I'd like to think that there was a staff meeting after this morning's show at which an edict was laid down: We never book this guy again.Conversation
But I'm not betting the mortgage on it.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Jerry Falwell, Jr. dons the tinfoil hat
. . .and displays some rapid-fire cognitive dissonance. He goes from nothing-to-see-here to an assertion of microbe warfare in thirty seconds:
But I'm not betting the mortgage on it.
But I'm not betting the mortgage on it.
The smallest of the small
This statement by the VSG rings pretty hollow . . .
. . . when you considered it was followed in short order by this:
There is only one thing in the entire universe the Very Stable Genius is concerned with: the glorification of Donald Trump.
Conversation
. . . when you considered it was followed in short order by this:
·
Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record. Our response is one of the best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the highest on record. His was lowest!
There is only one thing in the entire universe the Very Stable Genius is concerned with: the glorification of Donald Trump.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Thoughts on the VSG's endorsement of Tommy Tuberville in the Georgia Senate race
Look, Tuberville seems like a fine person with credentials that would recommend him for an entry into politics. His football coaching career was distinguished. He's quite involved with his church and has contributed time and other resources to charitable causes.
So the argument could be made that Trump, in weighing all the considerations, concluded that a fresh face on the scene was the way for the GOP to proceed.
Still, when one considers that Sessions was the first Senator to come out forthrightly and full-throatedly for Trump and, as Noah Rothman puts it, "[give] Trump establishment credibility when no one else in the party would," and how Sessions's first television ads in his campaign to regain his former Senate seat was a shameless shill (including the donning of a MAGA cap), even after he'd been humiliated repeatedly by the VSG, it points up how one little lapse in loyalty, in Sessions's case, recusing himself from the Justice Department's investigation of the 2016 campaign, saying, "I should not be investigating a campaign I had a role in," can sever the bond between sycophant and narcissist.
I obviously can't say for sure, but it seems to me that doling out punishment for insufficient ring-kissing had to be a factor, Tuberville's qualifications notwithstanding.
So the argument could be made that Trump, in weighing all the considerations, concluded that a fresh face on the scene was the way for the GOP to proceed.
Still, when one considers that Sessions was the first Senator to come out forthrightly and full-throatedly for Trump and, as Noah Rothman puts it, "[give] Trump establishment credibility when no one else in the party would," and how Sessions's first television ads in his campaign to regain his former Senate seat was a shameless shill (including the donning of a MAGA cap), even after he'd been humiliated repeatedly by the VSG, it points up how one little lapse in loyalty, in Sessions's case, recusing himself from the Justice Department's investigation of the 2016 campaign, saying, "I should not be investigating a campaign I had a role in," can sever the bond between sycophant and narcissist.
I obviously can't say for sure, but it seems to me that doling out punishment for insufficient ring-kissing had to be a factor, Tuberville's qualifications notwithstanding.
Finally, some initiatives to counter that insidious 1619 Project
A reassuring development:
Woodson's project has some heavy hitters among its participants:The Bob Woodson Center and Washington Examiner is offering an alternative to The New York Times and Pulitzer Center’s “1619 Project.” Theirs is aptly named “The 1776 Initiative.”Responses to the 1619 Project are popping up everywhere. Countless conservative scholars have weighed in, both Civil War and founding-era historians have teamed up to cry foul, Hillsdale College is offering an online course to counter the narrative, the Heritage Foundation has compiled a trove of essays titled “1776: A Celebration of America,” and the National Association of Scholars has started a “1620 Project.”
The 1776 Initiative is headed by Bob Woodson, a former civil rights activist, head of the National Urban League Department of Criminal Justice, and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The 1776 Initiative also has a plethora of well-known and respected contributors, such as syndicated columnist Clarence Page, Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution, Glenn Loury, professor of economics and social science at Brown University, and many more.
