âDonald Trump has made America great again, and he will make it great again, again, if reelected, but right now, Joe Biden and the Democrats are ruining America and filling it with chaos. So donât you think itâs time for a change?â
Her piece is pretty funny, you should read it. The internet is also asking: Why is vigilante murder an appropriate response to property damage, but property damage isnât an appropriate response to vigilante murder?
We canât let Trump highjack the narrative away from our other major problems: Consider that stocks in the US hit all-time highs this week, but another 1 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits. This shows that employers continued to eliminate mind-boggling numbers of jobs, five months into the pandemic. One result is that 12 million people have lost employer-sponsored health insurance since February due to losing their jobs.
Our economy remains far worse than it was in January. The Fedâs weekly economic index suggests that the economy is still more deeply depressed than it was at any point during the 2008 financial crisis. The stock market rise is driven by only a small number of technology giants (Apple, Google, Amazon, and others). And the share prices of these companies have very little to do with their current profits, let alone the state of the economy in general.
Trump has not offered a solution for any of this, because he doesnât need an answer if you think rioting and looting are more important. On to cartoons.
Why the stock marketâs up when everything else is down:
Guess which side thinks Kaepernick is a traitor, but Rittenhouse, the shooter is a patriot?
Trump says heâs not going down with the ship:
We left the reality-based world last week:
Some think that professional athletes shouldnât say anything about BLM:
The sleeping kid is Joshua Trump. He was bullied for sharing the same last name as, you know. The kid is one Trump who has already mastered âExecutive Timeâ.
 Young Trump kinda sums up the SOTU, along with this:
Certainly looks like an âFUâ clap from Nancy Smash. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times/Getty Images
Wrongo thinks the best part of the 1 œ hour Trumpshow were the shout outs to people in the audience. They took up about 1/3 of the time, and provided some interest, even if most were ham-handed efforts to represent administration policy. These introductions of citizens in the SOTU audience have been around since Ronald Reagan in 1982, and usually give us a bit of a break from the eternal SOTU spewing.
âThere were two truly well-done sections of the speech. One was the troll of the Democrats present around the divisive term âsocialism.â The other was a series of moments on the stories of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans.â
Most of the speech was either recycled campaign themes from 2016, or possible 2020 themes being screen-tested for the Republican faithful. Republicans in the room were very happy to see that Dems wouldnât clap for the war on abortion, or for Trumpâs pledge that America would never be a socialist country.
Wrongo thought that Trumpâs review of the economy was effective. It is surprising that he doesnât reference Americaâs late-stage economic recovery from the Great Recession more often. That, along with abortion, marauding immigrants, and socialism are setting the stage for what we can expect from Republicans over the next two years.
Why did Trump threaten Democrats about investigations? He said:
âIf there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesnât work that way!â
Heâs saying that he will obstruct legislation unless Democrats stand down on investigating him. Fat chance. He also said this:
âAn economic miracle is taking place in the United States â and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations…â
Nobody should threaten Americaâs economy for personal reasons. That prompted some boos from Democrats. Even Republicans greeted Trumpâs threat to economy with near-silence. And the GOP werenât totally craven yes boys for Trump elsewhere in the speech. The part about trade was poorly received by GOP members. The part about pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Syria was also met with near-silence.
Nancy Pelosi said afterwards that even though Trump spoke of the honor of being in the House chamber to deliver the State of the Union:
âHe threatened the United States Congress not to exercise its constitutional responsibility of oversight.â
The SOTU was as boring as Sundayâs Super Bowl, but without the uncertainty of knowing who would win or lose.
Even before Trump opened his mouth at the SOTU, it was clear that America would be the loser.
Fall near Halifax, Nova Scotia â October 2018 photo by zenox
Trump visited Montana on Thursday, where he praised Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) for assaulting a reporter in his bid for Congress last year:
Any guy that can do a body slam, heâs my kind of â heâs my guy… By the way, never wrestle him…
He said that even though the US is hip-deep in the Jamal Khashoggi mess.
Gianforte pleaded guilty to assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs during the final days of Gianforteâs special election race in May 2017. When Jacobs tried to interview him about the GOP health-care plan, Gianforte grabbed Jacobs, threw him to the ground and punched him. Gianforte won the special election, and later pleaded guilty, receiving a six-month deferred sentence.
