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Trump, Saturday, speaking to a coven of the Hitler Youth: "I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it [sic] better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere."
So Trump was initially correct: "I never understood wind."
Observes the U.S. Energy Information Administration (eia.gov): "Wind turbines do not release emissions that can pollute the air or water.... Wind turbines may also reduce the amount of electricity generation from fossil fuels, which results in lower total air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions."
Added Trump: "A windmill will kill many bald eagles. After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off, that is true. By the way, they make you turn it off. And yet, if you killed one, they put you in jail. That is OK. But why is it OK for windmills to destroy the bird population?"
While it's true that wind turbines kill roughly 150,000 American birds each year, it's also true that literally billions of birds are murdered by cats.
My Trumpian solution to this wanton bird slaughter by bloodthirsty felines? Lock 'em up.
The Times' David Leonhardt remarks on Politico's John Harris' think piece that targets political journalism's obsession with "centrist bias," which Harris defines as "an instinctual suspicion of anything suggesting ideological zealotry, an admiration for difference-splitting, a conviction that politics should be a tidier and more rational process than it usually is."
As Leonhardt also summarizes the journalistic concept of centrist bias, it "confuses the idea of centrism … with objectivity and fairness…. In doing so, however, [journalists] often make an honest mistake: They equate balance with the midpoint between the two parties’ ideologies." This logical fallacy, we might say, has been the bane of political commentators for years — Paul Krugman, perhaps, being the principal among the plaintiffs.
Nonsensical "difference-splitting" deserves an unmerciful death by the high priests of journalism schools, lest another generation of nonsensicality-writers be hatched. It is absurd for a straight reporter to note, say, that though supply-side economics has been a catastrophic theory in practice, its bizarre upside-downness is nevertheless defended by some economists — without the reporter noting that those defending economists are quacks.
So much for the fallacy of difference-splitting. However, I find must uphold the honor of what Harris and Leonhardt deride as journalism's "instinctual suspicion of anything suggesting ideological zealotry" and its "conviction that politics should be a tidier and more rational process than it usually is."
The now-instinctual suspicion of ideological zealotry originally had to be learned the hard way: by suffering the rise and results of the right-left extremes of Hitlerism and Stalinism. The intellectual postwar world emerged from those conflagrations with works in hand such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s The Vital Center and Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology — profound reactions to the transcendent perils of politico-ideological radicalism. The lessons — and vigilance — learned remain relevant.
As for the two critics' reproach of journalism for its conviction that politics should be a more rational process, it strikes me as odd that the critics recommend more tolerant coverage of seemingly unworkable progressive ideas (as presently advocated by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) yet scoff at what is maybe the most authentically progressive advocacy out there: that politics should be more rational than the insanity of Trumpism — which, atop Gingrichism, Reaganism, Goldwaterism and McCarthyism, would never be tolerated by any rational electorate.
What, pray tell, is so wrong with reminding a regrettably fair portion of today's voters that they're nuts?
That said, Harris and Leonhardt alike raise some interesting questions, all, or most, of them worthy of debate.
If only she had said to Pete Buttigieg and the country that she herself, once upon a time, scooped up big boodle by the shovelful. If only — two bitter, belated words of regret whenever coupled, and powerful enough to deliver the coup de grâce to an already wounded presidential campaign. The Associated Press:
"On a Saturday evening in June 2018 … supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren gathered at the City Winery Boston for a fundraiser. They … heard remarks from Warren, who was months away from announcing her campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. For the top donors, those who could contribute or raise $5,400 per couple or $2,700 a person, there was a VIP photo reception and premium seating. For them and others who gave at least $1,000, there was also a gift: a souvenir wine bottle."
If only it hadn't been a wine bottle, perhaps the sting of hypocrisy wouldn't smart quite so much for this self-styled candidate of 180-proof virtue.
The higher donated amounts — the maximum legal limits at the time — were OK, but karma was corked in those wine bottles that went with them. What's more, couples that contribute more than $5,000 to a political campaign often know other couples that can do the same — and then the campaign is into progressively disdained bundling.
