The Carpentariat

A wee bit of humor

 

Personal housekeeping note

I have a medical procedure early Tuesday (for which I may need to stay overnight) that I need to prep for (among other things) today, and another early appointment Wednesday. So this week may be a bit bumpy. See you when I can, which should be rather soon.

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Meanwhile … My visiting Missouri brother — who's chauffeuring me this week to assorted hospital procedures imbued with great drugs — is somewhat politically incorrect (as I am), so while I'm gone, I thought I'd treat you to at least something; some things some people can become rather preposterously irate about. See below.

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Your host is still kicking (actually I'm not supposed to be kicking or even moving my right leg much, since my right groin's artery, which was opened up this morning, is liable to reopen and start spewing blood like Regan spewed the Devil's green gruel)  But, in short,  since I believe you deserve an explanation for these intolerable absences, what took place this morning was that a cardiologist intentionally scarred my heart's electrical circuitry — scar tissue won't conduct electricity, you see — so that my pulse would no longer get out of control, due to rather exotic electrical excitements (pulse rates of 200+), even at rest. As I have already informed some very good friends, one fucking lethal disease at a time, right? Pulmonology tomorrow morning (Wednesday), because of the pulmonary embolism (!) I had in May. I'm penciling in a deadly stroke or brain-damaging blood clot for next week.   

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All is well, just need a day of recovery. I intend to return Friday morning. And thanks to everyone who left comments or sent emails. You folks — you "gals and guys" — are the best. 

George Will's "The Grapes of Rugged Individualism"

George Will has an amusing little piece that has me both historically and literarily befuddled. His thrust is a condemnation of national conservatives, who "regard the objects of their compassion [mainly working whites] as inert victims, who are as passive as brown paper parcels, awaiting government rescue from circumstances."

But then he writes the oddest thing: "In contrast, there was dignity in the Joad family (of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath), who, when the Depression and Dust Bowl battered Oklahoma, went west seeking work."

Yes, they did. Yet in reaching California, they discovered an excess of labor, resulting in low wages and worker exploitation. The only decent temporary housing camp in which the Joads stayed was operated by FDR's Resettlement Administration, a 1935 New Deal brainchild of economist Rexford Tugwell, intended to provide livable housing for migrant families (and eventually resettle them on arable land). Congress, however, regarded the housing-relocation program as too socialistic, and thus starved it of funds.

In Steinbeck's novel, one violent thing leads to another, causing Tom Joad, the novel's protagonist, to finally declare to his ever-suffering mother:

"I been thinking about us…, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together and yelled….

"[So] I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too."

Hence the Joads' rugged individualism of Will's column was, in Steinbeck's novel, socialist. That was the novelist's entire point. Did George not read the book, or catch its socialist message?

This week, Joe Biden just about cinched the Democratic nomination

Oh my, Andrew has changed his mind again.

In May he postulated that "Joe Biden Might Be the Best Bet to Beat Trump." I quite agreed with Sullivan's general reasoning on Biden's fitness for high office and his ridicule of the liberal media and Left Twitter's vapid consensus: "[that] Biden is hopelessly out of touch — too old, too white, too male, too handsy, too racist, too misogynist, too unwoke, and far too compromised by his past positions to be the Democratic nominee in 2020."

This one man's opinion, plus Sully's, was that the Left Twitter and too often the liberal media are suffering from severe gastrointestinal backup — and about that, I should know.

Then, in July, Sullivan mused that "Biden … is beginning to resemble the somewhat out-of-it Robert Mueller" — a cruel, unjustifiably abrasive line he invoked in his worrisomely despondent "The American System Is Already Failing."

Then, yesterday, he was back in May: "Biden Knows How to Make the Moral Case Against Trump." In a powerful piece of polemics, Sullivan wrote that a "really unexpected thing happened to me this week. I felt a slight but measurable twinge of hope…. Joe Biden’s Iowa address last Wednesday finally did what needs to be done…: it framed next year’s presidential and congressional campaigns as a battle for the soul of America….

"The speech should reassure people — as it reassured me — that the Democratic primary base … is not wrong or cowardly or sexist for consistently putting Biden at the top of their preferences." [Sully just recently described the Democratic Party, its primary base and its rank and file "as the lame farce we knew it was" and "as reckless as the leadership is feckless.")

Yet, contrary to appearances, this post is not about Andrew Sullivan and his mercurial opinions of Joe Biden and his party. It is, rather, about why I've unwaveringly believed that Biden is the party's best nominee bet: From a moral perspective, Uncle Joe has consistently assailed Trump as the immoral, or amoral, jackass that he is. "This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left" — Isaiah 30:21.

Of course Biden and running mate and all Democratic candidates at virtually all office-chasing levels should talk on the trail of climate change, healthcare enhancements (especially a public option), racial unity, immigration reform, the terrors of white nationalism, tax re-reform, ending this trade-war madness, the vital importance of supporting our international allies, etc. etc.

