Sunday, June 30, 2024

Shot

Chaser:
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Suffering The Children

 This is the way children behave:

"Here's the bottom line," Bannon asserted. "When this is adjudicated and reviewed, if they are certifiable, chain of custody, vote ballots and votes from American citizens, then hey, whatever that outcome is, is totally fair." 
"Until the time that we get that, all bets are off."
There were 60 cases rejected for lack of evidence; and every review of the vote count, including the ludicrous Cyber Ninja effort in Arizona, found no fraud and no evidence of serious misconduct.

Bannon here sets a whole chain of requirements vague enough to mean whatever he wants, so he can insist  on any one means he won’t accept the results. And what if he doesn’t? Who is Steve Bannon, that the country should give a shit what he thinks? Even failed candidate Trump can’t prevail against the national consensus and entire governmental apparatus declaring Trump lost. Trump insists he didn’t lose, but he’s the only one. Who really cares what he thinks, either? 

The nation survived his temper tantrum once. We can insist Trump accept the results (it’s even absurd to have to write this out), but when he doesn’t, who is he? A failed candidate and private citizen who’s a convicted felon with three more felony trials pending. So who cares what he thinks?
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Trump Even Sucks At Golf

Ron is right. Although one of Biden’s best lines was to challenge Trump to carry his own bag. But holding Trump to what he actually played, rather than what he says he played?

Well, that might well kill him. 😈


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What Fools These Pundits Be

"It wouldn’t work legally, it wouldn’t work politically…” When you set aside the handful of actual lawyers covering Trump’s criminal and civil trials, you realize at a moment like this the majority of the punditry doesn’t know shit from Shinola.

They’ve supposedly been at this long enough to know how things are done, and why they are done that way. They’ve practiced the solemn tones that make them sound wise, and rely on their experience to provide the veneer of expertise, but in truth they are ignorant as babes, as clueless as teenagers anxious to do whatever it takes to sit at the kewl table at lunchtime.

The August NYT editorial board pronounces that it must be so, and they all fall into line. Can it be so? Can the ballots be changed in all 50 at this late date? Would the Democratic voters stand for the replacement of their elected candidate because the NYT harrumphed? Is this how the real world works? 

Doesn’t matter. The pundits are in agreement. Ignore them at your peril. Or, rather, attend them at your peril because they don’t have a fucking clue, and they must opine, but they must not oppose the newly announced Received Opinion. To do so would be to appear partisan (the Philadelphia Inquirer is already guilty of this sin*); it would certainly get you barred from the kewl table.

The people who make this their career, based on their experience and acquired knowledge and their claims of expertise, cast all that aside the moment they opine, the better to follow the pack. But as they cast it off so easily, it’s fair to wonder if they ever had any knowledge at all. The lawyers who become journalists have at least some working knowledge of the courtroom. The non-lawyers are as insightful as if they were just dropped in-country and don’t even speak the language. As for political coverage, do they never understand at least the legal process underpinning the electoral one? Much less the political process that leads to a candidate being the party’s nominee?

Signs point to “No.”



*As a public service:
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News Is Gossip

The oligarchy?
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Saturday, June 29, 2024

There Can Only Be One Narrative

Two narratives just complicates things.
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The Selling Of The President

"If Biden were to accept reality and step aside, for once, Democrats would have a genuine opportunity to match Trump’s theatrical dominance," before adding, "What could draw more people into politics than a must-watch nightly drama, with the fate of the nation at stake?"
There it is, said plainly.

Mind you, conventions in my lifetime were spectacles organized to rally the delegates and inspire votes. I remember Nixon in ‘72, when primaries had largely superseded conventions. His inauguration was more like a four-day choreographed coronation. There was more attention paid to the fact of the planned “spontaneous events” (actually a term used in the planning documents) than to the carefully staged events themselves. And Nixon was about as comfortable performing in public as Trump is sitting quietly in court. He was, in other words, terrible at public performance.

But now it’s all about “theatrical dominance.” In 2016 it was “economic anxiety.” I don’t remember what the explanations were after that, except it’s never xenophobia, or nativism, or racism, or the plain appeal to “us,” (MAGA) v. “them” (all who are not MAGA, or worse, Democrats). Trump couldn’t be any plainer about this. He started it before descending the Trump Tower escalator, with Obama and birtherism. It took J6 before the MSM dared call it “the Big Lie” (a term that seems to have gone back on the shelf). They have yet to acknowledge Trump’s open and obvious racism (in display again in the last debate, but conveniently overshadowed by Biden’s failure to perform). Trump is an unrepentant racist, but he doesn’t speak with a drawl or claim southern roots, so I guess he can’t be? Or be said to be?

Or is racism just the hidden wound we must at all costs keep hidden? 

