The Carpentariat

How to earn millions about nothing: Andrew Sullivan and the seduction of cash.

The next tedious outrage.

Expect the Sullivans of "conservatism" to sweep up the profits. The NY Times:  

"The last time Republicans in South Dakota made a serious push to bar transgender girls from school sports, in 2019, their bill was known only by its nondescript numerical title, Senate Bill 49. Its two main sponsors were men. And it died without ever getting out of committee, just 10 days after it was introduced.

"But when Republicans decided to try again in January, they were far more strategic in their approach. The sponsors this time were two women who modeled their bill after a template provided by a conservative legal organization. They gave the bill a name that suggested noble intent: the 'act to promote continued fairness in women’s sports.' Supporters from Minnesota and Idaho traveled to the Capitol in Pierre to testify that a new law was urgently needed to keep anyone with male biological characteristics out of female competitions, even though they acknowledged only a handful of examples of that happening in South Dakota."

Here, though, is the key passage:

"Studies have shown that the majority of transgender students report feeling unsafe at school because of bullying and harassment."

And with that, one can say, Fuck the conservatives and opportunistic Sullivans.

Monday, can't trust that day, Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way

I'm unsure if I'll be posting Monday. This is Sunday. Tomorrow is doomsday, for me. And a liberating day for my daughter. I suspect I won't handle it well, though I'm supportive of her move thousands of miles away, and excited for her.

Perhaps some of you will understand. Were I a father still with her mother, naturally we would stand together at the doorstep — or in my case, scattered gravel and patchy grass — waving goodbye as she pulled out of the driveway and into the road, her car loaded with stuff she had accumulated over 21 years. But she has no mother, and I have no wife; there is no loving companion with whom, after the leaving, I can throw my arm around and say, What a bittersweet day — then hearing the selfsame, comprehending reassurance of the good over the bad.

It's that kind of closeness, as we spawning antecedents go farther into the dimming twilight, that makes the heartbreak of flying fledglings bearable. There ain't no such closeness here, and maybe there was no such thing in your little family as well. If so, you likely grasp what I'm saying.

One other item. It's true I once lived a boozy, brawling, fuck-whomever, high schooled-expelled, ghetto-oriented life, one in which human emotion and streetwise manhood never met — and were not supposed to. Yet at some unidentifiable moment, after plumbing the philosophical, historical and literary canon of human existence, I understood I was living the shallowest of it. I can't say I've yet evolved into a "good" person — some of those old wonts still reduce me to the aggressively animalistic — but by God I have tried to overcome, and believe I have conquered the motherlode of, shall we say, disagreeability. (Recent female relationships might differ from this self-assessment.)

Which is to say, I just know I am going to undergo a torrent of weepy, perhaps umanly emotionalism tomorrow, burdened as the day will be with daughterly parting. So if my baseline emotionalism interferes with my customary, daily posting about political shit, well, fuck it. Oops, there I go again, behaving like an animal.

Should desperate Trump clones, such as Josh Mandel, be covered?

​​​​​"We do not knowingly publish ridiculous and idiotic claims."

So says a Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial, as the paper grapples with the distasteful presence of Josh Mandel. The Ohio senatorial candidate is a cross between a punk and a clown, an ignorance-über- alles huckster who, writes the editor, "is given to irresponsible and potentially dangerous statements on social media."

In other words, Mandel longs to be Trump. Until he achieves that, all his energy is focused on gaining Trump's attention, Trump's admiration, Trump's endorsement. No one else's attention is worth much to Mandel, since no one else is held in such divine reverence by the ignorance-über-alles Republican base.

Thus Josh runs around the state blathering reckless stupidities, begging for GQD's blessing and hoping he scores some television coverage and print stories. For a newspaper editor, how to cover — or even whether to cover — the clownish punk.

Having noted that Josh "is pretty much a nobody right now," the Plain Dealer's editor issues a ruling: "We ultimately decided not to write about Mandel’s [latest stupidity]…. Just because he makes outrageous, dangerous statements doesn’t mean it is news." The editorial later becomes a bit hazy: "If a candidate makes statements that endanger the lives of Ohioans, as Mandel did here, that’s the story. That’s the news" — a passage that contradicts the first.

