Author Archives: Brian Lambert

It’s Time. Fauci and Birx Need to Resign.

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What’s happening to Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx is not a pleasant thing to watch. Though unknown to most of us before the pandemic, they built long and impressive careers, both by being competent in their profession and by carefully nurturing their reputations. Now though they’ve both becomes creatures of Trump culture, part of his supporting cast. A cast mostly of grotesques.

I know I’ve referred to this many times before, but it continues to apply over and over and over again. Everything Trump Touches Dies. (TM: Rick Wilson.) From the $400 million (in 2020 dollars) shoveled to him by his Klansman father, which he proceeded to squander, to his mis-managed airline, his bogus university, his fraudulent foundation, all his ex-wives, his porn star hookups, bankrupt casinos and mistreatment of lackeys like Chris Christie, Reince Preibus, Paul Manafort, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster, Lev and Igor, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Ryan and on and on, Trump has either sullied or compounded the self-sullying of everyone he’s drawn into his wobbling orbit.

And now it’s Fauci and Birx’ turn.

Fauci has been noticeably absent from Trump’s most recent afternoon press rallies, including last Thursday’s where it was up to a stricken-looking Deborah Birx to tap-dance and prevaricate around Trump’s brain-seizing riffs on injecting disinfectants and sticking UV lights up our where-evers. Then Sunday, Birx was the one pushed out on “Meet the Press” and Jake Tapper to explain away some more and deflect attention from what the rest of the entire planet of intelligent humans regarded, unmistakably, as lethal misinformation wrapped around unconscionable ignorance.

I take no pleasure in saying Birx has torched her credibility, but her feet are on fire. She has in effect become a Trump enabler. Which is to say her role, publicly, has become less that of an advisor and more that of an apologist. She’s become the loyal assistant to an ill-informed, anti-science demagogue, which is precisely the opposite of the virtues she built her reputation on over forty years in her chosen profession. To stay any longer, she is risking historic culpability in what will be regarded as the most catastrophic failure of presidential leadership in American history. (And yes, I know I’ve said that before, too. But it bears repeating, like a mantra.)

People like Fauci and Birx, at the top of their bureaucratic food chains, have talents beyond “mere” scientific knowledge. Fauci in particular is regarded as a remarkably skillful player at the game of massaging, finessing and herding serious, high-brow egos toward a common goal. But in Trump, a narcissistic sociopath who can’t tell the difference between the Hippocratic Oath and Fantasia’s dancing hippos, there is no foundation in knowledge or professional empathy to work with.

In Fauci and Birx we are … again … looking at career company players who can not break free of the rules and protocols that brought them stature and prominence. Like former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former Chief of Staff and Marine General John Kelly, ex-oil company CEO Tillerson, whoever wrote “Anonymous”, former Goldman, Sachs President Gary Cohn and even Robert Mueller, Fauci and Birx to this point have not been able to say what must be said. Namely, that Donald Trump not only has no clue what he’s talking about, but has no capacity whatsoever to deal with the biggest crisis the country has faced since WWII.

Like the other estimable reputations mentioned above, Fauci and Birx have so far refused to accept that the rules that brought them to this point of their careers have no weight or value in proximity to Trump. He regards their credibility and sense of duty to the standards of their profession as exploitable weaknesses to be bent to the service … of his reputation, which is to say the fantasy he creates for it.

The irony is that were they to announce their resignations — with unequivocal criticism of the stark, on-going failures of Trump — their standing as the foremost go-to truth-tellers on the pandemic would only increase. Trump would no doubt do everything he could to vilify and demote both. But since each would remain deep in the loop in terms of the science and logistics of pandemic response, they would remain vital, much sought after sources of critical information.

Given a choice between a daily unfettered Fauci & Birx pandemic update or one from their Trump-appointed replacements, (Jared? Pence?), which would you watch? Which would you believe?

More to the point, out from under the reputation-poisoning weight of Trump enabling they could speak freely and like intelligent adults to an adult public.

I Answer the Question,”What Have You Been Watching?”

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I’ve noticed how this pandemic has added a new collection of common statements and questions among people with whom my wife and I socialize, distantly. The common, nearly universal statements are along the lines of, “My god! Did hear what he said/did today?” But a common question I never before heard so frequently, is “What are you watching?”

Those with the luxury of not having to home-school, maintain full-time work obligations or tend to an ill relative have been maxing out their couch potato quota. Being both Catholic and a small town Midwesterner who grew up surrounded by Lutherans, I still have a dim view of people who watch TV in the middle of the day. The tube only comes on after … you’ve earned it. Daytime TV watching was for shut-in old ladies and alcoholics. It’s still that simple.

But after dinner, after putting up a couple hundred bales of hay … or pretending to pay attention in school, a guy out in Montevideo could kick back free of guilt.

So it is today. When paying attention to what is really happening can drive you nuts faster than insipid soaps and sit-coms.

With that in mind, and purely as a distraction, I’ve worked up a list of What I’ve Been Watching, and Listening To since the corral gate closed.

The Plot Against America (HBO). Not exactly light or escapist, but a terrific adaptation of the Phillip Roth novel, wherein (our guy) Charles Lindbergh beats FDR in the 1940 election, cozies up to Hitler and unleashes torrent of pent-up facism and anti-semitism across the land, specifically on a working class Jewish family and their neighbors in Newark, New Jersey. John Turturro and Winona Ryder are the only two name “stars”. But the production heft of the show comes from the presence of producer/writer David Simon, of “The Wire” fame and also “The Deuce”. The six-part series quite pointedly diverts from Roth’s novel in its ending. (Here’s a spoiler alert interview with Simon on his thinking.) But in its telling, the verisimilitude of the sets, locations, props are first-class Hollywood … with plotting and dialogue compliments of one of the country’s greatest novelists. It’s a statement on who covers pop culture today that “The Tiger King”, the depressing equivalent of being trapped in an elevator with a dozen MAGA grifters, received overwhelmingly more press attention. (I’ve had exactly no one tell me they watched “Plot Against … ” .)

Ozark (Netflix). Clearly the writing team behind this series spent a lot of time dissecting “Breaking Bad” for what made it so compelling. And they decided one magic ingredient was … ever escalating stress and tension. I’ve been a fan since the get-go, maybe from spending some time in the ‘Zarks and sprawling Lake of the Ozarks. (I have my souvenir “Big Johnson’s Halfway Inn” t-shirt.) But maybe mostly because it’s always had Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, two excellent if just-below-the-radar actors. (Bateman has directed several episodes.) The adventures of a corporate numbers guy from Chicago getting cross-wise with the mob and being forced to flee to oblivion … i.e. the Ozarks … where he proceeds to mix up the Missus, the kids and everyone he meets with local heroin dealers, hillbilly trailer trash, the Kansas City mob and the inevitable psychotic Mexican drug cartel, all while running a cheesy floating casino has always been fingernail-chewing fun. But it got even more desperate this season. Not to give too much away, but let’s just say Mrs. Marty Byrde (Linney) develops ambitions of her own. Favorite supporting characters: Darlene, the not so loving spouse of the local poppy farmer, and of course Ruth, Marty’s aide de camp, a child of trash with the feral cunning of El Chapo.

Westworld (HBO). The first season of this series was close to classic television. But then you get Anthony Hopkins in anything and you’ll be convinced it’s Criterion Collection stuff. The way season #1 played with the soon-to-arrive dilemma over what really is consciousness, and then, if something inorganic displays consciousness is it therefore “human”? made for a remarkably intelligent mainstream TV show. Thanks, I strongly suspect, to familial connections to acclaimed film director Christopher “Dunkirk”, “The Dark Knight Rises”, “Inception” Nolan, (his brother Jonathan and wife Lisa Joy run “Westworld”), the show has always worked off an impressive budget. (If you’re a studio exec, it can’t hurt to keep Big Nolan happy.) That said, the second season was a mess. Besides the fundamental dramatic problem of diluting suspense by having every character you gun down, chop up or set afire “rebooted” by a refreshed algorithm, the entire season was pretty much all gunning and chopping and jumping back and forth in time. The “Westworld” on-line chat rooms didn’t seem to mind. But what I felt was a series floundering and searching for the next leap up into serious, speculative science. And that element arrived four episodes into this season’s run. The almost-already-here question of gigantic data bases knowing so much more about you than you yourself know finally showed it’s face. Worse, the data bases and algorithms know so much they can “predict” your future. In effect you are living the life they permit you to live. And have I mentioned the budget for this thing? Stunning production design. I’m hanging with it.

Citizen K (Streaming on iTunes and others.) Even if you’ve heard of “the oligarchs”, the Russian tycoons who leapt in and seized control of huge chunks of the economy after the fall of the Soviet Union, you probably haven’t spent as much time with any one specific character as you do in this new documentary by Alex Gibney, Oscar-winner for “Taxi to the Dark Side”, plus “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”, “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and nearly a dozen others. The character here is one of the original oligarchs, Mikhail Khordokovsky, a guy who managed to corner a massive chunk of the Russian oil industry when benighted Boris Yeltsin came to the early-90s oligarchs for a loan to stave of economic collapse … and win reelection. It is simply impossible to watch Donld Trump operate and not see the guiding, mentoring hand of Vladimir Putin in his flagrant abuse of the truth and creation of a constant, competing alternative reality. Putin is the master. But unlike Trump, who is both a fool and lazy, Putin is disciplined and remorseless. Here, as Gibney tells the story of the war between Putin and Khodorkovsky, (essentially all the original oligarchs have been ruined if not killed and replaced by new oligarchs who owe everything to Putin), we understand the average Russian’s “helpless serf” need for a “strong man” to protect them from chaos. Excellent stuff.

Also, a couple podcasts that have moved up my list of faves.

