Jul 27 2020

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Robert Reich: Trump can’t shift public attention from coronavirus to the streets of America

The president shows no leadership on public health but wants to be a strongman on law and order. Voters won’t buy it

Donald Trump has said he has “no responsibility” for the coronavirus pandemic, fobbing it off on governors and mayors whose repeated requests for federal help he’s denied. Yet he’s now sending federal troops into cities he says are controlled by the “radical left”, whose mayors and governors don’t want them there

The president wants to shift public attention from the virus, which he can’t “dominate”, to the streets of America, which he and his secret police can.

It’s an especially cynical re-election strategy because coronavirus deaths are rising again. More Americans are on track to be hospitalized with the virus than at any other point. Rates of new infections repeatedly shatter single-day records. As a result, the US economy is backsliding.

Trump has never offered a national strategy for testing, contact tracing and isolating those who have the disease. He has provided no standards for reopening the economy, no plan for national purchasing of critical materials, no definitive policy for helping the unemployed, no clear message about what people and businesses should do. He rushed to reopen without adequate safeguards. [..]4

It’s been an abominable, chaotic mess – which is why the virus is back.

Yet when it comes to assaulting Americans, Trump has been asserting strong leadership. He’s deploying unidentified federal agents against protesters in Portland, Oregon: attacking them, pulling them into unmarked vans, detaining them without charges.

 
Charles M. Blow: Trump’s Nakedly Political Pandemic Pivot

This is how the president operates when he is desperate and in trouble.

After mocking people for wearing masks, refusing to publicly wear one himself and holding rallies and gatherings where social distancing was not required, President Trump has shifted his tone.

He has canceled his convention activities in Jacksonville, Fla., after moving the events from North Carolina when that state’s governor raised public health concerns about such a large indoor gathering.

He has resumed briefings, ostensibly about the coronavirus, after canceling them and trying to move on to other matters, as if the virus would simply vanish if he sufficiently ignored it.

Trump is in real trouble. With the election passing the 100-day-away milestone, he is down in the polls, people don’t trust or approve of his handling of the pandemic and he faces a real uphill battle to re-election.

Apparently, the reality of his dire straits has begun to pierce his inner circle of perpetual affirmation. There is a reality lurking that can’t be lied away. If the election were held today, he wouldn’t win.

Karen Tumulty: What century does Trump think American women are living in?

In what century is President Trump living? Or perhaps the better question: In what century does he believe American women are?

“Housewives” is a word you don’t hear all that often these days. When women are described that way in popular culture — in TV show titles, for instance — it is generally done with a wink to how different their outlandish escapist plotlines are from real life.

This was not the first time that Trump has revealed that his view of daily existence for most women and their families is stuck in the 1950s. In a May interview with the New York Post, he singled out two female journalists who had annoyed him — Weijia Jiang and Paula Reid, both of CBS — and added: “It wasn’t Donna Reed, I can tell you that.”

The president was likely referring to the saintly Mary Bailey character that actress Donna Reed portrayed in the 1946 movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Or the wife and mother she played on her sitcom, “The Donna Reed Show,” which ran from 1958 to 1966. Her character, Donna Stone, had a pediatrician for a husband and was always perfectly coifed, wearing an impeccably styled dress as she went about her housework and put dinner on the table. [..]

The opinion column that Trump believed would scare the bejeezus out of “The Suburban Housewives of America” criticized Biden’s housing plan — which is neither a new one (he released it in February) nor all that radical. It builds upon a desegregation rule that was put in place under President Barack Obama and that Trump is moving to repeal.

But then, Trump’s tweet wasn’t really about zoning policy at all. It was about stirring racial fears. His increasingly frequent claims Biden would “destroy the beautiful suburbs” is not a dog whistle. It is an air-raid siren.

Mara Gay: Rich New Yorkers, How’s That Census Coming?

Some neighborhoods where wealthy residents skipped town during the pandemic have among the lowest response rates in the city.

You’re a wealthy New Yorker who fled the city during the coronavirus pandemic, and you haven’t yet filled out the census.

