The Carpentariat

Joe Biden, Hyde, and principled pragmatism

The Claude Rains routine has become a cliché — which, as William Safire once noted, should always be avoided like the plague — but in the Washington Post's Richard Cohen's case, I can think of no apter routine. He is shocked, shocked to find that politics is going on in Joe Biden's campaign.

"I am less than thrilled at Biden’s sudden conversion" on the Hyde Amendment, writes Cohen. "It reeks of insincerity and of a decision made simply for political reasons."

True, and true, just as Abraham Lincoln stalled the Emancipation Proclamation — which, by the way, freed not one slave — for political reasons. In fact one could recite the history of American politics as a rolling litany of political insincerity, from Tom Jefferson's absurd, over-the-top attacks on John Adams to the pathetically monstrous insincerities of the sitting president. It's the way of democracy.

Was I proud of Biden for flipping like a frog on meth? Yes. Pace Cohen, flipping was Biden's only sustainable option, if he wished to remain a sustainable presidential candidate. To allow a subordinate issue such as the Hyde Amendment to destroy the prospects of the candidate most likely to destroy Trump in 2020 would have been nothing less than political insanity.

Indeed, later in his column, Cohen himself unwittingly sanctions Biden's reversal. "At the moment, Hyde is a huge irrelevancy…. The pressing issue of the moment is not Hyde, but the severe antiabortion legislation being passed in state after state."

Which is Biden's position.

Balancing principles and pragmatism can be a difficult undertaking. Some politicians practice only the latter and are soon exposed as the cynical reprobates they are, such as Trump. Some practice only the former, and therefore are never elected. The principled Mr. Biden was merely averting the second misfortune.

Elizabeth Warren: Sanders 2.0

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign constellation of progressive initiatives is almost breathtaking.

Her proposals would tip power from executives and investors to workers and allow the federal government to more aggressively steer the development of industries. She has called for splintering technology companies, like Amazon, that millions of consumers rely on in their daily lives. She would reduce the rewards for entrepreneurs to build billionaire fortunes and for companies to create global supply chains, scrambling the incentives for work, investment and economic growth.

Ms. Warren would seek big tax increases on the wealthiest individuals and corporations, creating a new tax on household assets that exceed $50 million as well as a new tax on corporate profits. From those two steps alone, she says she would raise at least $3.8 trillion over a decade — money that would go toward her plans on student debt cancellation, free college, child care, the opioid crisis and green manufacturing.

Whew!

Warren is hoping that her ambitious agenda will win over Democratic primary voters, and that her emphasis on protecting American workers will have crossover appeal in a general election.

There's little doubt — and her rise in the polls reflects this — that Warren's proposals will indeed attract primary voters, and for the same reason Bernie Sanders attracted primary voters in 2016: Many confuse a candidate's proposals with what will be accomplished in the next presidential term. But not one of the above proposals would stand a chance of congressional approval in 2021 or beyond, even if Democrats hold the House and win the Senate, where Republicans would easily retain enough seats to filibuster each and every ideal dream floating about in President Warren's head.

As for attracting "crossover" voters in the general election? My jaw slackened a bit upon reading that whopper of fantastical thinking. Trump & Co. would do handsprings at the news of Warren's nomination. And then they'd tear her apart. They'd paint "dreamy Liz" as a hardcore socialist and command-economy pol and typical big-tax Democrat who is utterly out of touch with individualistic "America" (summon the choir) and American values.

The progressive leap has been tried before in presidential politics, but since 1972, only Bill Clinton and Barack Obama played presidential politics correctly — as conservative-progressive Dems fashioned after modern progressivism's founder, FDR.

Thus, Joe Biden.

They had to postpone WHAT?

Who was the lunkhead who proposed this in the first place?

Politico: "House Democrats are postponing consideration of a bill that would include a pay raise for members of Congress, after facing a major backlash from the party’s most vulnerable members."

With a starting salary of $174,00 per annum, congressfolk would have a devil of a time convincing the average worker — who has seen his or her wages essentially stagnate for years — that our lawmakers alone are worthy of a raise.