The funniest thing is how dated these arguments already are. Biden rose in the polls after the debate; but more concretely, he gained $27 million, far more than Trump is reporting (wait for it…). The idea that Biden must step aside is laughable, now more than ever. What’s even more absurd is the idea a brokered Democratic convention would be “must see TV!,” and lead to Democratic dominance in the polls (which always matter more than electoral outcomes, until those are the reality. At which point all these pundits turn into Otter from “Animal House:” “You fucked up! You trusted us!” If they’re ever that honest.). It is not a serious suggestion. It’s meant to be, but it objectively isn’t. Opinions are like assholes: everybody’s got one, especially on how to run political campaigns.
What else matters?

Of course, the only way Biden can prove he’s unfit for office is to withdraw his re-election bid now. If he doesn’t, he’ll be declared unfit by the MSM until he wins. At which point, just like the polls that will once again be wrong (although argued to be misunderstood, in the same way the Delphi Oracle was never wrong, just misinterpreted), this will all disappear as if it had never been.

After all, if the MSM doesn’t talk about it, we can’t, as a nation, think about it, right?  It worked in 2016, when nobody could imagine, much less think about, Trump winning. Right?
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Time Wounds All Heals

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NYT Is The New WSJ

The editorial board of your paper, the New York Times, is urging President Biden to leave the race," Witt began. "You can see the headline, we are putting it up again. That, as you know, is no small thing. Did it surprise you, Peter, that members made this call so quickly after the debate and what kind of impact this will have?" 
"Well, as your viewers I assume know, there's a difference between the news side of the New York Times and the editorial side," he began. "I have nothing to do with the editorial side, so just so everybody understands this is something completely separate from what I do in terms of reporting."
Except:
But obviously it is an important editorial platform in the country," he conceded before proceeding, "And I think, more importantly, it reflects a lot of conversation among Democrats, put aside the media for a second." 
"What you are hearing from people, many of whom have supported very strongly Joe Biden over the years is a great sense of disappointment, a great sense of fear and uncertainty and a great sense that maybe he's not at the point where he can carry this out through the fall much less the next four years," he elaborated. "That, I think, has been an undercurrent among many professional Democrats for a long time but now it's been brought in the open in a way we haven't seen before.
Democrats who are in Peter Baker’s contacts? Or Democrats who just gave Biden $27 million? Which ones count, Peter?

The MSM will give up this narrative when you pry it from their cold, dead fingers. 
CNN's Arlette Saenz reported that "Biden is currently in the Hamptons for a fundraising swing." 
She added that he "is trying to ensure that he can continue to bring in the money for his campaign at a time when many Democratic donors have expressed a lot of angst following his debate performance." 
"Now the president is accompanied today; the reporters traveling with him said that they saw Jeffrey Katzenberg, his campaign co-chair, who is also a longtime Hollywood producer with a lot of networking and contacts within that Hollywood circuit who has helped Biden raise money for other events, including that L.A. fundraiser with Obama, just a few weeks ago." 
She then, however, added that there is a bright spot for Biden. 
"But the Biden campaign today is also touting the fact that they raised 27 million over the over the past two days, that was on Thursday and Friday, a bright spot that they're trying to point to after the president's performance in the debate."
"Trying to point to” is doing a helluva lot of work there. One wonders why campaign can’t just point to it, the way the MSM allows Trump to continue to be a xenophobic racist who wildly inflates his crowd numbers and his fundraising. Somehow Trump is never trying to claim more support or money than he has, while Biden is trying to escape a problem that more people more and more clearly was invented by a performance obsessed media. 🎭
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ew And I Are Both “Old And Arrogant”

(For your convenience, Costa’s original post) (The dinosaurs continue to regard the mammals as interlopers. And no, that’s not a reference to Biden’s age.)

And now back to our regularly scheduled tweet storm:
I work as little as possible, tbh. I should think that would be obvious by now, but you never know.
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Consequences

Trump, at that time, brushed off the importance of that review, noting through a spokesman that he is "not the holder of any liquor license in New Jersey, and he is not an officer or director of any entity that holds a liquor license in New Jersey — or anywhere in the United States for that matter." 
But on Friday, New Jersey officials found otherwise. 
"A review by ABC indicates that Mr. Trump maintains a direct beneficial interest in the three liquor licenses through the receipt of revenues and profits from them, as the sole beneficiary of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust," the AG's spokesperson said. 
Crimes of "moral turpitude" 
Under state liquor law, a license may be pulled if anyone who either owns — or financially benefits from — the license is convicted of a crime of "moral turpitude." 
The licenses for Trump's New Jersey clubs were at risk under both criteria, given his underlying financial interest in the clubs and his new criminal record, experts told Business Insider. 
Trump, by his own sworn testimony, is the sole financial beneficiary of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, the umbrella entity that owns all of the Trump Organization, including the three LLCs that hold the clubs' liquor licenses. 
Trump was the sole trustee for a few months after leaving the White House, but then hopped back out in July 2021, leaving his eldest son as sole trustee as his criminal and civil investigations in New York, Georgia, Washington, DC and Florida intensified. 
Still, as he testified at his New York civil fraud trial in October that he Trump remained the "sole beneficiary" of the trust and its assets. That means as his liquor licenses prosper, so prospers Trump, in contrast with everyone else at Trump Org, who is just on salary.
Whether or not Trump loses his liberty, he’s going to lose now. I’d be interested to know what the laws are in Florida, because I don’t think NJ is unique in this.
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The Grassroots Don’t Know What’s Important

