Points To Newsfeed, Shrugs

     Look at almost any newsfeed; sure, Fox News and the sites to the right of them are whistling in the dark more loudly than ever, but from the center onward, things aren't looking great for the Trump administration and it's rubbing off on a lot of Republicans, even in states and districts long thought "safe" for the GOP.

     Does that mean the upcoming election will be a romp for the Democrats?  I doubt it.  It's likely they'll do better than expected, but I don't think we'll see a dramatic majority for them in the Senate.  But the image of Republican politicians is getting tarnished even in the demographics most favorable to them, and that slide is unlikely to reverse as long as fuel (and everything downstream of it) remains expensive, Iran remains defiant, and the Russians keep pounding away at Ukraine.  Spin can only do so much, which President after President has learned the hard way.  Mr. Trump is not so much on learning, but the bill comes due nevertheless, and he's not the kind of guy who will happily pay up on presentation.

Events Leading Up To....

     Tamara's line for times like these is "Events leading up to...," that part at the beginning of a history book (or maybe a chapter in an especially thick one) recounting the factors, actions and events before some kind of noteworthy change for good, ill or maybe just very different.  Steamships, wars, disasters, revolutions: Archduke Ferdinand's murder, the promulgation of the first written code of laws, landing on the Moon, the Russian or American or French Revolutions: they didn't happen in a vacuum.

     We're living in "Events leading up to," but leading up to what, I can't say.  I don't know.  It's a cusp, a discontinuity.  The three branches of the Federal government are at war among themselves and with the public; it's a low-key, slow motion war (unless you happen to be Ilhan Omar, a tree on a public golf course in Washington, D.C. or an immigrant with less than spotless papers or less than impressive wealth) but it's unsupportable nonetheless.  You can see it in the polls, in the President campaigning in what should be safely Republican states and districts, making dire warning that he may be "the last Republican President."

     As an amateur student of history, that particular warning doesn't bother me.  While the United States of America has had a de facto two-party system almost from the outset, they've not always been the same two and their disagreements haven't been consistent.  The emerging parties named themselves the Federalists (more or less Hamiltonian, big-government as their day saw it) and the Republican-Democrats (roughly Jeffersonian, generally small-government), but only one has survived to the present day, and it with only half its name and few of the original principles or core issues intact, due to the changes under Andrew Jackson,* Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.  On both sides, party names and key issues have come and gone.  Who remembers the Whigs, the Know-Nothings, the Anti-Masons?   The spot the Republicans now occupy has seen the most changes of name, and both sides have had huge discontinuities, with the emergence of Jacksonianism for one and the collapse of the Whigs for the other.  Nobody weeps for them now except students who didn't study hard enough for the test.

     The thing about historical discontinuities is that although the term is bloodless, the real-world working out is not always so.  Things are not great now.  They could be much worse and I don't have any confidence they won't be.

     It's time to stock up on canned goods again.  Just in case. 
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* I somehow managed to conflate him with Hamilton in an earlier draft, resulting in "Alexander Jackson," a hybrid who is best not speculated about.

Y'know What I Want?

     I want to get back to a country where it's (mostly) safe to (largely) ignore politics.  The problem is, of course, that politics isn't doing a very good job of ignoring us.

     No matter who or what you blame 'em on, fuel prices, inflation, various kinds of food contamination, a slow-growing measles epidemic, simmering war in the Gulf and Ukraine (and a few other smaller hot spots) is affecting all but the most wealthy of us, every day.  Meanwhile, those rich people keep on getting richer while the rest of us are running as fast as we can to stay where we are.  I know I am; adjusted for inflation, my pay has gone steadily down for the last 25 years, and probably longer.  There's nothing "trickling down."

     If a politician ran on a platform of Make America Boring Again, I'd be seriously interested.  We've had way too much excitement.

Everybody Out Of The Pool?

     The Trump administration's DOJ -- far more a creature of Presidential whim than ever before -- is investigating the member news organizations of the White House Video Pool over their not covering the President on events that CNN (a long time member of the Video Pool) is barred from attending.

