The Commentariat -- October 9, 2017
Lisa Friedman & Brad Plumer of the New York Times: "The Trump administration announced Monday that it would take formal steps to repeal President Barack Obama's signature policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, setting up a bitter fight over the future of America's efforts to tackle global warming. At an event in eastern Kentucky, Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said that his predecessors had departed from regulatory norms in crafting the Clean Power Plan, which was finalized in 2015 and would have pushed states to move away from coal in favor of sources of electricity that produce fewer carbon emissions."
Beacon of Liberty: Torture Edition. Larry Seims of the Guardian: "274 documents the CIA and Pentagon were forced to declassify and release during pre-trial discovery.... These documents, many of them scheduled to be entered as exhibits at trial, provide the fullest picture yet of what the three men suffered in that secret CIA dungeon -- and of how fatefully their lives intersected with the rise and fall of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the men who designed the torture regime." Read on if you've got a strong stomach --safari
"Captialism is Awesome", Ctd. Joseph Cox of The Daily Beast: "Danny Manupassa sells everything the paranoid might need. As the director of PI-Products, he offers infra-red cameras, reinforced, security-focused doors to stop burglars armed with electric drills and saws, and even professional bug-sweeping services to find hidden microphones in cars. But this thirtysomething entrepreneur's main business -- the one that has led to him being the center of a cross-border investigation into organized crime -- is selling privacy-focused mobile phones...A Daily Beast investigation shows the widespread use of these devices by serious criminals, connections between crooks and some of the people that sell the phones, and the intense rivalry playing out across the industry." --safari
Mrs. McCrabbie: In today's thread, Akhilleus links the most famous moment in the the Army-McCarthy hearings. Here's Edward R. Murrow's response to it. You can substitute "Trump" for "McCarthy," & Murrows' remarks ring true today:
*****
On Columbus Day Weekend, Trump Pays Tribute to the Explorer
Who set in motion the American tradition of White Europeans abusing & exploiting Native Americans:
.... Of Dreamers & Schemers. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The White House on Sunday delivered to Congress a long list of hard-line immigration measures that President Trump is demanding in exchange for any deal to protect the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, imperiling a fledgling bipartisan push to reach a legislative solution. Before agreeing to provide legal status for 800,000 young immigrants brought here illegally as children, Mr. Trump will insist on the construction of a wall across the southern border, the hiring of 10,000 immigration agents, tougher laws for those seeking asylum and denial of federal grants to 'sanctuary cities,' officials said. The White House is also demanding the use of the E-Verify program by companies to keep illegal immigrants from getting jobs, an end to people bringing their extended family into the United States, and a hardening of the border against thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America.... The demands were developed by a half-dozen agencies and departments, officials said. But among the officials behind the demands are Stephen Miller, the president's top policy adviser, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions...." ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York: "... the White House has sent congressional leaders a list of immigration demands that is almost the complete opposite of what [Trump] told Democrats [Schumer & Pelosi] he was looking for in exchange for extending DACA.... The drastic shift from Trump requesting a moderate increase in border security to demanding Congress essentially enact his entire immigration platform would be enough reason to distrust anything he says about the future of DACA.... A letter sent with the list, which was signed by President Trump, states: 'These findings outline reforms that must be included as part of any legislation addressing the status of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients.' But according to The Wall Street Journal, Trump officials 'stopped short of saying the White House would insist on them,' and said the president is not issuing any veto threats."
Larry Summers Has Had Enough of This Shit: "The Trump administration’s tax plan is not a plan. It is a melange of ideas put forth without precision or arithmetic. It is not clear enough to permit the kind of careful quantitative analysis of its expected budget costs, economic effects and distributional implications that precedes such legislation in a serious country. It is clear enough, however, to demonstrate that the claims of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Council of Economic Advisers Chair Kevin Hassett are some combination of ignorant, disingenuous and dishonest. Hassett, whose job is to stand up for rigorous apolitical economic analysis, had the temerity last week to accuse the Tax Policy Center -- staffed by many of the most distinguished tax analysts in the country -- of issuing 'scientifically indefensible' 'fiction.' He and his colleagues should look in the mirror.... We know enough to say that a tax-reform plan along the lines of the administration's sketch would not substantially increase economic growth, would blow out the budget deficit and would make the United States an even more unequal place."
