PMC Commentary

Update 3: I may be recovering. I'm not entirely sure, since I have pumped myself with so many pain killers, extra doses of morphine and copious alcohol my mental acuity and personal assessment could be just a tad off. At any rate, they do ease a nasty ailment, so relevant medical warnings can go insert a body part where it counts. I did eat today for the first time in four days, which I see as improvement. If I survive my palliatives, I may return Thursday.   

Updated update: Negative on covid. Yet I still have most of the symptoms, which, thank God, only means I have anaggressive flu, which I would wish only on Donald Trump. And just to add to this comedic farce, I awoke this morning with my left cheek swollen all the way up to my eye, which makes me look like Joe Lewis after his first bout with Max Schmeling.    

Update: My daughter finally dragged me to the emergency room. They tested for covid. The physician said there is a chance I have it, but he was a bit firmer with my daughter in the waiting room. He told her he wants to treat this as covid. I'll have the results in 12 to 24 hours. I still believe it's nothing more than a really nasty flu. 

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I'm down for the day. I feel like Robert Kennedy must have felt after walking 50 miles on pavement in hard sole shoes on a dare from his brother John. If there's a bone in my body that doesn't ache, I don't know where it is.

Looking back on November 2020

Former 538er Harry Enten, who now writes for CNN, reflects on Trump's miserable polling relative to other incumbents:

There is time for Trump to mount a comeback, but the candidates who do come back are usually not incumbents and have never been elected incumbents in the polling era.

Since 1940, the only incumbent losing at this point in the cycle who would go on to win another term was Harry Truman. He, like Trump, was down around 10 points to Thomas Dewey in the early summer of 1948. But remember, Truman was not elected president before taking the 1948 election.

In terms of elected incumbents, Jimmy Carter was the one to be down by as much as Trump is right now. Carter went on to get crushed by Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The interesting point about Truman's "surprise" victory in 1948 is that it should not have been a surprise.

It became one mostly because all but one major pollster had stopped polling toward the end of October, since a Dewey victory seemed certain. In addition, Dewey's October lead was not that impressive; it averaged only 3.5 points. Last, the one polling operation — at the University of Michigan — that continued surveying likely voters discovered that undecideds were breaking for Truman. (That was similar to the joker in the deck in 2016's polling. As the election neared, polls showed that roughly 5 percent of voters were undecided, most of whom wound up choosing Trump. The polls weren't wrong, as is commonly believed. Clinton's loss was more the matter that nearly all observers — including myself — concentrated their predictions on her consistent, 2-3 point leads.)

President Carter's 1980 loss to Reagan was a Greek tragedy. Unlike Trump's tenure, in which all its wounds have been self-inflicted, Carter was battered by uncontrollable outside forces, mostly the energy crisis and, of course, the seemingly endless hostage situation in revolutionary Iran. The Carter campaign had prayed that Reagan would be the Republican nominee, since his reputation as a far-right wingnut remained firm. But the hostage crisis unfairly left Carter looking weak, which sank any hope of a win.

As for 2020? One merely needs to rephrase Mr. Enten's words: "In terms of elected incumbents, Donald Trump is the one to be down by as much as Carter was in 1980. Trump will go on to get crushed by Joe Biden."

Charmin-g

A post-Tilly roll of my daughter's toilet tissue.

But love is unconditional (even when one party looks a trifle guilty).

A gathering of fools

In "Florida’s Idiocracy: Come and witness the wisdom of The People," NeverTrumper Charlie Sykes recounts the pitiable yet laughable saga of a Palm Beach County public hearing, "during which angry opponents [of wearing masks] held up Trump signs, threatened the county board with citizens’ arrests, invoked the wrath of God, and held a festival of crazy."

Sykes also presents a tweet by Democratic political consultant John Aravosis, who watched the festival — a modern version of the medieval Feast of Fools — unfold on TV.

Floridians angrily claiming masks are the work of the devil because “they want to throw God’s wonderful breathing system out the door.” pic.twitter.com/5pDzU8ncwY

— John Aravosis 🇺🇸🇬🇷🏳️‍🌈 (@aravosis) June 24, 2020

At the county commissioners' meeting, the video's first featured wombat added: "What happened to Bill Gates? Why is he not in jail? Why is Hillary Clinton not in jail? Why are all of these pedophiles that are demanding you all to listen to their rules, why are they not in jail? Is it because you are part of them? Are you part of the deep state? The deep state is going down, and if any of you are in the deep state, you are going down with them."

