Month: July 2017

As I understand it, the Charlie Gard issue involves a child in the UK whose parents want to use a large sum of private money to provide him with highly experimental treatment with a very poor chance of success.  Like most Americans, I suspect, I don’t see an overriding public interest that justifies any infringement on the parents’ freedom to do whatever they can for their child.

A related hypothetical question would involve the use of public funds under the same circumstances.  To me, that is also an easy question;  as a taxpayer, I would not approve of the use of public funds when there is no reasonable chance of success.

The closer, and more interesting case, is if Charlie were an American, and if the proposed treatment could plausibly succeed.  The four GOP factions would respond to that scenario in completely different ways:

1.  Christian Democrats:  The preservation of life is an overriding objective.  Charlie gets the money.
2.  Conservative Libertarians:  The protection of freedom from a large and overreaching government is the overriding objective.  Hard cases like this are the unfortunate price of freedom.  Charlie dies.
3.  Pro-Business Libertarians:  It’s all about being popular and staying in power, so we can keep our tax cut.  This case is a cause celebre, so we support paying for the treatment.  If it weren’t, we wouldn’t.
4.  Reactionaries:  If Charlie is the legitimate son of two salt-of-the-earth, married, white Christian parents, he gets the money.  Otherwise, the world is better off without him.

This hypothetical should show you why it is so hard for the GOP to agree on anything, and particularly issues relating to medical care.

Bret Stephens had a column in Friday’s NYT in which he gave Trump’s foreign policy a report card from a variety of ideological perspectives.  His analysis was pretty accurate, but he somehow missed my opinion, so here it is:

1.  North Korea:  C (so far):  If you ignore the threats and the bombast, Trump has behaved pretty conventionally on North Korea to date.  That obviously could change, and disaster looms, but it isn’t here quite yet.

2.  China:  D.  Trump put way too much faith in Xi’s willingness to cooperate on North Korea, made it clear that he was willing to bargain away the security of our allies in exchange for that cooperation, and then reversed course in an extremely clumsy way.  He complains about the enormous trade deficit, but offers no plausible solutions.  A trade war is around the corner.

3.  Middle East:  D minus:  On the one hand, he has agreed to serve as the tip of the Saudi spear;  he growls at Iran, bombs Syrian airfields, and shoots down Syrian planes.  On the other hand, he has cut off funds to the Syrian rebels in order to make Putin happy.  Is he just trying to keep everyone off balance, or is this simply incoherence?  Who can tell?

4.  Russia:  F.  No elaboration necessary.

5.  Promoting American values:  F.  Having no regard for liberal democratic values at home, it was never likely that he would promote them abroad.

6.  Promoting American leadership in the world:  F.  “America First” means gratuitously offending our allies all over the world, dropping out of the TPP and the Paris Agreement, and threatening a trade war.   In the eyes of the world, it is now “China First.”

It’s not a pretty sight, and it’s probably going to get worse.

It’s hard to see anything but darkness in Theresa May’s future.  She’s behind in the polls, her party is badly divided, and her job security is shaky.  Her government is, by all accounts, adrift.  Realistically, the only reason she remains PM today is the lack of an obviously better alternative.

Imagine now, if you will, that you’re Jeremy Corbyn.  You don’t really love the EU, which you essentially view as a club of big capitalists, but circumstances have made you the leader of the battle against Brexit.  What do you do?

If I were Corbyn, I would promise a second referendum on the basis that the public has much better information on which to make a decision than they had in 2017.  It would split the Conservatives even further, and what does he have to lose?  If he doesn’t win the election that has to be coming in the next year or so, he’ll never have to deliver on the promise.  If he wins the election, and the referendum is approved, the biggest problem on his plate will disappear, and he can get on with the nationalizations and the other stuff that really interests him. If he wins the election and the referendum fails, the country won’t be much worse off than it is today, and he can just accept the will of the voters and move on.

The ex-White House press man named Spicer

Thought a job somewhere else would be nicer.

Lying for Trump

Turned him into a grump.

It’s like sticking your head in a vicer.

 

And so, the man with the second-worst job in America is gone.  Sanders lies with more gusto, anyway.

