PMC Commentary

Starvation and desperation don't mix well with machine guns

An official with the Israel Defense Forces said the slaughter of more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza City today was entirely the fault of the slaughtered. The IDF just happened to be in the neighborhood, with armed soldiers and tanks.

The official did concede to CNN that the soldiers were using live fire on mobs of starving Gazans as they attempted to get at the food piled on about 30 aid trucks. Initially the soldiers fired warning shots into the air, said the official, but the people surrounding the trucks then "approached the forces in a manner that posed a threat to the troops."

The soldiers "responded to the threat" of those who wouldn't move away "with live fire," the official said. The threat in fact included women and children, though not according to the IDF. It says Palestinian deaths and injuries resulted only from "pushing and trampling ... in a stampede several hundred yards away." 

An eyewitness, local journalist Khadeer Al Za’anoun, told a different story to CNN. The network reported his version in this way: "There were large crowds waiting for food to be distributed from aid trucks," but "the chaos and confusion which led to trampling only started once Israeli soldiers opened fire." As with every "incident" in Gaza, neither side's story could be independently verified.   

The only certainty appears to be that at least 104 Palestinians were killed, 760 were injured, and both counts are expected to rise. Dead bodies still littered the streets at the time of CNN's report. Ambulances were having a hard time reaching the injured because of rubble obstructing their paths.

Here's an early NBC News report on the massacre.

The body count of 104+ pushes total Palestinian deaths over 30,000. I recall estimating several weeks ago a final count of six digits, which I noted would be preposterous — international pressure on the Israeli government would prevent that, I wrote. I'm beginning to wonder if six digits really is a preposterous estimate. Perhaps not, since currently about one-half-million Gazans are looking famine in the face. 

Today's mass killings — that plus "slaughter" and "massacre" are terms I'm using here since none would be occurring if Israel had withdrawn by now — are also expected to upend the cease-fire talks. A Hamas official suggested as much, and President Biden agreed. "Asked whether the shooting would complicate negotiations, he said, 'I know it will.'" 

I, for one, can't see that today's bloodbath will have made much of a difference in the talks' outcome. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his war cabinet strongly prefer that the killing of Palestinians goes on under the guise of military missions. (Feel free to substitute Putin's "special operation" for "military mission.") For now they want a cease-fire as much as Hamas wants to return the hostages. And so it goes, another day, another week, another decade and another ...

***

To repeat, the IDF "says Palestinian deaths and injuries resulted only from 'pushing and trampling ... in a stampede several hundred yards away.'"

Update: "A hospital in Gaza City said it had received bodies of at least a dozen people who had been shot and had treated more than 100 people with gunshot wounds."

Samantha Power, who served as human rights adviser to President Obama and is now the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, "said that regardless of how they had died, it was clear that people were killed or injured while trying to get food for their families." This goes to my above point of this incident as a "massacre," for as long as Israeli guns and tanks on are Gazan soil, people will die. 

It's nice to have friends on the Supreme Court - and at Justice - especially if you're a crook

The Supreme Court has shafted the country and its erstwhile rule of law once again, which pleases only Donald Trump and MAGAland, as the court intended. But historians such as myself are obsessed with origins; acts which propelled the course of changes to come. Thus I'm displeased with Attorney General Merrick Garland as much as I am with the court.

Garland dawdled and dallied for nearly two years — 22 months — before he appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump's "alleged" federal crimes, which repeatedly made their appearance as a staggering public record of wrongdoing, dominating newspaper's front pages and cable broadcasts almost daily.

Simultaneous with Joe Biden's presidential certification by Congress and Trump's deadly coup attempt was clear evidence of the latter's culpability in denying the will of voters. This evidence Garland sat on as the J6 committee did the real investigative work of prepping an indictment. Garland's Justice Department spent its time pursuing no one but a bunch of beer-guzzling losers involved in the violent coup — at Trump's, ahem, suggestion.

Thus only now is the Supreme Court being asked to hear appeals by professional trial-delayer Trump. These appeals could have been heard and dispatched at least a year ago, had Garland not dawdled and dallied. The A.G., rather than the J6 committee, could have spearheaded investigations of Trump's crimes, or he could have immediately appointed a special counsel to do so. Instead he waited until November 2022. Had he acted, not waited, Trump's federal trials and our tribulations would now be over.

Such was the origin of this flagrant miscarriage of American justice. The Supreme Court has compounded the obscenity of it all by hearing Trump's appeal of presidential immunity with a nonchalance that also staggers. Early summer at the earliest is when the court will hand down a decision — a decision that's already been decided by lower courts with anticipated speed — the speed made possible because of the appeal's absurdity.

Former assistant U.S. attorney Kim Wehle writes that "whatever opinion(s) emerge will be nuanced, and possibly fractured, which will give Trump’s legal team new arguments for dismissing parts of the indictment." That means more delays. The court's pending decision also gives Judge Aileen Cannon another reason to delay the documents case, in that the court's ruling could affect its proceedings. 

I'm bemused, or perhaps just amused, by what some political prognosticators are seeing. I've read several chronology analyses that say "the justices have all but guaranteed that Trump cannot stand trial on the federal election charges until the waning weeks of campaign season, at the earliest." Indeed "the trial ... could even overlap with Election Day itself." 

I'd gladly bet these optimistic soothsayers that there will no trial "in the waning weeks of campaign season," and for damn sure there won't be one "overlap[ping] with Election Day." Trump's additional delays, by themselves, will make sure of that. And if he and his lawyers don't, Mr. Garland will do it for them.   

Interestingly enough, it seems the one trial previously deemed least critical to Trump and the nation's future is now, most likely, the only one capable of delivering justice in something close to a timely manner. That of course is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's prosecution of Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. 

