The Carpentariat

"A land where politicians don't care if children die"

The story is a familiar one; its venue, any town in any county in any state:

"A heavily armed young man barged into his former high school … opening fire on terrified students and teachers and leaving a death toll of 17 that could rise even higher…. The gunman — [described by acquaintances as 'quiet,' 'weird,' 'shy' and 'a loner'] — [was] armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle…. In addition to the rifle [the shooter] had 'countless magazines.'"

A local official said the killer had been treated at a mental health clinic, a fellow student said he recognized the shooter from an Instagram photo in which he "posed with a gun in front of his face," and another student recalled him "posting on Instagram about killing animals." Said the superintendent of schools: "Typically you see in these situations that there potentially could have been signs out there…. We didn’t have any warnings."

Said the county sheriff: "There really are no words." Sure there are. Said the school superintendent: "Words cannot express the sorrow that we feel." Sure they can. "My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting," wrote the president on Twitter. He thereby laid out the nation's official gun control policy and carefully planned post-massacre response: Wait for the next mass killing [update: the "18th" has been edited out] and then convey "prayers and condolences." All without ever doing a damn thing, making mass shootings of schoolchildren among the simplest of tragedies to address.

We all know the drill. "This" is also not the time to discuss a change in gun policy, so that maybe another quiet, shy, demented teenager won't have easy access to an AR-15 assault rifle and "countless magazines."

I cannot imagine the hellish torment that dozens of parents are going through this morning. I can, however, imagine the matitudinal thoughts of Second Amendment pols. They go with the drill. "OK, I'll offer prayers and condolences, I'll insist this isn't the time to debate policy, I'll slap on a bereaved, very solemn demeanor, and above all I'll protect my NRA rating." If it means being reelected, they really can't care if children die.

I believe I'll save this post in a copy-and-paste file, so that next time a school slaughter occurs, as it most assuredly will, I won't need to give it any more thought than would a Second Amendment pol. I'll just copy this post and paste it up — for the school and the town and the reactions make no difference; the story is always the same.

 

A blinding blizzard of scandals

The Washington Post:

Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin’s chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to create a pretext for taxpayers to cover expenses for the secretary’s wife on a 10-day trip to Europe last summer, the agency’s inspector general has found.

We are overwhelmed by the countless and necessarily briskly noted corruptions of this administration.

Andrew Jackson's was virtually paralyzed for a couple years by "The Eaton Affair," a morally antique episode in which cabinet officials' wives ostracized the secretary of war's wife because of her controversial past and free-spirited present. Lyndon Johnson's entire presidential tenure was haunted by a former Senate aide's influence peddling (Bobby Baker). Bill Clinton experienced a few exceptionally enjoyable minutes with an exceptionally caring intern, and a year was consumed in partisan outrage. One could go on itemizing the many time-consuming scandals, both petty and momentous, of assorted presidential administrations.

With Trump's? There's no time, really, to stop and ponder any one scandal, for there are simply too many. They come at us like a fierce barrage of artillery fire; just as one bombshell lands, another is launched. Some have theorized that it's Trump's evil genius to stack scandals like cordwood, so that we'll be too swamped by them to sort any one scandal out.

With this theory, I disagree. I instead believe that multitudinous, coexistent scandals are merely the substance of Donald Trump's corrupt, miserable little life. He's surrounded and deluged by scandals for the simple reason that he creates them; some out of greed and some out of untethered megalomania, but mostly out of stupidity. Yesterday I quoted a White House aide as saying that in the Trump administration "we don’t even have a coherent strategy to obfuscate." Trump can't plan beyond one move (e.g., he actually thought that firing FBI Director Comey would put an end to his Russia troubles) only because his mental capacity limits him to that number.

His administration officials copy his short-sighted behavior, knowing that presidential veniality loves company. VA Secretary David Shulkin's crime? It'll be out of the news by tomorrow. For we, and journalists, are overwhelmed.

 

 

Joe Biden appears to be gearing up early

In the surest sign yet that he's running, this just in, from Joe Biden: "Enough with the elitism."

"In 2018, I'm going to beat a path all across this country to stand up for leaders who will stand up for all of us. Are you with me? Are you ready? Then help me fight. Give what you can to help elect a new set of American leaders in districts all around this country — and let's take back the House."

