Full disclosure–as of today, Friday, I am no longer part of this mortal coil. Instead I have shuffled off to New York Comic Con where, even now, I am at table E11 in Artist’s Alley. So swing on by.
Consequently I am writing this on Wednesday, October 3, so I will not be current on whatever idiocy has occurred in Trumpworld in the last two days. But it’s still worth writing about what’s happened so far.
1). So what does this mean, exactly?. During the election Trump incessantly bìŧçhëd about NAFTA, complaining that for some reason I either failed to understand or he failed to explain, it was a terrible deal that was shafting America. I tended to ignore these claims for the same reason I ignored most of his claims: they were all lies. And I never thought he’d get elected and pose a threat to it.
Yet as it turns out he did get elected and he was ready to destroy NAFTA. I have no idea what the consequences of that would have been but I have to assume it wouldn’t be good. Yet apparently the US, Canada and Mexico managed to, at the eleventh hour, carve out a new deal. I know it has another name now, but I honestly don’t want to waste time looking it up again, so I’m simply going to refer to it as the New Administration Stupid Crap Úš Reboot, or NASCAR.
The Trump administration is claiming all sorts of positive things will come of it. Most of it seems to have something to do with Canadian milk. Considering his other policies are annihilating farmers nationwide, I guess it’s good that SOMEone is being helped. But I’ve seen a number of people who actually know about this stuff stating that the changes from NAFTA to NASCAR are going to be minimal. Plus there is a secondary issue. Thanks to Trump’s constant threats and actual dropping out of agreements that the US had signed onto, there is absolutely nothing apparently to stop either the Canadians or Mexicans, especially if there’s a change of government, from stepping forward and announcing they’re out of NASCAR. So Trump has likely laid down the mortality of the agreement he’s so proud of getting in place. It could be a classic example of what goes around comes around.
2). Someone should investigate the investigation.. So thanks to Jeff Flake being guilted into doing the right thing by some angry women in an elevator (and let’s give credit where it’s due; an entire women’s marching band in an auditorium couldn’t guilt Mitch McConnell into doing the right thing because the man has no soul, so at least there’s still hope for Flake) the FBI is spending this week investigating Judge Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault of Doctor Ford. Except the “alleged” should really be in front of the word “investigating” because, as of this writing, over a dozen acquaintances of Kavanaugh’s who want to back up Ford’s descriptions of a teen Kavanaugh have not been contacted by the FBI. Indeed, they’ve contacted the Feds and have not heard back. Even Ford hasn’t spoken to them, for God’s sake. To say that thus far it appears not only to be a non-thorough investigation but in fact a non-existent one is to understate it.
Is it possible that Trump has instructed them that way? Of course it is. That’s why he stood there in Mississippi a few days ago and belittled and lampooned Doctor Ford to the hoots and hollers of a bunch of Mississippi áššhølëš.
The fact of the matter is that over the past years, as the GOP did everything they could to block the efforts of every Democratic president to accomplish anything, we’ve lost focus of the United States of America. Instead we have devolved into tribes where everything someone witnesses is done through a polarized set of opinions that guarantees what they’re going to think before they see it. People in Ford’s tribe saw a pained but strong woman reliving one of the worst nights of her life in order to stop him from rising to the highest honor for a juror in this country. People in her tribe understood that of course she was too terrified to report it when she was fifteen. Kavanaugh’s parents were both attorneys. She’d have been shredded in courts, even her parents might not have believed her, her good name would have been destroyed, and her town would have turned against her and shielded the rich kid.
And then there’s Kavanaugh’s tribe. This includes both the rich and powerful, and the dumb ášš hicks who adore Trump and believe the white man’s position of strength in America is being threatened by women who can just make šhìŧ up and be believed. People who see rage from a man as something strong and rage from a woman a sign of shrill weakness. They dismissed Ford’s testimony as unsupported (because so many sexual assaults happen in public squares) and saw Kavanaugh’s hysterical, utterly unjudicial rant as proof that he was innocent because he wouldn’t have been so angry otherwise.
