For f***'s sake

You want to know how to get at least one Democrat who loathes Donald Trump and everything he represents to cast a futile protest vote in November 2020?

Nominate Kamala Harris.

In the last debate, she vowed to outdo Trump in the executive order, abuse-of-power department -- right before she vowed to treat states that pass abortion restrictions just like Southern states with a history of voting-rights abuses (Justice Department preclearance of election laws).

Of course, she failed to mention that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that particular section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Now, her campaign has taken to Twitter to combine an unhinged social-justice warrior level of hypersensitivity with a Trumpian degree of pettiness.

If the Democrats don't get their heads out of their ideological asses, the election -- and the United States -- will be lost. If Democrats are insane enough to nominate Harris (for just one), it probably will be lost even in the extremely unlikely event she beats Trump and the Russians.

For what it's worth, I am older than Harris, and if Joe Biden called me "kid," I'd consider it a term of endearment and respond with a sincere smile. Then again, I thanked the last person who ever carded me at a bar.

That reminds me . . . I need a drink.

Busing, Democratic mau-mauing and the Twitter thingy

Sorry, I'm too lazy to rewrite my tweetstorm for the blog thing, so here you go.

Laughing ourselves to death

You think your editor is tough on you? You don't know tough. (from the wonderful vol.2 of @LettersOfNote) pic.twitter.com/N8Tke8xxce

— John Dalton (@johndalton) January 5, 2016

Click on the image for readable version

That I laughed and laughed and laughed at this letter from Hunter S. Thompson made me realize that I totally understand the political appeal of Donald Trump, mad as that might be.

The Donald shows appropriate disrespect for our political system, the feckless weenies in charge of his own political party and the Stalinist pall of political correctness that's stifling our debate and rotting our minds.

Unfortunately, though, with the satisfying comes the strychnine -- the malicious stereotyping of Mexicans and Muslims . . . his willingness to ban people from the United States solely on religious grounds . . . egging on a mob mentality at his rallies and among his supporters . . . the nasty remarks about a female fellow candidate and a disabled journalist.


IT ALL demonstrates Trump's uncomfortable shouting distance to the over-the-top epithet Gore Vidal hung on William F. Buckley in an infamous 1968 television debate -- "pro-crypto-Nazi."

Hunter S. Thompson was entertaining -- warped and high as a kite but entertaining. Sometimes, he skewered those who sorely asked for the insertion of a spit. Sometimes, it all was quite satisfying. I can see how some might feel that way about Trump, taken out of his particular toxic context.

But it would have been a horrible mistake to let Thompson anywhere near political power on any national scale. Ditto for Donald Trump. Not all that entertains us is good for us, particularly when it feeds upon what's bad in us.

If Otter were Romney's debate coach. . . .

Greg Marmalard, who goes by Barack Obama these days, thought he was being smart in the foreign-policy presidential debate Monday night.
 
And Pinto just sat there and took it up the wazoo with that "horses and bayonets" bit o' condescension. I blame it all on that wussy little angel hovering over his one shoulder.

The one that told him he shouldn't hire that disreputable Eric Stratton as his debate coach. Who would have had Pinto, who goes by "Mitt Romney" these days, riposte with something like this:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the issue here is not whether we have these ships that planes can land on or boats that can go under the water. We do. The issue here is that we have the president of the United States of America -- The commander-in-chief! -- comparing the United States Navy to horses and bayonets like it's some irrelevant and antiquated entity.

"Can you imagine, the commander-in-chief looking upon our brave sailors as if they were something quaint from an exhibit at the Smithsonian put together by a bunch of liberal eggheads? If the commander-in-chief can cast aspersions upon and ridicule the entire United States Navy, what's to stop him from disrespecting the United States Marine Corps?

"And if he can disrespect the United States Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force surely will be next! How do we know he hasn't already? We don't! And he probably has! I mean, if you can disparage the United States Navy -- if, indeed, you can give up the ships -- there's no reason why he wouldn't go after the grunts and the devil dogs and the airmen, too!

"And if Barack HUSSEIN Obama can belittle the military he unjustly commands, he'd just as well disown the United States of America! And when you have a president who disowns the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, what you have is a fifth column at the heart of the American government.

"And if you have a fifth columnist at the heart of the government of this venerable and God-blessed republic . . . I cannot bear to repeat the word one would use to describe such an individual.

"I put it to you, Mr. President - isn't your statement a repudiation of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to me, but I'm not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!"

AND THEN "Pinto" Romney would lead half of the debate audience out of the hall, humming the Star-Spangled Banner.

Yeah, that would have been a debate worth watching. 

As opposed to what we actually got.

So, I'll just give my fellow Americans my standard advice. What we need to do now is to start drinking heavily. No one should have to sit through the last two weeks of this election sober as a judge -- it's in the Geneva Conventions.

Slimy reptile meets bad hairpiece

The Republican presidential race has come to this -- The Adulterer jumping through hoops for the amusement of The Donald.

