Biden has an immigration plan, but Republicans prefer their own--which is to keep that white grievance piñata handy to beat on for partisan political reasons

 

Ten “moderate” Republican senators are taking to the White House a “modest proposal” for a “unity” stimulus package of $600 billion, which is somewhat scaled-back from Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion proposal, which can likely be passed without Republican support through budget reconciliation. Despite the wide differences in those plans, that at least is chickenfeed compared to the gap between the parties when it comes to another round of immigration reform. In 2006 the Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress with a Republican president seemingly willing to entertain immigration talks, but Democrats in the Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to even bring the subject up in the face of Republican contrariness. In 2013, 68 senators agreed to an immigration reform bill, but the far-right Freedom Caucus cowed the Republican leadership in the House from even considering the bill.

Biden has introduced a summary of proposals for an immigration bill which provides for usual provisions. These include a path to citizenship for DACA, TPS and H-2A recipients, allowing undocumented foreign nationals to apply for conditional temporary status, clearing employment backlogs for work visas, reducing wait periods, and eliminating visa caps. It would also allow DHS to “adjust” green cards issuances based on macroeconomics, meaning providing for immigrant labor that improves the “big picture” in economic growth and needs. Unused visas by the Trump administration’s attempt to reduce legal immigration would be utilized for backlogs for family-based immigration and for asylum seekers. Green cards allotted for the Diversity Lottery would also be increased.

Of course the Biden proposals are not without illegal immigration prevention aspects; “smart technology” will be “enhanced” to prevent illegal border crossings, and as opposed to the Trump administration’s blackmailing tactics, studies will be done to create and fund a plan to reduce the causes of immigration from Central American countries, like corruption, violence and poverty. As noted, none of these proposals are new, but the rehashing of previous attempts which have been blocked by anti-immigrant elements in Congress, who find immigration—especially from Latin America—to be a useful political tool to rile-up the racist, white nationalist base.

Immigration has always been a political “issue” in this country, even since the time of this country’s founding. Naturally, nobody took into account Native Americans’ feelings about the illegal immigrants in their midst, who as “superior” beings felt they could occupy the whole planet and take what they wanted (especially the British). This is what Benjamin Franklin said to justify his opposition to the people of one nation “immigrating” to this land:

Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own nation. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it.

Who was he referring to? Germans, like Donald Trump and his forebears--you know, before they started calling themselves the "master race"; we can certainly understand at least the part of being “unused” to democracy. Franklin was also generally opposed to any immigrants who were not “Anglo-Saxon”:

The Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion, as are the Germans also. The Saxons only accepted.

Franklin was of the opinion that these “aliens” who were not native of the English speaking world were unlikely to “assimilate” into Anglo-Saxon society or accept its “customs”—anymore than “they can acquire our Complexion.” But as small-minded as Franklin was on the issue, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were even more dubious about the benefits of immigration from non-Anglo lands.

At one time or another, the Irish, Chinese, and Europeans from southern and eastern Europe were restricted from entering the country. The American or “Know Nothing” Party in the mid-19^th Century was founded on the anti-immigrant hysteria. The 1924 immigration law was promulgated to restrict “inferior” European “races” from entering the country; for those “outraged” by amnesty proposals, illegal immigration from Europe after the 1924 law led to the 1929 amnesty law, which was extended through 1948 to permit all European immigrants in the country illegally to apply for legal status, by which time immigration from Europe had slowed to the point where the amnesty law was deemed no longer necessary.  During World War II, refugees from Europe—especially Jews—were discouraged through the insidious “public charge” rule, which doubtless was responsible for the deaths of many thousands at the hands of the Nazis.

But even the 1924 immigration law did not apply to immigrants from Latin America, since for many decades they were considered as “partners” in the “new world,” and their labor was exploited. But during the Great Depression approximately 1.8 million residents of Mexican descent—an estimated 60 percent U.S. citizens—were rounded-up and “repatriated” back to Mexico, convenient scapegoats in the competition for jobs, despite the fact that research of the period revealed that few if any jobs were gained because of these deportations. Naturally this doesn’t make it into the history books or excite comment from the media when “civil rights” issues are discussed. TIME noted that

It was in this atmosphere that the Hoover Administration announced a series of deportation programs and began conducting large public raids in major cities. These raids also swept up U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. Though no federal law or act was passed allowing for the mass deportation of U.S. citizens, local governments in cities like the Los Angeles and Detroit, as well as companies like Southern Pacific Railroad and the Ford Motor Company, also took it upon themselves to begin putting people on trains to Mexico, ignoring the fact that only the federal government held the power of deportation.

These illegal roundups continued on FDR’s watch, one of the greatest moral failings of his administration—ironic, since due to labor shortages in World War II, the “bracero” program was instituted to import labor from Mexico, especially in the farm sector; the program wasn’t ended until 1965, which was when a new immigration law was passed that “officially” restricted immigration from Latin America for the first time. Between then and now, the U.S. has nonetheless continued to exploit immigrants from Latin America in two ways—both for their labor, and as a partisan political tool to excite white grievance that one party uses against another. The Trump administration modified this by ignoring the economic necessity for their labor and injecting personal prejudices and bigotry in order to stop even legal immigration.

There should be of course no expectation that a Republican Party that still ties itself to the anti-immigrant white nationalism of Trump will entertain an immigration bill, since it does not wish to “alienate” the white supremacist and neo-Nazi element that sees Trump as their “leader.” It is being suggested that the Biden plan will be broken into separate parts for consideration, but this is dangerous business, because it will allow racist Republicans to only consider the parts their racist base will accept--or that which the people they get their "news" from will "accept," the likes of anti-immigrant fanatics Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Pat Buchanan and the rest of that Nazi ilk. Stephen Miller will no doubt show up on Fox News to do his Julius Streicher imitation.

Three weeks after the coup attempt, Republicans seem just as eager to allow the fascist white nationalist and QAnon fringe to control its destiny

 

Should we pity or just feel disdain for people who are brainwashed by the likes of Fox News and other right-wing “news” outlets trucking in dangerous propaganda? Sean Hannity is professing that he doesn’t know if it is “safe” to be vaccinated against the Covid-19, although the way he said it the other day sounded like playacting. What kind of message is that sending to his viewers gullible enough to take him seriously? This is not being a responsible purveyor of needed information for the public welfare—this is irresponsible behavior that will kill people, and all because the likes of Hannity think that being “contrary” is good for ratings. I mean, they can’t actually believe half of what they say, can they? Even Art Bell was honest enough to admit that half the stuff that was talked about on his “Coast to Coast” radio show was “bullshit.”

I finally received that letter from the Fox News-addict family member since the events of January 6. I was curious to know about how he “explained” that event, but no such luck; not a single hint of his thoughts on the matter, just a few lines of paranoia about Joe Biden and the Democrats. Perhaps he knew deep down that this was wrong and just not “explainable.”  I wrote back suggesting that he take time off from watching Fox News and watch some reality-based news for a change, and that life was short, and if he was honest, he’d probably hadn’t noticed any real change in his life, good or bad, that could explain his dislike for Barack Obama and fandom of Trump.