The pay-raise bill (also supported by some Republicans) was an egregious example of political dissociation. It makes one wonder how some of these Dems got into office to begin with — and their detachment from reality makes me tremble when I  ponder the enormous electoral task before them.  

"The global tyranny of the metric system" - Tucker Carlson

Reader Peter G. posted this one-minute, June 6th video in the comment section. It deserves a more visible placement.

I tried to think of something hilariously absurd to say, but the video itself can't get any more absurd.

Here we go again - Fox News at its … best?

Brought to you by the scurrilous bottom feeders at Fox, as reported by the Daily Beast:

One month after Joe Biden announced his run for president, several Fox News stars have already begun quietly pushing rumors that the 76-year-old ex-veep is in poor health.

Since the end of May, Fox Business Network and Fox News star Lisa 'Kennedy' Montgomery and Fox News prime-time host Sean Hannity have speculated on-air, on at least four separate occasions, that the current Democratic presidential frontrunner is secretly dealing with health issues, often comparing his condition to illness-related conspiracy theories the network pushed about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

Well, at least the network isn't going any lower, since, as the article notes, it already tried this with Clinton — who whipped Trump by three million votes. The real problem for the network, however, is the same as MSNBC's: It's only addressing the true believers already in Trump's camp, just as MSNBC is addressing only the rational crowd, the anti-Trumpers. Both networks are but shadow-boxing, which may be a dandy profit-making strategy, but it doesn't mean squat in terms of political influence.

The focus-group game

In March, David Axelrod quite believably told Axios: "I’d sooner be the Dems than Trump. He drew an inside straight in 2016 with narrow wins in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He is vulnerable today in each, with no obvious prospect of adding a state to his column in 2020."

Then today, from Axios, based on an eight-member focus group, we get this: "Voters [in Pennsylvania] who switched from Barack Obama to Donald Trump are sticking with Trump in 2020 — unlike other swing voters who are getting tired of him."

Those "other swing voters" would be those such as Wisconsin's, where "Voters who supported Barack Obama in 2012 and then Donald Trump in 2016 are sick of Trump, saying in a focus group here that they're getting tired of his 'lies' and the way he treats people." Said one of the focus-group members who recently woke up to reality: "I think he’s a dirty crook that lies, cheats, and steals when he can."

So based on a just eight focus-grouped voters, we're expected to buy that swing voters in Pennsylvania remain blinkered to Trump's corruption, while swing voters in Wisconsin (whose universality may be just as suspect) have become politically enlightened. This is the kind of infinitesimal "research" that makes the silly season even sillier.

To believe that Pennsylvania is dangerously pro-Trump would be to believe that the state's swing voters have swung to utter madness since the midterms — merely a few months ago — when Politico was reporting: "A GOP implosion in Pennsylvania has Republicans alarmed about President Donald Trump's reelection prospects in a state that proved essential to his 2016 victory."

What I believe is that focus groups are a high-priced con huckstered to politicians and parties by really slick salesmen.

Biden slips in Iowa

The Hill:

[An] Iowa Poll, conducted by veteran pollster Ann Selzer [rated "A+" by FiveThirtyEight] for The Des Moines Register and CNN, found former Vice President Joe Biden leading the Democratic field with 24 percent of the vote.

The race for second place is a statistical tie between Sen. Bernie Sanders at 16 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 15 percent and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 14 percent.

Sen. Kamala Harris is the only other candidate who registers significant support. She clocked in at 7 percent of the vote.

So Biden still leads, but he has slipped. In December, Selzer's polling found Biden at 32 percent, and in March, at 27 percent. Perhaps even worse news for the former vice president is that Selzer's latest poll was taken before the Hyde kerfuffle, which is to say, before his fellow contenders delighted in skewering him ("you have to kill the bear").

Biden's favorability rating in Iowa? It was at 82 percent late last year; now it's at 72 percent. Plus, his unfavorable rating has creeped up by 9 points. And then there's this, also from The Hill, which causes one to wonder about the staff advice he's receiving: "Nineteen candidates will travel to Cedar Rapids on Sunday [today] to stump before the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Hall of Fame dinner, the first real Iowa cattle call of the race for the 2020 nomination. Every significant candidate, except for Biden, will address party activists."

