Tomorrow's Print Edition, Page 1

 

This not just in

 

By Isidore F. Stone, Spy Washington Bureau with
Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

Told ya.

That seemed to be the consensus of every right thinking journalist in the wake of the Trumpistas' attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday.   Here's one of Washington's most respected dispensers of Conventional Wisdom, Peter Baker of The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — So this is how it ends. The presidency of Donald John Trump, rooted from the beginning in anger, division and conspiracy-mongering, comes to a close with a violent mob storming the Capitol at the instigation of a defeated leader trying to hang onto power as if America were just another authoritarian nation.

The scenes in Washington would have once been unimaginable: A rampage through the citadel of American democracy. Police officers brandishing guns in an armed standoff to defend the House chamber. Tear gas deployed in the Rotunda. Lawmakers in hiding. Extremists standing in the vice president’s spot on the Senate dais and sitting at the desk of the speaker of the House.

The words used to describe it were equally alarming: Coup. Insurrection. Sedition. Suddenly the United States was being compared to a “banana republic” and receiving messages of concern from other capitals. “American carnage,” it turned out, was not what President Trump would stop, as he promised upon taking office, but what he wound up delivering four years later to the very building where he took the oath.

The convulsion in Washington capped 1,448 days of Twitter storms, provocations, race-baiting, busted norms, shock-jock governance and truth-bending prevarication from the Oval Office that have left the country more polarized than in generations. Those who warned of worst-case scenarios only to be dismissed as alarmists found some of their darkest fears realized. 

Who warned of these worst-case scenarios?  Say hi to Sarah Kendzior, who's written two prophetic books on just this subject.  According to that well-known Marxist rag, the Financial Times:

Only one rule remains valid about US politics in the age of Donald Trump: whenever it seemingly can’t shock any more, it does. Election campaign season is gripped by once unimaginable fears of violence, sabotage and a possible refusal by Trump to cede power if he loses.

This sorry state of affairs is also a vindication for Sarah Kendzior, one of the earliest writers to sound the alarm about how Trump would change America. Her trademark phrase is that the Trump administration is a “transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government”. Such uncompromising language has won her fans, but also helped define her as a Cassandra, especially when many seemed willing to give a newly elected Trump the benefit of the doubt. 

Very special people

Hmm, who seemed willing to give a newly elected Trump the benefit of the doubt? Here's a New York Times report from January 27, 2017, the first week of the four year shitshow:

If other new occupants of the White House wanted to be judged by their first 100 days in office, President Trump seems intent to be judged by his first 100 hours. No president in modern times, if ever, has started with such a flurry of initiatives on so many fronts in such short order.

The action-oriented approach reflected a businessman’s idea of how government should work: Issue orders and get it done. But while the rapid-fire succession of directives on health care, trade, abortion, the environment, immigration, national security, housing and other areas cheered Americans who want Mr. Trump to shake up Washington, it also revealed a sometimes unruly process that may or may not achieve the goals he has outlined.

A sometimes unruly process?  An action-oriented approach?  That doesn't sound so bad.  Of course, when the unruly action the President incites is an armed invasion of the U.S. Capitol, maybe that's not so good.

Here's the New York Times assessment of the Tangerine-Faced Raver's first 100 days in office:

In his first 100 days in power, President Trump has transformed the nation’s highest office in ways both profound and mundane, pushing traditional boundaries, ignoring longstanding protocol and discarding historical precedents as he reshapes the White House in his own image.

But just as Mr. Trump has changed the presidency, advisers and analysts say it has also changed him. Still a mercurial and easily offended provocateur capable of head-spinning gyrations in policy and politics, Mr. Trump nonetheless at times has adapted his approach to both the job and the momentous challenges it entails.

As Washington pauses to evaluate the opening phase of the Trump presidency, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that, for better or worse, the capital has headed deep into uncharted territory. On almost every one of these first 100 days, Mr. Trump has done or said something that caused presidential historians and seasoned professionals inside the Beltway to use the phrase “never before.”

. . . .