“Hacks on Tap” Ex-Obama advisor David Axelrod and ex-GOP strategist Mike Murphy take 45 minutes a couple times a week to zing each other and try … try … to make some sense of the Trump administration dumpster fire. Murphy long ago bailed on any idiot who would support a certifiable nut job for the White House, so don’t expect any MAGA zealotry. But these two old pros know “the game” inside and out. Likewise they’re on speaking terms with everyone in the game today who isn’t wearing a scarlet “T” on their chest. Recent conversations brought in guests like ex-Obama Chief of Staff and ex-Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who managed the entire show without dropping an F-bomb, and longtime GOP campaign operative Mark McKinnon, (the guy with the big hat on Showtime’s “The Circus.) The consensus of the latter was that Joe Biden needs to actually do this “fireside chat” idea that’s been kicking around. Sit down for an hour every week with Oprah, or David Letterman or, hell, Gail Collins from The New York Times and show America the guy this crew knows to be a regular, decent — empathetic — human being.

“The New Abnormal” Ten, twenty, thirty years from now the line, “Everything Trump Touches Dies” will be stamped like a watermark on this era, and credit will have to go to the guy who authored it, former Republican “master of the dark arts” Rick Wilson. Wilson has had two best-sellers — so far — ripping Trump, the Trump cult formerly known as the Republican party and TrumpNation, a matched set of new ones. The first book, “Everything Trump Touches Dies”, was as close to what I’d imagine Hunter Thompson doing with Trump as anything out there. And now — via his side hustle gig with The Daily Beast — (always behind the paywall) — Wilson, who lives down on the Redneck Riviera in the Florida panhandle and loves guns as much horses — has teamed up with uber New Yorker Molly-Jong Fast to deconstruct as much of Trump’s self-serving blithering as two humans can without risking strokes. The show just launched this week. But given Wilson’s high-profile on cable pundit-fests — (on MSNBC he once referred to Trump’s best-seller as “The Shart of the Deal”, a line that went over the head of the female host but cracked up other, cruder panelists) — this thing will catch on quick. And always wait for the end, where Wilson and Molly offer their picks for “Fuck That Guy” … of the week. (Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a truly contemptible low-life, got Wilson’s nod.)

Even Trump Has to Know Testing Will Help His Reelection

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It is truly a fool’s errand trying to make sense of anything Donald Trump does, beyond assuming he sees it as being in his very personal self-interest. But given that –and only that — that as an incontestabe reality, I still can not understand his refusal to ramp up and coordinate nation-wide testing for COVID-19.

If you accept that every move he makes is sociopathically-focused on getting himself reelected in November, and by that I mean shamelessly re-writing recently (recorded) history, scanning the radar for any and every possibility to lay blame for this catastrophic debacle on someone else and encouraging his troll-cult of “gun enthusiasts” to actively rebel against the states on whom he’s sloughed off the fundamental responsibilities of the federal government, the lack of “testing thing” still makes no sense.

I don’t know about you, but I long, long ago stopped thinking that Trump — a man who can’t read note-card memos much less books and thinks Captain Bligh was a role model for “very powerful” leadership — makes many or really any of the policy decisions in his White House. Clearly, he has no interest in doing anything other than the ceremonial, lights-and-cameras-on work of being President.

(The latest example were his “Liberate Minnesota!”, “Liberate Michigan!” and “Liberate Virginia, and save your great Second Amendment! It’s under siege!” tweets. These were tweets posted not as he was in his gold-trimmed jammies late at night, getting ready to go nighty-night after a snack of Kentucky Fried Chicken, nor were they even in the early AM, a bit groggy and entertaining impure thoughts about the blonde on “Fox and Friends”. No. They were just before noon, in the middle of a supposedly all-hands-on-deck, 24/7 fight against an international pandemic, and seconds after watching some nitwit on FoxNews. He was watching fcking TV! Point being … he never works at his job. Someone else is doing that.)

The assumption, already well-documented through contemporary reporting and almost certain to be verified in the “after action” investigations into what — to repeat myself — is the worst dereliction of duty and failure of executive function by a president in U.S. history, is that Trump “policy” such as it is is a product of the imaginations of others. Like, for example, 34 year-old former high school malcontent/Joe Goebbels-like senior advisor Stephen Miller. And the chronically-bungling senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner. And likely the various old tycoon cronies like Tom Barrack — (one of) the guys who did what he could to profiteer off the 2008 collapse, the inauguration and every Trump move since, along with whoever followed him into the men’s room, and of course the deep thinkers on talk radio and FoxNews.

But even then, with Trump as this vain empty vessel playing useful idiot for America’s worst characters and impulses, it makes no sense not to use the Defense Production Act and divert a fraction of the fire hose of deficit-exploding money for a Manhattan Project-style nationwide testing program. Testing, ordered by him (or whoever) and directed by him (or one of his many “task forces”) would without question have the effect of restoring a semblance of order and a functioning economy … before the election.

As we know from those pesky things called numbers, testing in the USA is slowing down rather than speeding up.

As dismaying as it it to imagine, Trump would be rewarded for at least doing that, never mind so completely screwing up the response to a forseeable and well-predicted international disaster.

So why isn’t Team Trump, Miller, (or the latest chief of staff and ex-North Carolina hill country real estate broker Mark Meadows), Jared, Ivanka, Sean Hannity, etc., pushing him on this? It’s not like he’d have to, you know, do anything. He wouldn’t have to show up in a WalMart parking lot and stick swabs up voters’ noses. He wouldn’t have to even break into any of his free-styling gibberish-and-invective spewing afternoon press rallies to express a moment’s worth of empathy for the 35,000 – 40,000 already dead. Hell, he could even go out and play golf! (They might even let him use the ball-washers.)

The only explanation that makes any sense is that someone, somehow has already made it clear that his failure to date is so far beyond the range of Herbert Hoover, (as in Hoover times-100), that the only election strategy now worth pursuing is to pour everything into the blame game. Blame everything on the states, states with Democratic governors in particular. THEY refused to do their job! THEY refused to test! THEIR incompetence is what has held down the economy. And THEIR whining about needing Trump’s help only shows THEIR ineptitude and weakness.

Without testing there’s no imaginable way the economic tragedy of Trump’s incompetence will have dissipated by November. With testing — at the level of hundreds of thousands per day — there is at least a real-world chance that recovery would be sufficient enough to allow millions to return to work.

And at that point thousands would forget/ignore how all this got so off-the-charts bad and vote to give Dear Leader another chance.

Go ahead explain it to me. I don’t get it.

That Enlightenment Thing? It’s a Still a Work in Progrsss.

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I won’t say that perspective and proportion are the first casualties of a crisis. But those two virtues of rational thinking have a way of quickly becoming endangered species.

While we don’t yet know the origin of COVID-19, (U.S. intelligence says it picked up no alarmed chatter among Chinese officials indicating an accidental outbreak in one of their bio-chemical labs), we do have a vividly clear picture of how thoroughly, totally and unequivocally the Trump administration has bungled — through fundamental incompetence, self-interest and naked mendacity — the preparation for and response to the pandemic. It’s all there already in the official record. Facts have been established.

But we don’t live, and — perspective alert — no human has ever lived in a world where facts alone control how critical decisions are made. As many have noticed, this is a partisan pandemic. Just as climate change instantly became a partisan battleground. Just as Galileo announcing that Copernicus was right that the Earth revolves around the Sun got him branded a heretic by the Catholic church and thrown into house arrest for the rest of his life.

It doesn’t help much, nor will it do anything to prevent Team Trump from continuing to blunder, ignore science and miscalculate the best available data. But there is a perspective on this calamity — the worst exercise of executive authority in American history (and that, I’ll debate anyone, is fully proportionate) — that I find somewhat reassuring.

A disclaimer here is that I’ve come to see validity in the brain science research that says some if not most of our tribal/partisan divide is a factor of evolutionary biology. As creatures who only a dozen or more centuries ago first figured out how to grow crops, we smugly think we’ve come along way in terms of making quality decisions based on what can be proven with the science we have. But just as with bonobos, hyenas and snail darters some are quicker on the draw than others. As with all evolution in all species, there’s a range in cognitive abilities, usually for good societal reasons.

This sort of thing — quite possibly a textbook example of a little information being a dangerous thing — is always in my mind as I watch, usually aghast, as Trump or one of his media enablers prattles on in wave after unapolgetic wave of misinformation.

So I perked up the other day when author/historian Jon Meacham suggested almost in passing that what we see today with this partisan pandemic is really just the latest battle of The Enlightment. Six hundred years later, we are still locked in the unfinished business of bringing the entire human species out of the dark ages of religious superstition, witchcraft, intellectual serfdom and blind loyalty to whoever holds power over our physical well-being.

I suspect Meacham’s been thinking about this because of the many fascinating ways that The Black Death of the middle ages set the stage for the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But the key point is The Enlightment was merely a tipping point. By no means did every member of the race suddenly reject superstition and embrace rationality. Evolutionary steps are never uniform across a species. IThe Enlightenment was merely when enough people of reason were able to network among themselves to establish a formidable, rational, scientific rebuttal to the superstitions that had failed to protect the 75-200 million who died of the plague.

But “enough” is far different than “all.” Which helps to explain the so often astonishing number of 21st century Americans, (not some lost tribe of the Amazon), who still believe in the fantastical. Like the 55% who say they believe in angels. Or the 39% who don’t “accept” the theory of evolution. Or the disparity of Americans who believe Jesus was born of a virgin, (73%), compared to those who believe humans have something to do with climate change, (61%).

As I say, I don’t know that applying this perspective helps all that much when the 21st century equivalent of necromancers, alchemists, pharisees and court jesters are making a forseeable pandemic several factors of magnitude worse than it should have been. But it may serve to fortify you and those around you for the fight to come, post-pandemic. The fight to step up the next rung on ladder of Enlightenment and prevent this kind of catastrophic failure from ever happening again.

The fight where fools, philistines and misanthropes are quarantined from power.

If Now Isn’t the Time to Assess Blame When Is?