Listen, I understand why you left. We were all scared. Maybe you’re older, or you have a compromised immune system. Maybe you have kids and needed access to schools, reliable child care and a backyard where they can run and play. Maybe you’d just rather be at your house in the Hamptons.

I’m not judging. I’m just asking you to do your civic duty and fill out the census. [..]

The census, which takes place every 10 years, secures vital federal dollars for the city’s public schools and free lunch programs, public housing and senior centers, and transit infrastructure. The poorest and most vulnerable New Yorkers already are suffering right now. They will suffer more unless all of us do our part and fill out the census — correctly.

Completing the census generally takes less than 10 minutes. Go to my2020census.gov and follow the steps from there.

It’s the least you can do.

Lawrence Douglas: What if Trump loses but refuses to leave office? Here’s the worst case scenario

The risk of an electoral meltdown is ordinarily rather small, but this November promises a combination of stressors that could lead to epic failure and chaos

What if Trump loses but refuses to leave office? Here’s the worst case scenario
Lawrence Douglas

The risk of an electoral meltdown is ordinarily rather small, but this November promises a combination of stressors that could lead to epic failure and chaos

While working on a book about the peaceful succession of power, I came to realize that built into our system of presidential elections is a Chernobyl-like defect: placed under the right conditions of stress, the system is vulnerable to catastrophic breakdown. The risk of such an electoral meltdown ordinarily is rather small, but this November promises – in a manner last seen in 1876 –to present a combination of stresses that could lead to epic failure.

The problem begins – but does not end – with President Trump, who, in his recent interview with Chris Wallace, once again reminded the nation that losing is not an option. He will reject any election that results in his loss, claiming it to be rigged. Alarming as this may be, Trump alone cannot crash the system. Instead, an unusual constellation of forces – the need to rely heavily on mail-in ballots because of the Covid-19 pandemic; the political divisions in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania; and a hyper-polarized Congress – all work together to turn Trump’s defiance into a crisis of historic proportions.

Jul 27 2020

Cartnoon

In ancient times hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived this strange race of people, the druids
No one knows who they were what they were doing
But the legacy remains here in the living rock of Stonehenge

Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge where a man is a man
And the children dance to the pipes of pan

Stonehenge, ’tis a magic place
Where the moon doth rise with a dragon’s face
Stonehenge where the virgins lie
And the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky

And you my love, won’t you take my hand?
We’ll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there, I will show you how

And oh, how they danced
The little children of Stonehenge
Beneath the haunted moon for fear
That day break might come too soon

And where were they now
The little people of Stonehenge
And what would they say to us
If we were here tonight

Jul 27 2020

The Breakfast Club (Good Doggie)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

An armistice ends the Korean War; A House panel votes to impeach President Richard Nixon; A pipe bomb explodes at the Atlanta Olympics; The deposed Shah of Iran and comedian Bob Hope die.

Breakfast Tunes

Peter Green (29 October 1946 – 25 July 2020)

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.

Will Rogers

Continue reading

Jul 26 2020

Rant of the Week: George Carlin – Wake Up, America

George Carlin didn’t live to see Donald Trump elected president but his words foresaw his coming in 2006. Warning strong language.

“The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they’re coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.“

The original is an excerpt from his 2006 HBO special, Life is Worth Losing.

Jul 26 2020

Faust

In Full!

C’mon, who doesn’t love 3 hour long German Operas about Crossroads deals with the Devil without a lick of Blues Guitar or Banjo in them?

Available until the 31st then it self destructs like an IMF Briefing I’m guessing.

Jul 26 2020

No Sports?

World championships of Ping Pong 2019 Final

January 27, 2019. Andrew Baggaley (ENG) – Wang Shibo (CHN).

Jul 26 2020

The Breakfast Club (Red Grapes)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club!

AP’s Today in History for July 26th

President Harry Truman orders desegregation of U.S. Military; Cuba’s Fidel Castro attacks Moncada barracks; Argentina’s Eva Peron dies; Playwright George Bernard Shaw and rock star Mick Jagger born.

