Tag Archives: Rachel Maddow

Do Something.

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Like many disheartened liberals, I almost completely withdrew from following national politics after the November election. I just didn’t have the capacity to deal with a flood tide of bad news about what Donald Trump was going to do.

I still spend less time consuming national news than I used to. But I can no longer enjoy the luxury of abstinence. Things are just too bad and too consequential.

The above passage is from Chapter 24 of the Book of Proverbs. I came upon it while tracking down the famous quotation, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.” It’s usually and wrongly attributed to Edmund Burke; as with many famous quotations, its actual origin is murky at best.

That sentence started rattling around my head as I was writing about the many ways in which Trump is already having a corrosive effect right here in Vermont, and about Gov. Phil Scott’s refusal to acknowledge the harm being done or speak out against it.

The last straw was the Friday, April 11 edition of the Rachel Maddow Show, in which she went deep on the crisis in the Social Security Administration the damage Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is doing at the Department of Health and Human Services.

So. I decided to do something.

Not just one thing. I decided to do one thing every day. Indefinitely.

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Stealth Conservatives: The Angry Chiropractor

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Meet Matthew Stralka, Thetford resident and chiropractor whose shingle hangs across the river in Hanover. He’s also the Republican candidate for House in the Windsor-Orange-2 district, currently represented by Democrat Jim Masland.

Almost forgot: Stralka is a Covid denialist of a particularly fulminant strain. And he thinks Gov. Phil Scott is a TRAITOR.

Funny that they’re now on the same ticket, but that’s what the Vermont Republican Party has been reduced to in the Year of Our Lord 2022.

The Republicans failed to recruit a candidate in the district. Stralka ran a last-minute write-in campaign, as did quote a few Republican nominees, and managed to snag the nomination. He appears to have done nothing whatsoever in terms of actual campaigning since. No campaign website or Facebook page, He hasn’t filed a campaign finance report since August 1 when he reported receipts of $682.50, all from himself, and zero expenditures. No filing on September 1 or October 1 or October 15.

Now, that’s a commitment to stealth.

He’s a blank slate with one exception. Stralka has a Twitter account. Not much of one; he has zero followers. He’s never Tweeted on his own. He has, however, occasionally replied to other people’s tweets, and done so in a remarkably incendiary manner.

The most frequent target of his ire is Governor Nice Guy. Let’s get to it!

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The Senator Floats Serenely Above the Fray

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I’ve written about this before, but it took on fresh urgency this week after the Supreme Court’s little knife job on abortion rights. Where is Sen. Patrick Leahy? What is he doing about this?

There are a number of things he could be doing. If he’s limited himself to criticism of the court’s ruling, I’m sorry. That’s no better than “hopes and prayers” right now.

For starters, he needs to spearhead the movement to reform the filibuster. At minimum, we should go back to its traditional form: You have to take the floor and stay there, instead of merely filing an email once a day. The abortion rights bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is just empty talk unless there’s serious filibuster reform, because there’s no way the bill would get 10 Republican votes or more.

Leahy is a powerful figure in the Senate, and he has yet to provide a clear statement of his stance on the filibuster. Last time I checked, I got this smidge of boilerplate from pres aide David Carle:

He continues to discuss this with other senators, and there’s a lot of that going on.

Good stuff, that. Especially since the reproductive rights of every woman in a red state are now in the judicial crosshairs. Maybe he could pick up the pace on those discussions?

Leahy is also the senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a past committee chair. He’s in a strong position to push for court reform — adding new justices, reining in the high court’s powers, etc. What’s he doing? Anything?

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Philpuckey

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There’s a particular kind of statement unique to the candidacy of Phil Scott, which has attempted to combine budgetary discipline with expressions of concern for the problems faced by “hardworking Vermonters” (copyright pending).

That effort to square two circles has resulted in a phenomenon I call “Philpuckey” after the great Rachel Maddow’s use of “bullpuckey” when she doesn’t want to say the S-word on the teevee.

