Monthly Archives: August 2016

08.24.16
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Tomorrow’s Irritation’s Today: There is No Pivot From Bigotry

 

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“Lady, you knew I was a snake until you covered my ‘attempt at tacking toward the center'” – Ancient Parable

 

Imagine that you’re at a bar with a guy and he’s railing about blacks and Mexicans and Jews. He’s just going off, and with each drink, he gets more and more unhinged about them, more conspiratorial, until toward the end he’s a sweaty mess and raving about how they are all out to get him and ruin his life, because they are evil and awful people, barely even people.

Then, about a week later, you see him. He mentions that he had a job interview, and it turned out that the people in charge were black, so he didn’t say anything racist for a few hours. Would you think, well, this fellow certainly has turned a new leaf! Because raw self-interests forced him to tamp down his essential terribleness for a spell, he clearly isn’t a terrible racist anymore!

Of course you wouldn’t. So hey, media: don’t pretend Trump’s sudden incoherence on immigration, and his faltering, obviously-insincere attempts at softening his hardline stance are anything but a transparent attempt to erase the last 14 months (and really, 5 years). You know it is a cynical ruse when he actually uses the word “softening”, which is remarkably insincere. It’s like saying “we’re about to start pandering, believe me.”

Everyone “pivots”; we know this. It’s part of politics. But running on naked racism and white nationalism for over a year, then pretending you didn’t mean that, isn’t a pivot. It’s a way to hide the essential nature of your campaign to fool people who are just now paying attention. This isn’t something he should be able to get away with. The stakes are too high.

So I really, really, don’t want to see serious discussions on “did Trump manage to massage his message enough to appeal to his base without alienating more people?” He’s still the know-nothing fascist dimwit he’s always been, now he’s just pretending to be a real candidate for five or ten minutes. He’s clearly not. It’s part of the cynicism of GOP leaders— just pretend that you won’t be an epochal and country-wrecking disaster of a President for 3 months, ok?”– and it is incumbent upon the media not to let them get away with it. This isn’t Romney pivoting away from the far right. It’s George Wallace putting on Groucho glasses and pretending to be someone else. It’s a gaboon viper telling you he’s a caterpillar. It really can’t be allowed to work.

08.24.16
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I’m Probably Going to Blame Teens For This

 

Don’t be so smug, Brayden. This is your fault. 

 

Facebook is running a small test that allows all videos to automatically start rolling with the sound on, rather than silently as they do now — this despite the company’s own research showing that unexpected, loud video ads annoy 80 percent of users.
[Peter Kafka | Recode]

I don’t really have much to comment on Facebook here, per se: they are going to do what they are going to do, and continue to make money, even as we grouse. And we will, because automatic videos with sound are annoying as hell. I work from home, where no one will ever look over and know I am goofing around when a video starts playing, and I still get instantly irritated and close whatever window the sound is in. It’s a natural reaction, a vestige of office-based guilt, but mostly annoyance. I’ll sit through ads. I’ll click on things. If I get a website for free, and enjoy the content, that’s the price. It’s fine. But not when you insist upon makign a racket. But anyway, that’s not what bugs me about this, really.

No, it’s that 80% that blows my mind. That seems overwhelming, but that means 20% of you aren’t annoyed by this. If you are talking to five people right now, one of them is ok with an ad for Hardees suddenly shouting at them. Who is fine with this? Who are you people? In some ways, this is more disturbing than knowing that millions of people are voting for Trump.

It’s probably teens. I knew it was teens. Even when it was the bears, I knew it was them.

08.23.16
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Baton Rouge is Not Obama’s Katrina

 

Waters will always rise. Will we? 

 

For almost eight years, conservatives and Republicans have been desperate to try to use the phrase “Obama’s Katrina”, knowing that the actual Katrina destroyed the tattered remains of George Bush’s credibility. It was, remember, a catastrophic failure, symbolized by Bush’s clueless flyover, where he glanced at the devastation from 30,000 feet, as well as his chuckleheaded praise for his dimwitted FEMA head. “Heckuva job, Brownie”, became emblematic of all the venality, incompetence, and cronyish destruction of his administration.

