Wow, those chairs really looked… festive

The state of South Carolina’s electric chair, once a more frequently used form of execution, is shown here in 1998. The viewing room to the right is where media, lawyers and family members from both sides sat as witnesses. THE STATE File photograph Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article135985263.html#storylink=cpy

The state of South Carolina’s electric chair, once a more frequently used form of execution, is shown here in 1998. The viewing room to the right is where media, lawyers and family members from both sides sat as witnesses. THE STATE File photograph

I hope my friends at The State won’t mind my using this old file photo they just posted, but I was really struck by the incongruity of the decor.

Imagine that being your last sight as you were being executed. Instead of, “I really wish I hadn’t done it,” you might think, “Where the hell did those chairs come from? Couldn’t they have found something a bit more respectful of the occasion?” Which would be a stupid thing to be thinking at a time like that…

Those chairs look like they escaped from a “My Pretty Pony” cartoon. I wonder for what purpose the state ever purchased them to start with?

Any Democrats wanna run? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

As you probably know, everybody and his sister has lined up to run for the GOP nomination for Mick Mulvaney’s congressional seat in the 5th District. As of last week:

So far, six candidates have declared on the GOP side of the race: former state party chairman Chad Connelly; anti-Common Core activist Sheri Few; Camden attorney Tom Mullikin; Norman; Pope; and Indian Land attorney Kris Wampler….

(Yes, Sheri Few is running again! If at first you don’t succeed…)

It’s a mad scramble; you can’t hold ’em back! I read that story at breakfast at the Capital City Club one day last week, then folded my iPad and stood up to turn to leave — and there was Chad Connelly sitting at a table yards away with four or five other people, already having a campaign meeting. Time’s a wastin’!

And on the Democratic side…

I received this today, about an hour ago, from Clay Middleton with the SC Democratic Party:

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It is my privilege to lead the SCDP’s candidate recruitment efforts for the 2018 cycle.  The cycle is off to an early start with the upcoming special election in the 5th Congressional District.  After conversations with many great Democrats throughout the district, we expect a candidate to announce their candidacy next week.  The filing deadline is March 13th.  To receive regular updates on this special election campaign,sign up here.
While things are moving quickest in the 5th, it is not too early to start planning for a 2018 run for office!  If you are potentially interested, or know someone else who would be a strong candidate, please email me at plan2run@scdp.org.    
Throughout the country, Democratic energy is higher than ever before.  Earlier this week, in a special election in the reddest State Senate district in Connecticut, Democrats improved by 25 points over the 2016 general election result.  South Carolinians are just as fired up, organized, and ready to vote.  We just need great Democratic candidates to harness and capitalize on this energy.

Yeah, y’all are moving mighty quick in the 5th! You’re already up to the crucial, Let’s look and see if we can find somebody willing to run stage. You might even have one next week! The Republicans are probably wrenching their necks looking back at you! Or would be, if they gave you a thought.

And to think, this is the seat held by Democrat John Spratt for a generation before Mulvaney replaced him in the Tea Party wave of 2010.

If you’re a Democrat, and even if you aren’t, this is sad, folks…

Thank for the leadership, Speaker Lucas

If seems that Grover Norquist no longer runs the South Carolina House of Representatives.

Jay Lucas does. And he’s doing a good job. Along with Rep. Gary Simrill and everybody who voted for his bill yesterday.

It shouldn’t be remarkable that the House just voted to increase the state gasoline tax by (eventually) 10 cents a gallon. After all, everything about the situation would tend to lead any reasonable person to take that action:

  • We need road repairs.
  • We lack money for road repairs.
  • We have a tax that is dedicated to paying for road needs.
  • That tax is among the lowest in the country.
  • It hadn’t been raised for 30 years.

But as we know, our Legislature hasn’t been inclined to make calm, objective decisions with regard to taxes since the GOP took over in 1995. Since then, taxes have been for cutting, no matter the situation — because ideology rather than real-life conditions have ruled. And that approach, as the Speaker says, “simply places politics above responsible public policy.”

Speaker Jay Lucas

Speaker Jay Lucas

Of course, you don’t have to be an anti-government ideologue to have reservations about a tax increase. And in this instance, it would have been wrong to give DOT more money without reforming the governance of the agency. But this bill takes care of that, too.

Is this a done deal? Nope, because it still has to get through the Senate, which unlike the House isn’t run by anybody. As a body, it has been as allergic to DOT reform as the House used to be to tax increases. And that’s not the whole story. There’s also Sen. Tom Davis, whom The State today described as “libertarian-leaning,” which made me smile. Tom leans toward libertarianism the way Donald Trump leans toward self-aggrandizement.

