PMC Commentary

Jindal on Trump: read it here (and laugh)

In a screamingly risible Wall Street Journal op-ed, former governor Bobby Jindal ponders why the Republican base sticks with Donald Trump:

"A shallow answer is politics: Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker both tangled with Mr. Trump, and it turned out to be political suicide," writes Jindal. "But to get a deeper answer, it’s instructive to examine what Mr. Trump hasn’t done. Since the campaign, Mr. Trump has abandoned many of his previous positions and embraced traditional conservative views …"

… on, for instance, wildly irresponsible deficit-financed tax cuts, wildly ultraconservative Court nominees, and wildly reckless gun policies. Concludes the eternally befuddled Gov. Jindal:

"It isn’t unusual for a politician to change positions. Unsurprisingly, voters tend to be more forgiving of flip-flops when they agree with the final result. This explains why Mr. Trump is forgiven for abandoning Republican orthodoxy on free trade and entitlement reform."

Nowhere in Jindal's deep musings on the strange attraction of the even stranger Donald Trump is a reference to his No. 1 appeal to the base: his brutal racism. The Republican base gives not one damn if Trump jettisons free-trade ideology, for example, as long as he hates the right people — anyone of the wrong color.

Somehow, this slipped Jindal's mind.

 

As usual, Trump & Co. has it wrong

Michelle Goldberg looks at Trump's neofascist demand that Google, Facebook, YouTube and other social-media behemoths be regulated because of their supposed left-wing slant. (Trump's latest obsession came from Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs, who in turn got his information from a laughable PJ Media blog post, titled "96 Percent of Google Search Results for 'Trump' News Are From Liberal Media Outlets." The post is laughable because of how it defines "liberal." Notes Goldberg: "[It] puts Infowars, Alex Jones’s conspiracy website, closer to the center than Time magazine.")

The reality of social-media content is, but of course, far different from the fevered imaginations of PJ Media, Lou Dobbs and Donald J. Trump. Goldberg quotes Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and coauthor of the book, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics:

"There’s a lot more objectively false statements being made and replicated in right-wing media," says Benkler. "Any algorithm targeting fake news [would therefore] have a disparate impact on right-wing media."

So, Donald, should we let the algorithms targeting fake news begin, as long as they're targeting "objectively false statements"?

 

The heart of darkness

Video from Chemnitz, Germany, followed by news coverage.

The NY Times:

Waving German flags, with some flashing Nazi salutes, the angry mob made its way through the streets, chasing after dark-skinned bystanders as police officers, vastly outnumbered, were too afraid to intervene.

A Syrian refugee and father of two, Anas al-Nahlawie, watched horrified from a friend’s fourth-floor balcony. They were hunting in packs for immigrants just like him, he said. "Like wolves."

For a few perilous hours over two days this week, the mob owned the streets of Chemnitz, where anger exploded after word spread that an Iraqi and a Syrian asylum seeker were suspected in a knife attack that killed a German man early Sunday.

Chemnitz, a city of some 250,000 in eastern Germany, has a history of neo-Nazi protests. Usually they draw a few hundred from the fringes of society — and far larger counter-demonstrations, city officials say. The crowd this time was 8,000-strong. Led by several hundred identifiable neo-Nazis, it appeared to be joined by thousands of ordinary citizens. More marches are planned Saturday.

And that, I'm sure, makes Donald Trump's week. (Some in the crowd were shouting "Fake news!")

Neo-Nazis are growing bolder and stronger, and they are better organized, officials and sociologists say. The far-right Alternative for Germany party is a growing power in Parliament — another shock to the system — and has started to normalize angry sentiments about immigrants that before would not have been uttered aloud, bringing them into the mainstream.

 

Is Trump dictating Democrats' strategy?

Democrats may not need to run against Trump this fall after all. For you know what they say about enemies and holes.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll is out, and it shows that Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a fresh high of a new low: 60 percent. It finds that a majority supports Robert Mueller's Russia probe; a majority also believes that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should not be sacked.

This, too, may be new high: 49 percent say impeachment proceedings should be launched against Trump. Another 53 percent believes that Trump has committed obstruction of justice in his interference with Mueller's investigation.

How has Trump been defending against these majority or near-majority opinions?

Over roughly the past day, President Trump has decried the "totally dishonest" media, with its "fake news" and "fake books." He has argued that Google is biased against conservatives. And he has accused NBC News of "fudging" the tape of an interview with him that has been available online for more than a year.

The president has even declared there is no chaos in his White House, which he claimed is a "'smooth running machine' with changing parts.”

In short, reports the Post's Ashley Parker, Trump's defense is this: "The president and his supporters are under siege … from pernicious forces conspiring against them."

