July 21, 2024

Dear Mr. President:

Dear Mr. President:

We have received the news of your decision, and will cope as best we can. I can certainly vote for Kamala Harris very cheerfully. If I understand your reasons for this decision, then we have yet another example of your patriotism, although we really didn’t need any more than we had already. I’m confident you will energetically execute your duties as President until 1/20/25, at about 1 pm. And when you retire from the field, I hope you will understand that you have set a standard of accomplishment that many two-term presidents should envy.

My only regret is that your decision may make it appear that the New York Times was right, and the New York Times is never right about Democratic Presidents. Still, they do seem to think that the Democratic Party is the only one who can save the country from the Republicans, and at the moment, they’re right about that. Accidentally, probably.

Our European allies are going to miss the heck out of you, and the nation of Israel, and Pres. Zelenskyy. The Israel Hamas war has been going on for seventy years or so, and I don’t see what else you could have done to support an ally led by Mr. Netanyahu, while trying to keep Palestinians alive. Some in the country think that Israel is a wholly-owned subsidiary of America, but you know better. If we get a cease fire, and two states out of this war, then your legacy will be extra shiny.

But your record will stand for itself as long as this country lasts. You have accomplished more for ordinary Americans than any Democratic President in my lifetime, which is the same vintage as yours.

Well done, sir. Thank you for your past and continued service. Thank you more than I can say.

July 19, 2024

Dear idiot media:

Dear idiot media—

I am sorry to address you rudely, but the enormity of your current practice of “news gathering “ is so dumb and so dangerous to the country that I must resort to linguistic violence to get your attention. I am talking to you if you write or edit for the NYT, or NPR, or NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, or any formerly respected news source. If you personally think that Pres. Biden’s candidacy is teetering, or that DJT’s acceptance speech is worth covering, then I’m talking to you. Because with the call for Mr. Biden to step down, you are hip deep in a story you created yourselves, and to pretend that a man who is a confirmed liar and fabulator is worth talking about because he went on for ninety minutes betrays your abandonment of all pretense to be news gatherers, much less to be savvy and smart ones. You are driving your own customers away, and you deserve to be ignored.

To begin with the most infuriating stance you’re taking, that DJT is newsworthy, you are ignoring facts your audience have been gathering for nine years (often from you). This means you are treating us like dolts with a mental age of seven and an attention span of 3.5 seconds. DJT is a person who has devised five different ways to betray his own country, been impeached for two, and would be in jail now except for the unequal treatment afforded rich criminals in this country. It seems to have dawned on none of you that the primary reason he’s running is so he can keep on collecting political contributions to pay his lawyers. To keep him out of prison. At the age of 77. The majority of your audience saw the mob attack the Capitol on 1/6/21, and watched the congressional hearings that a followed. That was the third treasonous act he committed. The first was his quiet alliance with V. Putin; the second was his attempt to blackmail our ally Ukraine into fabricating some dirt on his political enemy, Joe Biden; the fourth was his wholesale theft of secret documents from the White House, and the fifth is his ongoing campaign to convince American voters that the 2020 election was stolen. Your audience is aware of all these facts, and would be grateful to hear nothing more about this aberration of a politician until he’s finally sentenced for something. And his sentencing should appear on p. A28 of the NYT or in one sentence at the end of your newscast or commentary session. Enough! Much, much more than enough!

Now, for the story you fabricated: the disastrous editorial call for Joe Biden to withdraw from the race. Because he is old and didn’t turn in a great “performance” at a debate with the aforementioned serial liar and fabulator. Ten minutes of Biden’s political career, and the NYT and many others are ready to tell him to quit. Gentle journalists: there was no story there to begin with, but you made one up anyway, and gave it all the coverage it didn’t deserve. Now you’re following the aftermath of your own “news” stories, and obsessively covering defections in the President’s own party. You insist that this is an ongoing news story when many in your audience are tearing their hair out at your folly. You, the media, who created these “stories,” seem prepared to deprive the country of the only legitimate candidate running for president this year. Not only is Joe Biden the only legitimate candidate, but he’s coming off 3-1/2 years of stellar performance in the job of being president. If some in the country are largely ignorant about what he has accomplished, this, too, is your fault.

