guys have reached into your wallets and pulled out your credit cards to affirm that good (or, at least, sometimes good), human writing is worth paying for directly. As I say every time, I find this quite moving and kind of extraordinary--to get direct, unquestionable affirmation and support for what I do, from an audience that genuinely appreciates it (that literally values it!).

"So, you know, thank you for paying contributing. And if you don’t pay contribute, well, as I often say, if you get about one beer’s worth of enjoyment from my site every month, or ten beers’ worth every year, consider paying donating about that price to ensure the lights remain on and the site keeps coming."

***

One other feature of my, let's say, borrowed appeal was testimonials. This is something I have rarely done. Why? I've explained that. I stink at self-promotion. Reproducing testimonials is, in my view, pure, bodacious bragging (God knows we've had enough of that over the last nine years). And that makes me inexpressibly uncomfortable. But hey, the site I'm "borrowing" from has had success with it, so I won't allow my extreme discomfort to interfere with what seems to have worked for others. So here are merely a few kind notes from readers:  

It makes no sense that you have no more support than you do — perhaps this is another indication of the anti-intellectual zeitgeist that has seized the country and even the world?

Your posts should be mandatory reading for all.

The amount I contribute does not come close to matching how much I value your commentaries and unique perspectives.

I love your column. I read it daily. I need to talk politics with someone sane. I've tried talking with my cat, but she's not much help.

I am a recent convert to your blog. Yours is a fantastic, in my view, combination of wit, irreverence, and sound political commentary with a much-appreciated added element of getting into history; something that I feel like most of the best blogs out there today sadly lack. Please keep it up, Sir.

I shall, with your help. The year is coming to a close, and this commentary would very much like to leave it — very much needs to leave it — with a bang. The Make a Donation button is on the left. To all of you clicking it, you have my sincerest thank you in advance, which I always follow with a personal thank you. —PM

One hour can seem like "This Week"

In my Sunday morning haste to land on a credible news network, only by accidental surfing did I see Josh Hawley splattered on the TV screen. His was a brief appearance on ABC's "This Week," a top-of-the-hour teaser to open the show: The president-elect deserves the cabinet members he wants, said the senator.

Instant was the stench of cynical pretense, in that Hawley did more than just utter the words. He cast them in the form of a noble, universal principle, i.e., every president deserves the cabinet members he wants — not just Donald Trump. The ultrapartisan's feigned nobility and con artistry of fair play stank up the room.

Before posting I re-checked history to make doubly sure I wasn't slandering Jackrabbit Josh, the fist-pumping senator from Trumpy Missouri, my birth state of Trumanesque integrity and now a Mississippi doppelgänger moved north. Was he as noble and principled in 2021? Did he believe that that year's president deserved the cabinet members he wanted?

Not quite. Hawley voted Nay on 19 of Joe Biden's 21 cabinet and cabinet-level nominations — against a Democrat, a 90% kill rate. But let's cut him some slack. An Evangelical Presbyterian U.S. senator of God-blessed-neofascistic Republicanism couldn't possibly vote Yea on every nominee proposed by a radical-leftist-Marxist president in servile bondage to Roman popery.

They're rather remarkable, these Sunday shows, what with their usual suspects and standard humbuggery. I began this post by noting that my returning (and one-off) Sunday adventure was inadvertent; I sort of splashed into it while surfing my way to the BBC. Yet once at ABC, I decided to dive in for the hour.

Hawley had hooked me. His preposterous comment on the evenhanded treatment of presidential nominations was merely the opening teaser. And yet, with only these few seconds of airtime in mind, on the record and as a Sunday morning template, one could write a fair-sized book on the unchallenged absurdities of these shows and the pols who appear on them.

I don't single out the Missourian. The show's special guest was another Republican b.s.-peddler and senatorial colleague of Hawley's, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. Several times he said Trump had scored a huge and magnificent mandate from the American people — I'm paraphrasing — so now they want him to move expeditiously on all fronts, and to give no quarter.

And his rhetorical hustling was sheer nonsense. Trump's 1.6% advantage in the popular vote was a squeak, not a roar; a slim victory, not a sweeping decree of carte blanche. I should probably mention about now that "This Week" did have a host, a person sufficiently informed, one assumes, to guide the discussion back from any errant journeys into propagandistic falderal, such as Hagerty's. But host Jonathan Karl just sat there as the Tennessean yakked on about the nonexistent mandate.  

At times Karl did add some peculiarities of his own, the most conspicuous of which was his statement that Pam Bondi is "obviously qualified" to be attorney general of the United States. With that, the host dismissed her Trumpian agreement on the "stolen" 2020 election as dispositive evidence of either stupidity or skulduggery. Both should disqualify her as head of the DOJ or any high-ranking job, for that matter, other than RNC chairwomen.  

Finally, not one remark of originality or daring unconventionality was articulated throughout the hour. That I suppose is a feature inherent to such programming — especially anything audacious. In mediocrity there is safety. And originality? Even assuming its potential, it would only get in the way of one's talking points.

After sitting through every one of this Sunday show's 60 minutes, it turned out that Josh Hawley's absent B-roll appearance and triple-A insincerity, delivered in a flash, were the most interesting of them all.

I'll say this much for the other senator, the host and the panel's usual suspects and standard humbuggery. Rather than giving us another stint at American politics' cornucopia of crazy, they were refreshingly monotonous in that old-school tradition of Sunday public affairs programming. (Do people really watch this stuff every week?) 

"Every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence"

Gaetz's Job Application Rejected by Hooters

POMPANO BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—In the latest setback for the former lawmaker, on Friday Matt Gaetz’s application to be an assistant manager at a south Florida Hooters was flatly rejected.

“As the flagship Hooters of Pompano Beach, we take the responsibility of vetting applicants very seriously,” manager Harland Dorrinson said. “We strongly felt that Matt Gaetz would do irreparable harm to the Hooters brand.”

“To be clear, we are not singling out Matt,” the Hooters manager added. “We would have had the same reaction to Pete Hegseth.”

***

Gaetz also dreamed too big. A server, maybe, but assistant manager would have started him at a level that satisfied the Peter Principle.

He can still be an insufferable drag on society, however, as Florida's governor. For that position, incompetence is required; ethical bankruptcy, desirable. *See Lara Trump for job application.