On its face, McConnell and Trump have very little in common.  The latter is a wealthy, bombastic, narcissistic outsider with no knowledge of policy and no obvious political skills except the unrivaled ability to mobilize his base;  the former is a canny, understated insider with a demonstrated ability to wrangle votes to obstruct Democratic initiatives.  The interesting thing, however, is that on Obamacare replacement, they are in exactly the same position;  both of them simply want a win, and neither has any apparent interest in the contents of the legislation.  Why?

In Trump’s case, the answer is obvious;  his ego demands victories regardless of their impact on the American people.  With McConnell, there are a number of possible answers, including personal ambition, but the most plausible one is that he thinks losing on Obamacare replacement is a greater threat to the GOP majority in the Senate than the adoption of hideously unpopular legislation that will cost millions of GOP voters their health insurance.

In other words, McConnell probably believes that screwing over red voters will cost him fewer votes than breaking longstanding promises about replacing Obamacare.  I think he’s wrong about that, but American politics are so tribal today that the correct answer is not self-evident.

There once was a leader named Mitch.

He’s looking for votes he can switch.

His party’s confused.

The next vote’s his to lose.

But he just can’t help scratching the itch.

So it turns out that Trump spent about an hour with Putin during a reception at the G-20 meeting.  That won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has participated in some sort of an adolescent social event.

Even Trump has to be sensitive to the fact that Merkel and the other European leaders don’t approve of him.  How better to deal with that than to snub the authority figures and hang out with the other bad boy in the group?

Policy changes have come from less than this.

The Cabinet meeting is about to begin.  Trump kicks it off:

TRUMP:  As is our custom, we will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

The group recites the Pledge.

ALL:  I pledge allegiance to you, Donald Trump.  Slayer of Hillary Clinton; builder of walls; omnipotent and omniscient; you alone have made America great again. May your reign last a thousand years, and may your dynasty rule forever.

TRUMP:  Thank you.  Next up is, of course, tributes to me.  Betsy?

DEVOS:  O great and all-knowing Trumpster, you have been assigned by God to banish false beliefs through the land through your support of right-wing religion and charter schools.  You are a modern Moses.  We bow down to your commandments.

TRUMP:  I don’t know who this Moses guy is, but that sounded good.  Jeff?

SESSIONS:  God himself has given you the sword of justice to slay drug users and illegal immigrants.  Your powers are checked by him alone.  May your enemies all end up at Guantanamo Bay.

TRUMP:  Good idea.  Steve?

BANNON:   O great Trumpster, you are truly the alpha and omega.  Earthquakes tremble before you.  The wind roars your praise.  Liberals and the fake media quail before you.  You win so often, it almost gets boring.  Your reign will last forever!

The group applauds his eloquence.

TRUMP:  I know I can always count on you for something special.  Jim?

MATTIS:  You are the tribune of the people, subject only to the checks in the law and the Constitution.  May your cause always prevail.

TRUMP:  Yes, and?

MATTIS:  Yes, and what?

TRUMP:  That’s all?  Surely there’s more, and I don’t like that part about the law and the Constitution.

MATTIS:  You are the leader, under law, of the greatest power in the world.  That has to be enough.

TRUMP:  We’ll talk later.  Next is old business.

PRICE:  We need to do something about Obamacare repeal and replacement.

TRUMP:  That’s so July.  I’m bored with it.  We won.  Let’s move on.

PRICE:  But BCRA didn’t pass! How did we win?

TRUMP:  I’m a winner.  Winners win, by definition.  Everything I do is winning. In this case, we made the Democrats take the blame for Obamacare.   That’s fine with me.

MCMASTER:  What about North Korea?  We don’t have any good options.

TRUMP:  Kim obviously doesn’t understand how great I am.  We need to send an emissary who can explain to him that I’m omnipotent, and that he needs to give up his nukes in order to save his life.  If he trembles before me, he’ll be spared.

MCMASTER:  Who can persuade him of that?

TRUMP:  Dennis Rodman, of course.  New business?

MULVANEY:  What about the tax cut? We don’t have a real plan yet.