Of course there is an “explanation” for that, if you read between the lines. For example, he blamed Obama exclusively for Benghazi, while Hillary Clinton bore no responsibility whatever for what happened, despite the fact that Obama had given her free reign to do little but promote her egomaniacal self, and it was known that she did not get on well with Ambassador Christopher Stevens (because he was a man?), which may or may not explain the lack of security at the U.S. compound. Was this belief primarily based on the fact that one of these people was black, and other white? Probably, although he would try to rationalize it in “cultural” terms. Personally, I’m still waiting for that report explaining what Vince Foster knew that was so awful it compelled him to commit suicide (note that I did not say “allegedly”); it isn’t a “conspiracy theory” to want to know the truth about the Clintons’ involvement. I guess you can tell I am no fan of Hillary, who if she had been elected in 2016, would have only told about 20,000 lies.

But I don’t want to discuss that any further, because that is yesterday and we have to deal with today. One of the most absurd talking points going about Fox News these days is that while Donald Trump often talked and behaved irrationally, his policies were nevertheless “sound,” and while Joe Biden may appear “normal” and “boring,” his executive orders demonstrate that he is an “extremist.” Then there is Maria Bartiromo predictably spouting nonsense—“admitting” that far-right elements had been planning to disguise themselves as National Guardsmen on Inauguration Day, but only just as Antifa members dressed-up like Trump supporters during the January 6 riot to make those “peaceful” Trumpists look bad.

And then Tucker Carlson warned his wing-nut viewers that efforts to take far-right domestic terrorists and QAnon fanaticism seriously by law enforcement was in fact an effort to “silence” dissent and take away your “freedom of speech” rights—and all this is called “dictatorship”; the truth of the matter is that Fox News has been doing three things that are destructive to the maintenance of a democracy: propping-up and enabling a corrupt “strongman” (Trump), convincing its viewers that the election was “stolen” and thus enabling the belief that the democratic process only “works” if their candidate wins, and to twist people’s minds with alternate “facts” that are simply made because they are contrary to accepted reality. Oh, and let’s throw in “justifying” Brown Shirt violence as “patriotic,” too.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects on the far-right side of the U.S. Senate are still pushing election fraud conspiracies and insisting that Trump should not have to face the music at all for inciting the attempt to overthrow the government that he so richly deserves. I hope that the impeachment managers call some of those insurrectionists as witnesses, because you know that there are 150 guilty-as-hell Republicans who fear being “outed.”  

One of those people is QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is even more “out there” than we thought.  Let’s recall what QAnon is, according the BBC:  “At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. QAnon believers have speculated that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.” Greene herself doesn’t seem to have any particular problem with people being “executed,” mainly Democrats. CNN reported that on her Facebook page in 2018 and 2019

In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said "a bullet to the head would be quicker" to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the "deep state" working against Trump. In one Facebook post from April 2018, Greene wrote conspiratorially about the Iran Deal, one of former President Barack Obama's signature foreign policy achievements. A commenter asked Greene, "Now do we get to hang them ?? Meaning H & O ???," referring to Obama and Hillary Clinton. Greene replied, "Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off."

 

Greene also composed commentary on Nancy Pelosi:

"She's a traitor to our country, she's guilty of treason. She took an oath to protect American citizens and uphold our laws. And she gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land. That's what treason is. And by our law representatives and senators can be kicked out and no longer serve in our government. And it's, uh, it's a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason."

Greene also wrote on her Facebook page that Pelosi “will suffer death or she'll be in prison for her treason." Greene was also caught on video harassing Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, calling him a “coward” for supporting gun control legislation.  Greene’s response to these demonstrable facts about her questionable sanity was typical of the worst kind of hypocrites: it was all “fake news” from “the enemy of the people.” She denied any responsibility for what appeared on her Facebook page, and even for her own violent comments. She hypocritically denounced “all violence,” but only critiqued that allegedly from Antifa and BLM—the groups which she blames for the violent attempt to overthrow the government of January 6. If anyone is guilty of “treason,” it is those people who incited that insurrection, and Greene is near the top of that list, just below Trump’s culpability.

Who could vote for such a person? The 14^th District in Georgia is 85 percent white and largely Protestant “Christian”—and people don’t understand why more and more Americans do not take religion seriously? In The New Yorker, Charles Bethea wrote “On Facebook, she (Greene) posted a picture of herself holding a rifle next to images of Omar, Tlaib, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, below the words ‘We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.’” One local Republican said that while he opposed her racist, violent rhetoric and would not vote for her, she would likely be elected because “Poor white people in the countryside, who’ve been ignored by both parties for years—they expect nothing from the federal government”—which is just an excuse, because these “poor white Southerners” have been voting Republican for at least half a century, so why would they expect anything from the government? Of course they will vote for the “white candidate” and the one who is most “bat-shit crazy” rather than just your run-of-the-mill Republican.

Bethea talked to one small group of women who attended a Greene campaign rally; besides showing an interest in “learning” more about this “Q” thing, they agreed that Democrats are so “hateful” because “they’re controlled by Satan” and then nonsensically “That’s right. They want to control everybody else. They want to control people with fear. O.K.? They’re wanting to control people by their pocketbook.” What exactly is meant by all of this is not clear, and if you ask them to “explain” what they mean, they would doubtless be at loss to do so; watch any of Jordan Klepper’s videos of his adventures in Trump World, and you will discover how shockingly ignorant many Trump supporters are, motivated solely by petty personal grievances that have nothing to do with reality. What does seem “clear,” however, is that they only care about their own sad little lives, they never look at the “big picture.” When they talk about “control,” what they really mean is their “unhappiness” that their racist and white nationalist beliefs are not more forcefully translated from words to action; it is they, in actuality, who seek “control” on white nationalist and racist terms.

Republicans just don’t “get it” the way Democrats do; Democrats know that progressives and “socialists” don’t have anywhere else to go if they want to have any say in policy, while Republicans at the moment are allowing themselves to be controlled by Trumpists and the far-right extremist, white supremacist fringe. Again, where else do these people have to go if the party just untethers this barge? So what if the extremist fringe elements decide to form their own political party? When people see what their “platform” is untethered from the phony platitudes of the Republican Party, people will likely think twice before voting for a “party” that they are not prepared to explain what their “plan” for the country is, which one suspects will be like one of those crazy neo-Nazi maps where different parts of the country are “set aside” for pure-white Arians.

And even if such a third-party arises, they should take heed of what happened when Republican Teddy Roosevelt founded the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party in 1912 "to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics.” He actually received more votes than Taft in the 1912 election, but end result was not only the loss to Woodrow Wilson, but many progressive former Republicans switched to the Democratic Party. Of course we are looking at a much different dynamic here, with “traditional” conservative Republicans having to make a choice between their “ideals” and fascism, and only weeks after the attempt to overthrow democracy in this country by Trumpist/fascist forces, they seem now more receptive to allowing Trumpism/fascism to control the destiny of the party because of the total absence of moral credibility.