An election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense. Thatâs what itâs going to be. Itâs going to be an election of those things: law and order, Kavanaugh, remember common sense and remember that itâs going to be an election of the caravan, you know what Iâm talking about…
Facing a sharp increase in unauthorized immigration, President Trump on Thursday lashed out at Democrats and the leaders of Latin American nations, seeking to deflect blame and mitigate political damage by riling up his base just weeks before the midterm elections.
Trump signaled with zero proof, that Democrats are somehow behind the caravan of immigrants moving toward the US:
But a lot of money has been passing to people to come up and try and get to the border by Election Day, because they think that’s a negative for us. Number one, they’re being stopped. And number two, regardless, that’s our issue.
He has also tweeted that he might summon the military to guard the southern border, cut off aid to Central American nations and upend the new trade deal with Mexico if those governments fail to stop a caravan of migrants from Honduras making its way toward the US.
He wants to use the military to mow them down at the border.
Stop in the name of your sanity! Itâs time for a Saturday Soothing. Fall is upon us, and yard work beckons, but letâs take a few minutes to unplug from the mid-terms and focus on…quiet.
Start by brewing up a tall cup of Esmeralda Estate Porton Geisha Natural ($75/8oz.) Itâs expensive, but you donate more than that to candidates who have zero chance of winning two weeks from now. So why not treat yourself? Itâs from Dragonfly Coffee, a Boulder, Colorado-based micro-roaster that also supports worthy causes.
Now, move outside with your coffee, put on a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and listen to Samuel Barberâs âAdagio for Stringsâ, played in the original version by the Dover Quartet. Barber finished the arrangement in 1936. In January 1938, Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber.
Toscanini later sent word that he was planning to perform the piece, and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it! It was performed for the first time by Toscanini in November, 1938. Here is the quartet version of âAdagio for Stringsâ:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
(Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right are heading to Europe today. We will be gone for 10 days, so blogging may be sparse. Please keep America great while we are away.)
Happy Motherâs Day to all. A few more thoughts about BLOTUS (Big Liar of the US): Not only does he have the worst approval ratings of any president at this point in his term, but heâs also incapable of moving the needle of public opinion toward his positions. Ironically, for all of Trumpâs sycophantsâ talk that Trumpâs words ARE his actions, his tweets and public pronouncements are making his positions more unpopular.
Bluebells, Brussels Belgium April 2017 photo by Francois Lenoir
In many ways, it is too easy to criticize Donald Trump. While we can have differing opinions on matters of policy, they only account for a few of the issues Wrongo has with Trump. Most are his unfathomable attempts to avoid telling the truth. Consider his interview with The Economist which posted the entire transcript on Thursday. Letâs focus on this excerpt:
The Economist: Another part of your overall plan, the tax reform plan. Is it OK if that tax plan increases the deficit? Ronald Reaganâs tax reform didnât.
Trump: Well, it actually did. But, but itâs called priming the pump. You know, if you donât do that, youâre never going to bring your taxes down.
[Snip]
Economist: But beyond that itâs OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
Trump: It is OK, because it wonât increase it for long. You may have two years where youâllâŠyou understand the expression âprime the pumpâ?
Yes. We have to prime the pump.
Itâs very Keynesian.
Weâre the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?
Priming the pump?
Yeah, have you heard it?
Yes.
Have you heard that expression used before? Because I havenât heard it. I mean, I justâŠI came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. Itâs what you have to do.
Ok, so how did the guy from the Economist keep a straight face? The reporter is thinking John Maynard Keynes, the great British Economist, who came up with the idea of âpriming the pumpâ in the 1930âs. By the way, Keynesian pump-priming is temporary government spending to boost temporarily weak demand. It is designed to boost growth, (and jobs) during a downturn, but we canât assume that it will boost the economyâs growth rate.
Trumpâs idea for pump-priming is more tax cuts. Heâs following classic trickle-down economics, and claims that his tax cuts will boost investment, productivity growth, and labor supply, and thus raise the long-term growth rate of the economy. In this regard, Trump conflates Keynes, whoâs been proven right, with Arthur Laffer, who wasnât.
