Democrats losing Congress in the midterm election shouldn't be a "done deal" with all the corruption and psychopathy from the other side

 

It just amazes me that people want to believe that Democrats are in “trouble” for this midterm election. It certainly may be one of those self-fulfilling “prophecies,” but why? What have we learned about the other side of the aisle the past few weeks? Remember when Donald Trump made this statement: "You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.” And this guy was actually elected president?

This is same person who during a deposition in a lawsuit against him apparently lied under oath that he ordered Trump Tower security to manhandle protesters in 2015, and yet at the same time offered “justification” for doing it by claiming that he feared he might be “hit” by various articles of fruit, which he likened to “dangerous objects,” and you could “get killed by those things.” As they say, cowards lurk behind the façade of bullies; the only thing that would have been “killed” by a wayward tomato would have been Trump’s ego if photos circulated on the Internet with tomato on his face. We also learn that Trump is being fined $10,000 a day for failing to abide to a subpoena for financial documents by the New York Attorney General’s office, which of course is par for the course for a man for whom laws are just for “suckers.”

Meanwhile, more scrutiny is being given to the Trump administration’s passing out 95 percent of currently outstanding loans under the Cares Act meant for “businesses considered crucial to national security” to the Yellow trucking company. The Defense Department—which had a “history” with Yellow that it didn’t want repeated—strongly objected to the loan, stating that the money was being wasted for use on a business “non-critical” for national defense. But the Treasury Department took control and overrode the DOD objection. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reported that the Trump administration “directly engaged with Yellow and its representatives regarding the company’s application” and “took steps to communicate with Treasury officials” about the loan.” 

Misusing pandemic relief funds isn't "new," although it sometimes passes under the radar; an example of this is what I wrote about here (1) in regard to a local business. Although under scrutiny a year ago, the Yellow loan has received renewed interest as it has been revealed that Yellow—which was nearing bankruptcy even before the pandemic—went from paying “0” dollars for lobbying to almost $600,000 in an effort to secure the $700 million loan under false pretenses; the 10 other companies under the “national security” loan policy received only a combined $36 million.

Under the loan agreement, the government is assuming a 29.6 percent equity share of the company. This allegedly “protects” the public against the high risk deal, but in reality it puts American taxpayers on the hook if “given the company’s long-term non-investment grade rating and previous close calls with bankruptcy over the years, it is not clear that an equity stake in YRC will provide much, if any, compensation or protection to taxpayers.” The company claims $5.1 billion in revenue for 2021, $109 million in operating losses, $1.6 billion in outstanding debt and, curiously, $10 million in cash compared to $122 million in 2020.  

Although Yellow reported a profit in its last quarter, it is carrying considerably less total freight in an effort to improve “yield”—meaning taking only pallets with heavy loads and refusing to haul those with light loads that don’t bring in as much money in freight costs, which is allowing LTLs to survive higher operating costs for now. But others speculate that the current “boom” will collapse as the post-pandemic rise in freight will return to pre-pandemic levels, and companies like Yellow will be forced to take less profitable low yield freight just to stay in business.

We have been told that Trump was eager to approve the loan because he thought it would help gain him support with union voters for “saving” their jobs in 2020 election.  But the House committee notes that the bailout mainly benefits share and stockholders—and that is certainly the principle interest of Yellow’s management; they will lay-off workers to keep the pockets of management lined well. This loan was also allowed despite the fact that federal prosecutors were investigating Yellow for overcharging the DOD by “millions of dollars” by falsifying weights and creating artificially higher freight charges. The company eventually agreed to pay $6.8 million to settle the claim.

But lying under oath—a trait that has apparently been passed on to “first daughter” Ivanka—and corruption are not as “entertaining” as being named Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in the past week has been the butt of ridicule on cable news and late night talk shows. Greene—presently in a “spat” with the Catholic Church—was forced to attend an administrative hearing in Atlanta last Friday, meant to determine if she should be allowed to run for reelection this year, given the rule in the Constitution that states that no person should be allowed to run for federal office if they have committed or supported treasonous activity or attempts to stage a “coup” that threatened constitutional government;  Greene is accused of such in regard to the January 6 insurrection.