Biden is accumulating his chits — early.

In both his email and its subject line, he also exploits the most cherished buzzword of this frenzied populist age: "I'm sick and tired of this talk that we have to choose between a progressive party and the party of working people. It's elitist, and it's wrong."

I suppose we should brace for being ground down by yearlong denunciations of "elitism" — whatever that means, and it's so overused, it pretty much means any belief or behavior you wish to detest. I find these politically fashionable condemnations of elitism silly and pedestrian. But then again, what else is democratic tub-thumping if not silly and pedestrian?

At any rate, it sure looks as though Biden is gearing up for another presidential run. So you should also brace for the donated "Biden in 2020" ad I'll be posting in the sidebar. (I confess I'm conflicted. Pragmatically speaking, I also believe a woman candidate would be the Democratic ideal, since The Democracy is now essentially the party of women.)

 

Your moment of vile serenity

In these stressful times, I know you could use a laugh. So in what I assure you will be the funniest article you'll read this week — "The wife-beater, the witch and the White House: Why the hell did Trump ever tell Rob Porter and Omarosa 'you’re hired'?" — Piers Morgan describes "the most hated reality TV villain" as …

"a serial loser, a horrible human being, a viper and a vile, vicious, relentlessly loathsome …

"duplicitous, lying, conniving, shameless, shameful, diabolical, ferocious, disgusting …

"foul-mouthed, homophobic, revolting, crude, offensive, bigot[ed], reprehensible, filth[y] …

"chao[tic], plotting, bitchy, backstabbing piece of work."

There's history. It seems that when Piers and Omarosa appeared together on a show called "Celebrity Apprentice," the backstabbing piece of work held her epithetical own by telling the equally reprehensible Morgan to "Shut the f**k up, a**hole."

Still, what's really revolting is that Piers Morgan — a man who fancies himself a professional journalist, who makes his living through the English language — could write and publish this usage-mangled sentence: "And big questions remain over whom in the White House, in particular chief of staff General John Kelly, knew what, and when, about Porter’s history of alleged domestic violence."

There are no standards.

 

OK, who's really responsible for this mess? (Hint. Donald J. Trump)

We are now in Day 8 of the Porter Affair — in which we've learned that a wife-beating, blackmailable White House aide had more than a year's access to the nation's most sensitive secrets (but, Hillary's emails!) — and Day 390 of presidential indifference to defending the United States from foreign attack.

"There should be no doubt that Russia … views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations," the director of national intelligence told the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday. Saying the same were the directors of the National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI. Each delicately added, when asked by an incredulous Democratic committee member, that their boss, the president of the United States, had ordered nothing in terms of defense. In fact, as the Times notes, Trump "has mocked the very notion of Russian meddling in the last election and lashed out at those who suggested otherwise." Spineless aides who fear the emperor's infantile wrath have taken to avoiding the topic altogether in his presence.

Such is the state of affairs at the dubious helm of our ship of state. One state of affairs, that is. Another is the misnamed "Kelly coverup," which a White House official described to Axios as "unraveling right before our eyes." Other WH officials have told the Washington Post that this coverup of a coverup — which became vividly undeniable because of the FBI director's additional testimony yesterday before the Senate committee — is "a killer." WH officials have also characterized CoS John Kelly as a "big fat liar" and "well done." The perfectly ghastly Anthony Scaramucci, the WH communications director who lasted all of 10 days before Kelly sacked him, vindictively tweeted "Kelly must resign," as the FBI director was making hash of the WH's lies about the Porter tick-tock.

Director Christopher Wray, reports the Post, revealed that the "bureau had completed a background report on then-staff secretary Rob Porter last July," while the "White House claims that the investigation required for Porter’s security clearance was 'ongoing' until he left his job last week." Who you gonna believe? The FBI director or the oleaginous Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Yet that is not the most pertinent line in WaPo's reporting. This is (with my emphasis): "The latest bout of turbulence is exacerbated by the administration’s reputation, earned over 13 chaotic months, for … misrepresenting facts to the public — a culture set by the president himself."

This other line also zeroed in on the presidential culture of lies. "When asked if Kelly could have been more transparent or truthful," a WH aide texted the Post: "In this White House, it’s simply not in our DNA. Truthful and transparent is great, but we don’t even have a coherent strategy to obfuscate."