The trial is scheduled for 25 March. Each count carries a prison term of up to four years. If convicted and Trump is sentenced to the maximum, no doubt the terms would run concurrently. The Times notes that "many individuals, including first-time offenders, are sentenced to imprisonment for this crime in New York."

I'd be plenty pleased, however, if he were sentenced to only six months. Assuming the trial lasts about four weeks, that would put him behind bars just beyond Election Day.

I guy can dream, can't he?

I love this Republican senator from Dixie

Yes, I love her. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I absolutely adore her. She's my idea of the perfect Republican senator — one who perfectly expresses what I call Deep Crazy. 

She is Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, and yesterday — God bless her — she "blocked passage of a bill to protect access to in-vitro fertilization nationwide," reported Politico. 

Other Republicans can run from her but they can't hide. They too got this insanity rolling by boldly demagoguing Democrats' "baby-killing" for years, and now the lily-livered, yellow-bellied chickenhawks are sputtering and scrambling home to roost.   

In this latest instance of Deep Crazy, the adorable senator from the Maniacal Magnolia State claimed the IVF "bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far. Far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF, the act explicitly waives the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and would subject religious and pro-life organizations to crippling lawsuits."

The bill-authoring senator from the Land of Lincoln, Tammy Duckworth, noted something else the senator from the Maniac State (for short) had to say. "[Hyde-Smith] said at one point the bill would allow for chimeras — human-animal hybrids. It does nothing of the sort."

As for Hyde-Smith's accusations of a vast overreach, poison pills, the waiving of religious freedom and crippling lawsuits? Added Duckworth: "All the bill says, is if you want to seek reproductive technology you can, if you want to provide it you can, and if you want to cover it as an insurance company you can." That's a trifle less frightening than the kidnapping and murder of religious freedom, wouldn't you agree?

I also hereby and forthwith reaffirm and certify my supplemental love of Kellyanne "Alternative Facts" Conway, who told Politico: "People recognize that the lack of compromise, moderation and reasonableness is on the side of the professional, political left, and the Democrats."

Now I ask you, who could not adore such an unintended burlesque of undeniably perfect, Hyde-Smith-style Republicanism? Also known as ... Deep Crazy.

"The Weak Man" — thoughts on Ukraine and creeping authoritarianism at home, from Timothy Snyder

You're probably familiar with Yale historian Timothy Snyder from his bestselling book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which focuses on "America's turn towards authoritarianism" — and how to prevent it. Snyder also writes online essays; his most recent being "Beware the Weak Man." 

"Who is the weak man?" Snyder answers: "You shall know him by his itinerary. The weak man knows that Ukraine is what matters, so he goes to Texas. The weak man of Congress buys some casual clothes, has a staffer write a speech about the border, and recites it word-for-word.... The weak man invites us to fear phantoms rather than face issues."

You know him, or I should say, you know them — weak-men legislators such as Mike Johnson and J.D. Vance; a man with too much money and way too much influence, Elon Musk; and the weakest of all in a class by himself, the weak strongman Donald Trump. Johnson delivers empty speeches, Vance was too cowardly to meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference, Musk once made the fearfully sinister decision to cut Ukraine from his satellite service, and Trump, well, his weakness is so vast it defies curt description.  

"Ukraine could win, if Americans would help," writes Snyder, "but our weak men have cut off the weapons. Musk spreads Russian propaganda. Vance amplifies Russian foreign policy.  Trump follows Putin's wishes. Johnson maneuvers for months to block a vote on aid to Ukraine. And so the Ukrainians, fighting for their lives, run out of artillery shells, and must withdraw from losses. The weak man kills because he lacks the energy to act and consumes the energy of others. He scorns those who struggle with real danger" — this description coming closest to tersely describing Trump.  

"Instead of aiding Ukraine," continues Snyder, "the weak men of Congress have dedicated months to a long series of lies that have wasted the energy and good faith of others.... The weak men of Congress want inaction both at the border and in Ukraine. They only mention the one to explain why they are not acting on the other."

Here, Snyder discusses what he has studied the most of late: "The danger is that this vacuum will consume our democracy. The weak man runs from danger by running for office. Not strong enough to believe in law or to live by it, the weak man breaks laws and then tries to break law itself.... Trump wants to pardon himself or otherwise avoid prosecution for all the crimes he seems to know he has committed.  For the weak man, fear is everything, and fear must also become everything for us."

Snyder observes that the Republican Party is a party of fear — a fear of their own constituents, a fear of other Republicans (especially as primary season commences), and a fear of Trump. On the other side we're told that since Biden is old, "he must be weak.... But Biden is not weak. He is not running away from prison, or from anything else. He does not act from fear. He gets work done. His record is one of the strongest in the history of the American presidency.." 

The author, historian and scholarly expert on authoritarianism finishes by writing: "It is absurd, in such a world, where so much is at stake, where so much is to be won, to speak of our 'fatigue' either with the struggle in Ukraine or the struggle for our own democracy. Doing so is the prologue to a story of weakness, which ends with the victory of the weak man."

To Prof. Snyder's thoughts I'll add that there is nothing "America First" about Trump, Johnson, Vance et al.'s intense opposition to aiding Ukraine. Their opposition puts Ukraine's freedom at risk, which puts the free world at risk, which inherently risks America's freedom, which, one assumes, is the very last risk Americans would ever want to take.  

How is it, then, that the body politic can be so easily taken in by the weakest among us? By those who invite harm not only to others but to ourselves? Answers abound: the lure of demagoguery, the prevalence of low-information voters and the chronically inattentive, the attraction of simple solutions to complex problems, the masking of weakness by fake bravado, the peddled distractions of ageism (by the old), the outright lies too monumental and ubiquitous to be disbelieved by the soft-minded, and likely others perils not coming to me right off.