     To explain all this, I need to start by taking a long step back, to the White House Correspondent's Association.  The roots of it go back -- allegedly -- to Theodore Roosevelt's time in office, but the official founding of the organization was in 1914, during a time when -- wait for it! -- the odious Woodrow Wilson, then President, was feuding with the press and threatening to stop holding press conferences altogether.  They managed to broker terms between a President angry over what he saw as publication of off the record information, and a press corps hungry for news.

     There's only so much room in the White House, and even less when a President travels.  The WHCA operates as a kind of as "funnel," sorting out precedence (and, traditionally, seating arrangements) in the White House press room and selecting a subgroup of reporters to provide "pool" coverage for the entire membership when it's impractical (or impossible) to haul the whole bunch of them along.  In theory, they are the eyes and ears of the nation, and in practice, their membership and leadership represents a broad spectrum of political leanings and news philosophies.  This happens not because they're all so very chummy but because they're highly competitive and the only way to avoid anyone having an unfair advantage is to all be watching one another, all the time.

     The Video Pool reflects this.  There are many events where one or two cameras (a main and a backup) are all there's room for, and the outfits with the most experience making moving pictures and the best tech and production support comprise the Video Pool: NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and Fox News.*  They're not there to be the President's best pal or worst enemy, they're present to get whatever is newsworthy, and to share it with the other members of the pool and the rest of the WHCA.  When the President decided CNN (after trying to ban CNN, MS Now and Politico from White House press coverage and being told by the courts that having invited the press in, he didn't get to be picky-choosy about kicking some of them back out) was uninvited to those events that required Video Pool coverage, the other members of the pool declined to step in.  If CNN was the WHCA-designated Video Pool lead and they weren't allowed to do the job, none of the rest were going to pick up the slack. 

     DOJ is crying foul over that, saying such a showing of press solidarity may constitute illegal collusion under anti-trust laws.  Bartleby may "prefer not to" all by himself, but if he's been getting together with the other scriveners and stepping away en masse, well--  The courts will get to figure this one out, but the Press has considerable freedom, which the Federal government is Constitutionally disallowed from abridging.

     What, exactly, that might mean in this context remains to be seen.  Most administrations manage to do their work without needing to test every damn limit and norm; even the prejudiced and haughty Wilson saw the light of sweet Reason (or at least of bittersweet Compromise).  This crew, not so much.
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* This is in rough order of the formation of their TV news operations, with CNN and Fox News coming along well after the other three.  Bear in mind that pool video is share and share alike, and it's a prestige gig for the videographers and reporters, real "Don't screw this up" stuff.  They don't get brownie points for playing partisan gotcha, they get 'em for eye-catching, attention-grabbing coverage, period.  There is always a mildly adversarial relationship between Press and politicians, and I wouldn't have it any other way, no matter who's involved: you want 'em looking close.

The Case Against Public Execution

     The most recent barbarism from the Trump administration is the planned public execution of the man who committed the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting,* by firing squad.

     While I am opposed to the death penalty on moral, economic and margin-of-error grounds (you can't unkill the person if the verdict was mistaken), there's no question that the man in question committed the crime, nor that it was heinous; his actions were those of a bloody-handed barbarian and had he been stopped by being killed, I wouldn't have shed a tear.  I won't weep for him if he is executed as planned.

     I will weep for us.  Our Federal and state governments execute people rarely, and not in public.  It does not have a deterrent effect, and in his case, it will only make him a martyr for the cause he embraced.  He was paralyzed from the waist down by an injury sustained when people ended his murderous rampage, and while I have no pity for him over it, shooting a man in a wheelchair (or strapped to a support) only makes the spectacle worse.  There's no claiming the moral high ground after such an act.

     And possibly even worse, it's one more trial balloon for authoritarianism: can the government execute a man on live TV without pushback?  Will the sensation-hungry flock to the online video, share screengrabs and clips on social media, cheer on the administration for doing it?  If it flies, they'll do it again, and again, and again.  They've already shown a considerable taste for blood, and executions are much easier to control than street violence and enforcement overreach.

     It's one more spot of mold on the rotten fruit of Trumpism.
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* You do have to specify the date, there having been another one at the base in 2014. 

