The Carpentariat

A CPAC spark of Good News, Brother!

From Trump's party "dominance" to a persistent GOP civil war, the Times lists six takeaways from the charnel-house rumblings of CPAC. (This wrap-up I needed to read, since I couldn't bring myself to watch more than 30 seconds of the awful thing.) The itemizing must have been a grueling task for the two reporters assigned to summarize the four-day wake, since any real news — the customary object of reporters' attention — was scarce; just another Republican graveyard, more whistling.

Yet one tidbit, nestled in the tail end of the third takeaway ("A 'rigged' 2020 is now a G.O.P. article of faith"), was noteworthy, if not exactly news. And it was this:

"Pamela Roehl, 55, who traveled to the conference from Illinois, said some of her pro-Trump friends had written off civic engagement for good. 'They voted for Trump, and they said they’re not going to vote again, because they just feel like it’s so tainted,' she said. 'And that is just so sad.'"

Sad? Oh happy days — assuming Pamela's anecdote is more than just the confined rumblings of one Illinois hamlet, or an impermanent sniffle of Trumpian victimhood. For would it not be loverly if large, democracy-disillusioned chunks of the Republican base have indeed decided to withdraw from the unkind political world and go rattle their ghostly chains elsewhere? As did 1920s science-denying, tent-revivaling, W.J. Bryan idolizers?

Staying home on election days, majestically turning up their noses at this cruel world, is their best path forward. And God knows it would be bliss for us.

Under the weather, so the above post will be my last for today. See you soon.

A firestorm of bile

Only last year did we marvel as the extraordinary nastiness of Bernie Bros and Biden-bashers from inside the tent. For months we endured progressive insults hurled at liberalism's inevitable presidential nominee — defamations of ageism, creeping dementia and stuttering syntax, as well as, of course, that historically predestined assault on the candidate's inadequate devotion to idealistic purity.

In 2020 the hardcore left underscored, once again, that rhetorical ugliness is no monopolistic subsidiary of the right. But, once again, we must now remind ourselves of Orwell's maxim that "to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." And this time, the visible ugliness crept beyond the previous boundaries of Bernie Bro hideousness and progressive grotesquerie. Some mix of unknown but definite proportions of liberal, progressive and even usually moderate-Democratic bile spilled into view.

What horrific crime had been committed in urgent need of public revilement?

A reporter had done her job.

The Washington Post's Seung Min Kim had asked Lisa Murkowski about Neera Tanden's 2017 tweet — which Murkowski said she had not seen — in which the now-OMB nominee framed the senator as being "high on [her] own supply" of corporate tax-cutting "garbage." Pretty mild stuff in the thunderdome of politics. Anyway, Ms. Kim thereupon showed the tweet to the unalerted senator, whose reaction was underwhelming.

The resultant fury, however, was immense. In the minds of Tanden supporters — the above mix, that is — Kim became another among Trump's enemies of the people; she had further poisoned, you see, the nominee's chances of confirmation via Murkowski-enlightenment. What she had actually done was her job.

"Racist, sexist, and misogynist abuse quickly began overwhelming Kim’s social media feeds and email," observed the Daily Beast — abuse such as, "What a coonish thing to do to fuck up another POC nomination on behalf of whites. Dumbass snitch."

What a dumbass response. "What she did was basic journalism," replied the Post's national editor. "The racist and sexist attacks have been vicious — and typical," he continued, and "no one should have to deal with [them]."

After all the progressive slander of Joe Biden, we swiftly reposed in the comfortable, reassuring knowledge of the right as the typically vicious ones. But the non-right can be miserably human, too, awash in racism, sexism and groundless hate. Many of them are the very ones who hound other violators of contemporary sensibilities out of their jobs, so add hypocrisy to the list. When confronting vileness, we truly are in a both-sides world.

