More stuff other people said

Hot off last night's post, in which I both (a) complain about the corporate media coverage or lack thereof regarding the fascist idiot hatemonger that's running for president as a Republican, and (b) quote Craig Calcaterra on something entirely different, came today's edition of Craig's Cup of Coffee newsletter. Craig unconsciously rebuts some of my complaint while also supporting it, because Craig is a smart guy. I'll share the entire section for you here and also suggest that, if you are interested in baseball, politics, and/or relatively obscure indy musicians, Craig's newsletter is $7/month.

The problem with covering Donald Trump and J.D. Vance

Almost every day on social media you see a tweet in response to something Donald Trump has said or done to the effect of “why isn’t the [name a publication] covering this?!” I’m sure I’ve shared that sentiment myself at times. Usually when stuff happens like Trump telling people at a rally that he’ll suspend all laws as they apply to policing, round up 20 million brown people with a domestically-deployed military, and put them in concentration camps, the day after which the New York Times leads the front page with “How do Trump and Harris’ tax credit plans compare?”

This is galling, but it’s also the case that the news media is covering Donald Trump. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t know about his insane ideas. They do stories on his authoritarian proposals, his racist and sexist comments, and all of those things. Indeed, about 95% of the time you hear someone say “why isn’t the media talking about . . .” the media has, in fact, talked about it already, often extensively.

When people say stuff like that I think they’re saying one of two things.

The first thing they’re saying, at least implicitly, is “why hasn’t the entire country rejected Donald Trump out of hand based on this appalling information?! Why has this appalling information not created a Joseph N. Welch-style ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last’ moment in which the bad actor is effectively vanquished?” That, of course, is a very different question than one of coverage and a lot of it is tied up in the fact that a hell of a lot of Americans actually want the same horrible things Donald Trump wants. I don’t think our media has done a particularly great job of covering Trump and the Republican Party’s descent into abject fascism—let alone talked seriously about the practical implications and effect of those things Trump and his supporters say they want—but this dynamic is less of a media problem than an America problem.

A different thing people are saying when they talk about coverage—and it’s usually the more media-savvy people who are saying this one—is “while the media may have reported on this or that bad thing Trump has said or done, why hasn’t the media, en masse, made this a daily drip-drip-drip story the way it made Hillary Clinton’s emails or Joe Biden’s age? Why hasn’t the media given us the sort of coverage it has given all manner of other topics and figures for years—the sort of coverage that frames big ideas for weeks or even months at a time?”

I think that is a somewhat more valid criticism in many respects, and that at least part of it is a function of the American media being cowed by decades of bad faith conservative attacks on the press which, in the Trump era, have been weaponized in all manner of ways. Indeed, you can almost hear the meetings at major media outlets in which someone softens language or buries coverage in its entirety because of the fear of blowback from the cable and online conservative movement.

But I don’t think that accounts for it all. Rather, I think there’s a far more basic issue at play. One which I’ve been unable to really articulate before now but which Andrea Pitzer wrote about in a new piece over at her Degenerate Art newsletter on Monday.

Pitzer borrows a term from climate change studies—stationarity—which describes the human tendency to believe in a world that no longer exists. It gets at the idea of how even institutions, policymakers, an commentators who aren’t abject climate change deniers can nonetheless help exacerbate climate change by seeing the world through a prism of past circumstances which keeps them from adapting to present events. Sort of an institutional inertia that fails to properly clock the problem and thus fails to address it.

Pitzer argues that the media has done the same with Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and other Republicans. They have continued to approach stories and controversies as if Republicans and Democrats both want what’s best for most of America but simply disagree on the means. As if facts and integrity still matter to everyone involved and that merely shedding light on lies or general abhorrence will both cow the liar and/or abhorrent actors and inform those to whom they appealing.

Except, as Trump and Vance have shown, they do not want what’s best for most of America, facts and integrity do not matter to them, and they do not agree to the same set of basic assumptions of how the world works that almost all politicians did before they came onto the scene. The media, however, has not changed its approach to coverage to account for this sort of shamelessness and the result are stories which cast truth and lies as if they are merely competing policy positions to be weighed and cast inherently illiberal or authoritarian pronouncements as if they are equally as valid as whatever normal political actors are proposing. At times they go out of their way to normalize Trump’s and Vance’s radicalness specifically because they do not know how to properly process and report on such radicalness. Some say that’s because they are invested in the concept of “balance.” Some say it’s because the media favors Trump and wants him to win. I think Pitzer’s idea—that they are psychologically tied to a past world, even if they claim otherwise—explains a hell of a lot of this dynamic.

Another thing that is happening which support’s Pitzer’s notion is the way in which the media has continued to behave as if old markers of inherent legitimacy and integrity serve, in and of themselves, as guardrails against extremism. Stuff like a candidate coming from a putatively respectable profession like real estate or finance. Stuff like a candidate being a member of an established religion or political party. Stuff like the fact that they have wives and children and otherwise appear like normal people. There’s, in essence, an institutional bias in the press which equates signifiers of traditional normality with mainstream politics and when normality does not present itself, that normality bias seeks to shove the radicalness into a preexisting frame. Trump CAN’T be a dangerous chaos agent, because the Republican Party nominated him! Vance can’t be a misogynist who wants to make “The Handmaid’s Tale” a reality, because he has a wife with an advanced degree! This happens despite ample press coverage of their words and deeds and is way deeper than anything traditional media criticism can handle. It’s a root psychological problem that both the media and millions of non-MAGA hat-wearing voters who nonetheless vote for Trump because he’s the Republican are experiencing.