The Woodson Center press release describes the contributors as a “consortium of top black academics, columnists, social service providers, business leaders and clergy from across America who are committed to telling the complete history of America and black Americans from 1776 to present.”I like the way the Washington Examiner went about announcing it:
The Washington Examiner announced the 1776 Initiative in honor of famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ birthday, saying the contributors share an aversion to the “infantilization of black America or the denial of blacks’ agency throughout their history” and a distaste for “pseudo scholarship” that reduces American history to a history of racism and that consigns black Americans to the permanent status of victim.I know the Human Rights Commission in the city where I live has the insinuating of the 1619 Project into out local school curriculum on its front burner. If the school board has any integrity, it will insist that 1776 Initiative materials be included wherever 1619 Project content is considered.
Monday, March 9, 2020
A snapshot of a day that will be talked about for some time to come
Some readers know that some of the bonus content I've offered to the LITD Patreon community consists of compilations of archived posts in various categories, going back to this site's earliest days (2012). It's provided illuminating glimpses into fairly recent history, allowing me (and you in the community) the opportunity to revisit key moments from which chains of development were launched. (It's also given me the chance to observe how my blogging style has evolved. I've backed away from certain rhetorical devices as the entire dynamic between sociopolitical forces has shifted - and a major new force (Trumpism) has emerged.)
My perspective on some of those early posts may have changed, but I haven't come across any that I regret writing. I was giving my most honest assessment of particular points in time, and those points in time have proven to have lasting significance. Those posts have a kind of time-capsule significance.
It's in that spirit that it seems to me a lasting documentation of the lay of the land in the second week of March 2020 is in order. So much is happening today that it can make one's head swim.
I haven't had much to say about the coronavirus, mainly because people with far more expertise in the public health realm are still speaking as if the jury is out. Statistics show that other viruses, including the common flu -which is a broad-brush way to speak about a range of microbes - kill far more people proportionally than this virus has so far. Those recommending a balance between prudential precaution and continuance of normal daily life seem to be the adults in the room at the moment.
As I say, I'm no public health authority, but it seems plain that Donald Trump's attempts to convey the message that everything is under control are looking increasingly flimsy:
And it's true that while concerns about global supply-chain disruption due to this virus are a significant factor in the stock market free fall we're seeing, it's also being driven by a fissure between OPEC and another oil producer that is normally its ally, namely, Russia. Saudi Arabia is dealing with the problem of over-production by initiating a price war.
Elevating domestic politics to the level of these possible calamities may seem inappropriate generally speaking, but we are well into an election year, and the stakes involved in the circumstances that are appearing demand our consideration.
Trump's cocktail of bombast and denial is, of course, unhelpful. The nature of what the alternative to his antics is going to be has changed in the last couple of weeks, though.
There are two left standing on the Democrat side. Aside from the matter of that party asking itself, given the primacy of identity politics to its raison d'être, how it came to the juncture at which the choice would be between two straight white men in their late 70s, there are problems of how either would be perceived by the overall voting public once we've arrived at the general-election phase of the current cycle.
Bernie Sanders's marked decline in electability stems from the Democrats' realization that his explicit proclamation of what all the original lineup of candidates, to one degree or another, had stood for, was beyond palatable to most Americans. There are, of course, those of the opinion, that his overt radicalism is exactly what Democrats will need to defeat Trump, but Super Tuesday's outcome would seem to indicate that this is a niche outlook.
And there seems to be a hint of desperation in the recent spate of endorsements for Biden. Does anyone really think that Kamala Harris's little video oozed sincerity, particularly given their raw moments of interaction on the debate stage? Not only does Biden make a tepid standard-bearer for 2020 progressivism, the question of whether his bodily frame - particularly the command center within his skull - is up to the rigors of the last eight months of a presidential campaign now looms large.
Again, as in the case of the coronavirus, I'm far from able to conclusively assess someone's mental fitness, but evidence that Biden's is not at its peak is piling up.
If he really is cognitively fading, what does it say about Democrats, and that strange sliver of conservative Trump skepticism that finds Biden a viable alternative, that they might be willing to put a man through the coming ordeal when he should be resting comfortably at home? Is that really any way to rescue a nation from the present incoherence, and the cult following that sustains it?