The upsides are that, even though Selzer is known as a first-rate pollster, she surveyed only 433 "likely" caucus-goers; it's a long way to Iowa's caucus; and Biden has the resources to go the distance. And, as Politico reports, "he has stretched his lead to 8 points over Sanders, up from 2 points in March."

What's more, although Biden's "extremely enthusiastic" supports clocks in at only 29 percent, while his competitors have such support at 39 percent, roughly two-thirds of likely caucus-goers "said they prefer that the winner in Iowa be a candidate with a strong chance" of whipping Trump. Since no one else in the Democratic field has Biden's reputational advantage as a kind of blue-collar moderate, that's the former vice president's key selling point. (Selzer sees Biden's deficit in "extremely enthusiastic" support as a dire negative. I do not.)

Though the poll was largely distressing news for Biden, he still possesses assorted superiorities over his fellow contenders.

Daddy's home!

Man, this is just sick. The Washington Post:

"Alabama is one of two states with no statute terminating parental rights for a person found to have conceived the child by rape or incest….

"Last month, Alabama lawmakers considered a bill that addressed ending parental rights in cases of rape that result in conception, but the legislature removed that language."

Thus the state moves from lynching black men suspected of raping a white woman to protecting the "rights" of all men of the most violent character.

I was shocked when I read this, but considering that state's legislature — why?

Trump's Mexico/tariff scam

From the radio windbag who, in June 2016, compared Trump to "stage-four cancer" and then — once the demagogue was nominated — instantly flipped to being a Trumpism cheerleader, comes more automatic praise of Dear Leader. Writes Hugh Hewitt:

"Because President Trump emerges as a clear winner from his week-long confrontation with Mexico over our neighbor’s lax enforcement of its southern border, reflexive Trump critics will scramble to find some way of containing what is a clear Trump triumph."

The "scramble" for the truth didn't take long.

Reports the NY Times: "Mexico Agreed to Take Border Actions Months Before Trump Announced Tariff Deal."

Yes, it seems "The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months."

I guess Trump simply forgot to tell us that, months ago, the Mexican government had already agreed to the “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border," as well as "an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed."

So in fact, Trump's (and Hewitt's) much-ballyhooed "Great Tariff Avoidance" of last week was just another Trumpian scam.

It was Trump who surrendered, not Mexico.

He was laboring under tremendous pressure from "global leaders, business executives, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and members of his own staff" to cancel his economically devastating tariff threats. And he finally caved — but first he had to magically convert what was indeed an embarrassing defeat into another Trumpian victory.

The swindling just never ends.

***

NYT, in an accompanying story: "Trump assailed The New York Times on Sunday over a report that his new immigration agreement with Mexico consisted largely of previously agreed actions, claiming that there were actually secret, undisclosed elements to the accord." Added Trump: "Importantly, some things not mentioned in yesterday press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time."

I assume the "appropriate time" will be Trump's customary two weeks, by which time he knows everyone will have forgotten about his pledge. As I said, the swindling just never ends.

Mitch McConnell and dirty elections

The integrity of our elections processes was attacked by Russia in 2016 and 2018, and authorities say 2020 could be even worse. (How Russia's interference in 2016 — which helped to elect Trump — could be worse next year is nearly unimaginable.) Consequently, a fair number of bipartisan bills designed to battle foreign interference have been introduced in the Senate.

The proposed legislation ranges from $1 billion for state and local governments to enhance their election security; a requirement that states "spend federal funds only on federally certified 'election infrastructure vendors'"; a stipulation that internet giants identify buyers of political ads; and the codification of "cyberinformation-sharing" between the intelligence community and state officials. All perfectly reasonable, not to mention urgent, bipartisan bills.

Then again, there is the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a one-man wrecking crew and "long the Senate’s leading ideological opponent to federal regulation of elections," notes the NY Times.