At the same time, he has cast off conventions that constrained others in his office. He has retained his business interests, which he implicitly cultivates with regular visits to his properties. He has been both more and less transparent than other presidents, shielding his tax returns and White House visitor logs from public scrutiny while appearing to leave few thoughts unexpressed, no matter how incendiary or inaccurate. And he has turned the White House into a family-run enterprise featuring reality-show-style, “who will be thrown off the island?” intrigue.

“His first 100 days is a reflection of how much the presidency has changed,” said Janet Mullins Grissom, a top official in President George Bush’s White House and State Department. “The biggest difference between President Trump and his predecessors is that he is the first president in my political lifetime who comes to the office unbeholden to any special interest for his electoral success, thus immune to typical political pressures.” 

 

Also known as "Mr. Republican"

These carefully nuanced accounts have one thing in common, apart from failing to give the reader the appropriate idea of the insane criminality, corruption, and sedition in the Loser-in-Chief Administration: they were all written by the same fella who told us on Wednesday that the Trump-incited attack on the U.S. Capitol was “unimaginable:” Peter Baker.

We don't mean to pick on him (yes, we do) because his failure to tell it like it is was shared broadly across the supposedly-mainstream media.  His great conventional-wisdom rival, Dan Balz, had a similar litany of comforting euphemisms in his 100-day Washington Post thumbsucker:

President Trump’s first 100 days in office have been a mix of signature setbacks and some successes, plus more turmoil than calm emanating from the West Wing of the White House and more division than a coming together in the country. The president and his advisers have been on a steep learning curve, and it has shown.

When Trump won his surprise victory in November, one big question was how he would govern. The answer, with some caveats, is that he has governed as he campaigned — unconventionally, unpredictably, in constant motion and unbowed in the face of criticism.

The presidency is an office that historically demands prudence and patience, two attributes not often used to describe the 45th president. The office also comes with constraints — the checks and balances created by the Founding Fathers, and the pressure to provide some semblance of continuity in foreign policy. It is not built for producing easily the kind of wholesale upheaval that Trump promised as a candidate, a fact that has frustrated him.

Extravagant campaign vows have run up against predictable obstacles. Trump has moved rapidly on many fronts, but the lack of a singular legislative accomplishment has gnawed at his advisers and makes efforts to create a more positive narrative challenging for the White House. That has left the president subject to criticism, and his advisers have been fighting back all week to make the case for higher-than-average grades.

Keep in mind by this point that the Grifter-in-Chief had already tried to impose a racist unconstitutional Muslim ban and his choice for National Security Adviser, madman Mike Flynn, had been outed as a Russian agent.  You'd think that such actions would really screw up your 100-day grade point average, but that's why they call it Risky Business.  

Ten days later, the Loser-in-Chief obstructed justice by firing Comey and Balz really tore him a new one: “By dismissing Comey on Tuesday, the president has significantly raised the stakes, for the Justice Department, the FBI and ultimately his own administration, to demonstrate that the investigation will continue to its rightful conclusion without interference.” 

Any updates?

Hello Ladies!

Mr. Eric Boehlert, proprietor of Press Run, asked a poignant question about this week's carnage at the Capitol:

It's hard to think about what might have been if the press had carried out its duties differently over the last four years — if the press had shown more courage and not allowed itself to be bullied by a mad man.

There were a few honorable exceptions.  The Boston Globe's Yvonne Abraham told anyone who would listen in 2016 that the next four years would be far worse than anyone expected.  Here's her column today:

Democrat Joe Biden will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, but the inciter-in-chief and his “wonderful supporters” — including the politicians and pundits who helped whip up the insurrection — will still be with us. What burst into the open over the last five years, the cult of white supremacy and white grievance and white entitlement — an unholy trinity leveraged by Republicans for tax cuts and federal judges and vote suppression — will remain.

Maybe they'll listen this time.

But the vast wasteland of coverage of the Tangerine-Faced Insurrectionist reminds us of an old Harvard Lampoon parody of Life magazine's supposed coverage of the impending end of the world.  In a roundup of the grim news, the anonymous Life editors intoned, “Even the normally staid New York Times called the apocalypse ‘apocalyptic.’”

If only it had.

Happy New Year: the Red Menace back for a 121st season!

