Posts of Conviction

       Sorry for the rather indifferent approach to blog posting lately.   In the current political climate all I have felt like doing is posting screeds of impending doom which turns most people off.  However, on a more hopeful note, justice was served in a courtroom in New York yesterday and it deserves a post.

      Donald tRump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a scheme to influence the 2016 elections.   The American system of justice worked in this particular case, unlike the other 3 criminal trials the newly convicted felon is still facing.  Of course, instead of accepting the jury's verdict, tRump and his surrogates immediately went on the attack, blaming everyone in sight instead of looking in the mirror.

     We are about to test the validity of tRump's assertion he could commit murder in broad daylight and not lose support among his faithful.  My execrable congresscritter, Elise Stefanik, has already attacked the system for holding criminals to account in this case.  Many more will follow this dangerous path.  It is up to the rest of us to uphold the rule of law on November 5.

When the bottom falls out

      For the last 6 months or so, I have been doing what I advise everyone else not to do, namely following the trajectory of the stocks in our portfolio on a daily basis.  Some days it's a high and others a miserable bust.   Recently the Dow Jones Average topped 40,000 for the first time in history.  You would never know it happened if you listen to right wing media outlets.  If the same milestone had been surpassed while tRump was in office, a mighty fanfare would be played by these same outlets.   

      As Paul Krugman points out, the stock market is a lousy forecaster for the overall economy, but it does have a cachet among the general population.   I will start to worry when the NYT starts publishing stories about the middle class getting into the market.  Shades of 1929!

Small town treasures

      The Divine Mrs. M and I participated in the Champlain Valley Voices spring concert yesterday.   The weather was picture perfect and the audience was larger than many expected as there were two other concerts scheduled at the same time.  A good time was had by all.

      Living in a small, rural area in upstate NY, we have a vibrant musical community with many excellent musicians who perform on a  regular basis.  Even non musicians like yours truly are welcomed into groups like the CVV which operate on shoestring budgets.   Like many other musical groups it depends on the dedication of its members to raise the money necessary to bring high quality choral music to our area.  We often take the hard work for granted, but these people  are truly local treasures.

Empathetic Uncle Joe

       Democrats face a conundrum, according to most pundits.   the economy is doing well, inflation and crime are down and wages and employment are up.  Yet, Biden gets little or no credit for the economic numbers and it is seemingly driving him crazy.   

      Instead of empathizing with voters' concerns even if they are driven by a media environment where a minor blip in inflation is a chicken little moment, Biden's latest speeches are becoming more and more shrill.  Lecturing voters is not the way to win their hearts and minds.  There is no easy answer to combatting an overwhelming desire to educate people who can't distinguish fact from fiction.   However, what Biden and company are doing now is manifestly not working according to the latest polls.

What Democrats do understand about rural America

        Today, the NYT offers up yet another screed about Democrats abandoning the voters in rural America.   The authors, two Democrats who won a state senators' race in backcountry Maine, seem to think knocking on 20,000 doors and listening to voters concerns is the way to win elections.  In a perfect world, that may be so, but in a rural world dominated by Fox News and populated by elderly voters who would prefer you to get off their lawns,  their campaign is more a one off than a blueprint for a successful strategy.

      For years, congressional Democrats have pushed rural based programs to help mostly Republican areas.   They have gotten little or no credit from the natives.  The GOP runs on culture war issues like same sex marriage, abortion, immigration and crime and though voters consistently say they are more interested in the economy, that is not the way they vote.  In my own congressional district, the execrable Elise Stefanik will be re-elected again this year despite having done nothing for the district except to try and take credit for infrastructure spending courtesy of the Inflation Reduction Act which passed with no republican votes.

      This is the reality of rural America.   

Is the electorate this dumb?

       In the wake of a new bunch of swing state polls showing tRump ahead of Biden with less than 6 months remaining before the election I think it is fair to ask if the children is learning, to steal a phrase from the Shrub.

      Thanks in part to the compartmentalization of the media, as much as half the voters live in a media bubble inflated by the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, and other fact free news sites.  In this bubble, crime is rampant, the economy is imploding most Democrats live in an urban hellscape and illegal immigrants are bankrupting the country.   Oh, and Joe Biden is a senile tool of George Soros and at the same time a criminal mastermind.

       If you can hold all of this in your head without it exploding, you are probably a tRump voter.  They  may or may not be dumb, but their decision about who to vote for this November will probably decide the fate of our democracy.   Is the children learning, indeed.

Stupidity hurts

      In the furor surrounding the tRump hush money trial, the everyday stupidity we are being subjected to by House Republican is mind numbing.  They recently voted on the "Hands off our home appliances Act'' which would prohibit the Department of Energy from setting energy efficiency standards on washing machines, refrigerators, etc.   All in the name of "freedom".

     The GOP has fallen into the abyss of crazy and seems determined  to drag the rest of us down with them...

Knowing what's important

      Palestinians are dying by the hundreds, Sudanese by the thousands and Russians and Ukrainians continue to kill each other.  However, I'm sure a majority of Americans were tuned into the ''hush money" trial of Donald tRump yesterday as Stormy Daniels, aka Stephanie Clifford testified about her one night stand with the disgraced, twice impeached ex president in 2006.

     The details were salacious, as advertised, and by Ms. Daniels' account of the encounter flirted with a sexual assault accusation.  tRump was described as "blocking" Daniels' ability to exit the room.  However, she described the sex as consensual, albeit marked by an imbalance of power.  The clear question being posed to the national audience was do you really want this gross pig of a man to be the most powerful person in the world?  while the title of this post is somewhat tongue in cheek, the question remains.

Israelis and Netanyahu

        It looks increasingly like the IDF will assault the city of Rafah sometime this week.  The acceptance by Hamas of a peace plan seems to have caught Bibi Netanyahu by surprise, but he and his ''war cabinet'' reacted swiftly by rejecting the plan brokered by the Egyptians and Qataris with some speciously Orwellian word salad. Netanyahu needs this war to avoid prosecution for his many crimes and the deaths of thousands of Palestinians are a price he is more than willing to pay,  Meanwhile, Biden and Blinken continue to wring their hands as if they are doing everything possible to rein in the Israelis.  It's Kabuki theater on steroids.

Status Quo

        Sam Alito is a monarchist.  If confronted with evidence showing his hatred of democracy, he would staunchly deny it.  Magically sent back in time to the 1770's, Alito would have been a Tory and probably the owner of some of Clarence Thomas' ancestors.  

      There has been a strain of anti-democratic feeling in this country dating back to the theocratic leanings of the pilgrims.  Rarely has it been so obvious as it has over the last 40 plus years dating back to the Reagan years.   Fully 30% of American voters would be in favor of an authoritarian government with a dictator in the presidency.   Virtually all of them are coincidentally tRump voters.  As Ben Franklin might have said, '' Nice little democracy you have here.  Think you can keep it?"

Deja vu one more time

     For baby boomers in our mid to late 70's, the pro and anti Palestinian protests taking place on college campuses this year call to mind the anti Vietnam war protests in the late 60's.   However, instead of the big three (CBS, NBC and ABC) and the print media being the last word in news coverage of the protests, social media is where most people get their information.  

     Much like the Black Lives Matter movement, the Gaza war protests are fueled by amateur news providers armed with i phones and a Tik Tok app.   The images being shown to the world underline the callous indifference of the IDF to the suffering they are causing among the civilian population.  Yet there seems to be little or no acknowledgement among the protestors of the horror of the October attack on innocent Israeli citizens.  Unlike the Vietnam protests which split the country, the Gaza protests seem to me to be background noise except to those directly involved.  

      To the protestors today, their cause is all consuming.  It remains to be seen if the rest of the country feels that way.

Believe it or not

        Kevin Drum has  an interesting take on the conservative case for Donald tRump for president.   While both conservatives agree the Republican tax cut in 2017 was perhaps Cheeto Jesus' biggest if not only accomplishment, Drum provides a laundry list of "accomplishments'' often cited by conservatives as reason to re-elect this buffoon.

        Among these supposed accomplishments were a ban on travels to majority muslim countries, canceling the Iran nuclear deal, pulling out of the Paris environmental accords, fighting to cancel Obamacare, appointing conservative judges and on and on.   Most of this is tongue in cheek on Drum's part, but liberals can ignore the list at their peril.  Real people, including many of your neighbors actually believe this stuff and plan to vote according to it.