Yet Trump's defensive strategy has been in place for more than a day; it's been the signature approach of his entire presidential tenure. And what has it gotten him? Majorities who are increasingly opposed to all things Trump.

Which means Democrats may be wise to just sit back, and watch him dig.

 

Biden on McCain (and Trump)

Joe Biden's oratorical tribute to John McCain this afternoon was both touching and insightful.

Why does America mourn McCain's passing? asked the former vice president. Because, he answered in so many words, in this rage-filled age of rancorous, 24-hour news cycles and blistering partisanship, McCain stood for lasting values.

Unspoken by Biden: No one will mourn Donald Trump's passage into eternity.

 

McCain is still getting even

Politico:

Three of the most prominent members of his 2008 presidential campaign – campaign manager Steve Schmidt, senior adviser Nicolle Wallace, and longtime strategist John Weaver — were not invited to any of McCain’s services….

In the wake of the 2008 campaign, Schmidt and Wallace were publicly critical of McCain’s decision to tap Palin, though Schmidt played a role in it himself. Both cooperated with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s 2009 book "Game Change," which chronicled Palin’s tumultuous time on the campaign trail and helped catapult Schmidt and Wallace to national fame…. McCain viewed their lack of discretion as a betrayal…. Weaver … resigned from McCain’s 2008 campaign when it appeared on the brink of defeat, and subsequently criticized McCain for campaigning in a way that Weaver felt diminished him.

Although McCain and Schmidt reconciled in the years to come, this assessment, from a family friend, of McCain's campaign trio is brutal: "That cathedral will be filled with people who stabbed McCain in the front. Schmidt and Nicolle and Weaver stabbed him in the back and you can’t find a single McCain loyalist who will say different or feels different."

 

An unwelcoming year for Palin

CNN:

McCain said in the months before his death that he regretted not picking then-Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate in 2008…. [Sarah] Palin, in response, said to NBC News that she had "a lot of respect" for McCain, but his comments were a "gut punch."

And now,

Palin is not invited to any of the memorial services for her former running mate.

I'd feel sorry for Palin, if she had ever felt sorry for anyone other than herself.

 

A somewhat curious legal theory?

Yet another instance of congressional Republicans caving to the president's corrupt designs: "The willingness of Republican senators to turn on Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the result of a furious lobbying campaign from President Donald Trump, who for the past 10 days has been venting his anger at Sessions to 'any senator who will listen,' as one GOP Senate aide put it," reports Politico.

Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham have so far shown the greatest willingness to signal OK on Sessions' termination, although other "top Senate Republicans" — such as those at the very top, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn — still "see their job, in part, as blocking Trump’s worst moves.... Firing Sessions at this time, or moving against Mueller, fall [sic] into those categories."

The president's legal team, however, is coming around to the chief felon's point of view about cutting Sessions loose — for a rather peculiar reason. "There’s the belief that if the president taking action with respect to Sessions is going to be an important part of the Mueller obstruction case, most of that case has already been made. Things that the president has already done privately that have been reported, but also things that the president has done publicly that could be characterized as bullying or intimidating, all of that case is already there ready to be made, such that firing him is almost like an afterthought," said one person who's privy to Trump's lawyers' thinking.

In other words, Hey, the president is already toast when it comes to obstruction, so let him obstruct with abandon.

 

A Trumpeteer goes bananas, Part II

Care to see what you get from the unhinged world of Trumpeteering tweeters, should you ever poke fun at one of them? This clown, for instance, has far too much time on his hands — to make a fool of himself.

 

 

But what really hurt was that … he didn't like my looks.

 

 

The mind of a Trump supporter. A very peculiar, very scary thing.

 

Revising trade deals for revision's sake (and Trump's ego)

What might you call a trade agreement between the United States and Mexico? Let's ask that ingenious wordsmith, Donald J. Trump.

"I like to call this deal the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement." (Added Trump, seriously, it seems: "I think it’s an elegant name.")

You might also call it NAFTA, since "any revised trade agreement will look a lot like NAFTA," observes the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson. "[Its] major accomplishment — eliminating most tariffs among the three countries — would remain."

One difference between the old and the new are the many rules and stipulations surrounding automobile manufacturing. Here, "the requirements are so complex that many auto companies may decide that complying with them is not worth the trouble," says economist Jeffrey Schott, as paraphrased by Samuelson. "Companies might determine that paying the 2.5 percent tariff is the least costly alternative."