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In every American crisis there’s a moment like the one after the 2018 Parkland High School slaughter. A woman found her way into an exclusive Republican fund-raising event on toney Key Biscayne across the water from downtown Miami. She wheedled her way through the crowd of politicians and big ticket donors until she found Paul Ryan, then Speaker of the House.

Polite and deferential to start, she eventually asked Ryan if he was, “Here celebrating the death of 17 children.” At this point the silver-tongued Ryan waved her off saying that despite being the star attraction at a political fund-raiser he, “didn’t want to talk politics”. The line is a variation on the tried and true, “Now is not the time to talk [insert whatever the crisis of the moment is all about.]” (Here’s a few more examples of the same thing.)

There’s an amusing but deadly dark tussle going on amid the torrent of COVID-19 news. This, in case you’ve been distracted by the rapidly escalating death toll, the administration ordering thousands of body bags and dodging basic questions like when will it produce enough tests to moderate the near total lockdown of American society, is the matter of suing FoxNews and other key members of the right-wing disinformation network. For what? For their culpability in the spread of the contagion.

Sharp-witted and sharp-elbowed tech columnist Kara Swisher launched into Sean Hannity in her Tuesday column, using her 80 year-old mother, a Hannity super-fan as an example of the very high cost of the crap (a polite word) regularly spewed by Hannity to his millions of credulous listeners and viewers.

“Facebook was not my mother’s source of misinformation (in fact, the company has been trying to improve in this area). It was not the fault of Dr. Google, which has at least pushed out more good information than bad. And my mom doesn’t use Twitter. Instead, it was Fox, the whole Fox and nothing but the Fox. Many children of older parents have come to know this news diet as the equivalent of extreme senior sugar addiction mixed with a series of truly unpleasant and conspiracy-laden doughnuts.”

While a lawsuit over Fox’s role in feeding Donald Trump and TrumpNation ludicrously erroneous and arguably lethal misinformation, to the point that Fox-Trumpers continued on with activities that led to the infection and deaths of god knows how many others is a delicious thing to imagine. A kind of Scopes Trial for the Trump era. Another sweaty courthouse lawn somewhere. Perhaps Palm Beach in July. A trial of not just Trump, but the larger network of astonishingly cynical interests that have enabled and invested in him.

But that, as Swisher writes, isn’t going to happen. Modern America doesn’t work that way. Nevertheless, Hannity has gone ballistic, calling Swisher every name he can use on air (and Twitter) while – of course – failing to disprove any of the accusations of naked mendacity she posed against him.

He’s sweating. He can feel the first draft of history’s dim view of what he’s done.

TrumpNation is up on its arthritic hind legs, snarling and hissing through the few good incisors they have left that liberals are exploiting the pandemic to undermine Trump. It’s a more personalized, cultish variation on, “Now is not the time … to assess blame for how bad this pandemic has become in the richest and most technologically advanced society on the planet.”

But it very much is. Now is the time to make damn certain there is no doubt in a fat majority of Americans’ minds why this is as bad as it is, and why it could have been much less worse. Fewer infected. Fewer dead. Fewer livelihoods destroyed.

Given everything that is known and provable — just at this point in the crisis — of what Trump knew, what he was told by our intelligence agencies, by the likes of the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonier and what he then failed to do, what diametrically opposed “untruths” he told his gullible, credulous fan base about the likelihood and lethality of what was coming is nothing less than a catastrophic failure of character and duty.

And as much as I wish I could say that is hyperbolic. It’s not. Look around you.

Among the Usual Sage Heads of punditry and establishment media there’s this attitude that it’s est to wait. “This will all get sorted out once the crisis is over,” and “there will government hearings.” Please. As with any meaningful response to our weekly gun slaughter, “Now is not the time … ” is the all-important first step to … doing nothing. To letting the perps skate, and enduring the same tragedy all over again.

If you’re out there rattling your phone lines, your e-mail, your Facebook postings, your Zoom meet-ups, your Twitter accounts and your socially distant dog walks with your neighbors pounding the point that this is, verifiably and conclusively, the worst failure of an American president in the country’s history and that it is still failing, good on you. That’s informed citizenship. That’s a sonic wave with potentially critical vibrations.

In order to defeat the virus, fraud and incompetence have to be brought under control … now. Not a year from now in some musty D.C. hearing room with Devin Nunes cross-examining Anthony Fauci.

Governors and mayors and first responders have their hands (too) full because of Trump (and FoxNew’s) malfeasance and mendacity. Support them every way you can. But don’t mistake the importance, right now and for weeks and months to come, of seizing this moment.

What moment? The moment to write history. To establish beyond any doubt who fcked up and how badly. As you may have heard, history is written by the victors.

The Bullshit Has Gone Toxic

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Traffic for Rachel Maddow spiked a couple days ago when she observed the nose dive the stock market takes every time Donald Trump opens his mouth. Her entirely valid point — to her bosses and media colleagues — is that if Trump can’t spew anything other than wildly misleading to totally false “fairy tales” about miracle drugs being rushed to market, trainloads of medical equipment rushing to the front lines and all the people everywhere telling him what a terrific and impressive job he’s doing, he’s a bona fide health hazard and we’d be better pulling the plug on his daily “briefings“.

To put it in a way the refined and well-mannered Ms. Maddow never would, “The bullshit has gone toxic.”

Put aside flat out ignoring January and February intelligence briefings that this virus was going to get real, big and bad. Put aside all that claptrap about it fading away like a miracle and containing it at 15 cases … and on … and on … and on. What he’s doing today, lying about resources that don’t yet exist, refusing to declare a full-out national emergency and not calling out the Army to set up field hospitals, all while yabbering nonsensically about a malaria drug that’s really “impressed” him has a real world lethal effect. It falsely reassures some people, (most likely his devoted base), who then take fewer precautions with their own health and those around them.

Simultaneously, every briefing, where every time he reaffirms how wildly incompetent he is for this moment, adds a new level of fear among intelligent, informed people.

So yeah, the bullshit has gone toxic. Get Trump off the air. Like Maddow said, if it turns out by some miracle he does say something demonstrably true during one of these appearances, roll the tape. But for god’s sake don’t continue to give millions of overly credulous Americans the idea that this guy A: Knows what is going on, or B: Has any semblance of any idea about what to do next.

He doesn’t. He never has, and we all know that.

And while you’re at it — American press corps — either get tough and in the face of characters like FEMA administrator Peter Gaynor, (appointed two months ago by Trump), or dial back the airtime you’re giving them as well.

Gaynor made a disastrous round of Sunday morning chat shows today and, like Trump, his evasions, non-answers to direct life-and-death questions and “authoritative-y” assurances that everything was under control had precisely the opposite effect on any viewer actually paying attention. Gaynor sounded like every Republican apparatchik in the Trump era, namely, terrified to misspeak the truth and risk the wrath of Dear Leader.

In the best of times American society runs on vast and deep levels of bullshit. Every bag of snack food is the “richest” and “crunchiest” and “butteriest” and most “delicious”. Every car is a “best in its class” performer, dripping “prestige.” Every cookie cutter TV show is “the year’s number one new hit”. Every celebrity is a “break out star” even when they’re not the “Sexiest Man Alive.” It never stops.

And the reason it never stops is that we like it. It’s fun. It’s amusing. It works. We actually buy stuff and lose hundreds of hours of our life because we enjoy the fiction and make believe of being part of the “sexiest”, most “prestigious”, “crunchiest” thing going.

But now the bullshit has gone toxic. What is unequivocally not true, not really happening, not ready for prime and therefore a … lie, is now poised to kill us. Or if not us, our parents, grandparents or anyone with a compromised respiratory system.

So FFS, at least put Donald Trump — the quintessence of sociopathic bullshit — on tape delay.

Now back to my thrice-daily screening of “The Shining.”

You Get a Check! And You Get a Check! And You Get a Check!

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Given the fact that the federal government’s complete and absolute fck-up of preparations for this pandemic — including wasting three months calling it a “hoax” — is largely responsible for the near total meltdown of the economy, (everything has stopped because we don’t even know who or how many are infected), I guess it’s only right that the feds are talking about cutting us all checks.

Me, I’m not alone in seeing $1000 per adult as a kind of cheesy reelection bribe from Team Trump. “Here’s a grand. Sorry about bullshitting you about that hoax stuff and you then losing your job, blowing through your pitiful savings in a month and having to call off your daughter’s wedding and sell your truck and fishin’ boat. But hey! Buy yourself a beer. Let’s Keep America Great!”

But $1000 is something. Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum has been making the case that Jared and Pence and the Hollywood foreclosure king Steve Mnuchin better be prepared to cut a lot more checks if they’re serious about saving the majority of us from economic perdition. Of course, whether they care that much about anything other than the next election and their place in the annals of history’s greatest scoundrels and fools remains to be seen.

It’s encouraging that DC Democrats, sensing blood in the water for Trump and his enablers, have zeroed in on language to prevent the usual suspects, executives and stockholders, from their customary skim job whenever the gummint is handing out panic money.

Yesterday Andrew Ross Sorkin of “Too Big to Fail” fame started talking up what at first glance seems like a good idea, essentially a very … very … fat zero-intersst loan-cum-grant package to every affected employer to maintain payroll and lease/rent costs until some adults can ride in and turn this thing around.

Not being a Nobel laureate I can’t say if that is the best option out there right now. But anything that compensates airline executives, to take just one example, for stuffing their faces with stock buybacks and the resulting bonuses from Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell’s trillion dollar 2017 tax givaway instead of contingency planning for, you know, rainier days will be a scandal atop a catastrophe. The money — loans like Obama gave the auto industry, not grants — has to go, must go, to sustaining employees almost exclusively. (Here’s another good airline screed.)

Trump, ever the clueless idiot, has talked about bailing out the cruise industry. As if Norwegian Cruise Lines and others, nearly all of which are registered off shore and pay next to nothing in U.S. taxes are some kind of vital industry. FFS! Far better we zero in on the guys that run the corner beer and pizza joint and their minimum wage workers.