Whatever the answer — all the above; the above plus others; some of the above; some more than others — the most urgent task is for the body politic to grasp that it's in trouble. To acknowledge that American politics has gone off the rails, and to accept that one party and particularly one man have done the shoving. In short, the task is to apply the physician's code: First, do no harm — to ourselves. Put the shovers out of our misery first thing. Later we can try to understand how it was that we got ourselves into such big trouble.

Should there be an early Biden-Trump debate?

Alexi McCammond's Washington Post newsletter, Prompt 2024, asks: "Should President Biden debate Donald Trump?" Squaring off were Post columnists David Von Drehle and James Hammond. 

Von Drehle: "There is no reason for Biden to debate Trump. Trump has demonstrated his scorn for debates by refusing to face his GOP rivals. He also showed in 2020 that he has no respect for agreed-upon rules. He is a shameless clown, and Biden should not give him the forum."

Hammond: "Biden should call Trump’s bluff. The former president says he’s ready to debate the current president 'immediately' and 'for the good of the country.' Challenge him to go mano a mano. Biden needs to take a page from the Harry Truman playbook in 1948. Give ’em hell, Joe. Come out fighting the way he did in 2012 against Paul Ryan."

There's more, mostly just reinforcements of their stated positions or bits of flippancy: Biden must show he's not a "scaredy cat," Trump would abuse decorum, they're both old and they've both already said what they have to say "a thousand times."

Not that I've given any real thought to this subject — which is a plus in today's politics of slashing swords over contemplative pens — but I'm going with pro-debate Hammond.

Trump's performance we could all write a review of before the debate, he's that predictable. "He bullied, he was loud, he was ignorant of issues, he constantly interrupted and he repeatedly lied." Biden's performance is unpredictable, which is frightening, I grant you, but it couldn't possibly be worse than a performance by a bullying, lying, loudmouthed ignoramus.

I can tell you what I'd like to hear from Biden, although the odds of this are virtually nil. I'd like him to lecture Trump as one would a slow-witted lawmaker, such as Tommy Tuberville, and thereby humiliate him. Correct each fallacy and misstatement and drop of disinformation, and follow each correction with the headmaster observation that anyone so clearly uninformed and mendacious has no business being anywhere close to the White House.     

I'd especially like to hear Biden say that he won't be providing U.S. intelligence briefings to Trump once he becomes his party's nominee, since Trump — and this, Biden would need to make witheringly clear — is the nation's greatest security threat. Providing this intel is left to a president's discretion; he has the lawful power to deny his opponent and he should use it. Informing the nation that Trump is indeed a threat would be more than a campaign tactic. It's the unnerving truth.  

Another truth, or a very probable one, is that there will be no debate. I don't know what Biden's thoughts are about a meeting of mind and mush, but from what I've read his staff is cautious, protective and prohibitive. They should let go.

For the principal case to be made before, during and repeatedly after this notional debate would be that President Biden, even if he came on stage with a walker, an oxygen mask and a nurse to wipe his drool, is still — hands down, no doubt about it — the only sane choice in this presidential election.

Mike Johnson's unAmerican obsession

If you're a regular reader of this site you know I commonly refer to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, as God's vicar. I do this not out of sarcasm; none is intended. I do it not even to mock him. I do it because Johnson himself believes he is God's vicar on earth, hustling Christian nationalism as though his bizarre religious beliefs should be integral to the operation of the federal government.

What's truly bone-chilling is that the man second in line to the U.S. presidency appears to have no — as in none whatsoever — grasp of the U.S. Constitution, American history, or American political traditions. In that respect Johnson is Trump's doppelgänger.

Furthermore, Christian nationalism, or any religion, is to U.S. governance what Donald Trump is to humility. The founders made no specific reference to church-state separation, perhaps only because they firmly plastered its essence onto the founding document.

Yet, some just don't "get it." Easily predictable was that the melding of religion and government would create insurmountable problems in what otherwise could be the smooth operation of that government. For Johnson is not alone in his historical and constitutional vacuum.

Accompanying him in the House are many others who also see themselves as sort of vicars for God, confusing and conflating their secular duties with their vastly benighted belief that their religious convictions should be intrinsic to governing.

"The problem" goes yet deeper, and it's here we encounter what converts mere problems into insurmountable problems. In its strictest definition — and Johnson & Co. is nothing if not strict — religion has no truck with compromise, for God's Word is eternal, universal and above all absolute. Unless you're Donald Trump you cannot say, or rather you cannot sincerely believe, that "Thou shall not commit adultery, usually."

Legislative bodies, however, are full of Thou shall and shall nots — with conditions attached. They're called compromises, and without them operating a government becomes an impossibility, since governing is pluralism. Yet the deeply religious mind of folks like Johnson is committed to absolutes, both those of God's Word and in the running of government.

Indeed it was this fundamental conflict between the sacred and secular that ultimately led the modern conservative movement's founder, Barry Goldwater, to turn his back on the monster he had created.

Reluctantly but in desperation he peddled "social morality" during his 1964 presidential campaign. That knowing misstep then led to the creation of the 1970s New Right, which marinated itself in religion and religion's refusal to compromise. And by the 1980s, that led to Goldwater railing against the New Right, noting that government cannot work if compromise is forbidden.

This of course is Government 101 stuff. But God's vicar isn't interested in government. He is interested in infusing his religious beliefs into government, even if that means breaking it. And God's vicar has just enough little God's vicars in his caucus to force just that.