But I want to praise Speaker Lucas and the House for getting us this far.

Enough with these ridiculous come-ons, OK?

We must never forget that Donald Trump is not the only element dumbing down our country, making it tackier by the hour.

There are many, many other factors. For instance, Reality TV, which of course has a huge overlap with Donald Trump. And such things as this:

Normally, I get that sort of thing in a block of such come-ons at the bottom of an article I’ve been reading — sometimes on sites run by reputable publications. That “What they look like now will leave you agog!” formulation is very common. Other clickbait favorites include “She didn’t know why everyone was applauding” (which is closely related to “17 epic wardrobe fails in sports”), and “Eating this gross-looking thing will make you live to 100.”

If you click on that one above, it takes you to a page with the headline, “Famous Celebrity’s Kids: All Grown Up!” As opposed to “Unknown Celebrity’s Kids,” I suppose. The first item you get is Jamie Lee Curtis and her daughter. Which was an interesting choice, since to me Jamie Lee Curtis is a “famous celebrities’ kid.” To see more, of course, you must click and click and click some more. And no, I wasn’t curious enough.

Bottom line I’d gotten use to these things appearing at the bottom of stories I was reading. Having them crop up frequently as “promoted”  content on Twitter is a relatively new irritation…

Oh, another thing: The feed that put that up is called “Greeningz,” which “was started in order to bring two of our favorite topics together – Eco friendliness and Entertainment.” Which seems among the odder reasons for being I’ve encountered. Do you suppose “Greenzo” is their mascot?

Greeningz

As far as we know, the Palmetto tree hasn’t offended anyone

Blue Palmetto

We haven’t had a discussion about this, have we?

The Democrats in South Carolina are fixin’ (I’m trying to be folksy in keeping with the national party’s cornball televised response last night from the diner) to have their first Blue Palmetto Dinner in late April:

It is my great pleasure to announce the upcoming release of tickets to the inaugural Blue Palmetto Dinner, which will take place on the evening of Friday, April 28 in Columbia at the Medallion Conference Center, located at 7309 Garners Ferry Rd, Columbia, SC 29209.
The Blue Palmetto Dinner, with its name derived from the flag that unites us as South Carolinians, will showcase a party that fights for all of us. As our premier fundraising event of the year,  we encourage everyone to attend. 
Tickets will be made available on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22ND, at 10:00AM EST.
There will be special pricing and early notice given to our County Parties, and additional benefits will be made available for SCDP Members (Yellow Dog Democrats) and Committee of 100 Members. Finally, hotel blocks will be announced and made available in the coming days as well. 
The 2018 Elections are crucial for the direction of our party and the proceeds for our dinner will help us launch a coordinated field effort this year! We can’t afford to wait until next year to organize, recruit and prepare for these elections.
STAY TUNED for our official ticket release, and we look forward to seeing you in Columbia for the Blue Palmetto Dinner and SCDP Convention on April 28-29 at the Medallion Center. 
Sincerely,
Jaime Harrison
Chair, South Carolina Democratic Party

Of course, there’s nothing new about it but the name. Your Daddy — who was almost certainly a Democrat, if he was from around here — knew it as the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner. (At least, it was known as that in most parts of the country. In SC, I see references without the “Day.”) So did everyone else, until last year, when Democrats decided the writer of the Declaration and the hero of New Orleans weren’t quite impeccable enough for their tastes. Because slavery. And the Trail of Tears.

I suppose they could have gone with a Roosevelt-Kennedy Dinner, but probably didn’t because Japanese Internment and Marilyn Monroe. Or something. The flesh being weak, sooner or later something bad is bound to come out about anybody who ever lived. I suppose they could have gone with Jesus, but there are doubts as to whether He actually voted Democratic.

And no, I’m not making light of slavery; I’m just saying that pretty much anybody who ever did anything really great probably did some stuff that we wouldn’t be proud of, if we chose to focus on that.

People are problematic.

So they went with a tree, one that near as we can tell never offended anybody. So they’re probably safe.

But time will tell.

SpaceX accomplishes what Bernie Sanders never could — it’s made me resent ‘billionayuhs’

SpaceX says its Falcon Heavy rocket, shown here in an artist's rendering, will be used in the mission to the moon.

SpaceX says its Falcon Heavy rocket, shown here in an artist’s rendering, will be used in the mission to the moon.

It’s hard to stir class resentment in me.

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Karl Marx and Occupy Wall Street have all been trying like fun for the last century or two, but they don’t arrive. I don’t much care how much money other people have, or what they do with it, as long as they don’t expect me to count it, or be impressed by it, or even think about it — because I can’t imagine anything more boring.