I don’t think that the press is the only reason we have Trump and that, if Trump wins, it will be the press’ fault. That’s a facile notion because, again, it ignores the fact that some 80 million voters and many more non-voters are just fine with a president who wants dictatorial powers to go after immigrants and minorities, wants to subjugate women, and wants to hardwire the American system to do even more than it already does to make sure the wealthy stay wealthy and that the non-wealthy know their place. It’s a more popular platform than any of us would like to admit because America is a way more dark and messed-up place than most of us would like to admit.

But yeah, it’s pretty clear that the press is not just fighting the last war. It’s fighting a war from three wars back. The biggest reason it’s doing it runs way deeper than simple editorial choices, but either way it’s doing the country a disservice.

Also, one more quote, this time from one of the links Craig included above (Andrea Pitzer):

The joke about Trump goes that dealing with him is like playing chess with a pigeon who knocks the pieces over, shits on the board, and struts around saying he won. But what’s happening now is that our political and legal institutions have let the pigeon sign up for another chess tournament, and too many news outlets are spending an inordinate amount of time analyzing him like any other contender.

I've never heard that one before, but I now can't think of the orange buffoon as anything but a strutting pigeon taking dumps on a chessboard.

Tagged Politics, Craig Calcaterra   |   Posted on October 16, 2024 at 4:25pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Stuff other people said

I'm not feeling particularly eloquent tonight; I had something of a "lost day," which tends to happen during Black Hole episodes though in this case I think it's more due to the general stress alluded to in the previous post. But I have wanted to say stuff about the source of said general stress, just to vent if nothing else. But since I'm not terribly clearheaded right now I'll instead quote some other folks and see where this goes.

• I've had (and continue to have) problems with Bob Woodward's choice to withhold critically important information for months in order to sell more books, but I am nevertheless intrigued enough to want to read his new one, War. I'm most intrigued with it for the coverage of the Biden Administration's tremendous handling of foreign affairs, but it's this bit from former Army General Mark Milley that should be Page One News with followups every day for the next three weeks. Said Milley to Woodward about Donald Trump, for whom Milley served as Charmain of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country. A fascist to the core.”

  Excerpts from Woodward's book began to make the rounds starting around October 8th, and this quote was made public by the 12th. Nowhere is it mentioned in any way on the front page of the New York Times on any of those days, or in the days since. The Washington Post did publish an article about this on October 12th, but buried deep in the paper, with no mention at all on the front page (though they did feature "Campaign Seeks More Security for Trump" above the fold; the Times' October 12 front page had "Much of World Treating Trump as Power Broker" in similar position). In some alternate universe wherein the corporate press grew a spine and started recognizing the stakes of this election, that front page would have looked more like this:

  

  But we don't live in that universe. We live in the one where mainstream media covers this catastrophic candidate like this.

• Rachel Maddow is also displeased with much of mainstream media, and the other night she took them to task for coverage of the economy vis-à-vis the presidential campaign. I am continually flabbergasted at the impression many voters claim to have that Republicans are better on the economy when that hasn't been true at least as far back as the Kennedy Administration. But part of why people think that is comes from reportage that reinforces the false belief in both subtle and unsubtle ways. Here's Rachel:

  Regardless of what your priorities are for the election, the economy is generally seen as the most important issue for the most voters. And because of that, because of that preference among voters, that interest among voters and what you're seeing in the economic news, you're now seeing the political press, again, sort of begrudgingly, admit that, you know, yeah, well, it turns out the Biden administration is leaving in its wake a fantastic economy.

  But, when I say begrudging, I mean that the sort of subtext for all of it—and sometimes the overt text of all of it in the political press—is yeah, yeah, yeah it's a great economy, a really great economy, a historically great economy, but surely that can't benefit Kamala Harris, can it? I mean, I know you've seen headlines like this. Here's a typical one from just a couple of days ago at Politico.com, quote, "Harris is riding a dream economy into the election. It may be too late for voters to notice."

  It is a dream economy.

  I mean, as it says in the piece, "the unemployment rate stands at 4.1%, the S&P 500 stock index is up more than 20% this year, [and] GDP has been growing at a robust 3% pace. Middle-class Americans are more optimistic about their financial future. Gas prices have been falling. The economy added over a quarter-million jobs in September alone—far higher than expectations."

  It is a "dream economy" that is being left by the Biden-Harris administration. But Harris can't possibly benefit from that politically, can she?

• Chris Hayes, covering the insane Pennsylvania rally/alleged Town Hall at which Donald Trump spent about 40 minutes just bopping weirdly to his comfort songs, made this observation: "I think his ideal version of the presidency would be 350,000,000 Americans just watching him sway to Bocelli hits on stage."
• Craig Calcaterra has become my favorite baseball writer despite only having read his stuff on an email newsletter. In discussing the National League Championship Series (now tied one game apiece between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers), Craig indulges in one of my favorite things about the postseason: making fun of Fox color announcer John Smoltz. Craig writes: "During the sixth or seventh inning, Smoltz said that 'it’s been statistically proven' that one game means less in a best-of-seven series than in a best-of-five series. I still remember where I was when I read news of the mathematical breakthrough in which it was discovered that one is a lower percentage of seven than it is of five. A watershed moment to be sure."

I had more in mind when I started this post, but I'm foggy and in need of a meal. I probably spent too much time on that fake WaPo mockup. Bye for now.

Tagged The Black Hole, Politics, Craig Calcaterra   |   Posted on October 16, 2024 at 1:32am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Stress test

Little dude, what you ate wasn't food, OK?

I had to take one of my cats in to the vet late last week, as he'd fallen ill with ... something. He was doing sick cat things, like barfing bile, hiding out in secret places, not being active, and shunning food. When Zephyr shuns food, you know something is wrong.