As I tell my six-month-old pup whenever she should be engaging an activity, such as critical pottying: "Focus, let's focus, you've got to focus now." Nevertheless, Tilly is better at focusing than any of the anti-masketeers at the Palm Beach meeting. Pedophilia? Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, imprisonment and the deep state? At a board meeting on public health? Is dementia a new symptom of covid-19, which appears to be most prevalent among right-wing wackos preconditioned by dimwittedness?

A sucker is born every minute, and then dies at my command - Sean Hannity

Predictable, but still fascinating.

According to a recent study, "Misinformation During a Pandemic," which I learned of via the Washington Post, the "infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences."

The study's authors found that an increase in "viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with approximately 32 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14 and approximately 23 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28."

"Carlson warned viewers that the coronavirus might pose a serious threat from early February, while Hannity first ignored the topic on his show and then dismissed the risks associated with the virus, claiming that it was less concerning than the common flu and insisting that Democrats were using it as a political weapon to undermine the president."

By April, Carlson, in his covid coverage, had caught the Fox News Primetime Virus, which eats hosts' brains while accelerating uncontrollable mouth movement. The irony is that the more aggressive the debilitating progression of the illness, the higher one's ratings — which means a secondary pandemic of needless deaths through disinformation.

But it was Sean Hannity who pioneered the rather peculiar, televised art of slandering the power of covid-19, which involved, literally, the excited killing of his own viewers.

Testing Trump's epidemiological advice

After ordering restaurants to cut back on seating as well as ordering all bars in Texas to close by noon today, Gov. Greg Abbott, in an "abrupt reversal of his previous policy," said the partial re-lockdown is "the last thing we want to do." What he didn't say, but should have, is that following Trump's advice by reopening prematurely was the last thing he should have done.

"It is clear," said Abbott, "that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars. The actions in this executive order are essential to our mission to swiftly contain this virus and protect public health."

Had he bothered to heed health experts' advice rather than imitate the caveman grunting of Trumpian politics, mitigating — not "containing" — the state's first major wave of covid would not now be the governor's "mission." But I guess he first needed a body count before "protect[ing] public health."

Let's play roll the dice with Republican Sen. Martha McSally

Vox's Matthew Yglesias explains Sen. Martha McSally's (R-AZ) staggeringly idiotic American Tax Rebate and Incentive Program Act, i.e., the "American TRIP Act." But first, McSally's inspiring if rather peculiar explanation: "[It] will help boost domestic travel and jumpstart the comeback of our hotels, entertainment sectors, local tourism agencies, and the thousands of businesses that make Arizona one of the best places in the world to visit" — and then, at least for now, die a tortuous death from a vicious pandemic.

Gleefully does Sen. McSally continue. She says her legislative proposal will motivate Americans to "safely get out of their homes and discover or rediscover Arizona along with the rest of the amazing destinations our country has to offer" — such as the virus hotspots of Florida, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Utah, North and South Carolina. (Come to Orlando! Ride the rides and buy a Mickey Mouse coffin!)

But — wouldn't you just know it? — along comes liberal sourpuss and vacation-pooper Yglesias, who adds that McSally's "proposal is for a [$4,000 or $8,000 a couple] nonrefundable tax credit," which is applicable only to those who earn enough income to owe taxes. Hence "the vast majority of people in the bottom half of the income distribution would get no help at all from McSally’s program."

Furthermore, remember that her bill is a tax credit, not a tax refund. So if you've money "to blow on a vacation," writes Yglesias, "you’ll end up getting your money back when you file your taxes next year. But if you’re living paycheck to paycheck," you're screwed, you're out any financial benefits the bill permits. (On the upside, you won't be tempted to visit your final resting place years earlier than heavenly scheduled.)

In other words, this is your classic, Republican, plutocratic tax legislation which is almost incomprehensibly stupid. Those who have can have more, while those without and in most need of help are just fucked.

He would have made an outstanding Republican politician

From a 1977 Dick Cavett show, two minutes of the truly AMAZING Tony Slydini, an Italian national who preferred, for large audiences of paying paisanos, simple sleights of reality and straightforward deceits over flashy Las Vegas extravaganzas. 

Trump's nearly flawless tweet

The number of ChinaVirus cases goes up, because of GREAT TESTING, while the number of deaths (mortality rate), goes way down. The Fake News doesn’t like telling you that!

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

Damn right, Donald. Yesterday I read it in and heard it on the Fake News a mere two or three dozen times, the partisan bastards.