What many observers of CPAC might be telling us

CPAC is living up to its hype. Its speakers are railing against "woke mobs" and "Marxist leftists." Ted Cruz framed modern conservatism as one of Jedi "rebels" battling the left's "rigid conformity." Florida governor Ron DeSantis explained that espousing actual policies, the stuff of traditional politics, must be subordinated to hating the radical, perilous opposition. Soothing confirmations of a "rigged" 2016 presidential election are harbored, as is a gilded Donald Trump in stars-and-stripes trunks.

Should one suspect that CPAC is but a microscopic version of today's conservatism, one should think microcosm instead.

A Republican majority wants Trump as the party's 2024 nominee, and former WH chief of staff Mark Meadows says that "we will see the start of planning for the next administration and I can tell you — the people that are at the top of that list, all of them have Trump as their last name." According to one poll, the afore-noted majority stands at 54%, which in itself would secure the slot for Trump, but if it dwindles, his support would still be strong enough to slice and dice any internal competition. This assumes the golden calf isn't housed at a state work farm by 2024.

Don Jr. tells Fox News that "the establishment where they … help failing candidates who have no charisma, no personality, no political chops, get over the line simply because they've been there a few years; that's the kind of nonsense that has to go, and I think it will."

It already has. Two of Michigan’s "establishment" Republicans, Fred Upton and Peter Meijer, have been censured by their party's Jedi rebels. Illinois' Adam Kinzinger has received the same treatment, as has Wyoming's Liz Cheney. And these censured ones are not outliers.

In Michigan, once the home of Gerald Ford and George Romney, the Senate majority leader has been tortured into labeling the Jan. 6 insurrection a "hoax."

The most powerful Republican pol in the U.S. Congress swears he'll support for president the man he's condemned as a criminal. No torture was required; just seeing the instruments of pain was enough.

The head of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee has said he'll not ask Trump to forego outspoken support of primary challengers to establishment Republican senators, the committee head's own sitting Republican senators, such as John Thune and Lisa Murkowski.

Top all this off with the recent announcement by Q — the ideological heartthrob of CPAC, that microcosm of modern conservatism — that Trump will not, as previously announced, reclaim the throne on Mar. 4. Why? Because the previous announcement was in fact a "false flag" operation invented by dark leftist forces to "make the whole movement look dumb."

Although "Mount Stupid" is indeed modern conservatism's new residence, we should keep in mind that the Dunning-Kruger effect also envelopes those not within the inner circles of dumbness. Outsiders often mistake the most idiotic among us as less than superlatively idiotic, since grappling with such stupidity is beyond their usual, middling estimations of their fellow man. Thus is the bar of stratospheric imbecility lowered, and the outrageously dumb is deemed somewhat normal.

And then we have a problem, as we did in 2016.

Monty Python calling Mitch McConnell: We absolutely need you

I keep hearing that Mitch McConnell's vow to "absolutely" support Trump's nomination as the GOP's standard bearer in 2024 was a characteristically "transactional" act by the Grim Reaper. In this instance, "transactional" is an odd modifier to apply, since transactions are exchanges of something of value between two or more parties, some expectation of even-steven balance.

But a quid pro quo on Trump's part is never transacted, unless of course he's extorting a foreign partner into digging up dirt on a political opponent. Thus Mitch's pledge was altogether singular in action — not transactional.

His ingratiating panting, wagging tail and tongue over lip do amuse, however. Not long ago this second-most powerful man in the Republican Party stood on the Senate floor and denounced Trump as being criminally, "practically and morally responsible for provoking" the Capitol insurrection, which Mitch described as "a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty." Now he'll be absolutely supportive of the traitor, should the traitor choose to grab the nomination, again, sporting the flag he disgraced.

I say choose to grab rather than run for the nomination, since no real running would be any more forthcoming than a Trump quid pro quo. As Mitt Romney said this week to the NY Times, "Among the names being floated as potential contenders in 2024, if you put President Trump in there among Republicans, he wins in a landslide." The base also enjoys sticking pins in each other's eyes, as well as other sado-masochistic delights.

Now that's transactional.

What was McConnell's pledge? Well, like he said, disgraceful.