TRUMP:  Just do what Reagan did, only quadruple it.  I’m four times the man he was.  Anything else?  Hearing nothing, we’re adjourned.

That was easy!  Now I can go play golf.

Guards come and take Mattis away.  A few days later, a picture of his head on a stick appears in the Oval Office next to the portrait of Andrew Jackson.

 

Following Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump frequently railed about the “rigged” system during the campaign.  After his election, however, he filled his administration with billionaires–some of them from Wall Street.  Even factoring in a healthy splash of opportunism, then, it is fair to ask whether Trump and Sanders, while using the same term, were actually talking about the same thing.

They weren’t.  While Bernie’s program wasn’t actually socialist, he does see the world in fairly Marxist terms;  to him, as a result, the enemy is the big capitalist, and the Wall Street banker in particular.  The “rigged” system simply gives that kind of person too much power.  To Trump and his followers, however, the enemy isn’t Wall Street as much as it is the left-wing cultural/political/intellectual establishment that patronizes and misrules red America.  In their eyes, the system is still “rigged” against them even with Trump as president, and the battle continues to this day.

On the second of Trumps known as Don.

You could call him the President’s spawn.

He lies like his dad.

The whole world will be glad

When father and son are both gone.

There once was a leader named Mitch.

His party ran into a ditch.

He’s run out of plans.

The whole thing’s out of hand.

But health care is really a bitch.

The NYT Magazine ran an article roughly ten days ago about Trump’s relationships with his lawyers.  As you would expect, he likes attorneys who are very aggressive, never appear to back down, and plausibly spin even his defeats as victories.

I actually found this article somewhat encouraging, because if Trump and his agents are that good at persuading himself and the public that his failures are really successes, it gives him some room to back down in a crisis.  Without that kind of ability, I don’t see any way he won’t lead us (and the rest of the world) into one disaster after another, since we know he can’t stand to be viewed as a loser.

It’s March, 2018.  The Republican agenda is completely stuck in the mud as a result of constant infighting between Christian Democrats and Reactionaries. The party is cratering in the polls, and it looks like the Democrats will take control of both houses in November.

Trump’s antics have grown old and tiresome and are clearly doing great damage to the GOP brand, to say nothing of the national interest.  In addition, the great man himself is visibly tired of the job;  in reality, he only ever wanted the perks and prestige of the presidency, not any of its responsibilities.  The Russia investigation is getting on his nerves, and he is lashing out in a more extreme way every day.

Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan go to the White House with an offer.  If Trump is given a blanket pardon by President Pence for all actions taken by himself and his family, and if he is given a big parade (complete with tanks and fighters), and if he is permitted to retain an honorary title and many of the perks of office, will he resign for the good of the country and the party?  They advise him that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have already bought off on the plan.  The likely alternative is two years of highly publicized investigations of his business and political activities by a Democratic Congress.  Trump thinks about it, and takes the deal.

And we live at least somewhat more happily ever after.

To my knowledge, Donald Trump doesn’t fish or hunt.  I’m not sure he’s ever attended a NASCAR race.  He never served in the military.  He seems to prefer classic rock to country music.  He grew up and lives in New York City, not a rural area. Finally, his indifference to religion is the stuff of legends.

All of these are staples of rural culture, and yet Trump is extremely popular in red America.  Why?

I think there are two reasons:

1.  It’s all about the swagger:  Trump’s macho, nationalistic posturing has a big audience here, particularly when it is juxtaposed with female Democrats from urban areas.

2.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend:  Trump is a crass barbarian who both envies and despises the cultural establishment.  As such, he has friends in a community that believes (perhaps correctly) that it is constantly patronized by the elite.

There is a message here for the Democrats as they contemplate who should lead them in 2020:  if you pick someone who looks and sounds like Obama or Hillary, you can expect people in red states to close ranks and support Trump regardless of how abysmal his record may be, because they will think he looks more like one of them.  That may not be fair, but that’s the way it is.

A South Korean woman won the US Open, played on one of Trump’s courses in the presence of the man himself, and Asian women generally dominated the leaderboard.

Am I the only one who finds irony in that?  Where’s our protectionist-in-chief when you need him?  The tournament was obviously rigged!