Breakfast Tune Don’t cry for me Argentina – Banjo

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

The Current Trendline Is Full-fledged American Social Collapse
Ian Welsh

… or a full fascist turn.

Jared Diamond wrote a long book on why societies collapse.

Let me summarize his findings.

Societies collapse when elites are isolated from the consequences of their decisions as experienced by the rest of the population.

Here’s America:


Imagine that. The numbers nationally are worse. There is NO reason for the people who run America to change their Covid-19 strategy. None. Less than zero; the strategy is working brilliantly for them. Your suffering and deaths make them richer. Understand this. Understand it.

So, what does that mean?


It doesn’t mean that the US is likely to have 550K more deaths. Why not? Because the number one rule for understanding the US in the age of neoliberal greed is this:

No matter how bad you think something is in the US, it’s worse, even if you take this rule into account.

So, 550K is now the “good case scenario.” The case against it is based only on “lot of the old people have already died, and we’re better at keeping people alive now than at the start.” It’s not based on numbers of infections, which are already past the initial peak and nowhere near the top.

Then there’s those 32 percent of people who couldn’t make their housing payments in July, 22 percent of small businesses going bankrupt, etc.

So, I’ve been pounding this issue but today, looking at all this, it became utterly clear that the perceived self-interest of American elites is now so completely detached from the rest of American society and everyone else that there is no recovery without a revolution, peaceful or otherwise (and a non-peaceful revolution could trigger the collapse all by itself, while peaceful revolution is… unlikely).

Nonetheless, ordinary Americans are being pushed to the wall: broke, homeless and hungry will become normal for some number of Americans in the tens of millions. The actual economy will contract, but the rich will be richer.

Complete and absolute disconnect. This was visible in 2008, when the rich were bailed out despite being bankrupt and not just allowed, but encouraged, to set up an assembly line to steal ordinary Americans’ houses.

This is not recoverable.

It is not sustainable.

The Age of America is nearly done. Empires do not die cleanly. Russians died like flies when the USSR collapsed, and Russians were in far better shape to handle collapse than Americans are because they had garden plots and housing that wasn’t going to be taken from them.

Biden will probably win this election. He will not stop this. He will delay it somewhat, while furthering the conditions that made it happen.

Once Biden’s done, another right-wing “populist” will win the election, because the center would rather elect a fascist than even a 50s-style left-winger.

That President is likely to either turn the US full fascist or cause its collapse, or both.

When US passports start working again after Covid burns through the country, get out if you can. If you can’t, prepare as best you are able. …

Something to think about over coffee prozac

Joe Biden Just Made a Big Promise to His Wall Street Donors
DAVID SIROTA, JACOBIN

Two weeks ago, Joe Biden rightly received praise for creating policy task forces that released a package of progressive legislative initiatives. The proposals augmented Biden’s previous legislative initiatives to change corporate behavior. The task forces were meant to unify the Democratic Party after the primary, and their recommendations were blared all over the world in glowing headlines promising an era of progressive change under a Biden administration.

Then, this past Monday, Biden told his Wall Street donors that actually, he is not proposing any new legislation to rein in corporate power or change corporate behavior — and this was reported exactly nowhere, even as his campaign blasted it out to the national press corps.

You don’t have to believe me — you can click here to read the full pool report that the Biden campaign distributed to the press after his teleconference fundraiser. That event was headlined by Jon Gray, a top executive at the Blackstone Group, which is a private equity behemoth at the center of the climate, health care, housing, and pension crises. Blackstone executives had already donated $130,000 to the Biden campaign and $350,000 to a super PAC supporting him.

Here’s the relevant section, reviewing what Biden said:

Second question, again from Mr. Gray, who noted that there are “a bunch of business leaders” on the line. “What do you think is essential to get this economy rolling again?”

“I come from the corporate state of American, many of you incorporated here,” said Mr. Biden. “It used to be that corporate America had a sense of responsibility beyond just CEO salaries and shareholders.”

