PMC Commentary

Republicans and the joy of serial arson

Only Dick Morris, former presidential adviser and licker of prostituted toes, could put pen to paper and come up with this: "Economic Collapse to Trump's Advantage":

If it's economic recovery you want, America knows that Donald Trump is the man….

Whatever his strengths or weaknesses, perhaps everyone agrees that his strong point is managing the economy….

How natural it is that we then turn to Trump to bring back the economy he created.

If your house burns down — particularly if you loved it — you would turn to the builder and architect who conceived and erected it in the first place.

Trump didn't, of course — build anything, that is, except for stacking $1+ trillion more onto the national debt before dumping yet more debt on the outsized crisis he fecklessly conceived and erected.

So Dick, aside from that little burp in logic, if your house burns down, would you turn to the arsonist architect who burned it down in the second place?

I should modify my opening sentence, however. Trump, too, will soon be hawking what Mr. Morris is hawking — which, truth be told, is what Republicans have been hawking for decades:

Yes, every objective observer knows we burned down your house last term, but do give us another chance. Just one more tax cut and we'll balance the budget, enhance Social Security and Medicare, shove countless $$ in ammunition up the military's ass — yes you can forget your worries, sit back and just sip mint juleps on the veranda of this white man's plantation we call Amuraka.    

Trump dropped his rattle. So he's mad at the rattle.

​​​​​Nothing so perfectly exemplifies the infantile personality as does an "incredulous" Donald Trump. The Associated Press has this latest in presidential psychological profiles:

"New surveys by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign pointed to a harrowing picture for the president as he faces reelection…. [Aides have highlighted to him] the growing political cost of the [covid] crisis and the unforced errors by Trump in his freewheeling press briefings.

"Trump reacted with defiance, incredulous that he could be losing to someone he viewed as a weak candidate. 'I am not fucking losing to Joe Biden,' he repeated in a series of heated conference calls with his top campaign officials."

Yes, Donald, you are fucking losing to Joe Biden. And you're losing, in large part, because you can't be straight with anyone — including your own campaign team.

As the Democratic primaries were just gearing up, you were filling your presidential days with sarcastic, paranoid tweets aimed exclusively at the former vice president, since you and your aides believed he would be the nominee — and knew he would be your toughest opponent. After Iowa and New Hampshire, you moved on to targeting other, temporarily ascendent candidates. But then you watched in revisited horror as Biden regained his dominance. Now you scream to your unfortunate staff that you always saw him as a "weak candidate"?

To the nation you scream even more asinine lies: that you "built the greatest economy in the history of the world," and you're "going to do it again." The quickest, simplest retort to those humdingers of mendacity are two quick, simple sentences from Market Watches' economics correspondent: "The first statement is downright false. The second is wishful thinking."

But please proceed, Donald; please continue insisting the economy is "going to build fast. I think it’ll be a tremendous, tremendous comeback." And by all means keep your nitwitted son-in-law in the national spotlight, saying the same: "I think you’ll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again."

There's not an economist on earth, drunk or sober, who foresees a tremendous, really rocking comeback. Going into May unemployment continues to soar, more businesses are teetering and consumers are more fearful than ever — all because of your disastrous procrastinations, wishful thinking and towering lies months ago.

That brings us back to what your campaign staff has been trying to tell you, Donald: You are fucking losing to Joe Biden because you committed the greatest, avoidable fuckup in American history — at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives. But buried in what you see as your liberating lies, you can't lie your way out of mounds of corpses.

We've had some technical issues. Which may be over. 

Hannity's hilarious hypocrisy

The second sentence of Sean Hannity's 12-page letter of pettifoggery leaps at the reader like the Greek god of hypocrisy (if there were one): "We write concerning the New York Times’ blatant and outrageous disregard for the truth in mischaracterizing Mr. Hannity’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic."

Such blatant disregard is libelous, says the letter from Hannity's attorney; therefore the aggrieved party demands a retraction and an apology. Thus begins a litigious comedy performed by the Baghdad Bob of the American airwaves.

To be sure, that Hannity himself has been an outrageous pandemic of right-wing disinformation for the past quarter century is a sordid reality he hasn't overlooked: To lie and deceive, one must first know the truth — then set out to maul and molest it. So there's something of a Goebbelesque quality to Hannity's threatening letter to the Times and three of its opinion writers, Kara Swisher, Ben Smith, and Ginia Bellafante. In his own little way, Hannity is accusing Poland of initiating hostilities by invading the sacred fatherland of Fox News.