Let me just add to that:
 "As I walked off the stage on Thursday night, at the end of the highly anticipated 'Debate,' anchors, political reporters and all screamed that I had had the greatest debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates. They all said, effectively, 'Trump was fantastic!'" 
"This theme was universal, even at CNN & MSDNC, but by Friday evening it was all about the poor performance of Crooked Joe, and not so much about how well I did," he whined. "Oh well, that’s the way it is but, importantly, the result is the same!!!"
Because yes, the results are the same. Biden raised $27 million; and Trump tells himself lies so he feels good about himself. Pretty much all you need to know.
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NYT:RIP 🪦

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I Officially Give Up

 PBS just advertised a new show about disco. The thesis is that disco “start[ed] a revolution.”

No. Not at all. Not even close. Not nearly.

The language and the ideas of the Sixties: the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, women’s liberation, gay rights, trans rights (still fighting for all of them), economic justice, started by the true revolution of the Sixties, has now been so co-opted it is thoroughly meaningless. I thought MAGA had finally done that. I was wrong. This is truly the last straw.

Words have lost their meaning. Concepts have been bankrupted. It’s time to really wipe the slate clean and start over.



going to bars in the 70s. PBfriggin'S is claiming disco started a friggin' revolution? I was there and it was one of the things along with Happy Days nostalgia, StarWars, and other crap that pretty much ended anything revolutionary about the 1960s. I associate it with Nixon and Ford and me losing hope that gay liberation was going to turn into a real political movement like the Women's movement had been. I also associate disco with the backlash against second-wave feminism, the most poisonous of old line gender roles was a feature of disco. I associate it with a circle of NYC guys I knew whose lives revolved around clubbing, Ayn Rand was considered an intellectual among them. All of them died of AIDS in the 80s through 00's. I was encouraged to move to The City by a couple of them but when I saw how their lives revolved around going to the Mineshaft and The Toilet, I decided to stay in Maine and keep up with political action. Disco was putrid and the entire scene around it was, too.
Saturday Night Fever was hardly a paen to women’s lib; or gay liberation, for that matter. And Travolta’s real sequel to it was Urban Cowpie (I know; but I refuse). Which pretty much marked that disco was over, just as much as SNF announced it was real.
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The Need To Revive Shame

What black jobs are you talking about, Mr. Trump?" Steele asked. "I mean, you want to make a play to Black folks, you can't even show up at a [Black] barbershop?" 
"You call into a barbershop, and you're going to talk to us about Black jobs? Shut the hell up," he added. " You know, why do we even entertain this crazy from this fool?"
Trump means maids and cooks and groundskeepers and construction laborers. You know, the kinds of jobs blacks are qualified for.

Why this shameless racist is allowed in polite company is a question for us all. Why our loudest voices are concerned with Biden’s raspy voice and not appalled by Trump’s unrestrained racism (did they even notice?) is proof racism is our national hidden wound.

And proof that you cannot, indeed, shame a whore.
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Same As It Ever Was 🦕

It’s what killed the dinosaurs.🦖 🦕

You could look it up!
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🤷🏻‍♂️

It would almost be better if somebody were to say that. But somehow, being the first felon to run for president while awaiting sentencing (and three other felony trials) is not universally advocated as disqualifying. 

But one bad debate performance… 🤷🏻‍♂️ 
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So What Else Is New?

Adlai Stevenson is the politician I keep thinking of, the policy wonk with good ideas who rallied the delegates at the ‘52 convention and reluctantly won the nomination. He went on to lose against Ike in ‘52 and ‘56.
Stevenson dramatized the complex feelings of educated elites, some of whom came to adore him not because he was a liberal, but because he was not...he spoke a language that set apart from average Americans an increasingly college-educated population. His approach to voters as rational participants in a process that depended on weighing the issues attracted reformers, intellectuals, and middle-class women with time and money (the "Shakespeare vote", joked one columnist). Or as one enthralled voter wrote "You were too good for the American people."
Ike was hardly a narcissist, but Nixon was hardly Ike. Among GOP presidents in the 20th century, in fact, Ike is the anomaly. Nixon had Watergate; Reagan Iran:Contra (and damned near Reykjavik, another kind of scandal); Poppy was eyeballs deep in Iran/Contra and effectively self-pardoned his way out of it; Shrub had the gross incompetence of Katrina and Iraq (WMD that weren’t), and Dick Cheney running the Administration as he and Rumsfeld saw fit; and Trump was Shrub on steroids: even more incompetent, but without even Cheney and Rumsfeld to cover him.