About Those Odds Of Civil Unrest

     ...Maybe they just went up.  Consider the source, but the source's source is a well-respected Denver TV news station.

     The world is such a giant shitshow that I'm still kind of hoping I never woke up from anesthesia when they did my cataract surgery and it's all some horrific nightmare as the last neurons fire in near-random order.

Political Predictions

      With the mid-term elections about a month away, I'm going to make some guesses:

     One in ten to one in twenty chance of political violence -- roughly on J6 lines but state/local, the probability starting on Election Day and continuing until after the counts are finalized.  It only takes a handful of violent fools to make a mess, and we have no shortage  Those sound like long odds, but with fifty states, I will not be surprised at all by one or two instances.

     75 percent chance of something ugly and stupid happening at a polling place that is significant enough to make national news.  Much more likely to be county-level law enforcement or self-appointed nitwits than any Federal force.  Related, two in three of some kind of brawl among voters (let's all remember that campaign laws mean you cannot wear your political-slogan T-shirt to the polling place.  Smile and talk about the weather, and keep the line moving). 

     50/50 there's an ugly legal fight over a close race for a high office -- U.S. House or Senate, the many elections for Governor.

     85 percent chance of a premature declaration of victory by the President, and that's being optimistic; I think he'll call the outcome a win for his party even if it's a rout.

     Speaking of routs, I don't think we'll see one.  The House will probably get a Democratic majority; anyone confidently predicting which party will take the Senate is whistling in the dark.  But it is unlikely either party will sweep into office with a commanding majority.  Both bodies are closely balanced now and they will almost certainly be closely balanced after the dust settles.

     I think there is a one in four chance of something spinnable happening between now and Election Day.  It may or may not be staged and it's unlikely to originate at the highest levels, but if anything occurs, it will be spun and spun and spun.  I encourage you to ignore it when you vote -- bad stuff can happen at any time, society never runs out of violent idiots, but giving them a "heckler's veto" cannot prevent it or heal whatever harm they do, only make it worse.

     And speaking of harm, I predict Vice-President James David "JD" Vance* will continue to exhibit the charm and charisma of an STI.  Most Veeps are their party's next in line to run for the highest office but he is likely to face a crowded primary field in 2028.  The President's crude schtick† still holds appeal to his base and he knows how to work it; Vice-President Vance remains uncomfortable and awkward around the modern GOP base -- or almost anyone else not well-insulated by wealth and power.

     This election -- and the two years that follow -- is most likely to be a brutal slog.  Norms have been broken and institutions have been demolished with nothing to replace them.  Many will have to be rebuilt from scratch no matter which party is ascendant, but neither party's politicians have shown much appetite or aptitude for the job.

     They'll have to do the work nevertheless -- or find their way through the smoking ruins of Caesarism.
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* Named James Donald Bowman at birth.  Yes, I often point this out.  For a man who sneers at other people who have re-invented themselves, he's certainly done a lot of it -- "hillbilly" to Marine to attorney to venture capitalist, poor student to scholar, lower-class to upper-class, Protestant to atheist to Catholic, child of poverty to rich man.
 
† You can call this "Trump Derangement Syndrome" if you like.  I think it's a rational response to a crude, preening bully who is nowhere near as smart as he believes himself to be, but I'm not the boss of you.

CNN Still On The Outs

     Apparently, CNN's out of the video pool for now.  They've got access to the White House, but not Air Force One or special events like the recent state dinner.  The other members of the pool don't agree, but so far, there's no explicit policy, just a series of pointed snubs and counter-boycotts.

     Beside's the Executive Branch doesn't have any pressing problems to deal with -- just a little pocket recissioning, a tactic of highly questionable legality, in which Congress sets up a government program, funds it -- and the administration declines to spend the money.

     Boy, it's sure good there's not a war on, or a price crisis in anything important, like food, housing or fuel.

They're Back In! --Except Where They Aren't

      Around 12:30 yesterday afternoon, the White House started reissuing passes to journalists from CNN, MSNBC and Politico.  They were back!