And what of non-profits, many of which provide vital public services the pernicious “small government” crowd loves to mock if not ignore? Are they going to be rolled into the check-writing frenzy?

Very ironically, the whole thing is almost exactly what Andrew Yang was talking about for past year. (I also thought the best way to provide everyone $1000 a month in Universal Basic Income was by forcing Google, Facebook, Experian, VISA and every other corporate monolith to compensate individual Americans for the constant trading and profiteering off our personal information. But that’s just me.)

This whole episode is — no big revelation here — an astonishing shit show. One that wouldn’t be nearly as bad had the U.S. government been under the control of competent, experienced, functioning adults and not a clown car of frauds and grifters. But that Hillary … and those e-mails … .

The question I leave you with as we hunker in our caves, when we’re not day-drinking and over-walking the dog, is pretty basic: Does any fck up by any other American administration — and the Iraq war wasn’t even 20 years ago — come close to comparing with this?

Quick answer: No.

We’re Failing a Critical Test of Basic Evolution

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Among all the odd things I find myself obsessing over in this, um, interesting moment are the basic laws of evolutionary biology. Namely what every individual cell does (or does not do) to survive attack and crisis and thereby advance its DNA into another generation. The story of evolution, (which — much to my point here — a large number of Americans don’t believe in), is a multi-billion year saga of trial and error. A few winners. Lots of losers.

Sped up from the pure microbiologic level to mammals, there’s been a lot of deeper understanding since Charles Darwin on the ways packs and tribes of “advanced” species, (individuals themselves composed of roiling colonies of cells}, screw the pooch. How? By failing to adapt to high-peril changes in their environment or … by entrusting their survival to leaders, think “alpha apes”, who prove too weak or insufficiently wily (i.e. intelligent) to beat back an attack by another tribe, or adapt to change.

You can see where I’m going here. But it isn’t just Donald Trump, although god knows his narcissistic-to-the-point-of-sociopathic incompetence has been confirmed in granite by this epic debacle.

The decision 63,000,000 of our pack/tribe made in 2016 when they voted for Trump was based heavily on a popular but deeply-flawed misconception that all government, really any government, is incompetent, corrupt and fundamentally untrustworthy. A drag on our freedoms and wildly too expensive. This is a message that is essential to the modern conservative movement. From Ronald Reagan to Rush Limbaugh, from The Freedom Caucus to “Fox & Friends.” To quote Grover Norquist, “I just want to shrink [government] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

This self-defeating fallacy explains as well as anything why preparations for a pandemic, not at all a sci-fi improbability in a fully inter-connected world population, have been under-funded and eradicated entirely when they haven’t simply been ignored. These are the agencies dismissed as “wasteful social programs” and are therefore routinely and fairly easily under-funded or shuttered by conservative politicians. (Usually as a way of making some sense of the government books relative to another massive tax relief package for wealthy donors.)

Here’s a good, balanced overview of recent health-related funding.

We’ve learned in recent days that despite wasting three months since the first outbreak of the “foreign virus”, there hasn’t been even the most minimal marshalling of testing equipment and facilities (and national protocols) in case, you know, something did go wrong. Put in basic, conservative business terms: no contingency planning at all.

This is how tribes perish. By blindly accepting and following ignorant, incompetent leadership’s utterly false narrative. Ergo: no preparation for a life or death crisis.

So in this context, as we sort out how to prevent this from happening again, it’s worth discussing what are — truly — the fundamental matters of defense of the pack/tribe?

Put another way, what is “defense” today, for 21st century America? Is it really preparing for a full-out military attack from Russia, a mafia-style kleptocracy that remains in business solely because of unpredictable oil sales to western markets? Or is it China? Where we are required to believe they would for some reason attack their primary customer base, the primary engine of their economy?

Or is the real “threat” over the next 20-30 years, considering climate change and the ever-increasing human/wildlife interface, the much higher likelihood of a truly fatal, plague-like contagion, killing millions instead of “just” thousands?

If we’re now inclined to think the latter is far, far more probable, how do we then continue pumping $1.5 trillion into farcical shit shows like the Joint Strike Fighter while CDC funding amounts to 1.5% of the Defense budget, barely the cost of change of tires on that one ridiculous airplane?

Well Okay, So I Guess I’ll Take Warren.

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The rule of thumb is that in primaries you vote your heart and in general elections you vote your head. This means I have a problem tomorrow.

Almost at the exact moment I was going to start abusing the keyboard with my deep thoughts for why Pete Buttigieg was going to be my choice on Tuesday he dropped out. Ironically, the bottom line gist of my rant was going to be young Mayor Pete’s “judgment” — based on scholarship and thoughtfulness. And wouldn’t you know judgment, which is to say accepting he had no chance in 2020 and that the Democratic faithful will look more favorably upon him in 2024 or 2028 for stepping aside now, is what he showed in “suspending” his campaign.

So Mayor Pete is yesterday’s news. Now what?

Conventional wisdom says Amy Klobuchar will win her home state. You haven’t forgotten she’s from the Midwest have you? Or that she’s been “in the arena”? Or that she has “the receipts”?

Already at this point — eight months before the real election — every candidate’s operative cliches bang in my ears like a cheap tin drum. But somehow Amy’s cliches seem even more canned than most.

She’s been an effective Senator, at least on the level of constituent service, (provided by her terrorized staff), but there are just too many big, double-edged fights she’s avoided, and avoided IMHO out of calculation for her longer-term career goals. It’s wonderful she’s authored and passed far more bills than Bernie Sanders, (not a difficult thing to do). But on close inspection most of them fall into the category of requiring us to be kind to animals and eat our vegetables. The big fights … in the main arena … where the flak gets thicker and risk gets higher, is not a place she’s spent a lot of time.

The race is clearly moving to a Bernie v. Joe contest. Two nearly octegenarian white guys with the highest name recognition. Jesus.

Both come with barge-loads of baggage and an unconvincing forecast of what happens if they’re elected. Bernie is promising a near-total overhaul of 15-20% of the American economy, along with billions-to-trillions in fresh spending for a wet dream list of social programs, all while waving off the stark, ugly reality of Mitch McConnell and a federal court system every day stocked with more McConnell-knighted Federalist Society judges. Each of whom is committed to suffocating Bernie-ism before he gets directions to the Oval Office rest room.

Joe, meanwhile continues to assure us that since he’s been everywhere and met everyone in his 500 years in D.C. he’ll reach a collegial, cloakroom accomodation with Mitch and … you know … I guess … convince the Mitchs and Ted Cruzes and Lindsey Grahams of the world to give us all a win from time to time. Maybe roll back the 2017 tax cuts, stabilize Obamacare and throw some ching at climate change.

So … the heart being what it is, an emotional thing, prone to lapses of good judgment, I’ll be joining my lovely wife in voting for Elizabeth Warren tomorrow.

Warren has no chance at the nomination. And her “wealth tax”, where she basically takes the change she finds in Mike Bloomberg’s couch cushions to turn the US of A into a 3000-mile wide version of Denmark still makes no mathematical sense, while also dreamily ignoring what we’ll just call The McConnell Reality.

But what she does offer, and this is delicious, is the sharpest remaining contrast to the corrupt, semi-literate, sexist-racist vulgarian that is Donald Trump. Startlingly industrious, studious, diligent, energetic and … female, she more than any of those left standing offers an image of profound change. Also, unlike Amy, Warren is practically Spartacus when it comes to jumping into the high-profile/high risk arenas. The woman’s got fight in her. And damn … I like a gal with fight.

By Wedneasday morning though, it’ll all be Joe and Bernie, and maybe just Bernie. And with that decided, I’ll send a check to the winner, knock doors, paste bumper stickers all over my vehicle and, hell, stand on street corners– right here in Edina — and rant regularly about “a pox on the millionaires and billionaires.”

It won’t be pretty, especially if I’m still in my pajamas with a bad case of bed head. But it’s where we’ll be.

Fear the Bern

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Bernie Sanders is fond of saying, “People want real change”, just as in pretty much every election one candidate or another hypes his or her power to bring just that. Big time, transformational change. The problem is the data on that “real change” thing is pretty spotty-to-discouraging. In reality, mostly voters are afraid of “real change”. Mainly they want things to stay kind of the same, just with a different face at the helm of the ship.

Last night in South Carolina, Bernie took more than his usual share of hits. This wasn’t surprising given his solid-looking front runner-status. The Democratic establishment and a remarkable slice of the punditocracy have mobilized to prevent his nomination.

The primary argument being that once we leave the bubble of the primary season and Bernie is exposed to the full brunt of the hysteria and nefariousness of Donald Trump and Team Trump media, Bernie will play like a 78-ton millstone around the neck of every Democrat in every district and race where large numbers of voters — independents and moderate Republicans — mainly want things to stop being stupid and embarrassing and just go back to the way they were four years ago, no revolution required.

Sanders points to polling showing him regularly beating Trump. Skeptics point to other data showing how viscerally/emotionally voters respond to just the label of “socialist.” Hell, “atheist” polls better. And “gay” is no real issue at all. But “socialist”, even soft-core “Democratic socialist”, remains an American boogey man with very deep roots. It may be meaningless to people of the post-Soviet era, but it remains as toxic to (many) Boomers and ultra geezers as “pedophile.”

(From the article linked above: “Most Americans don’t like the idea of moving toward socialism, regardless of how you qualify it. In a Suffolk poll taken last spring, a slight plurality of Democrats said they’d be “satisfied with a presidential candidate who thinks the United States should be more socialist.” But steep majorities of independents (72 percent to 18 percent) and voters in the aggregate (67 percent to 22 percent) said they wouldn’t. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for the Democratic nominee regardless. But these grim numbers go much further.”)