"[He] has told colleagues in recent months that he has no plans to consider stand-alone legislation on the matter this term, despite clamoring from members of his own conference and the growing pressure from Democrats who also sense a political advantage in trying to make the Republican response to Russia’s election attack look anemic."

While it's true that McConnell has always possessed an ideological bugbear against, for example, sunshine on disclosures, it's just as true that he harbors an outsized fear of Trump's wrath. And as we know, that which shall not be spoken of, for fear of upsetting Donald the toddler, is any suggestion that Russia fraudulently helped him get into the White House. The proposed legislation on election clean-ups that waits, and waits, and waits, like Casablanca's refugees, is precisely that sort of suggestion. Thus the legislation will go nowhere, since the executive and half the legislative branches are now one.

Observes the Brennan Center for Justice's Lawrence Norden: "We need somebody to be leading on this. In some cases, individual states are. But given the threat, the idea that Congress is not going to have a role here … is insane."

Yes, it's insane. But we've been residing in an impregnable bubble of insanity since June 2015, that dreadful month and year when American politics morphed into little more than Trump, Trump, Trump — the veritable apotheosis of insanity — and all his neuroses.

Still, with or without Russia's help in 2020 — and given McConnell's authoritarian rule over the Senate, it will be "with" — another Trump victory seems as unimaginable as his last. I just trust that my mind isn't playing desperate tricks on itself.

Pelosi, and Trump's mental prison

Trump has never understood that when bitterly attacked, a highbrow retort of feigned bemusement is often more stinging than lowbrow grunts of barbarity — which are all he does understand.

Latest case in point: In response to Nancy Pelosi's eloquent yet caustic desideratum — "I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison" — Trump unleashed nothing but his all-too-familiar vitriol. In a Fox News interview situated at the Normandy American Cemetery in France — where "the sounds of the ceremony honoring veterans who fought on D-Day could be heard in the background," noted CNN — the president of the United States opened his rhetorical bomb-bay doors and unloaded a payload of infantile scorn:

"I actually don't think she's a talented person…. She's a nasty, vindictive, horrible person," a "terrible person," a "disaster" whom he calls "Nervous Nancy" "because she's a nervous wreck." (Further noted by CNN: "Trump has repeatedly used the word 'nasty' to characterize women who have angered him or their negative comments about him, including [Meghan Markle], Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren.")

For a nasty disaster, Speaker Pelosi sure has been successful, perhaps even more successful than that historic monument of legislative success, Speaker Sam Rayburn. President Obama would have achieved next to nothing without Pelosi, and with tremendous success she gets under the thin skin of the sitting president with singular regularity.

Trump could have simply ignored her "prison" remark (likely the reaction of the sophisticated, reserved Barack Obama), or he could have chuckled; said something to the effect of "We're all imprisoned in one way or another, I suppose"; and then shut his mouth after adding, "But really, notwithstanding her occasional harshness — and maybe it was just a kind of lighthearted harshness? — Speaker Pelosi and I can accomplish a lot of good if we just work together in the coming years."

That response would have baffled the pundits, bewildered the news anchors, and given his base as well as his critics something to be genuinely proud of, for once. Instead we got the same old Trump. Because he'll never learn.

Real, live, illegal pardon pitch

The transcript of a 2017 call placed to Michael Flynn's lawyer (Rob Kelner) by Trump's rather inarticulate personal lawyer, John Dowd, was published in the special counsel's report. Yesterday, the audio was ordered released by the federal judge preparing to sentence Flynn.

If you've never listened to a wiretapped call from a mob lawyer to a potentially incriminating witness, then welcome to Gottiland. The call's transcript follows the audio.

Audio of Dowd's call (a new window will open).

JOHN DOWD: "Hey, Rob, uhm, this is John again. Uh, maybe, I-I-I’m-I’m sympathetic; I understand your situation, but let me see if I can’t … state it in … starker terms. If you have … and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve gone on to make a deal with, and, uh, work with the government, uh … I understand that you can’t join the joint defense; so that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, we have, there’s information that … implicates the president, then we’ve got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don’t know … some issue, we got to — we got to deal with, not only for the president, but for the country. So … uh … you know, then-then, you know, we need some kind of heads up. Um, just for the sake of … protecting all our interests, if we can, without you having to give up any … confidential information. So, uhm, and if it’s the former, then, you know, remember what we’ve always said about the president and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains, but — well, in any event, uhm, let me know, and, uh, I appreciate your listening and taking the time. Thanks, pal."