     Well, sort of.  CNN had long been a member of the cool kid's club video pool, and the administration, having kicked them out of it, is maintaining a sphinxlike silence on whether they're allowed to swim again.  In solidarity, the other members of the pool -- ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox -- are sittin' on their cameras and whatever dignity they can muster.

     The issues here remain that, A) Having opened their doors to the Press, Federal institutions can't kick 'em out without "due process of law," meaning there are charges and a rebuttal and a determination from the git-go, or it ends up in court anyway; and B) Having opened their doors to the Press, Feds cannot give individual reporters or organizations the bum's rush over what or how they write.  Clearly actionable stuff might rate legal cases for libel, slander or over national security issues, but calling the President a big ol' meany or accusing Cabinet members of being stupid or excessively flatulent (or even just saying their approval numbers have reached new lows) are criticisms that Uncle Sam's official and loyal servants must endure -- and have had to from the first days of our Republic.  These are things that stem directly from the Bill of Rights and about which there is no lack of statute and legal-case precedent.  (This doesn't stop the back-and-forth; a local pundit reminds us that it's an ongoing struggle and I think it probably always will be.)

     If the Press, in their various and sundry slants, attitudes, angles, opinions, perceptions and limitations are blind men looking at the elephant (or, occasionally, donkey) of government, then let's have as many of 'em, and as many different kinds, as we can get -- because what no one seems to remember from the children's book is that when you put together all the disparate descriptions of the subject animal, you get a pretty accurate overall picture of the beast itself.

     Guess Who's Not Coming To Dinner:
     For years, the easiest way to get journalists to pay attention has been to feed them. Not feeding them can have the opposite effect.  CNN* and MSNBC showed up to cover the big state dinner for China's President Xi last night, and were sent home without so much as a roll or a stray fork in their pockets, let alone any video or sound bites.  This appears to be more limits-testing, and it's an area that is at least slightly gray; limited-access events (as opposed to press conferences) do have greater leeway for discrimination.  (And there's no word if Politico tried to get in and was sent home without dinner.)  What's next?  I don't know, but it's clear this bit of middle-school jostling is far from over.

     Conflict between the Press and the President is always uneven -- one has a bigger megaphone, but the other has the Secret Service, not to mention the Border Patrol, Space Force, Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard.  The Bill of Rights offers a little more balance, but when you come right down to it, one side's got locked gates and people to guard 'em, while the other side's got old-fashioned Mark I ears and eyes, a pen, a voice recorder and a camera.  If we want to keep an eye on what our elected officials are up to, we need those ink-stained wretches, even the ones whose fool notions we detest.
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* To be fair, CNN sent a list of who they were sending and the administration returned it with a note: only videographers and sound technicians were invited. CNN replied it was everyone on their list including reporters and producers, or nobody, and the upshot was, nobody, not even if they wore their best outfits and had a guide to which spoon to use for what dish.

Well, What A Surprise

     The news organizations ousted from their spots at the White House went before a judge yesterday -- a Trump-appointed Federal judge, presumably vetted and blessed by the Federalist Society* -- and were granted a temporary order putting them back in the job in the Oval Office, etc. for the next two weeks while the legal process moves forward.

     The judge says the news organizations are likely to prevail when the case goes to trial; there are no do-overs in the news business and government restriction on Constitutionally-protected rights is a serious matter, so CNN, MSNOW and Politico are back in immediately, where no doubt they will be graciously received,  Or not; as I write, there's no evidence that their White House press credentials have been restored.  (Will he or won't he?  The slow accrual of power to whoever holds the Oval Office ought to be chilling to even a superficial student of history, and the Trump administration has done more to further it than any President since Jackson or Wilson.  Enthusiastic partisans should bear in mind that no one man, or even party, can hold the office forever, and that immense power will pass to someone with a very different set of priorities.)

     A couple of things are going on with the case itself.  One is a First Amendment two-step: if you're a responsible party in The Government, once you've let the Press in, you can't shut them out if you don't like what they write, no matter how mean they are.  The other is the right to due process: the government cannot shove people or organizations around arbitrarily, based on whim  They've got to follow due process of law -- pull you over, write a ticket, aim you towards the courts.  A President can't just point and say, "You -- out!" in the manner of a Roman Emperor or a beat cop rousting someone sleeping on a park bench.