So once again we face a government shutdown. And as Vanity Fair's Molly Jong-Fast observes, "the blame should fall squarely on the shoulders of Mike Johnson, the election-denying Louisiana backbencher whom Donald Trump wanted to become Speaker of the House" — because neither does Trump believe in the traditional workings of legislative bodies. He and the speaker are "more focused on impeachment stunts" — and in Johnson's case, "further restricting abortion access" — "than keeping the government open."

Thanks to uncompromising Republicans, government shutdowns and threats of shutdowns have become, as you know, a regular feature of this "superpower." By now they're a bit blasé, though. In fairly short order congressional GOPers realize they're holding a really crappy hand, and so they fold. But first they must bellow and bluster. It's all part of the game.

What decidedly is not a game is what they're doing to Ukraine. On that they're holding firm. Why? Enter religion of the hardest-core kind — the very kind promulgated by Johnson and most of his caucus.

House Republicans are intransigent on assuring Ukrainians' slaughter solely in obeisance to a Christian fraud who opposes Ukrainian aid, but more than that a fraud who vows to end the nonexistent persecution of evangelical Christians, as well as staff his second White House with Christian nationalists, and promote their unAmerican vision of government.

Death and oppression for Ukrainians is the one Faustian bargain they're willing to make (Johnson originally supported Ukrainian aid) with a profoundly unChristian soldier.

Historians of American politics and American religion will look on this era as the most offensive to both.

McConnell snubs Trump (for now)

Mitch McConnell hid his pleasure, I should think, in responding to a reporter's question, which is barely audible: "Why are you holding out in endorsing [Trump]?"

JUST IN—Mitch McConnell refuses to endorse Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/igL7K3jcmc

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 27, 2024

If he persists in holding out, let us count the whys.

In Oct. 2022, Trump posted on Truth Social that McConnell has a "DEATH WISH" and he "is willing to take the country down with him." He either "hates Donald J. Trump" or he "believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal," which had peaked three or four years earlier and has rarely been heard from since. Far worse, Trump then mocked the ethnicity of the senator's spouse, Elaine Chao: "[McConnell] must seek help and advice from his China loving wife, Coco." 

Trump's former White House communications director, Alyssa Farah Griffin, couldn't take it anymore. Replying to his post about death wishes and "Coco," she tweeted that "this isn’t some crazy person on the internet, this is the GOP front-runner for President if the Party doesn’t wake up & demand better." Her overall sentiment was correct but she had one fact wrong: Trump is some crazy person on the internet. Disgusted, Griffin added that "he’s not even trying to hide the racism at this point. Just despicable." As for her "if" warning, the party didn’t wake up and so it never demanded better.

Moving along with the whys of the Senate minority leader's non-endorsement, at a 2022 rally Trump called McConnell "an old broken down crow." Saying his wife Melania would chastise him if he used foul language, he opted for a punchline ellipsis. McConnell, he said, is "an old broken down piece of ... crow."

The year before, at a Republican National Committee gathering, Trump called McConnell a "dumb son of a bitch." The next year at a Republican donor event Trump again called McConnell a "dumb son of a bitch," as well as a "stone cold loser." He also said "a real leader" would have refused to accept the (legitimate) election results. Nevertheless, only days later, McConnell announced he'd support Trump if he's the party's 2024 nominee.

Finally, in interviews with Maggie Haberman for her book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, he followed through with what he had wanted to say earlier: "The Old Crow’s a piece of shit." Wrote Haberman: "In fact, McConnell had kept Republican senators in line over and over to advance Trump’s policy and personnel concerns and generally protect his political standing as the leader of the Republican Party."

That's true. But Trump's singular litmus test of a "a real leader" is one who follows obsequiously and trumpets his asinine humbug about a stolen election. I'm no fan of Mitch McConnell; what he did to President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, prior to committing the Senate's most flagrant act of hypocrisy with another nominee, was unforgivable. I'll give him some credit, though, for essentially telling Trump where to get off about an endorsement— by telling him nothing.

Except there's this, from The Times: "People close to both men are working behind the scenes ... to pave the way for a critical endorsement of the former president." Come on, Mitch, don't be a Ted Cruz. But he almost certainly will be.

I'm ready to start a Macron fan club

From Reuters, a report on the most foresighted and humane statement yet to come from any Western leader on the catastrophe that is Ukraine:

French President Emmanuel Macron wanted to create "strategic ambiguity" by openly discussing the idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine, but he was so ambiguous that he sparked confusion and irritation among some allies.

Macron's comments at a late-night news conference ... fit with his reputation as a diplomatic disruptor who likes to break taboos and challenge conventional thinking.

By declining on Monday night to rule out putting Western boots on the ground in Ukraine, Macron was challenging the prevailing view that such a move would gravely escalate the risk of a global war between NATO and Russia.

His comments may turn out to be prescient and pave the way for greater direct Western involvement in the war in Ukraine against Russia’s invasion sometime down the line.

But they also run the risk of undermining the very thing Macron sought to bolster with the Paris meeting – unity among Ukraine’s Western allies as Kyiv's forces struggle to hold off Russian troops two years into the war.

Later, French officials reduced Macron's "ambiguity." They "were sent out to explain that Macron had wanted to stimulate debate and that ideas under discussion involved non-combat troops." Not exactly true, but even the lesser steps outlined by Sejourne are in the right direction. 

That would be French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne, who said "we must consider new actions to support Ukraine. These must respond to very specific needs, I am thinking in particular of mine clearance, cyberdefence, the production of weapons on site, on Ukrainian territory."

What to me is endlessly peculiar — in fact, downright stupefying — about this war is that Vladimir Putin is allowed by the international community to put brutalizing Russian boots on Ukrainian ground and mass-murdering bombers and drones in its air yet the idea of Western leaders putting liberation boots on Ukrainian ground is prohibited and considered dangerously escalatory.