Trump is the apotheosis of GOP Presidents of the last 100 years. And of course he’s a narcissist. You have to have a pretty strong ego, at least, to rise that far.

But the system has always favored bullshitters. Government has always served those with power. The government set up by the Constitution tried to disseminate that power: to land-owning white men, who happened to be all the delegates in Philadelphia. Only after a bloody civil war, which was a fight for power, did that start to change. Even then women got the vote before blacks got the Voting Rights Act (which the Roberts Court then took away).

Machine politics favored the Democrats and those who ran the “machine.”  But Republicans were pretty much interested in rule in the 20th century: McCarthy and Nixon wanted the power to decide who was, and was not, a communist, the better to decide who was, and was not, fit for American society. Reagan was little different, but he did it against “welfare queens in Cadillacs,” for political power. Shrub let Rumsfeld and Cheney act like Masters of the Universe. Closing the circle, MTG aspires no higher today than McCarthy and Nixon did. She even uses the same, now woefully outdated, vocabulary.

Wielding power is all about being selfish enough to think you know how to do it “right.” That’s a necessary evil, but it always exposes us to the rule of the narcissist. That’s a necessary evil, too. The system can’t be closed to it anymore than a more formal system can produce all the answers to all the questions it can generate.  There is no closed system that suits all needs, answers all will questions, meets all threats to its function. Nor do we have anything like a closed system in American politics. It used to be a more controlled system: Stevenson won the nomination in 1952 because of his speeches to the convention. Reformers democratized the convention to give power to people, not party satraps; to open the “closed system” to the people. And so we got: Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan; and Bill Clinton; and Shrub (both undistinguished governors from overlook estates. What quality if governor has either state produced since?); and, again the apotheosis of this process: Trump.

And a lot of incumbents in Congress who used to be marginally, at least, interested in the goals of their parties; but now are only interested in their social media status or staying the incumbent. Either way it seems to require no legislative effort whatsoever, and a lot of attention to taking care of oneself.

Such is the nature of progress.

As for the “public debate:” Jules Verne’s world traveler Phineas Fogg crosses the American plain and comes across a small town where a riot is in progress. Except it’s not a riot, it’s a political campaign: for the local dog catcher. American politics has never been a debate in the agora among gentlemen farmers. To read Plato’s “Apology,” it seldom was in Athens, either. If you’ll recall, Socrates antagonizes the Athenian citizenry for what are really his own selfish reasons. And honestly, no small part of Socrates’ “wisdom” is just Plato favoring Socrates’ “bullshit answers.” Plato makes sure Socrates wins the argument, mostly by keeping the rules of discussion unnaturally narrow. Power is all about who’s in control.

Real solutions to real problems is a matter of consensus that is the result of argument. But real solutions are ephemeral and short-lived when found. The Civil Rights Act was a real solution to a real problem; but its real implementation in affirmative action is all but dead, because it’s seen as unfair to white people.

And now there are politicians and would-be power brokers who want to take the vote away from women and revoke the civil rights act. These, too, are real problems, with real solutions.

Those solutions are at the ballot box.

There was no public consensus when LBJ, the only modern president to be more productive than Joe Biden in four years, passed the CRA and the VRA and Medicare and so many laws that basically created the America we take for granted now. There never is, even long after the fact. The public consensus was that the South well and truly lost the war. Within a generation the loss was the betrayed “Lost Cause.” and it was about sovereignty and independence and “state’s rights,” and never about something as ugly as slavery. And that “consensus,” held by a diminishing few, is still creating real problems; and is still a form of group narcissism, if such a thing can be said to exist.

The tendency towards selfishness will always be with us, as will its extreme in narcissism. Reinhold Niebuhr understood that society’s must act in their self-interest, or forfeit their rights to being a society (which exists, after all, to provide for its members). A truly selfless political leader would be as disastrous as a truly narcissistic one. It’s up to the political structure of the society to avoid the one as much as the other. Nothing else can do it.
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Or The Editorial Boards (NYT and Raw Story)…

...and several “serious people” on political Twitter who think Biden’s raspy voice outweighed all of that.

One group is as disconnected from “most Americans” as the other.
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Friday, June 28, 2024

Surely The People Are Sheeple!

That can’t be right! Obviously the people don’t know what they want. I mean, obviously! The people just don’t understand the importance of performance on TeeVee!
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