Month: December 2019

War criminals, Rudy and Falwell party down with Trump at yet another Studio 54 party

Never let it be said that Donald Trump lets a little ignominy and disgrace get in the way of a good time and money in his pocket. Last Wednesday he became the third president in American history to be impeached. By Saturday he was throwing down at the Mar-a-Lago Studio 54 Party, alongside his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. It must have been reminiscent of the good old days when Trump and his former lawyer Roy Cohn used to frequent the famous New York club on 54th Street in its 1970s heyday, only this time around Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol were replaced by war criminal Eddie Gallagher and evangelical leader Franklin Graham.

These parties seem to be a regular theme at Trump’s Palm Beach club. Back in February of 2018, he had to make an official visit to see some first responders and Parkland shooting victims at the Broward County sheriff’s office, but then he and Melania hightailed it out of there to, yes, a Studio 54 party at Mar-a-Lago. Perhaps he finds these shindigs comforting when he’s feeling stressed. Or maybe he just enjoys remembering how he cost the owner of Studio 54 and his investors a million dollars once by failing to disclose that a property he had sold them was in bankruptcy. Life was much simpler when all he had to worry about was outrunning frustrated bankers and angry women. Now he’s trying to outrun the U.S. Congress and the verdict of history, which is undoubtedly not quite as much fun.

Trump didn’t bother meeting any boring gun-violence victims before the party this year. Instead, he appeared at a big gathering of the Trumpen Youth at the Turning Point USA yearly meeting. Giuliani had warmed up the crowd the day before with a new call and response:

Giuliani said, “this is why they don’t like what I’m doing in Ukraine. Because you know who was making big bucks in Ukraine?” 

“Biden!” the audience replied.

I think we can assume we’ll be hearing that one again.

Trump himself was introduced by none other than Rush Limbaugh, who captured the hearts and minds of the young people in the audience with a very important message:

Rush Limbaugh, introducing ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ at Turning Point USA Student Action Summit: “Climate change is a hoax. Don’t believe it.” pic.twitter.com/Wxta0jwavj

— Toluse Olorunnipa (@ToluseO) December 21, 2019

They all believe him, I’m sure. And that’s very sad. That cynical fiend (who knows better) will be long gone and their kids will pay the price.

Then Trump took the stage and gave his standard Festivus airing of grievances, whining and wailing about the impeachment and the unfairness of everything, especially the scourge of — wind?

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Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Democrats are actually being savvy. Who would have thought it?

I’ve been wondering from the beginning whether or not the Democrats would be smart enough to keep the impeachment question open even if they pushed through the Ukraine articles, if only to be able to maintain the legal argument in for the cases that are wending their way through the courts. After all, there is nothing in the constitution that says he can’t be impeached again.

It looks as though they are keeping their options open:

The House Judiciary Committee held open the possibility Monday of recommending additional articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump as it pressed anew for the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn.

They don’t really need McGahn, of course. He testified under oath to Mueller. I suspect they want to test this immunity business once and for all.

Interestingly, the DOJ claiming that the impeachment is over in order to moot the case refutes this inane idea that the impeachment never happened. Somebody had better warn Bill Barr that Dear Leader will be very mad if he ever gets wind of it.

I am impressed that these Democrats are playing hardball. Trump is being driven mad by impeachment. His defenders don’t know which way to turn.

Lookie here:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that he was not ruling out calling witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial — but indicated he was in no hurry to seek new testimony either — as lawmakers remain at an impasse over the form of the trial by the GOP-controlled Senate.

Ok. Mitch. You take your time.  Lol.

I have no idea how this is going to end. But the Dems aren’t doing the Big El Foldo which is very surprising. Merry Christmas to us.

It’s Christmas eve and we should all take a break and leave politics alone for the next couple of days (unless, of course, something really exciting happens — which it might!)

If you have your credit card out and you feel like putting a little something in the stocking before you sign off, I’d be most grateful.


This is an exhausting time and I know everyone is sick of it. But we’ve got a hell of year ahead of us and I could use your help to keep this old blog afloat.


And thanks again for reading and contributing all thee years. I am more grateful than you know. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

A decade to put behind us
by Tom Sullivan

Nick Martin’s retelling of the last decade of North Carolina politics for the New Republic is a piece I might have written if I were not so occupied trying to affect repairs. Martin’s Twitter bio shows North Carolina roots. We know a couple people in common. He’s likely seen plenty.

