Data Doofus Download

Why even be in Congress if you don’t believe in doing your job?

Just quit and let someone who actually gives a damn do it instead of acting like a useless piece of furniture when babies are shot with AR15s that we let teen boys impulse buy before they can legally have a beer. https://t.co/f9rdJ40kEJ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 25, 2022

Chuck Todd loves his “Data Download” because he thinks figures not only don’t lie, they explain themselves, and statistics provide all the context one needs.

This morning it was the decline in people (per polls) who think government works, a decline since the halcyon days of America still in shock over 9/11. Never mind that fantastic failure of government didn’t immediately convince people “government doesn't work."  Funny how people never feel that way after a massive failure of government (hem-hem, Pearl Harbor), even if prior to that time they were convinced government wasn't doing much good (my father was 15 when Pearl Harbor was attacked; he still wanted to enlist immediately.  Prior to that he recalled people calling the Works Progress Administration by it's initials, WPA.  Except they replaced the words with the derisive: We Piddle Around.  That program was a "failure."  Foreseeing the strike on Pearl Harbor (or rather, failing to), was not.  So it goes.)

Of course, since 9/11 we've had a two-term Democratic President and a Senate Majority Leader determined to make him a one-term President.  We've also had Obamacare and the Iran nuclear treaty and several other programs which the one-term Donald Trump destroyed, tried to destroy, or pulled us out of (and now Iraq is months away from achieving nuclear weapons.  Thanks, Trump!)  We've also seen the relentless GOP messaging that "GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WORK! (so turn it over to us!)," and the rise of clowns like Matt Gaetz and Gym Jordan and now, in the apotheosis of the "revolution" started by Newt Gingrich, the furniture pieces of Lauren Boebert and MTG.

And still poor Chuck was befuddled:  his precious statistics couldn't explain the dramatic decline in "trust" in government in 20+ years.

Republicans have spent the young century being sure government won't work, and when it fails spectacularly, as in the Covid crisis, they wait calmly for Democrats to take over, fix up everything, and then blame them for the mess the GOP created which it takes more than a news cycle (or, more fittingly, an election cycle) to put back together. 

What, for example, is the Republican plan to stop inflation?  Reagan said he had one, but Paul Volcker did it.  Reagan hated him for that, because the Fed almost put the economy into a recession.  Then it didn't, and inflation was broken, and Reagan beamed.  Ah, yes, I remember it well.

Took a long time for interest rates to come back down, though; especially on credit cards.  State laws on usury were never replaced; or only in a few places, anyway.  Government doesn't work, you know; only business does.  Remember that when Elon Musk is broke because Twitter made him fork over the $1 billion penalty and his Tesla stock has gone to junk because GM beat him handily to the driverless car and all Tesla self-driving, even autopilot, programs are pulled from their cars by the NTHSA.  Only Musk would be stupid enough to think the R&D department of GM wouldn't treat him like the trumped-up little auto maven that he is.  They have a bigger R&D department than Tesla has employees; and have about a century of development of automobiles behind them.

Musk has his Twitter account; and his conviction cars are just computers with four wheels.  How's that working out for him?  I don't like GM, but it won't surprise me if they crush Tesla like a bug.

But I digress.  We were talking about the blinkered ignorance of Chuck Todd.  Somehow that seems related, though.