Trump Says He Doesn't Care Much about Health Care. Julia Manchester of the Hill: "President Trump praised health care block grants on Saturday, saying they allow the states to focus on health care, but said he would rather focus his energy on tensions with North Korea than 'fixing somebody's back or their knee.'" Mrs. McC: That is, Trump seems to think medical care is rather superfluous & pretty much all about chiropractic. he'd rather focus on calling Little Kim names and/or maybe starting a nuclear war. Way more fun. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
** The New York Times Editors have updated their "Republican's Guide to Presidential Etiquette" "to ensure that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and other congressional Republicans never forget what they now condone in a president." As the editors note, the standards have changed drastically since Barack Obama was president. ...
... Paul Waldman: "Despite his belief that he's a master dealmaker, Trump has shown himself utterly incapable of the things Washington dealmaking requires, including mastering the issue at hand and building and managing relationships with members of Congress whose own interests are often in conflict even within each party. So the agenda flounders, and one major issue after another winds up being shaped by Trump's personal whims and resentments.... [For instance,] Trump distrusts [Rex] Tillerson because, according to The Washington Post, 'Trump believes his top diplomat often seems more concerned with what the world thinks of the United States than with tending to the president's personal image.'... For this president, everything is personal. The purpose of the State Department isn't to represent the United States to the world but to tend to Trump's personal image."
Mrs. McCrabbie: I'll let Akhilleus report this one: "The Dauphin, le petit mikey pence, walked out of an NFL football game today, just as fast as his little legs could carry him, because he can't stand African American players advocating for their rights." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... In yesterday's thread, Akhilleus went on to reiterate how senseless mikey's own little protest is. Sadly, Akhilleus just doesn't get it. Behaving or dressing in a way confederates deem "patriotic" applies only to black people. Remember how riled everybody -- including ABC "News" -- by the fact that then-Sen. Obama often left the house without wearing a flag pin in his lapel? I checked the Googles & found dozens of photos of der Trumpus dressed in a suit with no flag pin in sight. Yet no one ever questioned his patriotism because of his shockingly flagless lapel. Nevah. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Update. Worse than We Thought. The mikey Protest Was a Trump-directed Made-for-TV NFL Opening Show. And You Paid the Production Costs. Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "The plan had been for Vice President Mike Pence to attend the Indianapolis Colts game at which Peyton Manning's number was to be retired.... The former governor of Indiana and his wife, wearing a Manning No. 18 jersey, left Lucas Oil Stadium after the national anthem, following instructions from President Trump after a number of San Francisco 49ers players, as they usually do, took a knee during the anthem. 'I asked @VP Pence to leave stadium if any players kneeled,' Trump posted on Twitter. 'I am proud of him and @SecondLady Karen.'... Pence left after more than a dozen members of the 49ers took a knee during the anthem, as many NFL players have done to raise awareness of social injustice and racial inequality. Members of the Colts stood for the anthem with arms linked.... Assuming a total flight time of six hours..., the tab for the flight alone would have topped $250,000.... [Other costs include] Secret Service agents deployed from the local field office; police to provide security along the motorcade route and at the perimeter of the event; an ambulance for the motorcade; and extra trauma teams on hand at a local hospital, among others -- with many earning overtime wages for working on a Sunday." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If Trump's campaign doesn't pay all the costs for this stunt, this misuse of taxpayer money is one of many grounds for impeachment to be added to the list. mikey could be impeached, too, but please, not while Paul Ryan is next up. ...
... Peter King of Sports Illustrated points out that pence has been a Peyton Manning fan for a long time, yet the purpose of this trip to from Las Vegas to Indianapolis, then on to California, was made for the purpose of upstaging Manning, whose jersey was to be retired during a half-time ceremony. ...