“Corporate America has to change its ways. It’s not going to require legislation. I’m not proposing any. We’ve got to think about how we deal people back in.”

There’s an obvious contradiction here. Before making these comments, Biden had previously promised to pass legislative initiatives to change corporate behavior on everything from climate change to tax policy. He has an entire section of his website outlining promises to pass corporate accountability legislation. He has received praise for these kind of promises.

But now he’s telling his donors they can rest assured that legislation to change corporate behavior is not forthcoming. Indeed, read Biden’s comment again: “It’s not going to require legislation. I’m not proposing any.”

Now, sure, you can try to write this off as just another gaffe — good ol’ Joe being good ol’ Joe. But it is part of a pattern.

Biden had previously promised his wealthy donors that if he is elected, “nothing would fundamentally change.” He insisted that we don’t need a political revolution in America because that might “disrupt everything.” …

Jul 26 2020

Pondering the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

Pondering the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

On Sunday mornings we present a preview of the guests on the morning talk shows so you can choose which ones to watch or some do something more worth your time on a Sunday morning.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM).

The roundtable guests are: Republican Strategist Sara Fagen; Democracy for America CEO Yvette Simpson; former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ); and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D?-Chicago).

Face the Nation: Host Margaret Brennan’s guests are: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX); Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Alex Azar; ,Atrium Health CEO Eugene Woods; and former FDA commissioner Scott Gotlieb, M.D.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this week’s “MTP” are: To be announced.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Brett P. Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health; Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD); Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA); Director of the United States National Economic Council Larry Kudlow; and Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot (D).

Jul 25 2020

Not Much Of A Party

Being the Tin Foil Hat Wearing Resident Conspiracy Theorist I propose that instead of mere incompetence this shows a serious fear of another fizzle like Tulsa or Portsmouth where they were so afraid of the preliminary numbers they canceled for a Storm so fierce I could see the shadow of my Maine Weatherstick (if it’s wet, it’s rainy).

How the Republican National Convention came undone
By Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, and Annie Linskey, Washington Post
July 24, 2020

For months, President Trump insisted on packed crowds at his nominating convention.

“Since the day I came down the escalator, I’ve never had an empty seat and I find the biggest stadiums,” he told North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) in a phone call on May 29, according to two people familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share its contents. “We can’t do social distancing.”

But behind the scenes, advisers were scrambling to plan a massive multi-day event amid a pandemic. They asked the federal government to provide protective equipment, lined up labs to test thousands of attendees each day, and shifted from an indoor arena in Charlotte to one in Jacksonville, Fla., and then again to a covered practice field used by an NFL franchise nearby.

But ultimately, the rising coronavirus caseload — and the political cost of forcing risky behavior on thousands just months before the election — proved too great. Advisers convinced Trump that canceling the convention could help him politically as he tries to pay closer attention to the coronavirus, show that he cares about the health of Americans and improve his sagging poll numbers.

The chaotic unraveling bears many of the hallmarks of the tumultuous Trump presidency: the public dismissal of scientific expertise, Trumpian allegations of political conspiracy and advisers run ragged to carry out a task that was next to impossible from the start.

No rallies, no Death Star: Trump’s campaign is disintegrating before our eyes
by Lucian K. Truscott IV, Salon
July 18, 2020

If you want to know exactly how well Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is faring as we count down the final three months before Election Day, all you have to do is Google “list of rallies for the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign” and compare it with what you’ve seen lately.

Now that was a presidential campaign! Not dozens of rallies, hundreds of rallies! Trump held 187 rallies during the Republican primaries, between June 15, 2015, and June 3, 2016. He held rallies in Costa Mesa, California; Warwick, Rhode Island; Vienna, Ohio; Evansville, Indiana; Warren, Michigan; Bethpage, New York; and dozens and dozens of other cities and towns.
…
In the same few weeks covered by the schedule on the Clinton for President website I looked at, Trump appeared in Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, West Virginia, California and Oregon.