Let's be clear. Chief of Staff John Kelly is a dissembler, a fraud, a degenerate protector of highly educated abusers. But chiefs of staff don't hatch the "moral" zeitgeist of the White House. That's the president's job. And this president is the king of degenerates, whose only trickle-down is in the form of transmittable mendacity. As a dutiful military man, Kelly was merely following Trump's lead. In this case, the Nuremberg defense is a valid one.

It's only Day 390. Show of hands. How many here believe that this White House, incessantly embroiled in fresh and multiple scandals, will ever see Day 1,460, let alone 2,920?

 

It seems there was a false bottom in Hannity's bottomless malice

I kid you not, here is the latest headline from Hannity.com*:

This motherfucker is sick. Hannity is compelled to politicize even a presidential portrait, and of course some equally sick conspiracy must be behind the politicization. I felt compelled, in turn, to leave a comment:

I wasn't alone. Some Hannityhead also left a comment — "HOW IS THIS ACCEPTABLE?????" (What is it with right wingers and excessive punctuation?) To which another reader, as sickened by Hannity's sickness as I was, replied:

It's no wonder that in Hannity's pathological malice, he's Trump's chief adviser.

 

*3:23pm Central: Hannity has now airbrushed the page — whose "information" evidently was drawn from a white supremacist site — out of existence.

 

It ain't so it ain't so it ain't so!

There's only one American who doesn't believe this — unfortunately, that person is "the only one that matters."

The Trump administration’s top intelligence officials said during a Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday that Russia is intent on disrupting elections in the United States and elsewhere….

"At a minimum, we expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople, and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States," [said] Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

I should clarify. It's not that Trump doesn't believe this; it's that he doesn't want to believe it. Being the self-absorbed child that he is, he does believe that confirmation of any Russian assistance would detract from the glory of his daycare blue ribbon. And little Donald, also being the only one that matters, can't have that.

 

Poor David Brooks; still suffering from both-sidesism

David Brooks is still desperately and rather humorously hanging on to the notion that both sides are ailing equally. Having informed us of this nation's increasingly hostile tribalism mostly within the Republican Party — which augurs its doom, says Brooks, quite reasonably — the columnist turns, at the end, and further informs us that Democrats are in the same party-destroying spot:

"Eventually, conservatives will realize: If we want to preserve conservatism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors. Liberals will realize: If we want to preserve liberalism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors."

It's true the Democratic Party has its own tribal warriors of intellectual intolerance and allergic reactions to compromise. It always has, in fact every political party always has. But compared to the GOP, they're scarce. Under President Obama congressional Democrats repeatedly begged Republicans to join them in crafting legislation, since bipartisan legislation is longer-lasting legislation. Republicans repeatedly rebuffed them. And since controlling both houses of Congress, Republicans have behaved as though they're in charge of a one-party state.

But, I guess to stay in the good graces of whatever conservative readership he has left, Brooks badly needs to peddle the fiction that both parties are in equal pain. It makes him, and them, feel better.

What fascinates me about Brooks is that he often comes so close to discovering some elemental truth, and yet every time he somehow manages to molest his discovery. He harbors those old pangs of tribalistic ideology himself, and they're always his undoing.  

 

The case for John Kelly

Politico:

The president took the time over the weekend to tweet, seemingly in Porter’s defense, about “due process,” but Trump’s only statement of support for Kelly … has been through presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, who told ABC’s "This Week" that the president wasn’t "actively"  looking for a new chief.

We know if Kellyanne says he's not, then he is. Bank on it.

Trump's meager defense of Chief of Less and Less Stuff John Kelly, however, makes for straightforward sense. That is, why would this president do anything other than leave Kelly to twist in the wind? First, it's sadistic, and other than torturing cats and pulling the wings off flies, we know that Trump enjoys nothing more than salving a grievance by leaving He Who Caused It to twist in the wind. Second, hanging Kelly out to dry takes heat off Trump, who, as we also know, is always completely out of the loop when it comes to damaging White House stories. Frankly, I'm surprised that Trump has copped to ever even hearing of Rob Porter.