By now I think we all get it: Donald Trump is the savior of American values from the dusky hordes. -- Kevin Drum ...
... Chas Danner of New York has a pretty good summary of how the whole outrageous pre-planned pence "protest" went down.
Jonathan Martin & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like 'a reality show,' with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation 'on the path to World War III.' In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts 'like he's doing "The Apprentice" or something.' 'He concerns me,' Mr. Corker added. 'He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.'... Mr. Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts. 'I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it's a situation of trying to contain him,' Mr. Corker said in a telephone interview." ...
... Philip Rucker & Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "Sen. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, on Sunday called the White House 'an adult day care center' after President Trump attacked him in a morning Twitter tirade. Trump alleged in a trio of tweets that Corker 'begged' him for his endorsement, did not receive it and decided to retire because he 'didn't have the guts' to run for reelection next year. In response, Corker (Tenn.) tweeted, 'It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.'... Trump's public lashing of a fellow Republican comes after Corker made headlines last week when he starkly suggested that the national security team provides the president with badly needed adult supervision." Thanks to Marvin S. for the lead. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
Senator Bob Corker 'begged' me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said 'NO' and he dropped out (said he could not win without... ..my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said 'NO THANKS.' He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal! -- Donald Trump, lying his way trhough a series of tweets, Sunday ...
... Eli Watkins & Manu Raju of CNN: "Trump tweeted Sunday morning in a series of posts attacking Corker that he denied the senator's request for an endorsement -- a claim denied by Corker's chief of staff, Todd Womack, later in the day. 'The president called Senator Corker on Monday afternoon and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek reelection and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times,' Womack said in a statement. Trump told Corker he was going to endorse him the day the Tennessee Republican announced his intention to retire, two sources familiar with the discussions said." ...
... Jonah Shepp of New York: "That Corker is the only Republican openly remarking on the irresponsibility of this behavior is, frankly, an indictment of the rest of the party.... Let's not give Trump's Republican critics too much credit here: They had enough evidence to know exactly what kind of erratic person they were hitching their wagons to last year, and went ahead and endorsed him anyway. Perhaps Corker will think twice the next time he has the urge to help someone get elected president and then try to change everything about them afterward."
The Fish Rots from the Head. Drew Harwell, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration, one of the wealthiest in modern U.S. history, is facing widening criticism over travel expenditures among some of the billionaires, budget hawks and business executives who head federal agencies. Inspectors general have opened at least five investigations into charter or military flights by Cabinet officials amounting to millions in federal spending.... 'The tone is set at the top,' said Noah Bookbinder ... of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.... 'When you have a president who is visiting his private resorts every weekend at great cost to taxpayers, it is not surprising that Cabinet members are using private jets to get to standard meetings.'"
Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "Republican Facebook employees embedded with the Trump campaign to help the then-candidate fine tune ads on the platform, according to an interview with Trump campaign digital media director Brad Parscale ... Parscale tells 60 Minutes that the campaign ran an average of 50,000 to 60,000 ad versions every day, with different designs, colors, backgrounds, and words. Some days, Parscale says, they peaked at 100,000 different ad iterations.... There is some irony in how successful the embeds were, Parscale says, saying that Facebook and other social platforms were invented by 'very liberal people' on both coasts, while they used the platforms to get a Republican in the Oval Office." --safari ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Baird also reports that "Parscale also says he heard the Clinton campaign, which also used Facebook advertising extensively, did not use embeds and turned down Facebook's offers to have employees essentially join the campaign." The very idea that a business with the breadth of Facebook would secretly embed employees in political campaigns to actively help one candidate over another is shockingly undemocratic (even tho I can't think why it might be illegal), even if that candidate weren't Trump.