It's also true, as you say, that the mortality rate dropped, but only because the coronavirus (not the ChinaVirus, not the Wuhan virus, not the Kung Flu) has afflicted, of late, a younger and thus healthier segment of society. Because of your maskless deceits and political malpractice and criminal negligence, Donald — but who's perfect? — much of this age cohort is now visiting its parents and grandparents as before the pandemic. So those older generations will soon be wrapped in arms of your malevolent god.

But Donald, you did err on one point in your otherwise informative screed. Or more likely, you just forgot to be completely truthful, which on occasion you do. The rising number of new cases has once again exceeded the increased rate of great testing, so the latter is not the only factor in the former.

But we know you, Donald, and therefore we know that once someone brings this incontrovertible fact to your attention, you will tweet a GREAT MEA CULPA.

An administration that just can't do anything right

Yes Sir, Mr. Trump, President Obama's economy is again galloping along, and so soon after you tanked it through criminal negligence. The Washington Post:

"Another 1.48 million people applied for unemployment for the first time last week" — "the 14th straight week that more than 1 million people have filed for unemployment.

"Another 730,000 people applied for the supplemental pandemic unemployment assistance program created by Congress for self-employed and gig workers for the first time last week, bringing the total number of first-time claims to 2.2 million…. When including benefits for gig workers, 30.5 million people claimed unemployment insurance of some type last week….

"The numbers were higher than analysts’ predictions."

In addition, just as you, Mr. Trump, and your Treasury bagman insisted, those trillions in stimulus passed by Congress need no oversight other than yours. After all, only about 1.1 million dead people have received a stimulus check. (With your name on it. My God, you're haunting them even into eternity.) Meanwhile, 30 to 35 million citizens above ground are still waiting for their check. 

Yes, your managerial competence continues to gallup along about as well as the economy you destroyed. 

The GOP, Jim Jordan, and Hermann Goering

In the previously cited story on the Biden-versus-Trump Sienna poll, the Times quotes one Arlene Myles, 75 years of age and a Republican of nearly that long, but now an independent. "I thought I was a good Republican and thought they had my values," said Ms. Myles, "but they have gone down the tubes these last few years."

They, not just he, and you know who he is. It's the entire Republican Party for which Ms. Myles now has contempt. And other than Trump and perhaps Louie Gohmert, what better embodiment of the decomposing GOP than Jim Jordan, the slimy, slithering representative from Ohio's 4th congressional district. This loudmouthed Midwestern demagogue breathes fire on behalf of today's national mob family-cum-Republican Party as furiously as any Democratic flamethrowing racist of the antebellum era.

Yesterday, for instance, in a stunningly conspicuous display of his truest partisan sentiment, Jordan brayed this about Bill Barr's manifestly corrupt Justice Department: "They’re not political, they’re just right."

Who, in the last century, made that argument? The answer — Nazis — likely came to you instantly. During his Nuremberg trial, Hermann Goering was still arguing the party line that Hitler & Co. had the perfect, even logical, prerogative to abolish all political competition, since only the National Socialists possessed the "right" solutions for Germany's early-1930s woes. His was a defense of official lawlessness, as was Jordan's.

He then made the absurd claim that "Barr is doing the Lord’s work trying to clean up [the Obama administration's DOJ corruption] so that it doesn’t happen again."

What unspecified values does Arlene Myles see missing from the contemporary Republican Party? Probably just decency, honesty, respect for the rule of law, and all other values foreign to cryptofascism.

Is Trump's campaign in trouble? Not really. It appears to be dead.

The breakdown of Joe Biden's impressive 14 point lead over Trump in the latest Sienna poll, which earns an A+ from FiveThirtyEight:

Increasingly I believe Biden's margin will continue to grow in other polls as well, since Trump never changes; he's a static character with one temperament: obnoxiousness. That explains his narrowing base — the macrocosm of obnoxiousness. Trump is the only incumbent in modern history who panders exclusively to a shrinking minority of voters, which strikingly reveals itself in the numbers above.

Adding to his campaign of exclusion are, more pointedly, his bumbling, desultory, and now oblivious response to the covid pandemic, which accounts for the economy's cratering, and his racist thus politically incompetent reactions to the Black Lives Matter movement. As the Times notes from the Sienna poll's internals, "white voters under 45 are overwhelmingly supportive" of the movement. And white voters were all he had to begin with.

So why, over the next four months, would general polling change when Trump doesn't?