So it stands to reason that the GOP has been looking for the same thing in Obama, finding his Katrina in every tornado, every cop killing, every hurricane (one of the reasons they were so, so mad at Chris Christie following Sandy). Nothing has ever stuck, which is why they were so excited at the flooding in Baton Rouge.

After all, the President remained on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, of all places, and didn’t visit until today. That the governor, John Bel Edwards, asked him not to do so due to distractions, is merely beside the point. Obama is aloof while a city floods and people drown. This is, finally, his Katrina.

Continue reading →

08.23.16
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A Brief Note on Gabby Giffords Endorsing Kirk and Toomey, and the Myth Of Encouragement

Politico: Americans for Responsible Solutions, the anti-gun violence PAC founded by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, on Monday endorsed two Republican senators for their 2013 vote following the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre.

“In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook, Republican Sens. Pat Toomey and Mark Kirk broke from the gun lobby and supported a bill to help prevent felons, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill from obtaining firearms at gun shows and online,” Giffords and Kelly wrote in aCNN op-ed. “This week, they are earning our organization’s endorsement.”

We just talked about Kirk, and his attempt to keep Republican votes while not losing everyone in Illinois who hates Trump, which is most people. Part of his (deserved) political reputation comes from things like bucking the NRA, even briefly, which is how he gets endorsements from groups like Giffords. But while, like anyone with a heart, I love Gabby Giffords, this endorsement is nonsense.

I get the instinct. If you “reward” Republicans with your endorsement in exchange for behaving like reasonable human beings on guns, you’ll get more support. That’s the theory. The other calculation is that Americans for Responsible Solutions can’t only endorse Democrats, because then they are seen as partisan actors. It’s a tough situation, to be sure.

Continue reading →

08.23.16
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Mark Kirk Dips His Toes In Trumpy Waters

It’s almost easy to feel bad for Mark Kirk. He’s probably the closest thing there is to a reasonable Republican Senator right now, what with hating neither the gays nor the Mexicans. Because of that, he’s never really been trusted by the far right, but that’s suited him well in Illinois. The deep south of Illinois is culturally Kentucky (indeed, where Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky meet is one of the most rabidly conservative regions in the country). The farmlands that make up most of the state are very Republican, and have been growing more far-right over the last few decades, but still have a lot of Combine machine-type politics which rarely demand the “Warrior for Christ” you see in a lot of other states. Kirk is perfectly suited to get their votes, since he has an “R” after his name, and can win a lot of the not-crazy but still conservative voters in the collar counties and near the Iowa border.

But being a reasonable Republican still means being a Republican, and that’s not going to cut it for him in Illinois this year. It’s far from a done deal, but it looks likely that Tammy Duckworth is going to end his Senate career this year. A Democratic Presidential candidate hasn’t won here since George HW Bush*, and Illinois is going Hillary in a landslide. The fundamentals were already stacked against him, which is why he made the choice to “un-endorse” Trump, saying he “Cannot and will not” support him. It’s was really his only choice: despite pockets of cultural support in Chicago’s ethnic and coppish neighborhoods, and the southern parts of the state, Trump is deeply unpopular here. He’s not a collar county sort of candidate.

All that being said, he can’t completely disappoint people who vote Republican, which is why he has to make the occasional dip into the waves of racial hatred Trump stirred up. His discussion of the Obama administration’s payment to Iran (money we owed legally) is a perfect example of this.

“We can’t have the president of the United States acting like the drug dealer in chief,” Kirk said, “giving clean packs of money to a … state sponsor of terror. Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East. … We’re going to see problems in multiple (countries) because of that money given to them.”

Now, the interesting thing here, you will note, is that “giving clean packs of money to a state sponsor of terror” is not a thing drug dealers tend to do. There is a complicated nexus between organized crime, narcotics, and terrorism, to be sure, and it is true that drugs tend to be a cash business, but this is not a straight line here. It’s nothing more than racial imagery to try to make sure that his voters know he’s still one of them.