The editorial's thrust, however, is that Josh Mandel is better left neglected, at least for a while. Which is wise. If cable news and major newspapers had just ignored Trump in 2015, he would have never become the Trump of 2016-2021.

"Stop the Steals." (It seems we ain't woke enough.)

So much for Georgia ever sending another Democrat to the U.S. Senate, or certifying a Democrat's presidential victory.

The state enacted a law this week that bounces the secretary of state from his or her voting position on the State Board of Elections, whose membership is now given over to a majority appointed by the state legislature.

The law also permits the board to suspend local election authorities and dominate procedural decisions, such as those pertaining to mail ballots, early-voting hours and the number of polling venues.

Nice knowing you, Fulton County.

Doubtless the new board will "find" needed votes for Republican pols, or throw out however many legitimate Democratic votes are needed to steal elections. Or shut down early voting. Or provide the city of Atlanta with one voting booth, open 10:15 a.m. to 10:59 a.m.

The secretary of state will still certify election results, but the state board will be free to intrude on certifications, since it alone will possess ultimate power.

While some conservatives are freaking out about woke activists imagining white supremacy everywhere, Republicans are actively, openly, demonstrably using white supremacy to crush American democracy. 

Georgia's Jim Crow legislature and its state election board "will make what we all lived through in 2020 child’s play," says an Atlanta elections activist.

Then, the Democratic presidential candidate won by less than 44,000 votes in three states, including Georgia. By only a hair did we escape an incomparable American catastrophe: the end of a political system — however much antiquated — in which voters are free to choose the nation's leader.

In Georgia and other states with majority Republican legislatures, that freedom is being dismantled, one statute at a time. They can shanghai the presidency, the U.S. Senate, whatever office they target.

And sorting out the constitutionality of these statutes (as if there's any question) will be Trump's Supreme Court.

For now, perhaps I'll just go back to bed.

Still here, but …

If, on occasion, for the next few days, I seem a bit discombobulated, it's because my daughter, Ellie, 21, has decided to seek her life's fortunes 2,087.5 miles away, in Seattle. Small towns and 21-year-olds seldom mix.

I have raised her alone since she was 12, for better or worse. For me, I reaped all the best; for her, well, what would you, as a teenager, think of a middle-aged parent hounding his culture-synchronized daughter to read Shakespeare and watch Humphrey Bogart movies. Right.

Nevertheless, we're close — quite close, much closer than I ever imagined we'd be when we found ourselves stranded alone, what seems like decades ago.

I won't get mushy. I'll just say I already miss her, as we spend our time together, till Monday. I shall still post mornings, mind you, though my mind may be somewhat adrift. With thanks for your toleration, I am,

Yours,

— Papa Carpenter

Fleeing the degenerate vortexes of Twitter

Behold a man who earns $174,000 a year so he can spend that time producing vapidity like this.

pic.twitter.com/ZYLYcFTKPz

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 25, 2021

A few months ago I dumped from my Twitter feed several Jordanesque buffoons. I specifically recall purging Dinesh D'Souza, who had taken to posting rapid-fire missives of clinical insanity. Even his slivers of the right's monolithic pathologies were, for me, too much. I must have retained Jordan merely as a reminder of my judicious slaughter.

I also retained several of the right's presidential aspirants — Tom Cotton, Nikki Haley and Josh Hawley are some. I did so believing it was my masochistic duty to track the pathetic yearners. But honestly, I'm unsure if I can cope with three+ more years of these ghouls. Virtually every tweet alerts us to bad, very bad things under Biden.

I'm thinking Andrew Sullivan will be the next to join my ethical cleansing. This once rational, balanced, comprehensive thinker has discovered the profitable magic of marketing borderline hysteria about one topic: wokeness. Feed the bears. Crank up the outrage. Obsess relentlessly over something that deserves occasionality. And especially feed those potential Substack subscribers. Perhaps I moan only with envy. Boy, is he ever raking it in. 

But let's do answer that proffered question. Do we miss Trump yet? I shall borrow from President Biden: Look, I don’t know where you guys come from, man.