HIV/AIDS may be only an "epidemic" and no longer "newsworthy," but unlike the Covid-19 pandemic, it still remains "cureless" four decades on

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a dominant feature of the news for a year now, and probably for at least another year because of its effect on the world economy. The virus and its mutations will likely remain with us for the rest of time, but because it is “curable” by vaccination and other drugs, it will likely go the way of other typical virus-related diseases that seem to be ever present but not life-threatening, like the common cold or flus. Other diseases remain that cannot be treated without surgery or radiation treatment, like cancer or heart disease. But one virus remains stubbornly resistant to a cure, and remains in many parts of the world a still worse problem than the Covid-19 in spite of the fact that it is no longer “newsworthy”—HIV/AIDS.

The human immunodeficiency/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome first appeared in the U.S. around 1960, but it wasn’t until 1981 that it was first recognized as a serious disease when the first major outbreaks began appearing in gay communities in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, and soon migrating across the country and into the heterosexual realm, and effecting the black and Latino communities at higher rates than whites. The Reagan administration’s response was not unlike that of the Trump administration was to the Covid-19 outbreak; it regarded the problem through the lense of right-wing homophobia, initially believing the virus was limited to the gay community, and thus did not see it as a problem requiring federal attention or intervention. On the other hand, the gay community initially did not believe the medical reporting and disease prevention protocols, probably because they felt unfairly targeted. Because of this initial failure to take HIV/AIDS seriously, it began “super-spreading” throughout the country.

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that a majority of people were actually personally concerned enough about HIV that they were fearful of any sight of blood on surfaces or oozing from the body. Blood tests for HIV were “recommended” before sexual relations were initiated. More than a decade after the first outbreaks of HIV/AIDS, it was still a matter of concern to people, particular after Los Angeles Lakers star “Magic” Johnson announced that he had tested positive for the virus. If a star athlete could catch the virus, anyone could, and there was still no “cure” or vaccine for it.

Yet by the mid-1990s, HIV/AIDS started to fade from media and public view, and today it is almost completely out of the public consciousness in general—this in spite of the fact that at least 33 million people have died of it worldwide, and including over 700,000 in the U.S., where over 10,000 people still die from it every year. The reason seems to be that for those infected with the virus, it is no longer an instant killer; Johnson has lived with HIV for almost three decades, and more or less “normal” life and life expectancy can be hoped for by those infected today.

Current anti-viral “cocktails” have been largely effective for people who do not yet have full-blown AIDs; The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology reported that HIV-infected patients who are not also infected with the hepatitis C virus have a survival rate similar to that of people who were infected by hepatitis C but were HIV-negative. It also found that it was chronic diseases, like end-stage renal disease (kidney failure), that were now the most likely “opportunistic” diseases that cause HIV-positive cases to advance to AIDS conditions and death.

That doesn’t mean that HIV/AIDS is no longer a serious condition, especially in poorer countries that do not have the same access to treatments those in developed countries have. Even in this country people with chronic kidney problems are most susceptible to HIV infection advancing to full-blown AIDS. HIV remains dangerous because it is one of those rare viruses that appears to be “immune” to being susceptible to immune responses. HIV has a long dormant period, and must be treated during that stage so it doesn’t advance to AIDS. Because it lays dormant for a long period embedded in DNA cells, the body cannot identify it until it advances to the AIDS stage, by which time it is typically too late to treat it. The problem with vaccines is that “dead” forms of the virus do not trigger an immune response from the virus, and naturally using a “live” version of the virus would likely be deadly. HIV also mutates quickly, so even if a vaccine is created, it likely will not work for long.

However, HIV/AIDS was never considered to be a “pandemic,” but an “epidemic” at worst. There may be a reason for that. In the U.S., already 60 percent as many people have died as a result of Covid-19 in less than a year as have died of AIDS in almost four decades. Although “officially” over 2 million people have died of the Covid-19 worldwide, this is almost certainly half the actual number. But unlike for HIV/AIDS, there are now workable vaccines that can combat it and its variants, and while the virus will remain with us for a long time, after a period of “herd immunity” in conjunction with widespread vaccination, it will likely “mutate” into something as non-newsworthy as the common flus and the cold—or cancer or heart disease or any other disease that everyone must succumb to one way or the other.

The first order of "business" in preparing for Ivanka's political ambitions is showing those effing "poor people" how "real" people live

Sure, the Trump clan in the White House were just “regular” people working for you and me, as we see now with their practically non-existent Covid-19 response “plan” and Ivanka’s phony Pledge jobs program, which “trusted” corporations to retrain American workers for new skills, but who instead just laid them off and hired H-1B labor. But now it is all over, and it is time to go home, but not, apparently, to New York City, where the clan is mostly seen as out-of-step with reality and nobody really wants to be within sniffing distance of them.

So where is home? For Donald Trump, it is the Mar-a-Lago golf club and resort, although how long he is permitted to live there isn’t clear, as if he cares about contracts, the law or what the neighbors think. Don Jr. and his girlfriend are planning to move into an exclusive beach front property in Palm Beach County, where predictably no one is particularly interested in calling them neighbors. Eric Trump will apparently go wherever his wife wants him to go, since Lara Trump (an “adopted” Trump) is a North Carolina native and it is expected that she will run for the open Senate seat there in 2022. 

But who really cares about them? What about the pair who refused to allow their own Secret Service detail use one their four bathrooms in their rented DC home, which cost $18,000 a month (really just “trump change” to them)? The Mansion Global breathlessly tells us that Jared and Ivanka “have signed a deal to lease a condominium in Arte, according to a person familiar with the situation. Designed by Italian architect Antonio Citterio, the striking, pyramid-shaped building is considered one of the most luxurious new oceanfront developments in Miami’s Surfside neighborhood. It is also one of the area’s priciest: Its penthouse recently sold to a New York private-equity executive for $33 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.”

It goes on to say that “the 16-unit building has direct elevator entry with fingerprint recognition technology, deep wraparound terraces with Roman travertine ceilings, European white oak flooring and temperature-controlled parking spots. The building is full of amenities, including a 75-foot heated indoor lap pool, a private rooftop tennis court, a fitness center, a children’s playroom and a residents’ lounge. While there is 24-hour security at the building, the couple will be bringing additional security, according to the person familiar with the deal.”

But that is just their “temporary” housing; you can’t expect self-styled “royalty” to have live in a building with strangers. According to Realtor.com, Javanka have much bigger plans afoot:

“The young couple has bought a nearly 2-acre lot of land in Florida for the tidy sum of $31.8 million. ‘Javanka’ allegedly purchased Lot 4 on Indian Creek Island, an ultraexclusive area near Miami. Also known as ‘Billionaires Bunker,’ Indian Creek Island is widely regarded in elite circles as one of the most picturesque locations in the U.S., says Dolly Lenz, a real estate agent at the eponymous firm in New York City. Proximity to a well-established religious community was also likely top of mind, Jennifer adds, as this lot is right next to Surfside, Miami's largest Jewish neighborhood. ‘There are great schools and hospitals nearby, and it's the most peaceful, unassuming area while also being adjacent to business and entertainment hubs,’ Jennifer says.”