This, to me, is why Republicans have to lose, and badly. It’s why the idea of a “moderate Republican” is little more than wish-flogging at this point. Kirk himself might be instinctually moderate. Heck, he got an endorsement from Gabby Giffords for being anti-NRA-ish. But at the end of the day, he has to appeal to the sort of people who would vote for Donald Trump to be President. And when you have to do that, you abdicate any claims of being a responsible and reasonable politician. Mark Kirk isn’t a moderate: he’s a member of the party of Trump, his voters, regardless of his sweaty triangulations, are Trump voters, and that’s literally all ye need to know.

*Earlier version said “since Reagan”, but that was wrong. I forgot about 1988. In my defense, I think most people have. 

08.22.16
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Saleh Blesses Russian Intervention, Confirms Russia’s Lack of Strategy

 

I like what this Putin guy is doing. He’s got the right ideas! 

 

A big argument, popular among the right, but also among serious foreign policy thinkers, is how effective Russia’s effective new foreign policy is. After all, they seem to be doing very well in Syria, bending the civil war to their will, and have all of Europe on high alert after annexing Crimea. Military exercises near the border are making people tense about the possibility of further assaults on Ukranian sovereignty. An alliance with Iran makes for a powerful new axis.

While it is clear there is serious danger in a belligerent and over-confident Russia, I argued last week that this was more a sign of weakness, a desperate attempt to project strength, because in international relations, if you’re perceived as strong, in a way you actually are strong. I argued, as have many others, that “(i)t’s a series of moves, not a coherent strategy to make the country stronger in the long term. It’ll catch up.” Here’s a few data points to back that up.

  1. Iran is already angry at Russia for announcing their use of Iranian air force bases, and now that privilege has been revoked. Russia is like the high schooler who brags about getting to second base with Suzy Cheerleader, the confusingly-named captain of the volleyball team, and so never gets to get near her again.
  2. Crimeans aren’t exactly happy with the lack of resources that Russia is putting into the region, as they are plagued with blackouts and a lack of infrastructure. Russia was more interested in taking it over to get that victory that in doing anything with it. This is how discontent forms. Russia “saved” the people of Crimea from a government that neglected them (which was a legitimate complaint), only to neglect them even more. This isn’t how a country that has its act together actually does things.

But the most telling sign comes from Yemen, where former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who hasn’t quite left the scene, and it still maneuvering, has said that he’d welcome Russian help in “fighting terrorism.”

A newly-formed governing council in Yemen could work with Russia to “fight terrorism” by allowing Moscow use of the war-torn country’s military bases, Yemen’s former president said on Sunday.

Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former counter-terrorism ally of the U.S. who was toppled by mass protests in 2011, told state-owned channel Russia 24 that Yemen was ready to grant Moscow access to air and naval bases.

“In the fight against terrorism we reach out and offer all facilities. Our airports, our ports… We are ready to provide this to the Russian Federation,” Saleh said in an interview in Sanaa.

The ex-strongman may lack the clout to implement such an offer. But officials from the party he heads now run a political council that controls much of the country along with the Houthi movement allied to Iran.

This is actually pretty perfect. It’s a scary thought– that would put Russia directly against the Saudis, and in turn, the US– but it is a perfect wedding of like-minds. Saleh is the king of short-term strategy, playing sides to buy time, making a series of desperate moves to stave off the nearest enemy, kicking the can down the road and hoping to make things better then. By necessity, and by temperament, he’s always been a “live today no matter what, and deal with the ramifications of today’s actions some other time.” He’s a genius at it, and is genuinely talented at survival, but not at solving any problems except the ones immediately in front of him. He never seemed to grasp that doing so creates even bigger monsters.

So his seeming approval of Russian strategy and desire for their help kind of confirms that they are playing the same game.

 

08.22.16
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A Quick Followup on Unskewing

 

Not pictured: a lot of human voters. 