By Leo Frank, Southern Bureau Chief with
Emma Goldman, Social Affairs Editor

It's 2021.  America is gripped by death, disease, economic calamity, and Louie Gohmert.  What, according to the Republican Senators running for re-election in Georgia, is the greatest threat facing this prostrate nation?

You guessed it:

NORCROSS, Ga. — The biggest applause lines in Senator Kelly Loeffler’s stump speech are not about Ms. Loeffler at all.

When the crowd is most engaged, including Thursday morning at a community pavilion in suburban Atlanta, Ms. Loeffler invokes President Trump or attacks her Democratic opponents as socialists and Marxists. Her own policy platforms are rarely mentioned.

“Are you ready to keep fighting for President Trump and show America that Georgia is a red state?” Ms. Loeffler said when she took the microphone. “We are the firewall to stopping socialism and we have to hold the line.”

Once again, the specter of the Red Nightmare looms over an election that desperate Republicans fear with good reason they will lose.  Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of its Baltic and Eastern European satellites, Republicans are still able to terrify (white) voters by claiming insanely that Democrats will usher in the Socialist apocalypse.

It's a frequent theme of ads from the Republicans' campaigns and their outside PAC's, including American Crossroads:

Loeffler's campaign has sought to portray Warnock as "a radical liberal." He is, according to Loeffler and groups including American Crossroads, a socialist, implying that he is therefore anti-American.

Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running against Republican Sen. David Perdue for the state's other Senate seat, has also been subject to similar claims of socialism and of being a threat to an unspecified "us" in ads by Perdue's campaign and outside backers.

You will of course hear Republicans claim they are shocked, shocked to discover that certain fringe elements of their party are stooping to such blatant fear-mongering.  So who's behind the American Crossroads Red smears?

Wait for it:

[Karl] Rove, the famed political consultant and former Bush administration official, is coordinating fundraising efforts for Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler in her battle with Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock and GOP U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who is fighting off a challenge from Democrat Jon Ossoff. The runoff election is Jan. 5.

So it stands to reason that American Crossroads, co-founded by Rove, is one of the earliest and biggest super PAC spenders on election advertising in the state. According to Federal Election Commission records, the group reported distributing almost $6 million just on Tuesday for television, radio and online ads in opposition to Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. 

Karl Rove? The man who engineered the “election” of George W. Bush as President and then served him loyally (by among other things, concealing his dirty tricks on his private email account, which as we all know is a capital offense)?  For it is he.

It's almost as if smearing Democrats as Socialists, whatever that means, has been a mainstream Republican political mugging for like forever.   That square-jawed figure above, later canonized as St. Ronald of Bitburg, rose to fame by inveighing against Medicare as “Socialism.”  And he didn't invent the false equivalency between government spending to ease the plight of the poor, like to keep them dying for lack of medical treatment, and Stalin's Gulag.

Here's a gem from the keynote address at the Republican convention of 1932, at which Republicans were finding it somewhat difficult to run on their record of economic ruin and human misery, as recorded in The New York Times, October 4, 1932 at 14:

 

 

Just in case you didn't understand to whom the Republicans were referring, President Hoover summed it up on November 1, 1932:

Spoiler alert:  His rival was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won but did not bring Socialism to America.  (Apropos of nothing, remember how shocked Republicans were in 2020 when Democrats tried to make an issue of Republican domination of the Supreme Court?)

Now Socialism is actually a term with a meaning. You could look it up, not on a search engine or other super-spreader of disinformation.  It means advocacy of public control of the means of production, like industries and services. You may think that's a good or a bad idea, but that's what Socialism is.  It is the opposite of capitalism, not the opposite of democracy.   There is zero, zip, zilch evidence that either Jon Ossoff or Rev. Warnock support Socialism.

So what's all the fuss about?

From the torrents of bushwa flowing out of Republican mouths since 1932, you might think that Socialism was code for taking a dollar out of a billionaire's pocket to pay for a poor kid's school lunch, and you'd be right.