Here is an image of the lot in question, which the couple will obviously pay a few more million just to put something they consider “livable” on it:

One may wonder what exactly these two do to pay for all of this. It doesn’t seem exactly where Jared and Ivanka are making those multi-millions, although their most recent financial statement claims that they somehow made anywhere from $36 million to $157 million in 2019 while working so hard for the American people. It is not entirely clear how they “earned” all of this money; they are only required to disclose a fairly wide “range” in their public financial disclosures, and not precisely where it came from.

What information is available concerning their past financial exploits doesn’t indicate that either of them could make it on their own without being kept afloat by family money. It started early with Kushner, who got into Harvard after his father paid a $2.5 million donation/bribe to the school. Kushner bought a tabloid weekly, The New York Observer, with $10 million he claimed he “earned” himself by “closing” real estate deals when he was a college student; before you roll your eyes, it was the “family” who actually paid for the deals, and the money was given to him as a “graduation present.” The original editor-in-chief of the Observer, Peter Kaplan, said of Kushner’s business acumen “This guy doesn’t know what he doesn’t know”—the long way of saying he was a complete dolt in at least the journalism business.

Kyle Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that Kushner didn’t seem to have much respect for journalists—believing that they didn’t need to be paid because they were “interchangeable” and “easily replaced”—which seems to be an attitude he shares with his father-in-law. He goes on “While Kushner didn’t remotely care about the content of the paper, he cared desperately that it be seen as a financial success. While that is essentially every publisher’s job, his interest in turning the business side of the Observer around seemed rooted more in bragging rights than in any commitment to the paper itself. He also made it clear that, compared to his day job of buying and selling real estate in New York City, this journalism stuff wasn’t exactly heavy lifting; he treated it as a sort of annoying hobby.” Kushner also used the tabloid to “settle scores and reward cronies.” The Observer also was one of the few publications that endorsed Trump in 2016, and when Kushner joined the administration, who sold his interest to a “family trust.”

Kushner wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the real estate business, either. Again, he always played with family money. The infamous 666 Fifth Avenue fiasco saw Kushner purchase the building for $1.8 billion with mostly borrowed money. After the 2007-2008 crash, the tenant cash flow was not even enough to cover the minimum debt payments, and Kushner was forced to sell the retail space and sell off-half the building to another developer to stay afloat.

Ivanka has also been mostly a belly-flop as a “businessperson.” Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry and fashion line were questionable enterprises right from the start, with Ivanka being accused of “plagiarizing” designs, using material with dangerously flammable properties, and off-shoring  manufacturing. After the 2016 election, retailers began boycotting her brand items until she officially got out of the “business” business to become a “public servant.” Her book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success was not well-received, and dropped out of the New York Times Best Seller “How to” list after just two weeks. Ivanka was reportedly paid over $700,000 for “consulting” work which her father tried to write-off as a tax deduction, which is currently under investigation in New York.

So how are they making their millions? Last August Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian admitted that it wasn’t exactly clear where the Javankas were making all that money which would pay for that Indian Island property. Apparently Jared and his brothers co-founded a real estate company called Cadre which was financed by—you guessed it, not his money, but by George Soros. Yes, that George Soros. Kushner apparently has a tidy sum locked-up in the venture, which he had “forgotten” to claim on his financial forms until recently. The company seems to thrive on “secretive” offshore investments by foreign players. “Nothing to see here,” observes Mahdawi.

Meanwhile, the investigative website CREW notes that while Ivanka’s jewelry and fashion line were officially closed in 2018, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t making any money from somewhere. Her financial statement for the year 2019 claims that she made up to $1 million from something called the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust, which handles her “trademarks” from all over the world, which of course makes money on her “brand” just as “Trump” is a “brand name” that her father is paid a “royalty” fee for. But while most major retailers refused to sell her “branded” products by 2018, that isn’t true of Amazon, where you can find plenty of products bearing her “brand.”

It is suspected that either Ivanka lied about ending her businesses—which would bring about ethics questions—or she skims off money from other companies who products with her name on them, but she isn’t personally involved except to take in her “trademark” fee. The only thing that does seem to make sense about their financial report is that royalty income from sales of Ivanka’s book is listed as “none.” So perhaps we can surmise that Jared and Ivanka are paying the bills with money “skimmed” off their “share” of the family business. But one thing we do know is that they like living like they are of royal privilege, “special people” who are superior simply because they were born into money and everything they “earned” was whatever was left over from the money father and friends gave them to play with.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Ivanka herself doesn’t think she has something to sell to suckers. She may or may not “primary” Marco Rubio in 2022, which may explain his recent defenses of Trump against a second impeachment. But even if Ivanka has political ambitions, that would mean she would have go out and stump before people who are “fucking poor people” who no part of her “would be interested in this.” Can you imagine this phony announcing a Senate run—and, god forbid, and 2024 presidential run—and trying her best to conceal her contempt for the plebian masses? One suspects she would make this a “gendered” campaign because, well, she is a woman and she can at least “empathize” with that part of the human condition. But something tells me that it won’t be hard to expose her as a selfish narcissist who has no interest in anything but her inflationary ego, making pompous, empty-headed proclamations that are worthy of snickers and eye-rolls behind her back.

Or maybe by then, Ivanka will be just be too put-off by the idea that she might actually have to do real “work,” and daddy can’t just buy enough voters for her. With daddy facing $500 million in personal loans due and Deutsche Bank wanting nothing more to do with him except wanting their money back, and daddy’s little girl will have to do that white nationalist thing, that certainly will seem even more disturbing coming from her. Let's hope that she and Jared will "rediscover" that being pampered children is a lot more "fun" than being responsible to those effing "poor people" who actually expect them to "represent" their interests instead of making things worse for them.

Can the moral disarray of the Republican Party be such that it is now controlled by the pestilence unleashed by Trump?

 

Megyn Kelly showed her true “colors” again in a recent interview with the BBC, claiming that the left-wing media (meaning all media that isn’t Trumpist) was as much if not more to blame for the January 6 coup attempt because of all the “hate” they piled on Trump—not because of the 30,000+ lies, endless insults and dehumanizing language, and instigating the violence by his supporters. The absurdity of Kelly’s claims should be manifest by the observation that all of these right wing-nuts don’t even watch CNN or MSNBC, but Fox News and other extremist “news” sources, as well as Trump’s (now defunct) twitter feed.  If we were all just mindless drones who watched Fox News for all of our “facts,” this country would be going down the moral and ethical drain pipe and no one would be any wiser about it.