It is a sad affair when North Carolina and Wisconsin can compete for which is most abused by Republican “power-hoarding” since the last census. The 2010 elections that gave Republicans control of North Carolina’s legislature for the first time in a hundred years brought with it a Trumpian thirst for payback long delayed. That scenario played out in enough other states to place a majority of legislative chambers firmly in Republican hands in the course of a day.

Martin ticks off a list of North Carolina players whose plotting shaped the last decade. But national Democrats’ complacency contributed as well, and progressives’ media-drive fixation with federal contests that left the states vulnerable to the takeover:

… the Democratic Party’s inability to truly reckon with its many shortcomings—notably its lack of funding for down-ballot races in these state legislature races—helped hand the keys of dozens of state governments back to Republicans. Mo Elleithee, a former Democratic National Committee spokesperson, admitted as much to NPR in the weeks before the 2016 election. “Democrats just have not played that game as well as Republicans have,” Elleithee said. “Part of that is resources. The Republicans have more money that they pump into those races. And just the lack of focus on these races has been part of the problem.”

The result has been a decade of revanchism: broad attacks on the right to vote, on the rights of women, minorities and immigrants; stonewalling efforts to fight climate change; undermining public education; denying Medicaid expansion across much of the old Confederacy; passage of “bathroom bills” in NC and Texas; and seemingly endless court fights, most of which Republicans lost. But they are working on that with the help of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Federalist Society.

It is a week too soon for New Year’s predictions. But not for giving thanks. As bleak as things sometimes seem, I’m thankful to feel neither helpless nor hopeless heading into 2020. Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I’m looking forward to the fight. It is not as much idealism as self-interest. The cure for feeling like political roadkill is not resignation, but persistent, defiant participation. Even when you get run over, you don’t feel like a victim anymore.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to write here every morning. It keeps me focused and sane. Knowing there is a community of readers and thinkers out there (still) helps one get out of bed every morning.

And I’m thankful for the indomitable Digby who, from her redoubt in Southern California, watches far more cable news than I could tolerate and keeps a close watch on mischief-makers. She has the beach for staying grounded. I have the mountains.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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Old Blue Dogs had better learn new tricks

This is what happens when the Democrats seek out wingnuts to run for congress. They are bad candidates in more ways than one:

Jeff Van Drew panicked.

Last week, the first-term conservative Democrat polled his district about his opposition to impeachment. The results were very one-sided. Over 70 percent of Democratic primary voters would be less likely to support him if he voted against impeaching Donald Trump.

Van Drew immediately went silent and was unreachable by allies in the party. The next day, he was meeting with Donald Trump at the White House to discuss switching parties. Within 48 hours, word had leaked out about his decision and, within a week, Van Drew was on cable news pledging his “undying support” to a president whom he voted against 93 percent of the time.

A longtime state senator from South Jersey with a reputation for being a “right-leaning moderate” in Trenton, Van Drew “was used to getting some backlash from members of his own party who didn’t think he was sufficiently liberal,” said one New Jersey operative who worked with him in the past. But the operative said “this whole process started happening” when Van Drew became one of two Democrats to vote against opening the impeachment inquiry on October 31. Advisers had urged Van Drew to vote yes to keep his options open, but the New Jersey representative barged ahead.

This guy is an idiot. He went to the White House and declared his undying support for Donald Trump and he represents a swing district.

To my point above, the Democrats have to realize that the old Blue Dog days are over. Democratic voters are just as aggressive and angry as the right and they aren’t going to put up with this crap any more than the old right-winger would. This will be a battle and defaulting to GOP isn’t going to work anymore.

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Thank you for reading and supporting me all these years. I am truly grateful — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

The CPAC Model for a new generation. Mean, crude and dumb. Just like the last generation.

In this post, I mentioned the Trumpen Youth conference down in Florida where conservative icons, Rudy Giuliani, Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump appeared before their adoring fans. This report from the conference shows that the new Millennial and Gen Z wingnut generation aren’t any more clever than their Gen X and Boomer forebears were when they were their age.

Considering how vibrant and creative this new generation is generally, they’re just sad:

A few times speakers said something so wild it stopped me dead in my tracks. Like when Ann Coulter compared Ilhan Omar to Josef Mengele. Or when Dinesh D’souza said, “To me democratic socialism differs from socialism kind of in the way that gang rape differs from individual rape.”
[…]
“The left can’t meme,” he said. “We’re having more fun than them. We’re way funnier. We’re more awesome.”

On big screens at the side of the stage was a slideshow of conservative memes to underline Johnson’s point. The memes included:

• Baby Yoda wearing a TPUSA shirt and hat, with a laughing Kanye in the background. 

• The painting American Gothic but with Greta Thunberg and David Hogg’s faces photoshopped on to it. 

• A photo of AOC looking confused, captioned “So am I the president now?”

More than once, Johnson paused mid sentence because he was laughing at the memes too hard.

“They don’t want to speak your language, they don’t understand you.” Johnson, 32, said. “They don’t understand us. The way that we communicate.”

They’ve always spoken in this cult-like language and told themselves that they are so clever and funny that the humorless libs just don’t get the joke.  As I said, sad.

This has nothing to do with Trump. Young American conservatives have always been pathetic.

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Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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Scammers scamming a scammer
by Tom Sullivan

“I never understood wind,” the president began before launching into another incoherent monologue on wind turbines.

On construction sites across the South of my youth, such monologues from co-workers began, “Now, I’ll tell you what’s the truth….” You knew what came next would be a doozy.

“I never understood wind,” Donald Trump told the Turning Point USA conference Saturday. “I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody.”

Here we go. The rest was word salad.

Trump’s puffing his encyclopedic knowledge of all things has brought him the allegiance of millions of credulous followers. So credulous, in fact, that he is not the only scammer scamming them. Dark money groups unaffiliated with his campaign have appropriated Trump’s logo and likeness to raise $46 million so far that is not going into his campaign:

The groups mimic Trump’s brand in the way they look and feel. They borrow the president’s Twitter avatar on Facebook pages, use clips of Trump’s voice in robocalls asking for “an emergency contribution to the campaign” and, in some cases, have been affiliated with former Trump aides, such as onetime deputy campaign manager David Bossie. But most are spending little money to help the president win in 2020, POLITICO found.

The unofficial pro-Trump boosters number in the hundreds and are alarming the actual operatives charged with reelecting the president: They suck up money that Trump aides think should be going to the campaign or the Republican National Committee, and they muddy the Trump campaign’s message and make it harder to accumulate new donors, Trump allies say.

“There’s nothing we can do to stop them,” said Kelly Sadler, a spokeswoman for America First, the one super PAC authorized by Trump. “This is a problem for the campaign, as well as us, as well as for the RNC.”

And for the country in general. Keeping critical-thinking education out of public schools works for predators until they have competitors. Most of the money comes from donors giving $200 or less.

Much of the money raised by these groups goes to “management services” and fundraising expenses. A growing number of such outfits hawk “MAGA merchandise alongside photos and conservative memes, videos and photos.” The Presidential Coalition, a group run by former Trump deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, began spending significant sums to support Trump only after an Axios reported it spent only 3 percent on political activity.

If he weren’t so busy “counterpunching” (as supporters call flinging insults via Twitter), Trump might free up enough attention span to get angry about this.

Michael Lewis, author of “Moneyball” and “The Big Short,” wrote in “The Fifth Risk” that Trump got plenty angry when he found out Chris Christie was raising money to pay transition staff:

Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my fucking money! What the fuck is this?

Trump really dislikes others making money off his brand.

Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my fucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: Fuck the law. I don’t give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition.

Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition.

Forty-seven million dollars is a lot of staff, mister president. You should pay attention more.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If would like to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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Last week was a year

What I mean by that is that this news cycle has gotten so surreal that I’m reeling. I’ll bet you are too. In fact, there’s so much that I can’t even write about it all and we usually do at least 8 posts a day here.

Here’s a partial list of stories from last week:

Trump impeached:


This is obviously and correctly the big headline. I’m sure by now you know all about it.

Oh and TRUMP IMPEACHED!

Trial standoff:

Pelosi decides to play hardball and let’s Trump twist in the wind over the holidays while McConnell worries that more Ukrainian shoes are going to drop. And they are dropping every day.