I’m not demanding a thousand word apology to the President, or your prosecution as dangerous spreaders of disinformation. I’m asking that you top and reflect of how you got from journalism school to where you are today, and quietly mend your ways. Editors: stop hallucinating stories that aren’t there, and journalists, start reporting from the real world your audience lives in. Look back on the eventful sweep of the history of this republic from 1776 to now, and then rate your current contributions to that history. Have a glass of scotch and your confessor, if you have one, handy. Then get up tomorrow morning and do your jobs.

July 11, 2024

I don't know what all the fuss is about: Biden won the debate.

He won for four reasons:

1. By default. His opponent appeared in a televised campaign rally while pretending to debate. (Has this lie been added to the list?)

2. On substance. His replies to the questions contained only facts, policies, accurate history, and laws enacted. His opponent threw verbal food at Biden for 90 minutes.

3. Mr. Biden used only polite formal English, and did not indulge in vulgarisms. He let his expressions of annoyance, disbelief, and disgust do the work of foul language.

4. At no point did Mr. Biden leap across the stage and attempt to throttle his opponent manually. Really, his self-discipline is admirable.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think that no one in the country, including the NYT, watched the debate. The whole media-invented "crisis" does not exist.

July 7, 2024

Debate strategies for Biden if there is a second one

First, Mr. Biden should make a few remarks characterizing his opponent's obstacles to a successful campaign: he might be in jail, he might be in court, he might be in jail and court at the same time, and he doesn't know how to debate anyway, just fling mud at his opponent. (TFG's first impeachment stemmed from his attempt to force Mr. Zelenskyy into an anti-Biden smear, but TFG hasn't grasped that this was a mistake.)

Second: if it's decided that a second debate is necessary, these strategies could be deployed:

1. Admit it's impossible to rebut/correct all TFG's lies and insults. Limit yourself to one sentence of rebuttal. This sentence can be framed in advance, e.g., "If my opponent were familiar with the Constitution, he would know ...", or "Coming from an adjudicated rapist, women might not want to trust this policy." Like that--his aides could think up some good ones. Likewise Mrs. Biden. This will give Mr. Biden more time to talk about policy and accomplishments, which is what he wants to do anyway.

2. Be as specific as possible, and as concrete as possible when outlining policies and problems. For example: "If climate change is a hoax, why are Miamians wading through waist deep water?", or "We don't have to have parents choosing between paying the electric bill and good childcare; we can do better. Here's how." Keep it short, sweet, and vivid. Many in the audience don't know how to listen to a debate, so give them the summary as you go along.

And remember, you won the first debate according to anyone who read the transcript, or actually listened to the debate. Losing your candidacy now would be the equivalent of tossing Simone Biles out of competition because her shoes didn't match her leotard. Call out malarkey wherever you find it, and full speed ahead.

July 1, 2024

LTTE: NYT (not)

[I am not sending this letter to the Times: it’s far too long for them, and they would assert a right to edit it. Screw that.]

Dear Times Editorial Board:

I read your editorial “To serve his country, President Biden should leave the race” (6/30/24) with great interest. Like others, I skipped listening to the debate, since I knew in advance it would not be a debate under the original meaning of the term, but one man answering questions honestly with facts, legislation, and arguments derived from reality. The other man would ignore the questions put to him at the earliest opportunity, and engage in his usual campaign rallying speech: persistent ad hominem attacks interspersed with warped versions of reality. Unfortunately, none of our broadcast media offered to clip out the Republican’s comments, and just offer us the sane guy’s. So I engaged in self-care, and skipped the whole thing.

