Murdoch Jackals Stalk Their Guy, After Ryan Personifies Democracy

11/9/2022

While some of us were dozing off, and others were gaping at the tube, and Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy were sleepwalking through their own personal nightmares, a bit of America resurfaced Tuesday night and well into Wednesday.

A portion of the United States asserted itself, remembered its manners and its civic lessons and the old movies, maybe overdone, when Americans tried to act like good guys and not ignorant bullies.

One example was Tim Ryan conceding his senate race to J.D. Vance in Ohio, emphasizing that this is the American way, to accept defeat, honorably.

The final results will take care of themselves in the new Congress, but despite the threat of Trumpian storm troopers, voters spoke overwhelmingly for the right of women to have a say about their own bodies, and kicked out a few bad actors, and pretty much ignored the grotesque bully lurching around some somber ballroom.

Now it is time for Americans to echo the words of Gene Wilder, playing a Polish rabbi out in the American west in “The Frisco Kid,” who declines the chance for vengeance on a murderous bad guy, and urges his congregation, (in a thick Yiddish accent), “Would somebody please show this poor asshole the way out of town.”

(Not to gloat, of course, but while Trump lumbers off the stage to face all those inquiries, he could take Kevin McCarthy with him – the “leader” who let Trump stage an insurrection and then crawled down to Florida to kiss his…ring.)

I feel particularly bad for a few Democrats who were voted out Tuesday night – Ryan in Ohio plus former Navy commander Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, who so impressed during the Jan. 6 hearings, and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York State.
Also, Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who were already gone, having left an image of conscience. Others will surface. Voters have asserted themselves.

The country has two years to put on the brakes and carefully move into a more rational lane.
President Biden has had a better election than anybody could have imagined. However, from reading Peter Baker’s nuanced and knowing article on President Biden a few days ago, we need a new look two years from now.
Right now, on very little sleep, now that some bullies and know-nothings have been exposed, I’m working on a ticket for 2024.
At the moment, I’ve got Tim Ryan and Stacey Abrams or Val Demings. Or vice versa.
Meantime:

You hate to see it, when the jackals start stalking. Of course, Murdoch and his amoral empire gave Trump a huge push, for decades, by treating him as something more than a scoundrel, and a stupid one, at that.

Altenir Silva

11/9/2022 12:51:05 pm

Dear George,
The world needs American Democracy.
Best/Altenir

George

11/9/2022 02:32:22 pm

Dear Altenir: Brazil showed the way for the US.
G

bruce

11/10/2022 12:40:39 pm

george,

i wonder if the usa will ever have a 'normal' election again.

one that doesn't seem like a circus with vast swaths of the public living on the outer reaches of sanity and rationality.

trump, walker et al....my god.

bruce

Ed Martin

11/10/2022 07:40:30 pm

GV, Gretchen Whitmer Gov. Of Michigan, tops my list—just won impressively and has good political and public skills. Question is where, Pres, Veep. For those thinking a change at the top is in order, she has the skills.

Pete Buttegieg, is brilliant, Rhodes scholar, eight languages, and has been effective this wlection campaign. He would do an excellent job, but is America ready? On thenother hand, thats what was said about Barack Obama.

Bruce, Until we have the will to reduce the amiunt of money for campaigns, we will make little progress. There is no political will to do that at present, that I can see.

bruce

11/10/2022 07:48:43 pm

ed,

buttegieg would've been my choice if i was a citizen of the great republic.

i think the money spent on the georgia race for senator probably exceeded what was spent in the entire country for the last federal election here.

of course, the campaign is only weeks long.

no gerrymandering either.

bruce

Alan D. Levine

11/10/2022 07:49:01 pm

No, George. You don't want people who lost their elections for lower office running for president. The last person to do that was Richard Nixon. How'd you like that result?

George

11/10/2022 09:18:29 pm

Alan, good point. That was written on adrenaline Wed AM. Now I just read Frank Bruni's piece on line with a
Few dozen names -- Whitmer, for sure. And Klobuchar -- I was for her for. Prez in 2020. And near the end, Bruni mentions Jon Tester of
Montana, whom I really like. He could even bring
Some cattle to graze at the White House, as long
As he takes off his boots when he goes back inside. Reasonable guy, I love it when Rachel
Maddow talks to him. GV

Andy Tansey

11/10/2022 11:09:13 pm

How likely is it that President Biden will say, "Okay, I did my part. Now i am getting on will pass the torch rather than run another lap with it"?

I think he's done alright. He's not the best public speaker, and the problems we face are real, but they are not his doing. The Sociopath-In-Chief Emeritus deserves more credit than anyone else in America for kicking off inflation and emboldening the great and evil Putin.

Bruce

11/10/2022 11:16:22 pm

andy,

i don't know what he'll do, but he certainly won't be in a hurry to say it out loud.

his ego might come into play...he beat trump once, had both house and senate, as of now it seems the dems will get their 50 before Georgia's runoff; also had some legislative success.

Alan Rubin link

11/11/2022 06:33:31 pm

"Politics as usual" is routinely bandied about, bit I believe that it is a way of avoiding the issue. It does not require a rocket scientist to know what to do, only some political backbone.

Public funding would minimize, if not entirely limit, the influence of "outside money".

A family member is currently receiving excellent health care in Massachusetts (a blue state) at essentially no cost. Otherwise, the fruits of a lifetime of work would be wiped out.

The basic function of our government is to provide necessary support when alternative measures are not available. A citizen's health and well being should not be related to their zip code.

bruce picken

11/11/2022 06:59:25 pm

alan,

all true and the usa is an outlier compared other democracies when it comes to national health care.

seems impossible to have rational conversations with people screaming about soclalism.

covid set many countries back, but the usa didn't too terribly well tho part of it was political.,

Comments are closed.

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

Murdoch Jackals Stalk Their Guy, After Ryan Personifies Democracy

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