Or, as I told my wife just a little bit ago, "Our fathers fought the Nazis for this."

From Politico:

After a nearly hour-long meeting at Trump Tower, Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich emerged for a joint news conference, during which the former House speaker defended The Donald from slams from Ron Paul that Trump moderating a debate would create a "circus" atmosphere.

"I'm actually very surprised that one of my friends would have said that," Gingrich said, noting that an actor who appeared with a chimp (Ronald Reagan) became president, as well as a former peanut farmer. "This is a country of enormously wide-open talent. You know, Donald Trump is a great showman. He's also a great businessman. ... I think that we have to be open to new ways of doing things and new ways of approaching things."

He added, "I thought it was great when he agreed to do it. ... It's part of the process by which Americans (choose)."

Gingrich said he got Trump to agree to create a system of, as he put it, "Apprenti," where 10 New York City school kids in the poorer schools can apply for an apprenticeship of some kind. The obvious branding aside, it's not immediately clear that the New York City Department of Education will be interested.

THE SORRY spectacle of America today -- not to mention the sorry spectacle of our politicians' whoring debasing a profession that used to be simply about sex for money, not betrayal for campaign contributions and sweet future lobbying gigs -- is an offense against the sacrifices of our forebears and a mockery of their dreams.

This is what the fall of spent empires looks like, when decadence of spirit turns into the destruction of mind and will. We can only pray that God's mercy is much greater than God's justice.

Given the evidence at hand so far this election cycle, that may be a real long shot.

Your Daily '80s: 'Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy'

This being the political silly season, I thought it would be appropriate that today's look at the '80s feature the time Dan Quayle walked into a rhetorical right cross.

Or left hook, as the case may be.

It happened here in Omaha at the 1988 vice-presidential debate, and I probably was about four blocks away at the time. Let's step into our time machine -- the pastel one with the little alligator on the fender -- and travel back to Wednesday, Oct. 5, 1988:

Dan Quayle made a promise to the American people before the vice-presidential debate: "You're going to see the real Dan Quayle. " Until Wednesday night, many Americans thought the real Dan Quayle was a sunny, overconfident, high-spirited young man who had spent more time on the golf links than in the library. But the Dan Quayle at the debate was a different person: a grim, wooden, frightened fellow who had stayed up late memorizing answers for the big test. So nervous were Bush's handlers that they denied Quayle any chance to be spontaneous, transforming him instead into an automaton searching for prepackaged answers that he could drone out safely.

The central issue of the Omaha debate was whether the 41-year-old Senator from Indiana had the intellect, temperament and judgment necessary to move into the presidency. Three times Quayle was thrown off balance when asked what he would do if he had to take over from George Bush. Quayle could only sputter bland inanities before falling back on his script about his congressional accomplishments. On his third try, he compared the length of his experience with that of John Kennedy in 1960. It proved a fatal flirtation with one of America's most enduring myths. With precision and rhetorical balance, Bentsen uttered four terse sentences. "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

"That remark was uncalled for, Senator," Quayle interjected. Replied Bentsen: "You're the one that was making the comparison, Senator . . . Frankly, I think you're so far apart in the objectives you choose for your country that I did not think the comparison was well taken." It was as though a respected uncle had reprimanded his young charge for cheekiness.

Afterward, few seemed to care or remember that Bentsen had been evasive in answering questions about his policy differences with Dukakis. Or that many of his responses too were recited verbatim from his stump speech. But never mind. Lloyd Bentsen looked and acted presidential -- indeed, to many he seemed more presidential than either George Bush or Michael Dukakis.

Bentsen also pressed the hot populist buttons that ignite Democratic voters. He played on nationalist sentiments by criticizing the trade practices of foreign countries and by ominously warning of their taking over American businesses. He raised the specter that Republicans are out to slash Social Security -- never acknowledging that he, like Bush and Quayle, had voted for a freeze in cost of living increases. And dusting off a line he had used at the convention, Bentsen articulated the Democratic case against the apparent success of the U.S. economy: "You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you the illusion of prosperity too."

Though Bentsen claimed that his J.F.K. line was spontaneous, it had been germinating for days. The weekend before the debate, the Bentsen camp descended on Austin for practice sessions. In a vacant basement bar adjacent to the Four Seasons Hotel, they set up a mock debate stage. Congressman Dennis Eckart, a golf tee stuck jauntily behind one ear, played Quayle. But Bentsen was nervous; he was not having fun. (They did not realize it at the time, but Bentsen aides mistakenly positioned him at the wrong lectern.) Then at one point Eckart, playing Quayle, compared himself to Kennedy. Bentsen became irritated. According to press spokesman Mike McCurry, he responded, "You're no more like Jack Kennedy than George Bush is like Ronald Reagan." No one commented on the line, and Bentsen's handlers did not even review it on the videotape. But when Quayle cited Kennedy in Omaha, Bentsen was primed.

-- Time magazine,
Oct., 17, 1988