Meanwhile, no doubt Trump is actively looking for a new chief — chief #3 within roughly one year — who will be the outgoing chief just as soon as Trump needs a new fall guy. That's not to imply that Kelly has been innocent here. It is to say he's been working in an impossible situation for an impossibly thin-skinned boss. To me, these two passages in the Politico piece generate some sympathy for Kelly, in terms of his having tried to get some decent help.

"I think people underestimate how critical that role is, the role of staff secretary," said a former George W. Bush administration official. Kelly, this official added, "had a good staff secretary and he didn’t want to have to deal with it"….

The administration continues to impose the ideological litmus test that kept out many Trump critics during the presidential transition, particularly in the realm of national security. A … former Bush administration official said that he had recommended a job candidate to the White House within the past month who had criticized the president during the campaign and was told that the prospect of hiring the candidate remained a "non-starter."

Thing is, every competent, possible recruit would have criticized Trump during the campaign. That in itself defines a minimum level of competence. But for Kelly, they're all out of bounds, because of Trump's hypersensitivity to criticism.

In this current maelstrom of typical Trumpian clusterfucking, I feel genuinely sorry for John Kelly. Though Porter is a wife-beating piece of crap, he at least knew how to do his job — and Kelly just wanted to hang on to the only other competent employee in the Trump White House. 

 

2018: The Year of Revenge

Roll Call's election analyst, Stuart Rothenberg, attempts to calm Democratic nerves, recently rattled by downward-drifting generic ballot numbers. He speculates that "the generic ballot probably now sits … in the 5- to 8-point range," which is decent enough. The Times' Upshot says a 7.4 margin in the popular vote is needed for Dems to retake the House, and "most estimates put the generic congressional ballot very near that number." Concludes Rothenberg: "Warnings of the Democrats’ weakening position [are] overblown."

He notes that Quinnipiac's findings, from early December through late January, gave Democrats a double-digit lead in the generic ballot (in February, plus 9). In other words, Quinnipiac has shown consistency. Others haven't, and their inconsistency is suspicious. In early December, Monmouth, for instance, showed Democrats 15 points ahead on the generic ballot question. By late January, however, Monmouth's "survey showed the party holding a mere 2-point edge." A similar plunge occurred in CNN's polling. In mid-October, it had Democrats with a 16-point lead in the generic, which grew to an 18-point by mid-December. Then, in mid-January, CNN put the Democratic advantage at a paltry 5 points.

The decay in Democrats' generic position is not what's suspicious. Stuff happens. Rather, the precipitous decline is what raises doubts as to the polls' accuracy. As Rothenberg observes: "Public opinion rarely moves so dramatically in seven weeks."

What's more, notes Rothenberg, "the generic ballot is just one measure of the two parties’ strengths during the cycle, which is why any analysis should look at multiple indicators." That's precisely what the Upshot's Nate Cohn has done. His conclusion: "Slowly but surely, the considerable structural advantages — like incumbency, geography and gerrymandering — that give the Republicans a chance to survive a so-called wave election are fading, giving Democrats a clearer path to a House majority in November."

Cohn seems most optimistic in the field of gerrymandering, where recent court rulings have inflicted real damage on Republicans' advantages in the "four big states" of Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania. There also are 34 Republican retirements — and counting — aa well as robust Democratic recruitment (military veterans, elected officials) combined with superior fundraising.

This is all quite comforting — all these tangible, quantifiable Democratic margins of strength. I put even more faith, however, in the Rumsfeldian yet-unknown known; which is to say, the virtual certainty that Donald Trump's abysmal performance to date will thunderingly gallop into even deeper abysses of abject incompetence, otherworldly tone-deafness and unequaled stupidity.

Strictly by the numbers (and, it should go without saying, for a thousand non-numerical reasons), the Donald should not be in the White House. Millions more voted against him than voted for him, and many of those who voted Aye did so only out of some ignorant, primally screaming confidence in the magical abilities of a billionaire outsider. They — [updated clarification: those marginal Trump supporters] — now know better, which is why Democrats hold a resepctable advantage in generic balloting. As those numbers close in on Trumplethinskin, and as Robert Mueller closes in as well, he'll crack, snapple and pop under the pressure — with an accelerated frequency that will astound even the jaded and benumbed.