***

Times must be difficult for Mitch McConnell. His rigid, uncompromising support for Trump continues, although the whole edifice is crumbling

Nevertheless...chin up, Moscow !

If you can find it, that is...

It went missing around the same time your spine disappeared

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) May 29, 2020

A three-ring circus of spin

As is true with progressives, their bewitching counterpart, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, never disappoints in its eagerness to turn water into molasses via the magic of spin. It may look like water, it may pour like water and indeed taste like water, but our senses deceive us, they insist. And today, WSJ board member James Freeman offers our eyes an illusory, threefold trick.

First he goes on at some length decrying the Biden administration's $1.9 trillion covid package. "Old Democratic friends have been warning President Joe Biden not to inflict his supersized stimulus plan on a growing economy in no need of rescue," he writes, confusing "relief" with "stimulus." I may be about as ready to stop with this correction as I am in reminding journalists that objects in prepositional phrases take the accusative case.

The administration's plan is meant fundamentally, just as Joe Biden campaigned on, to "Build back better": to extend the child tax credit; to help open safer schools; to assist state and local governments pounded by pandemic costs and tax losses, resulting in services cut; to extend higher unemployment benefits for those workers not yet enjoying what the Journal declares a magnificent economy, as well as issue one-time "hurdle" checks, you might say. The relief package is often touted as economic aid, but the aid is for the other half, which the Journal conceals behind a black curtain.

Freeman also scoffs at candidate Biden and Kamala Harris' outspoken mistrust of the Trump administration's "ability … to oversee the approval of safe and effective vaccines…. They now find themselves having to persuade the public to have confidence in the resulting achievements." The second observation has nothing to do with the first; to say it does is mere sleight of hand. Anyone with a newspaper subscription would have mistrusted Trump to do anything fairly, honestly and competently, thus confidence in vaccine developments is but a pleasant surprise.

What Mr. Freeman really wants to giggle and tee-hee about, though, is Politico's reporting that "nearly three dozen House Democrats on Monday called on Biden to relinquish his sole authority to launch nuclear weapons." Yet Politico misstated the request: It should have written the sole authority, not "his." The request is a blanketed one, extending past Biden's tenure. This, even Freeman concedes. Nevertheless he cannot resist: "After Mr. Biden’s faulty diagnosis and treatment plan for the economy, now it seems that some members of his party don’t even want to trust him with nuclear weapons…. It might be hard for any president not to take this message personally."

Trump certainly would have, as would any childlike mind and snickering voice like Freeman's. But President Biden happens to be an adult. That's something the WSJ editorial board and other wizards of right-wing spin will persist in obfuscating, especially having become accustomed to Trump's toddler tantrums and infantile brooding.

Here we go again. Is it the minimum wage - or the public option?

It's baffling. Still.

With the Senate parliamentarian's ruling that the minimum wage increase in the covid relief package would violate reconciliation rules, "progressives who have pushed for the elimination of the filibuster … [said] Democrats had no choice but to change the rules of the Senate to enable them to push through crucial policy changes," reports the Times.

Said Bernie Sanders, "I’m confident that we have a majority in the United States Senate, including the vice president, that would vote to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour." Other options are to overrule the parliamentarian by majority vote or, as the Washington Post notes, to tie the wage increase to the elimination of tax deductions for vastly profitable yet peanuts-paying corporations.

We sympathize with Sen. Sanders' frustration. But virtually no one has confidence in his confidence about a Democratic majority being ready to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. At least two Democratic senators have said no. Now, with the promise of 16 new Air Force bases in West Virginia and Arizona, they might suddenly realize the folly of their naysaying. Absent that, Democrats lack the votes, rules changes or not. The same goes with overruling the parliamentarian or lashing the wage increase to corporate tax deductions.

Not to be discouraged, progressive senators and fellow activists will go right on ignoring the reality that looms so vividly in the U.S. Senate. It's a replay of 2009's public-option blindness.

