[barmar]

Hey, Ken, I was just wondering if you're old enough to remember living through McCarthyism?

Yesterday's "Fresh Air" had an interview with the author of a new book about Joe McCarthy, and they made a point about how much Trump has been borrowing from McCarthy's playbook. Does your memory of the original inform your current opinion.

I wonder if someone like Trump could have succeeded a few decades ago, when more of the voting population remembered him.

[johnu]

barmar, on 2020-July-08, 20:09, said:

Hey, Ken, I was just wondering if you're old enough to remember living through McCarthyism?

Yesterday's "Fresh Air" had an interview with the author of a new book about Joe McCarthy, and they made a point about how much Trump has been borrowing from McCarthy's playbook. Does your memory of the original inform your current opinion.

I wonder if someone like Trump could have succeeded a few decades ago, when more of the voting population remembered him.

The Grifter in Chief was tutored by Roy Cohn, McCarthy's government paid personal shyster. It is no surprise that the Manchurian President's playbook is modeled after McCarthy's playbook.

[y66]

Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark said:

There have been a lot of overheated pre-mortems about the possibility of a Democratic landslide this fall, but this one by Henry Olsen is worth your time.

Olsen has been, shall we say, at least Trump-curious, so his latest analysis doesn't reflect any sort of pro-resistance wishful thinking. Although I've disagreed with his willingness to rationalize Trumpism, there's no question about his mastery of the data of polling.

So this is really something coming from Olsen.

"This year’s Senate races spell disaster for the Republican Party" by Henry Olsen at WaPo:

Quote

Republicans are beginning to gird themselves for a landslide defeat for President Trump that drags the entire party down. It could be even worse than they think.

Elections in both the House and Senate are increasingly syncing with broader presidential races. In 2016, every Senate race was won by the same party that won that state in the presidential contest. In 2018, House races largely correlated with Trump’s approval rating, with even the most popular GOP incumbents unable to run more than a few points ahead of the president. Polls for Senate races this year show the same trend, with Republican incumbents’ totals closely matched with Trump’s.

This spells disaster for the party. Public polls show incumbent Senate Republicans trailing in five states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine and North Carolina. One recent poll from Georgia shows Sen. David Perdue leading his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, 45 percent to 42 percent, but that same poll also shows Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the state by two percentage points, 47 percent to 45 percent. The clear implication is that Georgia is also in play if Trump’s ratings stay down, which would spell disaster for Republicans since the second Senate seat in Georgia, held by appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler, is also on the November ballot. That’s seven GOP-held Senate seats at a high risk of switching parties, with only the Democratic-held seat in Alabama that is seen as a likely Republican pickup to offset those losses.

It could get even worse.

Catastrophic even? You'd hate to see it.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2020-July-09, 09:24, said:

"This year’s Senate races spell disaster for the Republican Party" by Henry Olsen at WaPo:


Catastrophic even? You'd hate to see it.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2020-July-08, 20:09, said:

Hey, Ken, I was just wondering if you're old enough to remember living through McCarthyism?

Yesterday's "Fresh Air" had an interview with the author of a new book about Joe McCarthy, and they made a point about how much Trump has been borrowing from McCarthy's playbook. Does your memory of the original inform your current opinion.

I wonder if someone like Trump could have succeeded a few decades ago, when more of the voting population remembered him.

The first I heard of Joe McCarthy:


It was 1952, I was 13, Stevenson was running against Ike, I made some attempt to understand. I was not very sophisticated, and I did not give a lot of time to it. But I read some about Stevenson's record as governor of Illinois and rightly or wrongly I chose Stevenson, although Pogo Possum was also running and I had an "I Go Pogo" button. I was in the Boy Scouts, we met on Monday nights, I came home from a meeting and my parents were watching a political broadcast. It was McCarthy. As far as I recall, I had not heard of him before. He was explaining that in the 1930s, so really not that far back from 1952, Stevenson belonged to some organizations that were iffy. I am not sure if at that time he was speaking of "The Attorney General's List" or if that came later, but anyway the claim was that Stevenson was not a loyal American. Obviously 13 is too young to really assess such matters but I didn't believe it. In some ways I think of as being similar to my view of Trump. I was not prepared to offer a mature researched rebuttal, but I thought McCarthy was a fake. And, in 2016, I thought Trump a fake. We can argue policies and such, or we can just say we can spot a fake when we see one. This can go wrong of course, but with both McCarthy and Trump I had little doubt.

My friend Roger came from a Republican family and was not so convinced as I was, but he was not really a McCarthy supporter either. I went to Roger's 80th birthday party a couple of years ago and he is, to put it mildly, not a Trump supporter. He and some musical friends did a really quite good rendition of the Dead's Ripple. Reach out your hand....

Anyway, we were not so political that I can say either of us followed every twist and turn, but I can claim I was an early opponent of the junior senator from Wisconsin.

