In 2001, a team of international scientists projected that during the next 100 years, the planet’s inhabitants would witness higher maximum temperatures, more hot days and heat waves, an increase in the risk of forest fires and “substantially degraded air quality” in large metropolitan areas as a result of climate change.
In just the past month, nearly two decades after the third United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was issued, heat records were busted across California, more than 3 million acres of land burned, and in major metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, air pollution has skyrocketed. — “California’s climate apocalypse,” by Susanne Rust and Tony Barboza
The warnings actually came much earlier, as the story notes:
As one 1988 internal Shell Oil Co. document noted, “by the time the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation.”
“I’m only sorry that in 1989, I could not get an audience for what I wanted to communicate,” said Jim Hansen, a retired NASA researcher and early climate change scientist, of testimony he made to Congress about the issue.
The Western United States is burning. We did too little, too late to avoid catastrophe. Yet, as we near the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the President of the United States is a climate change denier, as this exchange between POTUS and Wade Crowfoot, California Secretary of Natural Resources, shows:
THE PRESIDENT: … So, Wade and Thom, please.
MR. CROWFOOT: Yeah, well, from our perspective, there is amazing partnership on the ground, and there needs to be. As the governor said, we’ve had temperatures explode this summer. You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley: 130 degrees. But even in Greater LA: 120-plus degrees. And we’re seeing this warming trend make our summers warmer but also our winters warmer as well.
So I think one area of mutual agreement and priority is vegetation management, but I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests, and actually work together with that science; that science is going to be key. Because if we — if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians.
Add to this that at a time of a raging pandemic that has killed more than 194,000 Americans — and still counting, Trump has undermined the scientists at the CDC.
Listen in vain for objections from GOP leaders in the House or the Senate. Fifty days until November 3.
No act is too brazen for the Republican majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. [Update: In a surprise,“the court’s newest conservative-backed member, Justice Brian Hagedorn,” shunning a party line vote, formed a majority with liberals to rule against mucking up the works.] Things didn’t turn out so well during the primary (apparently many Wisconsin voters resent the imposition of minority rule in the state). We’ll see if the latest attempt to throw a wrench into the works is a winning play by the Republicans.
Just days after Donald Trump acknowledged on tape, and then in person, that he has deliberately downplayed the gravity of the coronavirus, he’s still at it at a campaign rally in Michigan:
. . . Tell your governor to open up your state!
You know, it’s all Democrat governors and I think they do it for political reasons, you know, because there’ll be less activity. You’d be doing even better if you had a governor who knew what the hell she was doing. You gotta open up the state. . . .
Meanwhile, Trump performs a skit to illustrate the threat to the suburbs if Joe Biden is elected.
Does anybody wanna have somebody from antifa as a member and as a resident of your suburb? I don’t think so.
‘Say, darling, who moved in next door?’
‘Oh, it’s a resident of antifa.’
‘No thank you. Let’s get outta here. Let’s get the hell outta here, darling. Let’s leave our suburbs. Aww, I wish Trump were president. He wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.’
Aside from rallying his base, what’s Trump been up to? He describes how he spends his time and where he gets his information [spoiler alert: Watching TV — Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel]:
… I watch some of the shows. I watched Lizzie MacDonald, she’s fantastic. I watched Fox Business. I watched Lou Dobbs last night. Sean Hannity last night. Tucker last night. Laura. I watched, uhh, Fox & Friends in the morning.
You watch these shows, uh, you don’t have to go too far into the details. They cover things that are – it’s really an amazing thing. …
Where the president says he's just been laying around watching TV all day long pic.twitter.com/XQmHAoSOQL
Good to know “you don’t have to go very far into the details.” I’m sure Donald-Person-Woman-Man-Camera-TV-Trump grasped whatever Lizzie, Lou, Sean, Tucker, and his other Fox friends tried, without going very far into the details, to communicate to him.
Lou Brock died today. He and Bob Gibson were my favorite Cardinals in the mid-sixties, when I was a teenage fan of St. Louis — in an era when they won two World Series, once in 1964 and then again in 1967.
No one on that team was a more exciting player to watch than Lou Brock. (Okay: Bob Gibson matched him.) Thinking about that team reminded me of David Halberstam’s book, October 1964, which recounts that major league season and highlights the racial differences of the era between the American League and the National League.
