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It ain’t over unless we let it be

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

The tariff fetishist is starting a trade war with our friends and our foes, and it’s going to mean higher prices for you and me, just as predicted by all sane economists. But he says he “couldn’t care less.”

The leader of the free world is trashing his country’s friendly relations with neighbors and threatening a new era of manifest destiny that is forcing some world leaders to publicly acknowledge they cannot trust America to be a loyal friend and ally. (But TFG suddenly changes his tune when one of them calls him on it.)

The chief of the executive branch of government authorized what amounts to a group of consultants to fire government employees and carry out cuts to government budgets, none of which has been authorized by the legislative branch which is suddenly incapable of protecting its own lawful perogatives. The action is sloppily conceived and largely illegal, and being sold to the public as fulfillment of a campaign promise to lower the cost of government…with hopes it will also clear financial objections to a planned upcoming extension of tax cuts for wealthy Americans. (And today he attacked unions representing federal employees.)

The champion of law and order is allowing the illegal kidnapping of people from American streets and having them held in secret, people whose “crime” was lawfully expressing an opinion contrary to the president’s or appearing to be an undesirable. And the guy who has never shut up about the alleged “weaponization” of the U.S. Justice Department by his political enemies to persecute him has installed an acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who is accused of threatening his political opponents and supports the president’s ludicrous calls to impeach judges who rule against questionable Trump policies. And, the president has brazenly used government authority to intimidate lawyers and law firms from daring to oppose his actions or represent anyone who does. Or who has at any time in the past. (The highly-respected conservative jurist Michael Luttig believes Trump will ultimately lose his legal fight against the courts; long-time federal trial attorney and columnist Sabrina Haake hopes the chief justice gets a chance to get specific about what presidential actions don’t qualify for immunity.)

The man who harshly criticized a previous president’s use of executive orders as a “power grab” is doing all this through an unprecedented wave of executive orders that is apparently not a power grab at all. Dan Balz sees it as evidence of Trump’s desire to rule rather than to govern: he can’t be bothered waiting for a Congress (that is already controlled by the party he controls) to pass laws when he can act as king and simply issue edicts.

Is all of this part of the MAGA plan? Is all of this what those Americans wanted to have happen, or expected to happen, when they re-elected him? For many of us who did not vote for him, there is a tendency to feel some level of helplessness, which I think is at least part of the administration’s intent with the non-stop pace of activity. But Timothy Noah reminds us that we don’t have to give up.

Surveying this Boschian hellscape, many good people will despair. Yes, Trump is much more dangerous than he was during his first term (which was harrowing enough). He’s more giddily reckless about impounding funds, shutting down agencies, disobeying court orders, and using the government to punish political enemies. But if you allow yourself to tune out this ugliness, you might as well have voted for the man. The president is counting on such demoralization.

(snip)

How can ordinary citizens fight back? To scout the best approaches, I canvassed activists, lawyers, scholars, politicians, and union leaders for advice. Some of what they suggest will lie beyond your abilities, expertise, financial resources, or sense of personal safety—in which case, choose something you can do. Just about everyone I spoke to emphasized that there is no silver bullet—no single arena, not even the courtroom, where Trump’s illegal power grab can be stopped. “There’s no messiah” who will “sweep in and make everything better,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. That’s up to you and me. The good news is there are a lot of us.

Indeed, there may be even more than we can know just yet. Because Trump isn’t careful about whose interests he acts against, Resistance 2.0 has potential to evolve into a bipartisan movement. “Successful authoritarian regimes determine what their winning coalition is,” observed Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the resistance nonprofit Indivisible, “and then they work very hard to keep that coalition together.” Trump lacks such discipline, and as a result he frequently screws over natural allies.

Trump alienates the military by installing as defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a boozer and womanizer who called an officer of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps a “jagoff” and, after he was confirmed, fired the top JAG officers in the Air Force, Army, and Navy. Trump alienates Big Pharma by installing as health and human services secretary a recovering heroin addict, womanizer, and (according to his cousin Caroline Kennedy) “predator” who less than two years ago said, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” As HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommends treating measles with cod liver oil and letting bird flu spread unchecked through poultry flocks. Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says, “I’m not worried about inflation,” and “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” Trump, meanwhile, terrorizes Wall Street with market-killing tariffs and stray threats not to honor the national debt.

No matter who joins this fight, it won’t be won next week, or next month. Barring impeachment and removal, Trump will be president for four long years, and not even his allies expect him to become less authoritarian and kleptocratic. So pace yourself. But the sooner you join in, the more effectively we can limit the damage.

