The Prescience of the Obvious

Received by The Corvallis Gazette Times June 6, 2020

Printed and posted June 16, 2020

July 1, 2020

Because of a reversal of all trends related to Covid 19, Oregon governor Kate Brown mandated masks in public for all. No exceptions. By my reckoning, just in time, because masks had grown conspicuously absent at a rate similar to Oregon's Covid statistics.

Oregon per Johns Hopkins University

This page was last updated on Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 3:00 AM EDT

Per The New York Times

 
The simplest precaution has morphed into a libertarian cause célèbre. At the grocer's just last Monday, many, many went maskless, evidently beating the drum for so-called liberty. P.T. Barnum somewhere smugly smiles.

What has he got to lose?

The Emperor's New Bible

Then, this happened...

June 1, 2020 - Tear Gas Used to Remove Crowd for Photo-Op Across from White House

SHARPIE-GATE

What's next: Trump's signature on the stimulus check?

Viewer Request to MSNBC

msnbctvinfo@nbcuni.com
msnbc.digital.editors@nbcuni.com
Rachel@msnbc.com
zach.haberman@nbcuni.com
alana.satlin@nbcuni.com

Since you seem bound and determined to air Trump's daily thing live and then fact-check later, might I suggest recording the events and airing them with an immediate fact check. It is approaching the absurd to call you "news" in the great tradition of NBC News we grew up on. Propaganda works when not conjoined with reality.

Thank you,
Stacey Youdin
Corvallis, OR

Happy New Year!

Trump's Book Club

Beach Read

Reading Level: Stable Genius

Freedom: That's Just Some People Talking

I can't take credit for the notion that fact is what enough people believe and truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. Also at a loss to rebut that observation so as to land squarely where it is needed most. Whatever happened to acquiescence to people whom we admit know more than we do? The demonization of proper facts in favor of the feel good construct has spawned supporting governors who refuse Medicaid expansion, giving credence to endorphin raising theorists in lieu of objective sources of news, eschewing the role of citizen in our system of self-governance and the list, once begun, reaches book length.

On this, the eve of the Mueller appearance before Congress, the republic cries out like a modern Diogenes. Who will tell the truth that the chief executive was far from exonerated and that his collusions and obstructions were preemptively vanished by a corrupted attorney general who got to frame the Mueller report before its dissemination? And how on Earth can someone dissolve into a puddle of what-about-ism and cultish ear covering to perpetuate the validity of a chosen side, regardless?

Be reminded of this quote from Ben Bradlee: "As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free."

Freedom is what America should be all about, yes?

Checkers vs. Chess - June 2019

The Democrats are playing 24 dimensional checkers

Wayne Who?

While Republicans are playing one dimensional chess

The (R) stands for Har HAR!

The Mouth That Roared

Our Season of Luntzspeak

Projection

prə-jĕk′shən (pruh-jek-shuh n) 
The tendency to ascribe to another person feelings, thoughts, or attitudes present in oneself, or to regard external reality as embodying such feelings, thoughts, etc., in some way.

Just why do Republicans always tell us what Democrats are thinking instead of and despite what they're saying? For example, on the right and extreme right, it is a given that impeachment is job one for us, their opponents. 

Jonathan Alter stopped Kayleigh McEnany from saying just that and rebutted with the pertinent statistics that exactly 3 congresspeople were on board seeking it and fewer than 3 dozen candidates out of around 450 in the mid-terms had it as their top tier plank. As is customary, Ms. McEnany repeated it again and again until "we'll have to leave it right there" won the day.

Democrats are not thinking that, at least not out loud. I mean who couldn't say that the half ton gorilla in the room is the 239 pound orange ape in the oval office, so I shouldn't doubt that those with any modicum of common sense have gone there to some extent, but the point is you should have to stand for something to be awarded the blessings of the electorate. Such a singularly narrow issue seems like a subtle voter suppression, if defending against this straw man steals your focus and robs your potential supporters a fair look.

Without starting to go all Powerpoint on a multi-point platform, one can and should articulate one's philosophy of governance and representation; it also couldn't hurt to ask a person for her or his vote. 


This is the time we should fear the most. The informed voter has had pretty much everything for a while now. Save for the dead girl or the live boy. 

