Before I get to the other stuff, I’m going to briefly go over the hilarity with Viceroy Trump having his little mugshot when he was arraigned in Atlanta. One Internet character had the brilliant idea of casting all the 18 lieutenants who had to take mugshots (like Mark Meadows and Rudy Guiliani) as Batman ’66 villains with the final assembly, naturally, centered on Donnie Clownboy as The Joker. (Giving him the Cesar Romero mustache was a great touch.)
I also think not only that Trump actually rehearsed his pose for the shot, I agree with whoever said that Trump leaned over, not just to make that LookitmeI’msoangryGRRRRR face, but because the further out he projects his jaw, the harder it is to see his other chins.
It’s actually a little sad that because the mugshot was taken after Trump’s time in office (NEWS FLASH: Trump is no longer president) that it can’t be used as his official presidential portrait, since the picture that is actually used, while professional, fails for that very reason: Posing Trump at his desk at the Oval Office almost makes it look like he’s working. Even so, not even the Trump mugshot is as fucked up as the ACTUAL Chuck Close painting of Bill Clinton that is his official portrait in the national gallery. Yes, this is REAL.
But again, Trump staged his little pout very deliberately, and to present an image of being a lot more forceful and powerful than he has proven to be against actual dictators. And while to people like me, the effort is so obvious as to be comical, it actually seems to work with a large section of the public. And that gets to a matter that is a lot more relevant right now.
While The Lamestream Media seems to be focusing a lot on Trump’s malice and malfeasance, and (yet again) giving him a respectable platform for his lying, the main focus of national news seems to be how everyone in the Democratic Party, with the possible exception of President Biden’s own people, doesn’t want Joe Biden to run again.
And this shows that Trump’s emphasis on superficial branding actually works, even on people who aren’t brain-dead Trumpniks. It’s why people think that Trump is a financial genius because he inherited money and played a billionaire on “reality” TV. And they think that Trump is more young and vital than Biden because Biden actually looks his age whereas Trump uses a bronzer that the makeup department on the Original Star Trek would have rejected as too garish and cheap-looking.
But maybe because everybody knows Trump for what he is and some people accept it anyway, they’re more prone to judge Joe Biden in terms of his objective qualifications and circumstances, whereas Trump fans don’t believe in bourgeois conceits like “objectivity.” So “reasonable” and “moderate” people will look at all of Joe Biden’s gaffes and think he’s not fit to be president while a Trumpnik will still think Trump ha sempre ragione even when he says Biden wants to get us in World War II.
(I mean, isn’t that where we WON? Sign me up!)
It’s nevertheless true that whatever the Biden Administration’s real accomplishments on paper, inflation is still too damn high for most people to feel secure, so whatever the statistics are on the economy, a lot of voters just don’t care. That same economy is a lot of the reason why Biden and Democrats are losing support with the young and non-white voters that the party needs and traditionally relies on. It doesn’t help that the same policies that liberals credit the Biden Administration for are also the ones that spur inflation, at least in the short term.
To say nothing of the fact that Biden’s physical and verbal stumbles are of a piece with [the late] Senator Dianne Feinstein (D.-California) losing her train of speech and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Kentucky) staring into space for several seconds, on multiple occasions. Here I again point out that the etymology of the word “Senate” traces directly from the Roman Republic, where the Latin senatus is taken from the singular senex, meaning “old man”, which means a senate is literally a group of old men.
Fact is, the Establishment is a mess. That’s why Republicans have been able to capitalize to the extent that they have. But this isn’t 2016, when it was easy to critique Hillary Clinton and the Republicans had been out of power, so they didn’t seem so bad. Back then, Trump’s strongest argument was “Whaddya got to lose?” Well… now we know. And that was all before January 6, and the trials, and Trump saying that General Mark Milley should have been hanged for talking with a foreign power, not to mention being found guilty of fraud in a New York case where evidence was so overwhelming the judge saw no need for a jury trial.
The other issue again is that prior to Trump taking over, the “MAGA” mentality hadn’t been quite so dominant in political life, whereas even with Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate, the Trumpniks are increasingly overbearing in their attempts to impose themselves in state government and to the extent that they can in the Federal government.
This is why we, yet again have Republicans, mostly in the House of Representatives shutting down the government if they don’t get their way. In this case it’s largely because of SINO (Speaker in Name Only) Kevin McCarthy (BR.-California), whom journalists frequently describe as “feckless.” He is totally lacking in feck. Having given up all the authority of his office for the mere privilege of having it, McCarthy is obliged to go along with every childish whim of Matt Gaetz (BR.-Florida) and Marjorie Taylor (BR.-Georgia), for instance, stripping Ukraine aid out of a provision to keep the Department of Defense funded (because their Master’s Master thinks it’s a lot more fun to shoot Ukrainians when they can’t shoot back). Meanwhile in the Senate, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville (the name is French for ‘village of tubers’) has been on a long-standing crusade to stop any government promotions of military personnel, including the heads of the Army, Navy and USMC, because the Pentagon allows women personnel to take leave for abortions after the Alito Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade.