Trump’s campaign after he won the Republican nomination was just as busy. He appeared in 129 rallies between June 10 and Nov. 7 of 2016. He was all over the place: fairgrounds, convention centers, Las Vegas casino hotels, airports, sports stadiums, concert venues, even an equestrian center in Jacksonville, and a maritime park amphitheater in Pensacola, day after day, rally after rally, sometimes two in different cities on the same day.

Meanwhile, in some office park in San Antonio, Texas, a political unknown by the name of Brad Parscale was gearing up to run a virtual campaign on social media, raising money and running ads on Google, Twitter, and Facebook to a targeted audience, largely using the names of people who had signed up for tickets to Trump’s rallies during the primary and general election.

You know the result of Trump’s 300-plus rallies in 2015 and 2016, supplemented by Parscale’s expert manipulation of Facebook and Twitter with some Russian hacking and social media mischief thrown in. He won.

And he planned to win again in 2020 by following the same playbook: dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred rallies, complimented by a brand new Parscale digital operation he labeled the “Death Star” in a May tweet.

So how’s the Death Star firing, Brad my boy?

Parscale was removed as campaign chairman this week, replaced by a former Chris Christie factotum named Bill Stepien, one of whose career highlights was being named in the infamous “Bridgegate” scandal involving the closure of several lanes of the George Washington Bridge in 2013. Stepien saw duty as “field director” during Trump’s 2016 campaign, and the way things are going now, directing traffic is about all that’s left for him to do in 2020.

As for those rallies? Well, Trump appeared at a grand total of 10 rallies back in January and February before the coronavirus took hold of the White House and began to strangle its grand plans. Last month, a rally was held in deep-red Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was intended to kick off the Trump 2020 general election campaign. You know how wonderfully that turned out. After bragging on social media about a million tickets that had been sold for the Tulsa arena (which held only 19,000), Trump was able to “fill” the arena with just over 6,000 of his most loyal base voters. An “overflow” rally outside the arena was canceled when nobody showed up.

A few days later, Trump held another rally at the Dream City megachurch in Phoenix, attended by an audience of about 3,000 students.

Few attendees at either rally wore protective masks, despite a local ordinance requiring them in Arizona. There was an outbreak of coronavirus in Tulsa following the rally there, and the Republican governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, who attended the rally, tested positive for the virus this week. On Wednesday, Oklahoma saw its largest one-day increase in coronavirus cases, rising by 1,075, nearly a 5 percent increase in the state’s total number of cases.

The Republican National Committee announced plans for a scaled back convention next month in Jacksonville, complete with social distancing and masks. Most convention events will be restricted to about 2,500 delegates. On the final day, Aug. 27, when Trump gives his acceptance speech, alternate delegates and guests will bring the total allowed inside the arena to about 7,000. The Trump campaign has been scrambling for new venues to hold rallies where they won’t have to worry about the kind of depressed turnout they got in Tulsa. As of this weekend, no new rallies had been scheduled.
…
We haven’t even gotten into Trump’s cratering poll numbers. He is down by double digits nationally, down by double digits in most battleground states, and even down in double digits among his own Republican base when it comes to his performance in handling the coronavirus. And then there are the worst numbers of all: almost 140,000 dead, with the CDC estimating 170,000 by Aug. 8. A record 77,000 people were diagnosed with the virus on Thursday, and 926 died. The numbers keep going up almost every day.

There are only 15 weeks left before Election Day on Nov. 3, and a lot can happen in American politics in 15 weeks. We learned that in spades in 2016, didn’t we? But Trump isn’t just running against Joe Biden. He’s running against a virus that doesn’t belong to a political party, doesn’t watch Fox News, and doesn’t care how many times the president of the United States tries to wish it away. The virus has a big vote this year, and so far, it’s voting against Trump. It’s one of the tragedies of our political system that so many people have to die for one incompetent, corrupt man to lose the presidential election.

Jul 25 2020

Too Much and Never Enough

What the Hell Happened This Week?

Nothing Funny.

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