     It will be interesting to see what happens next.  Mr. Trump has already said he will appeal if he loses this case.  There's a step or two until the case reaches the U. S. Supreme Court (unless they apply to jump the line, a process governed by arcane rules I would have to go look up), and there's no telling what the slut-gnomes of false Berlin the nine robed eminences will do.  It should be utterly clear, but....

     Presently, none of the affected organizations have White House access yet.  And here's the bitter pill under those sweet, sweet Bill of Rights headlines: it's kicked the disastrous non-war with Iran and six-fifty-a-gallon diesel (chased by gasoline at $4.50 and both rising) plus the President's low and sinking approval ratings right off the front page, or at least below the fold.  Is pushing the Press around a bad look?  Probably not, especially to his base; while the public generally thinks better of news media than they do of Congress or the President, it's not very much better.  And there's nothing like a good fight to gather a crowd.
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* In fact, he's been a member of it since 2009, and they're picky about the conservative creds of anyone they let into the clubhouse.  Sending a boxtop and an SASE isn't sufficient, no matter how much Ovaltine you drink.

Strange Bed- Er, Well, This Is Awkward

      Yesterday, CNN had "pool" video duty for White House Coverage; the job rotates between ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC, and with CNN barred, the others refrained from stepping up and say they'll be sitting out pool coverage.  (Not to worry -- the President just launched his very own TV channel, with nonstop, officially vetted and approved coverage of whatever the White House wants covered -- and nothing it does not.  For those keeping track at home, this is the exact opposite of a free press.)

     Radio and online/paper Press have their own pool rotations and a few of them have stepped back, too, which meant yesterday, the Print Media pool covering the President was led by....  Envelope, please!  The Washington Blade, which (per Wikipedia) is the country's oldest LGBT newspaper, backed up by the arch-conservative website, The Daily Caller.  Both of 'em are known to wear their political hearts on their sleeves, and to not avoid sensationalistic stories.  The dynamic out there in the reporter seats must have been interesting; I'm picturing a couple of earnest scriveners desperately trying to read over one another's shoulders while not getting, you know, too close.  What if it's catching?

     There's a certain amount of comfort in knowing that even in these fraught and conflict-filled times, we'll be getting a diversity of perspective on the Executive Branch -- and even more comfort in the thought that they're probably creeping each other out.

It Wasn't A Dare

     Last night, I pointed to, and mocked, the increasing weirdness of the present administration and their Legislative counterparts (and let us not forget the nutjobs and partisan hacks they've ushered into the Federal Judiciary or who were already in place and happy to step up).

     Truth is, I was thinking it was just about Peak Strange.

     Guess again.

     The huge, ugly triumphal arch Mr. Trump would like to put up along the sightline from the Lincoln Monument to Arlington National Cemetery isn't something I've written about much.  While I think every bit of it demonstrates execrable taste, from the design and decoration to the location to the very idea of it,* it was indeed a matter of taste, and paled next to barring press organizations from attending public events of the Chief Executive of the republic, or the markedly violent immigration enforcement dragnets that have wept up legal residents and naturalized citizens, and which have resulted in the deaths of non-citizens and citizens alike.  The arch seemed like a minor detail, more gold-dripping frippery going up while the price of everything skyrockets.

     Turns out I was wrong.  Here's the President of United States of America, on his social media platform last night:

     "At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, [...] at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. [...]."

     Nothing like it anywhere in the world?  Ain't that the truth -- though I have seen similar setups, usually in church belfries, while watching reruns of Combat!  They were occupied by German Army snipers or sometimes machinegunners.  Lest someone accuse me of hostile editing, you can read the original in its entirety at the source.  You can also read news stories about it, but yes, this is just what it appears to be, a sniper tower just off the Mall.  That'll deter the next poor sod who picks up a loose flap of pool coating!  What it reminds me of are the later scenes in the recent film Civil War, when opposition troops are converging on a fortified White House cowering behind high walls -- well, that and the kind of thing military-obsessed boys liked to draw in middle school during class when they should have been taking notes.