But Democrats' overriding theme should be, aggregately, Trump's utterly unredeeming qualities, his depravities and debaucheries, his hypocrisies, his vile racism, his cleaving of families and torture of immigrant children and glorification of white nationalism, his violations of the law and contempt for the rule of law, his divisive rhetoric and less-than-subtle incantations of white supremacy.

And finally, Democrats should quote Biden whenever and wherever appropriate — which is everywhere: "In history, we’ll look back on this presidency as an aberrant moment in American history. But if Donald Trump is reelected, I believe he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. If we give Donald Trump four more years, this will not be the country envisioned by Washington and Adams and Jefferson. We give Donald Trump four more years, this will not be the nation bound together by Lincoln. We give Donald Trump four more years, this will not be the nation lifted up by Roosevelt or inspired by Kennedy. It will not be the nation that Barack Obama proved bends toward justice."

And Democrats should quote it because it's totally compelling,  genuinely profound, and absolutely true.

The Fog of Morning

When I saw the Times headline this morning, I rushed to see if they were writing about Trump or Epstein?

The World’s Smartest Chimp Has Died

An absolutely bonkers trade-off

Roll Call:

"Senate Republicans are looking to pay for President Donald Trump’s border wall in part by putting about $5 billion less in" — Michael Scott's drum roll — health and education.

"Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican, wrote an allocation for the fiscal 2020 Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that is about $5 billion lower than it would have been to provide funding for the wall."

A wall, mind you. If there's a "crisis" on the southern border, it has to do with the stinking, overcrowded, underfunded, disease-inducing prisons for immigrant children and their separated parents — not the lack of a wall. But Trump and Senate Republicans want to reduce $5 billion in spending on your health and your children's education so that a worthless hunk of concrete can be mounted by anyone with a ladder.

Unhinged can't begin to describe these people.

The plight, and Trumpian blight, of the American farmer

How effortlessly can pro-Trump American farmers be suckered by the globe's preeminent con man?

The latter's trade war with China has vastly contributed to record highs in recent years in farm delinquencies and bankruptcies. Earlier this week China declared it would cease buying all U.S. agricultural goods. Farmers' only alleviation has been Trump's dumping of your tax dollars — $25 billion worth — into farm relief; an emergency measure spawned by Trump's trade incompetence and Bushlike determination to stay the course ... of tariffs.

So far he has devilishly bamboozled our farmers three times. In the early months of America's oncoming agricultural devastation, Trump tweeted that "China has agreed to buy massive amounts of ADDITIONAL Farm/Agricultural Products—would be one of the best things to happen to our farmers in many years!" That was a no-go. Months later, he again tweeted that "Farmers will be a very BIG and FAST beneficiary of our deal with China. They intend to start purchasing agricultural product immediately."

Again, this year:

If a deal is made with China, our great American Farmers will be treated better than they have ever been treated before!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 26, 2019

Also so far, there is no hint — not even from Trump1 — that MS-13 caravans or Mexican invasions have caused these farmers their economic pain. But that sort of propaganda b.s.on a nationwide basis is, largely, why they've stood by him. So they deserve to be suckered.

The Bulwark, a NeverTrump publication, makes this major, concluding point, however: For post-Trump Republicans "we already know the arguments they’re reserving for the moment this is all over—the moment this miserable presidency whimpers to a close, with no grand triumph over China having ever arrived, no promised resurrection of the Rust Belt having been carried out, nothing to show for the trade war except higher prices for American consumers and shuttered American farms. They will rant and rage about how the president would have carried the day, would have brought China to its knees—were it only not for those wretched leftists and establishment Republicans who opposed him at every turn."

We can hope the Bulwark is wrong, but should doubt they are.

McConnell will screw the public once again

“I think the urgency of this is not lost on any of us, because we’ve seen too many of these horrendous acts,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell today.

"But Mr. McConnell said … he wanted Senate staff members to work on gun safety legislation so the chamber could take something up when it returns in September" (italics mine).

It'll never happen. McConnell delayed consideration and debate until September, knowing that national outrage and demands for new gun-control measures will have dissipated by then.

This is the sort of behavior that made McConnell the magnificently malignant politician he is. He knows precisely how to shaft any national necessity he particularly dislikes.

He's Trump with a brain. And every bit as duplicitous and mean-spirited. 

Even a C-, disbarred lawyer could win this one for McCabe

Remember the Old West, Issac Parker days of summary judgments? Does this really need to be litigated?

"Andrew McCabe, the acting FBI director who authorized an investigation into President Trump for ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice, filed a lawsuit against the bureau and the Justice Department on Wednesday, alleging he was illegally demoted and fired as part of a plot by Trump to remove those who were not politically loyal to him," the Washington Post reports.

He outdoes even Dan Quayle

George Carlin died well before the most bountiful embodiment of all three human "merits" was elected in 2016.

Quite aside from Trump, I once had a friend who worked in Congress when Dan Quayle was a senator. Really stupid senators were known among congressional staffers as "lightweights," but my buddy said Quayle was so fucking stupid they had to come up with the new term,"featherweight."

Trump? He would have been known as altogether weightless. 