A one-hour Biden press conference I happily missed

I have a habit of watching presidential press conferences​. Yesterday I could not. After reading several wrap-ups and bits of the transcript, my habit may be at an end.

It appears the most trenchant question asked — met by an appropriately trenchant answer — came from a reporter wanting, needing to know, as all of America needed to know, if President Biden is content with migrant children "sleeping on floors," "packed into these pods": "Is what’s happening … acceptable to you?" The president's reply came in the proper form of a swift kick in her ass: "That’s a serious question, right? Is that acceptable to me? Come on."

Another exchange of immense urgency was initiated by CNN correspondent Kaitlin Collins. "You just made some news by saying that you are going to run for reelection." I said that is my expectation. "So is that a yes, that you are running for reelection?" Look, I don’t know where you guys come from, man.

Then the all-important follow-up: "Do you believe you’ll be running against former President Trump?" I don't know how, but somehow Biden screwed up the energy to groan, again: "Oh, come on."

No questions on the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than a half-million Americans. Not one.

Perhaps the biggest story of President Biden's press conference came from another, thoroughgoing non-happening. He let loose no "gaffes." This disappointing non-occurrence will require eminently skillful dissections from Fox News. In fact, Tucker was on it like Trump on a cheeseburger.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it a “scandal bigger than Watergate,” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused President Biden of “thoroughly faking mental sharpness” for more than an hour during his press conference on Thursday.

Biden's press conference and the journalistic awakening to: Our future lies ahead.

Axios reports that President Biden met earlier this month with several historians, including Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss and Walter Isaacson. Rarely has a story been more pleasurable to read. Forget cancel culture; let's talk instead of presidential culture shock:

"The conversation got as granular as the Jay Treaty of 1794." Need I note that the presidency has passed through a sort of space-time wormhole, emerging on the intelligent side of the universe? I think not.

Anyway, Axios uses this historical backdrop as an introduction to Biden's FDRlike accomplishments and aims: the massive relief bill, "sweeping changes in voting rights," and trillions for infrastructure and education.

The only groaner in the piece is the observation that "Biden's presidency has already been" ... transformative. There outta be a bounty on that word, perhaps with a forgiving statute of limitation. Can journalists not mix it up a bit? — perhaps opt, now and then, for evolutionary, redemptive, restorative, or maybe liberating, inspiring, ennobling or civilizing? Each one more precisely describes Biden's presidency, since every new presidency is, by definition, a transformation.

The piece is also meant as a primer for Biden's press conference today, at 1:15 p.m. (which, in press conferencespeak, probably means about 2). Axios is quite pleased with the president's tenure to date, as most of us are.

Lest we and Axios become too chipper, however, the guy and gal journalists at the Washington Post warn us of darkness. "When President Biden’s team announced last Tuesday that he would hold his first solo White House news conference this Thursday, they were optimistic that Biden would be able to offer an ebullient update about his early successes," they write. Then comes the fateful, predestined But — "somewhere between planning and execution, reality intruded." Biden now faces "myriad crises and challenges … that may imperil his ambitious agenda."

In short, as the perceptive Tom Dewey would have said, Our rivers are full of fish, you cannot have freedom without liberty, our future lies ahead. (That last phrase he actually said.) And U.S. presidents face crises and challenges.

Good grief.

***

Just this single post today. Medical stuff this morning. Till tomorrow, let's try to be chipper.

How to make an ass of oneself in 3 minutes flat

As a professor of international finance remarked on Twitter, "The news is not that Yellen yelled. The news is that a Senator has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about re: US contributions to IMF funding." 

You can watch all seven minutes or catch this homegrown, Oxford-educated dimwit who can't admit he's wrong, Republican Sen. John Neely Kennedy, at around 00.03.30.

Ms. Yellen is secretary of the treasury, she formerly chaired the Federal Reserve and Council of Economic Advisers, and she is a Brown University, Phi Beta Kappa grad and a PhD in economics from Yale. Kennedy is lawyer, and laughable excuse for a senator.  

Major News We Can All Champion

NBC News: The First Lady's Press Secretary confirms that Major and Champ have returned to the White House, @KellyO reports.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 24, 2021

Dr. Oz and double-Jeopardy!