So that is the LITD snapshot of where things stand in post-America mid-afternoon March 9, 2020.
We'll muddle through in some fashion. There's a sense, though, that developments are occurring that will have ramifications for our range of options on a number of levels of daily life for at least the intermediate term.
My perspective on some of those early posts may have changed, but I haven't come across any that I regret writing. I was giving my most honest assessment of particular points in time, and those points in time have proven to have lasting significance. Those posts have a kind of time-capsule significance.
It's in that spirit that it seems to me a lasting documentation of the lay of the land in the second week of March 2020 is in order. So much is happening today that it can make one's head swim.
I haven't had much to say about the coronavirus, mainly because people with far more expertise in the public health realm are still speaking as if the jury is out. Statistics show that other viruses, including the common flu -which is a broad-brush way to speak about a range of microbes - kill far more people proportionally than this virus has so far. Those recommending a balance between prudential precaution and continuance of normal daily life seem to be the adults in the room at the moment.
As I say, I'm no public health authority, but it seems plain that Donald Trump's attempts to convey the message that everything is under control are looking increasingly flimsy:
Fissures between the White House and national health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have begun to expand as the coronavirus pandemic spreads to more American states, creating dissonance between President Donald Trump and the professionals tasked with containing the virus further.The two sides have grown increasingly distrustful of one another, people inside both the CDC and the White House say, as officials on each side question decisions that either appear designed to downplay the growing crisis or to generate further concern.The cracks are falling along predictable lines. While health officials have sought to present a realistic and cautious picture of the national situation, Trump and his political allies are hoping to relay an altogether different message: that the virus is contained, Americans face little risk, and life should proceed as normal.
And it's true that while concerns about global supply-chain disruption due to this virus are a significant factor in the stock market free fall we're seeing, it's also being driven by a fissure between OPEC and another oil producer that is normally its ally, namely, Russia. Saudi Arabia is dealing with the problem of over-production by initiating a price war.
Elevating domestic politics to the level of these possible calamities may seem inappropriate generally speaking, but we are well into an election year, and the stakes involved in the circumstances that are appearing demand our consideration.
Trump's cocktail of bombast and denial is, of course, unhelpful. The nature of what the alternative to his antics is going to be has changed in the last couple of weeks, though.
There are two left standing on the Democrat side. Aside from the matter of that party asking itself, given the primacy of identity politics to its raison d'être, how it came to the juncture at which the choice would be between two straight white men in their late 70s, there are problems of how either would be perceived by the overall voting public once we've arrived at the general-election phase of the current cycle.
Bernie Sanders's marked decline in electability stems from the Democrats' realization that his explicit proclamation of what all the original lineup of candidates, to one degree or another, had stood for, was beyond palatable to most Americans. There are, of course, those of the opinion, that his overt radicalism is exactly what Democrats will need to defeat Trump, but Super Tuesday's outcome would seem to indicate that this is a niche outlook.
And there seems to be a hint of desperation in the recent spate of endorsements for Biden. Does anyone really think that Kamala Harris's little video oozed sincerity, particularly given their raw moments of interaction on the debate stage? Not only does Biden make a tepid standard-bearer for 2020 progressivism, the question of whether his bodily frame - particularly the command center within his skull - is up to the rigors of the last eight months of a presidential campaign now looms large.
Again, as in the case of the coronavirus, I'm far from able to conclusively assess someone's mental fitness, but evidence that Biden's is not at its peak is piling up.
If he really is cognitively fading, what does it say about Democrats, and that strange sliver of conservative Trump skepticism that finds Biden a viable alternative, that they might be willing to put a man through the coming ordeal when he should be resting comfortably at home? Is that really any way to rescue a nation from the present incoherence, and the cult following that sustains it?
So that is the LITD snapshot of where things stand in post-America mid-afternoon March 9, 2020.
We'll muddle through in some fashion. There's a sense, though, that developments are occurring that will have ramifications for our range of options on a number of levels of daily life for at least the intermediate term.
