Category: Politics

Comments on recent political activities and developments primarily in the U.S. and Canada.

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Extorting Favorable News Coverage

Bill Owens, a “top producer” at “60 Minutes” has resigned, saying that his independence is being threatened by ownership.

‘Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on 60 Minutes.

‘Legal experts have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched…’

From NYTimes. 60 Minutes has long been one of the finest programs on TV, a wonderful monument of excellent, first-class, heavily-researched, accountable journalism. They do something foreign to Trump-World called “fact-checking”. Of course Trump would go after it. Using manipulation of the FTC to try to strong-arm Paramount into coercively censoring a popular news program is beyond impeachable. He is making similar threats to PBS and NPR.

It’s vulgar, and distasteful, and despicable. And yes, it is incipient authoritarianism.

The surest sign of weakness in any argument is when it resorts to attacking dissent because it doesn’t have faith in the credibility of it’s own “truth”.

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Promises Made, Promises Wrecked

Really? Do Trump supporters really have the stomach for watching his cabinet take turns debasing themselves by lavishing obscenely ridiculous praise upon their glorious leader in front of the press? Is Trump himself not nauseated by it?

I wonder if they at least worry that the man who negotiated himself into bankruptcy six times is now negotiating the entire nation’s economy?

Looks like he has deported lots of people. However, he has actually deported fewer in the first month than Biden did in his last month.

On his other election promises (score out of 10):

    • Lower grocery prices? 0
    • Stop the war in Gaza? 0
    • Stop the war in Ukraine? 0
    • Cap credit card interest rates at 10%? 0
    • End birthright citizenship? He can’t do that.
    • Bring new investment in manufacturing to U. S.? -5
    • Restore respect for America around the world? 0
    • Stop advertising for pharmaceuticals? 0
    • Healthier foods at schools? 0
    • Shut down TikTok if not sold to a U.S. owner? 0
    • Balance the budget? -10 (deficit increased by 4 trillion, at last count)
    • Make government more efficient? -10 (firing random federal employees does not increase efficiency).
    • Stop the attacks on shipping in the Suez Canal: failed.

So perhaps pundits blathering about “promises made, promises kept” could identify the ones that have been kept.

Meanwhile, Congress is actually trying to erect monuments to him, even proposing adding him to Rushmore and putting his face on currencies.

If the most valuable company in the world, Apple, moved production of the iPhone from China to the U.S., consumers will have to pay over $3,000 for it. If the “genius” sticks to his tariff policy, Apple is in big, big trouble.

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Trevor Milton’s Pardon – The Easy Con

If you are going to commit fraud in the U.S. make sure you make a healthy donation to the “Trump 47 Committee”. Trevor Milton, who bilked investors out of millions by making phony claims about the performance of his Nikola electric trucks, made the “donation” and just got himself a full pardon.

His investors are sure to be grateful: he is now off the hook for paying restitution as well. That is particularly vile. But not as vile as Milton practically chortling with glee on a video he released, claiming he was “persecuted” by the same corrupt deep state that went after Trump because he was a supporter.

It looks pretty easy to con the supposed genius. Take your pick.

But then, there are so many scandals with this administration. How do you choose any particular one to pay attention to?

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Cuomo’s Franken-sense

With Eric Adams on the outs Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York State, has stepped in to run in a primary against Adams for mayor of New York City.

Adams is on the outs because he sucked up to Donald Trump in an obvious attempt to extract a shutdown of the investigation into charges of bribery against him which almost certainly would have resulted in conviction, according to insiders at the Attorney-General’s office of New York.

Well, a lot of people have stepped up to demand that Cuomo extract himself from the primary because, well, everybody knows he’s a sexual abuser.

Do they?