 

So, last post was mostly talking about Trump’s own brand of imagined reality, but there are also a lot of people who clearly believe that the polls can’t be right, because: rallies and signs, man. Ceca, in his Salon article, points out how this can take place, in the doughy form of Eric Bolling at FOX.

Interrupting a discussion about the hiring of Breitbart overlord Steve Bannon to run the Trump campaign, Bolling complained, “These polls, Dana, honestly, we have to stop with these polls.” Bolling continued, “They’re insane with these polls. Just look at what’s going on. You look at a Trump rally, and there’s 12, 15, 10,000 people.” In addition to demanding that “we have to stop with these polls,” Bolling compared his inflated estimates of Trump’s crowd sizes to Hillary’s lesser-than crowd sizes, insisting that rally attendance is an accurate predictor of election outcomes. It’s not.

He’s right! It really, really, isn’t. We went through this with Mitt Romney in 2012. Don’t forget– don’t ever forget– Peggy Noonan’s list of yard signs and vibrations for why all the polls were wrong. When people are vested in an outcome, they will believe anything.

But it is easy to believe, honestly, and very tempting. It’s especially easy for some reporters who often have to drive long distances, because when you do so, you spend a lot of time on the highway. An example: last week, when my bride and I were driving home from the Adirondacks, we went through upper New York, near the Canadian border and rounding around Fort Drum before heading south to 90 near Rochester. Coming out of the highlands, we pavered off into flat country, flat and poor country, where each little town, dotted sparsely with ramshackle houses, broke-down cars, and dying businesses, blended together.

We saw dozens, if not more, Trump signs. In one town there was an (at least) 15-foot-high sign blaring “TRUMP” in enormous, hand-painted letters. One upholstery place had two signs. The first was a two parter, in which the proclimation of “Jesus is Lord” was above  the nature of the business, and next to it was a “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” sign. This was real Trump country. Hundreds of miles of Trump’s America.

We also went through the Lake Erie tip of Pennsylvania, as well as across Ohio. Most of that was interstate, but not all (we took a few detours). Throughout that, we saw exactly 1 Hillary sign that I can remember, and that was in Erie, PA. I would conservatively put the estimate of total Trump-to-Hillary signs at 100-1.

Donald Trump is not going to win New York, nor Pennsylvania, and probably not Ohio. So when people are tallying up signs, remember, it is meaningless. The vast stretches where not many people live, but those who do live difficult lives, can be distorting.

The important thing, for Democrats, and the media, is to remember these places exist between elections.

08.22.16
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“Unskewed Polls” and the Violent Endgame of Trump’s Unreality


 Musical accompainment.

In Salon yesterday, Bob Cesca reminded us of Dean Chambers, the non-entity whose candle burned brightly but briefly by making Republicans think that Mitt Romney was going to win. He did this by “unskewing” the polls, which, he believed were tilted unfairly in the direction of Barack Obama. The scientific method with which he managed this unskewing was to say “eh, I’ll just subtract seven, I guess.” In doing so, a 4-point Obama lead magically became a 3-point Romney lead. It was based on essentially nothing except feelings, but for the people who wanted to listen to him, that was a feature, not a bug.

This was very different from normal spin and cheerleading. Every pro says that the polls may say one thing, but we think as our message gets out, as we get closer to the election day, as our terribly unfair coverage changes, etc, we’re for sure going to win. Saying so keeps money flowing in and keeps supporters from getting too demoralized. It’s normal.

But this is a different beast. It’s not saying that the polls would be wrong, or that they will turn eventually: it’s saying that they are deliberately tilting the field. Chambers’s main target was media sweetheart Nate Silver, but the real target was, essentially, reality. It was saying that this new Democratic/progressive coalition couldn’t possibly be real, and that Americans couldn’t possibly like this hated Kenyan Muslim autocratic weak and feckless usurper. After all, we don’t like him, and no one we listen to on the radio or read on the internet likes him, so any media that says differently is clearly lying. They just want to protect Obama and trick Americans into voting for him.