The Dodgers had introduced Jackie Robinson to major league baseball in 1947. Seventeen years later, the Cardinals had put together a lineup with a terrific nucleus of Black players at the heart of the team. (The American League, including the Yankees, were hesitant to add Black players.) This was the year that LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a year before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Beginning in the early ’60s, before winning the pennant, the Cardinals — who had spring training every year in St. Petersburg — had encountered Florida law that mandated segregated housing. White baseball players were allowed to stay in swanky hotels; Black players boarded with Black families nearby. Here is a brief description from October 1964 of how the Cardinals (owned by the brewing magnate, August Anheuser Busch, Jr.) changed that:
Things are so much different in sports today. How disheartening to have a president whose torrents of racial divisiveness have set the stage for white supremacists to enter into the contemporary political arena, where they have become a slice of the Republican base.
P.S. Since it’s Labor Day, let’s take note of the fact that the Cardinals’ center fielder in the ’60s, Curt Flood, fought baseball’s reserve clause, making labor history, though he lost his case before the Supreme Court.
“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.” (“Louis DeJoy’s rise as GOP fundraiser was powered by contributions from company workers who were later reimbursed, former employees says,”Washington Post, by Aaron C. Davis, Amy Gardner and Steve Swaine)
That pattern violates federal and state laws and raises the question of how far Postmaster General DeJoy would go to deliberately delay mail delivery in order to sabotage tens or hundreds of thousands of votes from being cast or counted.
DeJoy’s spokesman suggested that he “encouraged employees and family members to be active in their communities, schools, civic groups, sporting events and the politics that governs our nation.” Furthermore, “Mr. DeJoy was never notified by the New Breed employees referenced by the Washington Post of any pressure they might have felt to make a political contribution, and he regrets if any employee felt uncomfortable for any reason.”
I’ll venture the observation that you don’t become “a top Republican power broker in North Carolina,” if you feel squeamish about pressing people for cash. Especially if you know you’re going to pay them back. Nor do you get rewarded as head of the U.S. Postal Service, if you’re sensitive about pushing people past their comfort zones.
Last month Steven Bannon was charged with fraud by federal prosecutors. Before Bannon, there were: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Michael Cohen.
Let’s hope Louis DeJoy will be joining that club in good time.
With Trump, the swamp is especially deep. And it’s not rocks or turtles, but shady characters of one sort or another, all the way down.
Landing on the following exchange, among so many others between Trump and Ingraham nearly a week ago, to illustrate how bizarre the President’s utterances have become, is virtually arbitrary. But it does cast doubt on the viability of Trump’s ‘strategy’ of portraying his Democratic opponent as mentally unfit.
Trump suggests there was some sort of thwarted terror plot against the RNC involving "thugs" in a plane, but refuses to divulge details pic.twitter.com/PQdQLcNSr4
Ingraham: Who do you think is pulling Biden’s strings? Is it former Obama officials?
Trump: People that you’ve never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows. People that are –
What does that mean? That sounds like conspiracy theory? Dark shadows, what is that?
No. People that you haven’t heard of. They’re people that are on the streets. They are people that are controlling the streets.
We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane it was almost completely loaded with thugs. Wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that. They’re on a plane.
Where is — ?
I’ll tell you sometime. But it’s under investigation right now. But they came from a certain setting. And this person was coming to the Republican National Convention. And there were seven people on the plane like this person. And then a lot of people on the plane to do big damage. They were coming –
Planning for Washington?
Yes. This was all, this is all happening.
But the money is coming from somewhere?
The money is coming from –
How can it be tracked?
— from some very stupid rich people that have no idea that if their thing ever succeeded, which it won’t, they will be thrown to the wolves like [you’ve never seen before.]
NBC’s Ben Collins traces this ‘rumor’ back to June 1, with a baseless Facebook post, which prompted numerous Trump followers — alert to the peril — to swing into action, arming themselves and setting out to counter the threat.
Last month, election expert Richard Hasen assured us that “there is still time to keep the presidential election fair.” Of course time is not the limiting factor. Noting Donald Trump’s attacks on the integrity of voting and unsupported GOP claims of voting fraud, including a “particularly ludicrous” scenario that Bill Barr has raised repeatedly, Hasen offers several steps to ensure a free and fair election.
For Congress: offer funding for the states to cover the additional costs of running an election during a raging pandemic. “This should not be a partisan issue,” he writes, though of course it is. Congress could also provide oversight of the Postmaster General to ensure that no measures impair mail delivery prior to the election. But if Mitch McConnell is opposed, Congress will be stymied.