But there's time remaining for the complacent to get caught up in the inevitable media spectacle and that's when the Luntzspeak, historically, has taken over. The hidden persuaders, who not for nothing make a pretty penny, are locking up the prime slots in media and gravitating to the latest apps. They are a-readying.

"We don't need a congressperson who will be constantly distracted by hatred of Donald J. Trump, enough to investigate and impeach him day in and day out and not pay attention to the things Americans really care about." And their voice-over guys will sound all snarky, with or without the doomsday music and the grainy, black & white stills. 

What should be the response? In the past, Democrats have lapsed into far too much tit for tat and it's evident they're not particularly good at it. 

Either or both. 


With the ground being conceded by the other side including just about every positive thing since The Enlightenment (many with Republican backing), we have to hope that adopting a stance of readiness to rebut any and all crazy surely has never had a better shot at prevailing this time. Hope is good. I can show you a poster.

The topic of impeachment as a political cudgel this week will find its replacement soon. Because it's only important as dominator of the news cycle, but the fact that they accuse the Democrats of such singular focus presents beaucoup evidence of projection.

The temptation to be anything but real to fight it is their aim in keeping you on your back foot until November. Real takes real.

The impetus to out bon mot Republicans has to be let go of. They are the ones both smelling it and dealing it.


Keeping you locked in and losing the battle which you can't win (see 'rigged system') because of the Trump Triangle we should call it, carries more than a whiff of high school. Ideas (such as) going from the loonisphere, to Fox News, to the mouth and hashtag of he who must be praised or else you're fired, rinse repeat, is what got us here.

The Trump Triangle: norms enter and are never heard from again. Its zeitgeist is projection. It knows its greatest weaknesses so it knows what to turn into weapons. The Democrats must have a single issue driving them because Republicans do. They can't tell you what tomorrow's will be but they know how to hammer today's.

Woe be to anyone contemplating defensive reaction to it because when the tit changes, as it were, the old tat becomes a loser. (See: oh yeah? and what about...?)


The jazz guys say it's outside the concept of the pocket if you wait to hear the beat played to try to play on the beat. You're always late. 

Instead, know which measure of what refrain you're in and be prepared to say something, if it's your turn.

If it's your turn.

*********************************************************************************************************
CORRECTED TO REFLECT IT WAS JONATHAN ALTER, NOT DAVID CORN WHO CONFRONTED KAYLEIGH MCENANY

DC vs. Hell Yeah I'll Tell You What

Since 2008 and the Supreme Court's decision in DC vs. Heller, gun ownership has had an individual right conferred on it. Anyone who begins a discussion by objecting to that as fact is wrong; anyone who excuses carte blanche possession of maniacally dangerous weapons that bear no resemblance to those around in 1789 is as well. And could we please drop the overly hackneyed "but what about" argument involving muskets, as Scalia's opinion used the old Groucho Marx You Bet Your Life terms and conditions of something you might find around the house. Meaning the right to bear arms may be refined by legislation, regardless of how many dangerous and unusual weapons have already been walking out of stores and crammed into the old gun case. Nor is a person immune from laws about safe storage and handling. Before Heller, the right was interpreted differently. It was politics of the day that began a chain of whittling away any dreams of a gun-free or gun limited culture.

If not proof positive that elections matter, little speaks more loudly than the comments section of my local paper during this fortnight of walkout and march. I asked, after the walkout story: "Did we obviate the 'well regulated militia' when we established local, county and state police forces and went with a professional army to defend us? Someday a Supreme Court decision might say just that and read the 2nd amendment differently than Scalia's thought processes in 'DC vs. Heller.' Were that to happen, would that be the boogie man 'tyranny' that is such a bottom line to so many. Could today's recreational bashing of liberals be a precursor to much worse if in due time the political winds in the country succeed in reversing a 38 year trend?"

One response, and hardly atypical these days, was: "No, the establishment of police forces and a professional military do not obviate any provision of the Second Amendment. Remember that 'well regulated militia' is immediately followed by 'being necessary to the security of a free state.' A free state must be defended not only against external foreign powers but also against internal domestic powers that seek to take away the other rights granted to us under the Constitution."

I don't know about you, savvy reader, but I took that as a "yes."

My point about him being right about the individual right being asserted and defended by Scalia was lost in his assumption that I was challenging the obviating or lack thereof. My point about it coming from the political realm and not some divine ordinance remained unaddressed but not lost to the discussion.