ACA ruling:

The big case potentially outlawing Obamacare all together got a district court ruling that probably means it won’t get decided by the Supreme Court until after the election. But there is an outside chance that they could take it up right away which means it would come down right in the middle of the election.

Either way, it’s the scariest case in the courts right now.

Putin planted the Ukraine conspiracy theory in Trump’s empty head:

The big scoop from the Washington Post which revealed that a number of former administration officials believe that Putin is the one who planted the Ukrainian conspiracy theory in Trump’s head and that is why he insists on meeting in private with him without any record of the meeting.

Personally, this has been obvious to me ever since he came out of the meeting with Putin in Helsinki and immediately started incoherently babbling “the server, the server…”

Rudy and Ukraine:

This should have been blaring headlines. Giuliani has been going on television, talking about Ukraine and confessing to committing more crimes. There is some suspicious evidence that Rudy is being paid by Russian money to do it.

I’m not kidding. This is real. And its been lost in the cacophony.

McConnell proclaims that he plans to violate his oath:

The Majority Leader who is busy setting the rules for the trial of the president went on Fox and made it clear that he is doing everything he can to ensure that the trial is a perfunctory acquittal and that he himself has no intention of being impartial, thereby announcing right out in the open that he plans to violate the oath he is required to take.

Trump Letter to Pelosi:

If he country survives this document will go into the Smithsonian as an example of the time we had a genuinely mentally ill president in the White House.  Even more shocking, it turns out that he and his closest adviser, the white supremacist Stephen Miller, worked on that crazy thing for days!

185 judges:

That’s how many unqualified, right-wing judges McConnell has had confirmed during Trump’s reign. They were busy confirming them during the impeachment vote.

Grover Norquist always said — all you need is a president who can hold a pen. McConnell got one.

Christianity Today:

Billy Graham’s magazine came out for Trump’s impeachment and caused a gigantic brouhaha among Trump’s most fervent fans. New polling since the impeachment shows that about 40% of evangelicals agree with Christianity Today. (Most of them are probably black evangelicals but that number suggests that at least 25% of white evangelicals are actually Bible believing Christians rather than Trump cultists as well.)


Democratic primary debate:

The field is narrowing and the latest debate was actually worth watching. Aside from some natural sparring and clever bon mots, it was a substantive debate that threw us all back into an earlier time when what we used to call politics was serious, adult business. It couldn’t be clearer that any one of the those Democrats should be able to beat Donald Trump hands down.  (Notice I said “should” not “would” — unfortunately.)

Trump’s looney Michigan rally:

Trump held a rally during the impeachment vote. And he was disgusting, most memorably degrading  Congresswoman Debbie Dingall for voting for it after he had thought he’d bought her vote by allowing her husband, the longest serving congressman in history, to have full honors when he died.

Then he said John Dingell might be in hell.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders reappears in the most Huckabee way possible:

Speaking of disgusting, the former press secretary showed she is chip off the old block by making fun of Joe Biden for referring to his stutter in the debate.  Like her mentor Trump, mocking the disabled like a cruel seven year old bully just comes naturally to her.  She wasn’t the only one.

One Democrat defects to the GOP

One freshman Democrat, Jeff Van Drew from New Jersey, decided that he just couldn’t vote to impeach Trump and when he found out that his constituents were really, really pissed off about that, he switched parties. Unlike Ukrainian President Zelensky, he got an invitation to the White House and he knew just what to do — he literally pledged his “undying support” to President Trump. Of course, he later denied saying it, even though there’s video. A perfect Trumpie.

Matt Bevin shows Trump how its done

The defeated sociopathic Republican Governor of Kentucky pardoned a bunch of hardcore criminal whose families gave him money. One of them is a man who raped a 9 year old girl.  Bevin says the little girl was lying.

The budget passed

The government agreed to avoid a shutdown with a gigantic spending bill and nobody really knows what’s in it because there’s so much going on.

Trump’s USMCA passed

They impeached the president and then passed the little NAFTA rewrite that Trump calls the greatest trade deal the world has ever known. I had been critical of the decision since it gives Trump a victory even as he’s being impeached but as it turns out nobody really noticed.

More military spending for no good reason:

We now have yet another branch of the military “The Space Force.”  I know. We should just be grateful he didn’t insist on calling it The Trump Force.