For the states: implement procedural reforms to ensure a timely and transparent process. Again, a sticking point will be among Republicans in key states in position to block any procedural changes. Nonetheless, Democrats are in charge in some states, while in others, Republican officials are on board with free and fair elections.
For voters: request mail-in ballots soon and vote early.
For the media: educate the public that counting all ballots will take many days, that this is not evidence of fraud, and that no candidate can credibly declare victory before enough votes have been counted to determine a winner.
The media has begun to communicate this message. That’s good news and so are steps that several states have begun to take to streamline the process of voting and tabulating votes.
The bad news is that Congressional funding (and effective oversight of the post office) aren’t on the horizon. And, in some states, there will be few checks on Republicans who are willing to engage in mischief.
In a previous post, I suggested that the fiasco in Florida in 2000 could well be a less ugly version of election larceny headed our way in 2020. Thus, Democrats’ Plan A for voting — encouraging voters to vote by mail — was too vulnerable to the possibility of Republicans stealing another election.
Pennsylvania is a key battleground with a history of voting breakdowns, as Politico reports:
With concerns about an Election Day debacle rising in this critical swing state, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf privately convened a group of Philadelphia Democrats recently to underscore the consequences of another vote-counting fiasco like the one that took place in the June primary.
The city took more than two weeks to count all of its votes due to a massive surge in mail voting amid the coronavirus pandemic — and a repeat performance might make it unclear who won the presidential election in the key battleground state long past Nov. 3.
The fear: if an Electoral College victory hinges on Pennsylvania, and there are hundreds of thousands of ballots yet to be counted, Donald Trump could cry fraud and claim victory. We’ve seen this coming for months. Trump has sought to delegitimize vote by mail, making it more likely that his supporters will vote in person on election day, while Democrats — taking heed of the raging coronavirus — have urged their voters to cast ballots by mail. This raises the possibility that Trump could be ahead in the count in the early morning hours of November 4, while Biden’s winning votes have yet to be totaled. That’s the red mirage [see definition at Chidi’s Corner], which we could see in a number of states across the country.
Even if Trump is behind, he and Fox News Channel will be free to raise a ruckus if votes are being tallied many days later. And of course even if Biden wins and takes office, the outrage and chaos manufactured by Trump and company could be a Trumpian GOP theme throughout the Democratic president’s tenure in the White House.
Hasen has endorsed legislative changes to streamline voting and counting votes. And called on Congress to help fund such efforts. Republicans, who control the Pennsylvania General Assembly, have resisted Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s proposals to do so. Nor has Congress acted.
Fortunately, a first step of Plan B — free of Republican obstruction — has surfaced in Philadelphia. The nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life has awarded the city a $10 million grant
to help fund upgraded equipment, satellite offices, personal protective equipment and other materials. Wolf has also raised more than $5 million to help municipalities implement mail-in voting and educate voters about their options, said Jeff Sheridan, his political adviser.
City election officials said the additional money puts them in a vastly better position than they were in June. They expect to open at least 800 polling places in Philadelphia in November, compared to fewer than 200 during the primary. Most of the $10 million in nonprofit funding is going toward costly equipment that will enable them to print, sort and scan ballots more quickly, according to the city’s grant agreement.
That’s good news. Here’s hoping funding for free and fair elections surfaces in other states across the country.
“To understand the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now, it helps to understand the predicate embraced by many Trump supporters: If Joseph R. Biden Jr. wins the presidency, America dies.” – Peter Wehner
Joe Biden (and any other Democrat who might have been nominated), Democrats/liberals, and the broad, diverse coalition the Democratic Party represents – all pose an existential threat to the United States of America in the minds of the Trump base. Opposing the Democrats is the raison d’être of the Republican Party and the glue that sticks Trump’s base to Trump.
When asked what the contemporary Republican Party stands for, a senior GOP aid replied:
David French, former National Review writer, quotes Buck and then adds [emphasis added]:
I can boil it down into three words—“fighting the left.”
You don’t need a platform to accomplish that goal. You don’t even need to succeed in governing the nation. Your pandemic response can fail. You can watch cities start to burn. Unemployment can soar. But behind it all is a bedrock animosity so strong that any success (such as the excellent diplomatic achievement of an Israeli/United Arab Emirates peace deal) is something your opponent could not possibly achieve and any failure would be orders of magnitude worse under an opposing regime.
And note how these beliefs are fundamentally unfalsifiable. How can you “prove” a Democrat would have achieved the same success as a Republican? How can you “prove” that their failures would have been worse?
Negative polarization is utterly futile and destructive as a governing philosophy.
Wehner writes [emphasis added]:
I know plenty of Trump supporters, and I know many of them to be people of integrity in important areas of their lives. Indeed, some are friends I cherish. But if there is a line Donald Trump could cross that would forfeit the loyalty of his core supporters—including, and in some respects especially, white evangelical Christians—I can’t imagine what it would be.
Consider Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, a spectacular failure as illustrated by comparing the U.S. (which leads the world in cases and deaths, and where COVID-19 is still out of control) with other countries confronting the pandemic:
Seen through the prism of a worldview embraced by Congressional Republicans and Fox News Channel, the possibility of a Democrat in the White House threatens the very fabric of America. The base accepts Trump at his word when he says, “… I alone can fix it,” whatever it may be — all evidence to the contrary.
That’s a consequence of negative partisanship (which FNC and the conservative media universe create and sustain). That’s owning the libs and defying the reality-based news media.
But that’s not all that’s going on here. The white folks who embrace Trump most tightly would also appear to fear a democracy in which increasing numbers of people of color, especially Black people; Muslims and other people of faith, apart from Christians ; and dark-skinned immigrants all have a say in governing our nation.
I’ll explore that issue and white identity politics in a future post.
I’ve been following American politics since I was teenager in the mid-1960s (that’s 50+ years). I had never before witnessed anything like what we’ve seen during the Trump era, essentially since that golden escalator ride five years ago, but especially during his tenure in the White House.
Trump’s transgressions against democratic institutions and practices, common purpose across our political divides, and a commitment to Constitutional limits and the rule of law have grown increasingly aggressive. The past week has been beyond anything I would have thought likely — certainly not three and a half years ago, but not even early in 2020.
First, there is the torrent of lies from the Republican National Convention. I’ll remark on a prominent theme of the convention later in this post. Limiting our focus now to the whoppers the President told, consider Daniel Dale’s review of Trump’s 70-minute address Thursday night. Definitely worth a listen (20 or so lies and misleading half-truths in 3 1/2 minutes flat):
Indefatigable fact checker, Daniel Dale, reviews many of the lies Trump voiced during his acceptance speech.
That’s one speech, from a man whose lies since taking office total more than 20,000 (as of July 13, 2020).
More troubling than the lies, though, are the chronic violations of law and of customs that have served our nation by nurturing democracy and boosting unity.
Let’s begin with the Hatch Act, which both parties have mostly respected — at least until Trump, and the staging of a television extravaganza with political speeches by Melania and Donald Trump on nights three and four of the Republican National Convention on the south lawn at the White House.
Congressional Democrats, although outraged, were powerless to stop these breaches, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s video endorsement of Trump, convention videos of Trump issuing a pardon and observing a swearing in of immigrants as new citizens, and the other executive branch personnel participating in and preparing for the RNC. Congressional Republicans either murmured mild disapproval or acquiesced in silence. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was an exception: “Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares. They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats.”
The Trump administration had long since expressed contempt for this law. Kellyanne Conway had this to say after openly violating the law in spring 2019: “Blah, blah, blah. … If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work. Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”
Since no president in the 231 year history of our republic has ever commandeered the White House for a political convention in the midst of his campaign for reelection; since no previous president has been so willing to disregard the law, past practice, and democratic values; and since Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced admiration for authoritarian rulers; the spectacle (in the image at the top of this post) brings to mind something more akin to 1930s-era Europe, when democracy was at bay, than to an American reelection campaign.
I promised to return to one theme of Trump’s reelection campaign — a portrayal of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party that presaged a dystopian future. The comments of Congressman Matt Gaetz about the Democrats ware representative:
Kimberly Guilfoyle took a similar tack and added a slam at California:
As a first-generation American, I know how dangerous their Socialist agenda is. My mother, Mercedes, was a special education teacher from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. My father, also an immigrant, came to this nation in pursuit of the American Dream. Now, I consider it my duty to fight to protect that dream. Rioters must not be allowed to destroy our cities. Human sex drug traffickers should not be allowed to cross our border. The same Socialist policies which destroyed places like Cuba and Venezuela must not take root in our cities and our schools.
A handful of excerpts from Donald Trump’s speech (all focused on disqualifying a middle of the road Democrat who has been in public life since his first election 50 years ago without revealing his covert subversive agenda) illustrate the Trump campaign’s reelection strategy:
This is the most important election in the history of our country. At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, or two agendas.
This election will decide whether we SAVE the American Dream, or whether we allow a socialist agenda to DEMOLISH our cherished destiny.