Anyway, there was a snafu with scheduling at the vet's office and I ended up seeing a different doctor than the one I expected to see. Not a big deal in some senses but huge in others; as it turned out, not a problem in Zeph's treatment and recovery. He's back to his old self now, having expelled whatever it was he'd eaten that he wasn't supposed to and had subsequently gotten stuck in his colon. But the incident did cost me about a grand and it may not have been so expensive if we'd been able to see the doctor who knows him; I wonder if Dr. S, with her greater knowledge and experience and uncanny intuitive insights, would have offered an alternative that featured fewer expensive x-rays, for example, but then again, maybe not. We'll never know.

But the way the schedule mistake came to light wasn't good, I felt blindsided and like the front desk staff dismissed my complaint about it as unimportant. It wasn't, though; I have a history with a couple of quack veterinarians—OK, to be fair, one definite quack and one very inexperienced doc whose treatment may or may not have killed one of my felines prematurely—that makes me leery of entrusting my cats to vets I don't know, and I had to leave Zeph for the day for treatment. I had a little post-traumatic stress episode upon leaving the clinic, kind of reliving the last time I'd left a cat with a vet I didn't know (the aforementioned inexperienced doc) and unloading some raised-voice displeasure on the receptionists. I can't recall all the details of the mini-tirade; they deserved it, no doubt, but it wasn't my finest moment. After that was a very anxious eight hours or so until I could bring Zephyr home.

Anyway, perhaps pertinent to this experience was something I read in Mary Trump's Substack today. She wrote about some inconvenient nuisances that befell her recently and how she reacted to them in an outsized manner:

[It’s] actually been happening a lot lately: Things that I’d normally take in stride, even if I find them annoying, make me feel undone. So, I've been trying to piece together what’s happening. Not surprisingly, it's all related to the context in which we’re all living our lives.

Every day we’re inundated with bad news that is sometimes disheartening, sometimes infuriating, sometimes demoralizing, and, sometimes, all of those things at once. It’s hard not to feel out of control, knowing that in less than 30 days, win or lose, a significant number of Americans (literally tens of millions) are going to go to the polls and vote for fascism. It's hard to take, and it does make everything else that goes wrong, even if it’s something relatively minor, seem like a bigger deal than it would under other circumstances.

Did I blow up at receptionists because so very, very many Americans are dumbshits that will vote for Mary's deranged and despotic uncle? No. I had other reasons. But the degree to which I blew up may well have had something to do with it. This era of American political reality has anyone paying even moderate attention to it coiled up in some degree of anxiety. Any extra stress in our lives twists that coil even tighter. 

In a few weeks we'll have passed the biggest milestone in this anxiety marathon, and we'll either be experiencing a profound relief or genuine panic. Until then, I guess the best we can do is take a deep breath and try to keep calm in the face of whatever comes our way.

Tagged Politics, Cats   |   Posted on October 14, 2024 at 1:29am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Every accusation is a confession

The Republican nominee for President is losing his shit over the fact that he hasn't been able to kill the legal proceedings against him and that the public is learning more about what he did while criming. Here's one of his latest rants from "Troth-Senchal," his failing social media platform:

The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked [sic] Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power. “TRUMP” is dominating the Election cycle, leading in the Polls, and the Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are totally “freaking out.” This entire case is a Partisan, Unconstitutional, Witch Hunt, that should be dismissed, entirely, just like the Florida case was dismissed!

There's one true nugget in that rant, though it is festooned with inappropriate capitalization: the upcoming election is, indeed, the most important presidential election in history (because if this clown wins it, America as we know it is over). Everything else is typical Trumpian horse excrement. But it does illustrate continuing patterns, including the projection of his own past and planned wrongdoings and criminality onto his opponents.

"Falsehood-ridden" is a kind term to describe nearly anything Donald Trump says in any context. Projection.

"Unconstitutional" is in some ways meaningless coming from him, as he had no idea what the Constitution says aside from a cherry-picked sentence here or there, but violating the Constitution is like breathing for Trump. He violated his oath to it countless times during his term in office. Projection.

I will agree that Governor Walz's debate performance was less than perfect, but he held his own, while VonClownstick's own debate performance was staggeringly awful. Projection.

The nearness to the election of the release of the legal brief he's talking about is his own fault, aided by the three Supreme Court Justices he installed. Trump and the super-majority of corrupt Justices caused the delays that brought things to basically a month from election day. Not quite projection, but certainly gaslighting.

Interfering in the 2024 election is and has always been his plan. Just listen to him tell people at his rallies that he doesn't need their votes, that he already has "plenty of votes." Why doesn't he need their votes? Because his plan is to ignore votes and cheat, and he has minions in swing states creating obstacles to voting and putting thumbs on the scales and introducing chaos to the proceedings for the purpose of making voting unreliable and suspect. Projection.

"Radical" Democrats? Please, this guy is an authoritarian fascist. Projection.

"Witch hunt" is a favorite term of his, used apparently without intended irony; investigations of his criminality are backed by mountains of evidence, but his own attempted takedowns of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Alvin Bragg, Anthony Fauci, and who knows how many others—even Mark Zuckerberg, of all people!—are based in nothing more than the whining grievances of a bully not permitted to bully with unchecked impunity. Projection.

Finally, weaponizing the Justice Department is one of Donald Trump's core policy planks. He's attempted it (both successfully and unsuccessfully) during his term in office and he promises to do it again, this time without pesky DOJ officials that tell him he can't do it. Massive projection.