Specifically, his legal action addresses "three [opinion pieces that] dealt in different ways with how Fox News at various points dismissed coronavirus as a political cudgel to whack Trump," observes the Washington Post's Eric Wemple. Reflects the media critic: "What we have here is a media loudmouth whose millions and millions of earnings each year as a radio and TV host come wrapped in the protective gauze of the First Amendment. The very lines that he accuses the Times of crossing are boundaries he fails to observe in his daily ramblings."

But since Sean is raising his righteous voice against three members of what he has elsewhere called the "Democratic extreme radical socialist party," no doubt he feels justified in crossing lines. And in doing so he earns free publicity and deepens his cred among millions and millions of morons.

The starkest line of hypocrisy crossed is etched in the legal action's counterfeit basis: "[The columnists'] false statements do not constitute protected opinion. A statement is not an opinion if 'a reasonable listener ... could have concluded that [the defendant] was conveying facts about the plaintiff.'" By this "reasoning" of the pompous boor's lawyer, not only Sean Hannity but virtually Fox News' entire crew of on-air talent would be liable for the slander of birtherism — and every other phony war cry belched over the years by the Murdoch family's cruel embarrassment to journalism.

Sean being Sean (unfortunately), at some near point he'll silently drop this action on the legitimate basis of having acted stupidly — and never again will he speak a word of it to his audience. Like most other right-wing outrages, Hannity's legal demands will simply flush themselves down the rabbit hole of past indignation.

'The Twit Zone'

This morning, when I saw this,

I thought of this:

What a difference a day (or two) makes

When I last checked — just a few days ago — the widely respected Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's doomsday projection, the predicted covid-19 death toll was 66,000, up from 60,000, which was radically down from around 90,000. Pessimism now seems to be infiltrating professional estimates — because of, I assume, idiots such as Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, egged on by the nation's most dangerous imbecile, Donald Trump?

And so it goes, in this exhausting Age of Trump

Another day, another report of Trump's incompetence, critical indifference, and criminally negligent unfitness for office:

U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat….

The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report … designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats….

The alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week….

U.S. officials said it reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts or other rapidly developing security issues.

Should House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff wish to see the PDBs … well, good luck. Senate Republicans have enshrined Trump's right to withhold any presidentially damaging information from both Congress and the voting public, since they, too, are criminally unfit for office.

America's salvation: pure crapola

Two days after Trump announced on Twitter that his television bullshit sessions were "not worth the effort," and 10 days after announcing that the nation's coronavirus testing capability was "fully sufficient to begin opening up the country," he revealed in another bullshit session a "blueprint" for the nation's imminent testing capability — in the next month, roughly 8 million tests.

To cite that figure I had to consult the morning news, since Trump's underlying strategy is to drown worried Americans in obfuscation and a flood of essentially insignificant but seemingly impressive numbers. Thus yesterday his sidekick in charge of dazzling befuddlement, Mike Pence, was there to throw around a multitude of Very Impressive Numbers — so many, in fact, it was impossible to discern the precise number of tests to be performed over the next month, or so the administration says.

The point of the president and vice president's thank-God-we-have-Trump blizzard of numbers was less about progress on testing than reopening the economy, which, in Trump's narcissistic mind, serves the nation's most vital interest: his reelection. He hopes he can bamboozle voters with the same sort of empty yet grandiose-seeming pronunciamentos — such as 8 million tests by the end of May — that he so regularly unloaded in 2016.

And empty indeed was yesterday's announcement. "A group of experts convened by Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics," reports the Times, "has called for five million tests a day by early June, ramping up to 20 million per day by late July" (my emphasis).

Ah, but that's from a center for ethics, you say — a concern as foreign to Trump as Larry Flynt's interest in stamping out pornography. Hence we turn to the materialistic. Says Noble laureate in economics, Paul Romer: "The federal government should test every American once every two weeks to reestablish national confidence and jump-start the economy."

A bit of a discrepancy, don't ya think? Trump's 8 million tests by the end of May versus Romer's 660 million tests. But not to worry. To really save American lives and safely regenerate the economy, Trump possesses a bottomless bag of bullshit.

Oh thank God … Jesse Ventura has his eye on the White House

… because he was so friggin' successful as a governor. Then again, as a presidential candidate Mr. Ventura has far more governmental experience than the swindling real-estate clown who ran in 2016, and is now running the country into the ground. 