Not at all baffling is Sen. Lindsey Graham's typically hypocritical observation that the parliamentarian's "decision reinforces [the rule that] reconciliation cannot be used as a vehicle to pass major legislative change — by either party — on a simple majority vote." Whenever confronted by such fussy objections, Republicans — not Sen. Warren — have a plan for that: Just fire the parliamentarian, as Majority Leader Trent Lott did in 2001, when a tax cut! was threatened.

Neither would this, however, be an option for Democrats. Were Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to sack the parliamentarian, the entire relief bill — which both the Times and Post still insist on calling a "stimulus" package — would go down.

I should by now be acclimated to progressives' awesome ability to gaze straight into the face of unfortunate reality — and deny it is there. But somehow, they surprise me every time.

Set your Dick Tracy watches, kids: Could be, Trump to show his hand

As we observe from safe distances CPAC's lollapalooza of rapture and hoedown of crazy, we also inch closer to the Donald's re-debut, though I repeat myself.

There he will slap down the tarot cards, and we shall read them. Or try. His mystic intimations flung far from his script may permit us to divine just how much he intends to deepen the GOP's divide — and pose himself as the party's ultimate savior in 2024.

According to several, anonymous anthropologists with firsthand knowledge of the orange primate's tropical habits, he indeed intends to nominate himself for the klan's highest honor come 2024, and forthwith "hopes to prove to both critics and supporters that he is the GOP's most effective puppeteer" — which means dangling beads, baubles and blankets before the obsequious and bashing the crap out of less crap-filled Republicans.

"We've seen this for years now — Trumpian offers of encouragement that are more like the mafioso 'nice little business you have here' threats," says a seasoned Republican strategist.

I do not begrudge the Donald this tactic. For what else has he got? A far-reaching political program? A philosophical vision? Anything resembling a winning platform on which the right can run? Such things are trifles in Trump's eyes.

He prefers the alternative statesmanship of one Joe Barboza Jr., a South Boston gangster nicknamed "the Animal." (Joe finally got whacked, whereupon even his lawyer remarked, "With all due respect to my former client, I don't think society has suffered a great loss." So take heart, Tom, Ted and Nikki. You have options.)

It appears the ex-ex-president also has another Jr. in mind, for his personal use and customary exploitation. That of course would be little Donnie, who so bestirred the rabble throughout Sr.'s last campaign. (Ivanka is now said to be done with politics.)

Don Jr. knows how to draw a hate-bursting crowd, maligning Democrats, cursing RINOs and casting all manner of conspiracy theories before the politically besotted. As the perfect spawn of ape ugly, Don Jr. is, as well, Dad's perfect proxy for the midterms. Plus, Dad will have more time to play golf.

What to make of Trump Sunday in Orlando, host of CPAC's hoedowning extravaganza beginning today? Speak beak, surprise us by speaking not in riddles but with that rarest of Trumpian roars — some measure of clarity. Then we'll know how much popcorn and champagne to lay in for the next four years.

No fury like a woman scorned

A coffee break.

On Jan. 6, idiot Pennsylvanian Richard Michetti paused his insurrectionist doings so that he could text his ex-girlfriend, bragging about and pictorially displaying his and others' heroic violence and vandalism at the nation's Capitol Building.

The young, amorously inexperienced and unknowledgeable woman-whisperer Mr. Michetti then did the silliest thing. He pissed off the former Ms. Right.

"If you can’t see the election was stolen you’re a moron," he typed, evidently to a woman who was 100 times his politically cerebral match and 101 times his match overall. This — Michetti's word-portrait of his erstwhile squeeze — she did not take well. And so she did what any smart mob mole would do. She sang, informing the FBI the following day that lover boy was there at the riot, and passing along to the long arm of the law her ex-beau's texts, pictures and videos.

Michetti now faces charges of "knowingly entering a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct," which might bring him years of imprisonment, where he would encounter a whole different kind of amorousness.

This post is somewhat mistitled. Perhaps it should more properly read, "No stupidity like a man bragging — and dissing the ex." Woe to the male idiots who believe in getting in the last nasty word; their would-be unfortunate targets will trip them up every time.