A Human Event

For after the local paper reported on our town's March for Life this past Saturday, the comments section had an aneurysm. This same commenter chimed in "I have to wonder if the idiot supporters of Initiative 42" (ed note: now 43, to do with assault weapons control) "know how many Oathkeepers and 3 Percenters there are here in Oregon. If this idiot proposal were to become law, are they willing to literally go to war to to enforce it? Heck, disarming my literal neck of the woods alone would take no less than an infantry batallion with armor, air, and special operations support."

I took that as a double "yes?" A "hell yeah" and an "I'll tell you what!" Literally.

I found a post by Andrew Rosenthal (NY Times 12/11/15) to be fair and balanced because he spelled out Scalia's opinion without skipping straight to a wish list. He laid the justice's premises out clearly but then added: "So rather than saying 'assault weapons,' in the future perhaps we should say 'the kinds of weapons that Justice Antonin Scalia has defined as dangerous and unusual and subject to regulation or an outright ban under the Second Amendment.'”

Breaking News Alert

Gauntlet Thrown

 Donald J. (Jaybird) Trump told the New York Times on December 28, 2017 many clever things, including that he's rooting for Robert Mueller's investigation to be fair, because the disappointment in finding out he's not would be immediate cause for dismissal, or words to that effect.

He also gave up an even more prime nugget when he addressed the entertainment aspects of the news-like product nobody should have allowed to metastasize.

“I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes. Without me, The New York Times will indeed be not the failing New York Times, but the failed New York Times. So they basically have to let me win.”
“And eventually, probably six months before the election, they’ll be loving me because they’re saying, ‘Please, please, don’t lose Donald Trump.’ O.K.”

To which I will add: Katy Tur, line one, someone named Clue.

********************************
Update: Charlie Pierce addressed this very quote more profoundly (as is his wont) after this post was up. It can be found here and I recommend it to the savvy reader.

On Joan Walsh

News spread rapidly in my circles that MSNBC had decided not to renew Joan Walsh's contract as an in-house commentator. There had never been any question of her biases when it comes to progressive v. libertarian stances and her presence was more than offset by recent corporate decisions to give airtime to intellectually dishonest spokespersons of the other side. Such is the climate in board rooms everywhere that reactions to their activities can cancel plans, coax overreactions of apology and lead to the dismissal of perfectly qualified personnel.

Jumping to any conclusion with "j'accuse!" certainty is not the intent here. Not like how 'the president with an asterisk lies for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the spaces in between,' or 'the current administration is calculated to break representative democracy as we have known it' which gets said here with far fewer hedges, so the accidental reader from Derptown should consider not wasting time seeing if that email address even works.

The savvy reader knows full well the where from which I am coming.


Television is a business and many things are at play - especially that thing called 'Q' which is the 'it' one either has or doesn't and a concept so ephemeral as to defy analysis beyond educated guesswork. That having been said, there have been few presences on that network more accepting that hers is opinion worthy of defense and retraction if need be. The kind of person you might want to be your editor, and in fact that is one role she has played over the years.

There was a time when I considered her to be mine, which speaks more to egocentricity than accuracy. You see, I had been a reader of Salon for several years when a call went out for participation in an experiment in social networking called Open Salon.

Just by accident, The Paxton Pundit was wrapping up 9 years of weekly essays hosted by the ISP which had brought modem technology to the near wilderness of New Mexico which we called home, then the Wildblue satellite service which stopped hosting web pages altogether; we were all directed to cloud based sites such as Blogger.


I latched on to Open Salon as my choice to call home in 2008 and shortly thereafter used my real name interchangeably. I referred to Joan Walsh as "my editor" nowhere but around the house, but it served to rein in the now-typical social networking traits of deceit and conceit. Opinions were clearly labelled and facts referenced. I was account number in the low 200's among a group which expanded to possibly the upper 400's during this "beta" phase and though not much more than pen pals, it became a treasure trove of feedback from folks who had earned my respect.

Thanks to them, not only could I continue my work as an essayist but post photographs and home recordings and return to read a dozen comments on a good day. The same fellow who claqued on and on about the lack of peer-reviewed science on climate change (quaint now, I know) could also effuse about that tree or cat and be welcomed for either. Beta days ended with Salon's decision to make this experiment a feature for one and all and it soon gave beta-salonistas a taste of what many find so worthless about currently popular, nay addictive web pursuits. The site itself lost Joan's regular input as Open Salon duties were handed off and she rose to editorship of Big Salon, as we called it.