Here’s a summary of the claims made against Cuomo:

    • Lindsay Boylan: described several years of “uncomfortable interactions”.  He once “forcibly” kissed her and even compared her to a former girlfriend.  Yes, that’s it.  Cuomo’s former aide Melissa DeRosa claims Boylan never complained about it while working for Cuomo.
    • Charlotte Bennett: Cuomo once asked her about her sex life.
    • Anna Ruch:  Cuomo placed a hand on her back and once asked if he could kiss her.  Yes, that’s it.
    • Ana Liss: Cuomo once called her “sweetheart” and kissed her hand.  (I’m not making this up: this is Liss’ complaint.  Check it out.)
    • Karen Hinton:  Cuomo once hugged her.  “Unethically”.  That’s it.
    • Brittany Commisso: Cuomo once groped her breast.  She told Cuomo that his actions might get them into trouble.  Did she mean the two of them or the two of them.  Either way, this is probably most serious charge levelled against Cuomo, if it is true.
    • Kaitlin (mystery accuser): Cuomo made her feel uncomfortable, more than once.
    • Jessica Bakeman: Cuomo went crazy here– he touched her arms, shoulders, back, and waist and once held her hand for some time.  Again, I am not making this up.
    • Alyssa McGrath: Cuomo “ogled” staff and commented on their appearance.
    • Someone else said that Cuomo, noting a diet drink on the employee’s desk, asked if her goal was to look like a Playboy Bunny.

All of the allegations are evidence of a distasteful personality, immaturity, and poor judgment.  They shouldn’t be dismissed, entirely, as complaints, but, at most, they deserve a very stern letter to the administrator. 

None of these are serious.  None of them really rise to the level of “sexual harassment”.  None of these are sufficient to demand the resignation of  the governor of a state.  But most prominent Democrats– terrified, I think, of offending the feminist wing of the party– immediately piled on.  Biden, Harris, Schumer, Pelosi, and dozens more.  The party must be purified!

All the righteous denunciation of Cuomo by Democratic Party leaders and staffers for these minor offenses plays right into the hands of voters who kind of mostly shrug at this kind of behavior in the real world and don’t respect hard-core feminists for what they perceive to be hyper-sensitivity to minor issues.  It’s plays into the hands of conservatives who describe liberal feminists as snowflakes for presenting themselves as suffering victims of slight offenses.

All of the allegations are in that fuzzy area of “inappropriate” and “uncomfortable”.  None of them are really serious enough to justify the “cancellation” of Cuomo, though they do reveal that he was a compulsive flirt who obviously did hit on women in his orbit.  He was probing, obviously, for a favorable response, to see if one of them might like to go further.  Some of them (who aren’t part of the cabal) might have.

Why is he the target?

Because the Democrats have a habit of forming circular firing squads.  They know they can’t take down the long list of womanizers in the Trump Administration so how do you rally the troops and proclaim your own virtue when the enemy won’t willingly capitulate?  You attack someone in your own party, like Al Franken, or Eliot Spitzer, or Andrew Cuomo, who actually, on the whole, are on your side, but might also be standing in the way of an ambitious woman (like Kathy Hochul) who could use a leg up.

When Cuomo resigned, Kathy Hochul, as Lieutenant Governor, became Governor of New York.  She barely won re-election in 2022.  She has flip-flopped on some major issues (like a congestion tax for Manhattan) and seems afraid to commit to a position on others.

 

 

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The Trump Marathon

There are lots of movies that evoke the character of Trump’s hold on the Republican party and the republic– “The Godfather”, “Kingfish”, “Handmaid’s Tale”, “Succession”, “Peewee’s Big Adventure”– but the one I like the most– though it is a dark, unnerving film– is this one, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969). Trump as ringmaster of a dance marathon (they really did have them during the depression), offering desperate, unhappy people, a long-shot chance at money and fame, only to reveal to a contestant that expenses will be deducted from the prize money leaving the “winner” with nothing.

The ending is something only an adolescent could admire.  Heavy-handed, is the word.  It wasn’t necessary to make the point and though it has some narrative credibility the film would have been stronger without it.

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Canadian vs U. S. Health Care

Someone, an American friend of a friend, commented on Facebook:

Some Americans think that the Canadian care is inferior. What I have heard is that there are longer waiting periods. Also, I have heard that Canadians come to the states for more timely service or even better service, i.e. our doctors are better. I don’t know if any of this is true, but one thing I know to be true: we have plenty medical bankruptcies, and you have none.