     I'm now unwilling to believe the unprecedented actions and events will stop at the present level.  Buckle up, kids, there's no predicting what's around the next corner.
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* Most Roman triumphal arches, and all of the surviving ones, were built by the Roman Empire, not during the Roman Republic.  And the United States federal government has never built any -- certainly not in the national capitol.  There's a message there, for those willing to heed it.

It Just Keeps Getting Weirder

      There's no end to the strange turns.  Let's see -- the President says he's banning some U. S. news organizations from the White House, which is not a specifically enumerated or implied power of the office and which previous Federal court cases have determined is, in fact, not a power Presidents have.  At present, the credentials of journalists employed by MSNOW, CNN and Politico have been revoked.  This is a bad notion and I hope the courts won't let it stand.  I want our elected officials to be scrutinized from every angle, so I can make up my own mind.

     Elsewhere, Congresspeople are getting themselves in trouble of the slept-with-the-wrong-person or took-money-they-shouldn't've type.  You can look up the various scandals, not all of which have been to court, for yourself.  It's too tawdry to list.  This is why you need every shade of reporter looking at them.

     At this point, there are plenty of trailer parks in the U.S. with fewer outrageous and/or or illegal activities going on than there are among the elected officials of the Federal government, and among the wildest offenders you will find many of the same people who have been presuming to lecture us Great Unwashed about our bad behavior.  Y'know, there's no honest path to the moral high ground from waking up in bed with an employee or someone else's spouse (or someone other than your own), dead drunk and violating the U. S. Constitution and I'm sick of the politicians, most of the Press and a whole lot of the rest of us acting as if there were.

     Politicians, appointees?  Fix you own hearts and whatever vestiges of a soul or conscience you've got before you come after the rest of us.

A Staggering Own-Goal

     Through misadventure, misjudgement and incompetence, the United States has led the way to a global shortage of diesel fuel.  Prices have skyrocketed -- and there are service stations in the U. S. where you can't buy it at all: they're out.

     This is bad when you go to top up the VW Golf and approaches catastrophic when the Super Duty pickup has run nearly dry, but you ain't seen nothin' yet.  Every single item on the shelf at the grocery store and the five and dime, every drug in the pharmacy and most children in the schools got there by diesel.  The box and tractor-trailer trucks and farm machinery all run on it.  The trains run on it.  The river barges are moved by tugs burning it.  Most school buses burn it.  The electrical peaking plants that keep the grid up on especially hot or cold days?  Diesel.  And speaking of cold days, fuel oil still runs many furnaces, and it's the next thing to diesel; if refineries adjust to make more truck fuel now, there'll be less heating fuel as winter comes in.  Jet fuel's another cousin (though even closer to kerosene), so close that hospitals and TV stations that fly helicopters sometimes get the emergency generators set up to run on the same fuel, sharing their supply.  And there have already been rolling jet fuel shortages.

     Big ships still run on thick bunker oil, which is pretty much at the bottom of the stuff refineries distill, what's left after they pour the diesel off -- but wait, some of them switch to clean-burning diesel as they approach port.

     Bottom line?  Everything you buy is going to get more expensive, and will stay that way as long as diesel fuel remains scarce and costly (and probably long after, until inventories turn over).

     The problem here is not Orange Man Bad.  Sure, he is, but we've had absolute bastards in the Presidency before (Jackson, Wilson, Nixon...); it's not actually a disqualification.  Nope, the problem is Orange Man Dumb and Orange Man Have Poor Impulse Control. Not to mention Orange Man Not Listen To Qualified Experts, of which his administration has vanishingly few anyway.  We're all going to pay the price for it -- all of us who are not high-and-mighty Federal officials and politicians, anyway.  They're still tucking into nice steaks and rick, thick Senate Bean Soup,* the ingredients for which were carried to the Capitol by train and/or truck, and paid for with your and my tax dollars.

     They've shot themselves in the foot, but we're doing the bleeding for them.
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* Apparently, it's not all that great.  My own 15-bean soup is undoubtedly better, though I rarely have time to make it. It's based on the Hurst packaged beans but uses a different recipe and is served with raw chopped onions and celery for toppings, and generous amounts of fresh cornbread.  And you'd never guess what fuel brought all that wonderful stuff to the grocer's.