Putin can invade and then escalate at will — but there shall be no military equilibrium imposed by the West. I'm damn glad Britain and France didn't feel this way when Hitler invaded Poland.

A new, nonprofit political website devoted to "deep reporting." It has some flaws.

I just ran across a newly founded political website called NOTUS, its name fashioned after POTUS, for "News of the United States." In late 2023 another website previewed its launch as a "high-profile nonprofit ... that promises to publish deep reporting and act as a training ground for young reporters."  

NOTUS works under the Albritton Journalism Institute and was funded by a $20 million grant from Robert Allbritton, Politico's founding publisher. Right off, the heart palpitates with unease, perceiving a conflict between NOTUS' mission — "deep reporting" — and its principal benefactor — the publisher of Politico, a publication not known for the kind of lengthy, investigative, deep reporting of, let's say, the Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica.

That's not to knock Politico. ProPublica's nonprofit business model is simply not Politico's model. Fair enough; the latter's model has no incentive to imitate ProPublica's. So let us not be hasty in assessing the newcomer. We shouldn't prejudge.

We shouldn't because also right off, NOTUS' editor in chief assures us that "while others will tell you what’s happening or what you should think about it, we’re focused on bigger questions: Why? Why is Washington the way it is? And what drives the people who make it so?" That is assuring.

But then, a certain unease slips its way back in, for "the most accomplished journalists working in Washington today" are "training the next generation of great journalists" at AJI. Yet still we mustn't prejudge; perhaps with a new sense of nonprofit freedom, today's accomplished journalists will indeed train young journalists to focus on the bigger questions. 

So I hastened to NOTUS' main story, titled "What Trump Wants in His Next VP." Among all the topics in all of Washington's gin joints, this one is almost too easy for a political publication set on answering the "bigger questions." What Trump wants is an unhinged Trump clone, one who will bow before his or her office shrine to Dear Leader each evening and vow to violate the Constitution in every requested manner.

Or, a political journalist could shove aside his or her certain knowledge of second-banana despotism and instead seek a source of balanced opinion about this big question. Say, Steve Bannon, whom NOTUS did ask. What's Trump looking for in a VP? "Quality of character," said Bannon. There was no follow-up by the reporter. Oh my. If that was meant as irony, left, as is, to dangle and twist in the reader's dumbfounded mind, the intention failed.

Because NOTUS went on with the kind of straight reporting that sticks to whatever would be handed out in a candidate's press release, ignoring the pregnant awfulness of Trump's frightful realities. Does he want an unhinged clone? No, reports NOTUS, "he has said he wants somebody who would be prepared to take over for him should something happen"; somebody who will "support his 'America First' agenda." Which is what? From NOTUS, not a clue. I guess that's not a "big question."

The publication wasn't yet through with its "deep reporting," however. It also sought out Freedom Caucuser and friend of authoritarianism Rep. Dan Bishop, who mused that "President Trump has transformed a lot of things and about our politics and gotten us focused." That's for damn sure. "And I think maybe what you need is somebody who can fight as hard and as readily as President Trump."

His "transformation" was more of a transmogrification: the soiling of 237 years of a generally successful American political tradition; pushing the world's oldest democracy toward the brink of autocratic destruction. That's on the record for Christ's sake. It's in his speeches, his diatribes and it's right there in his advertised agenda. That's not opinion journalism guilefully masquerading as straight news. It is straight news. 

What should have been the focus of NOTUS' piece was left for its close: "Trump critics within the GOP have a more sinister view of what Trump wants. 'At the end of the day, they just want somebody who will do whatever they say ... even if it goes against the law or the Constitution,'" said an anonymous source. Even that, this one small concession to the actual big picture, the publication mangled. Critics don't have a "sinister view" of Trump's wants. They have a view of Trump's sinister wants. 

NOTUS' editor in chief somewhat derides those "other" publications that merely "tell us what’s happening." I gather he's not heard of glass houses. He also cheerfully informs us that his website won't tell us "what we should think." With that I have no problem. No respectable publication would be so arrogant. But in place of that must be telling the public the way things are, why they are, and "what drives the people who make it so." All this he does promise — and then fails on all three counts.

It's not self-satisfied opinion to report that the way things are, as noted above, is that we're teetering on the edge of authoritarianism — the wholesale destruction of more than two centuries of democratic progress. Why is that? Because a severely mentally unbalanced candidate for the U.S. presidency is running about even with the protector of democracy. What drives that candidate is enfolded in the preceding sentence:  he is severely mentally unbalanced.

That, Mr. Editor, is not opinion or persuasion or an interpretation. It's the way things are. And that's what you should be reporting.

What's this? A politician - a Republican politician! - proposes a tax increase?

Semafor's headline dazed me at first: GOP Budget Chair: New revenue should be on the table to reduce the deficit. The GOP Budget Chair? Or for that matter, any Budget chair? A politician is openly recommending a tax hike? What brave new world is this?

The following quote becalmed me, hurling me back into the cowardly world of Republican politics. The Budget Chair is Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, and this is what Jodey said: "It’s only fair to have both revenue and expenditures on the table. The last time there was a fix to Social Security that addressed the solvency for 75 years, it was Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, and it was bipartisan."

Just to get this out of the way, waxing nostalgic about the Reagan-O'Neill era and citing it as a model of affable bipartisanship for today's politics is as useless as proposing that Congress work five days a week. This, Congressman, is the wacky, benighted and hate-filled Age of Gaetz, Greene & Tuberville, and nothing will change that short of electorally dynamiting you and your Republican colleagues out of your congressional seats. 