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Barney & Clyde - Season 2, Episode 5
Clyde and I looked at each other as we put a wrap on this one and knew we'd just recorded a B&C for the ages.
So welcome back to the Libation Station. Pull up a stool, pour yourself something bracing and join us as we discuss:
1. Clyde's Report on Libertarian Presidential Candidates who attended the Libertarian Party of Indiana's 2020 convention.
2. The New Right via Oren Cass presents the American Compass Project
3. The Dark Horse and the Dropouts: Biden blows into first pace when Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar, and a wishy washy Liz Warren drop out before the voters can decide. What did Biden promise the dropouts?
4. He Really Said That!? The newest rantings from the Very Stable Genius himself... Donald J Trump.
Plus Patreon only bonus content!
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Going off the rails
Some choice utterings from the Very Stable Genius over the past few days:
This:
And then this:
I find it unsettling that it has come to this.
This:
And his appearance on the site of the Tennessee tornado damage.Daniel Dale@ddale8Trump on why he wants to leave people on the ship: “I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.” And: “They would like to quarantine people. Now when they do that our numbers are going to go up.”
And then this:
On Thursday, Pence visited Washington state's Emergency Operations Center. Washington is seen as the epicenter of the coronavirus within the United States, with at least 14 deaths and almost 80 cases."I do want to commend, Gov. Inslee, your team's effort and the seamless partnership that was forged from the very beginning between our administration and your administration here at the state level," Pence said.
When asked Friday afternoon about Inslee, Trump had a different response.
“Oh, I told Mike not to be complimentary. … That governor is a snake. I said, 'If you’re nice to him he will take advantage,'" Trump added. "Mike may be happy with him, but I'm not."
When asked these comments during his evening press conference, Pence declined to comment.Now, this is an interesting factoid. The VSG has an uncle, John G. Trump, who taught electrical engineering at MIT. Now, check out what the VSG makes of that little factoid:
And this:His nephew, the president, spoke of his purported grasp of science on Friday, saying: ‘I like this stuff. I really get it.‘People are surprised that I understand it.'Every one of these doctors said: "How do you know so much about this?"Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.'
Meridith McGraw
@meridithmcgraw
Trump at the CDC: "As of the time I left the plane with you, we had 240 cases, that's at least what was on a very fine network known as Fox News. I know you love it. But that's what I happened to be watching, and how was the show last night? Did it get good ratings by the way?"
I find it unsettling that it has come to this.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Donald Trump is a spiritually grotesque, loathesome, disgusting pig (which doesn't translate into some kind of obligation to support Biden) - today's edition
Who the hell else would use a pandemic for self-glorification and trashing of previous addressing of pandemics?
But, again, we see that the Very Stable Genius does not understand that there is power inherent in being the bigger person and not responding to every criticism.
There's no defending this. It's repugnant.
Now, to Democrats or those who have, however tenuous, some kind of claim to being on the right but are getting really weird of late, who say in response to what I'm posting here, "Then are you ready to support Biden?", I say, "No f------ way." He's a vicious liar. One of his lies ruined an innocent man:
I have no horse in the race that appears to be shaping up.
It is very late in the day for post-America.
I realize that Klain has been outspoken in his criticism of the current administration's handling of this situation, and his motives may include the political.Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrumpGallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation. The April 2009-10 Swine Flu, where nearly 13,000 people died in the U.S., was poorly handled. Ask MSDNC & lightweight Washington failure
But, again, we see that the Very Stable Genius does not understand that there is power inherent in being the bigger person and not responding to every criticism.
There's no defending this. It's repugnant.
