2020: Good riddance to bad rubbish

 

2020 will go down as the strangest, most frustrating year I have ever experience in my lifetime, and I am old enough to be certain that the best popular music was produced in the 1970s. I had never experienced anything quite like what had transpired in 2020: although the pandemic was a serious matter, I still don’t know anyone personally who was actually infected by the COVID-19. I continued to work in a near empty downtown office building despite the lockdown, assisting in keeping it from turning into Miss Havisham’s dining room, or an episode of the History Channel's "Life After People."  

All around were other mostly empty buildings, along with upscale clothiers, bars and “fine” dining bereft of customers and patrons. There is the downtown Target and Ross stores which have somehow remained in business with mask-wearing requirements, and a couple of 7-Elevens, but otherwise there is simply no reason to even get out of the house, save to walk about and dwell upon what might have been had we not had someone like Donald Trump as president.

To what extent Trump is to blame for this is a matter of debate; all we know is that he did almost nothing to make things better, and with new strains cropping up, it may take years for things to return to “normal,” if ever. The only “positive” is that Trump will no longer be in a position to make things even worse. After being “acquitted” in his impeachment trial, Trump was riding “high” until he was hit by a real crisis, and this time Republicans would not  even try to bail him out of it; in fact some—like the governors of South Dakota, Texas and Florida—would only “help” make it worse by following his “lead.”

Trump waffled between claims that the virus would quickly disappear, or it was no more dangerous than the flu or the common cold, or engage in nauseating boasts about what a “great” job he was doing to control something he said wasn’t “real,” or preferring to “lead” by his example that the virus was just “fake news” and no one should be overly concerned about its effects or bother to wear facemasks if it impinged on their “freedom.”  Current deaths are at over 330,000; we are now told that this is only a prelude to a January that might be worst month yet. What is Trump doing while the country burns? He’s at the golf course, chipping his slices out of the weeds.

And still Trump won’t leave us alone. His campaign is still begging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the vote in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, after the court had already turned aside the Texas lawsuit involving those states along with Georgia and Michigan. It’s crazy, yet Trump is still supported in this by a cadre of aides who form the black hole of the Trump universe, so desperate are they to attract and consume all the anti-matter of the fact-based cosmos; perhaps they think as long as they hold on, they can cash in with their own shows on Fox News.

Trump has further solidified his position as perhaps the most corrupt human being ever to be president. The pardons for his rich friends and collaborators in crime are one thing, but those for war criminals and murderers is quite another. The four Blackwater “security” contractors who Trump pardoned for a shooting spree of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad ignored the fact that while 17 Iraqi civilians were killed and 20 were injured, none of the Blackwater personnel from two separate patrols were injured despite their claim that they had been attacked; the incident would not even have happened had not the Blackwater patrol not disobeyed an order to return to the Green Zone, and decided to look for some “action” instead. But these killers were Trump’s “warfighters,” and we know what Trump thinks of Muslims—at least those who don’t make billion dollar weapons purchases, like Saudi Arabia.

Many presidents (like Grant and Harding) were surrounded by corrupt officials, but they themselves were not considered personally corrupt; they were just too “trusting” of what was going on behind their backs. Before Trump, Richard Nixon was certainly regarded as the most corrupt president in history, and he had many collaborators in his administration who aided and abetted his corruption. But Nixon was not an ineffectual president when it came to foreign and domestic policy, and it is incomprehensible why he felt it necessary to engage in chicanery for the sake of his reelection, which he won in a landslide in 1972.

But Trump doesn’t even have Nixon’s fig leaf of a man who took governance seriously and with forethought; for Trump, the presidency was just another television reality show, except that it was our reality and his “show.” He didn’t care if his policies failed; he just went on to the next policy failure, and he didn’t care how his whims or petty personal gripes hurt millions of Americans. His efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act is only the most mean-spirited example of this.

As we observed during the impeachment inquiry, Trump’s stooges repeatedly obstructed, lied or didn’t even bother to show up, so there is clearly much to hide. This explains why his political appointees have been stalling providing the Biden transition team with information, especially in defense and foreign policy; one would rightly suspect that they are busy destroying documentation revealing the extent to which the Trump administration was colluding with foreign actors generally regarded as foes of the U.S., particularly Russia, and why the administration has turned its backside toward North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities have only increased since Trump and Kim Jong Un have become such good “friends.”

And yet Trump still hopes to cling to power, with the help of Congressional Republicans who have not one ounce of self-respect in their beings. As always, it doesn’t matter that their efforts will fail; history will record that for 10 weeks while the country was gripped in the worst phase of the pandemic, Trump’s only concern was to exploit the most crackpot conspiracies to remain in power like any two-bit dictator, and crazed conspiracy nuts and these Republicans were all willing conspirators in this insanity, their personal credibility forever shot, save in the minds of those equally crazed.

But surely there were occupations to keep one preoccupied, right? Even with movie theaters closed and music concerts nonexistent?  I haven’t watched prime time network television in years; whether the subject is comedy, drama or crime, there is just not enough “action” or “humor,” and too much political correctness since Married With Children ended its 11-year run. Back in the day, even while he was getting knocked unconscious Joe Mannix always managed to get in a wisecrack or two. And whatever happened to “physical” comedy? Are people afraid of getting an “owie”? Lucille Ball was still doing physical comedy on Here’s Lucy when she was 60 years old. People who never saw Laugh-In during its peak years might assume its humor was on the “silly” side; but watching it today, it is startling how political it was, and its “adult” sexual content would never pass the “cancel culture” test of today.  

Fortunately, I have thousands of movies and television shows on disc that I copied to external hard drives to save time and space. I probably will never watch all of them unless I live to 90, but that only means I won’t need to worry about cable subscriptions. I don’t care much for what is “new” anyways; all I know is that there isn’t anything out there that is a fraction as good as Bonanza was (and is). As far as current musical trends are concerned, nothing seems to have evolved (let alone improved) in the last 20 years. From the dawn of time until the mid-1990s, the music that stood the test of time was that which had melodies that “stuck” in the mind; that is a talent which seems to have completely disappeared. 

I don’t care for vulgar “plain spoken” repetition with nothing but an electronic “beat” behind it, or the lack of actual “music” in music; if “critics” think that Taylor Swift is a “superstar” not for her Barbie Doll looks but because they insist that she is a “great” songwriter, then that only speaks to the general lack of quality of songwriting in general these days; I know what a “hook” is, and it ain’t no “hook” if it doesn’t “stick.” In today’s social media culture, the music industry is being run by any auto-tuned no-talent who manage to get a few streaming “hits” on the cheap with maybe a computerized backing “band.”

I did however finally get around to watching the year’s one notable film release, The Irishman, which I liked, but I would rather watch Scorsese’s After Hours on Blu-Ray, so I wish someone would get on with that.  But although 2020 was devoid of worthwhile filmed content, that is not to say that there wasn’t any “news” on the motion picture front, particularly about who is and who is not allowed to work, and why. Amber Heard’s 2020 Takeaway “Adapt & Survive” YouTube video showed us a despicable, conceited, self-congratulatory hypocrite. This had been aired on CBS All Access as “Amber Heard’s Wisdom,” with her self-conscious mugging and being defensive about how “tough” it is to be accused of what she is: a “husband-beater.”

Let’s not forget that none of Johnny Depp’s previous relationships accused him of domestic violence, in fact wrote court depositions stating as much, while Heard was arrested for domestic violence in one of her previous relationships. That infamous recording of their marital therapy session showed her as a selfish control-freak, and someone who not only refused to take responsibility for her own actions, but expected the other party to just “accept” her abusive behavior because she was, you know, just a woman. Their marriage was clearly dysfunctional from the start, and listening to that recording we hear the laid-back Depp finding it difficult to deal with a person whose behavior was unapologetically irrational. Heard comes off in her video (like Trump) as completely narcissistic. Not surprisingly, this video had the last time I checked only 2,900 “likes” compared to 331,000 “dislikes.” Many of the comments quote Heard’s own words: “They won’t believe you, because you are a man.”

Of course Heard has a reason to act as if everything is still mostly peachy in her world, thanks to the hypocrisy of Disney and Warner; while Depp is out of work, the “Remove Amber Heard from Aquaman 2” petition which has nearly 1.8 million signatories, and yet the studios seem to think that it isn’t politically safe for them to remove Heard, since she is, well, a woman, and women are always the victim and never the abuser. And even if there are those like Heard for whom there is incontrovertible evidence that they are domestic abusers, there is just something not “safe” about talking about it. IMDB notes that Heard is still being cast in another pre-production film project, Run Away With Me, and is to appear in a TV mini-series version of Justice League. For me, she hasn’t been in a movie worth watching because she was in it since The Informers, over a decade ago. The general opinion is that she is not a particularly talented actor, but she does “look” good.

As for Depp, other than an animated TV mini-series currently filming, he has no projects on the horizon—and he has done a lot of films that are watchable for the very fact that he is in them. Again, none of this is surprising; last year I wrote a post in regard to Disney’s “updated” feminist version of the Maleficent character from Sleeping Beauty; as portrayed by Angelina Jolie, she is not really the “Mistress of Evil,” but just another “wronged” woman with a “backstory,” whose actions are “justified” by self-righteous vengeance. She just can’t be “naturally” evil, as men  typically would be with such characters.

It’s a good thing then that I am an NFL fanatic, because without it 2020 would have been the dullest year ever for sports. Well, actually, it is still the dullest because of how the pandemic affected the sports scene. We didn’t get a chance to see if Gonzaga might yet become a non-Power Conference team to win the NCAAM championship, because there was no NCAA basketball tournament, and the NCAA saw fit to name no team as the year’s champion. The NBA came back to play its full playoff slate, but it was too close to the beginning of football season for me to care. The MLB season was a complete fraud, with only 60 regular season games played by each team; if all the stats are what fascinates you about baseball, you had to feel a bit cheated. But while the NCAAF stumbled out of the gate, the NFL just ditched preseason and proceeded as if nothing was wrong, save for empty stadiums; being a Packer fan since way before there were names like Favre and Rodgers on the team, I can’t complain too much yet—but a Super Bowl is long overdue for this team.

But if you just wanted to sit back and read a good book, there plenty of those, right? Let’s see: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House; Trump’s America: Buy This Book and Mexico Will Pay for It; Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever; Fear: Trump in the White House; The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control; Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortions of Truth; Trump: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump; Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers; Liar’s Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies.

Well, at least we’ve got the last four years covered. I watched the Burt Lancaster film The Swimmer, about an apparently self-confident, middle-aged man who for some reason finds himself in the middle of suburban America wearing nothing but his swimming trunks, and he decides to “swim” back to his big mansion in the distance from swimming pool to swimming pool. Along the way, we find out that not only is there something not quite right about this idea, but after each stop we find out just a little bit more that suggests that there is something not quite right about the man himself. The film was based on a short story by John Cheever, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Stories of John Cheever about 40 years ago, back when some writers still qualified as being “literary.” I have that book in battered condition hidden somewhere, so I replaced it with a Library of America collection. It’s always helpful to have books that are actually good handy during a lockdown.

2020 was certainly a chore to get through. Unfortunately, 2021 may not be much better. I suppose that the 1973 oil embargo caused some people to stop going out for Sunday drives, but it was nothing like this, when there is literally no place to go anyways. Still, as much as some people want to prolong the year’s agony past January 20, we at least can be relieved to that 2020 will in fact end when all is said and done; good riddance to bad rubbish.

Political ideology has no meaning in the age of Trump

 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us that “politics” is

The art or science of government

The art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy

The art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government

The key words here are “art” and “science.” There is certainly no “art” or “science” in politics anymore; that died out when Newt Gingrich took control of the Republican Party and set it up for someone like Donald Trump. In a 2018 edition of The Atlantic, McKay Coppins termed Gingrich as “The Man Who Broke Politics”:

During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.

We saw this in Gingrich declaring war on Bill Clinton when he became Speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell doing the same during the Obama administration. There was no rhyme or reason to it; it was just to destroy the other party. There was no “governing philosophy” by Republicans, there was no “art” or “science” to what they were doing; it was just kill or be killed. It was the perfect set-up for a man like Trump; there was no more need for the “compromises” that things like “politics” required to maintain a civil society. It is just making the other guy look as bad as possible, blame him for every mistake even when you were the “party” most responsible—especially a president who was more fit to manage a strip club.

As if we didn’t know it already, there is no rhyme or reason with Donald Trump. He is apparently ruled not by any particular political or ideological “philosophy,” but by “gut feelings” and petty, narcissistic personal likes and dislikes. Being a “businessman,” he had no need for “compromise” or “politics”; it was about the “bottom line,” meaning “winning” by whatever means necessary. There had to be “profit” in doing anything, and during the Trump administration that meant doing whatever excited the adulation of a core group of fanatics who feasted on personal bigotries and paranoia. As for the rest, Trump cared little about those who were injured by his corrupt, unethical and immoral words and actions, because they were just natural-born “losers.”

Trump has fortunately suffered a few reverses of late; the principle peddlers of the most outrageous election conspiracies on Fox News—Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro—were forced in the face of defamation lawsuits to humiliate themselves by airing retractions. And then on Sunday the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post published a front page editorial urging Trump to “Stop the Insanity.”

The insanity was not just about the election conspiracies. When Trump vetoed the Defense Authorization  Act, it came as a bit of a shock to even his most ardent supporters in the House of Representatives, where the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, urged his fellow Republicans to avoid making it a “political” issue and override Trump’s veto simply on its merits.  In truth, Trump doesn’t know or care what’s actually in the defense bill; he is merely holding it “hostage” because he wants Congress to do something that is completely unrelated to anything save his own perceived “defense”—he wants Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act repealed.

Naturally Trump—like many people—doesn’t even understand what Section 230 is actually about, and what it is meant to do. Trump seems to believe that it exists only to annoy him personally, allowing Internet platforms to harass him and put warning labels on his falsehoods and conspiracy theories. In reality all websites are “moderated” to a certain extent without Section 230, and Trump certainly does so on his own Twitter page, removing or banning commentary that he doesn’t care to hear. Section 230 merely states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service” is liable for action “taken in good faith” to restrict material that might be considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”  Some of us at least know that most public Wi-Fi access is restricted in this way.

Section 230 was originally intended to allow websites to create  “family friendly” areas of the Internet, and does not require political “neutrality” in restricting content, to avoid being hit by “frivolous” lawsuits from “bad actors.” Trump and those who see Section 230 as only a mechanism to put “warning labels” on their false or dangerous claims—or on the other side, preventing content providers from being sued for such content—simply do not understand what it was meant to do in the first place.

According to Section 230, platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter are only “liable” for content they create; they are not “liable” for illegal or dangerous content that users provide as long as they take “reasonable” action to restrict access to such material, or apply warning labels.  Trump has repeatedly posted material that promotes falsehoods against the public welfare, and inciting dangerous responses; there is no doubt that his promotion of conspiracies and hate toward “ethnic” or religious groups has been the cause of “incitement,” and his continuing efforts to undermine the election with false claims of fraud also poses a danger to civil society.

In one of his PBS travelogues, Rick Steves went to Italy and Germany to examine “The Story of Fascism,” with Trumpworld clearly in mind; German political scientist Andreas Clemens provided insight into how a populist demagogue like Hitler managed to undermine Germany’s nascent democracy, which can easily be applied to Trump: “He repeated a lie endlessly, and he didn’t make it a small lie, he made it a big lie, and he kept hammering it into their heads. He also dumbed it down as much as possible,” providing simple solutions to complicated problems. It didn’t matter if what he said was dangerous; his most fanatical supporters were “entertained” by the “show.” Like Hitler, Trump is not “guided” by any particular ideology; he was a “messianic” megalomaniac who fed the masses with the most convenient “enemy” to blame for every problem.

So, we see that Trump’s vetoing of the defense bill was based on petty personal complaint and ignorance, not on any particular political “ideology.” And that brings us to that  can of worms of what exactly does political ideology have to do with the age of Trump. On one hand, Trump and his most fanatical base of supporters do not seem to be motivated by politics, but by petty personal considerations, usually of the “social” or racial variety—see Stephen Miller, whose whole existence seems to revolve around his personal distaste for Hispanics.

There can be little doubt that Miller was the Machiavellian behind Trump’s shocking announcement that he was not signing either the omnibus bill to avoid a government shutdown, as well as the COVID-19 stimulus package. How do we know this? Because only Miller would compose a speech in which its principle “whine” was that there was spending for foreign aid to Central American countries, without bothering to differentiate what spending package it was actually in.

When it was realized that House Republicans were not going to support the Trump/Miller call for the individual stimulus check bumped from $600 to $2,000 in any way, shape or form, Trump capitulated and signed both spending bills on Sunday, with the overriding  of his veto of the defense authorization to come shortly. It is worth noting that Trump’s “plan” had no basis in logic; A bigger check sounds great if you are living from paycheck-to-paycheck, or have no income at all; but as some economists are pointing out, $150,000 households don’t need a “stimulus” check, and will likely just leave it laying in the bank, while those who immediately spend the higher amount will likely cause “overheating” of the economy—which means that any too-fast short-term economic boost would likely lead to a harmful downturn.  But this wasn’t Trump thinking of long-term implications; angry that Republicans—at least in the Senate—were leaving him in their rearview mirrors, Trump just wanted to gum-up the works out of pure spite.

We are learning now that Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert, who arose from the “Tea Party” movement—which was simply a knee-jerk, racist response to the election of a black president—is “suing” Mike Pence to force him on Jan. 6 to use his alleged “authority” to throw out Biden’s electoral votes and replace them with Trump’s. This is the kind of insanity that the Post was talking about, but Trump once more sees this as a “loyalty” test to put Pence in an impossible situation.  If one is “confused” about why so many House Republicans behave like idiots it is because most of them were elected by the same kind of voters who find Trump so “appealing.” Such supporters may call themselves “Republican,” or vote for Republican Party, but it isn’t for “political” reasons, it is for social and “cultural” reasons. They just “hate” the “others” because they are “different.”

On the other hand, the “art and science” of politics doesn’t have much to do with what the “left” is doing at the present time. Being “left” isn’t so much a political philosophy, but simply being anti-Trump, regardless of actual political ideology; we see how while Trump has surrounded himself with “radicals,” Joe Biden has purposefully left out of his incoming administration anyone who is clearly of the ideological left, bringing in mostly “old hands” from the Obama administration; even the “new” blood,  Transportation nominee Pete Buttigieg, is better known for being a “moderate” and insensitive to black concerns as mayor of South Bend in the safely “red” state of Indiana. 

That Biden loaded up on women in his new administration has nothing to do with being “progressive” or “liberal” either, since none of them are known to be such; either he prefers the company of women (he’s a “handsy” kind of guy), or  being obsequious, or believing (like Trump) that they are more “loyal” and likely to be more “feisty” on news programs getting whatever point the administration wants to get across, especially if “alternate facts”  and “whataboutisms” are necessary.

Biden is simply not the “liberal” that Trump fanatics and Fox News calls him. He was not “bought and paid for” by “the liberals.” He was “bought and paid for” by voters who thought he was the “safe” choice, the “known quantity,” and in the end the only viable alternative to Trump once he was nominated. Ideology never entered into it. As unfit to be president as he was, Trump was still able to control a mob of voters who didn’t really care about “traditional” conservative “values,” but personal prejudices, bigotries and grievances—and Trump fed into that and from that because psychologically he was just like them. He is a populist in the worst sense of the word. 

Democrats still try to play the game, since unlike Republicans they are trying to curry favor with a much wider spectrum of voters, who are not easy to please whatever is done; but the fact that Biden is ignoring the “progressive” wing of the party means that there are “limits” to playing “politics” within his own party: he’d rather play with the Republicans, which of course is a fools’ errand, since Republicans don’t want to do any “politicking” with him or any Democrat.

Being “political” means actually believing in something, not just a knee-jerk reaction to what the other party is doing. I’m not actually sure I or anyone knows what Biden is actually “for,” although for the time being if it means overturning Trump’s mountain of executive orders (close to 200), that should keep him busy. But with a few exceptions in the U.S. Senate, there  should be no expectation of effort at “moderation,” which requires “politicking” from Republicans who are scared of what Gingrich created and what Trump has solidified—and they have only themselves to blame for not stopping it. 

What is left is Trump having mesmerized tens of millions of people by appealing to the absolute lowest common denominator of their psyches, their most elemental fears, hatreds and paranoia. In his Atlantic article, McKay noted Gingrich’s fascination with wild animals, and his belief that civil behavior was for “sissies”; he preferred the “politics” of wild beasts. And as we have seen too often, Trump acts no more rationally than a wild beast.

After a stumble, the Packers proceed to blow out Titans

 

The Packers have had a tendency this season to start out of the gate fast, but then slow down to make a game “interesting” at the end. Against the Titans it appeared to be more of the same, scoring touchdowns on their first three possessions, and they were ready to do so on their fourth when after a missed field goal was nullified by a Titans defensive offside penalty, they allowed the opportunity to pass when Aaron Rodgers was sacked on the fourth down play instead of retrying the field goal. In the third quarter that missed opportunity started to loom large as the Titans sliced a 19-0  deficit to 19-14. But then the Packers did something they haven’t done since Week 2 against the Lions, which was put their foot down and dominate the rest of the way on both sides of the ball for their most lopsided win of the season, 40-14.

As happened last week, the Packer running game was effective against one of the lesser defenses in the league, this time the seventh worst in yards allowed. Rookie AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones combined for 218 yards on the ground, although 89 of those came on two long runs; frankly, the Titans couldn’t tackle worth a damn all game, which meant that despite the snow there was little the Titan defense could do to slow the Packer offense down, which averaged 7 yards per play. The pass defense wasn’t much better, which meant that Rodgers’ mostly short throws were caught and moved a few yards down the field unlike last week, and in the fourth quarter with the game too far distant for the Titans, he allowed himself to chance a few passes down the field.  Rodgers didn’t need to throw too many passes in the game, and when he did he seemed to target Davante Adams almost exclusively; Adams caught 11 passes for 142 yards, and three of Rodgers' four TD passes.

Coming into this game it appeared that the Packer defense would have a challenge on its hands, with Ryan Tannehill having his best season, Derrick Henry the most dominant running back in the league. But maybe the snow effected both players, save on a 45-yard TD run by Tannehill that caught the defense napping. Tannehill was generally ineffective for most of the game, throwing two interceptions and finishing with a 40.5 passer rating, while Henry had only 70 yards on 19 carries until he tacked on some 28 garbage yards late with the game long since over. Whether the snow was a factor or not, it was the best defensive showing for the Packers all season.

Next week it is against the Bears, with Mitchell Trubisky back in the saddle again with three wins in a row. The Packers need to beat the Bears to clinch the NFC number one seed, which they haven’t had since 2011.

Trump was no “Santa Claus” when it came to delivering promised jobs on states’ wish lists

 

Before the election, Donald Trump granted an interview to Charles Benson, a reporter with WTMJ in Milwaukee. Trump obviously was treating the interview as a free campaign event, although the well-respected Benson was not Maria Bartiromo or any of those other sycophants on Fox News. He questioned the judgment of holding mass rallies during the pandemic despite Trump’s own health officials advising against it. Benson pressed Trump to explain why he didn’t support a “unified” approach to combatting the pandemic, and Trump of course claimed that “no one could have done better” than he. When Benson told him that his nonmask-wearing supporters would listen to him if he personally  advised that everyone wear a mask, Trump once again played the medical quack selling snake oil, insisting that no one can catch COVID-19 when they are “outside.” 

Trump then attacked Nancy Pelosi for failing to reach a compromise with Mitch McConnell for a stimulus package, but Benson pushed back, pointing out that Senate Republicans were opposing any deal over $500 billion; Trump of course erroneously claimed that he would “take care of that problem in two minutes.” When asked if he could do more to address racism in the country, Trump demurred, claiming that he didn’t think he could “do much” about it; he suggested that minorities should just be “satisfied” with all the jobs he has allegedly created for them.

Then Benson came to the real reason for the interview: what had happened since Trump’s presence at a “ground-breaking” event in June, 2018 with Terry Gou, the founder and CEO of Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, when Trump boasted of his “prowess” in bringing thousands of new jobs to the state.  Of course there was a “catch”: significant state subsidies and massive tax breaks based on job targets met by the company.

But as a prelude, ProPublica published a list of broken promises of jobs that Trump had taken personal credit for “creating” just before and after the 2016 election, promises that had three years to come to fruition before the pandemic struck. The fact is that Trump himself is responsible for almost none of the job growth that did occur in this country; it happened, as it always does, through “free market” mechanisms. In fact, given his mishandling of the pandemic, Trump is actually “better” at creating job losses.

So let’s take a look at a sampling of what actually happened when Trump took personal “credit” for persuading companies to create new jobs: Carrier, 500 jobs fewer than promised for Indiana; Softbank, 40,000 fewer jobs than promised nationwide; Flat Rock, Michigan, 700 automobile jobs not “saved”; Alibaba, nowhere near the Trump “promised” 1 million jobs created nationwide; Bayer, 3,000 promised jobs not created; General Motors, 5,000 fewer jobs by 2018; Walmart, 10,000 new jobs “promised” before 2016, not yet implemented; Keystone XL, 50,000 jobs promised, 202 actually new or saved jobs; Accenture, promised 15,000 new jobs nationwide, less than 4,000 in fact; Intel, promised 10,000 jobs in Chandler, Arizona, 3,000 in actuality; Charter Communications promised 20,000 jobs, 2,500 created in actuality; the claim of 1 million new jobs from a trade and arms deal with Saudi Arabia that was not reality-based; Broadcom bringing back a “massive” amount of jobs to the U.S.,  but the CEO denied that such was the plan; tax “reform” was supposed to create “a lot” of jobs, but didn’t—AT&T invested $1 billion with tax cut, but still slashed 10,000 jobs in 2018; Ivanka’s “Pledge to America’s Workers” claimed to create 6.5 million new jobs, but the “retraining program” produced few if any real jobs.

Which brings us back to Foxconn, which promised to build a 20 million-square-foot LCD complex in Mount Pleasant, a village in Racine County, and would employ 5,200 people by the end of 2020, to eventually expand to 13,000 jobs. Josh Dzieza wrote a lengthy expose in The Verge in October which examined Foxconn’s false promises in the hopes of receiving public funding and tax breaks, and currently employing less than 300 people, the majority of them foreign workers on student visas. American employees reported being humiliated by Foxconn’s Chinese supervisors, and many of the initial hires quit. Foxconn initially rented an old office building in Milwaukee where the employees had nothing to do and had to buy their own office supplies. The LCD plant was never built, and most of the buildings that were built by Foxconn stood empty until the company was granted permission for use as storage facilities. 

Dzieza’s writes “That illusion has had real costs. State and local governments spent at least $400 million, largely on land and infrastructure Foxconn will likely never need. Residents were pushed from their homes under threat of eminent domain and dozens of houses bulldozed to clear property Foxconn doesn’t know what to do with…Months after the 2018 groundbreaking, the company was racing to hire the 260 people needed to receive the first tranche of payments from the lucrative subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. Recruiters were told to hit the number but given little in the way of job descriptions. Soon, offices began to fill with people with nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones.”

One employee said that “things don’t make any sense here,” and “Imagine being in a job where you don’t really know if it’s real or not.” Another employee noted that an assembly line for televisions turned out to be nothing more than a photo-op for Trump and Foxconn executives; the rented building and the line was shut down within weeks afterward. This is the illusion of Trump in a nutshell; he of empty promises, empty photo-ops and empty buildings.

The reality was that most of Foxconn’s workforce was in China, and Trump was threatening a trade war, and Gou wanted to establish “goodwill” with the new president. Gou was engaging in what was called a “state visit project,” and apparently didn’t really mean to live-up to the contract he signed with Wisconsin state officials. Industry experts noted that there was an LCD “glut” in the market, and it was doubtful that Foxconn would actually build a major manufacturing plant in a state—let alone a country—where labor costs would outrace falling prices for LCD products. The fact was that Foxconn never really intended to build the LCD plant; Gou just wanted to get in “good” with Trump so that Trump wouldn’t do anything to hurt his business. The tax breaks and other state funding received by Foxconn, was just money to offset the “cost” of this “goodwill” gesture.

The cost of this “good will” to the residents of the state was also on the high side—anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million per person, contingent on how many people Foxconn actually employed in the state. The higher amount seems the most likely result. In a desperate effort to justify the money being on spent on Foxconn, the company came up with bizarre ideas on how to utilize the empty industrial park that had been built. One idea was to use a building as a distribution center for golf carts made in China. Dzieza writes

Foxconn only ever got as far as buying the golf carts. They arrived from China disassembled, in orange, pink and other festive colors. One employee described then a “the biggest pieces of shit,” like something “bought off Wish.com.” Unable to make them autonomous, Foxconn put them in storage in the multipurpose building. At one point, the company discussed outfitting them with lights and turning them into security vehicles, but the subsidiary in charge of security refused to pay for the carts, according to one employee. As the divisions bickered, bored employees would come down from the Milwaukee headquarters to race the carts around the empty building, until the batteries finally died.

Foxconn didn’t even bother to hire much locally, with much if not most of its hires eventually being H1-B and EB-2 college students from China and India. The Chinese supervisors made no effort to hide their contempt for American workers—even if all the students were doing was school work on “company time”; As long as they clocked-in and out, they counted as “employees.” When it was rumored that a Trump administration representative was coming for a visit, the management ordered most of the Asian employees to hide themselves to provide a façade of “diversity” in a group photo.

In order to meet the next hiring goal to qualify for subsidies, Foxconn “hired” about 350 new employees in the last few months of 2019, and then promptly fired most of them at the beginning of new year. State officials then demanded that either Foxconn abide by its contract—which the company claimed was actually a “fluid” proposal and not a “concrete” intention—or have its subsidies revoked. Officials in Racine County, where the alleged LCD manufacturing was to proceed, have opposed the cancellation of subsidies, despite the lack of evidence that anything is actually being “manufactured” there—save for churning out, what one employee derisively noted,  “press releases.” 

In his interview with Benson, Trump claimed that Foxconn had built “one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen,” typical Trump empty braggadocio, although when pressed about the epic failure of Foxconn to follow through on its—and Trump’s—promises made in its original contract, Trump conceded that maybe the company should not receive any more subsidies, which is far too late in the day for what the state has already paid for almost nothing. It is suspected that once Trump is out of office, Gou will feel no “pressure” to fulfill his side of the bargain at all and just pull out, just as he has done to other states and other countries after making similar promises to create jobs.

In the end, the Foxconn debacle is just another example of how Trump—pretending to be “Santa Claus” with a bag full of “presents” for states he needed to win—arrived with boxes with colorful wrappings and bows, but with nothing inside of them.

As long as Trump remains in office, he and his supporters remain capable of anything

 

The leftist journalist John L. Spivak, in commenting upon the alleged conspiracy by industrialists to stage a military-backed coup in 1933—the so-called “Business Plot”—with the intent of “forcing” FDR to accept being a figurehead president, noted that 

The takeover plot failed because though those involved had astonishing talents for making breathtaking millions of dollars, they lacked an elementary understanding of people and the moral forces that activate them. In a money-standard civilization such as ours, the universal regard for anyone who is rich tends to persuade some millionaires that they are knowledgeable in fields other than the making of money. The conspirators went about the plot as if they were hiring an office manager; all they needed was to send a messenger to the man they had selected.

The “office manager” the industrialists—the same kind of people that FDR in his famous 1936 Madison Square Garden speech proclaimed that he “welcomed their hatred”—hoped to recruit was Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, who had supported the "Bonus Army" protesters. However, they seemed to have missed what Butler said in a speech prior to his being approached for this mission:

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street…I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

In testimony before Congress, Butler claimed that a Gerald MacGuire repeatedly contacted him about supplying him with 500,000 armed men and financial support if he led a fascist takeover of the government. At the time, near everyone regarded the whole thing as a complete hoax, although given Butler’s impeccable reputation, it was believed that MacGuire was engaged in “exploring” the possibility of a coup on behalf of wealthy backers for whom the New Deal was anathema, and who would all deny any knowledge of the alleged plot. But if indeed Butler was approached to lead a fascist-style takeover of the government (the “pretext” being that FDR was in “ill health”), the alleged plotters seriously misread their man, for Butler was well known for his support of FDR and antipathy toward unrestrained capitalism.

As Spivak noted, the rich seem to think that since they are good at making money, that makes them “qualified” in other fields of endeavor, as if they can “buy” a PH.D without actually having to take a single class or read a single book on any subject that requires a modicum of intellect or critical thinking. We have heard Donald Trump repeatedly claim his “genius” in a variety of fields in which he offered crackpot ideas, and his belief he was “smarter” than all the generals in the military. If we need any more proof—or rather, just more to put on top of the Mount Everest-sized pile—that  Trump’s presidency has been nothing more than a massive ego-trip bereft of any semblance of intellectual curiosity (other than, say, drinking deadly chemicals to “kill”  the COVID-19). Nor does Trump (save for his most fanatical base) possess that “elementary understanding of people and the moral forces that activate them,” which was borne out by the fact that even in states with Republican-controlled legislatures or governors that Joe Biden won, the governors and election officials refused  to heed Trump’s pressure to overturn the election on ethical and legal grounds.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump from keeping his focus on riling up his personal militias on election fraud conspiracies while the world around him is falling apart. While once more Trump is trying to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to give him just one court “victory”—again targeting a state (Pennsylvania) with a Republican-dominated legislature that approved expanded mail-in voting—his insistence that cyber security, especially that targeting Russian hacking efforts, is just another thing that makes him look “bad.” His insistence on believing Vladimir Putin’s lies has opened this country to massive security breaches as we see now with the SolarWinds episode. Trump did not want to hear anything about Russian hacking, and this refusal gave Russian hackers a “window” to operate freely, because they knew that cyber security experts were afraid for their jobs if they brought the subject up. This latest hacking allegedly began this past March, which gave the hackers (likely Russian intelligence agents), plenty of time to do a great deal of damage. Of course the Russians are going to deny it; only a fool like Trump actually believes such denials.

Of course the pandemic continues to rage all over the world, and in this country we find that Texas and Florida deliberately reduced testing and “reevaluated” what qualified as a COVID-19 death, while delaying reporting before the election in an obvious effort to effect the vote. Trump’s own attitude toward the virus seems to be “If you don’t talk about it, it isn’t real,” and that goes for testing too. Of course with millions of Trump supporters who don’t believe the virus is “real,” it doesn’t really matter if Trump is only concerned about his political life and not that of people who haven’t stopped breathing yet.

For Trump’s “army,” the battle continues for what can only be described as a fascist overthrow of democracy. According to Politico, Trump’s most numb-nut supporters—including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn—have called on Trump to impose martial law via the Insurrection Act to undo the election:

Nonetheless, in the minds of some authoritarian-leaning and conspiracy-minded Trump supporters, the Insurrection Act has become a needed step to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from assuming the presidency. Their evidence-deficient reasoning: Democrats illegally rigged the election and are attempting a coup, and Trump must send in the troops to undo this conspiracy. The conviction shows how hard-edged MAGA ideology has become in the wake of Trump’s election loss. While scattered theories about a “deep state” arrayed against Trump have long circulated in MAGA circles, calls for troops to stop a democratically elected president from taking office have taken those ideas to a more conspiratorial and militaristic level. It also displays the exalted level to which Trump has been elevated among his most zealous fans as his departure looms.

Let’s recall that the 1933 “Business Plot” was to operate along similar lines, albeit under less “secrecy.” Today we have an anti-democratic conspiracy being led by a “businessman” who has lived his entire life ruled by his own laws and cannot function by compromise, or accept “losing.” Trump has deliberately sought to inflame his base with evidence-free claims of fraud without a single thought about the danger of doing so. He has been less than subtle about his supporters taking to the streets to overturn the election on his behalf. His supporters have in fact taken to the streets, sometimes violently and often armed to “protest” the election result. Given Trump’s abnormal behavior that is being fed by many far-right Republicans and media, it is a very real danger that if an “army” of Trump supporters did march on Washington DC to prevent Biden from taking office, Trump would do nothing to stop it. If Trump actually called on the Army itself to perform that action in order to prevent an “illegal” president from taking office, it would pose the most serious crisis in this country’s history since the Civil War.  

Trump is actually “keen” on the idea, but he twists it by claiming it is to send out the Army to quell an “insurrection” by anti-Trump protesters, if he actually refuses to leave office because of what he would call “proven fraud,” as he suggested to Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro.  The effort to concoct such “proven fraud” continues apace, as the New York Times reported that on Friday there was a “raucous” meeting that included Sidney Powell in which Trump proposed that Powell be appointed “special prosecutor” to investigate election fraud. Most Trump advisors opposed such a move, including Rudy Giuliani, because of the likelihood that such an investigation by Powell would only provide more embarrassment for the regime, given her incompetence and habit of promoting the most bizarre conspiracies, and “witnesses” and “experts” who turn out to be complete fakers themselves.

Meanwhile, a far-right group called True the Vote is attempting to “preemptively” disenfranchise 360,000 voters in Georgia prior to the runoff elections to determine control of the U.S. Senate. Some counties have taken their own steps to suppress the vote by reducing the number of early voting stations, which has led to the issuing of complaints to election officials.  It is worth noting that in this country there are 240 million people who are legally qualified to vote, with the number who did not vote in 2020 roughly equal to the number who voted for Joe Biden. We should be trying to trying to encourage more people to vote, not discourage them. But for Republicans, greater democracy is anathema because like all masters of the plantation, they fear as much as they patronize the plebes, which is why Republicans always seem to demonize those who promote such “socialist” ideas like affordable health care; it makes them more “equal.”

Despite the Electoral College vote, the danger is still not over. The refusal of Trump’s most fanatical supporters to accept reality and possibly react “affirmatively” to Trump’s call to “action” cannot be dismissed out of hand as a “hoax,” since Trump has taken pains not to discourage such action. That is what a “leader” with authoritarian impulses does with the help of far-right media propaganda that lends “deep state” conspiracies a measure of “credence” for a “base” that craves authoritarian leaders who promise to dispose of their social and ideological “enemies” and undesirables. 

Packers beat Panthers despite subpar performance by Rodgers

 

In an extremely frustrating game to watch, the Packers opened up an early 21-3 lead before limping to the finish line with a 24-16 victory over the Panthers on Saturday night. The Packers scored on their first three possessions, but despite the fact he threw one touchdown pass and ran for another, Aaron Rodgers was clearly not playing particular well, with just 66 yards on 9 of 12 passing; the rest of the game he was an ineffective 11 of 17 for just 77 yards. After being sacked just 11 times coming into the game, Rodgers seemed continuously under pressure, sacked five times for 47 yards in losses. He rarely took a shot down the field, often just taking one quick look and then dumping the ball short. According to the stats provided to the NFL Network game announcers, his average throw was just over four yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

Yet this was in stark contrast to the running game. Aaron Jones gained 145 yards on 20 carries, and overall the Packers averaged 7.2 yards on 27 official running plays. Was it because the Panther front was just better against the pass than the run? Was the Panther secondary “underrated”? This was not borne out by the season statistics entering the game; the Panthers were an “average” defense against the run, allowing 4.4 yards per running play, and allowed a 67 percent pass completion rate with only five interceptions and  just 19 sacks in 13 games—well below even the Packers 35 for the season. But it did look like Rodgers wasn’t comfortable at all in the pocket all game, which accounted for him breaking out more than a few times to run with the ball.  

While the Packers were stalling on offense after their third possession, the Packer defense was able to keep the Panthers in check because although Teddy Bridgewater can put up a “respectable” stat line, he is one of those quarterbacks who just plays better between the twenties. The ball being poked out of his hands at the goal line while he was holding it high trying to leap over a standing wall of defenders was just a dumb play. When it was decided to kick a field goal on first down at the 15 yard line instead of trying to score a quick touchdown with just over 2 minutes to play, it was only “understandable” if you have more confidence in the defense getting a quick three-and-out than in the offense scoring a touchdown given the time and timeout situation—and at least giving the offense a “chance” to score the tying touchdown. It turned out to be a not entirely senseless move, given the Packers’ offensive stagnation, but Bridgewater was predictably not up to the task when given that opportunity.

The Packers were fortunate to escape with a subpar performance by Rodgers because the Packers were able to run the ball early and the Panthers are just not a very efficient team on offense. The Packers are favored next week against the Titans, but they will face the NFL’ s leading rusher in Derrick Henry, and Ryan Tannehill is having a “career” season.

Trump supporters have heads of granite that not even a pile-driver can dent

 

After Mitch McConnell found his own “safe harbor” in acknowledging Joe Biden’s election victory after the Electoral College confirmed this fact, Donald Trump expressed his “disappointment” and disbelief that he could lose the election after having received 75 million votes. Actually, it was closer to 74 million, but in any case it was still not quite the over 81 million votes for Biden, a fact that Trump seems to relegate to the reptilian portion of his brain. For one thing, Trump also greatly benefitted from the voting changes in response to the pandemic; for another thing, if he thinks the votes he received is “tremendous,” then what the hell does he think 81 million is? Oh, yes, it had to be “fraudulent” because it was bigger than his number.

Meanwhile, that walking conspiracy theory, Sen. Ron Johnson, and the village idiot Rand Paul insisted on holding a committee hearing to somehow pretend that a margin of 7 million votes is not enough “proof” that the country has spoken. Save for a handful of senators and election officials, you could swap out Republicans with any Fox News, Newsmax and OAN conspiracy propagandist and you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

Out on the streets, the extreme-right racist Proud Boys are no longer content to just “stand by” as Trump instructed them to, and over the weekend rampaged all over Washington DC to express their “discontent” over the Electoral College vote. If we had any other person as president, he would be calling for calm; but not this so-called president—he chooses to feed into it because he enjoys this kind of thuggish support—some of it armed—because it feeds into both his sense of power, and his sense of victimhood.

To people who are offended by those who are base, bigoted, braggarts and bullies, it is incomprehensible that a so-called human being who inhabits all four of those “qualities” could possibly be fit to lead anyone, let alone a whole country. Trump has managed to please tens of millions of people who he has provided “substance” to their hatreds and prejudices, people who never once think of the needs of those outside their insular social spheres; their “view” is the only “right” view no matter how much harm it causes.

I received a letter from a family member who lives in a very “red” southern state, and like the rest of the family is just as “red” in political and social believes. Not all are “radicals,” but when you regard your views as logical and rational, yet to them it is “communism” or “socialism,” then you know that the disconnect is impossible to bridge. This letter was in response to one I wrote after the election, which I believed was well-reasoned and reality-based. I should have known better:

Looks the Dems, biased media, George Soros, Mikey Bloomberg and other billionaires—these two spent at least 2 billion to help buy the election for Biden. This Jan.20, you will the get the bought and paid for leader all you Liberals want.

George Soros, of Jewish-Hungarian extraction who made it his personal mission to support and assist in the establishment and maintenance of democracy all over the world, has been the far-right’s perpetual punching bag and bogeyman, which only goes to prove the right’s authoritarian impulses. Forbes reported before the election that 23 billionaires supplied the Trump campaign with at least six-figure donations. As for Biden being “bought and paid for,” he certainly wasn’t the “choice” of progressives; he was the “choice” of those who believed he was the “safe” choice, and his cabinet choices seem to indicate a desire to be “moderate.”

It is hard for me to believe a person that can’t carry a conversation without stumbling and stammering, forgetting even the state he is in, won’t even take the softball questions ask of him and only answers the pre-arranged questions he has been prept on.

I can tell this correspondent doesn’t watch too much late night talk shows with their monologues and commentary about Trump, because he would have discovered that Trump’s frequent garbled phrasing and mangled wordplay are the stuff of comedy legend. As for “softball” questions, he is being a bit hypocritical when he forgets that Fox News hosts typically throw Trump Hoppity Hop-size rubber balls that he can’t possible miss, or simply ask for his “opinion” on the latest insane conspiracy theories he retweeted and let’s him go on for an hour without interruption or even asking for “clarification.”

His rallies range from 6 to 26 people and a few of his rallies with cars in the parking lot, where the people had to remain in their cars with NO QUESTIONS ASKED. The other candidate has from 10,000 to 45,000 supporters at his rallies that last for over an hour.

Well, you know that there is a pandemic going on, but unfortunately I have not been able to convince him it is “real,” despite the fact that the state of Tennessee is in the top-10 in virus cases and is nearing 6,000 deaths—four times what it was before the third-wave started.  As for those attending Trump’s rallies, we can’t account for stupid, for stupid is as stupid does.

Or how about the 1,800,000 mail-in ballots from Michigan that were sent to voters and the 2,200,000 votes that were returned to be counted. The Republican vote auditors that were run out of the building ballots were processed and counted. And keeping anyone from seeing into the site. Go Detroit Go!!!

This conspiracy theory of course has no basis in fact, just random numbers thrown into and picked out of a bingo card basket. The ABC News affiliate in Detroit on election day reported that “According to the Secretary of State's office, there have been 3,326,389 requests for absentee ballots and a total of 2,631,430 received.” The other stuff is equally baseless and disproven conspiracy BS by trailer trash types.

Doesn’t smell like up and up to me. You would think the Dems would like not only the Republicans to see how honest the ballot counting was, but also for all America. How does it smell to you?

Well, it doesn’t smell alright to me, but not for the same reasons. It seems to be that it is his side that never wants honest counting of ballots, seeing their fear that if everyone who is eligible to vote did so, Republicans would probably lose by at least 10 million votes every election.

A person could be write on and on of the negative infractions, like changing the rules for mail-in ballots just a day or two before election day (where?), postal employees ordered by their , superiors to change the post mark to Nov. 3 so ballots could be could be counted.

Let’s see—the state legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia are all controlled by Republicans. They allowed the “changing of the rules” in response to the pandemic. Voters did as they were allowed to do—Democrat, Republican and “independent” voters all took advantage of the same rules. Trump lost because more people loathed him than “loved” him. Period. Oh, and more dangling conspiracy theories.

The one thing that really bothers me is Biden says not America First—take care of the world then the U.S.A.

Another conspiracy theory of the media right. Trump has made Russia, North Korea and Iran more dangerous adversaries because of his neglect of their nefarious activities; we are learning of massive Russian hacking into U.S. government servers, and Trump and his DNI partisan political hack are completely silent on it, because Vladimir Putin is a good “friend.” China? You just have to look at the latest trade deficit numbers to see how far this country is “bought and paid for” by trade with China, and Trump has done nothing to stop that. “America First” is nothing more than the empty sloganeering of fascist white nationalists, and of white grievance. After Trump alienated our European allies, we have mighty few real friends in the world at the present time. If “taking care of the world” means repairing our ties with traditional allies, that’s enough reason to ditch the “America First” hypocrisy.

The point of all of this is that a month after the election, all the asinine behavior of Trump and his allies is still not enough to convince Trumpers that maybe there is something very wrong with this man. Their heads are like granite, and not even a pile-driver can put a dent in their hard-headedness.

William Barr leaves behind a trail of infamy—and eventually, nothing

 

Following the Electoral College vote which as expected confirmed Joe Biden as president-elect, Attorney General William Barr announced that he was resigning his office forthwith, probably because there was no further reason for him to hang around, and Donald Trump probably told Barr that since he had “failed” to get him reelected,  it was best for him to get out of town. It remains to be seen if his replacement for the next five weeks, Jeffrey Rosen, will be his own man, or Trump’s.

One thing for certain is that Barr left with his rotten reputation intact. His resignation letter was full of lies and malinformation.  He was “proud” to serve in the cause of the “many successes” and “unprecedented achievements” Trump allegedly “delivered.” Barr, obviously mindful that his “legacy” will be attacked by historians, persisted in the self-serving whine that Trump accomplished all despite being “immediately met by a partisan onslaught” that was “abusive and deceitful”—conveniently forgetting that Trump’s first actions in office set the tone for his administration’s abuses and deceit, and that it was Trump who was the one who raised partisanship to almost the point of civil war.

Barr again attacked the Mueller investigation, again hypocritically ignoring the fact that it was Trump’s own Justice Department that initiated the investigation, and which did result in convictions of Trump campaign associates. Barr’s letter went on in frustrating fashion with more indefensible falsifications of Trump’s “accomplishments,” and was clearly meant to pacify both Trump and throw shade on Barr’s own hyper-partisanship.

Let’s recall some of the things that Barr will be “remembered” for.  Barr started out “innocuously” enough with his antipathy toward the legalization of marijuana in several states.  Barr ignored arguments by career staff that mergers between sellers of marijuana did not warrant antitrust investigations, and Barr demanded that these investigations continue without due process to determine if there was actually any “harm” being done to those involved in the business. A whistleblower revealed that Barr’s actions had nothing to do with the law, but with his own personal feelings about the legalization of pot.

But if there was any one thing that Barr signed on for the job to do, that was to go on an all-out assault on the Mueller investigation, which he had previously attacked prior to his confirmation; one wonders why so many senators seemed unmindful of the fact that far from bringing “gravitas” and “experience”  to the position of Attorney General, Barr’s previous stint in the position in the George H.W. Bush administration should have given lawmakers a clue of what Barr intended to do—which was to shield the president from any and all criminal liability.

Barr said nothing about the Mueller investigation until it was completed, and his own personal “summary” letter focused almost exclusively around the idea that the investigation found no “conclusive” evidence of Russian collusion with Trump officials, twisting it into a claim that there was “conclusive” evidence that there was no such evidence at all. The letter ignored the convictions of Trump associates, the indictments of Russians and Russian agencies, and chose to ignore the fact that evidence was found that Trump officials engaged in obstruction, but made the mistake of allowing Barr’s Justice Department decide if charges would be brought.

Barr also became involved in matters of foreign policy, first assisting Trump in “helping” his “friend,” Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan, to end the investigation into the Turkish state-owned Halkbank, which was accused of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran in a massive money-laundering scheme. However, the case seems to have become too “big” for Barr to simply sweep under the rug, and the case continues as a federal judge this past October refused to dismiss it. Barr also sought help from several foreign countries to discover what information they supplied the Mueller investigation, apparently hoping to find “irregularities,” which if they did exist were never made public.

Barr ignored the findings of the DOJ’s own inspector general, who found that there was nothing illegal about government surveillance on the Trump campaign. Barr insisted that improper “spying” occurred, and assigned U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate if such was the case. Durham’s probe has been ongoing for 18 months, and unlike the Mueller investigation it has been almost bereft of point, with one guilty plea from a low-level FBI official who changed one word on a FISA request.

 

Barr has also promulgated ideas of unfettered executive authority, and the power of the executive to do as it wishes, with only an election to hold the guilty “accountable.” The Durham investigation also illustrates Barr’s belief in his power to investigate and prosecute political enemies for purely partisan motives, if a motive is even necessary at all. Barr has repeatedly refused to come before Congress to explain this and other actions, even under the threat of contempt.

 

More recently Barr had been in the forefront of advancing baseless claims of voter fraud, even sending out threatening memos to polling stations in battleground states. After the election, Barr toned down the rhetoric, even “disappearing” for the most part as he realized his time was drawing to a close, admitting that there was nothing he could “prove” to change the election result.

 

One wonders what exactly Trump and Barr have accomplished during their years together; almost nothing that will last, since everything they have done can be easily undone by the incoming administration, since save for the tax “reform” law that mainly benefited Trump and his rich friends, none of it was through legislative action. When all is said and done, four years from now there will be nothing left of Barr’s “legacy” save the memory of the outrages he and Trump committed upon the democratic institutions in this country.

The Electoral College has spoken, but does the fat man still got a song?

 

As the Electoral College takes Donald Trump down for the count, his most fanatical supporters still seem to think they still have until January 20 to get Trump’s carcass off the mat. On Friday the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed in the most dismissive fashion possible the lawsuit brought by Texas’ pardon-hunting attorney general, signed on to by 17 Republican states and over 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives.  Even today before Wisconsin’s electors were allowed to conduct their business, the state Supreme Court still had to deal with another frivolous lawsuit. In another decision that was absurdly 4-3, two of the liberal justices had to remind the three dissenters that "Wisconsin voters complied with the election rulebook. No penalties were committed and the final score was the result of a free and fair election."

Adding to the sports analogy, Chief Justice Brian Hagedorn observed how late in the day it was for Republicans to complain about the election rules they themselves had approved: "Our laws allow the challenge flag to be thrown regarding various aspects of election administration. The challenges raised by the Campaign in this case, however, come long after the last play or even the last game; the Campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began.”

Such logic escapes the authoritarian fanatic, however. On Fox & Friends, that weasel-looking guy Stephen Miller announced that "The only date in the Constitution is Jan. 20. So we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election. As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we're going to send those results up to Congress. This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open. That means that if we win these cases in the courts, that we can direct that the alternate state of electors be certified."

Of course these “alternate” electors are technically voting illegally and have no force of law, but then again who ever said any of this had any “logic.” Just to show you how desperately stupid these people are: “Why did the Swing States stop counting in the middle of the night?”@MariaBartiromo“Because they waited to find out how many ballots they had to produce in order to steal the Rigged Election. They were so far behind that they needed time, & a fake ‘water main break’ to recover!”

Let’s try this one: Maybe people want to go to sleep at 2 AM after counting ballots all day?

In their book Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers, John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer describe Trump as a self-serving bully and power-mad—a pure and unadulterated demagogue who appeals to popular prejudices and fears, and in doing so, Trump’s supporters are willing to allow him any and all means to accomplish cleanning out the “rot.” If people hate “Mexicans” as Trump and Miller do, then any means necessary to rid them from sight is acceptable, whether by round-ups of working families by ICE Gestapo thugs, or by changing the rules of legal status. “Ordinary” Germans were quite willing to allow democratic institutions to be swept away in 1933, and be ruled by an authoritarian regime as long as the designated scapegoats were sought out and removed from sight, and how it was done didn’t matter to them as long as they perceived “benefit.”  

Trump may pretend that he does evil in the people’s name, but the reality is that Trump doesn’t even try to “lead”; like all demagogues, he stood on his stool and bellowed out his prejudices and bigotries, and to the “surprise” of many he attracted fellow haters like flies to a dung pile. As Dean and Altemeyer point out in their book, Trump was much better at this than Joe McCarthy and George Wallace. Still, when a demagogue with an authoritarian streak like Trump starts haranguing  at his rallies, does anyone really believe that he actually “respects” his audience as fellow human beings, or does he just see them as so many faceless “fans” of his “dynamic” personality? Sports and film stars receive great adulation from “fans,” but do the "fans" really mean anything to them on a personal level, save to further bloat their status and ego?

Trump and his supporters might be more “accepting” of the reality of his election loss had they spent more time viewing news programming that was not “fans” of Trump, and countered his demagoguery of personal bigotry and conspiracy theories with facts and reason. Even if they disagreed with the “other” side, maybe they wouldn’t have been so “shocked”  to discover that not only is not everyone a “fan,” but in fact hate Trump passionately. 

One wonders if Trump will ever leave us alone, or will we be forced to endure him for years to come. An “elder statesman” he will never be. What do people actually think? A poll commissioned by Fox News revealed the following: While Trump still had a 47 percent approval rating, there was an indication of weakness; while 30 percent “strongly” approved of Trump, this was in contrast to the 44 percent who “strongly” disapproved of him. This shows how “soft” Trump’s approval actually is, and the strength of the disapproval of him.

The poll also showed that only a bare majority approved of Trump’s handling of what is allegedly his strongest “case,” the economy. 66 percent currently believe the economy is only “fair” or “poor.” 11 percent actually believed the economy is in “excellent” condition, despite Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic; the only people who could possibly believe that are those who make their money off the stock market, or people too desperately supportive of Trump to want to believe anything else.

As far as personal opinion of the man is concerned, 45 percent view Trump favorably; 29 percent were “strong” in this view, while 42 percent “strongly” viewed Trump unfavorably. Only 32 percent believe the country is better off than it was four years ago; 55 percent believe it is worse off. This again suggests the tenuousness of those who “somewhat” support Trump.

Still, while it isn’t surprising that 42 percent believe Trump will go down as one of the worst presidents in history, what is surprising is that 22 percent actually believe he will be remembered as one of the greatest in history. Most historians will almost certainly opt for the former judgment on Trump, both the man and his presidency. That 22 percent certainly represents those whose dark vision of the country Trump has touched the most. Interestingly, while 29 percent of white men consider Trump one of the “greatest,” white women are not far behind, at 26 percent. Think about it: one out of every four white women you encounter thinks that Trump is one of this country’s “greatest” presidents.

36 percent, meanwhile, still believe that the election was “stolen,” including that percentage of white people with college degrees; both white men and women are equally likely to believe this, but the highest percentage of believers are, of course, white evangelicals, at 56 percent—and this group seems especially susceptible to authoritarian impulses. On a curious note, more GOP women (73 percent) believe that the election was “stolen” compared to GOP men, at 64 percent.  Still, "just" 58 percent believing that the election was not “stolen” is serious cause for concern, especially if Republican voters continue to be brainwashed into thinking every election is “rigged”—unless, of course, their side wins, and then it isn’t.

Will we see Trump running again in 2024? Only 32 percent think he should, and 57 percent emphatically think “no.” That doesn’t mean we won’t see another “Trump” running for office; that incredible swelling head named Ivanka is moving to Florida to “explore” a U.S. Senate run, taking on Marco Rubio in 2022; some advice if she does: that “who wants to read about fucking poor people” should come in handy as a campaign attack ad.