Continue reading →

08.18.16
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#AmericasMerkel: Trump Talks White Nationalism

 

Pictured: Trump Towers

 

Confused by Trump’s insistence that Hillary Clinton will be “America’s Merkel”, someone who is generally considered a pretty strong and resolute leader, easily the most powerful in all of Europe? It’s not just because her and Putin don’t get along (although it’s probably a bit of that), and it isn’t just because of rank misogyny (though it’s also very much that). It’s because he gets his talking points directly from white nationalist sites like Stormfront and VDare.com!

Think Progress has the scoop.

To white nationalist communities that fervently support Trump, Merkel has been a popular villain. Sites like the Daily Stormer, the White Genocide Project, American Renaissance, and The White Resister have posted constantly about her since the Syrian refugee crisis began escalating earlier this year. They have accused her of making a “deliberate attempt to turn Germany from a majority White country into a minority White country.” They have called her a “crazy childless bitch,” “Anti-White Traitor,” and “patron saint of terrorists.” They have asked in articles about her, “Why would you allow a woman to run a country, unless you were doing it as a joke?”

This is not a coincidence. You don’t hire the Breitbart guy and parrot an obscure line of attack about a leader Americans generally like, if they even know at all, without being intimately linked to white nationalism. Trump’s campaign grows more and more openly and flagrantly racist. What he’s stirred up won’t go away for a long, long time, and will deeply poison our politics for many years, but a unified front against him and a huge election defeat will help to tamp it down. It is literally the only moral duty we have as voters.

08.18.16
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This is Neat: Early Lake Ontario Shipwreck Discovered

 

 

Starboard side of Lady Washington. Image from Roger Pawlowski

 

A team of amateur- but still really damn good- underwater archeologists have discovered the incredibly-intact remains of an 1803 shipwreck in Lake Ontario, one of the earliest shipwrecks in the vast lake system. From their website:

Oswego, NY –  A rare 18th century built sloop, Washington (also known as Lady Washington), has been discovered in Lake Ontario off the shores of Oswego, New York by a team of shipwreck explorers.   Jim Kennard, Roger Pawlowski, and Roland Stevens located the sloop in late June utilizing high resolution side scan sonar equipment.

The sloop was enroute from Kingston, Ontario to Niagara, Ontario, Canada with a full cargo when it foundered during a gale on Lake Ontario in 1803.  The Washington is believed to be the oldest confirmed commercial sailing ship to exist in the Great Lakes.  It was the first sloop built on Lake Erie and the first to sail in both Lakes Erie and Ontario.  Sloops only existed for a limited period of time on the Great Lakes as they were replaced by schooners which had two or more masts and were much more efficient to operate.

It’s a thrilling find on a historical level. It’s also incredible to think about the enormous differences a scant 200 years can make. For settlers, in 1803, Erie and Ontario were on the edge of the West, that teeter-point between a barely-born nation that had just pushed itself away from the coast into the fearful forests and the wild lands outside. (The story was a little different for the natives, of course.) The fur trade, while declining, was still incredibly important, and a continuous link to the early days of colonization and exploitation, a direct line between the toddling American nation and the days of trappers and Jesuits.

And the Lakes were wild and fearsome beasts, capable of rising up and swallowing a ship whole, never to be seen again. It’s only in the last few decades, really, that we’ve gotten to the point where a Great Lakes shipwreck would be due to massive error, rather than the cruel and unforgiving coldness and brutality of the whipping winds and exploding waves.

But you can still see it when you walk past any of them, on a summer storm or during a winter gale. You can see the contained fury stir up into a frenzy, and from a safe and warm window you can imagine being out there, in a creaking wooden ship, eeking out a living bringing the dissected remnants of nature back to the cities in exchange for the meagerest goods of survival, and know the fear that must have gripped them when this implacable and wild land struck back. When Ontario, the smallest of the Lakes, but still terrifyingly larger than three of the original 13 states, roared up, and swallowed you whole, your bones never to wash up, lost forever, lost in the country, lost in the water, lost in a new America. You can still feel that vastness, sometimes, a chill up your spine, as you wonder what we’ve gained, and think of all that was lost doing so.