The article goes on to outline a number of ways that each of us can do something, the best each of us can, to be part of the resistance, from protests to lawsuits to just staying informed. Don’t give up: the fight isn’t over.

…and hope never to see again

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

I saw the worst show on TV tonight…but couldn’t turn away.  Someone suggested taking a drink every time the lead character said “like no one’s ever seen before” and it just got harder and harder to work the remote control.  Almost as bad as when you had to take a shot each time a character on The Bob Newhart Show said “Hi, Bob.”  (Oh, college days.)

Did our president really just say that military recruiting offices “are having among the best recruiting results ever in the history of our services”?  (What about the days after Pearl Harbor?)  Or that we will get Greenland “one way or the other, we’re going to get it”?  In what race can one break the old record time by five hours?  He did say DOGE is “headed by Elon Musk,” directly contradicting his own staff’s efforts to convince a judge that someone else is really in charge.

If you enjoy a good fact-checking of TFG – and who doesn’t – here (in no particular order) are a few from which you can choose.  (Sorry, couldn’t find the one from Fox News…you know, where they used to promise to report so we could decide.)

NPRWashington Post
New York TimesCBS
MSNBCPolitiFact
CNNABC

Also:

  • Isn’t he just the worst public speaker, in the sense of classic oratory?  For all his criticism of others being tied to the teleprompter, he’d have been totally lost if that thing had died…never even opened the binder in front of him.  He can read OK, but he conveys no sense of what the words really mean.
  • Why did we even have this speech anyway?  It was not a State of the Union speech, even if he seemed to think it was.  I guess his ego is as fragile as they say for such a self-gratifying performance piece to be required.
  • Good for you, Al Green (my own representative in Congress)…I couldn’t hear what you were saying, but it was good to see someone literally standing up to this doofus.

There you go again

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…we believed that after repeated clear demonstrations of the knowing falsity and deliberate deceptive intent of a politician’s claims, most Americans would grow tired of that politician’s attempts to mislead – and the implicit lack of respect for the voters that those attempts show – and they would turn their backs on the liar.  It was a more innocent time, one in which we never imagined that the lie was what so many Americans really wanted to believe.

Today, the official presidential firehose of lies was re-opened.  And the lies came so quickly, one false statement after another serving as bogus premises upon which to build an even bigger lie.  A performance by surely the most treacherous, perfidious president in American history, living down to a standard he himself established and which no one (I hope!) will ever challenge.

Our friends at PolitiFact live fact-checked the inaugural address, and found among other things:

–Trump made the case for his plan to enact tariffs: “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

Our reporting has found that most economists disagree tariffs will “enrich” Americans, and real-world examples of tariffs working that way are rare. Consumers in the tariff-levying country are on the losing end of the deals through higher prices, they said.

–Trump criticized the Biden administration’s response to natural disasters, including Hurricane Helene in North Carolina in 2024 and the Los Angeles fires that started this month.

“Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina,” referring to Hurricane Helene, Trump said. Trump added, “or more recently, Los Angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense.”

The Biden administration provided federal funding for both disasters.

–Trump repeated the campaign claim that people “from prisons and mental institutions … illegally entered our country from all over the world.”

Pants on Fire. There is no evidence that countries are emptying their prisons, or that mental institutions are sending people to illegally migrate to the U.S.

–Trump, who repeated his goal of taking back control of the Panama Canal, misled about the canal’s operations.

“And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal,” Trump said.

That’s false.

The Republic of Panama has owned and administered the Panama Canal since Dec. 31, 1999, when Panama took over full operation.

Panama Canal Authority, an autonomous government entity, governed by an 11-member board of directors manages the waterway.

China does have influence in the canal.Three defense experts who carried out fieldwork in Panama — Carla Martinez Machain of the University at Buffalo, Michael A. Allen of Boise State University and Michael E. Flynn of Kansas State University — wrote in a Jan. 13 article that Trump’s Dec. 25 claim that Chinese soldiers are operating the canal was false. However, the experts wrote that Chinese companies do have a stake in the waterway.

Check out the site for more, including something I just discovered: the MAGA-Meter, where they plan to concentrate research on the new Administration’s progress in keeping campaign promises.  PolitiFact, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker and CNN’s Daniel Dale have led the charge to hold Trump to account; I applaud their work, and refer to them regularly.