Connor O'Brien of Politico: "In an interview on ABC's "This Week," FEMA administrator Brock Long brushed off criticism from San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has slammed the Trump administration's response to Hurricane Maria.... 'We filtered out the mayor a long time ago. We don't have time for the political noise,' Long said." Mrs. McC: Yeah, there really is no reason to listen to a woman, even one who knows what she's talking about because she's been there & seen it. A valuable female official would be one who stayed inside the air-conditioned hurricane center & got coffee for the men having meetings. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Antibiotic Apocalypse. Robin McKie of the Guardian: "Scientists attending a recent meeting of the American Society for Microbiology reported they had uncovered a highly disturbing trend.... [R]esistance to [antibiotics] is spreading across the globe...The danger, say scientists, is one of the greatest that humanity has faced in recent times. In a drug-resistant world, many aspects of modern medicine would simply become impossible." Read on. --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Megan Twohey of the New York Times: "The Weinstein Company fired one of its founders, Harvey Weinstein, on Sunday, after a New York Times investigation uncovered allegations that he had engaged in rampant sexual harassment, dealing a stunning blow to a producer known for shaping American film and championing liberal causes." ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Sharon Waxman of the Wrap writes that in 2004, when she worked for the New York Times, she reported on some of Weinstein's antics, but Times editors stripped the story of sexual allegations after pressure from Waxman himself & from movie stars Matt Damon & Russell Crowe: "I simply gagged when I read Jim Rutenberg's sanctimonious piece on Saturday about the 'media enablers' who kept this story from the public for decades. 'Until now,' he puffed, 'no journalistic outfit had been able, or perhaps willing, to nail the details and hit publish.' That's right, Jim. No one -- including The New York Times."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Rod Nordland of the New York Times: "More than a thousand Islamic State fighters ... fled their crumbling Iraqi stronghold of Hawija. Instead of the martyrdom they had boasted was their only acceptable fate, they had voluntarily ended up ... in [an] interrogation center of the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq. For an extremist group that has made its reputation on its ferociousness, with fighters who would always choose suicide over surrender, the fall of Hawija has been a notable turning point. The group has suffered a string of humiliating defeats in Iraq and Syria, but the number of its shock troops who turned themselves in to Kurdish officials at the center in Dibis was unusually large, more than 1,000 since last Sunday." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: "At least 10 people have died and at least 1,500 homes, businesses and other structures have been destroyed as more than 14 fires ravaged eight counties throughout Northern California on Monday, authorities said. The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office reported seven fire-related deaths late Monday. In addition, two died because of the Atlas fire in Napa County, said a CalFire spokesperson. One person died as result of the Redwood Valley fire in Mendocino County."
New York Times: "Richard H. Thaler was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for his contributions to behavioral economics. Professor Thaler, born in 1945 in East Orange, N.J., works at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. The Nobel committee, announcing the award in Stockholm, said that he was a pioneer in applying psychology to economic behavior and in shedding light on how people make economic decisions, sometimes rejecting rationality."
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Reader Comments (13)
So the Bully-in-Chief holds Dreamer children hostage?
Why am I not surprised?
And gotta admire the Pence (who himself makes his living on bended knee) cojones, too.
So the extremist Dreamer demands kill any of that false fluff talk about donald having "heart", right? The media should definitively stick a silver stake through the heart of that notion, this president* caring for anyone but himself and his loyal grifters.
Antibiotic Apocalypse: I wrote the antibiotic chapter in a medical microbiology textbook. I included a statement based on a UK study showing the danger of resistance from use in animal farming. The book was published in 1974. You know, just that science crap.
We are not going to reduce profits from the drug and farm industries based on science. (notice, I could practically rewrite this using the term ' climate').
The NYT's editorial (linked above) is extraordinary and horrific at the same time. The memory of how Obama was criticized for even such petty things as having only mustard on his burgers–-"He's not a true American if he doesn't have catsup" said Hannity and Laura I.
Here is NYT's editorial from April 11, 2015 that shows us once again how Obama was being hung out to dry. And it ends with these words:
"If this insurrection [by Republicans] is driven by something other than a blend of ideological extremism and personal animosity, it is not clear what that might be [really?] But it is ugly, it deepens mistrust of government and it harms the office of the president, not just Obama."
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/a-new-phase-in-anti-obama-attacks.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
And what we have now is chaos and total disintegration. It has passed the point of disbelief and fury––something needs to be done and soon.