It’s of course another low-information problem. Beyond the primary season bubble of “activists” and “zealots” and “revolutionaries” — amounting to a fraction of a faction of the total electorate — are far more people, (likely voters), who have never processed how much “socialism” is already baked in to American life. Nor have sussed out how what Bernie is constantly yelling about would really work. Wish all you want that that wasn’t the case, but it’s a harsh reality.

And it’s hard to see how this improves in a long head-to-head with the disinformation/distortion Trump machine.

Through the primaries thus far Bernie has managed to play coy with his math on Medicare for All and with his health records. But there’s a gruesome gauntlet awaiting him on those two matters alone, post nomination. And then we’ll start adding on every “socialist”-sounding thing he’s said for 40 years on Vermont Public Access TV.

My feelings about Bernie remain pretty much what they’ve been for the last five years. Were it to happen, his vision for the mechanisms of the world would be better than what we have in almost every way … but I can not for the life of me imagine how he, or anyone, can possibly deliver them. His “revolution” of “real change” requires leading a wave election so large and definitive that it not only sweeps Mitch McConnell and a dozen or more Republican senators out of DC, but is also so sweeping and commanding it intimidates the truly titanic forces of American finance. To the point they concede resistance is futile and melt away from the fight … for their very existence.

The numbers aren’t there. (Here’s Kevin Drum at Mother Jones breaking down how much better Bernie will have to do with young voters than any Democrat has ever done.)

My pet response to anyone giddy over the thought of Medicare for All and a four-year timeline to put the private health insurance industry out of business is, “Ok, great. They’re carnivorous bastards. But just walk me through exactly how you unwind UnitedHealth, for one example. Never mind the employees out of work. Where does the shareholder value — held by pension funds for teachers unions and others besides the usual plutocrats — go? Are we just wiping it out? If so, I see some resistance there.”

As my blogging colleague Joe has said several times, the poison pill factor in Bernie’s support is the obsessive and (justifiably) angry faction that will not accept anyone but him. Should he lose they’ll likely repeat what they’ve done in recent memory and shift to some/any third party candidate making the same “principled” noises, ignoring what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore, or Jill Stein to Hillary Clinton. (Somewhere within Bernie’s support remains the “blow it all up” crowd who were down to a coin flip between him and Donald Trump in 2016.)

In both “Platoon” and “Saving Private Ryan” a character on the battlefield appeals to his commanding officer, “I got a bad feeling about this one.” That’s me today with Bernie.

Of course in “Saving Private Ryan” Tom Hanks responds by asking, “When was the last time you felt good about anything?”

When Amy Got Pissy with Pete

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Well, that’s was, um, lively, wasn’t it? My hunch that Mike Bloomberg’s presence would turbo-charge the tenor of the Democratic debates proved true. Obviously, it didn’t take Nostradamus to forsee that a guy who is the living embodiment of everything two fire-breathing progressives despise about American power politics would play the role of prime rib tartare to a pack of hungry wolves.

Elizabeth Warren is the trending meme this morning, and she was clearly up for the fight. Her repeated taunt to Bloomberg that all he had to do — right then and there on live TV — was release every ex-employee from the NDAs they signed, for whatever reason, would have been enough to make him look like the arrogant (albeit smart and arguably visionary) boss he is. But then she shifted to the country’s obscene tax structure … .

So yes, a bit of a revival for Warren. (Her fund-raising spiked during the debate.)

But my eye kept returning to the fight at the other end of the stage. Post debate, former Obama advisor David Axelrod commented that last night’s debate was as bad for our senator, Amy Klobuchar, as the New Hampshire debate was good.

Moving up in politics is exhilarating. When you get to upper tiers, it gets harder.@AmyKlobuchar‘s performance has been as bad tonight as she was good in New Hampshire.— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) February 20, 2020

As they say, the optics (and tone) were not good. In fact, they were bad. Klobuchar was clearly rattled by Mayor Pete. She looked and sounded like someone, who if they were meeting away from witnesses in a dark alley, would have stuck a shiv in him.

Klobuchar and Buttigieg both need the other to go away if they’re going to gain enough traction to slow down Bernie Sanders. I get that. But what I don’t get is how someone making such a loud and persistent point about their “experience in Washington”, their time in “the arena”, their ability to “work together” and all those other homey Midwestern values, (Amy’s from Minnesota, you know) could allow herself to lose any pretense of cool and presidential decorum responding to an entirely predictable line of attack. The one about not knowing the name of the president of Mexico.

She had the right game plan. Make a quick, self-effacing apology. Stuff happens. A matter of a simple brain fart. (Not that Amy would ever use such crude language in public.) But instead of that, as Buttigieg persisted noting her positions on committees overseeing Latin America, (i.e. “experience” in “the arena”), she got visibly, palpably prickly and personal.

By stark contrast, Buttigieg standing inches away, remained poised and on message. The cringe factor may not have hit Code Red, but it was definitely in the range of, “If You See Something Say Something.” And Amy looked defensive and angry.

Much was made of her New Hampshire debate performance as a key driver of her recent surge. But William Saletan at Slate had a compelling analysis of a Klobuchar tactic in the closing hours of that primary.

Says Saletan, “In a dramatic exchange, Klobuchar rebuked Buttigieg for belittling the Senate impeachment trial. In the debate and in subsequent TV interviews, she used his impeachment comments to portray him as unserious. It was a clever attack. It was also deceptive.”

He lays out how several times in the days leading up to the vote, Buttigieg in New Hampshire made the comment, “If you’re like me, watching this impeachment process is exhausting. It’s demoralizing. [It] makes me want to change the channel and watch cartoons.” And then quickly adding, “The cynics win if they get us to switch it off. [But] that’s how we win: To refuse to walk away. How they win, how the cynics win: if they get us to switch it off.”

Several reporters on the scenes noted that the audience understood quite well what Buttigieg was saying. “As discouraging as the impeachment process was, you can’t walk away. You have to stay involved.”

But … Amy, as part of a strategy to make Buttigieg look, you know, “inexperienced” and too callow to understand “the arena”, conveniently left off the part about staying involved and fighting through the temptation to throw up your hands and walk away.

Saletan: “Klobuchar, by taking his reference to cartoons out of context, inverted the meaning of his words. In an NBC interview, she described his message as “Let’s turn off the TV or go flip the channel and watch cartoons.” She contrasted this glib remark, as she presented it, with her own solemn responsibilities. ‘I have a job to do. I am in the arena’, she said. After the interview, Klobuchar’s communications director tweeted out her jab about cartoons.“

This sort of stuff is of course standard politics. But that doesn’t make it any less cheesy … and contradictory of “Midwestern values.” Everyone likes a fighter. Excuse me, an “arena”-tested fighter. But what we admire far more is someone who can play and win by making legitimate criticism.

… and not get flustered and pissy when your target needles you for something that plainly happened.

Baseball Must Take a Stand Against the Era of Remorseless Sleaze

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Clearly remorse, like courage, is out of fashion these days. While Donald Trump continues to pardon or commute sentences for a truly miserable cast of characters, none of whom have expressed even a milli-second’s worth of remorse for their crimes, it’d be nice if a grand national pastime like say, Major League Baseball, would step up and show America’s youth that cheating has serious consequences.

Until this past week it appeared unlikely that any of the actual players for the Houston Astros would be fined, suspended or otherwise disciplined either for the cheating scheme they created or were complicit in with their silence. But now, with heavyweights like Mike Trout — i.e. the best player in the game — and LeBron James, the most famous athlete of the moment — coming out and saying that baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is blowing it by letting the players skate, the times may be a changin’.

The commissioners of pro sports are quasi-independent employees of the owners of the various teams, and those owners, like CEOs everywhere have one primary objective: make money, or at least steadily increase the value of their investment. The punishment the Astros have received so far amounts to pretty much a parking ticket to people of the average owner’s total net worth.

But were Commissioner Manfred to belatedly bow to player pressure (in addition to fan and pundit pressure) and take serious action to restore credibility to the game and set a vivid precedent for anyone who tries anything like what the Astros have been proven to have done … well, that’ll have significant bottom line consequences for the Astros and several other teams, including the Twins and Yankees, whose current rosters include players involved with the Astros scandal in 2017 and 2018.

When the initial punishments of Houston executives and their manager were handed down, Manfred boxed himself in a corner by granting Astros players immunity if they came clean and admitted what they had done. Conventional wisdom was that the MLB’s Players Association would not have stood still for investigations, much less penalties of players. The thinking was that — as with your average bad cop — solidarity was so tight among players across baseball Manfred risked legalized mutiny and a PR nightmare by getting tough on the players.

But now, with a steadily increasing volume of outrage coming from opposing players, (i.e. other union members), rightfully disgusted by the way Astros players have slimed the reputation of the game (not to mention arguably stolen championships and individual awards), Manfred is getting pushed closer to making the decision he should have made weeks ago.

What kind of punishment? Vacating the Astros 2017 World Championship might seem extreme, but the NCAA (no one’s idea of an all-wise and just organization) has levied similar penalties right here in Minnesota.

Losing the 2017 World Series banner would sting. But the big hit, the only one that would catch everyone’s attention and send an unequivocal sign that baseball will not tolerate corruption, would be to suspend each and everyone of the Astros players on either the 2017 or 2018 teams, wherever they are now. (The Twins’ Marwin Gonzalez and the Yankees super-expensive new hire, Gerrit Cole would have to be included. Gonzalez has at least expressed remorse, which is more than any other the other Astros star players.)

One proposal is a 50-game suspension for each player. But that’s roughy 30 games less than the suspension a player gets for using an illegal diuretic. Eighty-one-games seems more commensurate with the discredit the players have brought on the game, and a full season is a nice round number that would serve like a bat to the head of anyone still not paying attention.

The financial impact is obvious. The Astros would have to field a team of minor leaguers and emergency hires that very few would want to see play, while the Twins and Yankees and other teams with ex-Astros would be more modestly debilitated.