But that's not the whole story.  There's a whole second level of malice behind the Socialism slur that's been in wide circulations since the 1950's.  Here's lovable ax-handle wielding and future Governor of Georgia, of all places, Lester Maddox, who inveighed against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as foisted upon upstanding white folks by “the Communists and the Communist-inspired agitators . . . that will enslave all Americans.”

Next door in South Carolina, those who sought to implement the long-delayed dismantling of schools illegally segregated by white racists were excoriated by by Republican stalwart Mendel Rivers: “He talks like a Communist . . . those of us who know him call him a commissar of integration.”

(R. Perlstein, Nixonland at 131, 136 (2008).)

Is it possible that when rich white Southern Republicans like Sen. Fembot throw around terms like “Socialism” to smear an opponent who just happens to be Black that she's really trying to mine the rich vein of white racism and anger?

Surely no one could take seriously the charge that a respected Black pastor was in fact the reincarnation of Karl Marx, right?

You know what the answer is:

The problem, though, is that the “socialism” narrative was never about actual socialism ― it was about culture, identity, and pushing back against the left more broadly. 

Socialism (Source: Illustrated
Republican Encyclopedia)

“What they were doing is waging culture war, and creating a kind of MAGA identity within certain subgroups in Miami-Dade,” [Political Consultant Carlos] Odio said. “‘Socialism’ is shorthand for a more multipronged attack. It’s not just about foreign policy. It’s not just economics. It’s also about culture, and it’s also about race.”

The Trump campaign sensed that early on, too, and folded its arguments on other subjects ― the mask wars and nationwide racial justice protests, in particular ― into its broader anti-”socialism” campaign. And it filtered those to voters through a right-wing media ecosystem that could echo every argument it made with little pushback. 

In one Spanish-language ad, the Trump campaign argued that Democrats were “puppets of the radical left, a gang that prefers anarchy and chaos.” 

Ever since Republicans embraced white supremacy and racism as their path to victory half a century ago, the real meaning of “Socialism” in their attack ads is the specter of scary Black people doing terrifying things, like demanding racial justice after 400 years of pretty much the opposite.  

Will it work in Georgia on January 5?  

Are you willing to put up real money that it won't?

Everything old is new again: TV preview

TV PREVIEW:

THE REBOOTED SERIES YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE WAITING FOR

Editors' Note: We could look back on the flaming train wreck that was 2020 but instead we thought we'd look ahead to sunnier times. We understand that in their latest desperate attempt to glue our eyeballs to the tube [It's a screen now, you old tosser – Ed.], the moguls of television are planning something truly daring: rebooting old TV shows in the hopes that your parents can be persuaded to watch them again, instead of the repeats themselves on Channel 25-7.  Already "L.A. Law" and "Night Court" are in production, but surely there are many more gems remaining to be unearthed.  Our Television Editor Frank Cross has been doing some digging and reports next year we can expect some or all of these oldies but goodies.  Happy Viewing!

The Drumppf Family

They're creepy and they're spooky/
They're altogether ooky!

 

Everyone remembers the zany adventures of the creepy Addams Family, the bizarre creatures who lived in a world of their own blissfully unaware of how crazy they were. 

Remind you of anyone?  

Sure it does, and they will all need a job and free media effective January 21.  

In this reimagined version of the 60's comedy classic, the creepy, crazy Drumppfs have retreated to their spooky Florida mansion but they remain as hilarious as ever, if perhaps a shade less credible and likable.  Of course Donald plays himself as the patriarch of the nutty family still raging about the late-night ballot dumps in Michigan.  And what a supporting cast!  It boasts, if that's the word, Melania Trump as Morticia, Rudy Giuliani as Uncle Fenster, Brad Parscale as Lurch, and Kimberly Guilfoyle as Cousin Itt.

 

Mayberry RPD (Redneck Police Department)

There was something so reassuring about this warm comedy about the hilarious misadventures of small town life in North Carolina.  No matter what happened, in the end everything turned out all white.  [Surely, right? – Ed.]  

The fun never stops in Mayberry RPD

But in this updated version, the Black citizens of Mayberry are no longer invisible.  They are brought into the police station every day for offenses like vagrancy, failing to salute Barney Fife, and just generally being uppity, and then locked up for months if they can't post the $1,000 bail, providing an endless parade of zany comic foils for the good citizens of Mayberry.  