Greene’s performance was perhaps to be expected from an ignorant bigot who looks and talks like your typical frumpy blond trailer trash. She lied about this, she lied about that. She didn’t “remember” saying this, and she didn’t “remember” saying that. She has pedaled QAnon “pedophile” conspiracies, but she claimed she didn’t know anything about QAnon. There was some laughter about the use of the line from the film Independence Day about not “going quietly in the night,” but it wasn’t that funny; Greene no doubt knew the “connection” and used it, even if it was provided to her by another party.

Steven Benen on MSNBC writes that

Did Greene urge Trump to invoke martial law in order to claim illegitimate power? The Republican testified that she doesn’t remember. Did Greene speak with White House officials about Jan. 6? There’s video of her exiting the West Wing, boasting about a “great planning session,” but the Republican said she doesn’t remember that, either. Did she ever hear anyone at the White House mention that Jan. 6 could turn violent? Once again, the Republican’s memory failed her. Pressed on her own record of extremist rhetoric, Greene simply couldn’t recall her own comments from last year. Asked about conversations with her GOP colleagues, the congresswoman once again drew a blank.

Benen speculated that all this denying and forgetting was part of “a carefully planned legal strategy” to avoid straight up perjury, since that is “difficult” to prove even when it is obvious. Since this is an administrative process, neither side can force the other to produce relevant documents, and the judge in the case has already overruled forcing Greene to sit for a deposition which would open up the possibility of prosecuting her for perjury. It seems unlikely after the hearing that the judge will rule against Greene so close to the primary, so it will be up to voters to make the final judgment on her fitness for office. However, Greene’s lack of “honor” and candidness should tell against her with voters who wonder who exactly she “represents.”

What should be most concerning to voters across the country is that if Republicans retake Congress in 2020, it may very well be that truly psychotic creatures like Greene. Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn will be the ones who “define” the Republican Party and its agenda in the House, and Josh Hawley and Rick Scott in the Senate. Voters need to takes this into consideration when they vote. Keeping these people from the levers of power will leave the message that the moral and ethical corruption of Trump and his cultists is unacceptable and has no place in the political discourse of this country. Keeping Trump’s foot soldiers from taking control of Congress this year is the next step in rejecting Trumpism/fascism in this country after first having voted out Trump in 2020.

Hard to have "fun" in a short life when people want you to feel "bad" because of their "hang-ups"

If today’s society is more “correct,” does it make life more “enjoyable”? Not from what I can tell, unless by “enjoyable” you mean free to whine about anything that offends the ego. I mean life is so short, so why muck it up what you have to feel "bad" all the time? Life today is so damn boring compared to the “old” days, now filled with boring people who make others afraid to do something that will offend them (especially women). Myself being a “loner,” this is only troublesome when ignorant, self-involved, paranoid jerks make their business “my” business.” Why not just ignore the “feeling good about feeling bad” types and enjoy life for its own sake, and the people who don’t want you have “fun” know what they can do with their whatever. From a trailer for a Russ Meyer film:

Moviemaker Russ Meyer, the rural Fellini, serves up a simple homey tale of Olympian togetherness, faith-healing, bra-busting humor, jogging, hulking herculean masculinity…an all-out assault on today’s sexual mores, and more; an end-around attack on women’s lib, blasting through the male machismo syndrome, kicking the crap out of convictions, hang-ups, obsessions, the whole bag. 

So recently we hear that a film production was shut down because of complaints about the behavior of actor Bill Murray, who apparently has a history of offending fellow actors on the set. We are told by the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser that the “#Metoo mob comes for Bill Murray and makes mockery of the movement,” and that 

Another man is being #MeTooed out of existence — accused, convicted in the public square, soon to be canceled without a trial or so much as a finished kangaroo investigation. All because he pulled a pony tail or two, draped his arm around ladies without first obtaining explicit consent. Guilty — of being an old-fashioned flirt.,,Horrors…source says Murray “was very hands-on touchy, not in any personal areas, but put an arm around a woman, touched her hair, pulled her ponytail — but always in a comedic way.