This Timeline Is Deeply Wrong

     "Lay down with dogs, get up with a job at the FBI," shouldn't be a thing, but here we are.  2026 is the gift that keeps on taking.

That Whole Charlie Kirk Anniversary Thing

     Not the terrible thing that was done to him.  I wrote at the time and I'll say it again: nobody has that coming.  Certainly not a guy whose shtick was showing college students that if you go arguing with a man in a venue he controls, where he sets the ground rules and picks the issues, you're going to lose.  It may even be a valuable lesson or two: the grown-up world does not play fair.  You cannot reason someone out of a position he holds on faith.

     I disagreed with most and maybe even all of his positions.  Nevertheless, the violence that was committed against him was absolutely inexcusable and should be condemned by every decent person.

     But I don't quite get why all the media outlets made a point of noting the anniversary of his murder.  What are they after?  They've been covering the trial of the man accused of killing him, and that's appropriate, but this is someone who didn't hold public office, and whose fame was based on employing his rhetorical gifts in remarkably uneven debates.  Big fun if you agreed with him, I suppose, but he wasn't otherwise notable.  The organizations he founded have faltered as cultural forces without him, and many people on the far Right have drifted towards even more extreme figures.  That's not great -- but it's likely those individuals were already headed in that direction.  He wasn't a moderating influence.  I'm sorry for the loss to his family and friends.

     We've got too damn much political violence in this country, and we're too easily chivvied into "Us vs. Them" conflicts that pit working people...against other working people.  Meanwhile, the rich get richer, no matter what their politics happen to be -- and their politics have often been shown to be remarkably flexible, depending on which party is in power and what they they think it can do for them.  Against that, making killers famous, marking the date of their crimes and shedding performative tears over their victims is an utterly cynical sideshow.

It's A Kind Of Genius

     Oh, it's crude.  And it's not possible, not to mention illegal.  But it's absolutely an example of how the man works: the President of the United States has promised to pay each and every American* a middling-large sum of money if his party retains control of Congress.  He's made similar payoff promises before, which somehow never materialize.

     It's the same appeal as a one-armed bandit, only with far less chance of a payoff: pull lever, get money.  And there's a group of voters, ranging from low-information to so deep in the fantasy they'll take it on faith, who will be moved by it.  Is the size of that group decisively large?  Is greed a stronger motivation than high prices for everything and stagnant wages?  Stronger than the reaction to an increasingly authoritarian Federal government whose masked secret-police thugs act with impunity?

     I don't know.

     The truth is, the money's not his to spend; it's Congress's.  And Congress doesn't have it; the payout would run to more than 1.3 trillion dollars and they're already deeply in the red funding his don't-call-it-a-war with Iran, the same one that's driving up the price of oil, fuel, and everything that relies on oil-derived stuff to be made or grown and transported.  I suppose they could just have the Mint print it -- that's what the Left calls "Modern Monetary Theory" and the Right mocks (so does the center); it's inherently inflationary, meaning by the time you get your money, it'll buy fast-food dinner for two and a daily newspaper as long as it's not the Sunday edition.  And it's illegal in the U.S. to pay people for votes, not that illegality is much of a deterrent.  (And it's the actual paying for votes part that is illegal -- candidates and everyone else can talk about it all they like.)

     It's money no American will ever receive, no matter who they vote for.

     Politicians have been selling pie in the sky for years; Mencken called elections a kind of advance auction of stolen goods, but the modern, jet-propelled GOP version auctions off the stolen goods -- and then keeps them.

     I beg people to choose a better class of crook.  I have no faith left that they will.

     Update: The "dividend" headlined every TV and radio newscast I saw or heard today.  It'll never be paid -- but using it as a lure is indeed a kind of genius.  Flim-flam genius we should be ashamed of falling for, and yet....
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* Citizens, presumably, given his party's positions, not resident non-citizens.

Wow

     It's harder and harder to jump back in the hopper of the daily grind.  I'm not sure if I'm more hopeful or more worried about November's elections and whatever follows.  I suppose if all that happens is an economic crash, we'll be getting out easy, but man, do I loathe interesting times.