[Winstonm]

News ot the day: The Scotus has ruled that Trump's claim of absolute immunity is bs. They also said he was subject to grand jury subpoenas. And on top of all that, the judge in Michael Flynn's case has asked for an en banc hearing to determine if the mandamus was approppriate (it wasn't).

[johnu]

Question for non-US forum members: Do any of the your countries have whackjobs like this guy???

GOP State Lawmaker Demands Americans ‘STOP GETTING TESTED’ For Coronavirus

Quote

A GOP state lawmaker in Ohio ― one of several states currently seeing a spike in new coronavirus infections ― urged constituents to “STOP GETTING TESTED” for COVID-19 in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

“Are you tired of living in a dictatorship yet?” asked Nino Vitale, who serves in the state’s House of Representatives. Testing for COVID-19 gave “the government an excuse to claim something is happening that is not happening at the magnitude they say it is happening,” he claimed.

Quote

Vitale in May said he would not wear a mask ― despite mask-wearing being endorsed and promoted by public health experts worldwide — because the face is the “image and likeness of God.”

Last week, he wrote on Facebook that “the only people I know” in history “that wear masks are those trying to get away with a crime. And this entire mask deal is simply that, a crime against freedom and a crime against humanity.”

The sad part of this is that this guy is representative of a large percentage of the Republican party, maybe even a majority.

[Trinidad]

johnu, on 2020-July-09, 16:56, said:

Question for non-US forum members: Do any of the your countries have whackjobs like this guy???

Answer from the Netherlands:

No, not at the time the spread was peaking (like it is in the USA right now). At that time people were worried about health and the consequences of the corona measures for the economy.

Now, we have everything under control: Widespread testing for infections, testing of waste water as an early warning for an outbreak. Very few positive cases. We are waiting for the second wave. Health and economy are moving towards the background and personal freedom is on the agenda. This was no issue at all during the peak.

So, people are going out for visits again. No touching, but that is the least of troubles. We will see how things develop.

But no, there is not a single politician who would be against testing for political reasons.

Rik

[Winstonm]

The Trump/Barr theocracy in action:

Quote

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Roman Catholic Church used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.

[cherdano]

johnu, on 2020-July-09, 16:56, said:

Question for non-US forum members: Do any of the your countries have whackjobs like this guy???

No but face coverings are controversial in any Western country that I am familiar with. They are cumbersome, unnatural, make it more difficult to be understood, etc. But they help prevent a pandemic from growing, so advocate for them with some empathy for anyone who instinctively doesn't like them and tries to find reasons not to wear them.

[y66]

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg said:

There are only two numbers from this week you need to know if you want to understand the presidential election: 1.3 million and 59,886.

That’s the number of new applications for unemployment insurance last week and (by one estimate) the number of new coronavirus cases from Thursday. They’re both disastrous figures for the nation — and for President Donald Trump, who has no apparent plan to deal with either.

New infections hit yet another daily record on July 9, according to the New York Times. Cases are rising in 36 states plus Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, DC. Hospitals are filling up in Houston, Phoenix and more. Supplies of personal protective equipment are running low. Testing, while considerably better than a few months ago, is still struggling to keep up. As a result, several states (including California, Florida and Texas) have partially reversed their reopenings and many more have paused.

As for the labor market? Despite better-than-expected numbers in April and May, the overwhelming story is that weekly job losses are at what would’ve been a record pace before 2020. As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Smith puts it:

The U.S. is in a very odd situation. Even as the official unemployment rate falls, the health of the underlying labor market is deteriorating as the coronavirus pandemic drags on. The country is in the middle of two simultaneous downturns — a short-term seizure caused by fear of coronavirus and a longer-term slump that will look more like a traditional recession. Unfortunately, the latter is just beginning.

There’s no way to predict the direct effects of the pandemic on the election; there simply isn’t a precedent for it. But if there's one relationship that is reliable, it's that hard economic times are terrible for incumbent presidents. It’s possible that voters would give Trump a mulligan on a recession directly tied to something beyond his control. The problem is that the longer the pandemic drags on, the less likely it is that they’ll consider either the public-health disaster or the economic fallout inevitable — especially since the damage has receded in other rich nations.

And especially since Trump has so little to offer. Since mid-April, he has basically abandoned any attempt to control the virus. His only consistent message has been to ask everyone to resume normal life. He's recently been repeating the preposterous claim that the spike in cases is simply an artifact of more testing, which hardly accounts for the hospital beds filling up in state after state. Trump's task force established guidelines for reopening businesses, but the president has urged governors to ignore them; now that his focus is on getting schools to open, he's pushing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to gut their recommendations.