Peyser has criticized the MeToo movement before; in 2017 she accused the “movement” of lumping the “trivial” with the “legitimate,” observing that Sen. Al Franken was put on the same plane as Harvey Weinstein. His “offense” was pretending to touch—his hands never actually touching—a sleeping former Playboy model’s breast as a juvenile prank from years ago on a comedy tour; Franken was pushed to resign his Senate seat because of it.

Peyser then accused Michelle Goldberg of revealing her bias against men in a New York Times op-ed when Goldberg claimed that she had thought that Franken was “one of the good guys” but now questioned if there were any “good guys,” which Peyser likened as further evidence “of a wider feminist War on Men. My fear is that the pendulum will swing so wildly out of control, the fight against genuine sexually based offenses will be delegitimized as much ado about nothing.”

Of course, the “response” to that is even “unconscious” or “innocent” behavior that offends women is still “bad” and the offender should be constantly aware of the fact that anything can offends someone who is just having a bad day or takes everything “personal.”

But back to Murray. OK, so he’s a jerk and has been for a long time, we are told. For example, we are told that he once threw an ash tray at Richard Dreyfus—who called Murray a “drunken Irish bully”—on the set of What About Bob? Dreyfus’ screen personality is one of those rare ones that are instantly recognizable as being his own, but would you want to be around that kind of character personality longer than necessary? A real person like that can be pretty annoying. In the making of American Graffiti documentary, Dreyfus recounts how a couple of his co-stars grabbed him and threw him into the shallow end of a pool, where his head was bruised after it hit the bottom. Decades later Dreyfus was still obviously “sore” about the incident, but it is perfectly believable to assume that it was done in response to a “personality” that was off-putting to some people.

Then there was incident when Murray and Chevy Chase got into a fisticuffs when Chase returned to host Saturday Night Live after leaving the show following the first season. Murray claimed that the encounter was inspired by lingering resentment by the other cast members who thought that Chase’s ego was a little too big to stomach; today, Murray claims that they are “friends.” Then there was the more widely-known incident involving actress Lucy Liu, whose head is probably on the inflated side too. There are two sides to that story; Liu claimed that Murray was making offensive remarks at her, rather than to her, and she “defended” herself; Murray would claim in a later interview that he speaks his mind if he thinks an actor is “unprofessional” and he is forced to work with them, implying that Liu was such a person.  

However, shutting down the set of a film suggests something more serious, but other than what is currently being revealed, Peyser suggests that production in question, Being Mortal, was shutdown out of an overabundance of fear and paranoia. The film’s director, Aziz Ansari, was, according to Peyser, the victim in 2018 of “a woman engaged in a twisted kind of revenge porn aimed at him, posting a viral article online detailing her disgust" with an admittedly consensual “interaction” and that “The poor guy was stunned and slimed, his career, for a while, upended. Meanwhile, the lady hid behind a pseudonym.” The implication was that Ansari shut down the production from the fear of accusations against him being “insensitive.”

I frankly don’t know what to make of this world we live in today. At least I lived long enough for “toys” like cellphones and computers and digital audio and visual media to be a part of everyday life, but I don’ wish I grew up with them; I grew up in a time when you could actually live. As documentary filmmaker Ken Burns recently suggested in an interview, there is no “social” in social media, and people in a room are less likely like to interact with each other and “understand” where they are “coming from” face-to-face, but just bury their heads in their phones seeking out only what they want to know or hear. Increasingly, we are being forced to accept the “hang-ups” and “obsessions” of the minority of one side and abide by their rules. It isn’t so much about “unacceptable” behavior, but that no one knows what is “acceptable” anymore because no knows how to have “fun” anymore.