It's Labor Day

     Anymore, I'm not all that sure what we mean by "labor," and to what extent a Federal holiday to celebrate it means anything.  Sure, sure, both big political parties will tell you they're the party of the working man (and, occasionally, woman) and the other guys are the party of the "elites," moneyed and/or intellectual.  Socialists and Communists and Labor -- and far-Right -- parties overseas will make similar claims (usually around May first in most countries, and you can ask the Communists to explain that one).

     But as a species, we don't actually like work all that much, and given a chance in literature or art to side with a sweat-of-his-brow farmer or the barbarian who shows up to steal from him or worse, a lot of people prefer Conan to the plodder behind the plow -- and we admire Tom Sawyer, half-covertly, and think the peers he gulls into doing his fence-painting are saps.  We keep coming up with ways to dodge even intellectual work; Socrates was none too sure about literacy and writing things down, fearing it would weaken memory and devalue being present in the moment, and we've kept on cheating -- log tables, printing presses with moveable type, typewriters, word processors, abacuses, slide rules, calculators, photography, computers, and now A.I.: forget tractors, why do the heavy gray-matter lifting when you can build a machine to do it for you?

     And yet -- we do still have gardeners, farmers, stonemasons, poets, singers, miners, men and women toiling in the kitchen or on the assembly line.  One of them might be able to do the work of ten of Socrates' students (or their wives or servants), but work they do.  (Alas, genius still resists force-multipliers; we don't get ten Greek philosophers of the price of one).

     Labor still matters.  It shouldn't be disparaged, not scrubbing floors or unpacking the mysteries of subatomic physics.  We must, still, work, and it's probably built right into our genes, long-haul hunter-gathers who stumbled out of Africa, ganging up to harvest tasty megafauna and sweet, sweet berries, singing before they went and telling each other stories about it afterward.

The Man Who Mugged Analogy

     Tam and I watch the Sunday political talk shows.  I wouldn't say we like watching them, but it's not a hate-watch either.  The programs are the lowest common denominator of American political discourse, available to the widest cross-section of the gen. pop., and because the big networks do have to keep their advertisers, viewers, the FCC and a smattering of basement lunatics* reasonably happy, they're as close to a big-picture look at the current scene as can be had.

     Today's snapshot comes from NBC.  Kristen Welker was interviewing Republican Senator John N. Kennedy of Louisiana, a politician who could out-awshucks Foghorn Leghorn or his inspiration even spotting them three "Ma'ams," one "I say," and a wilted magnolia.  Asked about the economy and specifically inflation, he had this to say:
     "I’m labor. I’m not management. I don’t run the show."

     He -- a U. S. Senator -- would have us believe he just works there.  To continue the parallel with business, that is as if a member of the Board of Directors pretended to have no more influence over how a company is run than some hourly person on the assembly line.  This is not the position of a member of the United States Congress, it's a neat summary of a Senator's job in Imperial Rome.  He's asking us to believe he's just a-watching the whole train run off the trestle, caboose over boiler, as he sweeps the floor in the railroad station waiting room, powerless, thinking if only: "...[W]e’d be on this issue like a hobo on a ham sandwich. We would be all over inflation passing bills."

     If he was my Senator, I'd be asking for my nickle back.

     The interview is a marvel of a man with money, power, influence and authority claiming he's just a little fellow caught up in the gears, a-doing whatever he can, which is nothing at all.  If that was true, why d'ya suppose he even bothered to appear on TV, or the TV people bothered to invite him?  You can find the whole thing here.  Don't eat first..
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* I'd like to be able to tell you that one "side" or the other, out at the fringes of our two-party system, has a definitive lead over the other when it comes to political violence.  But even though it's often more one than the other at any given time, metaphorical meteorologists blowing up Federal buildings or supposed law'n'order fetishists bushwhacking a talk-show host (or vice-versa), the truth is they're usually so far off the Left/Right horseshoe that their political "philosophies" are largely horseshit, and viewed as a whole over history, they're as likely to have gone galloping off from one end of the horseshoe as the other.