Yes. He would have. Because he sees himself as a deserving white man who is having something he believes he’s earned snatched away from him (just as, two decades ago, Clarence Thomas saw himself as a deserving black man who was the subject of a lynching because Anita Hill cited his sexual misdeeds, and she was pilloried for it just as Ford is now.).
There are two reasons I am positive Trump helped him with his speech last Thursday: 1). Because it was loaded with Trump talking points, and 2) Kavanaugh made sure to tell people that no one else had seen it. Why in God’s name would anyone make that claim? Seriously. Did Obama ever feel the need to say, “I just want you all to know I wrote this myself?” No, because if he did, every one on Fox News would declare, “Well that’s proof he didn’t write it himself, because who makes that declaration except someone who wants you to THINK it when it’s not really true?” Same thing here.
Yet Trump has the gall to say that it’s tough to be a young white man now? NOW? Why? Because they’re in danger of being held to a code of conduct that doesn’t automatically spin confessions of rape or assault against the woman who had to endure it?
And Doctor Ford even sensed that she may well have been wasting her time vis a vis Kavanaugh, describing herself as being an object in the path of a speeding locomotive. McConnell wants to steam roll right over her, even though Kavanaugh has made plain beyond any question that he is not deserving of a chair on the SCOTUS, and possibly even any judge’s chair.
This is not the opinion of a tribal liberal. This is the opinion of the American Bar Association. There are some excerpts from the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct as of February 2007.
CANON 1: A judge shall uphold and promote the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of Impropriety.
Rule 1.2, Comment 2: A judge should expect to be the subject of public scrutiny that might be viewed as burdensome if applied to other citizens, and must accept the restrictions imposed by the Code.
Comment 3: Conduct that compromises or appears to compromise the independence, integrity, and impartiality of a judge undermines public confidence in the judiciary.
Comment 5: …The test for appearance of impropriety is whether the conduct would create in reasonable minds a perception that the judge violated this Code or engaged in other conduct that reflects adversely on the judge’s honesty, impartiality, temperament, or fitness to serve as a judge.
By any reasoned viewing of his actions, he is in clear violation of the canon. As he decried Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular, does ANYONE who might have stake in a liberal issue before the SCOTUS have the slightest belief anymore that they might get a fair hearing from Kavanaugh? Of course not. It is clear beyond any measure that Kavanaugh has no place on the SCOTUS.
And yet McConnell and crew insanely still want him on. Why? He was one name on a list of two dozen jurists, all of whom will be happy to undo Roe V. Wade, which is what this is really all about. Why are they still stuck on Kavanaugh?
There is really only one viable reason:
They want to pìšš øff the Democrats.
I mean, God knows I’m used to that attitude. I’ve seen right wing áššhølëš support the most ludicrous challenges to the Constitution purely because they know it’ll pìšš øff liberals. Indeed, that’s the main reason they love Trump. He has no problem pìššìņg øff people he doesn’t like, most conspicuously liberals, and they take great glee in that. I understand it because it’s a juvenile and idiotic frame of mind to have, which is why they have it. But at least those maroons weren’t running the country.
Except now they are. That is the only explanation. McConnell and his Zoo Crew take delight in governing in a way that will anger Democrats. That, and holding on to power, are the only things they care about.
Kind of a stupid way to run a country, isn’t it?
PAD
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On NAFTA what president worthless is passing off as a ‘new’ deale is actually, with minor changes the trans pacific agreement Obama’s team negotiated. So instead of 16 countries as signatory there are only three. Another treaty he declared ‘bad’. Liar and chief.
“Except now they are. That is the only explanation. McConnell and his Zoo Crew take delight in governing in a way that will anger Democrats. That, and holding on to power, are the only things they care about.