But back to the substance of Arrington's remarks. He articulated two little words that explain Republicans' less than sudden urge for revenue and program reform: Social Security. And by the way this is a Republican urge. The congressman proposed the creation of a bipartisan commission to study the nation's deficit spending and "[craft] a plan to stabilize" the debt; it was voted out of committee by 19 Republicans but only three Democrats. God even called on "Speaker" Mike Johnson to support the wretched thing.   

He does because it will address that 89-year-old bugbear of ultraconservative pols: FDR's lasting legacy, Social Security. The aforementioned have wanted to get their libertarian mitts on America's most successful social legislation since the dawning of modern progressivism, 1935. President Eisenhower told them to go soak their tiny heads — they weren't to touch it. But they're back, indeed they've been back for some time, and given today's titanic deficits, they see this as their chance.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, also sees their ultimate objective: "There is a real concern out there that this commission will be called the 'Cut Social Security Commission.'" Added Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee: "I believe they’re well-intentioned. I honestly do. They’re very sincere. I just know the Republican Party in 2024 is not about to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, whether a commission says they should do it or not."

You're welcome to believe what you like, Mr. Kildee. My belief in their good intentions is equivalent to my belief that Trump is smart and Putin is a humanitarian. I do however honestly agree that they're sincere — in gutting Social Security.

Fact is, no commission, no studies, no spending cuts and shuffling of money are required to cure the program's long-term woes. One vote on lifting the income cap on payroll taxes would close 90% of the program's eventual shortfall, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has reported. Few would be affected; the center found that only 6% of workers "earn more than the current tax cap."

But as Rep. Kildee correctly observed: "The Republican Party in 2024 is not about to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans." They would if they were genuinely "sincere" about saving Social Security. To speak of Republicans, sincerity and good deeds in the same sentence, though, would be pure folly.

"Another fascist rant"

I missed Trump's Saturday night CPAC speech, if you'll excuse the euphemism. And I'm sorry I missed it. From what I've read it appears he was off his Thorazine again, psychotically clucking for 90 ghastly minutes about all his enemies, America's internal threats, and his extensive record of unparalleled awesomeness.

In short, one-and-a-half hours of delusions, paranoia and the profoundest mendacity. I tired of Trump's live performances of blathering pigswill years ago, and so I've avoided them almost entirely. I monitor his crackups via print only. That's something of a mistake on my part. Every student of fascism should catch his show in action every now and then; a modern-day, real-time version of watching Triumph of the Will.

CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale still catches all of them, somehow. He's been fact-checking Trump for years, and yet Saturday night's bombast seemed to hit him with a fresh intensity. "As president, Donald Trump made some of his most thoroughly dishonest speeches at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference," wrote Dale. "Trump delivered another CPAC doozy Saturday night"— a diatribe "filled with wildly inaccurate claims about his own presidency, Joe Biden's presidency, foreign affairs, crime, elections and other subjects." 

Here's just a taste of the rubbish Dale had to collect for his column. Trump claimed Manhattan's "killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen." Dale: [This] isn’t even close to true. "Trump claimed, 'Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up.'" Dale: This is nonsense. "Trump claimed that Biden, as vice president, held back a billion dollars from Ukraine until the country fired a prosecutor who was 'after Hunter.'" Dale: This is baseless. It's so baseless I'm rather surprised that even Trump is still hauling it out in speeches.

My surprise turned to shock when I read The Atlantics's Tom Nichols' assessment. For something like seven years Nichols refused to join the angelic choruses who sang warningly about Trump's greatest evil: his fascism. Those who did join with the angels, he regularly wrote, were but hyperbolic dupes of a cheap rhetorical fad. Then, suddenly, somewhere near Damascus, I think, a ray of divine light shone on Thomas. And now he's writing stuff like this: "The former president’s speech was full of falsehoods, but more important, it was yet another fascistic rant." Another, no less.

From there Nichols' proved his case. "Our country is being destroyed. And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me," shrieked the Prophet from hell. Biden's America is a “nightmare." Trump is a "political dissident" being persecuted (like Alexei Navalny). He's being subjected to Biden's "Stalinist show trials." (This "historical reference [was] probably lost on the CPAC crowd, and might not be understood by Trump himself," noted Nichols accurately.)

Those Americans who are "liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day." Same for "thugs and tyrants and fascists, scoundrels, and rogues."

What still manages to astonish nearly beyond belief is that this was a former U.S. president on stage, proudly letting loose with the sickest, vilest, most destructive slime that one can imagine — just barely imagine, and not imagine at all coming from any other former U.S. president. The bile, vengeance and hate he spews is easily conceivable as grist for a KKK rally or basement coven of Hitler-adoring anti-Semites wearing armbands. But Jesus Christ Almighty! from a former occupant of the Oval Office? And from a former occupant who's running to reclaim that office?

Then what really blows me away is that this glaringly psychotic, fascistic America-hater is running neck and neck with a sitting, moderate, sanely reserved, constructive U.S. president. And so far Trump is running rather successfully — which perforce means his supporters would be comfortable sitting at a KKK rally or in a basement coven of Hitler-adoring anti-Semites wearing armbands. Sleep on that, if you can.

Bibi, if you kill every last Hamas member, Israel still wouldn't be safe

Let's get right to it; Peter Beinart's brilliant-as-usual analysis of why Netanyahu's (unrealistic) goal of wiping all of Hamas from Palestine would still leave Israel in danger — even greater danger. It's longer than some readers might like, but it's essential reading and I've condensed its essence with no little ferocity. To read it all, go here.   

The harsh reality is that for many of the most powerful people inside the American Jewish community [to which Beinart belongs] and for many in American politics as well, there is only one metric that matters. And that metric is the safety of Israeli Jews. Essentially, any number of Palestinian deaths are acceptable if it produces an increased safety for Israeli Jews.... And the argument that I want to make is that this war will make Israel less safe—not more safe but less safe. [For the sake of argument] I want to start with a massive concession. I want to imagine that Israel in this war can destroy Hamas. 