During her last Senate race, Warren "bestowed awards on those who were successful at tapping their personal networks to raise money for her. Those who bundled large amounts under $50,000 … earned a silver pin, while those who brought in more were awarded a gold one engraved with her signature." Large bundling events were also held for Warren by big-name celebrities such as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
Ah, but all that was for her Senate — not her presidential — campaign, some supporters will say. And in the finest scheme of thin technicalities, they would be right. The problem with this defense, however, is that much of the bundled loot for her Senate race wound up in her presidential campaign war chest.
"I just quit doing it," said Warren after the fact, i.e., after the initial AP report. "I saw how the system worked and I decided when I got into the presidential race that I wanted to do better than that."
So has she, since? Proceeds AP's updated story: "Warren has continued to attend the very kind of events for which she has criticized others. She has headlined fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee in settings that raise handsome sums, and she said she would continue to do that if she were the nominee, so that Democrats would not be at a financial disadvantage against President Donald Trump."
Which, ironically enough, is what she should be doing. That was Mayor Buttigieg's entire point in Thursday's debate, which pragmatically finished off Sen. Warren's ship-wrecked idealism — the fate of most idealism in politics.
If only she had qualified her high-mindedness last week.
Courageously guarding the sanctity of religion is that porn-star paying, congressional-widow mocking, sexual-assaulting man of Two Corinthians, tweeting "I guess the magazine, 'Christianity Today,' is looking for Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or those of the socialist/communist bent, to guard their religion." The magazine, continued Trump, "would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President."
And by the way, he added, the magazine "has been doing poorly."
Sure enough, tagging along with Trump like a sniffling, sniveling little brother is Hugh Hewitt, who intones that Christianity Today "has now become just another content provider … of the left-wing sort.
"The real cost here is borne by readers who will simply shrug off appeals to resubscribe or give the platform a try…. The entire enterprise … will suffer."
Says the editor of the doing-poorly, now-suffering enterprise: The magazine has "received a surge in donations and new subscribers."
But Hewitt's obliviousness had barely commenced. To wit: "Christians by the millions will be on both sides of [the 2020] election. They did not need, or ask for, this intervention in their deliberation."
The columnist's selectivity is so dazzling, it's evident to even a child. Christianity Today has no business intervening in evangelicals' political deliberations, writes Hewitt, yet he pens not a word about, for instance, Focus on the Family's James Dobson's immediate response to the magazine in listing "more than a dozen issues in which he believed Democrats would be worse than Trump, such as school choice, abortion, Israel, gay rights and 'men in women’s sports and boys in girls’ locker rooms.'" Or Franklin Graham, who on Facebook claimed that Dad had voted for Trump.
Having logically blundered once, Hewitt decides to go back for seconds. "By injecting Christianity into [politics, CT's editor] inevitably suggests … that people of the Christian faith are, in fact, obliged to condemn Trump."
As opposed to the thousands of Bible-banging, pulpit-thumping, right-winging Men of a GOP God who shall persist in dictating to their congregations — on penalty of their loving God's eternal fire — that they are, in fact, obliged to support Trump.
Still, Harvard-educated, Michigan Law-graduate Hugh Hewitt's stumbling, contradictory ramblings are no mystery. If one sets out to make a living defending Trump, then one must become as incoherent, cretinous and contradictory as the president himself.
A careful reading of Politico's partial lede in "White House braces for Mulvaney's post-impeachment exit" reveals three rather seriocomic fallacies:
"Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is widely expected to leave his current position once the Senate wraps up its impeachment trial and the intense scrutiny of the West Wing settles down…."
One: Poor, sad, circumscribed Mulvaney isn't allowed to even act as White House chief of staff. As Politico reports later in the piece, "the biggest blow to Mulvaney of late … was his exclusion from the decision-making process for Trump’s new deputy chief of staff for operations, a position that reports directly to Mulvaney." Ouch.
Two: What's this we read about the Senate holding a trial? McConnell's GOP monkey house desires not a trial but something akin to a Wehrmacht physical examination and induction center, ca. 1945. The speed with which the majority leader intends to "wrap up" his spoof of accountability will leave us and the participants in indescribable awe.