Pelosi wants a useful commission; McConnell wants a show trial

Mitch McConnell is only doing his job by opposing Nancy Pelosi's Democrat-heavy, 7-4 composition of a proposed commission to study the Jan. 6 insurrction.

And Pelosi is only doing her job by loading the commission with Democrats.

Even four Republicans sitting on a panel in judgment of anything connected to Trump are four Republicans too many. Their appointments would be akin to having had Himmler and Goering investigate the origins of the Reichstag fire. (In that case, a communist did in fact set the building aflame, but that's neither here nor there; Hitler's henchmen would have reached that conclusion no matter what.)

Although McConnell now sits in opposition to Donald the Democracy-wrecker, he remains loyal to his party's conflation of 1/6 insurrectionists and those protesting systemic racism. Never has a right-wing atrocity gone unmet by charges of selfsame leftist perfidy. It's what Republicans do, they do it well, and that's why Ms. Pelosi has opted to disallow their coequal table-turning.

Says Mitch: “If Congress is going to attempt some broader analysis of toxic political violence across this country, then in that case, we cannot have artificial cherry-picking of which terrible behavior does and does not deserve scrutiny." Sounds reasonable. Except it's not. Last summer, the left's "terrible behavior" was aimed at the rule of law's misuse, whereas Trump's insurrectionists aimed at the rule of law itself.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says, in Politico's words, that Speaker Pelosi "does not want the commission to be focused on defending former President Donald Trump." Yet that would be the precise focus of an even bipartisan commission — just another Republican circus of cynical belligerence.

The Warsaw ghettoes of Palestine

Bibi Netanyahu. What a guy.

Tuesday, the Israeli government promised thousands of covid vaccines to the Czech Republic, Honduras, Guatemala and Hungary in tacit exchange for their acknowledgement of Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem, which is in violation of a U.N. resolution. (Another one, as illegal West Bank settlements continue.)

Palestinians, living in oppressive squalor in Israel's occupied territories, have yet to receive even one vial of the covid vaccine.

The Israeli government has implied that vaccine distribution to Palestinian authorities is forthcoming, yet "the military department that coordinates between Israel and the Palestinian leadership had not yet received government authorization."

Palestinians have no control over their imports, so they've nowhere else to turn.

The Israeli government is also in violation of Geneva accords, which require occupying powers to assist in the occupied's public health measures.

But what does the Israeli government care about U.N. resolutions and Geneva conventions? It has the United States in its pocket. So it's free to play diplomatic games, deprive the colonized of life-saving vaccines, and operate all the Warsaw ghettoes it wants.

I apologize for an earlier post — now deleted — in which I mistook Rob Portman for Ron Johnson. I had just written a piece on Johnson, here, and then skipped on to the WaPo opinion page and saw Portman's op-ed, but I had Johnson on the brain. I sincerely regret the error, as all good weasely editors say. 

Kill the Sunday shows

It won't happen, of course. Legacy broadcast networks reap mucho bucks from publicly relating defense contractors and other institutional advertisers. However the once-revered Sunday shows of "public affairs, news and information" are anything but. This has been the case for I don't know how long; still, the programs persist in pushing the fallacy that they're there to inform. We could learn more from the inside of a matchbook cover.

The issue re-erupted, sort of, because of host Jonathan Karl's interview of House minority embarrassment Steve Scalise on ABC's "This Week," this week. The even larger embarrassment came when Karl asked Scalise if Trump was responsible for Jan. 6 and if he, the congressman, believed the election was stolen. Two simple, straightforward questions.

Scalise thereupon engaged in — I'll gussy up his response with a $20 word — successive tergiversations: "there’s a lot of blame to go around"; "millions of people are still concerned about" fraud and "states that did not follow their state laws."

Karl's quick-witted sleuthing and grilling? He dropped it, both its, and scurried along.

Not only "This Week" is rife with this manner of journalistic dereliction. All the Sunday shows are. The exceptional occasions when they're not only prove the rule. Cable shows also have the nasty habit of interviewing talking-pointed pols and administration officials, whose remarks you could script before they utter them, and are usually met with — next question. My habitual response is to click off, whether Republican or Democratic intonements.