Kelly is currently out of the spotlight because she just couldn’t keep her small-minded bigotry to herself, she had to tell us all about it; her long history of racially-incendiary commentary at Fox News indicated that this was just another blonde, privileged fashion model white woman who was extremely self-conscious about her “privilege” and “entitlements” working for a network whose non-white on-air “help” could be counted on one hand.  An accompanying photo of Kelly was taken from a “Fortune’s Most Powerful Women” summit; I find this interesting in that even a known racist like Kelly is “worthy” of applause from the women-only audience while the moderator fails to question her about her insensitive commentary on a number of issues--which shows that the “women’s movement” doesn’t really have any moral or ethical guidelines, but is just a back-slapping “sisterhood” fan club.

Kelly also sought “relevance” by lambasting Joe Biden, admonishing his call for national unity as “nonsense” on Glenn Beck’s show (who like Kelly is currently banished to the fringes for saying stupid things). Kelly claimed the “left” had awoken a “sleeping giant” with “political overreach.” This is another absurdly hypocritical statement; the “sleeping giant” of white nationalism was a Pandora’s Box that was kicked open by Trump from the very moment he first announced his candidacy in 2015, calling Mexican immigrants “violent criminals” and “rapists.”

The far-right pestilence unleashed by Trump is unlike anything else we have seen. In Europe, far-right political parties have remained largely on fringes, since unlike this country it has endured fascist, nationalist political movements. We saw the forces unleashed by unchecked fascist mob action earlier this month, which is why European leaders roundly condemned the coup attempt, because they had seen it all before. The brief hand-wringing by those in the media and in politics who have fed fascism was predictably insincere; if it was “sincere,” then Fox News wouldn’t have added Maria Bartiromo to “prime time,” adding an extra hour of extremist lunacy to recapture the lunatic fringe that escaped to Newsmax.

We should always remember the stark difference in ideology between the “left” and the “right”: John F. Kennedy’s definition of “liberalism” still holds today: “someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties.” Today, the prevailing “right” has very little in common with traditional “conservatism”; most still pretend to respect “fiscal restraint,” but that cow has long left the barn. Even “conservative” economists think that deficit spending is better for the economy than budget surpluses, and since deficits are “OK” during Republican administrations, then why are they complaining about Biden’s current stimulus package? Because of their tax cut law in 2017, the federal deficit in even Trump’s first three years was higher than that in Obama’s last three.

The right also likes to call themselves “Christians,” and thus possessing higher moral and ethical standards, which of course is a crock; most of these people would go straight to the devil if their moral and ethical “values” were examined too closely—especially since many of them don’t know that lying is a sin, especially when it is done every day and incites people to acts of violence. Their god probably wouldn’t approve of their treatment of the “others” or those of less means either.

We are also discovering what “modern day conservatism” looks like in Arizona. The party of Barry Goldwater, whose extremism was just too much for the country after the assassination of JFK, has swung even further to the right under Trump’s “leadership”—it is just that white nationalist beliefs have all come together in one nice little package called Trumpism; he might be gone for now, but his “movement” continues. Trump is the “messiah,” “prophet” or cult figure that they now coalesce around. Those who do not fall in line, they are censured: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain have all decried the election lies perpetrated by Trump and his sycophants, and thus they must be damned by the party. McCain was quick to point out, of course, that the Trumpist Arizona Republican leader, Kelli Ward, had overseen both the loss of the state to Biden as well as both U.S. Senate seats. Lessons learned? Doubtful.

The moral disarray of the right continues apace a Rand Paul whined that Biden’s inaugural speech “implied” that Republican endorsed racism. “If you read his speech and listen to it carefully, much of it is thinly-veiled innuendo calling us white supremacists,” he told Fox News. “calling us racists, calling us every name in the book, calling us people who don’t tell the truth.” Well if the shoe fits, wear it.

Paul and Marco Rubio are also attempting to put the impeachment ball in Biden’s court, complaining that he is the one responsible for the impeachment proceedings that will “divide” the country. It is in fact the House Democrats who are bringing forward the impeachment proceedings, and why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so? It was their “house” that was sacked by Trump’s thugs, not Biden’s. Justice and accountability is what is called for here; most of the Republicans who are chiding Democrats for sowing “division” are the one’s almost exclusively responsible for causing division, and they are now hoping that everyone “forgets” about they’ve done so that they won’t be held “accountable” either. Every Republican who voted to support Trump’s election lies after the coup attempt should be censured at the very least. They just don’t know which way to turn; no matter where they turn, their hypocrisy stares them right in the face, and all they can do is lie and deny.

An Associated Press story today quoted a terrorism expert and advisor for the Rand Corporation named Brian Michael Jenkins, who warned that right-wing extremism that once appeared in isolation, had on January 6 struck at “the very heart of government” and provides an example for other extremists to violent action on a large scale. “The events themselves, and participation in them, has a radicalizing effect. And they also have an inspirational effect. The Battle of Capitol Hill is now part of the mythology…January 6 was the Woodstock of the angry right. The mere fact that those groups were coming together (white nationalist, white supremacist, QAnon conspirators), mingling, sharing this anger, displaying this passion—it is going to have effects.”

But since Trump has gone into hiding, the AP story goes on to report that “some are clearly angry that Trump disassociated himself with the very insurrection that he stoked. They’re upset that he failed to come to the rescue of rioters who were arrested while he was still president and are still being detained and charged.” Not only that, but some are now calling for the Republican Party to dissolve, and “out of its ashes, a true nationalist movement will arise.” Jenkins noted that the “next phase” for these extremist elements is to “transform” into a “broader national movement,” with Trump as their symbolic leader at least.

The Republican Party, and the “right” in general, has a serious problem. The right-wing “mainstream” media is already kowtowing to the extremist elements because it gets them higher ratings—so much for their “ethical” standards—and riling them up, and Republicans simply do not know which ideological direction to turn. It is of course their fault entirely. Everyone knew Trump was dangerous for the party and they said so in 2016. Yet once Trump started pulling the levers they all fell into line in the most egregiously pathetic of fashions. If they had tried to coral Trump from the beginning, none of this would be happening now. They allowed it to happen, and Trumpism now controls the party. Trumpism is a fascist ideology that is criminal, immoral and unethical, and the right appears to have tied itself to that ideology, and they are so entangled in a web of their own making they have chosen to be the prey of the mob they have unleashed on the country.

It's 2014 deja vu for the Packers in season-ending loss to the Buccaneers

 

We’ll keep my last football post of the 2020 season short and sour—well, maybe not “short,” but certainly sour. Aaron Rodgers is now 1-4 in NFC Championship games. Two were blow-outs in which the Packers were not competitive, and two were hair-pulling affairs in which the Packers failed to take advantage of the opponent’s mistakes, and made mistakes of their own at the most inopportune of times. There was the 2014 game when Russell Wilson threw his fourth interception of the game with five minutes to play with the Packers leading the Seahawks 19-7. Game over, right? Well, we know how that turned out, and it wasn’t all Brandon Bostick’s fault. Against the Buccaneers, Tom Brady threw interceptions on three consecutive possessions and what did the Packers do? They did score a touchdown after the first one, but incomprehensibly went for a two-point conversion that failed. Following the next two picks, the Packers moved forward exactly minus-5 yards on six plays. 