I suggest that you will have an extremely difficult time finding a single reputable Palestinian commentator who says that destroying Hamas, if that were even possible, would make Israel safer. Now, why is that? Because Palestinians recognize that Palestinians do not resist Israel because of Hamas. They began resisting Israel long before Hamas was even created. Palestinians resist Israel because Palestinians are not free.... Most of the people in Gaza are from the families of refugees. Most of them were expelled from Israel during Israel’s war of independence. Many can actually see the lands from which their families were expelled or fled in fear.... 25 years before Hamas was created in the late 1980s—this is the early 1950s—Israel was going in militarily to Gaza because Gaza represented a threat to Israel. And the fundamental threat it represented was all of these refugees who wanted to return.

If you look at the armed resistance in the 1970s by Palestinians—including terrible acts of violence against Israeli civilians, the Munich Olympics attack, the Ma’alot massacre on children in 1974, the airline hijackings—none of them were done by Hamas because Hamas didn’t exist. None of them were even done by Islamists. They were largely done by leftist and nationalist Palestinian factions.... The reason for the resistance didn’t have to do with the particular ideology or name of the Palestinian resistance organizations. It was because Palestinians had been dispossessed and were fighting against their dispossession.

You destroy Hamas. And what then? We know that Hamas recruits from the families of people that Israel has killed. So, some future Palestinian group—give it whatever name you want, think about whatever ideological predisposition it might have—it will almost certainly do the same thing. And think about how many potential recruits there are now. Not only do you have a population of people who are of refugees, who have been seeking to return to their homes since 1948, who have been repeatedly traumatized by Israeli attacks over the years, but now you have a population, 90% of whose homes have been destroyed. Every single person in Gaza will have family or close friends who have been killed in this war.... Think about the desire for revenge that will produce among Palestinians.

A wasted opportunity.

If Palestinians could be convinced that giving up armed resistance, indeed, working with Israel to prevent armed resistance, could bring them closer to freedom, maybe not for refugee return, but for their own state, self-determination, human rights, the right to govern their own lives. If Palestinians believe that, perhaps even given this horror, you might be able to imagine that Palestinians would say, you know what, armed resistance is not the way to go.

But here’s the problem: we’ve run this experiment. In the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have been doing exactly that. They’ve been cooperating with Israel, collaborating with Israel to prevent armed resistance from the West Bank for almost 20 years. And you know what? They’ve been pretty darn successful at it. And what have Palestinians seen that they have gotten out of that cooperation, that collaboration? More and more settlement growth that’s forced them into smaller and smaller little kind of ghettos in the West Bank, little cantons with Israel controlling all the territory in between, and more and more settler violence. You’d be very hard pressed to find any Palestinian who believes that strategy would work.

Especially given what the Israeli government is now saying about what they want to do after this war. They’re not saying that if Palestinians did absolutely everything right, they might move towards statehood. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel, for more than 15 years now, have had a government that is explicitly opposed to Palestinian statehood. And now, the Israeli government is saying it wants to actually create a buffer zone that makes the Gaza Strip smaller, that crowds people in Gaza into smaller and smaller territories, probably an even harsher blockade that will make any prospect of genuine reconstruction out of this absolute catastrophe impossible.

You want to know what frightens me? And I’m speaking here to those people who only care about Israeli Jewish lives. You know what frightens me more than Hamas? As someone who cares passionately about Israeli Jewish life, Hamas certainly frightens me. What frightens me more is what comes after Hamas, given the unimaginable violence and destruction that Israel has now committed in Gaza.

Israeli governments have successively and repeatedly opted for fruitless war rather than dispelling the fundamental cause of violence by agreeing to Palestinian statehood.

In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to rid it of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO survived, and worse, the invasion laid the ground for the coming of Hezbollah. In 2006 Israel again invaded Lebanon, this time to rid it of — you guessed it — Hezbollah, which is now stronger than ever.

Since 2008 Israel has waged three wars against Hamas in Gaza. The cumulative failure of those wars was hideously demonstrated by Hamas' 7 October attack. 

Israel keeps fighting for peace, which is like screwing for virginity. And if it keeps it up, it's going to permanently screw itself out of anything even close to stable security.

A sign that something really important is finally dawning on Trump

The good news is that Trump can't help himself. His lack of impulse control — his urge to say exactly the wrong things at precisely the worst times — rivals that of hemorrhoidally pained drunks in a bar. Still, he does now and then take uncharacteristic stabs at behaving like an adult. This he did Saturday night, after beating Nikki Haley in South Carolina's primary by 20 points.  

The NY Times' Jonathan Weisman reminded us that evening that after beating her in New Hampshire, "his victory speech displayed all the grace and decorum of a professional wrestling show." That's the Trump we all know and loathe. In S.C., however, if "not exactly gracious," neither was he "insulting," wrote Weisman. 

Why this probable fleeting change in behavior? To answer that, let's take a look at what caught The Wall Street Journal's attention. In S.C. Haley "won nearly 40% of the vote, which as she said in remarks Saturday evening 'is not some tiny group.'" Although she lost by double digits. reaping 40% of the vote in perhaps the darkest of Trump country — and against a former Republican president who's a far-right-winging lib-basher endorsed by almost every Republican official in S.C. — was a sign of real peril for the frontrunner.

Not a sign that he could lose the nomination, but an unmistakable sign that he could very well lose a heap of Republican votes in November. As the Journal put it: "As in New Hampshire, the size of her vote shows that millions in the party don’t want Mr. Trump back in the White House." Thus his strained attempt Saturday night to be conciliatory toward those voters by plugging his big, loud "Birdbrain Nikki" mouth. He needs a unified GOP if he's to win.   