But SpaceX has succeeded where all the populists and resentmentmongers have failed, with this simple announcement:

The private company SpaceX has announced that it plans to send two passengers on a mission beyond the moon in late 2018.

If the mission goes forward, it would be the “first time humans have traveled beyond low Earth orbit since the days of Apollo,” as NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce told our Newscast unit.

The two private citizens approached the company about the idea and have already paid a sizable deposit, CEO Elon Musk told reporters in a conference call. These private individuals will also bear the cost of the mission….

I am a child of the Space Age, and what could be better for a communitarian? Look at what we accomplished!

In those binary days of the Cold War, “we” meant Americans. Our ingenuity, our pooled resources (it was going to cost $24 billion to go to the moon!), our heroes, the best of the best of the pilots of our military, with our nerds using their American sliderules to make sure our guys got there and back! It was like everything that was great about the Free World — with the government and the whole aerospace industry pulling together because no one entity could do it alone — came together to make the impossible possible. Our boys might have been going up to do single combat with the godless commies in the heavens, as Tom Wolfe eulogized the effort, but they had millions of us behind them.

And what should have happened, as the Cold War faded, was that “we” should have been redefined to mean the whole human race. And that sort of started to happen, with the Apollo-Soyuz hookup in 1975 (three years after we’d quit going to the moon), continuing with the International Space Station and with American astronauts hitching rides with the Russians after we quit building spacecraft and became Space Slackers.

But now it’s not “we” anymore. It’s Bernie’s “billionayuhs.” They’re the only ones who get to boldly go where no man has gone before. Because the United States of America, the richest and most powerful country in the history of this planet, is no longer big enough, rich enough, brave enough, ambitious enough, dauntless enough to send anyone up there on behalf of us all, so that we can all feel part of the thrill of exploration.

We can’t afford it anymore, it seems, even pooling the resources and energies of the whole nation. The most we can manage is to catch rides for a pathetic merry-go-round ride in Earth orbit, basically not going anywhere that Yuri Gagarin didn’t go in 1961.

But a couple of rich guys can go, on a lark, past where any of our previous national efforts could go. Not to accomplish anything for science or humanity, but because they’d personally like to go, and can write checks big enough to make it happen.

So yeah, finally, I resent the rich guys.

But even more, I resent the rest of us for having given up on human exploration.

These guys hung their hides out over the edge for US, not to gratify personal whims.

These guys hung their hides out over the edge for US, not to gratify personal whims.

Open Thread for Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Happy Mardi Gras! The holiday is huge in Dominica in the Caribbean, where my youngest daughter teaches ballet under the auspices of the Peace Corps. This is from her Facebook page, "Ballet in Dominica."

Happy Mardi Gras! The holiday is huge in Dominica in the Caribbean, where my youngest daughter teaches ballet under the auspices of the Peace Corps. This is from her Facebook page, “Ballet in Dominica.”

A few things you might want to talk about:

  1. Trump prepares to address a divided audience: The Republican Congress — Which reminds me… I’ll probably be actively Tweeting during the speech, in case you’d like to join in.
  2. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds — A depressing piece in The New Yorker on how our brains work, or don’t work. It makes some good points — the ones that say things I already believed. The rest of it is fake news. Sad.
  3. Trump Learns That a Health Overhaul Is ‘So Complicated’ — Specifically, he said, “nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” I hope that didn’t shake him up too much, just before his big speech. You know what else is complicated? Stuff. Way more stuff than he has ever realized…
  4. U.S.-Russia Clash at U.N. Over Syria’s ‘Barbaric’ Weapons — The Kremlin vetoes American-backed resolution to punish Assad’s regime for using chemical weapons. Welcome to the big leagues, Nikki Haley.
  5. Confederate flag pair jailed over threats to Georgia black family — FYI, they’ve “received lengthy prison sentences” in spite of Georgia not having a hate crimes law. So, take that into consideration.

Putting your heads in the sand is no solution

coalition

I thought this was pretty dumb:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Democratic Coalition Urges People to #BlackoutTrump During Speech Tonight

February 28th, 2017 – Washington, DC – The Democratic Coalition, part of Keep America Great PAC, today called on people to skip watching President Trump’s address to Congress. Using the hashtag #BlackoutTrump, the organization urged Americans to do something that will actually help “Make America Great Again.”

“Donald Trump cares about ratings more than he cares about this country and its people,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition. “Let’s send him a message by skipping his speech and instead working to help the people his administration is going to hurt.”

