PMC Commentary

There should be no Democratic schism in confronting Trump and his virus

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said this week that we're likely in a recession, but to millions of Americans it feels as though we've entered the Great Depression II. My college-student daughter lost three part-time jobs this month, and about 3.4 million Americans lost their full-time livelihoods just last week. More to come — much more to come — as rising unemployment looms over the economy like fog over a fetid swamp.

"It remains a wide-open question whether this will become a long-lasting slump or a short-lived flash recession," writes the Washington Post's economic correspondent, Heather Long. "Economists say the jobless claims reported [March 21] is the start of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by mid-April."

Says economist Martha Gimbel: "The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs." To which Long adds: "That carnage is only likely to be partially ameliorated by a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill."

Hence Trump's political panic and ensuing, insane proposal to reopen the country for business in early April — a proposal that related Post reporting calls "potentially catastrophic." But the financially comfortable Trump is not panicking about your future; his panic is about only his own: What will the troubled body politic determine on November 3rd?

His reelection odds were already against him, even without the Trump-assisted recession or coming depression. He dawdled and oozed false hope and cold-shouldered the intelligence community when he should have been acting. Now the American economy and millions of its workers are paying Trump's piper, converting odds against him into odds assaulting him.

As all of us should. Yet working against that is not Minnesota Nice but Democrat Nice, which, historically, has self-disarmed the party. Axelrod appears to be leading the charge against any new and improved political judgment, while former colleague Plouffe is rightfully flummoxed by his passivity:

One of the rare times we disagree, brother. Using Trump’s own words and actions to remind people of his failures while he tries to rewrite history is essential. And his campaign will spend whatever it takes to create their own reality of his “perfect” response. Can’t disarm. https://t.co/4YBIGvZdEC

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) March 18, 2020

The truest Trump impersonation(?) ever

It's Friday, so ...

God only brought one guy back from the dead on Easter. Trump is here to bring back the whole economy on Easter 2020. Enjoy this clip (possibly, like, the best ever), share and be sure to subscribe to Making Podcasts Great Again (@TrumpPod) - new every week! pic.twitter.com/aUifVWRzfh

— J-L Cauvin (@JLCauvin) March 24, 2020

A widdle wacko, uh, worshiper

Rick Wiles is a "pastor" at Flowing Streams Church in Vero Beach, Florida. (The "church's" name reminds one of the viciously anti-Semitic Father Coughlin's National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan.) He is also a radio host, pundit, and founder of TruNews, which flogs "racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories," notes Wikipedia. "Wiles has said that Jews seek to obtain control of countries to kill millions of Christians, and has described Jews as 'deceivers' who 'plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda.' The Trump administration has given Wiles's website press credentials on several occasions." (Bold, mine.)

Rick Wiles says that God is spreading the coronavirus in synagogues because he is "dealing with those who oppose his son, Jesus Christ." https://t.co/2oNuRyqaqC pic.twitter.com/mTt3YdEuRs

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 26, 2020

Republicanism is now literally killing us

"New York has lost a staggering 20,000 hospital beds over the last two decades to budget cuts and insurance overhauls, complicating local and state efforts to battle the coronavirus…. The Empire State had 73,931 licensed hospital beds in 2000 before years of cuts and closures shrank the number to just 53,000 in 2020."

However magnified in New York state, this is a national problem. And by this I mean not only the hospital crisis, but that governments — local to national — have been on a myopic journey of devastating revenue cuts for decades.

Democrats' "big-government" spending has been dwarfed by Republicans' far larger deficits, resulting, before the $2 trillion stimulus bill, in a national debt of $21 trillion. When President Reagan took office, it was $1 trillion, and when he left, nearly $3 trillion. The GOP's habit of What, us worry? then mushroomed under the rank fiscal mismanagement of George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

In fiscal 2020 the United States is paying $479 billion in interest alone on the national debt. Over 10 years, that's at least $10 trillion more than Bernie Sanders' financially reckless Medicare-for-all plan — and under Trump, the debt's principal has steadily exploded and will continue to do so, courtesy his useless, massive tax cut.

Reaganism, Gingrichism, Bushism (II) and now Trumpism have preached that in good economic times, taxes should be cut, since the federal government is reaping unnecessary dollars and thus that money should be returned to taxpayers; and they've preached that in bad economic times, taxes should be cut, so as to liberate personal spending.