If the first part was true, generally, then U. S. life expectancy and infant mortality would be a lot better than it is. I am sure that any individual’s experience will vary– there are good and less than good doctors in both countries. There are definitely areas of the U.S. that have lost their hospitals and have challenges finding family medicine practitioners, as in Canada. Canadian hospitals and physicians are generally as competent as their U. S. counterparts. But the difference in the catastrophic impact on personal finance is absolutely astounding. Europeans and Canadians alike just find it shocking that America refuses to adopt universal health care because the advantages we see every day are so, so significant.

The U. S. pays twice as much for the same procedures as we do in Canada. The U. S. system by it’s own principles is supposed to result in more efficient, cost-effective care: it does the opposite. The administrative overhead is colossal, compared to Canada’s far more efficient system.

I have often considered that if the American system resulted in more competition, for price and quality, and resulted in lower costs and better care (for all– not just the rich), it worth considering seriously as an alternative. But in that respect, it has failed.

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Nothing New Under the Sun

In regard to here.

It’s about someone named Aaron Renn.

Mr. Renn loves city life, and has lived in Manhattan, Chicago and Indianapolis. Carmel is different. Here, church bells chime full hymns over the town square. It’s a place where it’s easy to forget Mr. Renn’s best-known idea: his warning to Christians that America is in an era of distinct hostility to believers like them, and that they must gird themselves to adapt to, as the title of his recent book put it, “Life in the Negative World.”

I don’t think there is anything new here at all. Christians have a habit of periodically engaging in wildly enthusiastic embrace of some new “reinterpretation” that seems more engaged and relevant and intellectually credible. (Jesus Freaks, Christian Contemporary Music, Blue Like Jazz, and so on.) And then you investigate it more closely and you see that it’s the same old redneck fire and brimstone, pieties and hypocrisies, patriarchy, smugness, and materialism.

And, of course, extreme right-wing politics. No, you’re not smart now.

It’s not really Christian at all.  It’s superstition combined with reactionary politics.  It’s the politics of the rich and privileged, which isn’t all bad, but mostly is.  It’s paranoia and conformity, banality and self-regard.  The same old, same old, same old.  The blah blah blah of middle America.

It’s a sweet, wonderful world, if you’re in the club, of consumer trinkets, antiseptic public life, and space for all those men to get off to Vegas for a glorious weekend once in a while, of gambling and prostitutes and Wayne Newton, because, after all, boys will boys.

 

The Palladium, a proud edifice built in Carmel to demonstrate that even conservative Republicans can have good taste, features acts like Mickey Dolenz, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Itzhack Perlman, Emmy-Lou Harris, The U.S. Army Field Band and Male Chorus, and an official release party for some country singer named Tege Holt who sounds pretty harmless.

Emmy-Lou Harris and Itzhack Perlman are esteemed but safe choices.  The others speak for themselves.  They remind me of the problem Trump is going to have bringing A-list acts to the Kennedy Centre now that he is it’s chief.

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Ethanol

“I may have to spend a lot of time educating him about agriculture,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the largest corn-growing state, just ahead of Illinois, said of Mr. Kennedy last month. “I’m willing to do that.”  NY Times

That chilling statement from Senator Grassley should remind us that there is only one political party in America and it is the money party.

What Grassley is alluding to is the fact that American farmers in the mid-west grow a lot of corn and they need someone to buy it.  That is why we have ethanol and corn syrup.  There is no good rational reason for ethanol to exist except for the purpose of providing a rigged, locked-in market for corn farmers, who vote in the primaries in Iowa– among the first primary states in the Union– and basically control national policy by holding onto the agricultural dick of the Republican party.   (And the Democrats.)

Mr. Kennedy’s critique is broad and deep. Generous federal crop subsidies of soy, corn and wheat artificially lower their costs, making byproducts like corn syrup cheaper for manufacturers who put it into everything from soft drinks to hot dogs to heavily processed bread.

What should freak most people out is the word “educate”.  It is a very suggestive choice of language.  It is Orwellian.  It is not sufficient to say that we don’t care about the health of Americans or the nutritional value of all the foods processed corn syrup is added to.  You must be “educated”:  you must publicly offer your unconditional obeisance to the mantra.  You must be seen to adhere to the perverse logic that provides massive government subsidies to a useless crop simply in order to keep those “hard-workin’ ‘mericans” juiced and happy.