There are lots of ways to use the time that would otherwise be wasted watching the President talk about how terrible our country is. The Democratic Coalition provided a quick list:

-Plan your attendance at a townhall – if GOP members of Congress ever hold them again
-Get organized for campaign volunteer opportunities
-Volunteer to rebuild recently desecrated Jewish cemeteries or clean anti-Semiitc graffiti off houses of worship
-Make calls to raise money for organizations that help refugees
-Dine out at literally any restaurant in the nation (providing work for immigrants)
-Call your member of Congress urging them to keep ACA in place
-Volunteer to improve your local community
-Retweet/Share the hashtag #BlackoutTrump
-Review the Dossier on Trump’s connections with Russia, more of which gets confirmed daily

Jarad Geldner, Senior Advisor of The Democratic Coalition added: “Though it will be closely watched in Russia, this speech doesn’t really mean anything to Americans. The President’s been in office an excruciating 39 days, but he hasn’t really accomplished anything beyond signing executive orders that scare people. We should all focus on ensuring that he cannot enact his agenda which aims to rob America of all its greatness.”

The hashtag was first deployed in late January, by deploying it today, the Super PAC intends to send the message that the American people are stronger and less divided than the White House would have us believe.

About The Democratic Coalition

The Democratic Coalition Against Trump, now The Democratic Coalition, formed in the Spring of 2016, with the main goal of making sure that Donald Trump never became President. The Democratic Coalition now exists to hold the Trump White House accountable, and is directly countering Donald Trump, along with Republican elected officials and candidates who support him, through aggressive digital and traditional advertising, grassroots action, in-depth opposition research, and a nationwide rapid-response team.The organization has chairs in all 50 states, comprised of Democratic elected officials, party chairs, delegates, grassroots leaders and activists.

Really? You’re going to get rid of this guy by hurting his ratings? And you don’t think going in ignorance about the insane things he may say is a bit of a high cost to pay to accomplish that?

You want a hashtag? How about #Vigilance?

Did you notice what the release said in the “about” footer? “The Democratic Coalition Against Trump, now The Democratic Coalition, formed in the Spring of 2016, with the main goal of making sure that Donald Trump never became President.”

Yeah, great job. Evidently, you still have the same strategists running your organization…

Suddenly, Nikki Haley is America’s foreign policy grownup

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This was in The Washington Post over the weekend:

After President Trump said that deporting undocumented immigrants was “a military operation,” Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, speaking in Mexico, clarified that there would be “no use of military force in immigration operations.”

After Trump, standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, upended decades of U.S. policy by saying he was open to a one-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East, U.N. envoy Nikki Haley asserted that the United States “absolutely” supports a two-state solution.

And after Trump alarmed European allies by declaring NATO obsolete, Vice President Pence flew to Munich and Brussels, where he reassured a worried continent that the president remains “fully devoted to our transatlantic union.”

One of the unofficial duties of Trump’s Cabinet, it seems, is cleaning up the statements of the man they serve. Five weeks into Trump’s tenure in office, his deputies have found themselves softening, explaining and sometimes outright contradicting the president….

Or, as Jennifer Rubin wrote last week, “Pay no mind to Trump. He’s just the president.”

Perhaps the only hope we have to cling to in this crisis is the fact that most of the world understands that the president of the United States is, for the first time in history, a complete nincompoop (see how I didn’t call him an “idiot” just then), so there’s the possibility of grownups cleaning up his messes before they blow up completely. No guarantee it will work, of course, but there’s the possibility.

Here’s what we’ve come to: Our own Nikki Haley, who had basically zero qualifications for the job of ambassador to the U.N., is now the grownup who has to step in and set things right when the president of the United States screws up on the global stage.

Scary, isn’t it?

I don’t want to take anything away from Nikki by saying that. It’s not her fault she was unqualified for the position. To my knowledge, she never sought the position, and can be forgiven for not having prepared herself for it before it fell in her lap. I applaud how well she’s doing scrambling to catch up. She’s apparently listening to the right people, and doing her best to learn, and I honor her for it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the guy who picked her for the job would do the same thing? But he won’t. He’s destroyed our hopes of his ever doing that, over and over again.

So everyone around him — or the competent ones, anyway, who are too few — will have to keep cleaning up after him, as well as they can for as long as they can. Which is cold comfort…

I love this picture from the Canadian border

From The Washington Post: Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police help a family from Somalia on Feb. 17, 2017 along the U.S.-Canada border near Hemmingford, Quebec. (The Canadian Press/AP)

From The Washington Post: Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police help a family from Somalia on Feb. 17, 2017 along the U.S.-Canada border near Hemmingford, Quebec. (The Canadian Press/AP)

I hope The Canadian Press (or the AP, which transmitted it) doesn’t mind my showing this photo, but my post would make little sense without it. It goes with this story this morning in The Washington Post:

OTTAWA — As desperate asylum seekers continue to flee the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown by crossing into Canada, concern is growing here over whether the country will be able to cope if the number of migrants keeps growing.