Paula Deen stars as Aunt Bee, with Dog the Bounty Hunter as Sheriff Andy and Ben Shapiro as bumbling simpleton Deputy Fife.  

In the pilot, Sheriff Andy lets the Black prisoners out for an hour to celebrate Robert E. Lee's birthday, but when they try to take down the statute of the Great American Traitor, hilarious complications, involving buckshot, ensue! 

 

I Dream of Jeannie the Fugitive

Rebooting one show is good, but how about combining two 60's classics?

Jackpot!  

She's out of her bottle and on the lam!

In this mashup of two beloved shows, Jeannie the Genie escapes her bottle and her life of misery with horrible Major Anthony Nelson.  She hits the road accompanied only by her faithful retainer, Jaffir. But the evil Maj. Nelson pursues her across the country and every week she has to evade recapture and a life sentence in her bottle.  

It's not all suspense though, as each week she takes on a variety of disguises and jobs, including levitating hundreds of packages an hour at an Amazon warehouse, all of which end up falling on her boss!

The all-star cast is headed up by Kate McKinnon as Jeannie, Randy Rainbow as Jaffir, and Clint Eastwood as Major Nelson.    

The Untouchables

America was riveted in the 50's by the adventures of Treasury agent Elliot Ness and his band of Untouchables as they relentlessly pursued corrupt, vicious gangsters.

They thought they were above the law

This time there's a twist: the Untouchables are the corrupt, vicious gangsters who plundered the United States and sold our America to the Russians with absolute impunity before pardoning themselves and their henchmen.  

But they didn't count on dogged New York Attorney General Letitia Jones (Leslie Jones) who pursues them to the ends of the golf course with a fusillade of state law subpoenas and indictments. 

Although the odds are long, she has the secret guidance and counsel of a grizzled veteran ex-prosecutor (Preet Bharara) and the assistance of bright dedicated assistant DA's (Maya Erskine, Linda Cardellini, and Elliot Page) as she faces down the gangsters and the worst lawyers their money can buy (Jason Sudeikis and Will Forte).

 

Adam-18 USC 241

The LAPD will protect you from threats like these

Who doesn't have fond memories of “Adam-12,” the action-packed half hour in which you the viewer got to ride along with two typical officers of the LA Police?  Everybody at our diner sure does!  

In this new version, we join Officers White and Taser as they keep the peace in an increasingly violent LA in vintage LAPD style.  You can bet that that the cousins of Black celebrities living in Brentwood and Hollywood Hills will think again before failing to signal for a right turn!  The officers bravely and without fear or favor, stop, handcuff, and beat the Black or Hispanic malefactors who drive around with a busted tail light and then have the nerve to complain about their rights.  In a running joke, each week the two officers try to start their body cameras just before turning on the siren, but they never work!  

Great family fun!  Starring Ted Nugent and James Woods.  

 

The Millionairess with Mackenzie Scott

In the late 50's, “The Millionaire,” featured unseen tycoon John Beresford Tipton giving away a million dollars every week to some lucky bastard, with typically unforeseen consequences.  

Highlight of each episode:
Her ex-husband's reaction

Sixty years later, it's been reconceived as a reality show in which newly-liberated billionairess Mackenzie Scott, formerly known as Mrs. Jeff Bezos, hands out big bucks to lucky deserving people and institutions while the unlucky ones eke out a miserable existence delivering packages for her ex-husband.  

You'll laugh and cry at the lives she changes with her handsome checks, not to mention the enraged reaction of her creepy ex (Mike Myers) as he ponders his revenge while gulping 'roids in his secret rocket control room.  

Consistent with the 50's cult hit, the actual benefactress is never seen on camera and is represented by her suave check-wielding assistant, Gilbert Gottfried.  

 

[That's enough reboots – Ed.]

Words: What Do They Mean? Why Do We Use Them?

 

 

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator

Our nation is writhing in agony.  Over 3,000 new deaths a day from COVID-19, most of which could have been prevented by effective government.  The consequent economic collapse threatens millions with ruin, hunger, homelessness.