Most of those farmers probably privately hold nothing but contempt for people on welfare.  It’s one thing to take money for sitting around looking after your kids and quite another to work hard at cheating the system, which most of those corn farmers do.  But you never know: maybe they have no problem with welfare.  Maybe they recognize that government hand-outs are okay, as long as you get your share.  Like Exxon and Tesla and the Tampa Bay Rays.

Fun facts:

      • fructose uses only about 4% of the nation’s corn product.
      • ethanol consumes about 40%.

Think about it:  what if you (as government) decided– correctly– that ethanol was a bad product that should not be subsidized by the government.  How would you make up for the deficit in the market for corn?  What would you do about the corn farmers– who are generally massively in debt– who would be out of work?  How would you deal with the political fall-out: you did something that hurt farmers?  Those paragons of hard-working American virtue?

 

 

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Revenge of the Mistress: Coralie Fargeat

But one of the most impressive feats of all is the way Fargeat subverts and co-opts the male gaze, turning it into something that’s both playful and fierce. The sexy and scantily clad Matilda Lutz initially looks like an irresistible piece of eye candy, and Fargeat knows you’re thinking that. She toys with your expectations of how a woman who looks like Lutz is normally photographed in a film like this before ultimately celebrating her character for the warrior she becomes.

From this review of “Revenge” by Coralie Fargeat.

A woman, Jen, is raped by one of her boyfriend’s hunting buddies while another buddy watches indifferently.  The boyfriend– who is cheating on his wife with Jen– returns and doesn’t seem very disturbed about it.  When she demands justice, she is chased to a cliff by the three men and pushed over so that she is impaled on a tree.  Remarkably, she recovers, and returns to the scene to take brutal revenge.

This reviewer, and others, celebrate this fresh, exciting story because, after all, she was raped: the men deserve to die, and the action sequences are pretty cool.

Maybe they do deserve to die.  That’s for another day, and another philosophical discussion.  Maybe the scenario is contrived to allow you to feel good about watching these men suffer and die.  (That is absolutely true.)    And maybe the transformation of Jen from an air-head exhibitionist potential valley-girl into an action hero capable of astounding acts of athleticism is a puerile fantasy.

It doesn’t matter: the critics fall over themselves to sing the praises of Fargeat.  Why?  Is it because action films that feature male protagonists chasing and murdering males is such marvelous entertainment that a simple role reversal only spikes the tension?  Or is it because those films have become boring and the role reversal makes it interesting again?

 

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USAID

USAID has had it’s share of expensive failures (like any large corporation or agency does) but it has also had some truly extraordinary successes, like the HIV program, malaria prevention, and nutrition for starving children in war zones. It has literally saved millions– literally millions– of lives. It has often worked well with faith-based charities even if their values don’t perfectly align.

If Trump was really the genius he thinks he is, it would take little effort to appoint really competent administrators to fine-tune their programs and reduce waste. That would merely take skill and intelligence. Terminating the entire agency is easy– and of obscene criminality. It is beyond policy: it’s simply monumental mindless cruelty. All for less than 1% of the U. S. budget.

China, meanwhile, must be salivating at the opportunity to develop relationships with the countries USAID must now leave.

And Republicans in Congress are obviously terrified of offending the capo but the aversions and sidelong glances and evasive answers are telling.

Things Trump Did That I Liked

    • Got rid of the penny.
    • Reduced credit card interest rates to less than 10%.
    • Reduced inflation to below 2%.
    • Stopped the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
    • Reduced waste and corruption in military defense spending.
    • Reduced deaths from fentanyl overdoses.
    • Brought manufacturing back to America on a broad scale.
    • Put a stop to states competing with each other to offer tax breaks and incentives to corporations to locate there.

No, of course he didn’t do any of those things.  Not yet.  Probably not ever.  I just like to fantasize sometimes.

People should take note (most of the media does not) that most of the job losses in the manufacturing sector over the last decades has not been due to off-shoring but to automation.  An entire recent podcast by The Daily discussed the manufacturing issue at great length without once mentioning this fact.  In other words, all the tariffs in the world will not bring back most of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost.