Bite-Size
I enjoy doing deep-dive stacks. But I also like to shoot out (on FB and “notes”) what my older sister Mickey called “morning thoughts.” Here’s a selection from the month of January.
It Was Never About “The Price of Eggs”
From Hillary’s “right wing conspiracy” to Biden’s “Democracy is at stake” and Harris’s “Project 2025” alarms, Dems have been right about everything. So why don’t we ever get credit for anything? No, it’s worse than that. We get blamed for everything—even by Dems themselves.
Like all of this self-castigation for not focusing on “kitchen table issues” during the election. The Dems DID. But their rational, sensible, mostly polite messaging had to compete against a barrage of well-coordinated lies about what “radical socialists” the Dems are. And Dems like Bernie and Michael Moore didn’t help by agreeing that the Dems didn’t address the “problems of the working class.”
Kamala did address the “price of eggs.” and although she didn’t bellow like Sanders, she proposed an “opportunity economy” that had actual plans (not just “concepts” of plans) for making the cost of housing, child-care, senior-care, education less back-breaking. She didn’t talk metaphorically about “kitchen table issues”; she recalled the actual kitchen table at which her actual working-class mother sat, figuring out how to pay the bills. She vividly described the everyday challenges of caring for aging parents—and proposed actual dollars that would help buy the soothing lotion for papery skin.
But we should know by now that it was never about “the price of eggs.” They won for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with “the economy.” That was just the easy, pre-packaged way of checking a box without too much thinking. There were no boxes that measured the effects of misrepresentation, disinformation, and just plain lying.
People voted for Trump because they mistook a reality-show creation for actual success at business. Because he was so “manly,” even when posing for a mug shot. Because he didn’t let the liberal press call the shots when he was on trial, but had the balls to insist on his own unhinged rants outside the courtroom in which he charged, over and over, that every prosecutor, judge, and jury who were “against him” had been hand-picked by “Biden’s DOJ.” Because they couldn’t accept the idea of a woman president (“serving” ones country is fine; leading it is another.) Because they believed that racial and/or ethnic groups other than their own are taking their jobs and/or taking over the country. Because it’s such a pleasure to have ones own intellectual limitations, fury at being told what’s correct behavior, and “fuck you” impulses mirrored by the man who would be president.
People voted for Trump because of how entertaining they found him (even when—or especially when—he’s making no sense at all) Because they didn’t know what’s a fact and what isn’t, and worse, didn’t care. Because they’d been persuaded that “Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.” (Michael Tomasky)
It was never about the price of eggs.
(Which, by the way, are rising now, in no small part due to Avian flu killing off chickens, as the GOP seems about to confirm the vaccine-decrying Robert Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.)
Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast.
So the guy who criticized Biden and Harris for never looking away from the teleprompter stood, his eyes glued on the pages of his speech like a sixth grader giving a report in front of the class. Except, of course, when he saw an opening to riff on…other things….
The theme was “We have to bring religion back.”
Under Trump, it can be done!! Some plans:
A “national garden of American heroes” which will include statues of George Washington, Billy Graham (a “very special” person) as well as “some of you right here in this room.” It won’t cost a lot.
“One company” to handle air traffic controls. Maybe from “a different country.” (Wonder just what company he has in mind….) That crash should never have happened. Mistakes were made. Our system is a mess. But on the other hand, it’s “amazing” that they crashed. His golfballs never crash into each other.
“We must cherish our police” (Except, of course, you know….)
Back to “bringing religion back”: The Bible instructs that we should “never give up.”
He himself never has (applause, applause) although If the democrats rather than God had their way, he wouldn’t be standing here today, but in a different place, not a very good place….
He knows how fragile life is. He son told him the bullet that missed killing him (and praise be, didn’t even “touch his hair”) was like missing a one foot golf put. “Two feet I can understand, but one!!” But God was watching him and “it changed something in me.” “God did that.” Or if not God, his immigration chart.
Under his guidance “Democrats are going to have dinner with Republicans again.” Just like his father did with a local politician (un-named) It’s possible!! Why, he himself even had a conversation with a man (“very intelligent, went to a great school”) who believes “men should be able to participate in women’s sport.” (He wonders if people will know what he’s referring to. “You know…transition”)
He’s “up 49 points” in “whatever the poll was.”
He certainly brought religion back to me. I’m praying right now.
Some Unsolicited Advice for the Corporate/Mainstream Media:
Stop already with the false equivalences!! On Morning Joe this AM a story about Biden’s pre-emptive pardoning of his relatives immediately was presented side-by-side with a story about Trump’s pardoning of the MAGAs who beat up cops on January 6. That story included a terrifying account by retired officer Mike Fanone of his ferocious beating and continued harassment (including a bag of shit thrown at his mother) by the J6 rioters.
What did the MSNBC commentator have to say?: “Democrats are finding it hard to criticize Trump’s pardons because of Biden’s pardons”
Then I read an article by Peter Baker, who presented a pretty good summary of Trump’s first week until he felt obliged to mention that Biden had also “tested the boundaries of the Presidency”—a headline that hardly does justice to the unhnged, deranged, constitution-crapping rampage Trump’s been on. Stop devoting hours to the failures of the Democratic opposition. Put whatever pressure/influence you wield on stressing the responsibility of the Republican congress. You’re acting as though their compliance is just a fact of nature. That silence amounts to YOUR compliance.
Stop featuring those old sage historian contributors who remind us that we’ve “gone through rough times” before. It’s not that it’s false. It’s that it obscures (1) that those “rough times” were not equally “rough” on all members of our country and (2) the unique awfulness of what’s currently happening.
Stop trashing the Democrats! Someday I’ll do a whole stack on the (so-called) liberal media’s true “imbalance.”: criticizing the Democrats for everything, including doing the very shit that the GOP got a free pass for. I don’t want to see or hear a single sentence “reflecting” on whether the Democrats will harm the United States by holding up any of the Republicans nominations or legislative proposals. We didn’t hear that shit when Mitch McConnell did it. I don’t want to hear it now, in some misplaced idea about “balanced” reporting. It’s not “balance” to give even a tiny measure of support, even as a side note, to the GOP congress.
Things are not just “not normal.” We are in the middle of a coup. You have lost your right to go on as though it’s business-as-usual.
So, for example, I want to see the headlines and Op Eds blasting against Kash Patel’s nomination.
I’m no expert on the mechanics of the (so-called) “separation of powers” of our government, but it seems to me that right now, what tiny scrap of integrity and backbone the GOP has is on the line.
It’s so clear that Kash Patel was either (duh) lying or hopelessly out-of-the-loop when he answered questions about whether he knew of any planned firings—of the sort that happened just ONE DAY after his hearing. He said “no.” Really?
It’s hardly the first time nominees have lied or fudged words in these hearings. Lying, evasion, fudging is the norm.
But the timing of this one bears on the competence of the Senate Republicans. How clear does it have to get? If they confirm Patel, it will be also be an unavoidable confirmation that they don’t belong in THEIR jobs.
Perhaps at this point, since Trump seems to have made himself untouchable—which continually boggles my mind—pressure needs to be directed at the Senate. So far, they’ve pretty much been left to their own corrupt, wormy devices.
Don’t let them. Stop “discussing.” No more “reporterly” assessments about how he will make it through. Revive the Edward R. Murrow portion of your brains and PROTEST.
Satan Reveals Himself After the January 30th Crash.
DID YOU KNOW THAT the crash was the result of Biden’s DEI policies? If Trump had been in charge of hiring air traffic controllers, helicopters pilots, etc. “at the highest level of genius” instead of deranged and incompetent people of color it would never have happened. Hegseth and Vance say it’s so, too.
We are so in hell.
Even the corporate media registered it. Normalizing has come to be an intrinsic part of their jobs. Even when they say “This isn’t normal” they do it in a way that negates the reality. Their facial expressions, their smooth talk, their “moving on” to sports, their schmoozing with each other—all negate the reality.
But yesterday was one of the very few times that broadcasters couldn’t hide their spontaneous horror at DT’s words. It seems that he can still shock us—and I’ve been thinking a lot about the line that he crossed that made that happen.
I’d thought he’d showed us everything. But it appears he hadn’t. During his first term, he at least tried to pretend he was a responsible, compassionate leader. He wasn’t, but he tried to act the part. Now that he’s safely installed and surrounded by obliging underlings as well as protected by the “Supreme” Court, he’s given up on that show. No need for it. He’s evaded jail, he’s bludgeoned the GOP into submission and is getting a hand-picked bunch of cow-towing incompetents for his cabinet, he feels no need to pretend anymore.
That pretense, even if we knew it was just a performance, was a source of reassurance that there were places he wouldn’t go, lest he lose support.
Now we know for sure that there’s no place he won’t go. The past 10 days, as horrifying as they were, were just an overture to the curtain being definitively raised.
That happened yesterday, and even the corporate media was shaken by the heartlessness, the cruelty, the lack of humanity of Trump, unadorned and without fear. We saw the emperor totally naked, and it was a grotesque, satanic sight
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(P.S. For more of my thoughts on this topic, see my stack, “Trump the Antichrist”:
Since I wrote the piece last week, Trump/Musk has taken a wrecking ball to USAID. The pretense that he is the new Christ has become so perverse that if evangelical supporters don’t come together and decry him it will demonstrate decisively that they are enablers of everything Christ preached against. They’re not just overlooking all of Trump’s personal sins, but his literally taking bread out of the mouths of the suffering.)
Mika’s/Fortune 500’s “Women Over 50” celebration annoys the shit out of me.
The presumption is that it’s challenging some common wisdom that our creativity and leadership expire after 50. I was just getting started at 50 and I’m not alone in that. The only thing that could be construed as “decline” was the markers of youthful beauty. In fact, I was gorgeous at 50. I didn’t look a witch out of a Disney movie just because I had some lines and sags. By any standards other than youth-biased looks, It was the beginning of what for many of us was a prime decade, creatively, intellectually, as leaders.
Can you imagine a conference celebrating “Men Over 50”?
Have you had a look at the ages of the most powerful men in this country??
I appreciate celebrating women of all ages. But I am not inspired by women being singled out as—wow, what a surprise!!—continuing to be functional human beings later in life.appreciate celebrating women of all ages.
happy belated birthday!
Susan, I love your badass photo. How wonderful to be among the coolest people your daughter knows.