On that last point, the New York Times—a publication that for some reason refuses to acknowledge the reality of Donald Trump's anti-American fascist dictator-worship—surveyed a number of former DOJ officials about Trump's plans for weaponization. I turn the analysis of that piece over to the great Craig Calcaterra:

The Times spoke with 50 former top officials from the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office to try to game out how Donald Trump would, as he promises he will, use the FBI and the DOJ to go after his political enemies should he be elected. The upshot of these people’s opinion:

Forty-two of the 50 former officials said it was very likely or likely that a second Trump term would pose a significant threat to the norm of keeping criminal enforcement free of White House influence, a policy that has been in place since the Watergate scandal.

Thirty-nine of 50 said it was likely or very likely that Trump, if elected, would order the Justice Department to investigate a political adversary. (Six more said it was possible.) This, too, is something presidents don’t do.

The respondents were more split on how the Justice Department would respond. Twenty-seven of the 50 said it was very likely or likely that career prosecutors at the DOJ would follow orders and pursue the case. Thirteen said it was possible. Nine said it was unlikely or very unlikely.

Some of the people the Times spoke to blithely assert that Trump wouldn’t do this or that, even if they cannot point to formal mechanisms barring him from doing so. Indeed, they believe that people in the FBI and Justice Department would somehow do the right thing and stop Trump from doing what he says he wants to do. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone who lived through Trump’s presidency can believe such nonsense but I suppose it’s pretty easy to be a Pollyanna about such things when you’re otherwise comfortable.

Personally, I prefer to believe what I see before my very eyes. And what I see is a man who has vowed to weaponize the Justice Department to go after his critics and enemies and has further vowed to use shock troops to round up minorities — including immigrants with legal status — and place them in concentration camps and subsequently deport them. A man who has promised to stretch the powers of the presidency in ways not seen in our lifetime. A man who, thanks to our corrupt Supreme Court, can now be confident that no one will be able to challenge his doing so. Again: this is not conjecture. He has openly and repeatedly promised this. He has promised to usher in what is, by any rational definition, authoritarianism and fascism.

This is not some conspiracy theory about a covert plot. It is not hidden. Donald Trump is saying it loud and clear. Most of the people who know how the system works believe he’ll do it. We had best listen.

I make it a point never to argue with Craig when he's right.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra   |   Posted on October 4, 2024 at 8:47pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Veep Debate and Wild Card Playoffs

Left: Literal evil. Right: Metaphorical evil.

I really tried to watch the whole thing.

Well, "really tried?" I mean, I could have pushed through. I chose not to for the sake of my blood pressure and my downstairs neighbor, who was probably sick of my screaming "go to hell you lying son of a bitch/smarmy troll/piece of excrement" etc. every two minutes or so.

But I turned it off, "it" being the so-called debate between Vice-Presidential nominees Tim Walz and J.D. Vance. Had I kept on, I would have seen Walz be better; early on he was obviously nervous and appeared out of his depth, but I know from post-debate analysis and the slew of clips that made it around the Internet and cable news that he improved markedly in the second half. Had I kept on, I would also, however, continued to see Vance pour on the bullshit in such a slick, phony faith-healer way, with an abundance of the sort of charm you might find in a sociopathic used car dealer determined to have you drive this lemon off the lot and be happy you did it.

Vance is like a lot of modern-day Republicans in that he can seemingly get away with saying the vilest, most repugnant things so long as he says it in a calm, thoughtful-sounding tone. The film Vice captured this in its portrayal of Dick Cheney, but it's the same schtick you hear form Bill Barr, Kevin McCarthy, even Steve Bannon (though his weird triple-shirts get in the way of seeming sane). But there was Vance, claiming in a calm tone with as straight a face as he could muster that Donald Trump saved the Affordable Care Act (when he actually tried his damnedest to destroy it), peacefully left office (when he actually incited an insurrection to try to stay in power), and didn't crash the economy (when he in fact presided over a massive manufacturing recession, waged a trade war that cost taxpayers billions, and so botched a global health crisis that everything went into the tank not to mention cost hundreds of thousands of lives). The smarmy, lying, weasel. And there were the alleged journalists acting as "moderators," treating a 35-year-old misstatement on a matter of no importance by Governor Walz with the same heft and importance—greater heft, arguably—than the mountain of deceit, lies, gaslighting, and revisionist history being spouted by the opposing campaign on a daily, nay, hourly basis.

Fortunately, it seems the public saw through Vance's facade of crap and credit Walz with authenticity from the event. I admit to being a little surprised at that, given how easily manipulated 70+ million people were in the 2020 campaign. The stakes being what they are, it's no wonder Governor Walz was nervous stepping onto that stage and thank god/fate/whatever he was able to hold his own against Weasel McPantsonfire.

Anyway, I couldn't take it, so I switched over to baseball.

This is now the third year of the "Wild Card Series" in the Major League Baseball postseason and I remain against it. We did have, for the first time, one series go the distance of three games, with the New York Mets pulling out a come-from-behind win to move on earlier this evening; meaning in the 12 WC series to date, the team that did not advance was won one game and the team that lost the first game has advanced zero times. You might say the sample size is still too small, but I say that pretty much negates the argument some had been making about the previous one-and-done Wild Card game setup being somehow less fair than a best-of-three, like we have now. And, illustrating another glaring flaw in the system, the division winners forced to play on the same level as the Wild Card teams were both ousted, meaning that now a division winner has been eliminated before the Division Series 2/3 of the time. (Not that I'm sad to see Houston lose, though. That's a silver lining this year.)

I've gone on at length before about how this is a dumb system that Commissioner Manfred has saddled us with and how it could be better, so I'll go on here only briefly. But it stinks for the fans in Milwaukee to see their team, which dominated its division all year long, bounced out in consecutive years by teams that won nothing in the regular season. Finishing first needs to actually matter. Advancing as a Wild Card team needs to be harder. Again, briefly, if we must have these stupid expanded playoffs, I want to see (for practical reasons only) four WC teams per league instead of three; all division winners skip the WC series; and no offdays for WC teams. Play the day after the regular season to winnow four WC teams to two, survivors play the next day to determine who gets the single WC berth in the Division Series, then straight in to the DS without any rest, meaning any WC team to advance to an LCS needs a deep starting rotation and a capable bench. Also, as a side benefit, this shortens the arguably-disadvantageous layoff for the "bye teams" (division winners) by three days. 

Too obvious?

Anyway, it is what it is this year, and we get an 8-team bracket of finalists with no obvious rooting interest for your's truly. Do I support Detroit as the upstart come-from-nowhere surprise club? The loaded lineup and battered pitching staff of the Dodgers? Cleveland's a possibility now that they've rebranded away from racism; rookie manager Steven Vogt and star power in José Ramírez and Steven Kwan are certainly appealing. KC has Bobby Witt Jr. and a lot of moxie. I don't know, I guess it'll take shape in my head as the series get underway. But I do agree 100% with Michael Schur of The Poscast: No matter how "appropriate" it may seem for the World Series to feature two megastars against each other in Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers) and Aaron Judge (Yankees), there is no universe in which the Yankees deserve another pennant, not for decades to come.

Tagged Politics, Baseball   |   Posted on October 4, 2024 at 2:25am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Demolition derby

I had umpiring to do last night, so it wasn't until the wee hours of this morning that I finished watching last night's debate between VP Kamala Harris and convicted felon F*%face VonClownstick. It wasn't perfect, there were things I was disappointed not to see, and of course I spent too much energy yelling at the TV when the man in the swirly combover was spewing bullshit at us. (So much so that about ten minutes in I got a text message from my neighbor downstairs asking, "catching up on the debate?" followed by a screaming emoji. I toned it down after that because she's one of these freakish morning people who goes to bed early.)

Although I don't think it started out strong for anyone, by maybe 20 minutes into it I was starting to feel like this was going to be a game-changer in a good way. The vice-president brought the goods and delivered some effective smackdowns while also elucidating sound policy on a number of topics, all the while getting so far under the convicted felon's skin that by the end he was almost screaming into his mic in a barely-contained rage.

I'm anxious to see new polling in a week or so to see how this will change the state of the campaign. But for now I'm pleased that the event generated quite a few potential video clips for use in ads, showed the viewership that Kamala Harris is a calm and collected person with plenty of smarts and savvy, and provided such a clear contrast between sane and small-d democratic vs. unhinged delusional nutjob.

These are my two favorite bits from the event. The first is VP Harris forcefully rebutting the absurd claim that "everybody wanted" Roe v. Wade overturned:

 

 

And this is Harris schooling her opponent on Ukraine and NATO:

 

 

What I wished for and didn't get—and for which there was a teed-up opportunity, a hanging "hit me" curve taken for a strike—was for someone, either a moderator or Harris, to either ask Trump how tariffs work or simply point out that even after being president for four years and enacting several, Trump has no understanding of what tariffs are. He seems to genuinely believe that imposing a 20% tariff on, say, Chinese goods means that China pays a fee equal to 20% of what they sell to American companies. Even though when he had his little "trade war" with China no such money was collected because THAT'S NOT HOW TARIFFS WORK. I want someone, somewhere, on camera, to corner this idiot into explaining how he thinks tariffs work. He's basing his entire economic policy, such as it is, on massive tariffs on imported goods and he doesn't understand what that means. The topic did come up, but it was the vice-president that raised it and called it a proposed "Trump sales tax," which is what it would effectively be; when Mango Mussolini responded it was just to spout his idiocy that "other countries will pay" and he wasn't challenged on it before things moved on.

Just for clarification to any who need it: A tariff is a fee imposed on AMERICAN BUSINESSES that import whatever product the tariff is targeting, and those businesses pass the fee along to the end consumer in the form of raised retail pricing. The intention is to discourage the purchase of foreign goods when the government would prefer similar American-made goods have greater market share, so American manufacturing is boosted and American labor is used for those specific goods Americans purchase. The foreign option is still available, it's just more expensive TO AMERICANS as a deterrent. (In practice, American manufacturers sometimes raise their own prices to match, thus defeating the purpose.) The foreign manufacturer may be hurt by decreased export sales—or not, if they make up the sales by exporting elsewhere—but they pay NOTHING to the United States. If a tariff is placed on a type of product that doesn't have a similar American-made analogue, or products that American manufacturing can't scale to, it amounts to nothing more than self-generated inflation. 

Another thing I wanted to hear more about was Trump's call for deportation camps, but I get why that wasn't a focus; immigration was Trump's go-to whenever he felt like he needed to change the subject, which was often, so no need to give it more oxygen.

Anyway, it was a good night for the campaign and I eagerly await evidence in the coming weeks of how/if it moved the needle for the electorate. I mean, how this even remotely a close race I can't fathom.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Kamala Harris   |   Posted on September 11, 2024 at 6:27pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Gun culture

There was a school shooting yesterday. Again. Four dead.

There was a dude firing a gun along Interstate 5 and wounding six people, at least one critically.

Four people were shot dead on a Chicago El train.

Five people were shot at a parade in Brooklyn.

A guy broke into a Birmingham, Alabama, apartment and shot four people playing cards, killing one.

Someone opened fire in a parking lot outside a bar in Nashville and wounded several people.

Two mass shootings in Ohio on the same day, one in Cleveland and one in Dayton.

All this since September first. A span of four days.

And yet nothing will be done about it.

Oh, suspects will be arrested, victims will be treated or eulogized, families will grieve. That stuff will "be done" about it. But nothing will happen to address the causes of this uniquely American problem of gun violence.

I know nothing will be done because nothing has been done. We've been living with this situation for decades—correction, most of us have been living with it, some very much not—and all we get from the people empowered to take action are meaningless "thoughts and prayers" and completely nonsensical, idiotic comments like this one, from Georgia governor Brian Kemp after yesterday's murders: "Today is not the day for politics or policy." Screw you, BK, this is precisely the day for policy. That's, you know, your actual job.

Some people in leadership positions want to do something. Assault weapon bans, stricter background checks, restricting access to firearms in various ways, these have been proposed in legislation but never with any real chance of passage because (a) Republicans, and (b) ingrained gun culture.

We have a real chance at getting something passed in the nearish future if we elect enough Democrats in November and can then bypass (a). So those of us who survive the inevitable shootings to come in the next couple of years or so might see progress. But I'm concerned about (b) being an insurmountable problem, at least for the foreseeable future.

Gun culture is everywhere in this country. It's in our historical touchstones, it's in our entertainment, it's in our language. It's in so many idioms we don't even notice it. We're basically inured to the idea of guns whether we want to be or not.

Just last night, while I was umpiring, I used the phrase "bang-bang play," which is baseball-speak for a super-close safe/out situation or split-second call made by an umpire. I'd never really considered the origins of the phrase until that exchange, which went like this:

Me (umpire): OUT!

Player: I don't know, man, are you sure?

Me: It was bang-bang, they got him.

It was the joining of "got him" with "bang-bang" that clicked it for me, this is a gun metaphor. I know, should have been obvious, but having heard it so many times in the context of a play on the bases it wasn't.

When estimating a timeframe, we say we're "shooting for" a date. We "shoot from the hip" or "shoot our mouths off" or "shoot ourselves in the foot." The passenger seat in a car is for "riding shotgun." We use "bullet points" in memos. If we're confident about the outcome of something, it's a "surefire bet." Someone who's extra gregarious might be called "a real pistol." We implore recipients of bad news, "don't shoot the messenger." If someone is criticized, they've "come under fire." A quickly-fading fad is a "flash in the pan." If we're on a tight deadline we're "under the gun." If you put off a decision or act cautiously in a dilemma, you might be "keeping your powder dry." If you change your expectations or goals you might be "raising/lowering your sights."

And those are just off the top of my head (an idiom which, so far as I know, has no firearm connotations). Even when there are no guns around, there are guns everywhere. I don't know how we get past that.

Of course, making the real guns a whole hell of a lot harder to come by would be a great first step.

Regarding the latest school shooting in Georgia, I leave it to Jeff Tiedrich to lambast the political "leadership" from that state and their useless "thoughts and prayers."

Tagged Politics, Society, Guns   |   Posted on September 5, 2024 at 7:27pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Internet-fame adjacent

Bob Cesca does entertaining political and sometimes nerdy podcasts thrice a week, four times if you pay him

Because I sent him a couple of my Harris/Walz bumper stickers in the mail (and because he liked them, presumably), podcaster extraordinaire Bob Cesca gave me a shoutout on the subscriber-only portion (aka "Shadow Docket") of today's (9/5/24) podcast. Thanks, Bob! He also mentioned my business URL and this site, so hello to anyone visiting because Bob said "starshiptim.com" on mic. There are political posts herein, but fair warning, there is also talk of baseball, which I imagine most Bob Cesca Show listeners don't much care about. (Maybe I'm wrong—if you're a listener and also follow the pennant races in general or my hometown Seattle Mariners in particular, then bonus for you.) Also nerdly things, which probably has more crossover appeal. Anyway, glad you popped by. Let me know if you would also like a bumper sticker. 

Bob did not mention my Presidential Primer project, which may have been because co-host David interrupted him mid-sentence, but for anyone inclined to assist—especially if you are a campaign volunteer/staffer for a Democratic candidate or otherwise know an avenue of distribution that would help—I put this booklet together back in April to educate the less-politically-engaged on the history of Democratic and Republican Presidential administrations. Since then I have endeavored to get it to folks who might be able to put it to use around the country, but haven't had a lot of success in doing so. Please download and share widely. If printing was not such an expense, I would suggest taking copies when door-knocking in swing states, but I know there's likely not a budget for that. Still, have a look and at least spread around the download URL: https://bit.ly/presidentialprimer.

Tagged Politics, Podcasts   |   Posted on September 5, 2024 at 6:12pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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More journalistic malpractice

Thursday afternoon, ex-President VonClownstick held a "press conference" at his tacky golf motel/stolen document storage facility. The reporters in attendance were treated to exactly what anyone who's been paying attention would have expected: a standard-issue Trump Grievance Whine campaign rally rant, with questions from the "press" that went unanswered and un-followed-up on. But the worst thing about it was not the candidate, it was the collective cowardice/incompetence of the reporters.

Shameful.

It's not a new phenomenon. Reporters have been treating this clown in much the same manner for almost a decade. But what is new, at least to me, is to see a fellow journalist take these worthless reporters down on national TV. That's what Lawrence O'Donnell did on his MSNBC show Thursday night.

Worth a look. It's about 15 minutes long, and then segues into Tim Walz introducing Kamala Harris at a speech to the UAW that, unlike the inane Trump presser, was not carried live on television.

 

Tagged Politics, Journalism, Lawrence O'Donnell   |   Posted on August 10, 2024 at 5:18pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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We're Not Going Back

I designed the above as a bumper sticker and ordered a couple dozen of them. If you want one, let me know.

I did this because I'm psyched. Like I said before, I did not expect Joe Biden dropping out of the race to result in a non-chaos nightmare, but boy am I glad to be wrong on that one.