I'm so culturally adrift, oblivious and out of it, I didn't know till yesterday that the quacking Dr. Oz had morphed as a guest host of "Jeopardy!"

Now I read that fans of the show — years ago I also watched it, but its creeping invasion of pop-culture questions answers estranged my forsaken heart — have launched a letter-written offensive, in  petition form, against the blathering witchdoctor and the program's co-oblivious producers. (It could also be that the latter just wanted a wrenching, host-changing blitzkrieg to acutely distract viewers from adorable Alex Trebek's untimely absence.)

I wish the petitioners well. This irredeemable clown has no business — or rather far too much of it — being on mass-market television.

To my knowledge she never invested in Dr. Oz's "unproven supplements," probably because some other afternoon host had convinced her that her credit card number would be stolen. But my dear old mama would, one week, swallow garlic pills and gobble up sweet potatoes, because Oz said they would stave off cancer. The next week she'd be downing vinegar so that her liver wouldn't explode, again, per the good doctor. Plus "blueberries, bananas, hemp nuts, apple juice and flaxseed oil" to prevent dementia. Would that they had.

My gentle suggestions to her that the voo-dooing viper of profit tended to oversell his homey advice was something eerily similar to telling flatly unpersuadable Trumpeteers that their Wizard was blanketed by a curtain of swindle. In her case, no real harm, just an occasional surfeit of miracle foods. But what of the true believers cashing out on crates of the hokey-poke doctor's phony supplements? Seemingly innocuous health scammery is dangerous, since some of these folks might dismiss real warning signs of serious disease, for they have pre-"fortified" themselves.

And in that, there lies true jeopardy.

No "crisis," no "surge" at the southern border

Though facts may be tiresome, dismissible things these days, an associate professor specializing in immigration and two PhD students in political science have taken a factual look at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's recent declaration that there is a "crisis" at our southern border, "created by the presidential policies of this new administration."

McCarthy isn't alone, of course. The entire Republican Party wants us re-quaking in fear of what book-writing opinionist Pat Buchanan, 15 years ago, called a State of Emergency, the barbarian conquest of America and all that. Update: It seems that just three months ago the U.S. finally sat in happy security against this grotesque invasion; then, two months ago Joe Biden, having stolen the election, flung open the gates. Ergo, crisis. That, anyway, is the Republican story.

Without wandering into the researchers' statistical weeds, they "looked at data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection … and found no crisis or surge that can be attributed to Biden administration policies. Rather, the current increase in apprehensions fits a predictable pattern of seasonal changes in undocumented immigration combined with a backlog of demand because of 2020’s coronavirus border closure."

Oh and by the way, in 2019, under Trump, "total apprehensions increased 31 percent during the same period, a bigger jump than we’re seeing now." 2020's pandemic disrupted the seasonal pattern of upticks.

But, as we know, facts are pretty much tiresome, dismissible things these days — especially for those with an R trailing their name. And, except for the columns of Marc Thiessen and Gary Abernathy, their constituents don't read the Washington Post opinion page.

Sen. Tom Cotton: Ivy League smarts-denier

​​​​​Excellent. The Senate held its 1,598th hearing yesterday on gun violence.

I caught a few minutes of it on C-Span. Arkansas Ranger Tom Cotton was solemnly explaining that our biggest problem is that we just aren't incarcerating enough people with guns, those brandishing guns, those committing violence with guns. (There seems to be a common theme here.)

As for our inadequate rate of incarceration, Ranger Tom must know — he does know this, right? — that the United States outpaces all other soft-hearted hangouts of promiscuity, such as Turkmenistan. In sheer numbers, the U.S. outshines even totalitarian China: 2.12 million prisoners vs. 1.71 million in 2020, even though China's overall population is many times that of ours.

Sen. Cotton then turned to a handpicked committee witness. Tom asked him who most needs guns. The witness testified that minority populations need guns more than anyone, since it is those populations most subject to gun violence. I am reminded of Archie Bunker's local-news TV appearance in which he advocated that airlines pass out handguns to all passengers, to protect against hijackings.