@PD Pepe: I couldn't agree with you more. I normally work on Reality Chex for at least two hours, & usually more, every night; then work in the morning from maybe 5 am till 10 or 10:30. But last night, I gave up in disgust after an hour. I just couldn't stand to read one more story about what an asshole Trump is & what assholes his various retainers are. Trump must spend his every waking hour dreaming up ways to be destructive & he expects everyone who works for him to do the same.
Here is an interesting, informative piece by James Mann from TNYRB called THE ADULTS IN THE ROOM: A scrutiny of Mattis, McMaster, Kelly and Tillerson.
"Phrases like "the adults" or "the grownups in the room" seem on the surface to carry intuitive meanings but raise all sorts of questions that deserve scrutiny. What does it mean to be an "adult" in Washington in general, or, in particular, under Donald Trump"
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/26/trump-adult-supervision/
@Mrs Mac: And yet you soldier on––thank goodness! I think we are all spent––I think we all reach a point where we are so fed up we can't take another morsel of this stink––but given a breather we are drawn back to it––because we care and because our hearts are broken.
Presenting a different view, Wall Street Journal reporters reflect on their September trip to Pyongyang, North Korea. Video/Photo: Paolo Bosonin/The Wall Street Journal "...inside North Korea "
Thank goodness for Akhilleus being up to the task of skewering Trump throughout the weekend with his various posts covering each emerging outrage. @Mrs.McC.: Yes, things have gotten increasingly wearisome, frustrating, and maddening with every breaking news story—and am running out of words to describe my distaste and horror of that #%@&* idiot in the WH. Everyday is watch, wince, and repeat. Glancing in the mirror while brushing my teeth I almost expect to see my inner Edvard Munch-like screamer reflected.
Once upon a time in a land far away the phrase, "Have you no shred of decency?" had social and political impact. In that long ago time the word "decency" actually meant something to the Republican Party, because most of their adherents were embarrassed when their leaders behaved badly in public, I assume because they must have felt that bad behavior reflected on them.
Interestingly, today the only behavior that will occasionally get a Republican leader into trouble with his party's base (or so-called leadership) is revealed philandering and then only if there's a very public payoff or abortion request involved.
Everything else, no matter how indecent, is just fine with the Repugnants in 2017, whose answer to the question posed in the early 1950 McCarthy hearings is now a resounding "No!"
Today "Who are these people?" is a far better fit.
The Gutless Wonder
It's funny (and not the ha-ha kind) to hear the little king say that Bob Corker has no guts. I suppose this is another bit of projection (where's Kate when we need her?) on the lk's part. He knows all about being gutless.
Like most bullies and cowards, Trump is forever beating his chest and braying about what a big man he is. As a young man, he had a chance to serve in the military. He pretended to have a hurt piggy toe. Awww....you can say what you want about Bill Clinton, but he made no bones about his opposition to the war. At least he was honest about it. The Decider said he was in complete agreement with the war but got his daddy to pull strings to keep him stateside in the Texas Air National Guard, but even then he wasn't enough of a man to stick to his obligations to show up for duty. But Trump? He weaseled out. Pure and simple.
He has never ever, as far as I know, accepted responsibility, like stand up men and women do, for any of his many failures. And his failures didn't just affect him. They put hundreds, if not thousands, out of work and, in another act of cowardice, he declared Chapter 11 not once, but four times to escape the consequences of his bad deal making and stiffed everyone to whom he owed money.
Fast forward past many other small and large acts of cowardice and maleficence, and we're now at the White House (god help us). And now Trump struts about like a little Mussolini (but without, as Marie noted recently, Mussolini's accomplishments; more on this in a bit) with his chin stuck out and that "I'm a Serious Bad Ass" grimace on his puss. He makes demands, threatens, cajoles and insults, but with every immense failure on his part to get anything done, he repeatedly whines like a little baby and blames others. He draws lines in the sand, then backs up and draws another, then another, then stamps his baby feet and heads for the golf course in a snit.
He meets world leaders face to face and acts obsequious and babified. But as soon as they're on a plane home, takes to Twitter to insult them and beat his chest again, not enough balls to confront them to their face with any particular issue he might have with them. More cowardice.
He wants to kill the ACA, but he doesn't have the guts or the smarts to actually do it, so he throws it to a couple of other incompetents, McConnell and Ryan, then blames them when he suffers another failure.
He struts about declaring the Iran deal the worst in history and says he's going to kill it. But he doesn't. Instead, he sends it to Congress hoping they'll do the dirty work. Even more cowardice.
Another possible interpretation of "gutless" is someone hollow on the inside, nothing there. And this too describes Trump. Oh, I shouldn't say completely hollow. His one abiding concern is himself. But really, that's about it. He's concerned about how he looks, about his money, and power, and his immediate family (at least some of them).
But concern for the country? For concepts and ideas of great moment? For the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, for true liberty, equality under the law, decent behavior, and integrity of intent, purpose, and action? He is bereft of all these. He can't even make a decent fascist dictator. As with the Mussolini comparison, it's pretty much a given that most fascist dictators are able to get things done. And not just because they control the levers of power in the state and hold its purse strings. The same could be said of Trump. His party runs Congress. He could do pretty much whatever he wanted. If he was any good. And not a gutless sack of shit.
But with Trump, there's nothing inside. Mussolini had a plan. He did get things done. I had an Italian girlfriend in high school whose Sicilian grandmother always spoke highly of Mussolini's ability to get what was a hugely dysfunctional government to actually do something. (We sort of left it at that. I was not a fan.)
But he had a plan. It was important for him to get things done. Not Trump. Trump wants the adulation without having to do any of the hard work. He's all fake medals and poses but no accomplishments.
Gutless.
Another example of his essential hollowness is the ease with which each new puppet master is able to shove his hand up Trump's ass and get him to mouth whatever revolting dicta they see as necessary to achieving their own agendas. So Bannon, and now Miller. Trump may balk occasionally, but it's not because he doesn't like what they're selling him. He balks because it's pointed out to him that the emperor has no clothes and then he gets pissed and lashes out.
That still doesn't mean there's anything inside worth a plugged nickel.
Gutless cowards tend not to make good leaders, never mind presidents. Which is why this guy will force us to undergo failure after failure and suffer through each storm of rebuke for everyone but the person whose gutlessness and cowardice are the true sources of each new fiasco.
Ken,
Amazing. Just this morning, I was thinking of Joseph Welch's immense "j'accuse" to the weaselly McCarthy. And who was sitting next to McCarthy, reveling in indecency and slithery, serpentine deceit?
Roy Cohn. Consigliere and teacher of Donald Trump in the tactics of duplicity and sleaze. And Trump, it turned out, was an excellent student in shameless two-faced behavior. As his star rose and Cohn's fell, with the revelation of his HIV condition and his secret life as a self-hating gay man, Trump abandoned Cohn to his end, and left him lying alone, to die in an empty hospital room.
But you're right. A charge of behavior lacking decency or a moral core is no big deal anymore. It's not as if we don't have any Joseph Welches any longer. We do. Look at Elizabeth Warren. But abettors of Trump, like Fox News, have expended hundreds of hours of air time painting Warren, one of the few true paragons of public service, a woman who strives daily for working men and women in America and who will not back down from the monied oligarchs, as a dangerous and untrustworthy socialist.
No. Welch's incisive question, today, would not carry the electric charge it did back in that committee room in 1954. Watch the tape. You can see McCarthy going down for the count. He tries to strike back, he pulls out all the tricks in his fetid bag of bullshit legislative maneuvers, but when Welch's final castigation is made and the room breaks into long suppressed applause at the demise of a dangerous, self-serving scoundrel, it's clear from the look on the Tailgunner's face that he is going under for the last time. And he knows it. That final glance in Welch's direction tells the tale.