There were other problems, of course. The Packers started slow and never at any point looked like they were moving on all cylinders. The offensive line had to take this opportunity to have one of its periodic “off” games, allowing five sacks and 8 quarterback hits. Neither team utilized the run game much, but the Packers most especially, which was surprising given the temperatures. Still, the game seemed competitive even when Rodgers threw an interception late in the first half with the Buccaneers ahead 14-10. It was even so when Brady converted on fourth down with six seconds to play at the 39-yard line, but the Packer defense failed miserably in allowing a long touchdown pass to make it 21-10 at halftime. The Packers had the ball to start the second half and Rodgers—who was under duress through much of the game—threw three straight short passes to Aaron Jones and all the Packers got out of it was a fumble and a first-and-goal for the Buccaneers and 28-10 deficit. Didn’t we see this movie before?

The Packers scored touchdowns on their next two possessions, but that was all she wrote. The Packers failed to score a potential tying touchdown with two minutes to play after Rodgers misfired on three straight passes on first-and-goal. The defense then committed three dumb penalties and squandered all three timeouts in allowing the Buccaneers to run out the clock—including on a pass interference call on third down with 1:46 to play—and “escape” with a 31-26 victory as Brady apparently proves that he was more the reason why the Patriots won all of those Super Bowls than Bill Belichick. But his 73.9 passer rating for the game with those three interceptions only contributed to the sense that he was damn lucky, and the Packers were only too generous with the lucky charms.

The next question for the Packers is will Rodgers be back next year. There are already rumors that the 49ers might be interested in a trade, and the Packers might want to save on some of the $37 million that Rodgers will be owed next season. My own feelings is that I want to see Rodgers back next year, because I don’t think he is “done” yet by a long shot, and you know, I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in the people the Packers have waiting in wings, and that includes Jordan Love. I’ve been through that dry spell with the likes of Scott Hunter, Jerry Tagge, John Hadl, David Whitehurst, Randy Wright, Don Majkowski, etcetera and ad nauseam (I give Lynn Dickey a pass, because he wasn’t bad when he was upright)--and what is Brett Hundley doing these days? Wherever he is at, he didn't play a single snap in 2020.

Republican hypocrites and enablers of Trump's crimes just need to get out of the way so Democrats can repair the damage

 

It hasn’t taken long for Republicans to expose themselves as complete hypocrites—again. Republicans started this whole business of hyper-partisan extremism under the “leadership” of Newt Gingrich, and it has never let-up. Sure, they were embarrassed by the invasion of the Capitol Building on the instigation of a president of their party, but their recriminations didn’t last long, did it? They said one thing yesterday, and today they are singing a completely different tune. They talk about “healing” and ending the “division” which they themselves created and exacerbated through their sycophantic support of a fascist authoritarian who spoke for what turned out to be an extremist fringe—yet they insist that it is Democrats who must compromise their ideals and ethics to be in line with Republican moral corruption.

What kind of people are Democrats supposed to genuflect before? Rep. Andy Harris, who is being investigated by Capitol police for trying to bring a gun onto the House floor? Rep. Lauren Boebert, insisting on her “right” to carry her Glock everywhere she goes? Boebert has been setting off metal detectors everywhere because of an object in her purse, and she refuses to allow police to look inside of it before she goes onto the House floor. She tweeted “Metal detectors outside of the House would not have stopped the violence we saw last week – it's just another political stunt by Speaker Pelosi.” That’s interesting—Boebert was among those Republicans who engaged in the political “stunt” that brought about that violence in the first place. She and her cohort of hypocrites could have prevented the violence if only they could have just stopped lying.  

Republicans are already outraged that Joe Biden would propose to restore the previous top tax rate of 39.6 for the richest one percent, the cut that was shoe-horned in with the massive 40 percent reduction in the corporate tax rate, while the bottom 10 percent saw only a $50 tax savings on average. Republicans are also “outraged” about suggestions of  suspending  the filibuster, a tactic they used to shove through over 200 judicial positions with mostly under-qualified, far-right activists “approved” by the far-right Federalist Society—half of the vacancies being holdovers from the Obama administration; most of Obama’s nominees were blocked in the final two years of his administration, with the Republican-controlled Senate confirming only 20 of his judicial nominees. Republicans sold-out what shred of credibility they had when after denying a hearing for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland nine months before the 2016 election, they “justified” breaking their own “rule” in shoe-horning in a replacement for the departed Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before this past election by claiming they they had the "right" to do whatever the hell they wanted.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is complaining about Biden’s executive orders overturning Trump’s criminal and inhuman “legacy.” Biden wasn’t elected to “continue” Trump’s crimes. McConnell apparently isn’t aware that polls show that a majority of Americans opposed Trump’s actions on a wide variety of issues, including the ACA, DACA and environmental regulation. Some Republicans are also complaining about another round of stimulus checks that their Wall Street buddies who pay their rent support, with one Republican, Rep. Steve Stivers, making the ridiculous claim that only those persons who received Covid vaccinations should receive another check—and this after the Trump administration not only completely bungled the vaccine rollout, but didn’t even have a “plan” for it.

And now after the coup attempt that was brought on with the “assistance” of nearly every Congressional Republican, enabling Trump’s election fraud lies and conspiracies no matter how insane, even those who initially decried Trump’s complicity yesterday are today decrying attempts to bring him to justice for the sake of “healing”—but on their terms, meaning we are all supposed to forget their own role in nearly overturning democracy in this country. Republicans who were involved in this crime against America are the ones who need to stand down and seek “forgiveness”—and get out of the way so that Democrats can repair the damage that Trump and his sycophants and enablers allowed to happen.

All over the world the pandemic is far from over, but at least now in this country we have a leader at the top taking this thing seriously

 

President Joe Biden is well aware that what will make or break his presidency is whether or not he is successful in bringing the COVID-19 pandemic under control, and the prevention of serious economic consequences because of it. Of course he can’t expect “help” from the Trumpists in power in states like South Dakota, Florida and Texas, who contributed to what new White House Chief of Staff Ron Clain called a “huge mess” inherited from the Trump administration.

The “mess” was first created by the failure of setting national standards by the Trump administration, and exacerbated in “freedom-loving” states which either deliberately ignored the health risks (South Dakota), reduced testing (Texas), falsified data (Florida), or “redefined” what qualified as a virus case or death (Tennessee). Meanwhile,  “Operation Warp Speed”—which bypassed normal safety protocols—has been more like “Operation Snail Pace” in acquiring and distributing the vaccine, even as the U.S. was averaging more than 3,000 deaths per day in the final weeks of the Trump administration. Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans—who are more likely to be working in close environments and have fewer health care options—are two-to-four times more likely to die from the virus, according to the CDC; in Republican states, this is known as “population management” and “purging the voters rolls.”