But even their effort to relentlessly chronicle what is and is not true wasn’t enough to get the scales to fall from the eyes of enough Americans to prevent this new assault on truth.  OK, America, don’t say you weren’t warned.  We are about to get what we asked for.

EDITOR’S NOTE: And as my gift, this free link to the Washington Post’s fact check on the second Trump inaugural.  (Hint, it finds even more of what you’d expect!)

As the coach used to say each Monday, let’s talk a bit about the happenings of last week

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… (Been done.)

It was the worst night of my entire life… (Take it easy, Princess.)

What in the actual f**k were you people thinking… (Leave that approach to Jon Stewart.  How about this:)

I am very disappointed with the result of the presidential election, and I’m concerned about what’s going to happen starting next year.  (OK…keep going.)

It’s not that I was firmly convinced that Kamala Harris was going to win and am now staring at the returns in disbelief.  I definitely wanted her to win, but wasn’t deluded into thinking there was only one possible outcome.  I am bewildered to think that more than 73 million Americans think the former guy – now the once and future guy, I guess? – is the best person for the job.  Unless they really don’t think that at all.

Now I’m reading (see the reading list below, and thanks to everyone who kept this such a secret until after the whole thing was over) that Trump, as opposed to Harris or Joe Biden or apparently any other Republican, represents a dramatic change from a system that these people do not trust.  Strenuously do not trust.  The theory is that Trump voters don’t really agree with everything that comes out of his mouth; some things, sure, but not everything.  But they do want a major change from the status quo.  They want to throw out the scoundrels of the political establishment, and they trust that anything is better than what we have right now.  Even crazy, lying, fascist Trump is, they think, preferable to more of the same old same old.

While recognizing that all of us only have two real choices in this race by the time we get to November, I’m still surprised that so many people would vote for Trump.  A guy who lies to us so profoundly and so often, who is a convicted criminal, who has shamelessly used public office to enrich himself; who offers a plan to fight inflation and lower prices with tariffs that will undoubtedly raise prices instead, who promises to deport tens of millions of people in a plan that will be enormously expensive and disruptive to the labor force and economy as well as probably inhumane, who promises the unattainable instantly (end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza?  Easy peasy) with no clear plan of action.  Or any plan at all.

I’m worried about what’s going to happen next.  We were surprised in 2017 when he didn’t become more presidential or tone down the rhetoric or act more like what we were used to, but this time no one should be surprised if he does some of the out-there things he promised to do.

–he promised massive tariffs on foreign goods; we’ll all pay higher prices for those goods because the higher prices will be passed along to us by the seller.

–he promised (allegedly) vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. control of our public health agencies; yeah, what could go wrong there.

–he promised to jail his critics; First Amendment, Schmirst Amendment.  Stand by for other protected rights to be ignored.

–he promised the largest mass deportation in American history; waiting now for the (multi-million dollar) plans to construct a new generation of internment camps while he strong-arms our allies to accept repatriation.

–he promised to settle the wars in Gaza and Ukraine; stand by for “America First” plans that will provoke Iran, threaten Ukraine’s sovereignty (to the benefit of Russia), and put the NATO alliance in jeopardy.

You get the picture.  If Republicans end up with control of the House of Representatives as well as the Senate, we’ll also see Trump’s sudden support for Project 2025 and any other effort to push the Christian nationalist agenda to remake America civil society in their image.  And he’ll do it all while, as he did the first time, illegally enriching himself (hello, Emoluments Clause, my old friend).

Oh yeah, there’s this result, too:

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FOR MORE INFORMATION:

To those thinking, how could Trump possibly win – that’s not who we are: Michelle Goldberg makes the case that maybe it is:

“Trump’s first election felt like a fluke, a sick accident enabled by Democratic complacency. But this year, the forces of liberal pluralism and basic civic decency poured everything they could into the fight, and they lost not just the Electoral College but also quite likely the popular vote. The American electorate, knowing exactly who Trump is, chose him. This is, it turns out, who we are.”

The polls say Trump won big with male voters; Elizabeth Spiers explores just which men they mean: Trump’s appeal to men was

“a regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright. That this appealed in particular to white men was not a coincidence — it intersects with other types of entitlement, including the idea that white people are superior to other races and more qualified to hold positions of power, and that any success that women and minorities have has been unfairly conferred to them by D.E.I. programs, affirmative action and government set-asides. For men unhappy with their status, this view offers a group of people to blame, which feels more tangible than blaming systemic problems like rising economic inequality and the difficulty of adapting to technological and cultural changes.”