But, didnât Trump graduate from Wharton with a business degree? Nobody gets out of Wharton without knowing that Keynes was the âpump primerâ. And his saying that he coined the phrase ‘prime the pump’ a few days ago? Unfortunately, there are only two explanations: first, Trump is 70 years old and his cognitive skills are starting to desert him. Or second, he is a pathological liar.
Wrongo wants to go with #2.
He just wants to sell America something with his name stamped on it. But since America isnât buying a hotel, heâs trying to sell Trumponomics, Trumpcare, etc. He does not really care about the details, he just wants to pass it, and to claim it is a success. Thatâs Americaâs tragedy.
So with Comeygate, Trumpcare and pump-priming, we all need to unplug and try, just try to relax on Saturday. We had a full moon and clear skies over the fields of Wrong on Thursday, so today we listen to âClaire du Luneâ by Claude Debussy. It is the third movement of âSuite bergamasqueâ. Its name comes from Verlaine’s poem Clair de Lune, “moonlight” in French. Here it is played by Dame Moura Lympany, British pianist, who died in 2005:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Trump won because he led people who used to vote for Democrats to believe that they had nothing to lose if they voted for him. Below-median income voters had long ago lost faith that Democrats, and Hillary in particular, would ever do anything to change their plight.
Trump said he would look out for them. Whether he does or not, remains an open question, but even before Trump, Democrats had already lost a big swath of America. From the American Prospect:
In the race for the White House, the Democratic presidential candidate has won…fewer US counties with average incomes under the national median and with populations that are more than 85% white in every general election since 1996. Concentrated in the Midwest, Appalachia, and the upper Rocky Mountains, there are 660 such counties today. Hillary Clinton won two of them.
Think about that: The Democratic Partyâs influence in mostly white, lower-income America has eroded to nearly nothing since Bill Clinton was president. This chart documenting their fall is stunning:
The Parties basically split below-median income counties that were 85% white in 1996. Over a 20-year period, the erosion of the Democratsâ control was steady, and complete. This isnât just the result of a poor 2016 presidential candidate, it is an indictment of the Democratic Party, its leadership, and its strategy.
The American Prospect article is about Montanaâs Democratic Governor, Steve Bullock, who won his state by 4 points while Trump was beating Clinton by 20. Bullock is a rural populist in a party of technocrats. Obama lost Montana by 2 points in 2008. Bill Clinton won Montana in 1992.
But, the electoral failure of Democrats is worse than its showing in these below-median income white counties. The following graphically illustrates the abject failure of Democrats to be competitive in political contests at all levels:
Nothing that Barack Obama did by holding on to the White House for that entire period compensates for these terrible losses.
Democrats remain divided about their Party strategy, many clinging to the thought that if Hillary could have turned about 80k voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where white working-class people are abundant, she would be president.
But she would not control either legislative branch, and she would have had to propose Supreme Court Justices similar to Neil Gorsuch to get one confirmed by the Senate.
The question is where will the DNC be taking the Party in 2018? In a 2018 mid-term election where the president has a historically poor approval rating with independents and Democrats, like Trump has now, victory is possible.
If Democrats want to win back Congress, and the White House in 2020, they need to field candidates who believe in jobs and economic growth first. The candidates need to be authentic people, who listen more than they talk. And when they do speak, they should use PIE as a metaphor for Americaâs economy, as in: (H/T Seth Godin)
How big is the pie?
Is the pie growing?
What will my share of the pie be tomorrow?
Who allocates the slices of pie? Can they be trusted?
When voters think the economy isnât growing, things begin to feel zero-sum. People begin to think that they may permanently lose their place in our society.
If the Democrats want to win back Congress, they need to describe concretely what they plan to do when they say they support their working-class constituents, regardless of color.
They need to get to be better than Trump on jobs, economic growth and finding a peace dividend.
All of that, and Medicare for all. In Wrongoâs Thursday column, Gallup found that health care concerns ranked highest across all income cohorts.
Shouldnât these principles be credible with working-class peopleâincluding whites?
A song about pie: Here is DâAngelo with âDevilâs Pieâ from 1998. Itâs a dystopian vision of capitalism, where everybodyâs fighting for more of the tasty, materialistic dish. All is fair in pursuit of a bigger paycheck:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Takeaway Lyric:
Fuck the slice we want the pie
Why ask why till we fry
Watch us all stand in line
For a slice of the devil’s pie