The first question that your editorial prompted me to ask was: Why are the Democrats being held responsible for the Republicans’ sins? Why are a Democratic president and his Democratic base being asked to save the bacon of the entire country and its settled form of government? Pres. Biden did not get us into this mess; the Republican Party and its chosen candidate did. Why, not for the first time, is one party being asked by the Times to atone for the sins of the other? Surely, if TFG and his party are dangerous to our democracy, it would be fairer to ask the Republicans to admit their multiple errors, express genuine contrition, and clean up their act? Does the Times think Pres. Biden can work miracles, or Kamala Harris, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Pete Buttigieg, or Katie Porter? Alas, they are all merely human, and are also constrained to playing by the rules, as well as the laws of the land. Since Republicans have broken every rule (and some laws) they could find for fifty years, would it not be a great injustice to let them skate free from this quagmire of their own making?

Whatever your thoughts on that question, I wish to protest being asked to abandon this specific president for the good of the country. As a tenderhearted citizen of the same age as the president, I would be glad to issue him his gold watch, and send him off to a less stressful life with the profuse thanks of his constituents. But as a practical voter, I know that Joseph R. Biden has exceeded my wildest dreams of what a Democratic president could achieve. Not to mention the hostile environment he’s been working in. The man is in the middle of pitching a no-hitter, and one of the coaches wants to pull him and insert a photogenic rookie. For Shame! I say. Democratic voters can’t afford to pull this player from the game. There’s too much good government at stake.

I am gratified to note that the Times thinks Mr. Biden has served this country “so nobly for so long.” But I suspect he would not recognize any nobility in himself. My guess is that he merely takes the “service” part of public service very seriously, and is, at this moment, engaged in a number of practical considerations. Whatever he’s thinking about, I feel confident that this game will be one for the record books.

June 29, 2024

Biden's debate "performance" and our media

Over the years since the Kennedy-Nixon televised debate, the main stream media have changed their focus when reporting political news. Soon after that first example of two candidates standing in front of a TV camera and debating issues, it came to the attention of pundits and journalists that some (or all) candidates were hiring PR specialists to advise them on how to seem more … whatever they wanted to seem to the voting public. More handsome, more decisive, more informed, more assertive, more electable! This struck the pundits as being unfair, because the public could be hoodwinked (gaslighted, in today’s terminology) into believing something that wasn’t true. So the Media started advising the public on the tricky wiles that PR specialists could work on the audience’s perception. An older generation of commentators would start a column with a fact, and from that, by marshaling other facts, conclude that the Russians were expanding their nuclear and conventional arsenals, and that America had better watch out. It was all very innocent. By degrees over the years, both columnists and straight reporters of political news have morphed from reporting hard news, like “this is what the candidate said,” to reporting on the political significance of whatever some poor candidate said in the political context of his candidacy, his party’s standing with various demographics, and the possible effect statement might have on the balance of power between the two parties. (There are only two, never more than two, because that’s an easier horse race for voters to follow.). What matters to the punditry is not anything politicians might say, but how it will play in the giant drama the media are actually following. When NPR and the NYT, and Bill Clinton (who lets the pundits do the “rating”), and most other media talk of President Joseph R. Biden’s “performance”, that’s exactly what they mean. He’s being judged on the dramatic value of his appearance in the debate.

So, in post-debate reporting, we have instant judgments on Mr. Biden’s verbal stumbles, and pretty much nothing else. Nothing like: did both candidates answer the questions put to them, or did one of them veer off instantly into ad hominem attacks? If only one answered the questions, did he respond with coherent facts, proposals, and policies? Did the other participant, ttc (the trump creature), indulge in ever-wilder fantasies of what a President did do, can do, and is certainly responsible for doing to the country? If ttc painted a lurid picture of Biden’s evil powers, did that matter at all in the face of Biden’s stumble(s)? Clearly, it did not. The media are not evaluating the debate as a debate, but as a scene in the endless political drama they are reporting on.