And so the Senate will stuff the Boulder "incident" in its bulging file of thoughts and prayers. Next week, its 1,599th hearing on gun violence.

Boulder, Co., "defund the police," and Democrats' critical moment of decision

Boulder's mass shooting is sure to intensify the Democratic Party's internal debate over what damage was done during 2020: "Democrats agonize over 'defund the police' fallout," blares a Politico headline, whose text, oddly enough, has nothing to say about Boulder.

Indeed, agony they own, which in itself belies the polled findings of "top liberal super PAC" Priorities USA. If nothing else, enjoy its triple repetition of reassurance: "In the aggregate, when you look at the totality of the election, 'defund the police' in the aggregate neither helped nor hurt the cause."

When one's own financing relies on establishing a thesis before initiating research, the outcome is rather anticlimactic.

Another Democratic researcher says "the GOP attack ads accusing Democrats of wanting to strip resources from cops were not any more powerful than other TV spots run by Republicans." Which isn't the point. First, TV ads are merely one variable among thousands in any congressional campaign. The second objection is even more pertinent.

A researcher can data-collect, aggregate, analyze and arrive at some statistical conclusion, but some opinions, sentiments and prejudices in voters' minds cannot be reached through socially scientific methods.

As for the latter, USA Today/Ipsos conducted a survey, March 1-2, on the issue, finding that, aggregately, 18% of respondents agreed with defunding the police; 67% of white Americans opposed it, while only 28% of African Americans and 34% of Democrats favored it.

Of greater interest — or greater relevance — was what some respondents had to say afterward, which reflected attitudinal undercurrents that simply cannot be tabulated.

Said one African-American retiree: "When it first surfaced, I think people had the wrong definition of what that meant." But they didn't. Which is why activists soon scurried in panic to "clarify" what in fact was a straightforward proposition. Said another retiree — he being among the most voting-prone electoral segment: "I think it's misguided," nobody "wants to defund the police." The gentleman understood precisely what the catchphrase meant.

And there was the Portland, Oregon Democrat who bluntly objected to what she called the "concept": "I don't like [it]."

Three weeks ago, oblivious as to what would occur in Colorado, the Oregonian also adumbrated Democrats' now-intensified agonizing: "We're already understaffed in Oregon for police issues. We had five shootings yesterday, and cops are having a hard time to get to those locations."

If, in its present examinations of what political damage "defund the police" might have done, the Democratic Party caves to progressive pressures by whistling past the necropolis, the party will regret it come November 2022.

Imaging Biden's $3 trillion outlay

​​​​​The NY Times' banner headline yesterday: "Biden Team Preparing Up to $3 Trillion in New Spending for the Economy."

The subtitle: "A pair of proposals would invest in infrastructure, education, work force development and fighting climate change, with the aim of making the economy more productive."

A pair of proposals? How charming. Almost any attempt at more pragmatically divining the Biden administration's future would suggest more than two. There are other contingencies of yet-known procedural modifications.

If the filibuster in all its idiotic glory is retained, Republicans will be very much in favor of rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, but very much opposed to Democrats achieving it through deficit spending
or tax increases — which means Republicans will be very much against any Democratic rebuilding of the nation's infrastructure. Begone.

However should the filibuster be weakened (its abolition is out of the question), then Democrats will still need to decouple their clean-energy aspirations from an infrastructure bill. The reason is obvious. That Artful Dodger of comprehensive climate-change legislation, Sen. Joe Manchin, will need to be mollified. At present, there is no such decoupling conceived under Proposal #1, if I understand the Times article correctly, which isn't a given, given its textual meanderings.

Proposal #1's aggressive "investments in manufacturing and advanced industries" with the integrated aim of battling climate change will require further decoupling. See above.

Proposal #2 will also depend on where the filibuster stands. Today it foresees big spending on improving educational opportunities through "free community college, universal pre-K education, a national paid leave program and efforts to reduce child care costs." Tomorrow it will die. Assuming the filibuster is alive and well. Otherwise, there is hope.

What I foresee is four bills at a minimum. And the success of each depends on preliminary emaciations of the all-powerful filibuster.