Walz’s Pandemic Leadership Showcases A Politically Courageous Side

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I’ve come to realize that I’ve been partially wrong about Governor Tim Walz.  Based on what I had seen pre-pandemic, I had him pegged as a politically cautious guy who inevitably gravitated towards a relatively modest “split-the-difference” caretaker agenda.  From a progressive’s standpoint, he seemed like a competent Governor, but far from a bold one.

Often Cautious

After all, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Walz had exhibited an abundance of caution that wasn’t comforting to progressives. For instance, Walz came into office proposing an exciting MinnesotaCare Buy-In Option for Minnesotans who can’t get health coverage from employers or the government. Progressives cheered.  But Walz didn’t seem to fight particularly visibly or hard for it. 

Likewise, Walz has expressed support for legalization of marijuana for adults. Again, progressives cheered. But Walz rarely uses anything close to the full measure of his powerful “bully pulpit” and political influence to move public opinion on that key social justice issue. 

In the 2019 session, Walz wanted to raise much more revenue to deliver improved services.  Instead, he ended up with lower overall revenue. He caved relatively quickly to Republican demands and walked away without one penny of the gas tax increase he sought, while giving Republicans an income tax cut and a 10% cut in the provider tax, which is needed to fund health care programs.

At a time when DFLers controlled the House and the Governor’s office, the GOP-controlled Senate somehow was given a”no new taxes” outcome that would make Tim Pawlenty proud, and Governor Walz declared victory.

Why has Walz been so cautious? My theory is that he is so infatuated with his “One Minnesota” sloganeering from his 2018 campaign that he has been afraid to challenge conservatives and moderates in rural areas of the state.

Bold On Pandemic Response

However, lately Walz has been under heavy fire from those rural Minnesotans about his wise decision to close bars and restaurants statewide.  Since most Minnesota counties still have few or no coronavirus cases, the bar and restaurant closures strike short-sighted rural Minnesotans as overkill, and Republican politicians are always all too happy to encourage rural victimhood and resentment. 

“While we understand the necessity of Governor Walz to lead in this time of crisis, that leadership should not be unilateral and unchecked,” (Republican Senate Majority Leader Paul) Gazelka said in a statement.

Gazelka’s statement came amid growing signs of GOP discontent with Walz’s previous ex­ec­u­tive ord­ers temporarily closing bars, res­tau­rants and oth­er busi­nes­ses. It also comes as the administration mulls new safety measures, including requiring Minnesotans to shelter in place.

Several lawmakers, all Republicans, have expressed concerns about the impact of Walz’s orders on small businesses in their towns in Greater Minnesota.

“The gov­er­nor’s ord­er puts these small busi­nes­ses in an im­pos­si­ble po­si­tion,” state Sen. Scott New­man, R-Hutch­in­son, said in a state­ment addressing the closings in the hospitality industry. “These small busi­nes­ses, and their many hour­ly wage earn­ers, will un­doubt­ed­ly suf­fer be­cause of this ord­er. I urge the gov­er­nor to re­con­sid­er the fi­nan­cial im­pact of his ord­er on small busi­ness own­ers that con­cur­rent­ly has the po­ten­tial to make them crimi­nals for sim­ply try­ing to earn a liv­ing.”­

To his credit, on pandemic response issues Walz has consistently put public health above politics.  He understood that ordering closures on a partial county-by-county basis would be unfair and ineffective.  After all, irresponsible citizens in counties were restaurants and bars were closed would simply travel across county borders to eat and drink out, which would create new pandemic hot-spots in previously uncontaminated Minnesota counties.

Thanks to Walz’s leadership, on March 24 Minnesota ranked in the top ten of states with the most aggressive policies for limiting the rapid spread of coronavirus.  A lot has changed since these rankings came out, but Walz seems very likely to issue a shelter-in-place order sometime this week, which should keep Minnesota relatively high in the rankings.

It would be tempting for Walz to view restaurant and bar closing through a short-term political lens, as the Governors in red states such as Wyoming, Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Missouri seem to be doing.   It would be easier to keep some or all of Minnesota’s bars and restaurants open, and let other states leaders do the heavy lifting when it comes to pandemic management. 

But Walz isn’t taking that politically expedient approach, and the economic and political fallout from all of this could potentially cost him his political career.