Stories of migrants hauling children and suitcases across frozen fields and snow-covered ditches into Canada have become headline news. The asylum seekers, who are fleeing President Trump’s travel and refugee bans as well as stepped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants, have received warm welcomes. But opposition politicians are criticizing the government of Justin Trudeau for being too harsh or too lax in its approach….

I just love that expression on the Mountie’s face as he lifts that child up from the snow. You go, Dudley Do-Right!

It’s particularly meaningful to me because our church sponsored a Somali Bantu family — a widowed mother and several children — in Columbia a few years back, and my wife played a leadership role in that, sometimes spending practically as much time with them, helping them negotiate American life, as she did at home. Or so it seemed to me, but I’m not complaining. She found the mother a job and helped her get settled in it, tutored one of the kids (using our old copies of The Wall Street Journal to help with his English skills), and all sorts of stuff like that. (My own involvement hardly extended beyond storing donated furniture in our garage before they arrived.)

Eventually, our Bantu family moved to Buffalo, where a lot of others like them had ended up. Also right on the Canadian border, you’ll note — although the picture taken above was far from there.

Of course, as I say, I love the picture. Despite the fact that it saddens me greatly that any of these folks would feel so unwelcome in this country that they would set out on such hazardous (and to them especially, horrendously cold) terrain in search of solace and safety…

Open Thread for Wednesday, February 22, 2017

PIA21422_hires

Today, most of the leading news is Trump-free! And no artificial additives!

  1. Scientists discover seven Earthlike planets orbiting a nearby star — This is very cool. And they’re only 229,261,492,590,000 miles from here, as a crow would fly if he could fly through space and wasn’t inclined to get tired after a few hundred billion miles. Hey, maybe there’s an alternative Earth where Kasich won the election! A lot of us would like to go to there! (I didn’t say the news was entirely Trump-free.)
  2. Free-speech advocates rail against House anti-Semitism bill — Our second time today on this subject. Have you ever noticed that a very wide range of people style themselves “free-speech advocates?” Some are actual champions of liberal democracy, and some, not so much…
  3. City of Columbia to provide healthier food choices for employees, residents, guests — We’re talking in terms of what’s offered in city park vending machines, and what is served if the city has a luncheon or something. I figured this might start some “free speech.”
  4. Bernie Sanders Loyalists Are Taking Over the Democratic Party One County Office at a Time — And I definitely didn’t say it would be Bernie-free…
  5. Men: Strenuous Exercise May Be Hurting Your Sex Life — You know, I had just started back to putting some time in on the elliptical this week, but maybe that’s a bad idea…

Nikki shows Trump how to address anti-Semitism

I call your attention to Jennifer Rubin’s column praising Nikki Haley for showing the correct way to address anti-Semitism, a lesson her boss would do well to learn.

Of course, you might say Nikki evidently had help from people who know more about the Mideast and global antipathy toward Israel than she does, to which I’ll say, I certainly hope so. And bless her for having the wisdom to listen to them. And when she spoke them, the words became hers.

Here’s the pertinent part of the column, which quotes freely from Ambassador Haley’s remarks:

Her remarks are worth watching or reading in full, but this was especially effective:

The Security Council is supposed to discuss how to maintain international peace and security. But at our meeting on the Middle East, the discussion was not about Hizballah’s illegal build-up of rockets in Lebanon. It was not about the money and weapons Iran provides to terrorists. It was not about how we defeat ISIS. It was not about how we hold Bashar al-Assad accountable for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of civilians. No, instead, the meeting focused on criticizing Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East. I am new around here, but I understand that’s how the Council has operated, month after month, for decades. …

Incredibly, the UN Department of Political Affairs has an entire division devoted to Palestinian affairs. Imagine that. There is no division devoted to illegal missile launches from North Korea. There is no division devoted to the world’s number one state-sponsor of terror, Iran. The prejudiced approach to Israeli-Palestinian issues does the peace process no favors. And it bears no relationship to the reality of the world around us.

She further observed, “The double standards are breathtaking. Just a few days ago, the United States sought unsuccessfully to have the Security Council condemn a terrorist attack to Israel, where the terrorist opened fire on people waiting for a bus and then stabbed others. … The statement was blocked. And that’s downright shameful.”

She added, “Israel exists in a region where others call for its complete destruction and in a world where anti-Semitism is on the rise. These are threats that we should discuss at the United Nations as we continue working toward a comprehensive agreement that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” (Emphasis added.)