The good news: there's an inexhaustible supply of resources available to provide aid and succor.

The bad news: Republicans are blocking all such efforts.  This condition is known by all media as “gridlock” (more on that below).   What's the “snag” (as The New York Times likes to call it)?  There are a couple of them, but let's focus on the “snag”that has blocked aid since May.

About 100 years ago, in May 2020, the House of Representatives passed a comprehensive $3.3 trillion pandemic relief package.  It didn't even get a debate on the floor of the Republican Senate.  Why?

A liability shield seems like a good thing.

Mr. McConnell, who said he hoped to release a final version of his measure in the coming days, doubled down on his insistence that the package include liability protections for businesses, medical workers and schools — a proposal that Democrats fiercely oppose. 

“Liability protection?”  What's that?  And how can I get some?  We all want to be protected.  And who wants to be liable?  That's not good.  So why can't those Democrats get behind protecting us from all that terrible nasty liability that's floating around out there?

It turns out that what Republicans, led by Moscow Mitch McConnell, mean by “liability protection” isn't as comforting as it sounds:

If you want to know why COVID relief is tied up in Congress, one key reason is that Republicans are demanding legal immunity for corporations so they can expose their workers to COVID without repercussions.

Dems don’t want you to die for a check. That’s what we’re fighting over.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 24, 2020

Gee, when you put it like that, it doesn't sound too terrific.

And it's not as if the fears of workers are exactly theoretical:

Today, a little more than a month after the study came out, the federal government is finally responding: a bipartisan group of Senate and House lawmakers have announced legislation to shield corporations from lawsuits when their lax safety standards kill more workers.

In practice, the legislation, which is being tucked into a larger Covid relief package, is a holiday-season gift for corporate donors: it would strip frontline workers of their last remaining legal tool to protect themselves in the workplace – at the same time the unemployment system is designed to financially punish those workers if they refuse to return to unsafe workplaces during the pandemic.

The legislation comes not only as workers continue to die, but also as roughly 7- 9% of the total Covid-19 death count are “take home” infections traced to employees unwittingly spreading the disease to their families and friends. 

So a better way to describe the proposal to repeal ordinary legal rules protecting workers would be “work-or-die.”  Maybe that will catch on instead.  Or at the very least a journalist could use an expression like “limiting workers' rights,” which is hardly even debatable.

Let's see how the media are covering this latest effort to let corporate plutocracy endanger the lives of workers and their families:

Here's CBS News:

The Washington Post:

NPR (filed under Business, because protecting the lives of workers and their families isn't personal, it's just business):

Bloomberg:

You catch the drift.

But with coverage like this, what consumers of supposedly reality-based media catch is that Republicans are seeking something benign and those corrupt selfish Democrats are standing in the way.  Don't believe anyone would be stupid enough to fall for this crap?  Moral Mountain David Brooks, come on down:

two thorny issues: aid to the states and liability protection, which should, on the merits, be in the law.  This is how democracy is supposed to work! Partisans stake out positions, and then dealmakers reach a compromise.

As usual, ethical paragon David Brooks is wrong.  On the merits, businesses should not be free to endanger their customers, workers, and innocent third parties without taking reasonable measures to protect all of the above from a lethal virus.  We know these fears aren't preventing reopening because businesses are open to the full extent permitted by state law.  

So why should businesses, who are in the best position to protect their workers and the public, and have an economic incentive to purchase insurance against any residual liability, get to send their powerless workers back to the kill floor to chop up hogs until they sicken and die without accepting the consequences of their actions?

You don't have to climb to the top of the moral mountain or roger your research assistant to conclude that there's no valid economic or ethical reason to take away our rights.  

Of course, the use of the tendentious phrase “liability protection” is not the only abuse of English that redounds to the benefit of Republicans.  The accompanying narrative about the inexcusably delayed pandemic relief aid heavily stresses not the true cause of the delay – Republican obstruction – but rather the facially neutral (but untrue) term “gridlock.”