You can tell when you’re about to receive a load of Philpuckey. His voice slows down a beat, his face gets that open-and-honest look designed to soften the hard edges of Republicanism, and he expresses concern for suffering Vermonters and how we must help them. His voice has a painstaking tone, as if he’s explaining an abstract idea to a preschooler.

There is, of course, a big fat “but” in the offing. As in, “But my first concern is the affordability crisis.”

He may be earnestly concerned, but won’t spend a single dime to address it. He’ll just suffer his concern — for our sake.

It’s kind of like seeing a begger on the street, pausing in front of him, shaking his hand, wishing him all the best, and walking on without putting anything in the hat. Noble sentiment, unsupported by action.

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Resilience, but no revolution

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Bernie Sanders won’t be the Democratic nominee for president. And it’s not because of superdelegate shenanigans or imaginary Clinton conspiracies* or the media’s reluctance to validate his candidacy. It’s not even because I endorsed Hillary and voted for her in the primary.

*Honestly, I don’t get the Clinton hate. To hear some of my leftish acquaintances tell it, the Clintons are somewhere between Richard Nixon and Attila the Hun on the universal scale of evil. 

But give the guy credit. He did better than expected on Super Tuesday. Not well enough to give him a shot at the nomination, but more than well enough to keep his candidacy going all the way to the Democratic convention.

Which is an absolutely worthwhile goal: get all the publicity you can for progressive ideas, and compel the Democratic Party to honor the left wing for the first time since, oh, 1972. Bernie has proven that the left wing is as strong a potential source of energy (and even money) that the party can’t afford to ignore. That is his enduring gift to our political discourse.

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Donald Trump is the apotheosis of modern Republicanism

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I suppose it shouldn’t surprise that a super-wealthy real estate developer would run for President promising to turn America into a gated community.

Really, this is where Donald Trump’s rhetoric has been pointing since he launched his campaign by calling for “the greatest wall you’ve ever seen” to keep out Mexican criminals and rapists. His latest stand, for a ban on Muslims traveling to America, is of a kind with the Mexican wall. It’s just one tick crazier.

But after all the crazy shit Trump has said, the ban on Muslims was the straw that broke mainstream Republicans’ backs. Some Republicans, including a lot of Vermonters, sensing that the Crazy Line has been crossed, have finally criticized Trump as being out of step with true Republicanism.

Well, there’s a problem with that. It’s not true.

Donald Trump is, in fact, the inevitable end product of the past two decades of Republican and conservative politics.

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Silence descends at MSNBC

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Outside my usual bailiwick, but I’m compelled to write. And if I need a pretext, well, Benen is a Vermonter.

Today, dozens of reporters tramped through the apartment of the alleged San Bernardino shooters. Some of them, including MSNBC and CNN, went live as their reporters rummaged through the belongings of the dead couple, brandishing pictures of unnamed people and pieces of legal identification before the cameras.

The spectacle revealed nothing. It was, as the Washington Post put it, “life-sucking.” It was despicable. It was a sign that journalistic ethics have been completely subsumed by the endless hunger for ratings.

The authorities say they have completed their investigation of the apartment. I find that hard to believe. What I do know is that if they ever want to go back in there, they won’t be able to use anything they find as evidence. The whole scene is irretrievably tainted.

And people think bloggers have no standards. Today, I prefer my profession to journalism.

Even the news anchors seemed to be choking back their revulsion. CNN’s Anderson Cooper called it “bizarre,” and a CNN security analyst spoke about compromising a crime scene. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell begged reporter Kerry Sanders not to show pictures or ID’s on the air.

The networks seemed to realize what a ghoulish clusterfuck they’d just taken part in. MSNBC later issued a very tepid semi-apology. CNN boasted that it had not showed pictures or IDs, which is just the worst of many offenses.

After getting home this evening, I turned on Rachel Maddow to see what she would have to say about it.

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