Now, to Democrats or those who have, however tenuous, some kind of claim to being on the right but are getting really weird of late, who say in response to what I'm posting here, "Then are you ready to support Biden?", I say, "No f------ way." He's a vicious liar. One of his lies ruined an innocent man:
He also teamed up with Ted Kennedy to savage the reputation of one of America's greatest legal scholars and deeply human public figures, Robert Bork. He also told a predominantly African-American crowd that Mitt Romney aimed to "put y'all back in chains."Biden’s wife and daughter did, in fact, die in a car wreck. That is true. It is not true that the driver of the other car was drunk, that he had been drinking, or that there was any reason to believe he was drunk or had been drinking — or even that he was at fault. The late Mrs. Biden “drove into the path of [the] tractor-trailer,” the police report says. But Biden, like every other third-rate ward-heeler of his ilk, thinks and speaks only in terms of good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats — and if something bad happens to good people, then it must be because somebody in a black hat did something nefarious. The driver of that truck went to his grave haunted by Biden’s lies, to the point where his children were forced to beg the vice president to stop defaming their late father. The casual cruelty with which Biden is willing to subordinate the lives of ordinary people to his political ambitions — for the sake of a petty tear-jerker line in one of his occasionally plagiarized stump speeches — is remarkable.
I have no horse in the race that appears to be shaping up.
It is very late in the day for post-America.
Monday, March 2, 2020
Monday roundup
Ryan P. Williams and Matthew J. Peterson of the Claremont Institute, writing in the New York Post, on what poisonous garbage, from its premise to its misrepresentations, the 1619 Project is.
A recent word salad from the VSG. It's a dandy:
At the rally where he let loose with this, he also said that North Korea hasn't fire any missiles in eight months. That bit of information hasn't aged well:
Kyle Sammin at National Review reviews Ross Douthat's new book, and it's prompted me to make yet another addition to my wanna-read-this-year list. I've long held that his premise was the case. This blog is called Late in the Day, after all:
An example of the cultural exhaustion he discusses is this Billie Eilish phenomenon:
The ever-ballooning amount of money that federal, state and local levels of government spend on education is a rich subject for exploration. We devoted a segment of the last episode of the Barney & Clyde podcast to the matter, launching into it via something happening in the city where we live. The school system, with the backing of the school board, is pushing a referendum that will be on the May 5 primary ballot. People will vote on a local property tax increase to fund teacher salary increases - a response to last fall's Red for Ed push. But it seems some of the newfound funds will go for stuff like "social and emotional learning" initiatives, mental health professionals in each school, as well as school resource officers. How did we come to have these needs? If I may venture an answer, it's that we have become a markedly more nutty society in the last 50 years.
I'm seriously tempted to send to the system superintendent and all the board members this Real Clear Politics piece by high school teacher and Young Voices Education fellow Tyler Bonin entitled "Throwing Money At Education Won't Improve Outcomes":
A recent word salad from the VSG. It's a dandy:
Trump: "You know President Putin is KGB... Putin is fine. He's fine. We are all fine, we're all people
At the rally where he let loose with this, he also said that North Korea hasn't fire any missiles in eight months. That bit of information hasn't aged well:
North Korea fired two presumed short-range ballistic missiles into its eastern sea on Monday, South Korean officials said, resuming weapons demonstrations after a months-long hiatus that may have been forced by the coronavirus crisis in Asia.And immediately on the heels of that really bad deal between our State Department and the Taliban comes this:
A deadly blast shattered a period of relative calm in Afghanistan on Monday and the Taliban ordered fighters to resume operations against Afghan forces just two days after signing a deal with Washington aimed at ushering in peace.No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack at a football ground in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, where three brothers were killed, officials told AFP.The blast occurred around the same time the Taliban ordered fighters to recommence attacks against Afghan army and police forces, apparently ending an official "reduction in violence" that had seen a dramatic drop in bloodshed and given Afghans a welcome taste of peace.The partial truce between the US, the insurgents and Afghan forces lasted for the week running up to the signing of the US-Taliban accord in Doha on Saturday, and was extended over the weekend."The reduction in violence... has ended now and our operations will continue as normal," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP."As per the (US-Taliban) agreement, our mujahideen will not attack foreign forces but our operations will continue against the Kabul administration forces."The Taliban's military commission circulated instructions for fighters to resume operations, according to a document that an insurgent provided to AFP.