My understanding is that most major league contracts contain, in essence, morality clauses, voiding the contract if a player’s personal behavior grossly violates common standards of decency. Since debasing the good name of baseball qualifies (IMHO), owners would not have to pay serious sums of money for the duration of the suspension … but would be in the business of complicated, expensive make goods for TV contracts, season tickets, corporate boxes, field advertising and on and on.

Better legal minds say Manfred’s immunity gambit has destroyed any option he might have to push for real punishment now. But he’s falling into a predicament where he has to try.

The point is — and it’s especially valid in the age of Donald Trump, someone or some organization somewhere has — to put it grandly — demonstrate a moral obligation to the culture at large. How? By standing up and proving it will not tolerate corruption. By showing there are very serious financial and reputational consequences for cheating.

Donald Trump’s sleaze and corruption may be entirely acceptable if you’re a Republican Senator, Congressman or state official. Or if you’re a white evangelical or a NASCAR fan.

But for everyone else who wonders and worries what the effect a vulgar, pussy-grabbing, porn star-cavorting, pathological liar is having on America’s youth, it’d be cathartic to see a bedrock role-modeling institution like big league baseball say emphatically, “No. This shit is dead wrong. Actions have consequences. So you guys are off the field and out of the money for a year.”

Mike Bloomberg Is Stalking Me

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It was officially too much when Mike Bloomberg followed me to the barber shop. I mean the glossy mailer had already come to the house. And the constant TV ads long ago became a disorienting seige barrage … to the point I’m seeing perpetually joyless Mike Bloomberg in gaudy cruise wear strolling the Captain’s Deck as Grace Slick roars on about those worthless pills that Mother gives you. But at the barber? (Excuse me, “bespoke artisanal hair stylists”.) Where the tattooed fashionistas clip and trim to cheesy pop and classic rock? A Bloomberg radio ad? After a Lizzo song?

Too much.

But maybe it’s because I personally can’t imagine a less plausible character as the 2020 Democratic nominee. (Ok, maybe Marianne Williamson, or Kid Rock.) But come on! Yet another New York billionaire? A former Republican? Who gushed over George friggin’ W. Bush only 16 years ago? Who unconstitutionally “stopped and frisked” five million black and Hispanic guys? A dude with the quintessential “Yes, boss” mentality and corresponding lack of people skills? And a guy who, you just know, has a closet with a hundred more wince-inducing clips like the one kicking around today, which he has very unsuccessfully (and unwisely) tried to suppress?

For me, Bloomberg 2020 is the Democratic equivalent of the weird crush Republicans get on bizarre “outsiders” like Fred Thompson, Herman Cain, Alan Keyes and Ron Paul. The problem with that analogy is that New York fake billionaire Donald Trump was once one of those weird crushes and he won. Therefore, the thinking goes, don’t scoff at Bloomberg! He could save us!

Please. Bloomberg may be setting a new campaign tech precedent with his gargantuan media buys, and some of the ads he’s put out vivisecting Trump are exactly the kind of “put an end to the vulgarity” messaging Democrats should be hitting the public with. But a bit like Pete Buttigieg, a majority of the Democratic-inclined public has no idea who he really is. “He used to be mayor of New York. Letterman made a lot of jokes about him. I went to New York once. Had a drink in Times Square. Rode the Staten Island Ferry. Noisy place. And expensive! But, you know, we didn’t get mugged.”

It may be possible to run a mostly-all media campaign these days. But the twist in that notion is that it’s still show biz. You still have to sell a personality. A human being people can trust and relate to … on some level. Which means Bloomberg the Billionaire Boss is going to have to press some flesh somewhere and start doing a lot more impertinent media interviews than he’s done, all of which will be asking about “stop and frisk”, smooching George W. and trying to suppress embarrassing video clips … where he was simply showing who he really is.

Bloomberg will have his 2020 debutante moment at the next Democratic debate, and baby-oh-baby is Bernie Sanders going to be happy to see him. Few things strengthen Bernie’s claim to the Democratic mantle more than the possibility some stone-faced corporate titan, (“a billion-nayah!”) is the alternative to him atop the ticket this year.

Pundits are warning of the ultimate Democratic blood bath if by some infectious virus Sanders and Bloomberg are the two choices left standing after Super Tuesday. And it isn’t hard to imagine how the “Bernie bros” will respond to being blown out of the nomination by a half a billion dollar check from one guy.

Very (Very) Few Have Abused “Freedom” for as Long and as Badly as Rush Limbaugh

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If we’re talking high-profile, big name cultural figures — and not child molesters, serial killers and your occasional Wall Street banker — Rush Limbaugh would make the top five Most Contemptible People of This Generation.

So tt was of course fitting that Donald Trump, in tight competion with Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and maybe Dick Fuld (ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers) for Numero Uno, would pause his “State of My Mind” speech Tuesday night to award Limbaugh the (instantly much-diminished) Presidential Medal of Freedom … to the sycophantic roars of Trump (and Limbaugh’s) assembled Republican hostages.

I’m fond of boring people with the conservative lineage that gave us Donald Trump. She was a huge asset, but no, it didn’t begin with a raving twit like Sarah Palin being elevated to the public stage. And it wasn’t George W., Charlie McCarthy to Dick Cheney’s Edgar Bergen. It wasn’t even FoxNews … not there at the beginning, anyway. It was Limbaugh.

It was Limbaugh, unleashed by Ronnie Reagan’s sign-off on a last ditch attempt to codify The Fairness Doctrine into law who kicked open the sluice gates from the manure pond of rancid personal attack, gross distortion of facts and reality, incivility and … and! … the billions to be made by agitating the self-pitying greivances of America’s white males. (The Fairness Doctrine stood for 40 years as a way to give people and agencies attacked on public airwaves an opportunity to respond.)

Limbaugh’s act metastasized practically overnight and within three years was the most dominant show in the country, fattening not just his bank account but that of thousands of otherwise beknighted radio managers and salesmen all across the country. These were people who all of a sudden found themselves in the business of charging top rates from a nearly inexhaustible list of clients eager to “be where the men are.”

There was no secret to Limbaugh’s “secret sauce”. It was a constant mocking antipathy of minorities, feminists, the established news media, environmentalists, unions and on and on, but mostly liberals. Bill Clinton, few people’s idea today of a hair on fire “lib”, was a godsend to Limbaugh. He couldn’t find enough foul and invariably false things — i.e. brazen lies — to accuse him of. (The stamp Limbaugh alone put on “Crooked Hillary” did as much to sully her in the average voter’s mind than any other single perason else … so say I.)

On a personal level, Limbaugh, currently on wife #4, was also a trailblazer for a candidate with essentially no moral bona fides to get up and bellow that contrary to what your lying eyes were telling you he was imbued with the light and spirit of the one true God! And not only bellow it, but … be believed … by the huge audience of white Americans desperate to hold on their presumption of status without, you know, doing too much readin’ and thinkin’ to find out for themselves what was really … truly … true.

More sinister in the pantheon of Nefarious Schemes is that what Limbaugh introduced as a winning populist concept is precisely — and I do mean precisely — what Vladimir Putin, then rising through the wholly corrupt post-Soviet bureaucracy — seized on as his primary tactic for diminishing western democracies, the United States in particular.

The tactic was, given that Putin had no money for big flashy weapons systems … bullshit.

To be clear, a constant torrent of bullshit and lies and threats so thick and dense and ceaseless the average person soon gave up even trying to figure out what was true. Whatever “truth” was reported by someone once thought credible was countered three times over with, to paraphrase Kellyanne Conway, an “alternative truth.” It’s what put Putin in power in Russia and what keeps him there today. (It sure isn’t the economy or life expectancy.)

Hell, Trump advisor Steve Bannon came right out and said it two years ago.

“The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Trump is merely the poisoned flower of all that toxic fertilizer. With Limbaugh as the stem and America’s vast, complacent/lazy/anxious sub-set of race and gender-phobic men is the root system. All and all, it’s about as ignoble, graceless and, as I say, contemptible as it gets.

But it sells. As they say in the ad trade, “You can move product with that message.”

As nauseating as it was to see Melania T. wrap Limbaugh with a medal previously given to the likes of Mother Teresa, Stephen Hawking, Jackie Robinson, Buckminster Fuller, Georgia O’Keefe, T.S. Eliot and Elie Weisel, we’ve reached the point where nothing actually surprises us anymore. Disgust, yes. Surprise, no. There is simply no corruption or vulgarity the ethos of Limbaugh-FoxNews-Trump (and all their sycophants and wannabes) won’t visit on our most respected traditions.

Which leads me to wonder. Given the bona fides of his career and the naked prejudice and disinformation he’s pumped into the American system for over 30 years, what will the mainstream obit writers say when Limbaugh, now with “advanced” lung cancer, finally departs this earth?

And What’s Simon & Schuster’s Angle in this John Bolton Business?

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So six weeks from now thousands of copies of John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where it Happened” will be dumped on display tables in book stores all over the country. If we don’t already know everything that’s in it by then via the current steady drip of leaks, curious readers can whip out their plastic and take home as their own personal property.

That is unless, of course, The White House and the Justice Department don’t come up with a Dershowitz-like convolution of laws and prevent the thing from ever seeing the light of day … or at least until after the November election. (Bet on that.)

But until March 17, the thinking goes, Mr. Bolton could throw a dart at a wall map of any of the hundreds of media outlets panting for an exclusive interview with him. An interview where he could, you know, tell his story, if telling his story really is invested with the kind of pure, patriotic impulse we’re led to believe it is. Hell, he could drop the interview next Tuesday afternoon, hours before Dear Leader/King Donald gives his State of the Union address (to the frenzied, roaring “huzzahs!” of his Republican hostages/protectors).

That would be fun, wouldn’t it?

But of course Mr. Bolton, besides being a deeply-committed Constitutionalist and warrior for vigorous American morality is also a guy trying to make living. And the $2 million (minus agent fees, etc.) he’s getting for telling the story of Trump’s Putin-inspired shakedown of Ukraine may likely be the biggest check he’s ever going to see.