This theory explains the media’s judgement on the dramatic value of the recent debate. Personally I didn’t listen to the debate, for two reasons, the most compelling one being that I’m so sick of political reporters explaining politics to me that I could scream.

September 6, 2023

Civil War? Or not.

All right. Last night on NPR I heard a guy saying we could not disqualify TFG on the 14th Amendment because this could lead to bloody battles when his followers will revolt and shoot a bunch of people. There are several reasons why I don’t think civil war is imminent. First, the extreme polarization which the press constantly refers to may be a figment of the media’s imagination. There may be one party of armed maniacs and a bunch of people who are not prepared to shoot anybody because of their red hats. Second, even if enough red hat people got together and decided to attack something, it is extremely difficult to decide what they could attack that would get them anywhere. Third, we have seen the strategic acumen of the red hat people on 1/6/21, and all their geniuses were AWOL. Even if they wanted to strike hard, they have no discipline, since their prowess is mainly in their imaginations. They think owning a gun or seven makes you a soldier.

Are we as polarized as the media think we are? There are certainly a lot of hot heads on the red hat side, people who want to use their guns to defend their country, but they, like all of us, are a little fuzzy on exactly who to shoot. But what about the blue hat side? I don’t see a whole lot of blue hats calling for the arrest of people who wear red hats. We are perfectly happy to wait for one of them to break the law, and then arrest them. We’re law and order types. So why do the media keep going on about it? Because it’s essential to their narrative structure that there be two sides in American politics: The liberal and conservative, the fiscally responsible and the spendthrifts, the red and the blue. It’s essential that these sides be evenly balanced, because if they were not, that would be a whole different story, one the media are not prepared to tell. In short, they’re not in the business of reporting news, but of entertaining us with an endless horse race, pumped full of as much emotion as they can imagine. I only discern one army, when you really need two for a war.

Next, should the red hats decide on revolt, what will their target or targets be? All the blue state houses? I don’t know about your governor, but I don’t see Gov. Hochul standing still for this. There may be an exchange of fire, but governors have the National Guard, police forces, and the law on their side. A blue state strategy would call for a larger army than the red hats could field, imho. What if Gov. DeSantis just surrenders his state house to the red hats? Well, that will be a problem for Floridians, but it will galvanize the rest of the country, who may develop a powerful desire to shut the red hats down. Oh, of course, why don’t they attack the U.S. Capitol building when congress is in session? Even with a traitorous President pulling strings, this didn’t work. TFG wasn’t serious, and some of his followers still haven’t got the memo, even as the 1/6 insurrectionists are escorted off to jail.

And lastly, we have seen no evidence that the red hat mob has any idea what a strategy is, much less any strategists. I have a feeling that any sergeant in the U.S. Army could do a better job of attacking a building than the entire red hat army. The Red Hats are deeply into shouting, roaring, clubbing, and decorating themselves with horned fur hats. I really don’t see that they have an officer class to lead them. I thing Red Hats may be an army of self-anointed leaders, with no followers.

It would be so nice if we had the media on our side, led by a few stalwart journalists who would just explain to the country that a 2024 TFG campaign for the presidency just will not work. They would have to drop their rigid “both sides are equal” theme, and sail out into the uncharted seas of reality, but I bet they would find the trip invigorating.

September 4, 2023

TFG: rhetoric or rap?