For Republicans, no time is a bad time to slash government revenue. Hence in general they've preached textbook-economic stupidity. Which has trickled down to so many states and municipalities.

Just one catastrophic consequence of which is New York state's "staggering [loss of] 20,000 hospital beds over the last two decades."

Republicanism is now literally killing us.

A personal microcosm of right-wing madness

The once-respected actor James Woods tweets as often as Trump, and is just as meshuga. Accordingly, he has 2.2 million followers.

Asians are ruthless in war. Ask any American who fought in WWII, in Korea, or in Vietnam. Could China have engineered this virus (high contagion/low lethality) as a warning to President Trump not to interfere with the cozy globalist trade deals arranged by Clinton and Obama?

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) March 22, 2020

First off, rare is the nation that isn't ruthless in war. Ask the Japanese. At least 225,000 were vaporized in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the blink of an eye, or for months afterward died agonizing deaths — nearly all civilians; another 100,000 died in the U.S. Army Air Forces 1945 firebombing of Tokyo.

As for Woods' other drivel, an actual military historian at the U.S. Naval War College, Tom Nichols, asked if the actor was "always this crazy, or did [he] become crazy once he swore tribal allegiance to a sociopathic failed casino boss?"

That's an easy one, Tom. Only a real nutjob would have ever sworn such allegiance.

Lord only knows where Woods learned of the Chinese-virus conspiracy theory (Limbaugh? Levin? Hannity?), but it does seem that the larger swarm of right-wing racists and paranoids now reassuredly believes in the return of the mid-20th-century's Yellow Peril.

As historian Richard Hofstadter noted in his famous essay on pseudoconservative paranoia, its clinical victims see America as under perpetual siege by enemies who, among other attributes, are "a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman — sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, [and] cruel." To the Chinese, add "inscrutable." 

And wouldn't you know it? It further seems that the Clintons and Barack Obama were in on the fix, were traitors within, were villains in the service of menacing globalism.

Good grief.

"I'm not going to do anything rash" - Trump, 25 March

​​​​​I don't live in Chicago, but many times I have walked by the eponymous obscenity above — and yet never noticed, above me, that monstrous surname hovering. Mental self-preservation, I suppose.

At any rate, this, from the Washington Post, should explain why Trump has been frazzled with worry right down to his little orange fingers and is so anxious to reopen America:

"Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue."

On a related note:

"On Sunday, he was asked if his business would abstain from any federal bailout. He did not give a clear answer. 'Everything’s changing, just so you understand, it’s all changing,' he said. 'But I have no idea.'"

He does now. A HuffPost headline:

"Senate Coronavirus Bill Prohibits Trump’s Hotels From Receiving Bailouts:
Democrats pushed to ban Trump family businesses from cashing in on the Senate’s $2 trillion rescue package."

Shakespeare aside, those are the most beautiful words ever written in the English language.

Republican humor from a really honest Republican

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Commenter Peter G. recommends, in one of this site's comment sections, the universal reading of English poet Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est," an utterly ghastly telling of The Great War's gaseous "green sea" and trench-scarred battlefields. Its contemporary relevance is too bloody obvious to spell out.  

 

***

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

***

Which is to say:

It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

Stunning. Absolutely stunning.

Perhaps even worse than our wealth inequality problem is our intelligence inequality problem. 

Whom do you trust for #coronavirus info:

Dems:

CDC 87%
Your governor 75%
National media 72%
Friends/family 72%
Religious leaders 44%
Trump 14%

Republicans:

Trump 90%
CDC 84%
Friends/family 81%
Religious leaders 71%
You governor 65%
National media 13%

-CBS/YouGov

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) March 25, 2020

While it's true that the United States has become another Gilded Age's Two Americas, the poor and the rich, it's also true that these Two Americas are partitioned in terms of the informed vs. the ignorant (which, of course, feeds wealth inequality, too).

Polarization? Negative partisanship? Yes, but our equally deplorable Two Americas battle is one of conflict between brains and Trump-loving, media-hating, Bible-pounding brawn.  

A sprinting virus

How well have containment-mitigation efforts fared to date? Shown below is a partial, states chart, courtesy NPR and the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, of covid-19's expansion over just the last three weeks:

As of 14 days ago, every state was affected.

Hence covid-19's exploding status quo, if you will, even with, in many areas, a rather severe regimen of containment-mitigation efforts — a regimen that Donald Trump now suggests should be lifted.

