Monthly Archives: August 2017

And boy, there's a lot of dumping to do. I think the scariest thing about Trump's walk back of his Nazi condemnation is this: A lot of folks thought he was erratic and uninformed but found enough things about him to like. The rationale for supporting someone like that was "He'll surround himself with good, level-headed experienced people and they'll stop him from nuking Kathy Griffin's house or whatever nutty thing he seemed like he might do."

What happened yesterday proved that even if does have good, level-headed experienced people, they can't even stop him from undoing their work. They couldn't even prevent him from saying, more or less, that there are good people among the Neo-Nazis.

The thing I always wonder about with politicians — and not just Trump — is how much of their odd behavior is because of one or two powerful (i.e., wealthy) people they're trying to impress. Every so often, you'll see some Congressperson suddenly, out of nowhere, declare something like, "We need to investigate the robots that are sneaking into our homes and stealing all our yogurt!" And you wonder where the hell that came from.

I find myself imagining a dinner with a very rich potential campaign donor who says, "Well, Congressman…I'd like to help you out with a few million but what I'm looking for is a guy who's going to get serious about all these thousands of reports of yogurt-stealing robots."  And the Congressguy instantly says, "Oh, I'm right on top of that, sir. I've been researching that shocking situation and…well, just wait'll you see my press conference tomorrow about it."

It just seems to me that a lot more of our illogical governance is caused by one or two phone calls that we never know about and can't possibly factor in when we try to figure out the mindset of our leaders. Wonder if someone Trump didn't want to piss off called and told him, "You had it right on Saturday and wrong on Monday. Go back to Saturday!" And now this…

• Jonathan Chait writes of the White House aides who have done so much to shield the public from Trump's racist beliefs. I'm still sticking to my position that Trump is not a racist but I'm having more and more trouble convincing myself.
• German Lopez says that Trump's talking points on Charlottesville are coming right off of Fox News. We'll know for sure if he starts selling gold — the kind of you buy for investment — for five or ten times its actual value.
• Trump tried the silly "slippery slope" argument about how if we get rid of all the statues of Robert E. Lee, is George Washington next? To me, those are usually like "If we get rid of the traffic light at Elm and 3rd Street, where does that lead? Do we get rid of all the traffic lights everywhere?" Matt Yglesias has more on Trump's ridiculous manipulation of history.
• And Kevin Drum addresses the claim that to lose Confederate War statues is to lose a piece of history. Those statues weren't put up to remind all of history. They were put up to remind black people who's in charge.
• Trump was supposed to call the Mayor of Charlottesville but as of now, he hasn't. Actually, I was under the impression that Trump never called anyone; that his working premise was that since he was the most powerful man in the world, he didn't call people. They had to call him.
• Ryan Lizza thinks that firing Steve Bannon, as has been called "imminent" for several months now, won't change much of anything. I think hope this is a growing sentiment.
• The prominent Conservative Jonah Goldberg does not like how "his side" has embraced the alt-right to gain power.

As we all know, Trump has been threatening to discontinue the Cost Sharing Reduction Subsidies that the Federal government makes to keep Obamacare viable. Trump seems to want to destroy Obamacare that way on the questionable premise that no one will then blame him and everyone will blame Obama and his care. But as Kevin Drum (him again!) notes, that could mean that the federal government will spend more, not less on medical care for poor people. This is not something that Trump's base should like. (This just in: A White House aide says the payments will continue.)

Jim Jefferies is one of my current favorite stand-up comedians. The other night, he was on with Colbert but the show ran long and this anecdote was edited out of the telecast…

Back when Jackie Mason was funny — yes, there was such a time — he had a line about Richard Nixon during the time of Watergate. He said, "I get up every morning and check to see if my furniture is still there." There really was this ongoing sense of, "What's he going to do to us next?"

I now wake up, reach for my iPhone and check to see what news headline awaits: What's Trump done this morning while I was asleep? This morning, there was no headline and I gave out with a sigh of relief you may have heard, wherever you are. I do not enjoy living in interesting times, especially when what makes the interesting is a question like "What is the President of the United States going to do today to protect his support from racists?"