To any objective ear, Dowd's scarcely veiled proposal — "Remember what we’ve always said about the president and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains, but ..." — was a clumsy attempt to obstruct justice via the president's pardon power. And there's no question about Trump's involvement. As the Times reported in March of last year: According to sources "with knowledge of the discussions…, Dowd has said privately that … he had told [Flynn's lawyer] that the president had long believed that the case against Mr. Flynn was flimsy and was prepared to pardon him."

Dowd has flatly denied, of course, that a pardon had ever been discussed with Flynn's lawyer, or Paul Manafort's lawyer, or any lawyer whose Trumpian client was in need of one. To hear Dowd tell it, talk of pardons was strictly taboo in the White House. Yet "current and former administration officials have recounted [to the special counsel] conversations they had with the president about potential pardons," and "in … meetings with senior advisers, the president raised the prospect of pardoning Mr. Flynn, according to two people present."

Again, to an objective ear, case closed; Trump was clearly seeking to silence any former adviser or campaign associate who could put him away. But the law being what it is — a complex array of nearly indecipherable circumlocution that can stand both logic and your hair on end — some "expert" lawyers have questions about what is so clear; that is, the legal community, as the Times put it, is "divided about whether … offers [such as Trump and Dowd's] might constitute obstruction of justice."

That any division of opinion exists is mind-blowing when you inquisitively frame the issue in its simplest terms: Could it possibly be legal for a president of the United States to pardon criminals so as to to cover up his own criminal behavior?

"'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble [via Mr. Dickens], squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass — a idiot.'"

Follow the money? No, follow the base.

A superb condensation of Trump's Mexico tariffs:

Trump is raising taxes on Americans because he’s angry at Mexico over Guatemalan, Honduran, and El Salvadoran immigrants.

—Benjamin Parker, The Bulwark

Parker goes on to argue that Trump has no incentive to ever remove tariffs on Mexico. Since he "has demonized illegal immigrants as rapists, drug dealers, and gang members," it follows that the number of illegal immigrants allowed to enter the United States must be zero — an absurd number the Mexican government can never reach. But "Anything less," writes Parker sarcastically, "is surrender. Weak. Sad!"

And so the tariffs will likely remain in effect until the end of Trump’s presidency. They will not deter any immigration. And just like the wall, Mexico will not pay for them, continues Parker.

Simply imagine any absurdity, and you will have stumbled on a Trump policy. His base is composed of irrational creatures, and these are the only Americans Trump wishes to please. Thus irrationality has become the foundation of Trump's policies.

Perp-walking the prez

These statements, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, seem like reasonable, campaign-trail approaches to that man in the White House.

"I don’t want to see [Trump] impeached, I want to see him in prison," said Pelosi to party leaders Tuesday night. To clarify, the speaker wants to first demolish Trump in the 2020 election, and then be pursued in the courts for his multiple crimes, most notably, obstruction of justice.

Then last night, at an MSNBC town hall, Warren said that "If [Trump] were any other person in the United States, based on what is documented in [the Mueller] report, he would be carried out in handcuffs."

What's the difference between Pelosi's criminalization of a political opponent, and Trump's of Hillary Clinton? Easy. Trump has unarguably committed crimes, while Hillary just as unarguably had not.

The rent is too damn high, and we have too damn many candidates

I'm not sure I could do a better job than the DNC of selecting candidates worthy of June's debate stage, but excluding Montana's Gov. Steve Bullock while including Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang suggests that something is fundamentally wrong with the Committee's formula. Politico:

In order to be eligible for the debates, candidates must cross one of two thresholds: earning 1 percent in three polls approved by the Democratic National Committee, or receiving donations from 65,000 people, with 200 in 20 different states….