I'm no epidemiologist, but his logic would seem to be … uh … crackers.

Perhaps a few of us lucky ones can hang on, disease-free, for 222 more days — Election Day.  

Virus containment X 50

This is just one problem with having 50 relatively sovereign states — along with their 3,007 counties, 64 parishes, 41 independent cities, and 19 boroughs:

"New York and California [are] already instituting strict measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, and doctors in Washington State [are] dealing with the bleak reality that they may have to decide which patients to prioritize for care....

"But even as the crisis escalated, the response to the pandemic has remained widely inconsistent….

"A regulatory patchwork has unfolded in recent days in Texas — which has 700 confirmed infections and 11 deaths — with restrictions, curfews and stay-at-home orders that vary from county to county."

As someone quipped the other day, "It feels like we're living under the Articles of Confederation."

The upside to having 50 states, etc.? Imagine if Donald Trump had been in charge — exclusively — nationwide: Today we'd be reading this corrected version of what the NYT wrote this morning:

"In New York, the epicenter of the crisis in the country, cases exceeded 25,000 250,000 statewide by Tuesday, and in California, at least 2,500 25,000 cases had been confirmed."

Born to be dead

Yesterday I was about to note that composers such as Haydn — 104 symphonies — Mozart and Beethoven make me realize just how little I've accomplished in life. I demurred. 

Yet I've suddenly come to understand that I'm vastly worthier than any of those eminently gifted gentlemen. For according to Donald Trump, Mitch the Grim Reaper, Palin the death panelist and swarms of their ghoulish friends, I was born to die in the noble service of saving the United States economy — the world's largest, greatest, best.

Could Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven have made claim to such an esteemed and historic accomplishment? Pshaw. They were but pikers.    

Wildly. Dead.

Sen. Burr set to star in "Hoarders" reality show

I simply cannot resist Borowitz (until he sues me for copyright infringement).

A Democrat's suicidal - or expatriate - musings

Yesterday, New York's brilliant and refreshingly articulate governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that he held the ancestral philosophy of "prepare for the worst, hope for the best."

I have realized of late that I've overindulged the latter, and addressed the former as would Trump a killer virus.

See below, two posts, for your own epiphany. If the poll posted had a margin of error as high as even 10 or 15 percent, I'd still strive to stick my partisan head in a gas oven, or, as übermanly Papa Hemingway did, blow my head off. As epiphanies go, mine is a finishing whopper.

For nearly four years we've endured not just the worst-ever president, but the worst-ever inhuman being — discounting, perhaps, a few mass slaughterers of yore, although sociopathic Trump has seven months yet to go.

Hence it remains inconceivable and indescribably painful, to me anyway, that this guttersniping jackanapes of a POTUS could nevertheless register a 48 percent job-approval rating — that being higher than the electoral percentage that dumped his criminal ass in the Oval Office's executive chair, previously occupied by a man of virtue.

That statistic — along with the poll's numbers, below — is not only obscene to anyone with even a brain-damaged conscience, it signifies that, whatever its faults, this once-great nation is stubbornly populated by an ethically diseased minority-cum-majority.

The United States has become the most roguish, blinkered, inexpressibly dumbfucking nation on the globe. And the thought of squandering another four fucking years of otherworldly Trumpian corruption and chaos has me wondering.

Oven, shotgun, or passport?

Were I Joe Biden - terrified, part 2

Sorry to add more quantitative evidence of a boneheaded country that put a bonehead in the White House, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, Mary Lou, and I've got to go rope stupidity:

Naturally, men, being men, which is to say, Cro-Magnons, outnumber women in witlessness, and white folk with more comfortable salaries and manicured lawns dominate blacks in stupidity, 49 to 24 percent.

Just as naturally, those with a conscience and reasonable worldview who temporarily believe things are just peachy pale in numbers — 21/18 percent — next to the unspeakable morons who brought us Donald Trump, 74/70 percent.

Last night and right up to the matutinus hour of 6 a.m. I slept not at all — trazodone can be a hit-and-miss cure for neurotic sleeplessness. I thought that would be the worst of today. Wrong. I arose, turned on my laptop, and was immediately, maliciously punched in the face by this CBS/YouGov poll.

But of course it wasn't really the poll that decked me. It was the towering cluelessness of my American brothers and sisters, fellow Cro-Magnons and the keep-the-cavefire-burning women who sleep with them.