You certainly can’t shame right-wingers by saying that government bureaucrats won’t be paid for having to work. But what’s telling is that we’re expecting members of the military to go without pay (while the Republicans who created this mess get paid on schedule, of course). It may seem remarkable how hostile the “pro-military” “conservatives” are to our military and global position, and that not even an appeal to patriotism works on the Party of Trump.
Democrats still haven’t figured out that shamelessness is the Republican superpower. Republicans don’t care. What the real issue is is that you can’t even hit them with appeals to patriotism because they see this country and its government in proprietary terms. That is, unless they OWN this country, it’s not theirs, and until they own this country, this country is their ENEMY. If they were honest – or in some cases, just blabbermouth enough – they’d admit that they’re undermining our defense posture because they’re not patriots for this country, but rather for the country that their Leader does so much to emulate.
And they think that if they can make everybody hate the Democrats as much as they do, they’ll win. There’s just one problem. Everyone already DOES hate the Democrats, and they’re still winning elections against Republicans, which is why Republicans do everything they can to discourage voting and making sure votes don’t count.
So everybody hates the Democrats. Everybody hates the economy. What do Republicans propose to do about that? Shut down the government if Democrats don’t submit to blackmail, no matter HOW MANY TIMES the public sees whose fault it is.
And everybody IN the Democratic Party is the opposite of enthused with Joe Biden. Just like Bill Clinton was already getting to be a liability for his party and Al Gore even before Monicagate. And then Republicans impeached him and the Democrats rallied around their guy. Just like Donald Trump was increasingly unpopular even in his own party for his erratic behavior, and then he got impeached, and everybody in the Republican Party had to rally around him. And because actual conviction in impeachment requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate and there’s going to be at least one-third of the Senate in the sitting President’s party (were that not the case, that party almost certainly wouldn’t have elected the president), impeachment is damn useless for its constitutional purpose and by now both parties should know it. In the short term at least it only serves to boost a president’s support with his own party at the lowest ebb when he needs it most.
So what is Kevin McCarthy going to do?
What are you going to do, Kevin?
That’s right! Impeach the President!
Reeeeal Men of Geeeeniuus….
And in the midst of all this, I forgot about the second (non-Trump) Republican presidential debate Wednesday September 27. But I guess so did everyone else. For one thing, it was held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, an institution which now has as much influence on the Republican Party as any of the candidates. I gave up watching around halfway through when I couldn’t get past all the shouting and everyone talking over each other. When I could hear one individual speak uninterrupted, it was either lame jokes or more political hack sloganeering than any Amy Klobuchar or Kamala Harris speech, except Democrats are campaigning for a welfare state and Republicans want a place that makes Gilead look like Ibiza. As with the last show, Nikki Haley made the best impression, especially when she told Vivek Ramaswamy, “Every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber.” So say we all.
So it made even more sense than last time for Trump to skip this whole thing (even though he IS a chicken for avoiding debate) because none of these guys are real competition and they’re not worth the effort. What then did he do Wednesday? Well, there was a lot of noise in the media about how Trump stole Biden’s thunder by using debate night to make a speech to auto workers instead, which is why the Biden Administration decided to counter by having the president join a UAW picket line Tuesday. But then it turned out Trump was scheduled by management to speak at a non-union shop for parts manufacturing, a shop which staffs 150 people even though the event drew 500, and told his massively huge crowd that because Biden was pressing to make all cars electric, “It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what (wage) you get because in two years you’re all going to be out of business.”
Donald Trump: It’s Morning in America.
I’m sure there’s lots of Republicans who would rather vote for somebody, ANYBODY, besides Donald Trump, but they’re not going to vote for somebody else, they’re going to vote for Trump. Likewise, Democrats may say they want somebody else besides Joe Biden, but they’re not going to vote for somebody else. Why? Because this is America, where we have freedom of choice.
Among Joe Biden’s many, many Dad cliches in speech is saying “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” And like much of what Biden says, it’s bland, it’s obvious, and it’s absolutely correct. Yes, he’s old, he’s slow, he was never that smooth on his best days, and if people had any confidence in Kamala Harris, people wouldn’t be so scared that he’d die in office. But then compare him to the guy who talks about starting World War II, then compare him to the various ankle-biters still running in what used to be the Party of Reagan, hoping maybe Trump will choke on a steak or something. Biden may not be Almighty God, but God Almighty, the alternative is a shit volcano.