Kamalamentom is a real thing, it seems, and I absolutely love the choice of Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz is a relatable guy, military background as well as Congressional and statewide executive experience, and maybe best of all, a public school teacher. As Rachel Maddow put it the other day (paraphrasing), knowing how to handle a high school cafeteria food fight will be a useful skill when dealing with Republicans in Congress.

The pair of them are inspiring, and they have ex-President VonClownstick flailing and melting down. It's got me feeling more optimistic than ever that we'll avoid the headlong dive into authoritarian dictatorship that, though it remains a real possibility, seems more remote.

I heard about the video below—a PSA for a new Minnesota law a few years back restricting cell phone usage while driving—when listening to a recent episode of the Bob Cesca Show, so I went and looked for it on YouTube. I enjoyed it a lot, I think it shows so much of Tim Walz's humor and midwestern charm and "America's Dad" personality that will be a delight on the campaign trail. Please to enjoy.

 

 

Tagged Politics, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz   |   Posted on August 10, 2024 at 12:50am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Now what?

Well, I didn't see that coming.

Really. I did not think I was wrong when I said Joe Biden isn't going anywhere. But clearly I was, because just before I left for my umpiring shift today he ended his campaign for reelection.

Not much news has broken yet, just the official statement of his withdrawal from the race and an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee. Plus word that several Democratic leaders have also endorsed Harris.

What made Joe change his mind? We may learn that at some point, we may not. I mean, we'll get a rationale sometime this week, I imagine, but I wonder if it will be real or just sanitized for public consumption. Was the president truly convinced this was the best move, or was he essentially forced into it by moneyed interests? Was it just due to polling? If it was simply polling data, then shame on the Democratic Party; the polling is janky and incomplete to say the least, and is more an indictment of the party apparatus' failure to break through the noise and bullshit in what passes for news media these days.

I hope, and I suspect, that President Biden made it a condition of his agreeing to step aside that all the party mucketymucks get behind Harris, that the alternative candidate possibilities that have been thrown around—Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, House and Senate leaders—promise not to run and fuck things up. That the condition for his agreeing to not run is the infighting stops. NOW.

It was not so much the president's debate performance that killed his candidacy as it was the subsequent freakout and colossally irresponsible corporate press obsessing over the freakout and ignoring the Republican promises to turn this country into an autocratic despotism. The people freaking out and the press seem to want chaos, as infighting sells newspapers (or their digital equivalents) and generates ratings on cable news, and the last thing we need now is chaos at next month's Democratic Convention. Assuming the decision was not, in fact, based on a legitimate and specific health issue, I have to imagine that President Biden is pretty pissed off right now.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a lengthy video on Friday warning against pushing Biden aside because of the logistics, the fact that the primary is over, and the fact that Republicans will exploit any chaos that results not just politically but legally, possibly finding ways for critical state ballot decisions to make their way to the six corrupt apostates on the Roberts Supreme Court. Her arguments are basically the same as the ones I've tried to make, and are why I am now freaking out when I wasn't before.

If there is chaos, we're in serious trouble. If it is a smooth, conflict-free (relatively; I mean, we are Democrats) transition to Vice President Harris atop the ticket, then things might start to look good again. But until the convention is over in a few weeks I will be metaphorically biting my nails and spastically twitching now and again in anticipation of a supreme self-inflicted fuckup that ends the country.

 

 

Tagged Politics, President Biden, Democrats, Kamala Harris, AOC   |   Posted on July 21, 2024 at 8:03pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Panic never leads to good decisions

It's been two weeks since the horrible, awful, no-good debate performance from President Biden. In that two weeks, the press—most notably the New York Times, but plenty of other outlets as well—has been stunningly irresponsible in perpetuating the panic within the Democratic party. A panic brought on by the two big events the president appeared at after his multiple trips to Europe last month: a fundraiser in Los Angeles and the so-called "debate" in Atlanta. The president was not at his best, to say the least, at either event, appearing tired and softspoken and failing to deliver the kind of tactical rhetoric that would effectively wound Donald Trump. Some Democrats have extrapolated from this that President Biden is too frail, too diminished, to continue running for reelection, and the Times and other media have jumped on it like flies swarming over fresh manure.

We've had two weeks of this and that two weeks of panic has done more damage to the campaign than the events themselves ever could have.

I get that people are scared. Hell, I'm scared. But what we're scared of is not Joe Biden.

Not one person outside of the MAGA cult lemmings, not even the cult's leaders, is afraid of what might happen if Joe Biden wins reelection. No one outside the cult lemmings fears a serious crisis befalling the nation if Joe Biden remains president because we know that Joe Biden is decency personified. Because we know that his vice-president, his cabinet, and his staff are supremely competent people committed to upholding the Constitution and American values and ethical behavior. Because we understand that if it should happen that Joe Biden became unable to continue his second term as president due to declining faculties, those competent people would step in, and should they be unable to convince the president he wasn't able to continue they would put country first and employ the 25th Amendment.

The only people that fear a second Joe Biden victory are the grossly uninformed, the rubes that swallow right-wing propaganda whole, and the racists/misogynists who can't abide a woman minority possibly succeeding to the presidency (and no one should give those people the time of day).

As I've said before, what we fear are stupid people. We fear the tens of millions of voters who behave like Level Seven Susceptibles, mindlessly absorbing Republican misinformation and fearmongering. Most of whom don't really have evil intent; only a relative few of these millions are actually pro-fascism, actually want to see their neighbors rounded up and sent to concentration camps, actually want the courts to continue shredding the Constitution, actually want to see American military troops stationed all over major U.S. cities enforcing a police state. They've just been conned.

That's who is causing the gigantic and potentially suicidal freakout within the Democratic party.

Let's just keep that in mind as we pore over yet more coverage of said freakout and see the freakout spread to our own circles.