Kyle Sammin at National Review reviews Ross Douthat's new book, and it's prompted me to make yet another addition to my wanna-read-this-year list. I've long held that his premise was the case. This blog is called Late in the Day, after all:
Pollsters often ask the American public their opinion on which way the country is going. In his latest book, Ross Douthat takes a step back from that inquiry and ponders whether America — and the West as a whole — is going anywhere at all. Have we instead entered an age of decadence and stagnation, resting on the successes of the past, and lulling ourselves to sleep as civilization slides lazily into decline? In The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, Douthat makes a fairly convincing argument that this may be the case.He examines several areas, including technology (he points to the 1972 end of the Apollo space program as the inflection point on this score), politics and the arts. He cites Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, which I have read. Douthat says we could go go on in our present state for quite some time.
An example of the cultural exhaustion he discusses is this Billie Eilish phenomenon:
Strange and often terrible things happen when the music industry anoints new royalty. Backlash is quick and intense. Stars sweat under the spotlight and start to say and do the wrong things. (Remember when *Justin Bieber peed in a restaurant mop bucket and cursed out Bill Clinton?) Everyone is desperate to figure Gen Z out, and rallying behind Billie Eilish seems to be a lot of people’s idea of getting it done, which is an understandable thought process, considering the size and median age of her following. But when you shoot a young performer to the top of the prestige circuit on the first album, where do they go next? For Eilish’s sake, let’s hope she can mitigate the backlash and show people what she’s really about and what she’s capable of.
The ever-ballooning amount of money that federal, state and local levels of government spend on education is a rich subject for exploration. We devoted a segment of the last episode of the Barney & Clyde podcast to the matter, launching into it via something happening in the city where we live. The school system, with the backing of the school board, is pushing a referendum that will be on the May 5 primary ballot. People will vote on a local property tax increase to fund teacher salary increases - a response to last fall's Red for Ed push. But it seems some of the newfound funds will go for stuff like "social and emotional learning" initiatives, mental health professionals in each school, as well as school resource officers. How did we come to have these needs? If I may venture an answer, it's that we have become a markedly more nutty society in the last 50 years.
I'm seriously tempted to send to the system superintendent and all the board members this Real Clear Politics piece by high school teacher and Young Voices Education fellow Tyler Bonin entitled "Throwing Money At Education Won't Improve Outcomes":
SCOTUS will consider a challenge to the "Affordable" Care Act's individual mandate.in the U.S. a great deal more was spent on support staff (administration, operations, etc.) than teaching staff. Support services spending has increased by 50% between the 1999-2000 and 2014-2015 school years in North Carolina. Such has been the broader trend in the United States overall, where school staffing growth, reduced only briefly during the recession, climbedconsistently since 1950 at a rate greater than student growth. So, while teaching staff in U.S. public schools grew by 243% between 1950 and 2015, administrative and support personnel increased a whopping 709% during the same period.Spending money on perpetual bureaucratic bloat and top-down pedagogical approaches that assume one-size-fits-all doesn’t mean educational equity will follow. Indeed, this growth of support services at greater rates than teaching faculty demonstrates just how large the educational-industrial complex has become. And the more distance put between bureaucrats making these funding decisions and the schools they work for, the less likely it is they’ll spend wisely (and the more likely they’ll never be satisfied with the amount received).The rising number and popularity of charter schools in states like North Carolina and Texas, then, illustrate the effectiveness of local educational governance and decision-making, especially concerning finances and student achievement. In 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly lifted the charter school cap from its maximum of 100. As a result, charters have grown while traditional public school districts have contracted. The Opportunity Scholarship, NC’s voucher program, has nine times the number of students it did in its inception year of 2013.More constituents have voted with their feet, choosing alternatives to traditional public schools, like charters or private schools using the Opportunity Scholarship. Their record of student success and prudent spending speaks for itself. Hopefully, legislators will learn from the charter example that money well spent is far more valuable to students than a poorly managed influx of cash.
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