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“Kind of a stupid way to run a country, isn’t it?”
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They’re simply becoming reflections of their base which is becoming a reflection of Trump who feeds off of both to become worse.
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It’s like a perverted negative feedback loop version of coherentism. Three key points in the loop feeding into each other and making them worse.
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Trump during the nomination process played to the worst aspects of his base’s humanity and many of the same Congressional Republicans balked at it. Then he won the nomination. His base got uglier, he got uglier. Then he won the election.
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We’ve had two years of the increased ugliness of that base and Trump.
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Trump lowers the bar on a daily basis. His base then feels increasingly free to be uglier in their day to day political activity. They now feel freer to express things- racist ideas, misogynistic comments, backward social positions, “alternative facts” -as personal opinion that they would have before now kept to themselves and to do so in ways that they once wouldn’t have because it was deemed… well… racist, sexist, misogynistic, backwards, and lying. And they do it with more than a smidgen of anger.
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But Trump feeds into their worst nature, and now they feel these are justified beliefs and they are the long-dormant “silent majority” come into power once again. And they’re just getting uglier feeding off of each other.
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The Congressional Republicans, many of them at least, can see what’s happening. They can see the Trumpian purity tests happening in primaries. So they’re ramping it up. They’re becoming a part of the loop. They’re becoming something in the image of an increasing number of their constituents. As their constituents become increasing uglier, they feel free to become increasingly uglier. Their constituents feed off of Trump, they feed off of the constituents and Trump, Trump feeds off of them, and the cycle just gets uglier and all parties in the loop feel that their ugliest opinions- that their alternative facts -are now justified beliefs.
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We’re seeing Congressional Republicans trying to be the Party of Trump. They know their base wants this- the anger, the hate, the casting aside of any attempts to find a middle ground -so they’re embracing the hate, the ugliness, the bigotry to become the party of Trump in all ways.
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And in that loop, they’re normalizing what in our society had become or was in the process of becoming the abnormal. In the last two weeks, I’ve seen average conservatives, people I’ve known five, ten, twenty years or more, expressing things in ugly, bigoted, and misogynistic ways that ten years ago would not have come from their mouths or typing fingers or, had they done so, would not have taken the nakedly ugly form they did.
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“Except now they are. That is the only explanation. McConnell and his Zoo Crew take delight in governing in a way that will anger Democrats. That, and holding on to power, are the only things they care about.
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“Kind of a stupid way to run a country, isn’t it?”
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Yes, it is. But they’re looking at their base, the angry, ugly Trump base, and realizing that this is who they are now and they think this is who they have to be. Some are just playing a part, feeding on the overall ugliness and letting it guide them, but more than a few are probably doing what the Trump base I’ve had encounters with this last two weeks are doing. They’re finally and fully letting their true faces be seen because in the era of Trump they think it’s okay. They think it’s their time again to be those kinds of people.
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Trump because fûçk your feelings
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This has been building for a while. Go back to 91 or 92 and the rise of Rush on conservative talk radio and then a few years later with the creation of Fox News. What was one of the things they, especially Rush, pushed? Moderates were weaklings. Bipartisanship (at least when Republicans were in power) was weakness.
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You combine that philosophy growing stronger in conservatism with the long-simmering bigotry, white supremicist streaks, and sexism in the party and you have the recipe for the rise of Trump in the party. When you have the rise of Trump, you have the dam bursting. Once the dam bursts, you get your answer as to why those maroons
weren’tare now running the countryAnother strange (and tragic) thing is that the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and partisanship and tribalism has made it so that Trump and the GOP aren’t just trapped in a feedback loop with each other and their base.
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They are also, strangely, trapped in a feedback loop with Liberals. Whenever Liberals adopt a position, they have to be dead set against it. There was a time when Liberals and Conservatives could agree in some issues (I still remember when Environmentalism used to be a lot more bipartisan than it is today).