Finally comes this shocker — although it shouldn't shock, considering that an economic illiterate is in charge:

"Trump is also considering raising car tariffs as high as 25 percent because the industry is said to be vital to national security. This would, quite probably [most definitely], result in hefty price increases and dampened production, hurting American consumers, workers and auto companies. In the worst of all possible worlds," concludes Samuelson with less equivocation, "everyone loses."

For now, we're merely in the process of losing. In two or three years, will we have lost?

Will the year 2021, for instance, be too late for President Joe Biden to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership? That agreement was one of President Obama's more distinguished achievements, for America's — as well as the world's — trading future is Asia. So naturally, Trump has been obsessed with the percentage of American-made components in Mexico-manufactured automobiles.

In the annals of presidential stupidity, Trump's ego-inflating rejection of the TPP will go down as a real bobby-dazzler. At the moment, though, he's self-satisfyingly engaged in more delimited stupidities.

 

A Trumpeteer goes bananas

I haven't a clue as to who Mike Krietemeyer is (excepting the intel I gathered from his quite reserved Twitter bio: "I am a proud American who supports his president and honors our men and women of the Armed Force. #MAGA #USA," followed by not one, not two, but three American flags). Therefore I've also no clue as to why he addressed the zaniness below to me. At any rate, I simply had to share it with you.

I do know that Mr. Krietemeyer lacks the democratic spirit. Wouldn't you agree? He seems to believe that partisan control of government is a matter of might, of brute force, not votes. Thus I picture Mr. Krietemeyer as a puny, almost skeletal weakling who has read too much Nietzsche. But — I'm just a deranged, screwball libtard. (My, he does have a way with words.)

 

Religious liberty: The right to be fantastically stupid

Trump, speaking to an "assemblage of pastors and other Christian leaders gathered in the State Dining Room" Monday night:

This November 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it's a referendum on your religion, it's a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment. It's a referendum on so much.

It's not a question of like or dislike, it's a question that they will overturn everything that we've done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence. When you look at Antifa — these are violent people….

You're one election away from losing everything that you've gotten. Little thing: Merry Christmas, right? You couldn't say "Merry Christmas."

(The source of this story was anonymous.)

Try as I might, I simply cannot conceive of anyone so bloody stupid as to believe that Antifa hooligans write the nation's laws — or that these bomb-throwing knuckleheads previously banned the public utterance of "Merry Christmas." But believe it they do, and they'll pass along their frenzied paranoia to their equally phobic congregationalists.

And then both will wonder why they're the target of so much ridicule.

Still, Trump was essentially right about one thing. We could be just one election away from derailing — if not losing — everything the founders bequeathed us.

 

A new journalistic theory

… unless the anonymous source is quoted by Fox News, the New York Post, Newsmax, National Review, Breitbart or Red State.  

I once heard a Trumpeteer assert on talk radio that a historian's job is to "memorize dates." If your average acolyte of Trumpism is that clueless about Thucydides' profession, there's no doubt he believes that Ashley Parker's profession could be adequately conducted in the absence of anonymous sources — which would have kept a lid on Watergate and Iran-Contra, as well as every last Trumpian crime.

Then again, that's the whole point.       

 

Oh Joe, you nut

This morning, MSNBC's Kasie Hunt asked Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who's running for a U.S. Senate seat from Arizona, if he regarded John McCain as a patriot.

ARPAIO: Yes.

HUNT: A hero?

ARPAIO: That’s hard for me to answer. Because I never had a hero in my life until several months ago when I woke up after 75 years, and I found my hero. You know who that person is? Donald Trump.

***

Lord, if an Arizona Republican must be elected to the Senate, please let him be Joe Arpaio. Democrats need all the laughingstocks they can get.

 

The best and greatest eulogy ever

Excerpts from Trump's undelivered eulogy for John McCain, as revealed by Washington Post-cartoonist Tom Toles:

We are gathered here today to listen to me speak. I have many things to say, all of them valuable. And true. Very, very true.

We have been reminded that life does not last forever, but I should point out to you that I  myself am very much still alive, both personally and politically….

But enough about me. We are here to remember what John McCain thought about me. Not enough….

A lot has been said already about heroism and loyalty. As for loyalty, Sen. McCain wasn’t always loyal to me. And I shouldn’t need to point out that I won the presidency, and he didn’t. But I will point it out, because it’s true. And I won with the largest majority in U.S. history, larger even than the majority won by the legendary Abe Lincoln and all the other Republican presidents — put together. Sen. McCain didn’t win at all, although some call him a hero.

What is heroism? Heroism is having the courage to put the White House flag back up to full-staff, even as disloyal aides kept trying to keep it at half-staff….

So let the American flag fly proudly, over my office, at full-staff, and let that be a lesson to you all. As today we say goodbye, to the America you used to know.

A parody? I think not.