 

The “whiteface” of Asian claims of discrimination

 

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court—in another “shadow docket” ruling—this time let stand a lower court ruling allowing a “race-neutral” admissions policy to continue at the Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia. The Fairfax County School Board argued that the Supreme Court has ruled before that promoting diversity in schools is constitutional, just not with direct racial “quotas.” Of course the farthest far-right fringe of the court—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch—showed themselves eager to ban even race-neutral efforts to promote diversity.

According to Bloomberg, the “selective” school’s admission policy was changed last year “to guarantee slots for 1.5% of the eighth-grade class in each participating middle school. Remaining applicants compete for 100 other seats under a system that gives points for attendance at underrepresented middle schools.” This was  defended as being similar to the University of Texas' "10 percent" admissions policy.

Opposing this policy is the so-called “Coalition for TJ,” another “Asian-American” front group being orchestrated by long-time affirmative action and voting rights opposition leader Edward Blum, whose “Students for Fair Admissions” is behind the “Asian-American” lawsuit that was supported by Donald Trump’s unapologetically racist first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, against admissions policies at Yale and Harvard, cases that are currently before the Supreme Court. Despite the fact that Asian students are still admitted at a higher rate (54 percent) than any other racial or ethnic group (even whites) at the Thomas Jefferson school, those bringing the case still claim to be “discriminated” against.

I put “Asian-American” in quotes because as Glenn Nelson (who is Japanese-American) wrote in the Pacific Northwest progressive website Crosscut, studies have shown that “the split in Asian American support for affirmative action was generational. In other words, more recent Asian immigrants were least likely to support affirmative action. Asian Americans born in the U.S., with both parents also born here, were three times more likely to support affirmative action. Another study found that, of the five largest Asian American ethnic groups (Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese and Korean), Chinese Americans were the least likely to support affirmative action.”

However, Nelson noted that it was the massive opposition campaign by mostly Chinese immigrants to the Washington State legislature’s passage of a law overturning the 1998 I-200 anti-affirmative action initiative that was most problematic. I-200, pushed by the troublemaking Tim Eyman, had apparently either “fooled” a lot of people in this allegedly “liberal” state with language allegedly claiming it was for “equality”—or merely revealed the level racial hypocrisy. But it was Chinese immigrants who were now the “face” behind I-1000, which would overturn the legislature’s move (it would by a narrow margin).

One proponent of affirmative action, Ben Henry, went to speak at the state capitol in Olympia, and walked into a “buzz saw”—mostly those Chinese immigrants of the so-called Washington Asians for Equality—wearing white T-shirts, which allegedly stood for “equality.” Of course if you actually know anything about this country, the color “white” really “stands for” anything but “equality” in this country. Henry observed that “It makes me sad that the opposition to affirmative action has an Asian face.”

An Asian face in “whiteface.” In 2017, Natasha Warikoo on PBS News Hour noted that far-right activist Blum—who was also behind the fight to gut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court—represents a racist fringe element that is using both white women and Asians to mask their own agenda. Warikoo writes “Why the sudden interest in Asian-American rights by conservatives who normally reject any mention of race or ethnicity as ‘identity politics,’ especially when those mentions claim racial discrimination? Asian Americans are the latest vehicle for critiquing affirmative action.”

Warikoo notes that white students are under the assumption that opposing affirmative action for underrepresented minorities means that their place at the “table” won’t change. But under the “logic” of anti-affirmative action proponents, if “merit-based” admissions is the sole criteria and testing based on rote memory is how “merit” is determined, then white students would surely lose out too (the University of Washington's changing "look" from just a decade ago attests to that). But the racist white fringe is telling Asian students that they are the “losers”—when in fact what they really want is for Asians to back their racist agenda by making them believe that it is underrepresented minorities, and not whites who want to maintain dominance. who are their “enemy.”

But. as Warikoo notes, “Asian Americans, as well as white, black, and Latino Americans, need to understand the history of racial exclusion and the production of racial inequality in American society. When we do, it’s hard not to support affirmative action for underrepresented racial minorities.” Nelson also quotes from a study by sociologists Jennifer Lee of Columbia University and Van Tran of the City University of New York: “As nonwhites, Asians have endured immigration restrictions, legal exclusion from U.S. citizenship, anti-Asian hostility, violence, prejudice and even internment. But as non-Blacks, Asians have escaped centuries of slavery, the legal codification of racial inferiority, the cumulative and intergenerational disadvantages that blacks have endured as a result.”

Yet some Asian immigrants can “feel like they are both victims of discrimination and victims of affirmative action who are penalized for their race while Blacks and other (people of color) are rewarded for theirs” according to Lee and Tran. I have said again and again that hypocrisy burns me up more than anything, and in particular in regard to the Asian group making the loudest noise—Chinese and Chinese immigrants—they need to look at themselves square in the mirror and see the darkness of ugly racism in themselves.

Racism and racist acts against African students and businessmen in China goes back decades when they were “invited” into that country, mainly to convince African leaders to provide them access to markets and natural resources. But even efforts to “disperse” their presence in China as not to cause fear and discrimination among the Chinese citizens seldom worked to do that, and mob attacks against Africans was not uncommon over the slightest “provocation.” In 1988, a race riot occurred on a college campus in Nanjing. According to a story by CNN

Later that night, about 1,000 local students surrounded the Africans' dormitory, after rumors swept campus that they were holding a Chinese woman against her will. Chinese students lobbed bricks through their windows. After police broke up the scene on Christmas Day, about 70 African students decided to flee the campus and went on foot to the city train station, hoping to travel to Beijing where they had embassies. Other dark-skinned foreigners, including Americans, also fled, fearing for their safety.

 

During the Covid-18 pandemic, Yaqiu Wang of Human Rights Watch noted that this kind of racism only became worse, despite official denials by the Chinese government, which claims that racial incidents are social media inventions. “For those who think the official line from Beijing is bad, check out the Chinese internet, where the rampant racism against Black people is often too appalling to repeat.” WeChat—which is the social media platform most commonly used by the Chinese—translated the Chinese “neutral” term for black people as the N-word, before outraged readers outside of China forced a change in the “translation.”

Wang writes that “People of African descent living in China are often depicted as overstaying visas, not paying taxes, and encroaching on Chinese culture”—much as Hispanic immigrants are viewed in this country. “African migrants as well as African-Chinese intermarriages are commonly described as spelling doom for the Chinese race.” Stereotypes and racist caricatures are common features of Chinese media and cultural views of Africans, often with “actors” in blackface, fake posteriors and dressed as monkeys. Many excuse this behavior as a “subconscious” admiration for lighter skin, and that “dark skin”—even among Chinese and especially Chinese women—is looked upon as being lower status. Of course in that kind of world, you can’t get any lower than “black.”

But worse happened during the pandemic, when Africans were forced out of their homes and run out onto the streets. Earlier this month in the wake of a surge in virus cases in China, CNN reported that “The African community in Guangzhou is on edge after widespread accounts were shared on social media of people being left homeless this week, as China's warnings against imported coronavirus cases stoke anti-foreigner sentiment. In the southern Chinese city, Africans have been evicted from their homes by landlords and turned away from hotels, despite many claiming to have no recent travel history or known contact with Covid-19 patients.”

Further, “police ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin. Moreover, local officials launched a round of mandatory tests for Covid-19, followed by mandatory self-quarantine, for anyone with 'African contacts,' regardless of recent travel history or previous quarantine completion.”  “Rows of Africans” were seen sleeping on the streets with their luggage because of being “evicted from their apartments or been turned away from hotels. Other videos showed police harassing Africans on the street.” A volunteer group was also shown being harassed by police when they tried to help the homeless Africans with food and supplies.

 

So yes, we’ve seen this all before in “whiteface,” and these are the kind of people who claim to be the “victim” of discrimination, and only quite willingly bring their own racism and throw it into the pot that is already present here. I for one have little sympathy for their complaints when underrepresented minorities have fought decades and even centuries for a place at the table.