The Journal noted that a "Fox News voter analysis found that 59% of Ms. Haley’s voters say they wouldn’t vote for Mr. Trump if he is the GOP nominee." That would be nearly one-quarter of all Republicans; or, turn out the lights. "And the exit poll showed that 36% of voters said a conviction in one of his criminal trials would make him unfit to be President." A conviction is scarcely required to confirm the no-brainer of his unfitness, then again, these aren't your average, I'd-prefer-that-a-mobster-not-be-a-U.S.-president voters.

Would the 59%, or the possible 36%, follow through by staying home or going third-party? Who knows? is the irrefutable answer to that. But that some significant portion of them would is a reasonable assumption. Trump will work to pull those voters back into his shrinking tent, and he has started by trying his damnedest to not piss them off even more. But, as noted, the good news is that he just can't help himself — not all the time. 

On a related note, Politico reported late yesterday afternoon that the Americans For Prosperity Action super PAC has terminated its financial backing of Haley."She has made it clear that she will continue to fight and we wholeheartedly support her in this effort," wrote the group's CEO in a memo to staff. "But given the challenges in the primary states ahead, we don’t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory."

I was rather shocked to learn that AfP ever believed she had a "path to victory." Do these political PAC people not follow politics? My impression was that the super-wealthy super PAC merely enjoyed dumping on Trump by backing Haley, since he so regularly has dumped on AfP. I gather my impression was wrong.

The news of its funding termination hurt, since now more than ever Haley needs outside cash to whittle away at Trump's inside-the-GOP reputation. The AfP wants him back in the White House no more than Haley does, except the only alternative is the evil, radical-leftist moderate Joe Biden. So with no path to victory for Nikki — which, again, has been bloody obvious for months — it scurried. And it's timing was awful.      

We should thank Ms. Haley for enduring her path as long as she has. She's the sharpest thorn in Trump's side by unremittingly (lately, anyway) reminding Republicans of the witless catastrophe he'd be, should catastrophe befall us all in November. But with a little luck, and with her remaining on the trail and with Trump's lack of impulse control, the Republican Party will continue unraveling — and dooming its nominee.

Invisible polling favors Biden

Nate Cohn of "The Tilt" observes that Trump underperformed his polling in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. In N.H. he led by a polling average of 18 points, but won by only 11 points. In S.C. he led by 28 points and finished with a win by 20 points.

These results suggest — with emphasis on the word's ambiguity — that Trump's underperformance in polling is excellent news for President Biden, especially since general election polls show that Trump, presumably, is leading. Cohn offers three theories "worth considering" as explanations for Trump's underperformance.

Theory No. 1: Undecided voters

"One simple explanation is that undecided voters ultimately backed Ms. Haley." This is less theory than empirical fact. Undecided voters decide their choice at the eleventh hour, and they generally choose the challenger. The most infamous example of this phenomenon descended on us like vultures in 2016.

In the post-election period pollsters took a lot of criticism for having shown Clinton in the lead by a couple points. In fact, the polls were remarkably accurate, for they also showed about a 5% undecided vote. Sure enough, by and large they went with challenger Trump. (Clinton was seen as a stand-in for the incumbent Obama administration.) 

In 2024 there are likely to be fewer undecideds. Each of the two major candidates possess a strong love-or-hate base of voters. To still be undecided in early November would require a Herculean effort at vacillation.  

Theory No. 2: The electorate

"Another possibility is that the polls simply got the makeup of the electorate wrong," writes Cohn. This theory has less to do with the 2024 election since the electoral makeup they got wrong were Democratic-leaning voters who opted for Haley. Ordinarily pollsters don't poll Democrats in Republican primaries. That won't apply in the general election.

Theory No. 3: A hidden Biden vote?

Now for the most plausible, most reassuring reason for Trump's underperformance. "If you’re a Democrat hoping that the polls are underestimating Mr. Biden in the general election, your best-case scenario is the polls are wrong because there’s a Hidden Biden vote, or at least a Hidden Anti-Trump vote," notes Cohn.  

This points to a factor in which the press and broadcasters consistently mislead the public. This far away from the general, most pollsters are surveying registered voters. It's among them that Trump leads, slightly, and it's those results the media bandies about with great fanfare. Yet in polling of likely voters, the numbers flip, showing Biden with the lead. Likely voters, as Cohn also notes, are "the most highly engaged voters."

Most polling to date isn't exactly wrong. It's just polling the wrong voters. As the general election nears, pollsters will begin surveying likely voters more often. And there we're likely to see a shift from Trump to Biden. 

Weird thinking

I'm puzzled by this sort of judgment. 

I’m not going to support a convicted felon. And of course that remains to be seen. So let’s see who comes out of the Republican convention. It’s not done until it’s done. I think what Donald Trump is trying to do is to wrap this nomination up very quickly because he knows the storm clouds are gathering over him with the multiple court cases, with the financial judgments against him, and with 40% of the Republican base saying we want an alternative. And so, let’s wait and see who comes out of the convention. I’m not going to support a convicted felon.

— former governor and presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson

Trump knows they're stormy clouds because he also knows he's going to be nailed in at least one of the "multiple court cases." Hutchinson appears to be in knowing agreement with Trump about an inevitable conviction; otherwise, he himself would not have labeled the clouds as "stormy." Because Hutchinson knows this, in his mind Trump is already a felon. A conviction would be nothing more than a ritualization of what virtually everyone knows. So why would Hutchinson need to wait? He already knows a felon will "come out of the convention" — conviction or no conviction by then. 

You're better than this, Asa.