Looks Like 18 Months for Trump Was Too Conservative

2/17/2017

(start at 3:30 for deep expression of concern over diet)

I did not watch the spectacle on Thursday because it makes me uncomfortable to see somebody behave like that in public.

It’s a behavioral problem the Trump family really should have dealt with when young Donald was acting out while at the Kew-Forest School and was exiled to military school.

Now it might be too late. But not too late for Republicans to open their eyes and realize what they have wrought.

Two months ago I wrote that I was putting my hopes on Sen. John McCain to mobilize his colleagues, as the patriotic act of a military hero.

The other day, the great Tim Weiner put his hopes on Sen. McCain as well as James Comey, the head of the F.B.I.

Comey. The name is familiar.

I also gave Trump 18 months in office before he got bored, or was forced out. The way it looks now, he will lose the Republicans in Congress, one by one. One can only imagine what the rational ones are saying in the corridors right now. Eventually, even moral ciphers like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan will catch up.

Then there's this: last weekend on the resurgent Saturday Night Live, Michael Che alluded to Trump’s junk-food jones:

“I’m starting to feel bad for Donald Trump . . . I hope he quits. Donald, is this really how you want to spend the last two years of your life?”

I did catch a few clips from Trump’s performance on Thursday. The man looks terrible – new lines on his face, new jowls, new twitches. He seemed to be sucking wind between his one-liners.

Dude, when you see McCain and Graham and a few others at the door for a little chat, they will be doing you a yooge favor.

John

2/17/2017 02:49:44 pm

This is fucking embarrassing.

Richard Taylor

2/17/2017 03:40:31 pm

A few thoughts. Bob Michael died today. As I wrote my adult children, Bob Michael's demise at the hand of Newt Gingrich marked the end of the Republican party as a responsible entity and began their long descent to the reptilian party it is today. James Comey, in my opinion, single handed destroyed Clinton's campaign. The Russians may have facilitated the leaks but the FBI director knew very well that timely releases would ensure Trump's victory. Put me in the tin foil hat club but this was a "very American coup".

Ed Martin

2/17/2017 04:38:14 pm

Why am I reminded of Casey Stengel saying, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

I respected Bob Michel, appearing before the HEW Appropriations Sub-committee in the House, where he was ranking Minority Member. He was a Conservative Republican, but he understood human needs and supported federal aid for education of children with disabilities and when some "Mickey Mouse" was going on I visited him to put it straight. Republicans cared for principles in those days, and believed in bi-partisanship. In addition to pitching for the Republicans in the Congressional Annual Baseball game, he and Hugh Carey, (D.NY) used to love to sing afterwards, or anytime they were in a convivial spot. RIP, Bob.

George Vecsey

2/17/2017 04:41:56 pm

Dear Mr. Taylor: Thank you for alerting me about Rep. Michlel. I will admit, I didn't know much about him, but he sounds familiar. I covered Appalachia, early 70s religion later, and I got to meet members of Congress. I once spent a day with Howard Baker and his asst. Fred Thompson in 1972 -- before Watergate became hot. I think of Javits, Rockelfeller, LBJ's friend Dirksen and more recently that terrific rep from Virginia,. Tom Davis. I had high respect for them -- and miss the gravitas of the loyal opposition. Best, GV

George Vecsey

2/17/2017 05:04:43 pm

Duh. I knew I was forgetting somebody important. Richard L. Thornburg, ``` later attorney general but in 1971 the attorney for western PA. He was prosecuting a pollution case (by US Steel) and gave me a primer on jury selection that informs me to this day. Smart, funny, principled.
And decades later he gave me some great insights into the western PA hero, Stan Musial from Donora, whom Thornburg knew.
A major public figure from another time and place. GV

Gene Palumbo

2/18/2017 01:56:18 am

More on Bob Michel, from “When Decency Prevailed,” Elizabeth Drew’s piece about the memorial service for former House speaker Tom Foley:

Shortly after he was elected Speaker in 1989, Foley proposed to the minority leader, Bob Michel, that the two of them meet once a week, first in the office of one of them and the following week in the other’s. They did so throughout Foley’s speakership. Such an arrangement now is unimaginable. Foley often crossed the House floor to sit and confer or shoot the breeze with Michel. And so at the memorial, after a series of short speeches by some of Foley’s closest colleagues in the House, the ninety-year-old Michel, by now frail and stooped and needing assistance, approached the podium. One worried that Michel might not be up to the demands of the moment. But as soon as he started talking—with his characteristic ruddy cheeks and cherubic face dominated by a broad smile—Bob Michel’s great baritone voice filled the vast hall. Foley was fortunate to have had as his counterpart this plainspoken representative from Peoria—who never became Speaker because the rising Gingrich forces saw him as too friendly toward the Democrats, which Michel’s supporters argued was the way to strike bargains on their proposals. Michel was also of a positive temperament, almost the last of the guard who put the institution and accomplishing things over sheer partisan competition and combat. In his tribute to Foley, Michel said, “We both saw the House of Representatives as one of the great creations of a free people.”

Michel spoke of the time in 1994, when Foley had just been defeated for reelection—a shocking development, the first Speaker defeated since the Civil War—a devastated Foley asked him to preside while he made his farewell remarks to the House. Michel told of the talk that he and Foley had then about their mutual pride in what they had achieved together, substantively and as an example of how the House should work. And then, Michel said, they spoke of it again years later when Michel visited Foley as he lay dying in his home not far from the Capitol. “We both felt good about that.” Obviously aware of what had become of their beloved institution, Michel, with the main destroyers sitting before him, said, “I only hope that the legislators who walk through here each day will find his spirit, learn from it, and be humbled by it.” Voice choking, growing softer, Michel concluded, “that is what I have to say in honor of my dear friend Tom Foley.” The audience rose at once to its feet to applaud him—and them. No such clearly felt sentiment seemed likely again.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/nov/01/foley-memorial-decency/

George Vecsey

2/18/2017 09:30:20 am

Gene, thanks I'm sorry I didn't know more about Michel. There are so many examples of pairing off by politicians -- LBJ and Dirksen, Reagan and O'Neill, Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch.
About seven years ago, I got a call in the office from a former senator from the midwest who had a sports question. We chatted about that, and then I asked him about the vitriol in Congress, and he sighed and said, yes,it was never like that when he served.
I also forgot to mention John Sherman Cooper in my list of admirable Republicans. The bizarre thing is that McConnell started off working for Cooper. I met Cooper in Lexington circa 1971,when he announced his retirement. Dark blue suit, dignified, looked and acted like a senator. Ancient history.
GV

Hansen Alexander

2/18/2017 12:13:45 pm

George,

Richard Taylor above provides the excellent overview. The incoming new guard of Gingrich (we now know the creation of Koch Brothers) saw Michael as too accommodating to the Democrats, and hence the scorched earth policy of bullying your way to power, including the legally questionable Clinton impeachment, ensued.

Of course, the Republican strategy of gutting the Government so the voters would not feel beholden to the Democratic Party (an amazing admission of who was passing all the bills to help Americans) had already begun under Reagan, as did the union busting, or what was left of unions. Nixon called Reagan an anarchist, not a conservative, and now we can see the result: Trump the anarchist.

Yet, like the child who sticks his tongue out at an icy window and gets it stuck, the Fuhrer of Fifth Avenue may end up being just being a footnote to chaos, such as the Whiskey Rebellion,

George Vecsey

2/18/2017 12:39:52 pm

Hansen, as the saying goes, your lips to G-d's ears.

GV

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3/1/2017 03:38:34 am

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QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Looks Like 18 Months for Trump Was Too Conservative

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