A prominent governor [Montana's Steve Bullock, right] running in the Democratic primary is at serious risk of getting shut out of the party’s first presidential debates — while a meditation guru and obscure tech entrepreneur take the stage for the most important event of the race so far….

The 13 candidates who can book their tickets to Miami include the race’s top figures. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Julian Castro…. But also meeting both the polling and fundraising thresholds are Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and two lesser-known figures: Marianne Willamson [sic: even Politico doesn't know her name], best known for authoring spiritual, self-help books, and Andrew Yang, a first-time candidate who wears a baseball cap that says "MATH" on the front as he touts his proposal for a universal basic income.

After those 13 candidates, the rest of the field gets murky. According to a Politico analysis, an additional seven candidates have hit the polling threshold: Michael Bennet, Bill de Blasio, John Delaney, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper, Tim Ryan and Eric Swalwell.

I'm also unsure of the debates' purpose — this early and with this many candidates. "Debates" they decidedly will not be; there will be just enough time to permit one or two sentences of memorized, tub-thumping twaddle from each candidate on each question, thus the only thing the 13 performances will actually demonstrate is each candidate's recall ability.

Most of these hopefuls will lack the money to go the distance or even survive Iowa, and just as many are running for the vp slot, not the presidency. Plus, as noted, there's the insanity of allowing, say, the utterly obscure Mr. Yang on the stage, while Montana's governor gets booted — or so it seems.

I missed the days of smoke-filled rooms in which party elders agreed on one candidate, and yet, I miss them.

Biden's old bugaboos, and a new one

It has begun. The Washington Post's above-the-fold story, "Echoes of Biden’s 1987 plagiarism scandal continue to reverberate," reads more like the echoes of grueling media hits on presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore. 2016's harmless mails, a twisted Vietnam War record in 2004 and 2000's overblown internet invention plagued those Democrats in their respective campaigns. And now, as anticipated empirically, Joe Biden is getting "the treatment."

This week, the Biden campaign affirmed that its early climate and educations plans had contained unattributed material from sundry nonprofit publications. "Staff working on drafts of the policy paper inadvertently left some citations out of the final document, and Vice President Biden was unaware of it," said Biden's campaign spokeswoman, Kate Bedingfield. “As soon as staff were made aware of the error, they fixed it," continued Bedingfield, adding: "To be clear, a quickly fixed staff error on citations and cherry-picked, isolated examples from a 45-year career in public life are irrelevant to what kind of president Joe Biden would be. Voters know Joe Biden. They know his values and his character are the polar opposite of Donald Trump, who lies to the American people virtually everyday."

Trump's count of lies or "misleading claims" since he took office is now over 10,000. In this presidential cycle, Biden's campaign — not Biden himself — has committed an unintended, written transgression of 1. But that was enough for the Post to re-review, ad nauseam, 32-year-old charges of Biden's plagiarism in his first presidential run.

The principal hit on Biden in 1987 was that he had used, in an Iowa debate and without attribution, material from a British politician, Neil Kinnock (who has endorsed Biden's current run). "[He] had already been using the Kinnock material, and properly attributing it, for weeks," concedes the Post. And says an Iowa aide to Biden in '87: "I had heard him quote Neil Kinnock by name, probably 20 times. So I don’t know if I call it plagiarism. I might call it 'he forgot.'" Nonetheless, the charge of plagiarism has endured.

That said, for now Biden's bigger problem, as you know, is his support of the Hyde Amendment. "Biden could, however, change his position, as his campaign also said that the former vice president would be open to repealing the law given ongoing attacks on abortion access." To me that reads as though Biden has already decided to flip on Hyde*, which would of course be politically wise.

But like the plagiarism charge's endurance, that doesn't mean that candidate Biden will have heard the last of his primary opponents' criticisms. They — and the press — will remind him and us, ad nauseam, that he once supported Hyde, as though he still does. In politics, some things are forever.

***

*Sure enough: "After two days of intense criticism," reports the AP, "Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden reversed course Thursday and declared that he no longer supports a long-standing congressional ban on using federal health care money to pay for abortions."