Nikki at UN

Your Virtual Front Page for Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Sorry that none of these things is very light. But I won’t dwell on them for long:

  1. Trump Details Plans to Deport Millions of Immigrants — And so it begins. Remember how we used to talk, hypothetically, about how we’d have to become a police state to round up millions of people? Well, no more hypotheticals. This is what we’ve become. My question: Will Trump have to go through Congress for the funding to buy all those new jackboots? But then there’s this version of the story:
  2. Trump administration seeks to prevent ‘panic’ as it outlines broader deportation policies — Spicer says the goal is not “mass deportations.” OK, then — why does the memo call for hiring thousands of additional enforcement agents?
  3. Breitbart writer resigns amid outrage over his pedophilia comments — I had never heard of this guy before today. You? Whoever he is, he doesn’t look like the same person in any two photos. He’s like Clapton in the 70s. Of course, if I said pervy stuff like what he said, I’d try to disguise myself, too.
  4. Trump Denounces Anti-Semitism After Mounting Criticism — I’m of two minds on this. For one thing, I’ve long decried this weird national expectation — which I think got traction during the Clinton administration — that the POTUS have a comment on everything, everywhere, whether it directly bears upon his job or not. On the other hand, when POTUS comments on stuff that didn’t happen in Bowling Green, Atlanta and Sweden, it is kind of nice to have him address something real.
  5. Columbia could lose millions of dollars if SC lawmakers OK business license bills — That poses a genuine problem for Columbia, which starts out in the hole because so much of property in the city is untaxable. But somehow, I don’t expect a lot of business people to lose sleep over it.
  6. Wal-Mart, Home Depot Show Big Box Stores Aren’t Dead — Well, good for them, but if I were Home Depot, I’d worry. For my part, needing a new chainsaw — just for light-to-medium use in the yard — I went to Lowe’s over the weekend and looked at them and hefted them and compared features and prices. But I’m almost certainly going to buy from Amazon. I don’t feel good about it, but there it is.
I'm leaning toward this one -- the WORX 18-Inch 15.0 Amp Electric model with Auto-Tension, Chain Brake, and Automatic Oiling.

I’m leaning toward this one — the WORX 18-Inch 15.0 Amp Electric model with Auto-Tension, Chain Brake, and Automatic Oiling.

I’m thinking ‘light’ today…

Don't know where this came from. A friend shared it on an email thread the other day...

Don’t know where this came from. A friend shared it on an email thread the other day…

Today, it hit me that my last four posts had been a bit wordy for general blog purposes. This one monster on Friday was 1,425 words, which is roughly twice as long as a lot of newspaper columns. (And it only drew 2 comments, more to the point.)

So today I’m going light. No attempts at gravitas.

Hence that last post. And this one…

¿Que pasó a La Casa Blanca?

Jennifer Morrow/Flickr

Jennifer Morrow/Flickr

I was purging inactive or irrelevant feeds from those I follow on Twitter today. Some time back, I settled on 600 as the maximum number of feeds I would follow, and so whenever the number climbs above that, I go looking for slacker feeds to eliminate.

When I got to @LaCasaBlanca, I figured, That’s one I can ditch! This White House certainly has no used for a Spanish-language feed!

As it turns out, yes and no.

The Trump administration signaled its willingness to keep reaching out to Spanish-speakers with this Tweet, 11 days after the inauguration:

Then, only one day and 3 Tweets (only one of them in Spanish) later, the feed stopped cold. Here was the last thing it had to say:

¿Que pasó a La Casa Blanca? ¿Quién sabe? I just thought I’d share what I found…

Of course, I don’t get them either, which is also bad

I didn't get why everybody was so mad in "Network," either.

I didn’t get why everybody was so mad in “Network,” either.

Just to examine the other side of the coin…

My last post quoted a Trump supporter on the subject of his detractors, saying “I just don’t get it.”

Well, far be it from me to let on to be wiser than others when I’m not. (As a Twain protagonist said, “I was born modest; not all over, but in spots.”)

The thing is, I don’t get Trump supporters. Oh, I can cite this or that overt reason that they give for holding the views they do. But I don’t have a good grip on what an editor I used to work with called “the emotional center.” And normally, I would.

After past elections, I’ve pretty much understood what happened, on most levels. Not this time. I read about people having (some of) the same reservations about Trump that I did, and voting for him anyway. And with some of those folks, I understand the underlying emotion — they really, really hated Hillary Clinton. I consider it rather intemperate and unwise to hate anybody that much, but I don’t doubt the force of that impulse.

But there’s something bigger than that going on, something at the root of the nihilism I kept writing about during the election (much to the irritation of some of you). Something that caused people to feel they wanted to blow it all up, regardless of the consequences. Something that made them want to give a grossly unqualified, deeply unfit man the most powerful job on the planet. Something they were just fed up about.