As for the economy, Trump seems far more willing to provide continued relief and stimulus than the “wait and see" Senate Republicans. But his specific proposals aren't particularly well thought-out or suited for the job (he really wants to restore the deductibility of business-entertainment expenses, which seems more like a long-term benefit for people in the hospitality business than a way to immediately boost the economy). And he hasn't put together a sustained push for new legislation; he's been willing to let Senator Mitch McConnell set the pace, which has meant months of delay. At any rate, as both public-health professionals and economists have been screaming since March, the economy will never be healthy as long as the virus is out of control.

The truth is that, in a crisis like this, there just isn’t a substitute for sustained, serious presidential action, and Trump has been more of a passive spectator than anything else. And while there is still theoretically time for him to rebound from his desperate standing in the election, it's hard to see how that happens if he doesn't change the way he runs his presidency.

[Zelandakh]

cherdano, on 2020-July-10, 08:03, said:

No but face coverings are controversial in any Western country that I am familiar with. They are cumbersome, unnatural, make it more difficult to be understood, etc. But they help prevent a pandemic from growing, so advocate for them with some empathy for anyone who instinctively doesn't like them and tries to find reasons not to wear them.

My suggestion is to call them "veils" and leave Exodus 34:29-35 sprinkled liberally around churches and other meeting places.

Quote

The radiant face of Moses
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. 32 Afterwards all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.

33 When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. 34 But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.

It does not really matter of conservatives are protecting others from covid or from the radiance of their Lord. Either way works just fine.

[johnu]

cherdano, on 2020-July-10, 08:03, said:

No but face coverings are controversial in any Western country that I am familiar with. They are cumbersome, unnatural, make it more difficult to be understood, etc. But they help prevent a pandemic from growing, so advocate for them with some empathy for anyone who instinctively doesn't like them and tries to find reasons not to wear them.

Nobody likes wearing a mask (maybe with the exception of bank robbers and little kids playing). I have no empathy at all for people who refuse to wear a mask without a legitimate medical reason (are there any? and if not a cloth mask, a clear plastic visor shouldn't have any effect on breathing), in violation of store and/or local/state regulations. And I have active disgust for people who refuse to wear a mask because of some warped belief that coronavirus is a hoax and that not wearing a mask is a political statement.

[Winstonm]

There is corruption, There is absolute corruption. And then there is Donald Trump.

Quote

President Trump on Friday commuted the three-year prison sentence for Republican operative Roger Stone, who was to report to a federal prison on Tuesday after being found guilty of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to Congress.

[y66]

kenberg, on 2020-July-09, 12:24, said:

My friend Roger came from a Republican family and was not so convinced as I was, but he was not really a McCarthy supporter either. I went to Roger's 80th birthday party a couple of years ago and he is, to put it mildly, not a Trump supporter. He and some musical friends did a really quite good rendition of the Dead's Ripple. Reach out your hand....

Perhaps at a future party someone will request "He's Gone".

[Cyberyeti]

johnu, on 2020-July-10, 18:58, said:

Nobody likes wearing a mask (maybe with the exception of bank robbers and little kids playing). I have no empathy at all for people who refuse to wear a mask without a legitimate medical reason (are there any? and if not a cloth mask, a clear plastic visor shouldn't have any effect on breathing), in violation of store and/or local/state regulations. And I have active disgust for people who refuse to wear a mask because of some warped belief that coronavirus is a hoax and that not wearing a mask is a political statement.

I find mask wearing very difficult. I cough a fair bit as a side effect of medication I take, and sneeze a lot due to the broken way my body processes viruses, I've had the same cold for 18 months. Disposable masks are ridiculously expensive (the only ones in the shops here are £30 for 50, no smaller boxes) and the cloth ones don't seal over my facial hair so my glasses are dripping wet within seconds. So far, I have cloth masks but have only used them twice, on a bus and at the doctors where they are required, and I took my glasses off on those occasions and was basically blind, I could not shop with a mask on.

[hrothgar]

Learn to shave

If the Sikh's - who have had religious prohibitions about this for centuries - can do this, you can as well...

[Cyberyeti]

hrothgar, on 2020-July-11, 12:00, said:

Learn to shave

If the Sikh's - who have had religious prohibitions about this for centuries - can do this, you can as well...

My beard has been on all my adult life, it's not coming off now. Shaving gave me the most horrendous painful rash whatever I used which is a large part of why I have it.

It also doesn't get round the issue that sneezing inside a mask is just horrible and I wouldn't always have time to remove it and get a handkerchief there in time.

[hrothgar]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-July-11, 12:48, said:

My beard has been on all my adult life, it's not coming off now. Shaving gave me the most horrendous painful rash whatever I used which is a large part of why I have it.

God forbid that you might need to inconvenience yourself...

[Winstonm]

I find it staggeringly demoralizing that so few seem to grasp the significance of Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's sentence: Trump is using the powers of the presidency to protect himself from criminal prosecution as Stone is a witness to his wrongdoing - and even admitted as such to a reporter.

The 2016 election placed a criminal enterprise in the highest office in the land and granted them near unchallenged powers. He must be not only stopped but brought to justice.