I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does, it’s a relatively small price to pay to prevent Minnesota hospital patients from suffering the kind of horrific meltdowns being seen in Italy, where physicians are reportedly forced to deny care to suffocating people over 60 because of lack of medical capacity. 

Trying to avoid scenes like that are well worth whatever political price Walz pays. Here’s hoping that the newly self-quarantined Governor stays healthy, and that a plurality of Minnesotans will eventually appreciate his impressive display of political courage at this crucial moment in Minnesota history.

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.

The Problem With The “Electability” Debate

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Whether you reside on the left or middle end of the political spectrum, the fashionable way for Democrats to discuss politics these days is to assert that your preferred candidate is the most “electable.” Furthermore, you must posit that anyone who dares to disagree with your electability theory is guilty of the unforgivable sin of supporting  ideological purity over removing the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President in history. “If Trump wins, it’s your fault!”

Why the obsession with electability? In part, voters who are exposed to massive amounts of punditry on 24/7 cable news outlets and social media are aping those pundits.  Beyond that, “electability” has become the Democrats’ go-to argument because to argue otherwise opens you to being labeled an impractical ideologue indifferent about removing Trump.

But the electability discussion is a massive waste of time and energy.  Ten months away from the election in a highly unpredictable environment, being able to divine electability is impossible.  Electability is unknowable. Not difficult to know. Unknowable.  Gauging who is most likely to beat Trump is akin to gauging a Rorschach ink blot, where we see what we want to see, not the one and only truth.

After all, ten months before the election, how many of the pundits, whether in the mainstream media or your social media feed, were correct about the election victories of Paul Wellstone, Jesse Ventura, Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, or an extremely inexperienced black guy with the middle name Hussein? In all of those cases, the same group of pundits were doing what they are doing now, branding supporters of those candidates unrealistic naifs for not seeing that the winner was sure to be Rudy Boschwitz, Skip Humphrey, Norm Coleman, Jeb Bush, Joe Crowley, and Hillary Clinton.

But getting it wrong so many times doesn’t seem to make either professional or amateur pundits any less confident in their seer skills.  Moderate pundits like James Carville, Jonathan Chait, Thomas Friedman, and George Will are once again loudly warning that a progressive nominee will force moderates to vote for Trump against their will, and therefore are unelectable. 

Similarly, progressive pundits are warning that a moderate candidate will surely force people of color and young people to stay home or vote for a leftist third party, and therefore are unelectable.

Both sides are correct about the electoral disadvantages they flag.  But they also undervalue the advantages of each candidate, and are self-delusional in believing that they know precisely how each candidates’ advantages and disadvantages would net out  against Trump on November 3.  None of us can know that, but the three words you will never hear coming from an amateur or professional pundit’s mouth are “I don’t know.”

This electability bickering is not only a waste of time, it also carries a high opportunity cost. After all, every moment progressives are yammering about electability speculation is a moment that voters aren’t hearing compelling arguments in favor of progressive proposals and achievements and critical of conservative proposals and transgressions. That’s a big problem.

Rather than continue this self-indulgent electability parlor game, my suggestion to Democrats is to do two things:  First, vote for who you would most like to see be your President, period. Stop staring at the electability ink blot pretending that you can see the one correct answer.  Stop with the electability guessing game, because it’s a fool’s errand, polarizing, and off-message. 

Second, if your first choice isn’t the nominee — highly likely in a field of 24 candidates, by the way–support the Democratic nominee without throwing a tantrum because your electability guesswork didn’t get embraced by your fellow Democrats.

I supported the dearly departed Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, so I’m already resigned to the fact that I probably won’t fall in love with the nominee. But to paraphrase the great Stephen Stills, if I can’t be with the one I love, honey, I’ll love the one I’m with. With the daunting Trump threat hanging over the nation, we Democrats need to do what Republicans do, fall in line even when we don’t fall in love.

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 Would Democrats Do If They Had a Bribing Chief Executive? Ask Rod Blagojevich.

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Republicans are currently led by a brazenly corrupt chief executive who was caught in a bribery scheme to benefit his personal and political career.  The evidence is clear and overwhelming, but congressional Republicans are marching in lockstep defending their corrupt leader.

As this plays out, many cynical observers shrug it all off, maintaining that if a Democrat leader faced a similar charge Democrats would do the same thing Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are doing.  They claim that “both parties protect their own, no matter what.”

They might want to ask Rod Blagojevich about that.

On December 9, 2008, Blagojevich, the Democratic former Governor of Illinois, was caught soliciting appointments in exchange for the right to name the replacement for former Senator Barack Obama.  It was clearly documented bribery for personal benefit.  Sound familiar?

The Democratic Governor’s actions were deplorable and corrupt.  At the same time, Blagojevich’s type of bribery lacked some of the worst elements of the Trump Ukrainian corruption scandal. 

After all, Blagojevich wasn’t endangering a foreign ally’s troops under attack from a sworn American enemy, as Trump did. 

Blagojevich wasn’t directing a foreign government to interfere with our free and fair elections, as Trump did.

Blagojevich wasn’t illegally redirecting hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds approved by a large bipartisan majority of the duly elected legislative body, as Trump did. 

Blagojevich wasn’t demanding the slander of a political opponent, as Trump did.

Blagojevich hadn’t launched a massive cover-up of evidence, as Trump did.

Still, Blagojevich’s form of bribery was despicable in its own right, so Democrats at both the state and national level acted swiftly to protect citizens from this corrupt leader. 

Immediately after the charges against Blagojevich became public, state Democrats immediately condemned their fellow Democrat and called for him to resign, including the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, Treasurer, and Secretary of State.

At the national level, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin called for the Democrat to step down.  The 50 members of the U.S. Senate Democratic caucus ordered Blagojevich to not fill the seat with himself or anyone else. 

When Blagojevich named someone to serve anyway, the Democratic State Attorney General filed a motion with the Illinois Supreme Court seeking to declare the Governor “unable to serve” and strip him of the powers of his office. 

Then the Democratic-controlled House quickly began impeachment proceedings.  In January 2009, just one month after the Blagojevich crimes became known, Blagojevich was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House on a vote of 114–1. Only one Democrat opposed it.

Just twenty days later, the Democratic Governor was convicted by the Senate, with every Democrat voting in favor of his impeachment.  Democratic legislators also disqualified their fellow Democrat from ever again holding public office in the state.

In other words, faced with a powerful chief executive from it’s own party engaged in attempted bribery to benefit himself, Illinois Democrats didn’t make excuses.  They didn’t engage in blame-shifting “whataboutism” arguments. They didn’t shrug it off because no payoff had yet been made before investigators shut down the scheme. They didn’t put party over principle. 

Instead, Democrats supported a swift impeachment and removal of their party’s top leader.

Democrats are far from perfect. But as Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate begin their Trump impeachment trial, the contrast between how Democrats and Republicans have handled these two respective bribery scandals is clear and stark.  The case of Rod Blagojevich reminds us that lazy “both parties are equally complicit in the face of bribery and corruption” assertions just don’t hold up.

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.

5 New Year’s Resolutions for Liberals

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The 2020 elections are the most important elections of my lifetime, and potentially the most important in American history.  Will we replace the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times, and his shameless congressional enablers, or will we go further down the road to authoritarianism and corporatism?  That sounds melodramatic, but given what we’ve learned about Trump over the last three years, it’s not an exaggeration.

The stakes are high, so liberals need to step up their game. 

This isn’t about trashing liberals.  Liberals have done a lot of great things for America.  At a time when all of these things were quite unpopular, liberals had enough vision, courage, and commitment to pass Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, marriage equality, civil rights, voting rights, environmental protections, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 

But we grassroots liberals also can be also our own worst enemies.  To win in 2020, we need to make five New Years resolutions to do better than we did in 2016.

STOP THE PETTY, PERSONAL ATTACKS.  With hundreds of substantive reasons to criticize Trump and his lackeys, there is no reason to stoop to snotty attacks about personal issues like the President’s complexion, hair, waistline, hand size, penis size, verbal slips, and misspellings.  The same goes for personally insulting his supporters.

Among the moderate swing voters who will decide the outcome of this election, those kinds of personal shots inadvertently create sympathy for Trump and others who don’t deserve swing voters’ sympathy. I get that they are cathartic, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek.   But they’re also and self-defeating in the end, and therefore self-indulgent, so liberals need to get better at taking a pass on the personal shots.

STOP THE CANNABILISM.  Liberals also need to be mindful of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “thou shall not speak ill of other Republicans.” 

I understand the temptation to wage civil war.  My top presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has already dropped out of the race, and my second choice, Cory Booker, doesn’t look like he will last much beyond Iowa.  Having to go to Plan C is deeply disappointing to me. Having to go to Plan D, E, F, G, H, I, J, or K, a distinct possibility in a field this large, likely will be even more disappointing to me. 

In the end, I realize that I am unlikely to be in love with my Democratic Party nominee.  But if I can’t be with the one I love, honey, I’ll love the one I’m with. Unless we learn something dramatically scandalous about one of the Democratic candidates in the coming months, I’m pledging to myself that I won’t trash other Democratic candidates, vote for a third party candidate, or sit out the election.  For a long time, I’ve even been making monthly donations to the eventual nominee, whomever that ends up being, via the Unify or Die fund.  

All liberals should make a resolution to forgo intra-party cannibalism, because it greatly increases the chances that we have four even more catastrophic years with the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times.  That can’t happen, so we all have to suck it up and pledge to support the candidate that prevails in the nominating process.

STOP THE SHINY OBJECT CHASING.  We all know that President Trump is going to do and say hundreds of things before the election that are mock-worthy and outrageous, but probably are not issues that are going to sway swing voters or motivate non-voters.  Every moment we spend talking about those side issues –say, a funny golf story, a boneheaded gaffe, a stupid joke at a rally, a silly exchange with an athlete or celebrity–is a moment we’re not talking about issue differentiators that are more likely to influence voting decisions.

What Trump actions are more deserving of our focus? His giving lavish, deficit-spiking tax cuts to the wealthy. His separating young children from parents and caging them. His taking birth control and other types of reproductive health care away from women. His blocking legislation to control pharmaceutical prices. His cowardly refusal to cross the NRA to support common sense gun safety laws. His erratic Russian-friendly foreign policy decisions in dangerous places like Iran, Syria, the Ukraine, and North Korea. His repeated attempts to repeal Affordable Care Act protections, such as preexisting condition protections for 133 million Americans.

Polls show those kinds of issues work against Trump with swing voters and non-voters, so those kinds of issues should be the primary focus of conversations at the break room, bar, barbeque, or online chat. 

With such a steady stream of Trump’s outrages, it’s difficult to not take the bait from the ever-outrageous tweet stream. I’m far from perfect on this front.  But we liberals have to get better about focusing on the issues that matter the most to swing voters and non-voters, and that means shrugging off a lot of the side issues.

FOCUS ON ROOT CAUSES.  When deciding how to spend time and resources, liberals should also consider focusing on the root causes of Trump’s electoral success.   For instance, rather than only supporting individual candidates, consider supporting groups like Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight 2020 and the ACLU. Those groups are battling Republicans’ relentless voter suppression efforts aimed at people of color, which threaten to swing close elections to Trump and his political toadies now and for decades to come. 

Ensuring that every vote counts and voting is easier will help progressive local, state and federal candidates up and down the ballot. It will help preserve our representative democracy for future generations. Supporting those groups isn’t as obvious to most of us as supporting parties and candidates, but it’s every bit as important.

SPEAK OUT EARLY AND OFTEN.  Speaking out against Trump and Republicans in person and on social media is frowned upon by Americans who are “non-political,” ignorant, and/or in denial about what is happening to America.  That can make speaking out about Trump unpleasant and exhausting.  Goodness knows, no one relishes being called, gasp, “political,” and being accosted by trolls. 

But in America today, we have politicians who are all too willing to separate brown-skinned kids from their parents and put them cages indefinitely.  We have politicians trying to repeal health protections for 133 million Americans. We have a party that gave a massive, deficit-ballooning tax gift to the wealthiest 1% at a time when we have the worst income inequality since 1928 and record deficits.  We have a President taking birth control and other reproductive rights away from women. If we don’t vote out this crew, we could easily have much worse developments on the horizon in a second, even more unhinged Trump term.  

All of which is to say one person’s “politics” is another person’s life, livelihood, and rights.  A while back, writer Naomi Shulman helped put this issue in proper perspective for me:

“Nice people made the best Nazis.  My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

I’m not saying liberals have be jerks and nags to their friends and relatives. We don’t have to be the turd in the punch bowl.  In most cases, we should be calm, respectful, factual and measured when we speak out, even when the respect isn’t deserved and returned, because that’s usually the best way to win hearts, minds, and votes. 