One of my pet peeves, mentioned many times before on this blog, is people who make what is to me a silly, deceptive analogy. It's when anyone in politics makes any kind of concession or compromise and they liken that to Neville Chamberlain trying to appease Hitler by giving up chunks of Czechoslovakia. It's usually ridiculous because not every enemy is Hitler and not every compromise is surrender. Most problems in this world are not settled by killing the other guy.

I'm surprised no one's compared Trump to Chamberlain lately though. He sure wants to appease those boys with the tiki torches in Charlottesville.

Last night, Stephen Colbert had Anthony Scaramucci on his show for a kind of exit interview. Colbert was a bit too aggressive in his questioning, occasionally talking over his guest, but he did wring some interesting responses out of "The Mooch"…

Colbert: Are there elements of white supremacy in the White House?

Scaramucci: No. But I don't like the tolerance of it.

I wish Colbert had then asked, "Is it tolerated because some of them agree with it or do they just want those votes?" I assume Scaramucci would have said, "The latter," then Colbert could have asked, "So Donald Trump — this man you say is so compassionate and so media-savvy — is tolerating white supremacist views in his White House because he doesn't want to lose the support of racists?" I wonder what the response to that would have been.

Hummingbirds bathing…

• I get Trump's plan now. His wall will get built and Mexico will pay for it. That's because they'll erect it to keep American Nazis out.

So…Donald Trump finally spoke out against White Supremacists this morning. I read the text of it online and then watched him delivering those words. They were more impressive in print than they were coming out of his mouth because he sure didn't look like he wanted to say those words and they were clearly not his. I'd have been a lot more impressed if he'd said them on Saturday and even more impressed if I thought he meant them.

I wonder how much difference any of this makes. The people who didn't like him before don't like him now. The people who liked him before are probably fine with whatever he says but disappointed that he didn't handle it better. Too many of them didn't know what to say when their Trump-bashing acquaintances said, "So how do you feel about backing a president who's spent more time attacking Rosie O'Donnell than the Hitler Youth Corps?" The ones who side with the so-called Neo-Nazis probably all believe he had to say what he said today for political reasons but he's still on their side.

We forgive our leaders a certain amount of that because while we want them to side with us on everything, we also want them to get things done and to grant us items on our wishlist. It's not a direct analogy but a lot of us were frustrated that Barack Obama wouldn't come out forcefully for Gay Marriage until, finally, he did. We understood that, as the saying goes, "Politics is the art of the Possible," and that leaders sometimes need to sneak up on these issues to be effective for them.

I still doubt Donald Trump is a racist in the classic sense. I don't think he divides the world into White and Non-White. I think he divides it into Pro-Trump and Not-Pro-Trump. The man believes in wealth and winning and he doesn't care how he makes the money and how — or even what — he wins.

What a fine actor that man was…great in everything he ever did. I'm talking about Joe Bologna, who has left us at the age of 82. I wish I'd met him and that I had a great anecdote about him. Well, I do have a story about him. He just isn't really in it but I'll tell it anyway…

In 2015, I had my right knee replaced. I spent a few days in the hospital and then they moved me to what they call a Skilled Nursing Facility for a few more days. I was wheeled into a room and in this place, they put each patients' name on his or her door. The name of the patient who had just vacated that room a few hours before was still there. It was Joseph Bologna. So for the first day or so, I was laying there in the bed, feeling a great urge to go do the Boss Hijack sketch.

The facility's Social Director came around…a nice lady whose job involved arranging events, mostly in the dining room, to entertain the patients. One source of such events was that she interviewed each patient who was admitted and find out what they did. If it seemed like it would be of interest to other patients, she'd ask them to give a talk some evening and others could come hear them. I told her what I did and she was interested but since I was only going to be in the place for two or three more days, it wouldn't be possible for me to give one of those lectures.

I asked her if she prevailed on the man who was previously in the bed I was occupying. She said, "He was an actor, he told me — but he was evasive. He wouldn't tell me what he had done. I meant to go Google him and find out but I never got around to it before he was discharged. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay with us. You might want to join us for movie night. Actually, every night is movie night here. Every evening at 7 PM, we run a movie in the dining room."

"What do you have for tonight?" I asked.

She said, "I forget. I'll have to go look it up…but I can tell you what we ran last night. Last night, we showed My Favorite Year!"

Sorry that's as close as I can come to a Joe Bologna anecdote. I wish I'd met him because then I might have a much better one and at least, I could have told him how I've always admired his work.

I posted earlier that I expected Alex Jones would denounce the whole tragedy in Charlottesville a "false flag" operation that was set up to make his people look bad. And sure enough, he has. I also expected people to start trashing the victim, Heather Heyer. And sure enough, some sites have. So many people these days are incapable of accepting bad news for what it is.

And as usual, we have lots of calls for "unity" and to "bring us together" from folks whose idea of unity is that the other side surrenders to theirs while they don't give an inch or admit having done anything wrong. This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm going to try to stop thinking about all this for the rest of the day. You might like to see if you can do that.

Erick-Woods Erickson is a religious Conservative talk show host who is really, really disappointed in Donald J. Trump. I do not for a minute buy his premise that "the social justice warrior alt-left and the white supremacist alt-right [are] two sides of the same coin" but I nod in agreement to much else that he says. To just cite one huge difference, the alt-left is smaller, far less prone to encourage violence, and it's all about helping the poor and downtrodden. The alt-right is about about helping themselves and way too often about guns and threats.

It's kinda nice that David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is so outspoken about how his crowd is sure Donald Trump is on their team. None of us who dislike Trump will do him as much damage.

Here, from Julia Azari, is a history of presidential responses to racial violence. It isn't that impressive a history but Trump still manages to look bad in comparison to his predecessors.

Former White House communications director (for about twenty minutes) Anthony Scaramucci on Sunday says Trump should have been "much harsher" speaking out against white supremacists. Having "The Mooch" say you should have been much harsher is like Hannibal Lecter telling you to grab a snack. Scaramucci is supposed to guest with Stephen Colbert tomorrow night. Wonder if they'll mention Donald.

Hey, this'll get your mind off Nazis for a while. The other day in Colton, which is a city in California, there was a minor traffic accident involving a black Mercedes. The driver of that Mercedes decided to flee the scene and a motorcyclist who witnessed the whole thing decided to give chase. The biker, who calls himself "Dick Danger," had a body camera on and he followed the Mercedes for some 57 miles until the law could take care of the guy. Here's the video…

So this morning, you have all these headlines saying things like "Trump steadfastly refuses to condemn White Supremacists." I have a feeling he will. I have a feeling that he has advisors working to come up with some stronger but equally ambiguous language for a statement that will simultaneously spank the Nazis while winking to them, "Hey, I have to do this to stay in power where I can do you guys some good."

His supporters have to be getting weary of this have-it-both-ways governing. He was going to quickly institute a health care system that would give everyone better coverage for less money but he was also fully behind the Republican bills that would have done the opposite. He was even behind the one he called "mean." They're not going to leave him because they have nowhere else to go but they've got to be wondering what he stands for except the glory and bank account of Donald Trump.

Me? I don't think he ever stood for anything but that. I do have friends who back him, though with increasing discomfort. I've been telling them, "He's not on your side. He is only emotionally capable of being on his side."

So I'm waiting for Trump's faux condemnation of that which so many are insisting he condemn. And I'm waiting for Alex Jones or someone like him to start advancing the theory that no one was injured or died in Charlottesville. It was all a "false flag" operation to make Nazis look bad. And have we had the smearing yet of Heather Heyer, the young woman who was killed? We will.

Hey, at least it's getting our minds off North Korea.

• The people who have to fill Trump's twice-daily "folder of praise" have it easy this morning. They just have to print out Nazi chat sites.

If you're recording tonight's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, you might want to pad the running time a bit. The show just announced on Twitter that it will run five minutes longer than usual. Not all TiVos or DVRs will get the message.

Here's a clip from The Dinah Shore Chevy Show for 1/13/1957. Dinah and her guest Art Carney wander over to the St. James Theater where the Broadway show Li'l Abner was then running. Well, actually, they wander onto a set on her stage that was supposed to pass for backstage at the St. James but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Stubby Kaye is there and they perform "Jubilation T. Cornpone" from Abner, which had then been running for about two months…

And as Matt Yglesias just pointed out on Twitter, there are state legislators who want to make it legal to run down protestors if you can convince someone it was an accident.