And, three: There is, imagines Politico, to be some scrutiny-dimming of the West Wing. I on the other hand imagine that this Trumpian ground zero of stupidity, incompetence and criminality will soon be under an even more powerful electron microscope. While screaming Exoneration!, the Swindler King will become more stupidly, incompetently and criminally insane with power, committing multiple Ukraines simultaneously — not that aforementioned Mitch McConnell and sidekick Kevin McCarthy will give a damn.
All that from less than the first full sentence of Politico's lede.
Of the sundry squabbles in last night's Democratic debate, I found the most interesting of them centered on money in politics, as hashed out by Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. What made it intriguing then was its vast separation of pragmatism from idealism — and what makes it intriguing this morning is its journalistic trivialization by ABC News.
The network quotes Warren: "Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States. I do not sell access to my time" — implying, of course, that Buttigieg does.
And here is the network's full Buttigieg quote, followed by a paraphrase: "'This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass,' Buttigieg said in response, pointing out the fact that while she was running for the U.S. Senate, Warren followed the same path he did."
Such is the maximalization of trivialization. In ABC News' "5 takeaways" coverage, a mere 181 words are devoted to the immensely critical issue of money in politics, 64 of which are eaten by "Look, a brawl!" coverage: "The Democratic detente that largely defined the last debate ended in the second hour of sparring"; "feuds that have been bubbling on the campaign trail in recent weeks finally boiled over"; "Buttigieg and Warren stood shoulder-to-shoulder in one of the nights' most pitched fights"; and "the clash was perhaps a preview of a rivalry between two candidates competing for a very similar set of voters." (Say what?)
As for the issue, not the brawl, Buttigieg, I thought, got the better of it by far. Of course billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president, although it is customary for candidates to appear at debates with tedious, rehearsed jabs. However the mayor's retort about the problem of purity tests was as pertinent as his extended remarks: that "if you can't say no to a donor, then you have no business running for office," and "if I [had pledged] never to be in the company of a progressive Democratic donor, I couldn't be up here."
I have yet to witness idealism thrashing pragmatism in a street fight, which is pretty much what political campaigning is. As merely one anecdotal example, I was once chatting with a congressional Democratic candidate about her untainted progressive "vision," only to make the harrowing mistake of befouling our chat by asking about her PAC contributions. She was aghast at my beastly implication that, perhaps, in a conceivably winnable district she just might need some real money. To cut this tale short, in the general election she went down like a drunk on his third bottle.
Which reinforces Buttigieg's argument of last night, the important scope with which ABC News could not be bothered.
Mencken, in his review of his own book:
"I am convinced that the average woman, whatever her deficiencies, is greatly superior to the average man."
Obama, earlier this week:
"Now, women, I just want you to know: you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you're better than us [men]."
Me, earlier this year:
"Women are superior to men. Period. They're smarter, they're more human and caring (well, most are)…. So here's to women, whether they like it or not. You're superior to men, and it's about time we men accepted that."
From NBC News:
Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that the other candidates in the Democratic presidential race do not have the right credentials for the White House — including former Vice President Joe Biden.
"I don't think any of them have the experience," Bloomberg said in an exclusive interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle [whose following, responding look is priceless].
When asked if that comment applied to Biden, who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for more than 35 years and served as vice president under Barack Obama, Bloomberg said: "He's never been the manager of an organization, he's never run a school system."
"The presidency shouldn't be a training job," Bloomberg added. "You need somebody who comes in and knows how to run an organization."
Such is the bottom-feeding competitive foolishness to which the Democratic presidential-primary gauntlet has sunk.
In 1975, former deputy attorney general Laurence Silberman wrote a withering denunciation of by-then deceased J. Edgar Hoover in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends."
Silberman's words are quoted by the NY Times' conservative columnist, Bret Stephens, who then asks in his own words: "If conservatives are right to object to the abuse of power by F.B.I. agents, shouldn’t they be far more alarmed at the abuse of investigatory and other powers for political ends by the president of the United States?"
Well, they are now. Sort of.