Bernie Sanders’ take:

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them…First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

David French calls the vote a revolt against the ruling class and a faithful effort by those who believe Trump fulfills a prophecy.  (Honest to God)

Democratic mega-donor (and one-time candidate himself) Michael Bloomberg wonders how Democrats could possibly lose to such a bad candidate.

Just for fun, here’s a “deep dive” (as the kids say) on the scary details of Project 2025; Christian nationalists are unlikely to let this opportunity pass.

You know you’re in trouble when one candidate for president encourages violence as a response to free speech and honest journalism, and some people cheer

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Right after the U.S. Constitution established the three branches of government to provide checks and balances it immediately identified the next most important protections for American society: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”  In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers meant to make it clear that the people enjoyed freedom to live their lives on their own terms (within limits), and that the people (as a whole) were the superiors of the servants who staffed the government.  The people are free to say what’s on their mind and to share that information with others, and to call into question the words and ideas of their chosen and aspiring leaders.  And free to do so without retribution from the government.

Our most recent former president is hardly the first politician to have an adversarial relationship with American journalists; no president or any other government official enjoys being called out for flat-out lying or for bending the truth to his or her benefit.  But most don’t carry a crazy expectation that the free press is there to merely transcribe their words for posterity: he’s the only one I can remember who has, seemingly quite seriously, called for violence against anyone who criticizes him or fact-checks what he says.

Donald Trump told a crowd on Sunday that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot at the news media present at his rally here, escalating his violent rhetoric at one of his closing campaign events where he repeatedly veered off-message.

(snip)

Trump’s latest comments about the media underscored his embrace of violent language, days after he received blowback for suggesting former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney would not be such a “war hawk” if she went into combat and had guns “trained on her face.”

(snip)

Trump has also used violent language for hecklers at his rallies. In 2016, after someone interrupted a Las Vegas rally, Trump told the crowd: “Here’s a guy throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming at everybody else,” then added, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”

In Iowa during the same campaign, he encouraged supporters to “knock the crap” out of potential hecklers. And last month, at a California rally, Trump suggested that a heckler would later get “the hell knocked out of her.”

Houston Chronicle columnist Chris Tomlinson puts a finer point on the problem:

More than 100 times since 2022, Trump has threatened to punish people who disagree with him, according to a tally by National Public Radio. He calls journalists the “enemy of the people,” anyone who disagrees with him “evil” and says critics are an “enemy within” more dangerous to the nation than Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping.

(snip)

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people,” Trump told Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures. “It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

The MILITARY used to “handle” his internal enemies?  Just what the hell does that actually mean?  Well, according to his supporters and his campaign, it’s just campaign rhetoric.

Supporters assure me that we have nothing to fear from another Trump presidency. The Republican nominee is only engaging in campaign hyperbole; he will not execute any of these plans.

I’m unsure how you vote for a candidate whose comments the public should not take seriously. (emphasis added) If we shouldn’t believe Trump will put millions of immigrants in camps and jail his opponents, then why should we think he will impose tariffs and promote tax cuts?

What’s serious, and what’s balderdash?

No other candidate in American history has run for office expecting voters to psychically divine his or her authentic policies. Conservatives excoriate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz if they put one word out of place, but they excuse everything Trump says or does.

I don’t object when people who are dissatisfied with the way the country is being run turn to a candidate who I disagree with, even when I disagree on a long list of topics.  I try not to demonize my fellow citizens who make a different choice from me; that is their right, and it doesn’t make them evil.  I do hope that all Americans look at the full picture in considering which candidate to support, and I don’t mean looking for a candidate with whom you agree on every single thing…hard to believe that’s possible, for any of us.  That full picture means considering policy positions, and your perception of the candidate’s belief in the fundamental norms of American society and the American system of government.  And of their basic, inherent honesty.  And wondering, are they in it for America or are they running to advance themselves…or to be able to corruptly abuse the system to keep themselves out of prison?

Many of the Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris have made plain in doing so that they do not agree with her, politically, on much of anything.  Nevertheless, their concern for the full picture and their knowledge of this Republican candidate have led them to choose against their party this time.

“I tell you, I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” [Liz] Cheney said at a Harris campaign event in Ripon, Wisconsin. In an attempt to persuade swing voters, she pointed toward former President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, declaring that anyone “who would do these things can never be trusted with power again.”

“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself,” Cheney said as the event’s audience cheered. “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican or an independent, that is depravity and we must never become numb to it.”

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