The QAnon phenom

Don't know much about history / Don't know much biology / Don't know much about a science book / Don't know much about the french you took / But you do — do you not — want to know about QAnon, the online, pro-Trump conspiracy theory outfit whose adherents should be straitjacketed and industrially dosed with Thorazine?

WaPo's "cultural columnist" (gosh I'd love to be one of those), Alyssa Rosenberg, presents a useful encapsulation of its believers' beliefs:

"Trump and his allies, including former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, are waging a covert campaign to root out an elite child-sex-trafficking ring. Mass arrests are imminent. John F. Kennedy Jr. is about to reveal that he has been alive all along so he can take Vice President Pence’s place on the 2020 Republican presidential ticket. And a mysterious government official using the handle 'Q Clearance Patriot' is recruiting soldiers to the cause."

Q-researcher Travis View explains to Rosenberg that "Q offers something a hell of a lot more [than voting]. You can sit at your computer and search for information and then post about what you find, and Q basically promises that through this process, you are going to radically change the country, institute this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this historical movement that will be written about for generations."

Almost bloodless does, evidently, apply to QAnon. However unaffiliated Q-like extremists have murdered dozens of members of synagogues and mosques — "And on the message boards where racists lionize the killers, they often speak of these events in the competitive language of body counts."

But hey, the real Q-wackos aren't all bad. "Earlier this year," writes Rosenberg, "a man allegedly killed reputed [Gambino] mafia boss Frank Cali while attempting to perform what he apparently described as a QAnon-inspired citizens arrest." Stupid, yes, but as Bugsy Siegel once noted with some semblance of humanity, "We only kill each other."

Trump's three advantages - plus one

The Times' Frank Bruni makes a point this morning that marks, for Democrats, either quadrennial incredulity or quadrennial fury. For me it's both; you also, most likely.

He first notes that Trump's electoral advantages in 2020 are perhaps greater than commonly believed; the president possesses the power of incumbency, an Electoral College map in which the emotional issues of immigration and race may in fact increase white-voter turnout, and the near certainty of (Bruni calls it merely the "possibility of") Russia's — or others' — insidious interference on Trump's behalf.

Three advantages, then, for the Oval Office ogre. But there's also a fourth, significant advantage for Trump, which actually has nothing to do with the incumbent: the media's frequent obsession with the most insignificant of Democratic flubs, errors and bloopers.

Bruni honorably takes some personal blame. In the most recent round of Democratic debates, "dozens if not scores of journalists, including me, picked apart Joe Biden’s closing statement, in which he badly bungled what were supposed to be instructions to send a text message of his name to a certain phone number. Some also noted that he rued the possibility of 'eight more years' of Trump rather than 'eight years,' which was obviously what he meant."

Some, many, journalists also chastised Biden for his possibly hyperbolic claim about his involvement in withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, and Bruni laments that he wrote in his post-debate "analysis" about Biden's "way in which he trails off at the end of a sentence or an argument." So did President Eisenhower; Tom Jefferson had a squeaky voice; and FDR would say in his patrician manner: "agane and agane," rather than "again and again." BFD, as Biden would say.

How many times must we suffer these picayune nothings when it comes to clearly wiser and more experienced Democratic candidates and nominees? With Al Gore we heard endlessly about his bodily stiffness; with John Kerry, his windsurfing; with Barack Obama, his fist-bumping; and you-know-what with, and about, Hillary Clinton.

As Bruni notes, Trump's "three advantages may matter less than [this] fourth one."

The media unfairly make clowns and misfits of our more prominent and distinguished Democratic pols. And to put it in many voters' vernacular: That really sucks.

Seven Democratic heroes and a harpy from hell

 

 

 

(Also Klobuchar and Sanders.)

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As for the harpy?

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I was unable to find an Elizabeth Warren video on the mass shootings, which suggests a poor communications staff. 

"EXPERIENCE"

Some men break your heart in two,
  Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you;
  And that cleans up the matter.

— Dorothy Parker (d. 1967)

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Notwithstanding Alexander Pope, could brevity ever be so soulfully witty?

(I'm too laid up to bear much serious news or gag-worthy attention to Trump, so I have sunk to borrowed humor. Sorry.)

A surrealistic "presidency"

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government" — Will Rogers

From the Times:

Bundespräsident Trump "began a day set aside for healing by delivering a series of political grievances against liberals and the media … exhibit[ing] the divisive language that has prompted some in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, to protest his visits."

"Around midnight, he attacked Beto O’Rourke..., mocking him for having a 'phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage'…. He lashed out at the mayor of Dayton, calling her a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders and of antifa, a radical leftist group."

"Trump [also] quoted a conservative television news outlet’s reporting that 'the Dayton, Ohio, shooter had a history of supporting political figures like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and ANTIFA.'"

"Before he departed on Wednesday … he dismissed criticism about his use of divisive language. 'I think my rhetoric brings people together.'"

"On Monday, Mr. Trump delivered a short speech from a teleprompter in which he condemned 'racism, bigotry, and white supremacy'" — in other words, himself.