Seth Meyers is back from a break and he does not pull his punches about the way Trump, his administration, and his Republican enablers have completely lost the plot on dealing with the crisis.
Mano Singham
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Senator Joe McCarthy casts a long shadow over American politics. The radio program Fresh Air had an interview with Larry Tye, author of the book Demagogue, that chronicled McCarthy’s smear campaign that brought him such fame. Starting in 1950, his wild allegations of Communists having infiltrated pretty much the entire US government, including the military, led to many people being fired and their lives destroyed, with some dying by suicide.
McCarthy adopted scorched-Earth tactics against anyone who opposed him, piling on lie after lie, making unsubstantiated allegations just in time to make the news deadlines, and quickly moving on to new ones before the earlier ones were investigated and repudiated. He would also lash out at anyone who opposed him, even campaigning against fellow politicians, and was so successful that he became feared and few ventured to criticize him. The comparisons to Donald Trump just jump out at you, including the detail that McCarthy was advised by the same sleazy lawyer Roy Cohn (1927-1986) who was a mentor to Trump and represented him in defending the charges that Trump’s housing properties discriminated against potential black tenants.
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The associate of serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein appeared in a New York City court today and pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against her. The judge denied her request for bail after prosecutors disputed her defense team’s claim that she was not a flight risk. Prosecutors said that her French citizenship (a country that does not extradite its citizens) and her extensive financial resources would make it highly likely that she would flee. The mystery is why she had not already done so before her arrest because she must have known she was under investigation, especially since Epstein’s death elevated her to the main living perpetrator of the abuse.
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Tucker Carlson hosts a show on Fox News that some have dubbed the ‘White Nationalist Hour’ because of the relentless race-baiting that he spouts. It says something about the Fox News audience that Carlson’s show has become the highest rated cable news show. But a couple of days ago, Blake Neff, the show’s top writer, was exposed as having posted racist, homophobic, and misogynistic messages on various social media sites under a pseudonym.
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Some political analysts claim that presidential elections are determined by what they call the ‘fundamentals’, meaning those factors that represent the underlying health of the economy like the GDP, job growth, unemployment, inflation, the stock market, and so on, all encapsulated in the mantra of the Bill Clinton campaign workers that “It’s the economy, stupid!” Such analysts argue that all the hot button GRAGGS issues (guns, race, abortion, god, gays, and sex) that make up the news headlines play a much lesser role in determining the outcome
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The NFL’s Washington football team announced today that they are dropping the racist team name and the logo. After sponsors and advertisers abandoned him, Snyder finally capitulated, despite vowing in 2013 never to change the name and logo.
Washington owner Dan Snyder announced in a 3 July statement that his team were launching a “thorough review” of the 87-year-old nickname and that the NFL supported the idea. That came in the aftermath of the team’s prominent sponsors, FedEx, Nike, Pepsi and Bank of America, asking them to change the name. Until that corporate pressure was applied, Snyder had shown no indication he would change the name since buying the team in 1999. Indeed, in 2013 he told USA Today that he would not change the team’s name and the newspaper could put his quote “in all caps”.
FedEx is the title sponsor of the team’s stadium in Landover, Maryland, and the chief executive, Frederick Smith, is a minority owner. Nike and other companies have pulled team equipment from their online stores.
I recently watched this documentary that takes the first part of its title from the credo of legendary investigative journalist I. F. (“Izzy”) Stone (1907-1989) that every journalist should take to heart. Stone said that all governments lie all the time. He said that while governments sometimes told the truth, the burden was on them to prove that to you. The documentary discusses how following that belief made Stone one of the most influential journalists of his time and the inspiration for some of the best journalists who came after him. Although he started out working for newspapers and magazines, he is best remembered for the period from 1953 to 1971 during which he published his own newsletter I. F. Stone’s Weekly out of his home, with his wife as his business manager. The newsletter was considered a must-read by fellow journalists and by anyone interested in serious news. Marilyn Monroe (who in real life was not at all like the ditzy blonde of her film image) reportedly bought subscriptions for every member of Congress.
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The US has an inordinately long time interval between the presidential election, held the day after the first Monday in November of quadrennial years, and January 20 of the following year when the new president is sworn in. This is a ridiculously long transition time, allowing for all manner of shenanigans by the outgoing president. In most parliamentary democracies, like the UK for example, the transition is made the very next day and seems to go pretty smoothly. James Robenalt argues that if Trump loses in November, he should resign immediately and have Joe Biden become president.
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Donald Trump loves to boast that he’s a decisive leader. But most of that self-image comes from him thinking that sending out a tweet about something is equivalent to having actually done something. In reality many of those tweet message were false, irrelevant to any substantive issue, impossible to carry out, or were slow-walked or even contradicted by his advisors and members of his administration. But no matter, in his mind, and the minds of his supporters, he has ‘acted’ like a strong and forceful leader. But such smoke and mirrors can only be taken so far and the big problem for him is the coronavirus because that is something that cannot be controlled by tweets and here Trump’s indecisiveness and lack of action are increasingly manifest.
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The US Supreme Court on Thursday issued its last opinions for the term and much attention has focused on the two 7-2 opinions concerning Trump’s tax returns. In one case in which Congress sought Trump’s tax returns, the court returned the case to the lower court saying that the judge should consider the separation of powers question. In the other case, the court said that documents pertaining to Trump’s financial records that were being held by his banks and accountants were not immune from grand jury investigations.
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