Yes, Benedict Donald possesses nine more months — count 'em, nine — to further degrade not only his degraded reputation, but that of the pitiless Trumpbots in Congress. And the more pitiless they become, the more pitiless toward them the electorate will become. Thereafter, the year of Our Lord Twenty-Eighteen will forever be known as the electoral Year of Revenge.

 

The portraits

I'm not an art critic, but I am an artist, even if it's been too long since I picked up a brush. And as an artist, I was sad to see President Obama's official portrait, unveiled today at the National Portrait Gallery. While it conveys Obama's solemnity and a likeness of his reserve, it also looks like something you would see in a child's storybook. "Barack and the Beanstalk"? The foliage is that of his ancestral and geographical past; blue lilies of Kenya, the jasmine of Hawaii, Chicago's chrysanthemums. But who would know that? And who would want it cluttering up — or dominating — his portrait?

Michelle Obama fared much better with her portraitist, Amy Sherald, whose biography I also like better. Obama's, Kehinde Wiley, "runs the equivalent of a multinational art factory, with assistants churning out work," notes the Times' art critic, Holland Cotter. "Ms. Sherald, who until a few years ago made her living waiting tables, oversees a studio staff of one, herself."

I find this striking. Compositionally it's perfect, color-wise it suits my taste, and to me it reflects Mrs. Obama's easy casualness, even while in an evening gown.

But Mr. Obama's? If he had paid for it, I'd advise him to ask for his money back.

 

What's the "one thing [that would improve Democrats'] odds of winning the House back"?

On Friday I wrote that "superb as [Nancy] Pelosi is in backroom negotiating and vote-counting and pluralism-embracing, I believe she'd be doing the party a favor if she were to step aside [as minority leader], perhaps in an éminence grise kind of way. Because … Pelosi's strength 'is in what she does away from the  microphones.' In front of them, she can be a public relations disaster."

No matter how much you may like Pelosi, you'd probably like winning recontrol of the House even more — which is less likely as long as Pelosi remains Republicans' top target in grainy, slow-mo, B&W TV advertising against Democratic candidates nationwide. That's already begun. And it has begun because it's effective.

It is scarcely my opinion alone that Democratic candidates will need all the help they can get this November, and in pursuit of that, they'd be well advised to eliminate any drags. Thus Ms. Pelosi's willingness to bow out of the picture, literally, would be most appreciated.

Some readers agreed with me, some didn't, which is the way discussion of political topics is supposed to proceed. One outside observer in unambiguous agreement is the Cook Report's House specialist, David Wasserman, who over the weekend was quoted by the NY Times, saying this:

"There’s no question [Pelosi has] been a highly skilled legislative tactician for Democrats for decades; she has also been very effective for Democrats raising money and behind the scenes. But if House Democrats could do one thing to improve their odds of winning the House back, it would probably be to install leaders that no one’s ever heard of."

That "one thing" would start, and perhaps end, with the minority leader's departure — which would gut Republicans' leading strategy to defend their majority. And that's all that interests me.

 

A special kind of stupid

Politically speaking, and speaking only politically, when you are president of the United States and your approval rating among women is beginning to resemble Lester Maddox's among African Americans, it takes a special kind of stupid to tweet something like this.

OK, to move away from pure politics for just a bit ...

No recovery? Life and career are shattered? What, except for being (somewhat) elected to the presidency of the United States? 

(And yet, after Donald Trump is through degrading that office, it may be that one's life and career are indeed "shattered" upon assuming same.) 

 

Housekeeping note

Roughly one in every couple hundred legitimate comments is getting trapped by Typepad's spam filter. I don't see that this has happened until the following morning, whereupon I set it free. So don't worry; if you've left a comment and you don't see it appear within a minute or two, it has not been deleted or blocked. I don't delete comments and no one is currently blocked. In the past I have blocked explicit racists, but these bans I cancel within a couple days once the racist realizes he has been blocked, and has taken a sulking hike. (Plus, I am philosophically opposed to virtually any censorship.) So, again, should one of your comments fail to immediately appear, don't fret. It's there, just waiting to be released. Rest assured, this is a very rare occurrence, but I wanted to make you aware of it — in case.   

Now, proceed to my morning post, below.