To be clear: I haven't filed anything. I authorized a letter of interest that was sent on my behalf to the Greens and I'm testing the waters for Green Party nomination. I'm an independent. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican because I know they're not the solution.

— Jesse Ventura (@GovJVentura) April 27, 2020

I gather "testing the waters" means sending a tweet saying he's testing the waters. A glance at comments received reveal two main themes: Ventura could be a spoiler for Trump's reelection — "You would be the second most hated person in the world" — or, he could be the Bernie Sanders who wasn't, or rather isn't:

"You must run on a progressive agenda:

"Fully Public Medicare For All (nothing less); Green New Deal; $15 Minimum Wage; End The Wars; CANCEL STUDENT DEBT; Free Tuition; American Jobs.

"Run on this platform. We will put you in the white house."

And by God I'm pretty sure "We the People" of the Green Party believe it.

What's up with Matt Drudge?

In a turn unimaginable a couple years ago — and still rather dumbfounding to me — noise-machinist Matt Drudge has soared from eminent Trumpeteer to NeverAgainTrumper. Of this, I was unaware until yesterday. Drudge is one of the many politically theocratic fanatics I haven't kept tabs on, since, to borrow from Tomlin, no matter how assiduous I become in following right-wing crackpots, it's never enough to keep up.

At any rate, yesterday afternoon I was reading an unmemorable piece about something or other when a link to this contemporaneous Drudge page (once, and perhaps still, the bible of crackpots) sprang up, and I clicked:

That was intriguing. So I Googled "What's up with Drudge?" and got this, from the Columbia Journalism Review: "Why did Matt Drudge turn on Donald Trump?" by Bob Norman, January 2020. There I found that "cracks began emerging in Drudge’s devotion two years into Trump’s term, with the president’s inability to get full funding for the border wall." Indeed Drudge became irate that America had "no new wall at all!"

Once turned, Drudge couldn't stop. In the summer of 2019 he complained of "big government" Trump; of the president's "trash talk" and its alienating effect on suburban women; of hard-pressed farmers and disastrous trade wars. With impeachment came "loaded headlines" like this, noted Norman: "Republican criticism [of Trump] mounts …"; "It took [a] long time for Republicans to abandon Nixon …"; and “Senate likelier to remove [Trump] …"

Around the time of these headlines, Norman managed to reach the reclusive Drudge by phone at his $2.2 million Florida home. He inquired as to the provocateur's Trumpian apostasy on the heels of such supportive fervency: "That was three years ago," said Drudge. "[He] wouldn’t go further," wrote Norman.

In 2015, Matt Drudge said to friend Alex Jones on InfoWars: "I live in a world that is free, colorful, vibrant, takes chances, bold, stands up to power. And that’s where I’ve made my success."

Again I'm intrigued. Is Drudge — whose readership numbers have rebounded since first filleting Trump — a kind of one-man vanguard in readying today's pseudoconservatives for a recovering, post-Trump era? Has Drudge envisioned a colossal Trumpian train wreck on a Big 2020 Blue Wall? Can Drudge restore the internally demolished credibility of the right-winningest NeverTrumpers? Can that be where Drudge makes his next success?

Anatomy of murderous Trumpian bullshit

​​​​​The Bullshit: "America’s testing capability and capacity is fully sufficient to begin opening up the country, totally," announced Trump on April 18th. On April 22nd he added, "We are doing more testing I think than probably any of the governors even want."

The Reality: "We are not in a situation where we can say we are exactly where we want to be with regard to testing," said Dr. Anthony Fauci to Time magazine, April 23rd.

The Bullshit: "The three-phase White House plan, Opening Up America Again [target date: May 1] … says states should have a 'downward trajectory of positive tests' … over two weeks, while conducting robust contact tracing and 'sentinel surveillance' testing of asymptomatic people in vulnerable populations."

The Reality: "Many states are still struggling [four days before the reopening target date] to conduct much more urgent testing of patients with symptoms" (my emphases), reported the Times yesterday.

Reality²: We must "significantly ramp up" not just the number of tests, but the "capacity to actually perform them" — Fauci to Time, on the emptiness of Trump's repeated boasts about the numerous tests out there.

Reality³: This administration is trying to kill you.

Trump's Plan B is Plan A, over and over and ...