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Nowadays, even some pretty basic, pretty obvious things, like “racism is bad”, are disputed because they happen to be Liberal positions. Conservatives are becoming more and more like Bizarro, they have to be the perfect opposite copy of Superman.
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Problem is, Liberals are starting to be affected by this too, and moving into being completely opposite to all Conservative positions. Already there are movements to turn into pariahs any Liberals who don’t toe the line on abortion taken by the feminist movement, for instance.
A few more points of the week:
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– NYT story about tax schemes
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– “That’s OK. I know you’re not thinking. You never do,” – transcript of press conference changed it to “not thanking”
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– “I don’t think you should lie to Congress and there are a lot of people over the past year who have lied to Congress and to me, that would not be acceptable.” – Seriously?
And Joe Manchin is there to give us all a stark reminder of why there’s so much apathy on the left.
Yeah, but I’m not sure he counts as much as others might. Joe Manchin is a WV Dem, and that’s not exactly your typical Dem situation.
Jerry, you’re right about Manchin’s situation, but also there is that the only thing more rare these days than a conservative Democrat is a liberal Republican. They once both existed within Peter’s and my lifetimes. Yours too, if you’re anywhere close to
the same age as we.
David, there hasn’t been a “liberal Republican” since John Anderson ran for President in 1980 as an Independent because he (a definite “liberal Republican”) feared Reagan’s alliance with the religious right as putting an end to HIS Republican Party (Anderson had first been elected to Congress as a Republican in 1960, two years before Ronald Reagan became a Republican). Anderson had started as one of the most conservative Republicans but, as the 1960s progressed, he began rethinking a lot of his beliefs, especially with regard to social issues.
Once Anderson lost the election, that sounded the death knell for ALL Republicans who were slightly left of the absolute political center. (I always thought the spectrum put liberal Republicans between moderate and conservative Democrats). I’m pretty sure that by 1990 there wasn’t a “liberal Republican” still in office (the Northeast Republicans were probably the closest to “liberal Republican” that still existed but not a one of them would admit to the term).
I especially love McConnell’s diatribe earlier in the week at how Chuck Schumer and “his” Democrats were making an unnecessary partisan delay in confirming Kavanaugh. He said Schumer announced his opposition to Kavanaugh the moment his name was announced and that these three weeks of delays hurt the SCOTUS. It is un-American to deny a confirmation vote like this.
Totally ignoring the year-long denial that came the moment Scalia died when McConnell said no one Obama nominated was fit.
And I also love how the GOP is ramming this through, on a Saturday, when even the American Bar Association has stated Kavanaugh should not be seated on the SCOTUS.
And now McConnell’s trying to use “tradition” as his excuse. He said, in an interview on that right-wing propaganda network, that it was a “tradition” (since 1888) that the Senate wouldn’t confirm a Supreme Court Justice nominee of a President of the opposite party during an election year.
And yet, according to Wiki, the GOP-controlled Senate confirmed not one, but TWO, Supreme Court justices in 1888 for Democratic President Grover Cleveland. 1888, of course, was a Presidential election year.
As I noted when I saw this lie on Yahoo news, McConnell lied. Like ALL GOPers do. (The interview–I think by Chris Wallace–had brought up the idea of a SCOTUS vacancy in 2020 and would McConnell leave that seat open. That’s when McConnell lied about the “tradition.”)
It should also be remembered that any “tradition” that existed before 1913 should be ignored when it comes to the Senate; they weren’t elected directly by the people until that year.
Since you mention Comicon, I will mention that I bought a drawing from Caroline at your table yesterday. I asked for a headshot of a character I like and Caroline gave her personality and attitude!
Any new Marvel work coming out?
Nothing I can tell you about right now.
Or, when translated from PAD-Spin BS, “Nothing”.
Um…no FOF this week? That’s two weeks now…don’t tell me you’ve run out of material….did I miss a post where you said you wouldn’t be doing that anymore?