I really don't care if these programs lose guests if those delicate guests run into pushback. The programs do care. They must interview somebody. Besides, their content is provided only as filler between commercial breaks. The programmers also don't care if I don't care.

Yet here's the Good News, The Word, a Gospel of Joy, dear Sunday-morn congregationists. MeTV has been airing Warner Brothers cartoons, Saturdays a.m., complete with Elmer, Bugs and Daffy. I wouldn't know how, but I'm sure you could tape them and run them in place of Sunday's Jonathan Karl — assuming you can tell the difference.

Neera Tanden and the politics of Puritan scorn

Politico reports that Neera Tanden's confirmation hearings, scheduled for today, have been "postponed," which suggests her nomination as OMB director "is on the brink of collapse."

As the world knows, Tanden's greatest offense was to have tweeted perhaps 1 percent of the wrath of confirmed Trump appointees. But Senate Republicans and the Democratic Party's Joe Manchin — maybe others — have had their novelistic Jane Austen sensibilities insurmountably upset by the unvirtuous Ms. Tanden's bluntness, which included,

… the Oh-close-my-ears! characterization of Sen. Susan Collins as "the worst." I doubt even puckered spinsters went screaming.

… Tanden's casting of Mitch McConnell as Voldemort. (For Christ's sake, the man revels in calling himself "the Grim Reaper.")

… her insult toward Bernie Sanders, which particularly charmed me.

Could it be, could it just be, that there is a trifle element of reactionary misogyny in Senate play? Whoops, now I'll never be confirmed as President Chris Murphy's OMB director. My own bluntness, however much smoothed by sarcasm, has doomed me.

I speculated from the beginning that Tanden's nomination was a rather strange and decidedly risky one. Her progressive-conservative views had also ruffled the dodos' feathers to feigned extremes. Now it's payback time — for the birds.

That said, I'm also of the unyielding opinion that POTUSes deserve whomever they wish to appoint. But the 50-50 U.S. Senate has suddenly decided to advise and consent, which is always the very riskiest of political propositions.

Of Ron Johnson, Tucker Carlson, and CPAC: a coven of crazy

Sen. Ron Johnson has become a caricature of a spoof of a pathological parody of himself. He's far from alone — let it never be said that Trumpian burlesque is, in clinical numbers, an insignificant disease; it's just that Ron, born under the stars of Minnesota nice, kind of went mean and crazy in Oshkosh.

Having already denied that the Capitol attack was an "armed insurrection," yesterday he consumed his Senate committee time not by asking any questions of law-enforcement officials, but by reading from one guy's lone letter published by a singular, far-right website which swore that Trump supporters' historic atrocity of 1/6 was, in fact, no doing of Trump supporters.

No, the riot was "festive," said Johnson; "a very few didn't share the jovial, friendly, earnest demeanor of the great majority"; the real villains were "Antifa or other leftist agitators," as the one dude attested; the Capitol Police misjudged the festive crowd and overreacted, and that's what caused the violence.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has observed that "Johnson’s grasp on reality has been tenuous for years." But his dissociative disorder is now complete. And, as noted, he's not alone. A right-wing media host has confirmed for other reality-trollers that "there’s no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on Jan. 6" — oh, "and contrary to what you've been hearing, there's also no evidence this was a, quote, 'armed insurrection.'"

The upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference has slated no less than seven seminars centering on a somewhat different tactic: Trump's election-fraud alerts contained a lot of truths, thus, implicitly, the 1/6 insurrection was inevitable, understandable, and forgivable.

Yesterday I wrote, "American politics has entered a new age" — one in which the preposterous and the most radically unbelievable are the coin of nearly half the electorate. Season-ticket holders to the GOP's theatre of the absurd are compelled by propaganda artists to nevertheless believe, or be banished. We have witnessed this sad, unmindful degeneracy among millions throughout history. It never ends well for the believers.