They also added yet more billions to the bloated military budget. And Trump continues to insist that he’s a peace-loving, isolationist America First president.

He must fear an invasion by Martians.


Carly speaks out:

Carly Fiorina said Trump should be impeached. But she didn’t rule out voting for him.  She’s a Republican, through and through.

The British election:

This was actually the week before but people are still analyzing it. Boris Johnson won a huge majority and Brexit is happening. Everyone thinks it shows that the Democrats can’t beat Trump. This is incorrect. Johnson isn’t Trump, the Democratic Party isn’t Labor and America isn’t Britain.  Nonetheless, that day brought back that awful feeling from the morning of November 9th, 2016. I didn’t like it.

I’m sure there is something I missed. Those are just off the top of my head.

You are undoubtedly feeling overwhelmed as am I.  We’ve had terrible crises that were much worse than this in the past. We aren’t at war. Most people are working. There isn’t blood in the streets.

However, I don’t know if we’ve ever had so many different small and medium crises happening at once, even as huge crises loom over us threatening the future, Trump’s re-election being one of them. It’s is almost impossible to absorb it.

My contributors and I are here trying to sort it all out seven days a week. For us, writing about it is a form of therapy in itself and we hope it provides a little bit of understanding and, perhaps, sense of solidarity to those of you who stop by to read it every day.

If that’s of some value to you I hope you’ll throw a little something in the kitty over this holiday season so that we can keep it going during what is going to be a crazy political year ahead.

And thanks for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am very, very grateful. — d

Happy Hollandaise!

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The Christmas Cauliflower Miracle

By Spocko

Mrs. Spocko lost her wallet today. We retraced her steps. On the way to the farmers market where she thought she lost it there was a rainbow. I said, “The end of the rainbow is right where it will be!” And it was!

A woman at the organic produce stall she was shopping at found it and turned it into the market’s information booth. All the contents were untouched. A Christmas miracle!

We went back to thank the woman at the stall who turned it in. She was happy too. We bought an extra large cauliflower from her.

On the way back we stopped at the bar by the farmers market where we had asked if someone had turned it in. We told the bartender we found the wallet and she said, “It restores your faith in humanity.”

I thought, “What does that comment actually mean?” If someone says that a certain action “restores their faith in humanity” it means they are holding onto an idea that humans are terrible and bad acts are normal.  The returning of the wallet restored the idea that humans are good and good acts are the norm. I understand the benefits to thinking people are no damn good. It’s fun to be the cynic.

I actually have a lot of faith in humanity–especially when it comes to people returning lost items. Maybe it’s because it’s happened to so many people. They think, “That could have been me and my wallet!” So they do what they hope someone would do for them in the same situation.

For me the “Christmas miracle” was the reminder of the power of human empathy. Someone put themselves in another’s shoes and helped. It not only made the person being helped feel good, the person who helped another also felt good.

Michael Schur, the creator of the groundbreaking sit-com about ethics, The Good Place, talked about the thinking behind the show and people’s actions. He was at Starbucks and realized he was waiting until the barista saw him tip.

“I wanted the credit.’ You want that person to see that you’re such an amazing benevolent person that you tip 30 cents into a tip jar, and it just sorts of struck me as funny that there were things that you just want credit for. You want to feel like you’re getting the points for your action. You feel like if no one sees it, it feels like it didn’t happen.

And the truth is whether you get credit for it or not shouldn’t be the point of a good action; you should just do it because it’s good.”

I’ve always hated the phrase, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Why do people say it? I think it’s because they are looking for a reason to NOT do a good deed, especially one where there is no reward. “What’s the point of doing a good deed if it comes back to bite you?”

Schur argued that oftentimes individuals think and act selfishly, but that people caring about the well-being of one another isn’t just helpful in making the world a better place — it’s necessary in making sure society runs effectively.

Sometimes we do the right thing knowing that it will make us feel good and we will be rewarded for it. Other times we do the right thing knowing we won’t get rewarded for it. Whether you are rewarded or not shouldn’t be the point of a good action; you should just do it because it’s good.