I shudder to think if I ever coaxed her to respond "right on, Stacey" to a post about that fat phony who currently haunts the White House. I'm told nothing you ever have written for the Internet ever goes away and heard rumors lately of some 10 year old web activity of hers which somebody with a rod up his or her butt had found simply despicable.

Who knows what lack of "Q" leads a profitable media outlet to release what I and many others have come to look for in Joan's learned and well reasoned round table behavior. CNN has snapped her up in a heartbeat and that made Christmas a little less like the eve of destruction for her, I will safely conjecture. Still, business is business, and though for now she is welcome to make unpaid appearances on MSNBC, one just never knows about corporate management.

If she is one of the twelve or so accidental readers who finds this post, THANK YOU JOAN. (#not-for-nothing all-caps.) Best wishes for a happy new year to you and yours.

Same to you, savvy reader.

On the Twelth Day of Christmas

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2017

Trumponomics

Cutty McCutface

So Simple - #Mmmmmwah!

Why I Am Not on Facebook/Twitter

For the same reason states which don't have the death penalty have never wrongfully executed anybody.

I have never been targeted by a malevolent troll-bot. Family and friends know how to reach me without pushing Christmas letter style content out there and assuming it has been read by anyone who 'cares.'

I have enjoyed dinner table company and never felt the need to know if my latest whatever has gone viral or acquired 'likes.'

I enjoy writing things other than "and another thing."

Because anyone who would have me first sign into Facebook to read their menu, schedule a servicing or what have you is unaware that the platform they think is helping them is actually hurting them. A read-only Facebook page, conventional web page, phone number and email address are as 'interactive' as I care to get. 

I choose not to compete with ignoramuses who belittle election day (to the point of skipping voting in some cases) and focus on political blathering for sport. When commonweal gets another fair shake, arguing with automatons might just no longer 'trend.'

I can do with a little less up-to-the-minute knowledge of what our president with an asterisk thinks I need to hear. He 'tweets' the way he 'grabs.'

I hear your jealousin' savvy reader.

IT WAS QUITE THE CLOWN CAR

 reprinted from OpenSalon.com
1/27/15

MITT ROMNEY Former governor, two-time presidential candidate, predatory businessman, author of "Apologize for What?" Well ensconced among the one tenth of one percenters. Two words: roof rack.


JEB BUSH Former governor, champion of privatized everything, engineered the 2000 Florida result, author of "Not My Wars: Forging an American Identity." Dubbya stink.


DR. BEN CARSON Accomplished neurosurgeon, weekly opinion columnist, FoxNews fave, author of "We Made This: One Nation Starved of Honesty and Common Sense." Had me at Michael Brown caused his own murder.


CHRIS CHRISTIE Current governor, former prosecutor, unindicted so far, flagrant lap band cheat, author of New Jersey's steep decline. Forging tomorrow's passive aggression from today's aggression, pal.

MIKE HUCKABEE Former governor, Christianist, author of "God, Guns, Grift & Gravy." The caricature by Charlie Pierce of Esquire.com says it all: a "de-bloated god-bothering whackaloon who is occasionally mistaken for a nice guy."
(ed note: recently appears re-bloated)


RAND PAUL Senator, eye doctor, libertarianish author of "Aqua Buddha Goes to Washington." The sandwich board reads: all you can drink snake oil.


TED CRUZ Senator, ardent McCarthy reenactor, aural irritant, author of "I've Already Spent My Advance - DONATE NOW!" Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.


SCOTT WALKER Governor, also unindicted so far, poisoner of the public trust and the state's full faith, author of "Unmitigated: an Armed Fact-Checker's Fish Barrel." He's the most likely to benefit if not running on your record remains a viable tactic.


MARCO RUBIO US Senator, former speaker of the Florida house, veteran (no comma) Obama basher, one time savior of his party's demographic difficulties, author of “American Fantasy: Economic Opportunity Cake for Everyone.” Proof the clowns will need a limousine this time.

RICK PERRY Longest serving governor of Texas, indicted for abuse of power (case pending), author of "Feed Up!: Parceling Out America from Washington." More rehearsed with more departments of government he'd axe.