. . .
Your vote will decide whether we protect law abiding Americans, or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens.
And this election will decide whether we will defend the American Way of Life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.
At the Democrat National Convention, Joe Biden and his party repeatedly assailed America as a land of racial, economic, and social injustice. So tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?
. . .
If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other Constitutional freedoms.
Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism. If Joe Biden doesn’t have the strength to stand up to wild-eyed Marxists like Bernie Sanders and his fellow radicals, then how is he ever going to stand up FOR you?
The most dangerous aspect of the Biden Platform is the attack on public safety. The Biden-Bernie Manifesto calls for Abolishing cash bail, immediately releasing 400,000 criminals onto your streets and into your neighborhoods.
When asked if he supports cutting police funding, Joe Biden replied, “Yes, absolutely.” When Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called the Minneapolis police department a cancer that is “rotten to the root,” Biden wouldn’t disavow her support and reject her endorsement — he proudly displayed it on his website.
Make no mistake, if you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will Defund Police Departments all across America. They will pass federal legislation to reduce law enforcement nationwide. They will make every city look like Democrat-run Portland, Oregon. No one will be safe in Biden’s America.
. . .
If the Democrat Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them, but I, as your President, will not be a part of it. The Republican Party will remain the voice of the patriotic heroes who keep America Safe.
. . .
If the Radical Left takes power, they will apply their disastrous policies to every city, town, and suburb in America.
Just imagine if the so-called peaceful demonstrators in the streets were in charge of every lever of power in the U.S. Government.
Liberal politicians claim to be concerned about the strength of American institutions. But who, exactly, is attacking them? Who is hiring the radical professors, judges, and prosecutors? Who is trying to abolish immigration enforcement, and establish speech codes designed to muzzle dissent? In every case, the attacks on American institutions are being waged by the radical left.
Always Remember: they are coming after ME, because I am fighting for YOU.
We must reclaim our independence from the left’s repressive mandates. Americans are exhausted trying to keep up with the latest list of approved words and phrases, and the ever-more restrictive political decrees. Many things have a different name now, and the rules are constantly changing. The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and driven from society as we know it. The far-left wants to coerce you into saying what you know to be FALSE, and scare you out of saying what you know to be TRUE.
. . .
So tonight, I say again to all Americans: This is the most important election in the history of our country. There has never been such a difference between two parties, or two individuals, in ideology, philosophy, or vision than there is right now.
Our opponents believe that America is a depraved nation.
. . .
For contrast, Donald Trump mentioned Joe Biden by name 41 times. The former vice president failed to utter Donald Trump’s name once at the Democratic Convention.
Finally, there’s the failure to govern, to lead, to accept the responsibilities of office as the president.
Let’s reflect on what passes for public policy in Trump’s U.S.A.
More than 183, 000 Americans have died from COVID-19, while Donald Trump has refused to even make a plan for crushing the virus. This past week, consistent with Trump’s oft-spoken wish to reduce testing, the CDC stealthily changed its testing guidelines (before the director walked this back, slightly, after an outpouring of criticism from the medical community).
The unbridled Kellyanne Conway clearly articulated the strategy for Fox News, “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”
"The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order" — Kellyanne Conway makes a case that the killings of peaceful protesters will benefit Trump politically pic.twitter.com/ClJ6ArrbkE
Look, it’s gonna be a close election. As I said in my speech, you can win three million more votes and still, you know, not get elected because of the Electoral College. It all comes down to the Electoral College.
If it’s a close election, like say Biden, you know, say Biden wins. What do you think Trump will do?
Look, I think that they have a couple of scenarios that they’re looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting.
Right. Of course. Yeah.
They believe that helps them. So that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the Electoral College on election day. Because remember we’ve seen a couple of cases, like in Wisconsin, where they did everything they could to mess up voting. But because courts had ordered absentee ballots to be counted if they were postmarked on election day, Democrats actually won some important races there.
In the recent Michigan primary, I was told, in Detroit the Republicans had forty lawyers challenging absentee mail-in voting. And a local reporter, talking to one of the lawyers he knew, was told it was a dry run for November.
So we’ve gotta have a massive legal operation. I know the Biden campaign is working on that. We have to have poll workers and I urge people who are able to be a poll worker. We have to have our own teams of people to counter the force of intimidation that the Republicans and Trump are going to put outside polling places.
This is a big organizational challenge. But at least we know more about what they’re going to do.
And, you know, Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is gonna drag out. And eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch. And if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is.