The Wall Street Journal’s news side reports that

Mr. Biden’s national strategy announced Thursday is part of a blizzard of activity to curb the virus in his first 100 days, including a federal mask mandate, the administration of 100 million vaccines, the establishment of 100 federally supported vaccination centers, and reopening of most kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools. The orders signed Thursday also call for studies, including large-scale randomized trials, to identify treatments and Mr. Biden’s administration will create public dashboards with state-by-state and national information on testing, vaccinations and hospital admissions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will make vaccines available in local pharmacies beginning next month, and agencies will work on guidance for reopening schools and emergency temporary standards requiring employers to take steps to keep workers safe from Covid-19.

This is obviously a dramatic departure from the Trump administration’s “handling” of the pandemic, and almost a year too late for the hundreds of thousands who have already died. Trump had always seen the pandemic as a personal annoyance that he tried to wish away—and when it didn’t just disappear, he either denied it, suggested magical radium water-type “cures,” pretended that everyone could afford the $650,000 medical procedures he received when he caught the virus, and finally simply just ignored that there was a pandemic going on at all. If nothing else, Biden should be credited with at least taking the thing seriously.

Whether or not the rest of the world is doing a better job at “handling” the pandemic depends upon what part of the world you are talking about.  China claimed its first virus-related death since this past summer, and its positive tests have only increased by about 4,000 since then, according to Worldometers’ numbers, which tend to be higher than other counts, and thus more “accurate.” But the numbers in Wuhan alone are in fact at least 10 times higher than officially transcribed, due to the number of people who have been found to have coronavirus-related antibodies, but were never actually tested for the virus itself. Although an authoritarian regime like China can be expected to take harsher measures to enforce restrictions, the WHO has been critical of China’s failure to be more “open” about its data, and its official numbers should be taken with a strong dose of salt.

Australia has one of the lowest case and death rates in the world, which may be in part be explained by the fact that the population density of the entire country/continent is less than 3 people per square kilometer—less than one-tenth the density of the U.S., and somewhat below India’s 382 people per square kilometer. However, a recent “outbreak” of a dozen cases in Sydney led to the government being slammed for not imposing an immediate lockdown, allowing the virus to “escape” into the neighboring state of Victoria.

Europe saw a “second wave” of the virus that was much more dramatic than the first one.  This was likely due to a false sense of safety after the slowdown of infections over the summer while the U.S. continued to see high numbers. The re-opening of “normal activities” increased group activities, and such complacency led to the most recent surge that saw the death count rise even more dramatically than in the previous “surge,” especially in Germany. Belgium has the highest death rate in the world; one conspiracy theory links this to its close interactions with China. Sweden continues to “experiment” with “herd immunity,” which has resulted in a death rate ten times higher than that of its neighbors, Norway and Finland. Here is “herd immunity” in action from a Reuters image last October; note that no one is wearing a mask:

Many other parts of the world have at best only provide “estimates” given their resources, or lack the political will to contain the virus or report accurate numbers. At least one country, North Korea, has not provided any numbers at all. But one country stands out for its contradictory approach to the COVID-19: India. By the middle of October, India’s numbers had skyrocketed from almost none in the spring to just one million cases behind the U.S., and on pace to pass the U.S. in total number of infections by mid-November.

But then something strange happened: the number of cases and deaths reported by India declined precipitously to the low levels reported in the first months of the pandemic, while case and death numbers continued to surge elsewhere, to the point that the U.S. now has nearly 15 million more reported cases of the virus than India does. Could a country that is poverty-ridden, has one of the most poorly resourced health care systems, and is one of the most densely populated countries in the world actually have stopped the virus virtually dead in its tracks?

The India-based news outlet NDTV tells us what actually happened:

There are two ways to fudge the actual number of Covid cases. The first, more obvious way is to reduce the number of tests being conducted, as Donald Trump repeatedly suggested. The second, less obvious and more insidious way is to increase the number of Antigen tests and reduce the number of PCR tests.

As we all know, Antigen tests do not detect the Covid virus as well as PCR tests. In fact, the separate data, published by only a few states, on PCR vs Antigen test results, shows that PCR tests have a positivity rate that is 2.5 to 3.5 times higher than Antigen tests (for example, in Delhi the positivity rate for PCR tests is 14% while the positivity rate for Antigen tests is 4%).

From 100% PCR tests at the very start of the pandemic, India is now down to less than 60% PCR tests - while Antigen tests have risen sharply from a negligible number to now almost 5.5 crores, which accounts for over 40% of total tests. And, every week, there is a continuous rising trend of Antigen testing.

States with a high level of Antigen testing are likely to miss a large number of positive cases. Once again, Bihar - especially during the run up to elections - was the worst state in India in under-reporting Covid cases. The true number of Covid cases in Bihar was an outrageous 132% of the officially reported cases (that is 2.3 times the “official” number). Telangana and Gujarat have also grossly under-reported the Covid pandemic in their states.

The BBC reported that death counts also appear to be deliberately under-reported:

Since March, a group of volunteers in India's southern state of Kerala have trawled local papers and news networks for reports on deaths due to Covid-19. Led by Dr Arun N Madhavan, a general medicine physician, they checked the district editions of seven local newspapers and followed five news channels unfailingly every day. They took notes on every death reported in the news and obituary notices and diligently entered the details in a spreadsheet. "It's a useful method of counting," says Prabhat Jha, of the University of Toronto, who led India's ambitious Million Death Study, one of the largest studies of premature mortality in the world. As of Thursday night, the volunteers had counted 3,356 deaths from the infection in Kerala, which reported its first Covid-19 case in January and the first casualty in March. But the official death toll from the disease is 1,969.

One health official, Rajeev Sadanandan,  who “advises” the government on how it should “handle” the pandemic, confessed that "We did not count cases who were suffering from terminal or renal diseases and were found to be infected with Covid-19.” The Times of India noted that efforts to disguise the number of Covid-related deaths included the rapid use of crematoriums; in one such facility in Kolkata, workers were seeing cremations increase from “15-20 bodies per week to that same number per day.” India has not been the only country underreporting virus death; Europeans countries like the UK and Italy, and states like Tennessee and Florida, saw “unexplained” rises in the previous year’s death totals early on that were considerably above what could be explained by the official virus death totals. But such undercounts are clearly more significant in a country as populous and crowded as India.

Despite the rollout of vaccines, there is nowhere near what is required to stop the pandemic in the short-term, and some countries and states here seem to prefer—as Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick asserted—that vulnerable populations “consent” to die so that everyone else can “live.” That is clearly not the “humane” thing to do, and we don’t yet know if allowing the virus to simply run its course will only “embolden” its mutated successors to turn on the “less” vulnerable. This is obviously far from over, but at least we now have a leader in this country to take the right steps to “handle” it.

Inauguration Day passes mostly without incident, but no time for "celebration" for either Biden or Trump

 

Inauguration Day passed by largely without incident, with 25,000 National Guardsmen insuring that Donald Trump’s own militia was sufficiently cowed into submission. Trump snuck out of town, not even taking a moment to partake in the optics of military force which normally would excite him, since it wasn’t the “radical left” for whom their presence was deemed necessary. Trump departed with the “promise” that he will be “back” in “some form,” which brings to mind the 1957 film A Face In the Crowd, in which Andy Griffith—in a rare dramatic role—played a drunken vagrant named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, who conned a radio journalist with his “folksy” guitar playing, charm and “populist” ringers, providing him with first a local and then a national platform with his own TV show.