I have been listening, when I couldn’t avoid it, to TFG talk for nearly eight years now. Respectable news organizations, like NPR, always quote him with audio clips or have journalists quote him. So he’s been impossible to avoid. And various linguists have attempted analyses of his rhetorical style, as though the secret of his effectiveness lies in the history of English prose. I think it makes far more sense to consider him as an artist, a practitioner of rap, in which poetry is intoned, choruses repeated (“Lock her up!”), and the object of his song to his people is emotional connection, not rational persuasion. This theory would explain why he keeps jumping from subject to subject, caressing each with some simple phrases, and moving on to his next topic. And all of the topics he touches on are sources of resentment for his audiences, or he provides new resentments loosely attached to the old ones. He modulates from: “Not only are vaccines ineffective”, to “but they’re trying to force you to take them,” to “ because they’re treating you like sheeple, not the smart people you are.” Everything in TFG’s “speeches” is subordinated to massaging his followers’ egos, to encouraging their resentments, and to whipping them into a fine froth of frustrated indignation. If DJT is rapping, he has a foolproof formula for fooling those eager to be fooled. The object is emotional connection, not reasoned persuasion.

I am not saying that TFG has studied real rappers and Hip-hop artists. There’s no proof he can concentrate long enough to study anything. His stream-of-consciousness dribbles are characterized by the rhythm of resentment interspersed with not-quite-actionable suggestions. He has a finely honed sense of what could get him arrested on the spot, and he always stops short. The classic example of this is his remark re: Hillary Clinton, that some “second amendment types” should [something] [something]. His other great suggestion, on 1/6/21, was that “you have to fight” for your rights/to stop election theft/to restore him to power. And the crowd took right off for the Capitol, ready to rumble. Intense suggestiveness coupled with avoidance of any responsibility are the hallmarks of TFG’s style.

And exactly what was he trying to accomplish with the attack on the Capitol? Even as I observed, with no surprise at all, his abandonment of his followers to the tender mercies of the criminal justice system, it has been niggling at me that even he could not have expected that mobbing the Capitol would actually change the electoral vote count. He had encouraged his lawyers to whomp up a rickety theory as to how it could be done, but he had not secured the lynch pin of the entire structure: he had not gotten Mike Pence to buy in. Even if Pence had played along, there was no quorum after the mob invasion, to do anything at all. If the elected representatives had been brought (marched?) back to the chambers, they would have laughed at what Pence would have asked them to do.

So if TFG was not seriously trying to take over the government, what was he trying to do? The only answer that makes sense to me is that he was demonstrating his prowess at getting TV ratings. That is, he sent a large volunteer group of his followers to play a righteous segment of the voters who could not contain their feelings one second longer. He created a crowd scene with a few thousand unpaid extras to thumb his nose at the country which had rejected him. If this was his deepest motivation, he succeeded very well. But of course, his faithful followers have never understood that the object of TFG’s presidency was to provide an emotional high for the president. Nothing to do with them or their lives at all. I think TFG never recovered from being the most popular TV reality show host for a while. This experience fed his ego, and only once since then has he felt the same sense of triumph: when his emotionally enslaved mob ran rampant through the Capitol. He sat in front of a TV in the White House lapping it up. Since this was not a TV studio, but real life, all the actors are liable for damages, and even the director will face contemptuous prosecutors from the Department of Justice.

October 17, 2022

On Greed

We often blame the excesses of capitalism on greed, or excessive greed. The first thing we should note is that the capitalist system is motivated by greed. Capitalism is legalized greed. Capitalists perceive a need or a desire for various goods and services: oil and its byproducts, clothing, food, food served in restaurants, trinkets and gadgets, means of communication. They then set about producing them as cheaply as possible, and selling them for the maximum price the market will bear. And we buy: as much as we need, and, urged on by advertising, as much as we can afford, and sometimes more. As these processes play out, the capitalist, the “owner,” may make some very handsome profits indeed. But they couldn’t make the profits without the market to buy their products. In America, our cultural norms tolerate all these desires, for profits by the owners, and goods by the buyers, as the norm, the best available economic system.