At this point, Doug is jumping up and down, saying, “I knew it! I kept saying you didn’t get it!” But I do get that the impulse was out there. What I don’t get — not being a cynic like Doug — is the rational basis for it.

I hear about “economic dislocation.” But that seems inadequate. I’m a white male who is as economically dislocated (the position I worked my whole life for, and performed very well, has ceased to exist) as anyone, and I strongly suspect that a lot of Trump voters, quite likely most of them, have higher current incomes than I have.

I see the anger is there, and I see it as key to what has happened (it certainly didn’t happen for calm, rational reasons). But I can’t connect to it.

And the feeling is familiar. I felt the same way back in the 1970s, when I saw “Network.”

To this day, I have no idea what Peter Finch’s character was on about when he kept babbling, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” (In the larger sense, I mean — the immediate cause was that he was getting fired.)

Mad as hell about what?, I kept wondering. It made no sense, yet in the film, he turned out to be perfectly in sync with America. The viewers loved it. And that’s the tough part, see. I understood that Howard Beale was unhinged. But why did it strike such a chord?

I thought people running to their windows and shouting about how mad they were about some nonspecific “this” was absurd. I still think that.

I’ve heard all sorts of explanations as to what the Trump voters were mad about beyond the economic stress thing. And I fully believe in some of them — such as the feeling of being ignored and mocked and insulted by coastal elites. That I can dig; it’s based in something real. I can also understand frustration with the mess the parties have made of our politics — but electing Trump always seemed to me the surest way to make things worse, not better. And even if you take every ostensible cause and double it, and add them all together, and throw in Doug’s powerful disgust at government in general, it just does not add up to a justification for what just happened, and keeps happening every day.

It just doesn’t.

And yeah, it may seem stupid for me to try to explain a visceral phenomenon in rational terms, but I do try. I just don’t arrive…

Trump supporter: ‘I just don’t get it.’ There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.

All of these years, some of us had this certain picture in our minds of what a president should be like. How were we to know there were so many people who didn't want that at ALL?

All of these years, some of us had this certain picture in our minds of what a president should be like. How were we to know there were so many people who didn’t want that at ALL?

To translate from the Shakespeare: That’s why this disaster called Trump isn’t going away soon.

I refer you to this story today in The Washington Post: “Trump supporters see a successful president — and are frustrated with critics who don’t.”

There’s just this enormous cognitive gulf, and we’ve apparently made little progress in bridging it.

Most of us who would never, ever have dreamed of even joking about voting for Donald Trump see his daily insanities, and think, All those people who voted for him have to be regretting it all now.

But the truly shocking thing is, apparently they’re not. Apparently, these folks and their philosophical forebears had been waiting for a president just like this for the last 228 years. Ever since the election of 1788, we’ve seen a progression of presidents who were serious, well-informed individuals who approached the duties of the office with respectful decorum and dignity and hewed mainly to more or less intelligent policies that served the national interest. And most of us thought that was a good thing, and disapproved of those who in one way or another strayed from the norm, such as James Buchanan and Andrew Jackson.

But apparently, these folks didn’t want qualifications or gravitas or depth of understanding or honesty or any of those other qualities in a president at all. They wanted — a Reality TV star.

(Remember that exchange in “Ghostbusters” when Sigourney Weaver says “You know, you don’t act like a scientist,” then Bill Murray, taking it as a compliment, says, “They’re usually pretty stiff,” and Sigourney slam-dunks that by saying, “You’re more like a game show host?” Well, this is kind of like that, only without Murray’s goofball appeal as a protagonist.)

So they’re happy with what they got — if The Post has it right, but remember, the media are the Enemies of the People — and they can’t imagine why the rest of us would be so critical of their guy. They assume that it’s about being sore losers or big babies, or having nasty ulterior motives or something. As one supporter puts it:

“There’s such hatred for the man,” she said. “I just don’t get it.”

And that’s a huge problem, the not getting it. If none of the chaos we’ve seen out of the White House since Jan. 20 has clued these folks in yet, if this in fact is what they want, then there’s little hope of Republicans in Congress seeing the kind of movement in polls that would embolden them to initiate proceedings to get rid of this guy. (And yeah, some of y’all will say I’m getting ahead of myself even thinking that way, but hey, I see a problem of this magnitude and I immediately start looking for the solution, whether everybody else is ready for it or not.)

It would be poignant, if it weren’t so awful for the country. As the Post says of these folks:

Many of President Trump’s most dedicated supporters — the sort who waited for hours in the Florida sun this weekend for his first post-inauguration campaign rally — say their lives changed on election night. Suddenly they felt like their views were actually respected and in the majority.