So, he wants to maximize his bottom-line royalty pay-off by, well, by not giving away the juice before public has bought the bottle, to use an awkward metaphor.

But it isn’t just Bolton who’s calculating the timing on telling the full story and running the numbers. You gotta know his publisher, the venerable Simon & Schuster, is war-gaming the same scenarios. They after all have written the $2 million advance check, (usually a series of checks, the last of which comes on actual publication), and, like all good patriotic businessmen and women are as committed to reclaiming their investment (and then some) as they are to revealing the truth of a historic national scandal to the American public.

(As I understand these things, Bolton, having lived up to his end of the contract, keeps his $2 million no matter what. But Simon & Schuster — a subsidiary of Viacom/CBS — pays itself back by taking the lion’s share of book sale proceeds until those sales pay off the $2 million, at which point Bolton starts seeing royalty checks. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.)

My point being that it isn’t just crusty, ornery, neo-conservative relic John Bolton play a self-serving game with vital, highly-consequential information, it’s also a respected Manhattan publishing house. (I mean, Carly Simon might still have a stake in the place).

If the national interest were a serious concern of Simon & Schuster’s I believe they could cut a revised deal with Bolton to “enhance” his return and “encourage” him to accept — today — any one or two or ten of the hundreds of requests for interviews. Hell, they could start with “60 Minutes” right there in their corporate family.

Not that anything Bolton or anyone else could ever say or prove would make a whit of difference to your average Lamar Alexander, Marco Rubio or Lisa Murkowski.

I mean, this is America! We can’t convict a guilty man!

The Trial of the U.S. Senate is Actually Going Pretty Well

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Even if by some miracle John Bolton is forced to testify in Trump’s impeachment trial, and says out loud (or in closed door deposition) that, “Yup, he did it,” I don’t put the chance of Trump being convicted at anything better than 10%. Which would be up from the .01% it is right now.

It is indisputable that the modern Republican party is a Trump cult and every Republican senator (and hell, every elected Republican official) deeply fears their “head on a pike” by failing to immediately genuflect in every conceivable, humiliating way to the demands of Trump.

But, by contrast, the “Trial of the U.S. Senate”, which is as it has been described by several Democratic leaders as well as strategy-minded pundits, is improving its position with each passing day. Because, with each passing day, some new confirming/damning piece of evidence leaks out, much as it has for months now. More to the point, there is no reason — zero — that leaks of “bombshell” in-the-room, first-hand-witness evidence, recordings of Trump himself confirming everything he’s been charged with and further details of truly grotesque abuses of power and corruption will not continue to pour out right up to election day.

Once past primary season, after Republican Senators (in particular) have staved off the latest siege by saucer-eyed, frothing-mouth Trumpist candidates, they will have to find a way to constantly, and I do mean constantly, explain why they consented to a sham trial and summary acquittal … in the face of roughly 70% of their constituents saying that witnesses and evidence are of course a part of any kind of fair and open court proceedings.

Throwing Trump out of office — as in having a couple beefy bouncers grab him under each arm and drag him out to a chopper on the South Lawn — is every liberal’s and a majority of adult America’s fondest fantasy. But … regaining control of the Senate, crippling Mitch McConnell and neutering Bill Barr, will have a far more immediate and productive impact on restoring some level of lawfulness on our much-debased institutions.

The long-game of the Democrats’ impeachment strategy has always been to hang as much unequivocal shame as possible on Republican Senators. And they’re doing a pretty good job of it.

I have to concede a level of wishful thinking here, but given their complicity in what is known and — importantly — what is yet to be revealed about Team Trump, the reelection prospects of more than just the usual handful of Republican Senators are far from cheery.

The media environment is much different than when Joe McCarthy was ridiculed into oblivion, or when Richard Nixon conceded to Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott. But being fully complicit in so naked and shameless a sham as a witness-free Trump acquittal really is like painting a glowing red “S” on your chest. Not for “superman”, but rather for “stooge.”

Just as those of us in the “reality-based” bubble fail to understand the long-festering, cultish greivances of those in the Trump bubble, so those speaking to and appealing to only those in the Trump bubble fail to appreciate what is going on outside their nearly impermeable membrane.

The usual “pivot” back to the center for cats like Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, Susan Collins and Martha McSally, isn’t going to be nearly as easy given the venomous abhorrence of all things Trump by liberals and a general weariness/embarrassment of Trump’s constant vulgarity and stupidity by that mystical “persuadable” voter.

The greatest victory of all of course would be the defeat of McConnell himself in Kentucky. But despite having the (second) lowest approval rating of any senator in his or her home state (Collins just eclipsed him) no one to date sees any serious chance of him losing.

Not after that multi-million dollar deal with mobbed-up Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to build an aluminum plant in Kentucky and the titanic influence of every 1%-er indebted to McConnell (and Paul Ryan) for so handsomely improving their portfolio with that 2017 tax cut bill.

But a guy can dream, substantively.

What Was Elizabeth Warren Thinking?

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I still don’t understand the purpose of Elizabeth Warren “letting it be known” that Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t get elected president. If she wasn’t prepared to contradict him to his face and say, “That’s what you said, Bernie” in last night’s debate, why bring it up at all?

The story of Warren and Sanders having a private conversation in 2018 and Bernie saying what she claims he said pretty clearly originated from her campaign, yet her prepared response when asked at the debate brushed it aside and spun off into how Amy Klobuchar and her have never lost an election.

What am I missing?

It may just be a personal thing, but I’m appalled by people who engage in private conversations only to hit the PA system when what was said — between friends — serves their greater purposes. It’s a fundamental violation of “trustworthiness.” If you’re truly a friend, you retain that confidence … no matter what.

Warren’s too-slick by half non-response to being asked (essentially) if Bernie said what she said he said contrasts with Sanders’ response, which was a lot more digestible. Namely, that given Hillary Clinton’s three million popular vote plurality two years earlier, what sort of fool would ever say a woman couldn’t win?

There’s an interesting debate discussion to be had with the various candidates breaking down the particular pitfalls facing: the kinda doddery old professional DC animal, the billionaire(s), the really smart but pretty damn young gay dude, the you-can-smell-the-ambition-through-her-pores Midwestern Mom, the old socialist and the up-from-hard-scrabble-professor … who doesn’t seem as trusted a good friend as her advertised scruples would otherwise suggest.

But we didn’t have THAT debate.

A “Joker” for the Age of Trump

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I finally watched “Joker” the other night. It met my expectations. And now — after making a billion dollars at the box office — it’s been nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. So, what the hell, let’s blame Trump, or whatever it is that created Trump.

Two things put me off seeing “Joker” in a theater.

1: I don’t have much interest in purely fictional psycho killer movies. I mean “Psycho” was terrific. But it took its time getting to Tony Perkins. He wasn’t set up as the ghoulish, fully gratuitous lodge pole of the entire picture.

And 2: I generally despise comic book movies. To be blunt, they’re simple-minded and adolescent. Which is fine if you’re both of those things. But not being a 14 year-old, cos-playing fan boy, capes, tights and wall-to-wall CGI action fail to move me to anything other than boredom.

Yet here was, quite clearly, a cultural phenomenon. Literally millions of people turned out to see “Joker”, likely as attracted by its connection to Batman as I was repelled. Then word got out about how “brilliant” Joaquin Phoenix was as the genuinely mentally disturbed main character, Arthur Fleck, a hapless punching bag for pretty much everyone in his orbit. Plenty of critics said “no thanks” to the whole grim adventure. But prizes were nevertheless won at prestigious film festivals.

It’s been maybe 50 years since I placed any great credibility in the movie industry’s notion of “art” or “best”. When “Oliver!” beat out “2001: A Space Odyssey”, (which wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture), it was an early lesson for little, young me that the voters in the movie business are mainly about their business — who they worked with, who they know and like, who they want to work for — and not about the side of filmmaking that thoroughly invested in the interweaving of art and imagination.

Hollywood 2020 isn’t so different, even with all the attention and effort given to bringing in younger and more diverse voters. A truly good film like “Moonlight” was likely lifted up as much by the movie industry’s “woke” culture as the film community’s appreciation of its storytelling and craftsmanship. This “wokeness” was even more evident with last year’s winner, “The Green Book”. (The movie business was very hinky about lending too much weight and credibility to Netflix and “Roma”.)

And now, “Joker”. A billion dollar winner at the box office, and with serious adults talking about how it isn’t just a comic bok movie. About how it really has something important to say about our cultural moment. To which I say, “Like what exactly?”

That damaged-in-youth, mistreated-through-life “losers” are a potential danger to their families, themselves and us? While I find it hard to disagree, I fail to see the fresh insight into the issue in a movie that depends on a connection to a more or less dystopian comic book to find its place on the stage of our times.

Phoenix does startling work as Arthur Fleck, and will almost certainly win Best Actor. But I gotta tell ya, as someone who has spent more time than I should have watching movies and chatting up actors over the years, I’ve long since stopped thinking playing a nutjob is difficult work. For an actor, playing crazy is like a horse on the open range. The reins are off. It’s remarkably feeing. A patently crazy character has no connections to any familiar parameters with which audiences can judge good acting from bad. I mean, the guy’s crazy! An actor can pretty much take that anywhere he and the director want to go. There’s no good way to measure it as “real” or bona fide.

Along with the stunning box office numbers, my guess is that Academy voters see “Joker” as a tap into the Trump-era zeitgeist. (“Zeitgeist” being one of those words you always need to drop to convince readers you’re smarter than you are.)

Here, in Arthur Fleck, a piece of human detritus, someone both abused and forgotten in a fundamentally corrupt society, controlled and exploited by the uber-wealthy. (Enter young Bruce “Batman” Wayne and his mega-macher father.)