I have had three conversations in the last week with friends who are in the Biden-needs-to-drop-out camp. I think they are very much wrong, but I understand why they feel the way they do. Winning this election is critical, and because the news media as a whole has proven itself unwilling to stand on the side of democracy and law and truth, the perception keeps growing that Biden Is A Problem That Can't Be Surmounted.

But here's the thing: it's too late to change candidates. If there were really and truly worries within the party about Biden's cognitive faculties and ability to do his job—real, thought-through evaluations and real rationally-arrived at concern—it would have surfaced when the primary campaign began and the push would have been made then to nominate someone else. But that didn't happen, and now the primaries are over, and the delegates and campaign funds and infrastructure belong to Joe Biden. The only—repeat, only—possible alternative candidate at this point is Vice President Harris, as hers is the only other name on the ticket and she is the only other person allowed to use those funds. (Not to mention the fact that Biden is beloved by the African American community and should he decide not to continue, bypassing his VP would be a slap in their collective face.)

But would switching to Harris actually make the race more winnable?

I've heard arguments that such a switch would galvanize young voters, that it would bring more people of color into the fold, that it would give a fresh sense of "youth" to the race. All of which is pure, unadulterated speculation conjured from an imaginary universe. Might it be true? Sure, maybe. Might it not? Sure, maybe. Those first two arguments in particular I think are specious; younger voters are by far the least reliable constituency year after year, and as mentioned, you risk alienating POC just as much if not more than attracting them by dumping Biden.

It's a matter of the devil you know versus the devil you don't. The potential for utter catastrophe is, in my view, far greater, enormously greater with the devil we don't. Incumbents challenged from within their party always lose. A challenge at the convention would invite chaos. Republicans would have a field day exploiting such chaos.

There is almost nothing I would want to emulate from the modern Republican Party—they are led as mindless drones by exploitative, greedy, power-hungry, fascistic liars with the ethical standards of Pol Pot—but they have illustrated something about the American public that the rest of us should take note of:

No matter how unfit and disastrous for the country they know most of the electorate would find their candidates, they close ranks and fight for him (it's usually a him, Marjorie Sporkfoot notwithstanding), and as often as not, it works.

Richard Nixon won thanks in large part to Democratic chaos in 1968. Ronald Reagan won in large part because Ted Kennedy primaried incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. George W. Bush won—or came close enough that it didn't matter—in 2000 and 2004 despite being demonstrably stupid. And Trump won in 2016 despite his litany of crimes and crassness and obvious colossal ignorance. All of these Republicans championed policies that were profoundly detrimental to a large majority of Americans and all of them committed crimes in office (and, to this point at least, got away with them). Except for Reagan—who was able to use his Hollywood charisma to fool people into thinking he was a good guy and, for his reelect, to mask his Alzheimer's—they were also terrible candidates, but the GOP nevertheless closed ranks and pushed them through. (Please see and share my capsule history of the presidency.)

I'm not suggesting that Democrats now employ Republican tactics of lying to voters and conning them into thinking their guy isn't who their guy really is. Not only is that despicable, there's no need for it. Our guy really is a good guy fighting for all citizens, Americans and global citizens as well. He's just old.

No, I'm suggesting Democrats quit fighting amongst ourselves and back the President. Strongly, without reservation, without fretting about age or how loudly he speaks or how tiring the job of President is. Yes, by all means, coach him on better rhetoric to use when campaigning, get him in front of the public and on TV frequently to not only tout his phenomenal record but show the uninformed how dangerous the Republican plan to destroy the country really is. (We also need to remind people how awful the Trump Administration was and that Trump 1.0 was only that disastrous because there were patriotic Americans in government to stop him from taking even more ruinous actions, and Trump 2.0 would have no such patriots to get in his way. But I suspect that's a job for ads and surrogates more than for the president himself.)

All of us have known older people. Some frailer than others, some mentally sharper than others. We all (or mostly all) have the firsthand experience of knowing that only some senior citizens are incapable of rational decision-making, which is what the job of President boils down to. My grandfather lived to be 92, and sure, after he hit 80 he wasn't getting around as easily and his voice lost some of its timbre, but he never lost his faculties. He was sharp at 90, conversing about novels and relating stories of his aviation career and marveling over Vladimir Guerrero's ability to hit terrible pitches. He just spoke with less vocal strength. He had a friend, a fellow ex-pilot, who at 80 or maybe late-70s had physically declined so much he could hardly communicate. For whatever reasons, some people fare better than others, and physical decline from age does not necessarily bring cognitive failures with it. This shouldn't be hard to grasp.

Joe is over 80. Trump is a sociopathic criminal bent on tyranny. Joe has, like all but one president before him, shown obvious signs of age beyond the norm from the stress of being president. When Trump was president, he of course never actually worked enough to stress himself beyond the levels of his previous life of crime and grift, so his aging seemed "normal." Joe can get tripped up by his stutter and his over- or mis-preparation for appearances getting in the way of extemporaneous speaking. Trump will occasionally say something truthful by accident while spewing a torrent of bullshit. Joe is comparatively robust for a man in his 80s in a phenomenally stressful job. Trump is essentially a few Big Macs away from cardiac failure and is lazy as fuck.

This is not only a winnable race, it's a rout waiting to happen if the Democratic Party will just quit rending its garments and panicking over what the stupids might do if they think Joe Biden is an old man.

Focus. Get behind your guy, because he's not going away. Champion him, campaign your asses off, and make it clear to anyone who will listen that Biden's disembodied brain in a jar Futurama-style would still be infinitely more desirable than Donald Trump at any age.

Tagged Politics, President Biden, Democrats   |   Posted on July 11, 2024 at 3:27am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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