Biden's low profile vs. Trump's thin skin

Axios:

"Trump's campaign, recognizing that he'll lose to himself if November's election is a referendum on him, is trying to flush Joe Biden into open combat by challenging him to more debates, taunting him as 'Hidin' Biden,' and posing a 'Question of the day for Joe Biden.'

"The Trump campaign is getting very frustrated that Biden is keeping a low profile and letting Trump give himself uppercuts every day."

All the more reason for Biden to keep a low profile. "When your enemy is …"

Biden has already committed to, I believe, three debates, which are three more than advisable for any candidate with a double-digit lead. But obviously Biden can't duck the now rather standard triad of presidential debates (although as weird as Trump has made modern politics, I do wonder how obvious the "obviously" is).

The Biden campaign's press secretary answered the opposing campaign's bullying: "The Trump campaign is frustrated because every single day Joe Biden is making a case to the American people for steady, experienced, compassionate leadership that is in stark contrast to the erratic, divisive and cruel message coming from Donald Trump's White House."

If the press secretary really wanted to irritate Trump, though, he would have written about "the erratic, divisive and cruel message coming from Fat Elvis' White House" (or whatever epithet of the spokesman's choosing).

When they go low, we go can go lower. And nothing unnerves Trump — which makes him even goofier than usual — like ridicule.

Bernie's socialist left and the cultural left

The politically and religiously orthodox conservative Ross Douthat reflects on ​​​​​Bernie Sanders' second stinging failure within the last few months: First he lost the Democratic nomination, and now he's "losing the battle for the future of the left."

As an orthodox, Old Left socialist, Bernie has always hewed to the fundamentally Marxist notion of the class struggle and "the rectification of economic inequality," writes Douthat. And since 2016, the senator also believed the left was coming along with him. But now his "war against the 'millionaires and billionaires'" has been "obscured by cultural battles," with the left's vanguard largely supported by corporate power and the recently hated Establishment.

We’re watching a different sort of insurgency challenge or change liberalism, one founded on an intersectional vision of left-wing politics that never came naturally to Sanders. Rather than Medicare for All and taxing plutocrats, the rallying cry is racial justice and defunding the police. Instead of finding its nemeses in corporate suites, the intersectional revolution finds them on antique pedestals and atop the cultural establishment….

The longer arc of the current revolutionary moment may actually end up vindicating the socialist critique of post-1970s liberalism — that it’s obsessed with cultural power at the expense of economic transformation…. In five years, it’s more likely that 2020’s legacy will be a cadre of permanently empowered commissars getting people fired for unwise Twitter likes rather than any dramatic interracial wealth redistribution.

In a broader sense, Douthat's critique is a familiar one: The left is more ideologically grounded than politically centered. This was also true of conservatism in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but it overcame its ideological obstacles when it wedded social conservatism to economic libertarianism, thereby ameliorating its factionalism.

And yet, what Douthat misses in his commentary, I think, is that Bernie's "revolution" was as ideologically extreme for this centrist country as today's more radical police-defunders. There are ways to sell a decent, deeper socialism than by promising overnight universal healthcare to the unserviceable tune of $36 trillion. It's called incrementalism. But Bernie lacked the political patience for that. His reach, as they say, exceeded his grasp.

In that sense, Bernie Sanders' second loss was always inevitable — and if losing is inevitable, can it really be called a loss?

Two Trumpian criminal acts win "legal" approval

Trump is finally having a good day.

Great! Appeals Court Upholds Justice Departments Request To Drop Criminal Case Against General Michael Flynn!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2020

Indeed, this criminal president is having a great day, since his criminal Justice Department prevailed this morning in having criminal charges dropped against one the criminal president's criminal friends.

The case is not quite over, since it could still go to the Supreme Court. But for now, an honorable U.S. district judge, Emmet Sullivan, has been overruled by two ideologues — one, a Trump appointee — sitting on a U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit's three-judge panel.

The two deciding appellate judges informed Sullivan that, in the Washington Post's paraphrase, it is "not within [his] power to prolong the prosecution or examine the government’s motives for its reversal in the politically charged case" (my emphasis). In doing so, he had committed a "clear legal error," said the court.

Pardon my legal ignorance, but when a criminal court is told by an appellate court that motives cannot be examined — in this instance, not Flynn's motives but a corrupt Justice Department's — then the entire foundation for the rule of law has been undermined.

Another four years of this criminal president and his criminal cronies? We could kiss the rule of law goodbye — forever.