We’ve watched these sad wretches go homicidal. Hell, a guy like Arthur shot up a movie theater playing a Batman movie a few years ago in Denver. Therefore, if you’re keeping score at home, “Joker” is a provocative comment on our ugly, abusive times … or … maybe only if you really want it to be.

My view, slumped in my chair watching on iTunes, was closer to “slick, crass exploitation.” As someone somewhere has already written, “Joker” is a variation on “Taxi Driver” for an era that wants its cultural commentary reduced to the wholly literal simplicity of a comic book.

If a mirror to the era of Trump is something you’re looking for, “Bombshell”, has far more relevance than “Joker.” And if you’re a film lover looking for where “art” meets “best”, track down “A Hidden Life” … which hasn’t been nominated for anything … and has a lot to say about our moral obligations in an era of corruption.

Let’s Play Nightmare Scenario 2020

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Well, 2020 has certainly started with a bang, hasn’t it? For months I’ve been telling the (very few) who would listen to buckle up for this one, because “normal” has never been an option. Never mind duelling attack/counter-attacks with Iran, the simple fact of Donald Trump requiring re-election to avoid a torrent of criminal indictments guaranteed a long season of ever-compounding insanities.

So, since dystopian fantasies are all the rage in teen sci-fi and Hollywood, let’s imagine what the next 358 days might be like.

Mid-January: With Congressional Democrats denied access to any intelligence proving the existence of the “imminent attack” necessitating the killing of the Iranian general, the House opens hearings … and as usual is denied access to administration communication and officials, many of whom do however go on “Fox and Friends” to vilify Democrats as “soft on Iran.” Simultaneously, Nancy Pelosi continues to outrage Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson by not accepting Mitch McConnell’s conditions for a Senate acquittal trial.

Early February: ISIS forces, no longer constrained by American troops, re-constitute, attack and re-take a major Iraqi city. This follows a mysterious day-long black-out in New York City. With impeachment still in limbo and thousands more U.S. troops re-deployed back to the Middle East, Trump delivers his State of the Union speech amid large-scale anti-war/pro-coniction protests outside the Capitol and around the country. An organized mid-speech walk out by progressive Democrats leads to Trump to extemporize about “America-haters”, for which Laura Ingraham says he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

March: Simultaneous terror attacks on U.S. government targets in South America and Asia and a Trump Hotel in the Phillipines are all Trump needs to demand a large-scale attack on Iranian military and government targets in Iran itself. Several key Pentagon offcials refuse to obey the orders and resign. Their replacements carry out the bombings, which kill hundreds of civilians as well. Iranians close-ranks around the once-reviled ultra-conservative religious government. Meanwhile, the Democratic race, post-Super Tuesday, has boiled down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, with Sanders the standard bearer for impassioned anti-war activists. Bolstered by long-delayed court rulings, Pelosi and House Democrats add new articles of bribery to impeachment charges. But the Supreme Court rules along straight ideological lines that White House officials do not have to obey House subpoenas.

April: After demanding NATO allies join the U.S. build-up of forces in preparation for a major attack on Iran. Only Montenegro agrees, at which point Trump announces the U.S. is leaving NATO, a decision Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh and Vladimir Putin hail as a “courageous, principled stance.” This is followed by a series of large-scale hacks, brown-outs and cyber-corruptions of major U.S. corporate infrastructure. An actual invasion is left in limbo.

June: Three oil tankers are attacked and sunk, blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices in the U.S. spike to $5.50 a gallon. In retaliation, Trump orders attacks on all major Iranian military ports. The U.N condemnas Trump’s “reckless adventurism”. Trumps withdraws the U.S. from the U.N. Democrats fume and “call for” restrictions on his war powers but are, us usual, ignored by McConnell’s Senate. Despite a fever pitch of anti-war fervor, and the deaths of dozens of U.S. troops in skirmishes in Iraq, Joe Biden wraps up the Democratic nomination under the familiar cloud of “inside power players” freezing out Sanders. Bernie’s supporters denounce the system and mount a write-in third party candidacy for him.

August: Full-scale, violent riots break out at Trump’s nomination convention. Several demonstrators are killed, hundreds injured in the police/security response. Sean Hannity suggests that demonstrators were actually “Iranian agents and sympathizers.” Water purification systems in over a dozen U.S. cities fail simultaneously. ISIS attacks and seizes a Carnival cruise liner in the Mediterranean and holds 3000 Americans hostage. The impeachment deadlock is broken when Pelosi and McConnell agree to two witnesses and limited questioning. Trump is quickly acquitted and Brian Kilmeade appears on the “Fox and Friends” set wearing a red, white and blue “exonerated” t-shirt.

September: After a 21-day siege, Trump orders a SEALs/Special Forces rescue of the cruise ship hostages. ISIS terrorists blow up the ship. Only a couple hundred passengers survive. Trump, riding hardened support among his base, who are filling is twice-weekly rallies in West Virginia and Alabama to over-flowing, declares all-out war on Iran to ecstatic cheering. Democrats demand a formal Congressonal inquiry and vote on war, but on the advice of Bill Barr, Trump declares he has “total power” to “protect America” and ignores them. It goes to the Supreme Court. Anti-war rioting becomes a constant feature in every major American city.

October: On a straight-line ideological vote the Supreme Court rules Trump does not need Congressional authorization for a war against Iran. Rioting takes place outside the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. Trump nominates Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to replace her. McConnell orders a “fast track” confirmation. Polling shows Trump — who has refused any debate not moderated by Lou Dobbs — leads polling with 41% to 37% for Biden and 20% for Sanders.

November: Election day. Hundreds of computerized polling precincts across the country report hackings, breakdowns and “wildly erroneous” tabulations, yet Biden wins by two electroal votes. Trump though refuses to concede. The latest cyber attack cripples VISA and American Express, rendering them unable to process transactions. Washington D.C. endures a three-day power outage. Bill Barr meets with the Supreme Court to decide how to rule on the election melt-down. After more than a month of deliberating, marked by more demonstrations and rioting, the Court rules to void all election results. The decision about when to hold new elections is left to Congress. Pelosi and McConnell begin discussions … which linger well into 2021.

Until then Trump remains in office.

Elizabeth and Amy vs. “The Mayor”

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I hear her saying it, but I’m not convinced “experience” makes all that much difference anymore. In last night’s debate, our senator, Amy Klobuchar, sunk her teeth into “Mayor” Pete Buttigieg, arguing in so many words that he hasn’t been around the Washington political circus long enough to be as credible as she is.

Amy, who is “from the Midwest” in case you haven’t heard her say it a couple thousand times, seems to believe this is an effective diminishing attack on the very young “mayor”. (She pushed the “mayor” business often enough to let you know she doesn’t think running a city of 120,000 compares well to representing a state of 5,000,000.)

But really? Experience? After Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016? In what world is experience still a primary criteria for the White House?

In 2008 John McCain was clearly the more “experienced” candidate. But raw charisma withstanding, astute voters didn’t have a hard time deciding whose fundamental judgment they found more appealing/reassuring. McCain’s long DC experience was pock-marked by dozens of examples of truly suspect judgment on key issues. In his case “experience” translated to “more of the same FUBAR.”

Klobuchar isn’t John McCain. But as hard-working and as tough a competitor as she’s proving to be on the campaign trail, I still have no sense that she has the quality of judgment to play the game as it has been designed and is being played by the likes of Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, the Federalist Society and their vast network of very wealthy, influential benefactors.

At this point I can’t say for sure if Buttegieg does either. But he continues to display a depth and quality of thinking and judgment that suggests he understands pretty damn well how the country actually operates and what to do — and not do — to get where you have to be to make some changes.

The past few weeks — and again last night — “Mayor” Pete has been taking shots from the progressive wing for his coziness with … well, really rich progressives. This business about his fund-raiser in a California “wine cave” is bad optics in the minds of those applying the kind of sack cloth and ashes standard to progressive politics. But besides the (mild) hypocrisy of Elizabeth Warren poking him for snuggling with billionaires, he isn’t the one demonstrating bad judgment by accusing his rivals of something they all have done to one degree or another. (Bernie less than others.)

Despite their obvious tenacity, Warren and Klobuchar, both of whom are currently trailing the inexperienced “mayor” in Iowa, haven’t demonstrated to me at least that they have the fully-thought out perspective on American politics 2020-style. At least not as well thought out as, “a gay dude from Mike Pence’s Indiana,” to quote the “mayor”.

Huffington Post progressives and others seem to see Buttigieg as more somber and studious version of Bill Clinton. Another (white, though not straight male) too comfortable in schmooze mode with the tycoon class, and therefore less likely to ram through in his first 100 days all the major reforms the country needs.

They could be right. But what that ignores is that Clinton, for all his slickness, canoodling and all the dry tinder he laid at the feet of the rabid dogs of talk radio Republicans, produced indisputable improvements for women, the middle-class, science and international relations. (I’m open to the debate over welfare reform.)

Point being, as a “middle-laner” rightfully skeptical of promising voters all sorts of dreamy and wonderful things that have zero-to-no chance of so much as a hearing in a Republican Senate, Buttigieg is showing better judgment — certainly of the real world realities of 2020 America — than Bernie and Warren.

As for fellow “middle-laner” Klobuchar’s accusation that the “mayor” doesn’t have sufficient experience, those of us here in Minnesota, (which is in “the midwest” as you might know), are well aware that after 13 years as a solid, workman-like Senator, Klobuchar’s judgment has not produced the reputation of being an acknowledged leader on any of the biggest issues of our era.

The difference between listening to Buttigieg and Klobuchar talk about the country’s foundational problems is this: with Buttigieg you’re listening to someone who has impressively cross-referenced the demographics, the science and the raw vagaries of human nature and is making unique, well-considered and strategic distinctions between noble aspiration and pragmatism.

There’s an inspirational factor there.

While with Klobuchar, the sense is of someone with plenty of battle-tested experience, but whose judgment is regularly deferring to standard political positioning and protection.