JOHN KASICH Governor, former congressperson, former paid FoxNews personality, author of "Something Something: The Looming Battle for Something Something." Unequivocally he'd be something.

RICK SANTORUM Former Senator, prude, vouchsafer of all things clean and not dirty, author of "Blue Collar Conservatives, Narcoleptic Goats: Some Things Just Don't Make Sense." Despite a line of bull so long that a "santorum" could readily have been made the internationally accepted unit for at least 10 parsecs, his name suffices as go-to slang for buckets of anal goo.


BOBBY JINDAL Governor, non-displaying Rhodes Scholar, first responder to the annual Obama address, author of "Crises After Crises: Our Leadership." The night he was born, "Joy to the World" was number one, say no more, wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean?

CARLY FIORINA Former CEO whose removal saved Hewlett-Packard, failed California senate candidate, McCain for President advisor, born Cara Carleton Sneed, author of "My Side of My Own Damn Story: a bitch-faced memoir." Some people who might just need to put some bona fides into their new CNN contracts (just sayin') are (what's the word?) confident (no, that's not the word), despite currently polling at a statistical zero percent, losing support even from benefit of the doubt.

RUDY GIULIANI, MICHELE BACHMANN, et. al. 

(ed note: these were supposed to be the also ran entries)

PAUL RYAN Congressperson, Hill brat since college, Empower America (Freedom Works) speechwriter, Romney running mate, author of "From Now On, It's Like the New Deal Never Happened." Still conflates capitalism and morality but he'll confine it to the House for now, he says.

SARAH PALIN Former governor, 2008 vice-presidential candidate, FoxNews personality, expert grifter, author of "Goyim Rouge." They say you shouldn't punch down and Palin has turned her syntactically challenged, period eschewing, buzzword rich, semantically void schtick up to a disturbing eleven plus, so I'll lay off the fantasy presidential bid of this poor tortured soul unless and until she rents (wink) another bus.

DONALD TRUMP Undisguised grifter, publicity whore, failed casino owner, author of "TRUMP: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump." Quadrennial poop in the bassinet whose candidacy would be a YUGE mistake to consider serious.

  

TAKE-AWAYS

• This was 7 months before the first Republican debate
• You can provide educational opportunities but you can't make people learn
• Trump remains poop in the bassinet

Alex Witt Proves Peter Principle

Engaging millions, well hundreds of thousands, well tens of thousands, well hundreds of MSNBC viewers who may have told themselves they were watching a "news" broadcast, Alex Witt declared about our Manhattan Mussolini: “He’s being far more tactile than he was in his first visit, and just getting right there up with folks who have been displaced by Harvey. Again, this is a recovery center. And, you know, so there he is perhaps now showing a little bit more to his critics that he’s got an empathetic side. ... I’ve got to tell you, we’re seeing a remarkably different President than we have seen in the past. I mean, we have seen him with his grandchildren, and he walks hand in hand with them, deplaning Air Force One, or seeing them perhaps on the balcony at the White House, and we know that he is a doting grandfather in that regard.”
 
This, savvy reader, is unadulterated Stockholm Syndrome.

Also Q.E.D. to the Peter Principle. She has been promoted from reading the copy which scrolled along the teleprompter to one of those personalities who feel the public is drawn to them rather than the information they are paid to bring to our attention. To wit (pun intended) “I’ve got to tell you, we’re seeing a remarkably different President than we have seen ever in our history. One who is given second chances up the wazoo to deliver words and tone in what will eventually arrive at a seeming presidential job performance. I mean, we have seen him with his golf clubs, and his abject hypocrisy by surpassing Obama's time on the course, deplaning Air Force One posing with chin thrust out like Mussolini, or seeing him perhaps at a state dinner, and you just know he's thinking 'there should have been missiles at the inauguration, which by the way was huge' and so now he's traipsing around Texas again having been told his performance just a few days ago was unconvincing in the compassion department, and because I have to cover this crap and have so heavily invested my name in this newscast, I hereby will be retiring from MSNBC, effective immediately.”

Then, savvy reader, we could admire both her competence, and her self-awareness. She is skilled at reading copy from others' reporting but, like the president, when she goes off script she takes MSNBC Live to a network with Fox News envy.

Isn't that where Van Jones works?