And what that meant was that somewhere, somehow, McCarthy did have a sliver of decency, long buried, perhaps, but it was still there. Maybe he could hear his mother or father in his ear,perhaps and realized what a shameful path he had taken. He was a beaten man.
Trump? He hasn't enough decency to be found with an electron microscope. He is, perhaps, as lacking in virtue and civility as any individual you could find in public life outside of a member of organized crime.
Tom Toles has an excellent comment on Trump's reneging on the Dreamer deal: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2017/10/09/a-trump-deal-is-like-monty-hall-in-reverse/?utm_term=.4cc18775d63b
He has some sage words for Chuck and Nancy: "Psychologists across the land have been busy trying to diagnose what’s wrong with the way Trump’s mind works. Can they tell us what wrong with the way our minds work? Why is it we keep thinking that working with Trump could be a good idea? Why is it that if Mr. Dodgeball goes two days without saying or doing something utterly contemptible, we immediately forget that he’s a irredeemable maniac? That if he offers us something that sounds good, we decide to disregard his track record?"
Schlub,
Thanks for the Toles piece. It really does beggar the imagination that some Americans believe that after being scammed and lied to by this weasel time and again, all of a sudden, when he's promising the Publisher's Clearinghouse guy will be at their door in the morning, they'll be rich. They don't count on the fact that the Donald won't send them Ed McMahon (he's dead). Instead, he sends an IRS investigator to audit their last 20 years of returns unless they send him a $5,000 check for his re-election campaign.
But if he called them up the next day and offered to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge, they'd start checking the Brooklyn real estate listings (Williamsburg is nice).
I'm tempted, given the mention of Let's Make a Deal, to review the famous "Monty Hall Problem", a puzzle involving statistical possibilities. The quick version is this: You're on the show. Monty Hall asks you to pick a door. You pick "Door number one". Monty says, well, before we open that door, let me show you what's behind door number three (the trick here is that a new car is behind one door, two other doors hide goats and their bales of hay). He opens this door. There's a goat, natch (he's not gonna show you the car, duh). He then asks if you would rather switch your selection from door number one to door number two.
Most people say, screw it. It's now a fifty-fifty proposition. I'll stay with door number one.
But they're wrong. You can check why for yourself. It has to do with counterintuitive logic, but switching doors will get you the car 2/3rds of the time. Try it yourself.
So, this is an amusing little game of logic. But here's the problem. We're now dealing with Trump. And in Trump World all logic devolves to "Donald Wins, You Lose".
With Trump as the host, there's a goat behind all doors.
Maybe if we had switched doors on election day, we'd have President Clinton instead of the Tasmanian Devil. No idea what was behind the third door but it couldn't possibly be worse than what we got.
Nonetheless, we'll do it all over again in a few years (if we all survive that long). And barring a 25th amendment pence party or impeachment, it's likely, according to an op-ed Marie linked yesterday, that we'll get the Tasmanian Devil again. Especially if some third party jamoke is behind one of the other doors.
Let's Not Make a Deal.
Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?
Have you left no sense of decency?
The speech pattern alone, beside the sentiment, denote a man from another age. Indeed, Joseph Welch was born in 1890. His words were timely in that 2 or 3 or 4 years before, they would have had no power. In Feb 1950 McCarthy stood in the Senate waving some papers in the air and declared "I have here a list of 205 communists in the State Department!" It wasn't until October 1953, having decimated the State Department and Hollywood and dragged society into the septic tank that McCarthy chose to investigate communists in the US military. At last Eisenhower was driven to react and there ensued 8 months of anti-McCarthy propaganda before the June 9 1954 trial where Welch uttered his famous words. 6 months later, his Gallup poll numbers @ 37% +ve, McCarthy was censured 67 to 22. But before the Army trial McCarthy had raged unchecked for 44 months. Trump has only been ruling for 9 months, his popularity is at 38%, and only Republicans who announce their retirement have the moral fiber to oppose him. I cannot imagine what vile act he must commit to arouse a sense of "enough!" in the American people. Butchering 23 children is not enough. Killing and wounding almost 600 is not enough. America is an unbelievably insensate creature.