The uneducated but garrulous Rhodes was soon elevated into a successful pitchman both in business and for a presidential candidate. But then he revealed his true self behind the cameras, an arrogant egomaniac contemptuous of “little” people, and after a hot mike caught him heaping abuse on both the candidate and his own audience, all of Rhodes upper-crust “friends” deserted him. But Walter Matthau’s staff writer Mel assured Rhodes that while he may be out of a job at the moment, he would be back on the air soon enough—albeit with much less “prestige”—because there would always be a gullible audience for a populist conman like him.

Like Rhodes, Trump leaves town disgraced, and the failure of even the most fanatical Trumpists to turn out in force as “promised” elsewhere in the country suggests that now that he is out of power, he has lost some of his “credibility”; his audience called it a day, at least for now. But Trumpism itself will never “die,” because the reality is that it is just the latest name for other far-right, white nationalist “movements” we have seen in the past, like the so-called “Tea Party” movement. There was a difference in this latest iteration, of course; this time there was a morally-corrupt president who was leading the movement, and giving “legitimacy” to violent action.

In the meantime, President Joe Biden has his work cut out for him, particularly in matters of the pandemic, the environment, immigration, repairing relations with international allies, tackling the Russian cyber threat, and seeing a new stimulus package through. He wasn’t helped by the Republican-controlled Senate, which refused to confirm any of his cabinet nominees with the excuse of allowing Trump’s election fraud scam run its course, even though it was obvious to everyone with a pea for a brain that it was morally and ethically—as well as lawfully—a dead duck, with the events of January 6 its natural endgame. Biden is also potentially hamstrung by the fact that Trump loyalists were shoe-horned into civil service positions in the last days in order to obstruct his policy positions, and the failure of Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell to reach a power-sharing agreement to prevent Republicans from obstructing Biden’s policy agenda in his first 100 days.

It would be in the Republican Party’s interest not to immediately incite partisan divisiveness if it wishes to expel the influence of Trumpism/fascism. One suspects that at least a modest number of Republicans in the Senate do not want to set-up immediate roadblocks for Biden, since it would only embolden the remaining Trumpists who feed off of division, anarchy and racism. Of course there is still Fox News, which has done some “shaking up,” expelling the editors who angered Trumpists by calling Arizona for Biden “too early,” and placing partisan voices in new time slots to regain the extremist white nationalist audience it lost to Newsmax and OAN.

Tucker Carlson is already busy with the Trumpist propaganda line that Biden is going to “war” with “half of America,” as if Trump wasn’t explicitly doing that very thing in actual fact—as had been Carlson and the rest of the Fox News fascist propaganda machine in going to “war” with 81 million American voters who they wished to silence. Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs are, of course, back to their favorite pastimes—inciting racism and paranoia, warning of the “cultural threat” to the nation allegedly posed by people with brown skin.

As for Trump, he has an impeachment trial to look forward to, a tax fraud case in New York, a defamation case brought by two women who claim he sexually-assaulted them, and potentially a civil lawsuit for his part in inciting the sacking of the Capitol Building. While Post Master General Louis DeJoy is happy to slither off into obscurity—surprisingly not the target of Trumpists for “aiding and abetting” mail-in ballot “fraud”—for Trump’s other familiars, like Stephen Miller, Mark Meadows, Peter Navarro, Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, John Ratcliffe and many others, there may be Congressional hearings and Justice Department investigations in their futures; given the fact that some of them are considered too “toxic” for immediate employment, they probably don’t have anything better to do with their time anyways.

Trump likely wouldn’t listen to Marley’s Ghost telling him how he has led a twisted life, but we can still “speculate” on a Trump “Christmas Carol”

 

In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, who informs him that he has been condemned to carry the chains he himself wrought from a life of greed and selfishness. In the case of Donald Trump, he doesn’t need a Marley, because he is Marley, although one doubts he will ever have the self-awareness to warn others who “idolize” him that his was the wrong path to take. In his lifetime Trump cheated and swindled countless people both because he was a “scrooge” in meeting his obligations, but because of his incompetence leading to numerous bankruptcies, it was always lenders and business partners who were the ones who felt the pain, not Trump. It is an open question whether it is better never to have been president—or to be a president who is forever recorded in the history books as the most dangerous and demented man ever to hold the office; that will certainly be the heaviest of the chains Trump will take with him into the afterlife.

But for the sake of amusement, let’s speculate if Trump received a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past—who might have been better off skipping the visit, because what makes Trump “happy” is disturbing business indeed. What happy memories can a self-involved narcissist have? We know that being a bully makes Trump  happy, and he is happy to see anti-Trump protesters getting beat on at his rallies and on the streets. We know that watching pro-Trump rioters storming the Capitol building made him happy. We know that seeing children locked-up in concentration camps made him happy. We know that insulting and dehumanizing others made him happy. We know that people lying, cheating and committing criminal acts on his behalf made him happy. We could go on and on with this. Why would the ghost wish him to relive this kind of past?

If Trump was then visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, he would likely be confronted with his “handling” of the COVID-19 pandemic and his seeming disinterest that more than 400,000 have died thus far from it—as well as the subsequent economic costs to millions of Americans. He would also have to face his trucking in lies and racism that has created an atmosphere of division and hate that has torn this country apart. He would have to account for his role in the near violent overthrow of the democratic process. The ghost will also condemn Trump’s hypocritical “concern” about the welfare of working people in light of his Christmas gift to himself and his rich friends via the so-called tax reform law, as well as his attempt to kill affordable health care for all.  But most ominously the ghost will attempt to warn Trump of how his nurturing of Ignorance will destroy both him and the country if he continues his wicked ways even after he leaves office.

If Trump is finally visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he should already have a “taste” of what that will be. Sure, the millions of true believers in the Trump cult will continue to supply him with the fiction that he is The Great White Messiah, who tried but mostly failed to “restore” total white supremacy in this country, and having failed to do so in the time allotted him, nevertheless bestowed upon his followers an alternate fact universe in which their feverish minds could inhabit, one in which it is “lawfully” permissible to violently act out their grievances in an effort to carry out the messiah’s prophecies. 

But the ghost may warn Trump of the possibility (or probability) that the Trumpist cult will die with him, and outside his family, he will be “mourned” only by those who are promised a free lunch. And perhaps when the crows of Trump’s crimes finally come home to roost, his equally selfish fry will greedily pick at whatever meat is left on the moldering corpse of his “organization,” his “brand” nothing more than a scarlet letter burned onto the foreheads of those fated to bear his name and “legacy.”

Perhaps in Trump’s demented and feverish mind he has already imagined such visits, and in “atonement” he is doing the only thing that a corrupt and morally-bankrupt person can do in a fit of belated “Christmas” cheer: assuaging his “guilt” by "gifting" pardons to other corrupt and morally-bankrupt people.