But less than one month into Trump’s term, many of his supporters say they once again feel under attack — perhaps even more so than before….

It’s almost enough to make me feel bad for them. But not quite, because, you know, they’re getting their way. And it looks like they will continue to do so for quite some time….

"You're more like a game show host."

“You’re more like a game show host.”

The LAST thing we need is more partisanship

The usual partisan nonsense is even more pointless than usual in the face of the Trump crisis.

The usual partisan rubbish is even more pointless than usual in the face of the Trump crisis.

There’s an argument I keep having with Democrats lately, on social media and elsewhere.

On one such occasion recently,  I went on at some length in writing. And as y’all probably know, I hate to spend time typing something and then not put it on the blog. So I’ll share it with you.

This was on an email thread started by friend of mine who has a long list of people he regularly shares things with. On this occasion, he was sharing this story from The New York Times: “Who Hasn’t Trump Banned? People From Places Where He’s Done Business.”

Well, I couldn’t read the Times piece because I’d exceeded my free reads for the month, and I have no intention of subscribing. But I was able to read this response from another recipient of the email — someone who you can see is obviously a Democrat (and someone I’m not going to name because I have no indication he meant it to be published):

An answer:  do not normalize the Administration in any way whatsoever.

An answer:  daily resistance.

An answer:  reorganize the left-of-center ship—and well, frankly, be organized—and call failed leadership to account.

An answer:  approach 2018 as if the everything is on the line (it is).  It’s time to stop playing backyard croquet campaigns.

An answer:  Democratic officials need to stop endorsing Republicans.  (I can’t even believe I live in a state where that is necessary to type.)

I responded thusly:

I agree with [the gentleman] that Trump must not be normalized, and that he must be resisted daily — which I certainly do on my blog.

I disagree VEHEMENTLY with his apparent assumption that the answer is more partisanship… Especially his assertion that “Democratic officials need to stop endorsing Republicans…”

There is nothing MORE likely to normalize Trump than to treat this problem as just another inning in the absurd left-right, Democratic-v.-Republican game.

You really need to get out of that “left-of-center” rut and recognize that Trump is a phenomenon that has no place on the left-right spectrum. He is a unique problem, unlike anything this country has ever seen.

And conservatives — real conservatives — are just as capable of seeing that as liberals. If not more so — at least they can see this is not about the usual partisan games.

You need those people — and people like me who reject the whole left-right thing altogether (and are fed up with it) — on your side in the matter of Trump.

This isn’t about winning the next inning of the perpetual game in 2018.

This guy has to go. And you know who has to reach that conclusion? Republicans in Congress.

Yep, we’re a long way from that happening right now. Republican members are tiptoeing around as though in a minefield.

But you and I and everyone who understands what a threat to the nation Trump truly is should do anything and everything we can to give them room to reach the right conclusion.

And every time a Democrat tries to make it about party, that makes Republicans more likely to close ranks. In other words, it normalizes the situation.

You know where you could start to make the situation better? By supporting and encouraging Republicans who have the guts to stand up to Trump. Sure, it’s just Graham and McCain so far, and writers such as Bill Kristol and Bret Stephens. But the more of this bad craziness that Stephens wrote about today that we see, the more likely others are to wake up.

… IF the rest of us don’t chase them back into their partisan comfort zones. Which I see too many Democrats are eager to do.

MORE of the partisan nonsense that has turned off people across the political spectrum, from Sanders’ supporters to Trump’s, is most assuredly NOT the answer to this national crisis.

It’s time to rise above, and help all Americans, not just those of your own ideological ilk, to see what’s at stake…

I wrote all that in response to an email thread on Jan. 31. Since then, I’ve seen more and more instances in which Democrats act like this is business as usual. For instance, there is talk of pulling out all the stops to try to block Neil Gorsuch from the Supreme Court. Which is insane. It shows that these Democrats completely fail to understand what is going on — or, they don’t care.

Gorsuch is a highly qualified nominee and representative of the kind of judge that a mainstream Republican would nominate. If Democrats waste what tiny amounts of political capital they have left (were it gunpowder, they’d hardly have enough for a firecracker) on this, then they’re saying Trump doesn’t pose any sort of extraordinary problem for the nation — because they’d do the same with any Republican president.

It’s hard to think of a better way for Democrats to normalize Trump than to fight Gorsuch with all their might.

Bottom line, it just looks increasingly unlikely that the Democratic Party is going to play any kind of constructive role in helping the country out of this mess. Which leaves it up to the rest of us.

Well, that’s the UnParty response. What’s yours?