The Carpentariat

New York A.G.'s report on Gov. Cuomo: What it will mean, and won't.

An investigative report issued this morning by New York Attorney General Letitia James "concluded that Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and, in doing so, violated federal and state law."

Here's Politico, in its own, inexorable conclusion: "The report [is] certain to revive calls for the governor’s immediate resignation or, if he refuses to step down, his impeachment."

Buh-bye, Andrew.

I would also say buh-bye to Trump's idiotic claims of New York's attorney general going after only him and his partisan ilk, if it weren't for the thundering fact of Trump's true believers steadfastly naysaying all right-in-front-of-their-noses evidence to the contrary.

For everyone's sake, pay no attention to this noble exhortation

Erin Aubry Kaplan, a writing instructor at Antioch University, Los Angeles, speaks in a NY Times op-ed of her recent liberation from the time-consuming, often mind-numbing life of shopping, whether in person at malls or while surfing online stores.

"With the backdrop of this nation’s existential crisis," she muses, "shopping looks more and more like an attempt to ignore and forget. That is to say, it looks more and more like what it’s always been."

This, I agree, is a rather noble observation. Good citizens will enmesh themselves in small-r republicanism, as the founders hoped they would; they will understand the fundamentals of responsible civics, be involved in self-governance and advocate change wherever needed. Only then can they keep republic the founders created. So far, so good.

There is a problem, however — a big one — with Kaplan's reasoning. Should tens of millions agree with her newfound objection to shopping and, by and large, just stop ...

the economy would collapse.

As an idealistic youth I concurred with John Kenneth Galbraith's cascading denunciations of modern advertising and the consumerist urges it leads to: buying a lot of stuff that — let's face it — we really don't need. Galbraith instead advised that the money be spent on social improvements and thus national progress.

What he overlooked — or simply ignored, for the benefit of idealistic young 'uns like me — was that most of the money needed for those social improvements would not be there without millions of taxpaying consumers working for the manufacturers and retailers selling the stuff in the first place. Countless jobs in both economic sectors would vanish.

So yeah, shopping for frivolous scraps of whatever may seem like a waste of time and money. But it keeps the economy going, without which, social progress would slam into reverse.

Borowitz issues alert: "Avoid This Scam!"

I intend to squeeze in as many of Andy's New Yorker Very Important Memos — seriously — in a reasonably allotted way before my online sun goes down, sometime in the (appropriately named) fall. Because ... satire has become legitimate political reporting.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus needs marksmanship training. A lot of it.

And they're off, with a sense of direction like Wrong Way Peachfuzz's.

House progressives are furious at President Biden for "failing" to unilaterally extend an eviction moratorium, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's legal entanglement — which an in-your-eye executive order could worsen; they're furious at Congress, too, for failing to extend the moratorium. More than these misdirected furies, the always virtuously disgruntled Congressional Progressive Caucus is overlooking the incompetent culprits who created the eviction crisis in the first place: state and local governments — you know, those that Republicans say should rule the roost because they're "closer to the people." Yes they are, and they've made a frightful, close mess of things.

To avert the crisis, the federal government allotted $46 billion to them. In return, they've spent all of $3 billion of it. For anyone to actually receive the funds, state and local governments threw up a bureaucratic blockade, armored by reams of unintelligible paperwork, backed up by online portals that repeatedly crashed. And so the federal funds sit. Case in point: A 74-year-old Rhode Island landlord says "he and his tenant both filed forms for the billions in federal aid meant to help keep tenants in their homes but so far … he hasn’t seen a cent of the state’s $200 million share."

Says the head of the National Housing Law Project: "The thing I worry about the most is that you have millions of people across the country who may get evicted over the next couple of months, even though there is enough money coming from the federal government to pay all their back rent" [emphasis inherent).

But at whom are progressives aiming their fire? The president — who's desperately trying to avoid a Supreme Court body slam which could well portend an even more unhelpful ruling — and their fellow House members. This second target, or rather progressives' secondary complaint, borders on the laughable. As noted, they're demanding that Congress pass an eviction moratorium, yet, as they do on virtually every issue, they silently dismiss the inescapable reality of Senate Republicans filibustering a moratorium to death.

And whenever that little hangup is raised, progressives simply shout, Well then kill the filibuster! — again silently dismissing the reality that the filibuster can't be killed, for there's that other little hangup: Democrats lack the votes.

No one faults any group of politicians for getting pissed at governmental inertia and fingering the culpable bad guys. Progressives, however, always miss the mark. They couldn't hit the broadside of the real scoundrels' Queen Elizabeth II.

Their unfortunate aim would be laughable, if it weren't for its more unfortunate consequence: Millions of these progressives' followers buy their bullshit, which is just peachy for the bright-blue-district pols, but poison to Democratic unity — needed now more than ever.

Gavin Newsom's spooky 47%

In California's gubernatorial recall debacle, Democrat Gavin Newsom's spending "edge" is as lopsided as Nancy Pelosi's wit vs. Kevin McCarthy's. The governor has so far shelled out about $6 million against Republican recallers' $27,500, reports First Read. And in known ad buys to come, right up to recall-or- not day, Gavin "hold[s] a 150-to-1 advantage."

That's the good news. The not-so good news is that though 50% of Californians who say they'll "likely" vote are backing Newsom, 47% say they want him yanked.

Newsom's consequent angst, as reflected in his massive spending offensive, is understandable, given that irate barbarians — those Ghastly Old Partiers — are more likely to actually vote than are rational citizens.

Such is the scourge of American democracy. Newsom's recall battle shouldn't be this close. But should and shouldn't are, in politics, mere fancy — which, for 20 years, is something I've also tried to get through the resistant skulls of fanciful progressives. 

Of Mark Meadows and Donald Trump's self-abuse

A friend emailed me yesterday asking why I hadn't remarked on former White House CoS Mark Meadows' Newsmax interview on Friday, in which he said he's been huddling with Trump and his "Cabinet members," whatever that means, about schemes to "move forward in a real way" — again, whatever that means. Perhaps a better 3-driver club?

The only thing "real" about Meadows' cloak-and-dagger intimation, which comes atop a bountiful bevy of blurry others, is its unrelenting bullshit. I'm not saying definitively that no reelection scheme is being hatched from Trump-addled minute to minute; his yeses and nos on running again fly around in such meetings, I imagine, like the Wicked Witch's monkeys. When adding his severe attention deficit to his congenital imbecility, one is left with nothing but hard maybes.

What appears to have "rattled some," reports HuffPost, is that Meadows' gibberish entailed references to Trump as "the president," still staffed by a Cabinet. One such hauntingly rattled observer is the Times' Maggie Haberman, who tweeted, "I can’t stop thinking about this interview. The former chief of staff is talking as if there’s a shadow presidency going on (there isn’t) at a time when there’s a conspiracy theory that Trump will be reinstated (he won’t)."

Then why can she not stop thinking about the interview? Why be consumed with wonder and worry about a former crackpot chief of staff blathering in a cone of obfuscation about his former crackpotted boss and his maybe schemes to re-steal the throne?

Frankly, my dear Maggie, I don't give a damn about whatever Mr. Meat Head babbles to a Newsmax masturbator. But should Trump ever stop pounding his own meat and publicly declare himself a presidential candidate and therefore a resurrected mortal threat to the nation, I most decidedly will give a damn.

Kevin McCarthy, gold medalist in stupid

News stories are proliferating about the accelerating and rather nasty rhetorical competition betwixt Nancy Pelosi, gold medalist in getting shit done, and Kevin McCarthy, America's gold medalist in stupid.

Sports fans and political observers everywhere are asking, How fraught will the competition become? That, as our keenest, most insightful of forecasters are forever inclined to venture, remains to be seen. What we do know is that the competition is a brutal mismatch. Pitting San Francisco's Nancy against Bakersfield's Kevin in a name-calling contest? Even Rome's gladiator bureaucracy would have outlawed such inhumane, asymmetrical combat.

So far, the moron has hit himself on the head by saying — whimsically! — he'd love to bash her on the head. Funny, funny stuff, Kevin. Why would the moronic minority something-or-other resort to visions of physical violence in a rhetorical competition with the 81-year-old woman speaker? Because, as Dana Milbank reminds us this morning, he speaks like this:

"The president, we sat to met with, that we wanted to be — keep our path be energy independent"; "[Pelosi] will go at no elms to break the rules"; and "we told her that she fights for the Americans, but they make $5 million in less than a month trading stock options … on tech companies that were — that were debating inside the House; that the only reason the market went up, that they made that money was what the outcome of the stocks — or, the outcome of the bills."

Doubtless, Kevin could again sweep the Olympics in stupid. But when it comes to the Queen's rhetorical English, he'll still be at the starting blocks as Nancy is crossing the finish line.

An Italian gold medalist

If nothing else, read this post's last, short paragraph

In observing what he assesses as Trump's limited power over his party, Ross Douthat writes that when he "came out against the bipartisan infrastructure bill currently moving through the Senate … almost nobody seemed to care: There was no sense that Republican senators feared his wrath, no expectation that Trump supporters would crowd town halls in protest."

Absent from Douthat's appraisal is that the number of Republican senators who seemingly feared not his wrath was 17, which tells even this mathematically impaired humanities major that 33 Republican senators probably took his wrath into account. The 67-32 infrastructure vote was also a vote to open debate only, leaving another opening the width of the Mississippi river for the 17 to trickle away, in whole or in part.

As for why Trump voters seemed not to care? I doubt five out of 100 could offer even the sketchiest summary of the infrastructure bill. Trumpers have been too immersed in cauldrons of cultural inanities to bother with major policy initiatives. "Nobody imagines that an infrastructure vote … is really a referendum on Trump himself," writes Douthat. Yet that doesn't mean it can't become one to many of the 17 presumed apostates, especially as they town-hall themselves throughout August and the base gradually recognizes their enemy fraternization.

Douthat sees another probable limit on Trump's internal power:

"If you are worried about 2020 being replayed in a Trump revival in 2024, but this time with Republican state legislatures actually acting to overturn results, you should be looking for signs that Trump has found a way to fuse, in advance, support for himself with support for that specific move…. He would need not just sympathy for his inevitable voter-fraud allegations but also an understood rule, among G.O.P. statehouse leaders in Michigan, Pennsylvania or Arizona and their voters, that to support Trump simply is to support legislatures choosing presidents, with no daylight in between.

"I think that rule will be very hard to impose."

Why? He doesn't say. And that, tactically, is smart non-argumentation. Trump, of course, already possesses party-wide "sympathy for his … voter-fraud allegations." Yet more than that, he has indeed instilled the rule among state G.O.P. pols and their voters that to support Trump simply is to support legislatures choosing presidents. In an earlier passage, Douthat does correctly observe that Trump, last year — and that is important — "couldn’t get Republican state legislatures … to begin to go along with his election-overturning efforts." But that was then, before Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and other notable Republicans also condemned Trump's responsibility for Jan 6. Those voiced condemnations have since gone silent, just as we won't hear McCarthy et al. condemn states' election subversion. The barbarians aren't at the gates; they're in statehouse offices and rotundas.

Thanks to Trump — and his party, which now is more accurately known as the Trump Party. Does that moniker suggest to you either of Douthat's expressed limitations on Trump's internal power?

Keep in mind that I write not merely about one Times columnist, but about all the folks who similarly believe there are breezy limits to Trump's monstrous potential. A lot of volk believed the same about another monster, 88 years ago.      

"We got him" Part II

On 1 May 2011, President Obama announced to the nation in a moment of joyous relief, "We got him" — him being you-know-who. Now it seems we can joyously announce that on 30 July 2021, "we got" the other you-know-who, the terrorist malefactor who attempted to kill America from within.

Evidence of Trump's core involvement in the attempted coup of Jan. 6 is already piling up. And whatever loose ends of doubt about his broader coup attempts might otherwise have remained — legally speaking, that is — appear to have been whisked away by the Justice Department's surrender of notes, to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, taken by then-Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue.

The memorialization of his and Boss Rosen's Dec. 27 phone conversation with Trump is the smoking Nixonian gun.

In fact, the gun is on fire. The most damning bill of particular in criminal charges to come: "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me" — America's terrorist malefactor and, paraphrasing here, his congressional lackeys, he added, who all along have flagrantly aided and abetted the chief conspirator's crimes.

Notwithstanding the department's repeated refutations of election fraud, Trump's command to the DOJ to just say the election was corrupt is unambiguous evidence of his conspiracy to commit not only said fraud, but to perpetrate one coup attempt before the next.

One final thing. The Times writes that "handing over the notes to Congress is part of a pattern of allowing scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election." It's the notes' contents, however, that are part of a much larger, more relevant pattern of Trump's criminal behavior — which, as I understand it, could be admissible in a court of law to impeach his credibility, if he's first convicted on other fraud charges, say, in Georgia and New York.

We got him. At long last, we got him. I think.

Funnier than Borowitz

To think that this moron is a duly elected U.S. representative and the House's third-ranking Republican. Good grief.

Note: To say she's a moron is an act of kindness. The only alternative explanation for this monumental fatuity is that she indeed knows better, and is merely feeding yet more rancid meat to the great unwashed, for which there is no excuse.   

Today’s Anniversary of Medicare & Medicaid reminds us to reflect on the critical role these programs have played to protect the healthcare of millions of families. To safeguard our future, we must reject Socialist healthcare schemes. https://t.co/mOdUuX7THT

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) July 30, 2021

It's not equity over equality, but equity to equality

In "Pursuing 'equity' over equality reveals the nation's moral regression," George Will channels a prevailing neurosis by writing that "the steady pursuit of [equal opportunity] is as noble as today’s progressive abandonment of this aspiration in favor of 'equity' is ignoble. This regression involves ascribing all disparities in social outcomes to racism."

That moderate Biden's equity policies are but foothill paths to the aspirational zenith of equal opportunity are unfailingly misrepresented by the right as ends in themselves is also a diagnostic symptom of — I'll be charitable — an unfortunate misunderstanding.

A plain fact of unopportunistic racial disparities in social outcomes is, well, as one might guess, race. To take remedial considerations of race out of social policies would be akin to taking the U.S. military out of "good" wars. Without intervention, neither equal opportunities nor the ultimate objective of peace could ever be achieved.

Just as unfortunate is Will's correct assertion that "benefits allocated to a specially protected racial cohort might come to be seen as a badge of inferiority." They already are, of course, by many Americans. Yet an end run around that perception by throwing up our hands in exasperated hopelessness is scarcely the better alternative. After four-hundred years of mostly unprotected racial cohorts, this society, led by its only conscientious political party, must keep trying to balance the books.

As Will writes his color-blind preferences, he also writes this shockingly blinkered statement: "Getting used to special dependency, and soon experiencing it as an entitlement, the beneficiaries might come to feel entitled to preferences forever."

Reading that, my mind leapt not to an equal opportunity-deprived African American or Latino or Native American, as Will intended. It leapt instead to that special dependency of hereditary rich, forever-entitled, beneficiary halfwits and social parasites such as Donald Trump who so routinely infiltrate the ranks of America's "elite." About that, Will has nothing to say. He simply averts his blinkered eyes.

The evolution of Republican hyperpartisanship

In the lead paragraph to his self-answered piece — "Is Joe Biden Sinking?" — the WSJ's deputy opinion page editor, Daniel Henninger, writes: "The country’s partisan polarization has intensified every year since George W. Bush won the presidency in the 2000 hanging-chad election."

I'm generally loath to play the tracing-back parlor game. This strong disinclination took root during my two graduate years of minoring in the history of science, in which I read numerous authors giddily noting that Darwin's principal thesis was nothing new. His more insightful predecessors stacked up in these books and essays, with each author going further back in time to reveal the "true" Darwin. Had I kept reading these works, I'm sure the Original Darwin eventually would have turned out to be a French Neanderthal who left a cave painting of humankind's evolutionary timeline.

But back to Henninger's premise, which touches on, more precisely, Republicans' Neanderthalic evolution. The country's barbarous polarization most decidedly did not begin with Bush's appointment, my dear Daniel, to the presidency.

Now, just as the above authors have done, I could easily flip on my historical retro burners and zoom past Newt Gingrich as the more distinguishable culprit of partisan-polarization launching. Effortless would it be to soar back to the New Right, and before that, Barry Goldwater, then on to Joe McCarthy, malicious anti-New Dealers and, for that matter, Woodrow Wilson-haters. But let us be more temporally precise: It was Newt Gingrich and his 1990s semantics-centered memo to House Republican colleagues that really juiced political hostility and consequent partisan polarization.

As you may recall, in the memo the then-Republican whip urged his comrades to unrelentingly curse and attack the Democratic opposition through the usage of nouns, verbs and adjectives such as "anti-flag," "anti-child," "disgrace," "betray," "sick," "cheat," "pathetic," "radical," "crisis" and "traitors." As Gingrich wrote in 1990, "These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast" to "your vision of public service." By 1996, well, you know.

The words were indeed easily understood — and emotionally absorbed — by the Republican base. Politics hasn't been the same since. Neighbors have turned on neighbors, families have fractured, certain "news" outlets have long adopted the Gingrichean style, we've gone from Newt to the Donald and Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan; the nation's polarization is now not only nasty and brutal, it's locked in.

There's the delineating history of it, Mr. Henninger. Your history.

Pop quiz, multiple choice …

… just for the hell of it.

Which would you mark as correct? ("A" is from the NY Times this morning.)

a) President Biden’s hoped-for message that happy days are here again is on hold as the administration’s initially blitzkrieg-like vaccine rollout has slowed to a relative crawl.

b) President Biden’s hoped-for message that happy days are here again is on hold as the administration’s initial blitzkrieg-like vaccine rollout has slowed to a relative crawl.

c) President Biden’s hoped-for message that happy days are here again is on hold as the administration’s initial, blitzkrieg-like vaccine rollout has slowed to a relative crawl.

Might Trump be losing his sledgehammering influence? I'm skeptical.

The Bloated Blight had commanded Senate Republicans to spit on an infrastructure deal. Otherwise they'll "look weak, foolish, and dumb," the Blight frothed with his usual eloquence.

Then came the weak, foolish, dumb pro-vote — on opening debate only — by 17 of them. So Trump's froth turned to a venomous, fulminating explosion. "Fight for America, not for special interests and Radical Democrats," he howled yesterday. RINOs are ruining America, right alongside Communist Democrats. (I really like the rhetorical escalation from "radical socialists." It has such a nice McCarthyite ring to it.) 

The Hill observes that "the vote is … likely to raise questions about Trump’s influence over the policymaking process in his post-presidency." Much more than likely. The suggestion itself raises questions about his influence. But I'd be wary about raising the questions too high. 

A few of the GOP senators who voted aye are retiring, hence they needn't give a damn about Trump and his deranged base any longer. Others, though, are undecided about sticking around, and assuredly, they and still others who certainly do wish to stick around are pondering that looming, inescapable horror of being primaried. Merely voting to open debate is in no way tantamount to voting for a final package. Thus we might very well watch 17 shrink to 15, 12, and ultimately 9.

Give the base a while to, ahem, express their displeasure at these Communist-Democrat Republican senators. Then, as the political axiom goes, once the base has an excruciating grip on their balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

Or at least that's my guess.