Politics Plus

Yesterday, I watched the hearing, and this time I admit I did get a surprise. It had never occurred to me that coward Trump** might have actually meant it when he said he would be with the protesters. Temper tantrums, yes. Throwing china, yes. Ripping the tablecloth, yes. But actually walking? In his physical condition? That’s a surprise. I can’t say their evidence of witness tampering is surprising – that, after all, is typical Mafia stuff. And anyone who has the guts to truly testify about events will also have the guts to report attempted tampering. But that was a powerful call to witnesses inviting them to “suddenly recall” events they might have forgotten. To be truthful, there was a lot of content from Ms. Hutchinson that I was not able to make out – she is soft spoken – so I’ll be looking at the after-the-fact YouTube and see if there is CC there (in which case there will be a transcript.) While the hearing was going on, I also receuved email confirmation that I may visit Virgil Sunday – half a day only, so I chose the second half. That will give me a chance to get enough sleep. (Later – there’s no CC on the YouTube vodeo, but Wonkette and Robert Reich filled in some of the gaps for me, and I have no doubt Heather Cox Richardson will fill in any gaps that remain.)  Breaking news end of day – Tina Peters lost the GOP Primary for Secretary of State! Yay!

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Does Hungary Offer a Glimpse of Our Authoritarian Future?
Quote – The Republican Party hasn’t adopted a new platform since 2016, so if you want to know what its most influential figures are trying to achieve … you’ll need to look elsewhere for clues…. A more efficient way to gauge the current mood of the Party is to spend a weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as cpac.
Click through for article. Perhaps the scariest thing is that it’s a bit less obvious than brownshirts. It’s already hard to convince people who aren’t paying attention to either history or current events that we are almost a fascist nation now.

Robert Reich – The roots of Trumpism
Quote – When I interviewed these people, the overall economy was doing well in terms of the standard economic indicators of employment and growth. But the standard economic indicators don’t reflect the economic insecurity most Americans felt then — and continue to feel. Nor do they reflect the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness most people experience. The indicators don’t show the linkages many Americans still see — between wealth and power, crony capitalism, stagnant real wages, soaring CEO pay, their own loss of status, and a billionaire class that has turned our democracy into an oligarchy. The standard measures also don’t show that for four decades, Americans without a four-year college degree have worked harder than ever, but gone nowhere. If they’re white and non-college, they’ve been on a downward economic escalator. Finally, the standard measures don’t show what most Americans have caught on to — how wealth has translated into political power to rig the system with bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, special tax loopholes, shrunken unions, and increasing monopoly power, all of which have pushed down wages and pulled up profits.
Click through for analysis. Someone could shoot Trump** on Fifth Avenue (or anywhere else) and Trump**ism would not disappear – far from it. To get rid of it, we need to dig deeper – a lot deeeper.

Food For Thought