Greed, then, is a normal part of our economic system. Capitalism works in part by channeling everybody’s natural desire for more than they have or need into orderly processes. There are stores, warehouses, catalogs and websites to display the goods, there are delivery services to get them to the buyers, and banking services to handle the payments. What our understanding of capitalism doesn’t provide us with is a measure for deciding when a lot becomes too much. At what point does the need to keep a business running become destructive? When profits exceed 2%, or 5%, or 30% or 45%? Economists don’t hold these discussions, because they have made it their business to discuss economic systems as though they were natural phenomena, like bird migrations, or the mating habits of whales, or the component planets in our solar system. Greed, as it is used these days, seems to be a moral accusation: those who are greedy have a vice, and they need to curb their desires for more for the good of their souls, and society at large.

There is an analogy with the controversy over abortion: the pro-life party accuses the women who seek abortions of being morally cruel to the innocent life they bear. Abortion seekers are really killing babies, seems to be their judgment. The problems arise when the pro-life party tries to control abortion by making it illegal. As soon as they try that, all the messy other realities of child bearing are exposed, and the laws don’t work to save innocent lives. Anti-abortion legislation, doesn’t work, but the pro-life party gets to enjoy their own moral superiority over the abortion seekers.

All of us capitalists get to feel morally superior to the owners, or at least the “big” owners: Big Oil, Big Pharma, Walmart, Big anything, when we call them greedy. But we don’t ask for a change in the system, or even to control the system as it’s now practiced. It may be that we could keep the main components of capitalism, while legally controlling profit levels, or at least executive salaries. You will have noticed that any discussion of controlling profits is immediately labeled as redistribution of wealth and socialism, and the moral outrage turns to moral panic. And Ronald Reagan is elected President.

I would like to see Pres. Biden, Sen. Sanders, and of course Sen. Warren, develop a plan to curb some of the excesses of unfettered capitalism, just to prove that discussion is possible, and even healthy. The hard line capitalists like to pretend that any restriction of capitalism at all brings on Armageddon. What if it doesn’t spell doom, but salvation?

August 25, 2022

An English major considers loan forgiveness

Following are economic thoughts from an English major, so you can judge how many academic credits in economic subjects I have: none. Still, I listen to NPR reporting on economics all the time, and have life experiences too. So, here's my take on how loan forgiveness will affect the economy.

First, I'd like to point out that when most of us say we own a car or a house, what we mean is that the bank owns the house and the financing company owns the car. This is only fair: if we encounter financial difficulties, the financer can repo the car and the bank can foreclose on the house. When we use our credit cards, there's often less tangible stuff to repossess. How is the bank going to repossess the restaurant meal we charged to our card, or the vacation in Acapulco? The bank could try repossessing the stuff we bought, but the bank wants our washer even less than they want the house or the car. The banks' profits sink like a stone when they have to repossess something. What they really want is for us to pay off the loan at the interest rate we agreed to. That will make them happy. Or perhaps they want to sell our active loan and make a profit from that. The only thing I'm confident of here is that banks and financing companies do nothing that's not profitable.

Now, What does all this have to do with student loans? Student loans are used to pay for education. Just try repossessing somebody's education, and see how far you get. Banks are taking a bigger risk with financing education loans, because we really can't pick people's brains. That's only a metaphor for voluntarily sharing your thoughts. Meanwhile, to the economy at large, the average person is of primary importance, because 70% of our economy is powered by consumers. What this means is that the Economy needs us to spend as much money as we can possibly afford, so that all their industries will thrive and grow. When we hear it reported that the Economy "grew" by X percent, that means lots of us spent money on things we needed or wanted, and our noses are still above the flood waters of insolvency. So, it is our economic duty to spend as much disposable income as we can for the greater glory of Capitalism and Our Country.

Perhaps you can see where I'm headed with this: when we forgive educational debt, we boost the economy. A fellow DUer mentions that their son may be able to get married now with his lingering education debt forgiven. Wedding industry, take note! Mortgage industry and child product industries, celebrate! I am assuming here that Pres. Biden is going to pay off the students' debtors, the banks, from tax revenues. If this happens, truly everybody wins, especially the overstocked retailers who need to sell some stuff pronto.