We don't need to hold forth at length about this verbal obfuscation because Mr. Eric Boehlert has kindly done the work for us:

A much-needed Covid-19 economic relief bill hasn't been passed in Congress for the simple reason that Republicans don't want to pass one. That clear-cut fact should define news coverage surrounding the ongoing inaction on Capitol Hill.

“It's just liability protection,
sweetie, don't worry your pretty
little head about it”

Instead, anxious for a Both Side story line, the press has spent months bungling the story, portraying Democrats, and specifically Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as standing in the way of stimulus relief checks being sent out to struggling Americans. . . .

Leaning into a "gridlock" and "dysfunction" narrative, the Beltway media have botched the story for most of this year. Last summer, journalists claimed "Congress" was to blame for weekly $600 relief checks being cut off. Wrong — the payments ended because Republicans forced them to end. That kind of Both Side coverage has given Americans a skewed understanding of why the federal government under Trump isn't functioning properly in a time of national crisis.  

The point is that words matter. And the wrong words could persuade just enough adorable white suburban women in Georgia that there's no problem voting for Sen. Fembot and Sen. Finagler because they weren't mindlessly obstructing lifesaving pandemic aid.  Rather, the two crooked extremist hatemongers were simply seeking jolly “liability protection” for all of us but were victimized by "gridlock."

But the hungry, unvaccinated, evicted, and exploited will die if pandemic aid is not passed and powerless workers are forced to work in dangerous slaughterhouses without virus protection.

If you don't think words don't kill, stop by any ICU in America and see what happened after nine months of words that have buried the truth about the coronavirus pandemic and our country's non-response.

Spoiler alert:

Tomorrow's Print Front Page: The Official Loser!

 

Problem Solvers ... to the rescue!

By Isidore Stone, Washington Correspondent
with Roscoe Arbuckle, Entertainment Editor

It's just like one of those radio or movie serials, where the heroine is tied to the train tracks by the villain and the train is approaching.  Then with a blare of bugles and a cloud of dust the U.S. Cavalry rides to the rescue, saves plucky Nell and foils the bad guys.

So in that spirit let's follow the latest exciting adventures of the Problem Solvers as they rescue the innocent, punish the wrongdoer, and bring justice to the lawless confines of Washington, D.C.

Cue rousing music.

Announcer: Boys and girls, gather round as the Red Network joins the Blue for another thrilling bipartisan adventure of the Problem Solvers.  I'm your host Mark Penn welcoming you to tonight's episode, brought to you by Big Oil, Big Pharma, Financial Finaglers and our continuing sponsor, America's billionaire elite.

It's Susan Collins and

the Problem Solvers!

Our story begins right here in the good old U.S. of A.  Folks, the country that beat the two most infernal empires in history just 80 years ago and won the Cold War just by waiting out the varmints has fallen on hard times.

Yes, this once great nation has been ravaged by a pandemic that has killed almost 300,000 persons.  That's one 9/11 a day.  Hundreds of thousands more are suffering long-term health consequences or mourning loved ones they have lost.

Even worse, millions more are going to bed worrying where the next meal is coming from and whether they will be sleeping in the streets because they can't pay the rent or the mortgage.

Yet in Washington, D.C., the government is paralyzed by a months-long gunfight between the Blue Gang, led by stubborn ol' Nancy Pelosi, and the Red Gang, whose long-time mastermind we know as Mitch “Deadheart” McConnell.  For months, they've been firing away as millions of their fellow citizens sicken, die, and starve.

Stubborn Nancy wants to spend $3.3 trillion to help them.  She's so rigid and unyielding that she's reduced her demand first to $2.4 trillion, and then to $1.8 trillion.  Meanwhile Deadheart McConnnell has been holed up at the No-OK Corral with his 51 henchmen (sadly Arizona Martha was took a bullet for the gang).

What can be done to break up the gunfight and rescue the innocent victims?  Wait, boys and girls, what's that I hear?  Is it hoof-beats?  No it's the sound of a dozen sound checks at once.  Could it be?

Yes, it's the Problem Solvers to the rescue:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a coronavirus aid proposal worth about $908 billion on Tuesday, aiming to break a months-long partisan impasse over emergency federal relief for the U.S. economy amid the ongoing pandemic. . . .