All week they've been somewhat amusingly apoplectic at the extracurricular, political snooping done by Presidents FDR, JFK, and LBJ. But this is a decidedly unconservative world for contemporary conservatives. While severely reproaching those past Democratic presidents for having dabbled in the dark arts of political espionage, today's Republicans have nothing but love for the sitting ultra-fanatical president, who makes FDR-through-LBJ's White Houses look as though they had roosted in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.
This is all so unfair, shriek these pseudoconservative children not merely about impeachment, but of Trump's bootless persecution. Evidence of historical, domestic wrongdoing by some presidents they see vividly. When it comes to their literal commander in chief demanding the corruption of foreign powers in our elections, they see reams of conclusive, guilt-laden evidence as only so much confetti, tossed about by giddy Democrats who've been out for Trump's head since Day One. Which is horseshit. And they know it.
As scholars Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein carefully observed seven years ago, "The Republicans are the problem." Party members have deep-sixed any semblance of fairness — along with anything resembling actual conservatism. They just don't give a damn about the traditional institutions of Congress, a trustworthy executive, or a balanced judiciary — all of which disrupts even the concept of social stability, which conservatives once hailed as the prime directive.
To answer Bret Stephens' question: Yes, today's Republicans should be alarmed by the president's abuse of power, but that would be so impossibly old school of these radical anarchists.
If I'm ever in a knife fight, I want Nancy Pelosi on my side.
"We will make our decision as to when we are going to [forward the impeachment articles] when we see what they are doing on the Senate side," said the speaker to reporters yesterday. "So far, we have not seen anything that looks fair to us."
If more than a bluff, her tactical delay portends — at the extreme end - a Republican Senate denied its inexorable acquittal of the most corrupt, depraved president to ever hold the office. Speaker Pelosi can sit on the articles of impeachment as long as she likes, thereby divesting Trump of the acquittal he so wrongly needs.
The downside of teaming up with Nancy in this particular rumble, however, is that we would be bringing a blade to a gunfight. We want "anything that looks fair"? Good luck to us.
Unlike Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is virtually as corrupt and depraved as Trump: bottlenecking House legislation, depriving the preceding president of his power to appoint, sustaining a sitting mob boss-cum-president, flaunting his disregard for even the spirit of the U.S. Constitution. And like Trump, he has no shame.
So while Pelosi might pull out a scimitar, McConnell can unholster a .38.
As Trump's underboss, Stonewall Mitch possesses the power to be officially indifferent to whatever the speaker does. His opening play? A soft counter-bluff. Tweeted a McConnell adviser: Pelosi's potential delay "might be the greatest compliment McConnell has ever received."
It's excruciatingly problematic to beat a man who just doesn't give a damn about upholding any self-dignity.
Katie Hill, the I-don't-know-why resigned-in-disgrace "openly bisexual and the first LGBTQ congresswoman from California," suggests to Playboy magazine that she'll run again.
As a reminder, Hill resigned from Congress this year following RedState.com's publication of private photos of the congresswoman — which is as far as I'll go in describing them, since they were private, and thus no one else's business. RedState's salaciousness was followed by a British tabloid's, and, naturally, Twitter's obsessive tweeters then did what they do best: go nuts.
Amidst this raging non-scandal, Hill, who before entering Congress had lobbied for "affordable housing and health care reform," resigned her seat. If nothing else, the House Ethics Committee — some of whose members have almost certainly engaged in consensual behavior similar to hers; even the far-right Matt Gaetz, for heaven's sake, admirably tweeted: "Who among us would look perfect if every ex leaked every photo/text?" — announced it would check out this most egregious of nothing.
Hill had already conceded that her relationship with a campaign staffer was "inappropriate"; in essence, the #MeToo movement had flipped back on itself.
If every House member were to resign because of some inappropriate behavior committed external to the chamber's purpose, the House would be an empty tomb.
Nevertheless, in this archaic new age of Victorian hypocrisy, Hill had to go. "I hate that [Republican haters] won," she told Playboy. "I hate that I did end up quitting, but the GOP made it clear that they were going to continue this until I quit."
Playboy "ask[s] whether, despite everything that has happened to her, she might consider running for political office again." Says Hill: "Obviously, I’m going to need some time away, but it’s almost something I want to do on principle."
I hope she someday strikes "almost."