This, from minutes ago, is just sad — the impotent sputtering of a disrobed wannabe emperor; the forceless slinging of a tedious, ethically bankrupted call to arms; the running-home-to-mommy (the base) act of a red-faced loser:   

FAKE NEWS, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2020

Georgia's governor is the very model of a modern major conservative

​​​​​The Wall Street Journal's editorial board is most unhappy that Trump, subsequent to being happy that Georgia's governor reopened the state, isn’t at all happy that the governor reopened the state.

"I want him to open as soon as possible. And I want the state to open. But I wasn’t happy with [Governor] Brian Kemp," was Trump's latest verdict on the gormless gov. (The prez's ruling came the day before he advised American citizens to guzzle a cleaning agent of their choice. Just days ago, Kemp revealed — months after this had been quite prominently in the news — that he had just learned that asymptomatic covid-19 can be contagious. And there you have it: the state of "conservative leadership" in America.)

Mused the WSJ: "Consistency has never been Donald Trump’s strong suit, but during a national calamity it would be terrific if the President would decide what he wants without shifting from day to day." Georgia's governor "may be wrong to open gyms and nail salons this early," the Journal continued, "or he may save the livelihoods of thousands of Georgians without significantly reducing the health risk."

That the editorial board believes Kemp may be right is plain enough, though its reason for this belief is just plain nuts: "Mr. Kemp made a good case. Georgia has not seen a devastating outbreak of Covid-19. As of Friday the state has had 22,147 known cases, with 892 deaths related to the virus — a per capita rate far below that of such hard-hit areas as Louisiana, Michigan and New York."

Overlooked — entirely — by the Journal is that mitigation efforts have been responsible for Georgia's heretofore lockout of a devastating outbreak. With his own mitigation of those efforts, Gov. Kemp has taken the encouraging status quo — "the number of documented cases appears to be diminishing," note the editors — and hoisted it on its own, otherwise deactivated petard.

I cannot understand, in any sympathetic way, the conservative resistance to self-evident reasoning — other than that conservatives know what they want, and thus grab for it as would an ill-mannered toddler for a cookie. It's politics of the moment; the infantile thrill of immediate gratification; the shucking off of responsibility for harmful consequences.

What I do understand is that not for long can you run a functioning state — or country — that way.

Get yours today ...

I did!

As presidentially prescribed, I took two just a few minutes ago. And no longer am I worried about any upper respiratory problem. 

What this country needs is more Trump

Over the last three weeks the nation has suffered 13 hours of Trump TV, note the Washington Post's Philip Bump and Ashley Parker. Two of those seemingly endless hours were devoted to attacking Democrats, President Obama, governors, China, the media and Speaker Pelosi. The president spent nearly another hour congratulating himself for the superb job he's done. His expressions of national sorrow for tens of thousands of covid victims used 4.5 minutes.

And if the arc of history really does bend toward justice, Trump's vindictiveness, self-triumphalism and sociopathic indifference to others' pain will soon morph into four years of unemployment, civil suits and criminal charges. For as it turns out, what that "sleepy guy in a basement" needed most in his presidential campaign was … more Trump.

Anecdotally, in 2016 I watched his first couple rallies on cable television and in near disbelief. I could take no more. This year, I've watched just about every daily White House briefing, cheering Trump on and begging for more: His 2020 airtime is having the inverse effect of 2016's — with every buffoonish second, he loses a thousand votes.

Though the above, scientifically speaking, is nonextrapolatiory, it's clear that I'm far from the only viewer who sees Trump as his own worst enemy. "Some administration officials, outside Republicans and other Trump allies," write Bump and Parker, "say the briefings … are doing more to harm than help the president’s reelection hopes. They worry that Trump is squandering the opportunity to demonstrate presidential leadership and be the 'wartime president' he has claimed to be by picking petty fights and appearing childish and distracted."

After Thursday's magnificent self-implosion via his Clorox moment and the light shone on it, Trump has gone dark. Some observers, such as Jennifer Rubin — "Yippeee! You finally figured out the more Americans see of you the more contempt they have" — believe that Trump has indeed figured things out. In fact, he himself might have us believe that he has:

What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2020

That tweeted sentiment, however, is the essence of Trumpian fake news. There is simply no way this sociopathic narcissist can avoid the early-evening spotlight in the coming days, weeks, months — in those seemingly endless hours. He'll be back. And I'll be cheering him on.