While the negotiations among leadership and the administration were stuck, senators in both parties worked together for weeks on a proposal to break the logjam. Several centrist senators — including Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Angus King (I-Maine), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) — as well as members of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus held a news conference Tuesday morning to push their proposal as a template for legislation that could pass Congress as the economy faces increasing strain from a fall surge in coronavirus cases.

“Our action to provide emergency relief is needed now more than ever before. The people need to know we are not going to leave until we get something accomplished,” Manchin said, flanked by about half a dozen lawmakers at the Capitol. “I’m committed to seeing this through.”

Whew, that was close, boys and girls!  Logjam broken!  Aid on the way!  Food on the table!  No layoffs of first responders!  And all thanks to the moderate, bipartisan Problem Solvers!

Tune in next week for another thrilling episode as the Problem Solvers save the world from global warming.  Until then boys and girls remember to drink quarts of sugary sodas every day and share your personal information with Mark Zuckerberg!  This has been a Third Way Production.

Sadly, life, especially political life, doesn't guarantee anyone a happy ending, unless of course you are Bob Kraft.  

The townspeople hailed the arrival
of the Problem Solvers

Of course, the usual suspects hailed the great victory of the Problem Solvers.  Jennifer Rubin, whose idea of a Problem Solver used to be Bibi Netanyahu, nearly swooned over the dramatic arrival of the Problem Solvers: 

Conventional wisdom suggests Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his Republican cohort will stop at nothing to hobble President-elect Joe Biden, resulting in continued gridlock and partisan warfare. However, we saw a promising sign that such an outcome is not preordained.

A bipartisan group from the House and Senate put forth a compromise stimulus package of $908 billion this week. And, lo and behold, the proposal took off.

Did you look down the runway, Jen?

That inexhaustible torrent of Conventional Wisdom, Politico, said:

The Problem Solvers may have actually solved something. For once.

Fed up by months of inaction over coronavirus relief, House and Senate centrists are showing newfound force and influence, bucking their leadership this week in the hopes of finally clinching a stimulus deal. 

Force and influence?  Wowser. 

And the patron saint of Both Siderism and Younger Shikses, Moral Mountain David Brooks said, well, just guess:

The 2020 election results have powerfully strengthened moderates. After months of gridlock, the moderates took charge this week, crafting a bipartisan $908 billion relief compromise. Led by Sens. Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Mitt Romney and Mark Warner and endorsed by a bipartisan group of House members from the Problem Solvers Caucus, it is big enough to make a real difference and includes two thorny issues: aid to the states and liability protection, which should, on the merits, be in the law.

This is how democracy is supposed to work! Partisans stake out positions, and then dealmakers reach a compromise. This is a glimpse of the sort of normal-functioning democratic process that has been largely missing since Newt Gingrich walked onstage lo these many decades ago.

That is how democracy is supposed to work.  And marriage is supposed to be for life.  But sometimes things don't work out quite as you thought.

This week, despite the breathless excitement that greeted the Invasion of the Problem Solvers, it turned out that Ol' Deadheart Mitch was still shooting:

Mr. McConnell’s office declined to comment, though he has made it clear that he was cool to the compromise, instead urging his colleagues to drop both the liability shield and the state and local aid in favor of a much narrower package.

Looks bad for our Problem Solvers

Surely the brave Problem Solvers weren't going to be stopped by an old varmint like Deadheart Mitch.  That's the whole point of being a fearless moderate independent Problem Solver – you don't care what the bad guys say, you just solve problems and get the hell out of Dodge.

Right?  Not so much:

“I think the question I have is, will we say, ‘Hey, look, we were successful in getting $908 billion, getting people together to that number,’” said Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah and one of the lawmakers involved in the current bipartisan discussions. “We’ve solved a whole series of elements — maybe on state and local, the liability, we wait, given the time frame, until next year.”

Hey, look, Ma, it's the Problem Solvers laying down their guns and running away like the good citizens of High Noon, leaving state and local governments to cut services and, um, defund their police.

Maybe the problem that needs solving isn't gridlock in Washington between the conflagration and the fire department.  Maybe what we have to do is put out the fire.