 

A naked, blind emperor

"I heard there were protests. I said, ‘Where are the protests?’ I don’t see any protests. I did see a small protest today when I came — very small. So a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say."

—Donald Trump, 4 June 2019

The domestic Trump doctrine: cruelty toward the defenseless

The humanitarian impulses of this administration are as void as its prudence. Reports the Washington Post:

"The Trump administration is [illegally] canceling English classes, recreational programs and legal aid for unaccompanied minors staying in federal migrant shelters nationwide, saying the immigration influx at the southern border has created critical budget pressures."

Are the U.S.'s never-ending, self-imposed, "critical budget pressures" the youngsters' fault?

More than that, of course, is that budget pressures were of no concern to Trump when he was huckstering his far, far more costly tax cuts. A heightened economy would compensate, the cuts would pay for themselves, middle Americans would appreciate their windfalls — just some of the false justifications ballyhooed by Trump, who didn't give a damn about budget pressures and skyrocketing deficits.

The Daily Beast:

"Senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a 'hockey stick' spike in the national debt in the not-too-distant future. In response, Trump noted that the data suggested the debt would reach a critical mass only after his possible second term in office. 'Yeah, but I won’t be here,' the president bluntly said."

But he's there now, and his heartless base will do joyful handsprings over Trump's cruelty toward these migrant youngsters.

Social media and elusive hate

It seems to me that if social media vanished tomorrow, we'd all be better off.

That rather harsh, somewhat impulsive assessment was inspired by the Steven Crowder vs. Carlos Maza YouTube dispute. Crowder is a right-wing lunatic with a YouTube account — "Louder with Crowder" — and Maza, a gay man, is a video producer for Vox. Watch this one-minute video of Crowder doing one of his anti-Maza routines on YouTube, and you'll see just how offensive this pissant of right-wing celebrity can be.

Maza protested Crowder's behavior to YouTube, which then launched an internal investigation. YouTube's conclusion? “Our teams spent the last few days conducting an in-depth review of the videos flagged to us, and while we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies” [against hate speech and harassment].

That is stunning. If Crowder's contemptible rants aren't perfectly representative of hate speech and harassment, then nothing is.

I'm a radical proponent and stalwart defender of free-speech rights in what academics call "the public sphere." But YouTube is a private firm, thus it can rightfully orchestrate whatever rules it wants, such as its rule against harassment. Of what value are such guidelines, though, if YouTube (and other major social media) turns around and ignores its very own rules? To say the Crowder video is absent hate speech and harassment is to make a mockery of any guidelines at all.

Twitter is even worse. Other than being overloaded with ad-hominem mavens, it allows the most hateful man in America — Donald J. Trump — to punch down, to humiliate and belittle his fellow Americans on nearly an hourly basis.

More often than not, social media in general seems little more than a massive machine of hatefulness. With impunity it unleashes animal emotions, distorts reality, truncates decency and lowers our politics into a cesspool of dimwitted hate. Would we miss it if it were to vanish? Well, Vladimir Putin certainly would.

The day's outrage, and the day's reassurance

In an interview with "Good morning Britain" co-host Piers Morgan, "Trump was asked about his lack of military service during the Vietnam War, which Mr. Trump has claimed was because of bone spurs in his foot. He said he was 'never a fan' of that particular war, and insisted that Vietnam had been barely known of. 'At that time, nobody ever heard of the country,' he said" [italics mine].

In reality, it was after exhausting his college deferments (four of them) that Trump submitted his bone spur appeal. The year was 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive and Walter Cronkite's provocative, dour assessment of America's presence in Vietnam — the bloodiest and most controversial year of the entire war.

Morgan also asked Trump if he would have served, assuming no bone spur "problem." "I would not have minded that at all," replied Trump. "I would have been honored." (And I feel nausea coming on.)

In Portsmouth, England, Trump read a portion of a prayer that FDR delivered to the nation on D-Day, 6 June 1944. From the NY Times' pictorial representation below, I'd say the event's organizers captured the humanist proportions of the two presidents about right, though Trump could have been at least a bit smaller.