But we do have to speak out, because silence implies consent.  As Martin Luther King  famously said of another movement in another time:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”  

The same is true of the movement to save America from Donald Trump and his Republican enablers.  I’m about as conflict averse as they come, but unfortunately that excuse just is not going to cut it with so many lives hanging in the balance.

So my fellow liberals, this New Years Eve raise a glass of your favorite truth serum, and make some challenging resolutions that nudge you outside of your comfort zone.  Your country needs you now more than ever.

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.

“Support Our Troops” Sloganeering Has Led To No One Supporting Our Taxpayers

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When it comes to food stamps (aka Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) for poverty stricken Americans — 80% of whom are children, the disabled or elderly—President Trump is a tough fiscal conservative.  This Christmas season, Trump announced he’s taking food away from 700,000 of them, which will save about $1 billion per year. Self-described fiscal conservatives are cheering. 

But when it comes to lavishing funding on the Pentagon’s huge corporate contractors, Trump has been the furthest thing away from fiscally conservative.  Last year, he proposed an increase of $34 billion per year to a $4.7 trillion 2020 budget, including funding Trump’s Space Force toy.

To recap, Trump is saving $1 billion per year on food stamps with the one hand, while going on a $34 billion per year Pentagon spending spree with the other hand.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is contemporary fiscal conservatism, where cruelty is the point, not actual fiscal restraint.

Contrary to Trump claims that President Obama “devastated” the military, the U.S. doesn’t need to play “catch-up” on spending. It spends more on military than the next seven more armed nations, COMBINED. Clearly, we are armed to the teeth so that chicken hawks like Trump and McConnell can have their hair triggers at the ready any time they feel the urge to send other people’s kids in front of bullets and IEDs.  

At the same time, the Pentagon has not exactly shown itself to be the most trustworthy and efficient of public agencies.  It was recently caught hiding an audit that found about $125 billion in wasteful spending. The Washington Post reported what the Pentagon and fiscal conservatives wouldn’t:

“The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.”

So, how do politicians and their constituents justify taking from the poorest Americans while giving lavishly to the richest corporate Pentagon contractors?  Three words: “Support. Our. Troops.”

Uttering those three magical words gets most politicians on both the right and left to obediently write deficit-financed blank checks to corporate contractors, lest they be accused of being anti-troops. 

The “support our troops” mega-brand has been built in no small part by Pentagon military recruitment budgets that ensure there is an endless stream of shallow paid-patriotism sloganeering at all types of community gatherings, particularly sports events. The Washington Post explains:

“In 2015, an oversight report by Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona revealed the NFL as one of several leagues that accepted Department of Defense funds to stage military tributes, a practice known as paid patriotism. (The league eventually gave back more than $700,000, drawing praise from Flake.) Joe Lockhart, a former Clinton administration staffer, had just joined the NFL as a spokesman when the scandal broke.

‘As I dug into that a little bit, the National Guard, which is probably the most aggressive advertiser at NFL games, talked about how it was the single best recruitment vehicle they had,’ said Lockhart, who left the NFL last year. ‘Which is just interesting. I think there is a connection. . . . Football Sundays have a connection to what a lot of people view as patriotism.’

The service members presented at games can feel like props, part of a show. The camouflage uniforms and accessories can cheapen the sacrifice of soldiers and prohibit critical thinking about the military.

‘It almost feels like it’s a mandatory patriotism that is pushed down the throats of anybody who wants to attend a game,” said former Army Ranger and author Rory Fanning, who has become a vocal critic of America’s wars. ‘By trotting out veterans, patting them on the back, I don’t think it does justice to the actual experience of veterans, particularly over the last 18 years. There certainly isn’t an opportunity for veterans to talk about their experiences in combat. So many veterans don’t feel like the heroes the NFL wants to present them as.””

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for “supporting our troops,” at least in ways that are actually relevant and meaningful.  Say a sincere, heartfelt thanks. Provide good pay and benefits. Supply the training and equipment soldiers need.  Fund lifelong help after they serve.  Most importantly, keep them out of unnecessary armed conflicts.

But writing blank checks to corporate contractors is not on that list.  The reality is, too much of that $4.7 trillion annual Pentagon budget has nothing to do with troop-supporting functions, such as the $125 billion in covered-up waste. 

So how about some bipartisan cooperation for dramatically reducing that largest of government boondoggles, the $4.7 trillion per year Pentagon budget.  How about putting a little “support our taxpayers” in the mix?