Schur said so many fundamental problems in America are from people thinking, ‘How can I win? How can I do be better? How can I defeat other people or rise above other people?’” He added, “And they have a fundamental belief that what life on Earth is about is competition and if someone else is winning, that means they lose.”  People who look at life that way wonder why anyone would do anything if they didn’t benefit.

I see good people

This season I want to acknowledge the good things people do and the good things people try to do. That’s another point of the show, trying to be a better person, regardless of how you try, is better than not attempting to improve at all.

Besides one individual human helping another, some people want to do good things for lots of people. This is wonderful, but this makes certain people nervous, “What’s their angle? What’s in it for them?”

I understand why people want to help others, especially if they have ever put themselves in the shoes of other humans who are in pain. They think, “That could be me. How can I help?”  When I get cynical about the possibility of good things happening for a lot of people I realize it’s because I’m trying to protect myself from feeling hopeful about a good outcome.  But having this attitude means I’m always expecting bad things to happen and for people to behave badly. That’s not the humanity I see.

Today, at the end of a rainbow, I saw a simple act of humans helping each other. When we care about the well-being of one another things can get better for all of us. This coming year I’m going to give myself permission to be excited and hopeful about all the good things people can do for others.  

Merry Cauliflower Christmas to you all.

LLAP
Spocko

Cross posted to Spocko’s Brain

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If would like to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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Democratic women are overwhelmingly pissed off

There’s a lot to unpack in the crosstabs of this new post-impeachment poll by Politico-Morning Consult. But one thing really stuck out at me. Across the board Democratic women are the most vociferously opposed to Trump and most enthusiastic for his impeachment and removal.  We’re talking 90% plus!

Democrats generally agree with those thing but not with the same intensity or the near unanimity.

Most women in this country are Democrats and most of them loathe Donald Trump with every fiber of their beings. I hope the party understands this, I really do. This is where the intensity of opposition resides.

(This article in about the nation’s relationship with an abusive president, may explain why women are more tuned in to what he’s doing.)

In 2018, the gender gap was huge:

It’s a sad fact that white non-college educated women are still Republicans but the movement away from the party by college educated white women is pretty profound. Combined with African American women, who form the backbone of the party, and the other racial minorities you have a large coalition of very pissed off women.

Let’s just say it — if it weren’t for women, Trump would be re-elected handily. 51% of all men and 60% of white men voted Republican in 2018. And it’s not just the old guys, unfortunately. The generation gap between younger women and younger men is also wide, which is kind of depressing. (Younger men are still a lot more liberal than conservative, though, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.)

Trump loves his base and has done nothing to expand it. In fact, the GOP is shrinking. This from just before the midterms tells the tale:

The University of Virginia Center for Politics detailed party registration last week and found that there were nearly 12 million more registered Democrats than Republicans across 31 states and the District of Columbia.

The analysis also found that 40 percent of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, while only 29 percent are Republicans.

I would not be surprised if those overall numbers have gotten even worse for the Republican party.

Donald Trump has a full-blown cult backing him and even if their numbers are shrinking, they are intense in their devotion. But there are just as many extremely intense Democrats, especially women, lining up against them and they are just as motivated.  2018 showed they can get ‘er done.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

No “both sides” or “pizzazz” analysis here

by digby

When it comes to media criticism, nobody does it better than Margaret Sullivan, formerly of the NY Times and now at the Washington Post. As expected, her analysis of the impeachment coverage is right on. Quoting a woman named Carol, she first points out first the obvious point that the central problem we face is that a good number of people just no longer believe in facts. Then she reminds her readers of a test she laid out for the media to deal with that:

Their test was to cover the impeachment proceedings without getting mired in the usual traps: false equivalence; distraction by presidential stunt; rampant speculation; the use of squishy language; and what I called Barr-Letter Syndrome, a reference to the way the mainstream press allowed Attorney General William Barr last spring to mischaracterize the findings of the Mueller report.

Now that Trump has been impeached, it’s not possible to say that the mainstream media has earned anything close to an A.

Nor did they flunk out. 

There was a ton of coverage. But as Sullivan points out it wasn’t easy to get to the facts, much less the truth though all that verbiage.

We try to do what we can here to follow the news cycle and do some analysis you might not always hear everywhere else. There’s a lot to keep track of. But I can guarantee you will never see me or any of the contributors writing  fatuous “both sides” analysis or “pizzazz” theater criticism.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!