DL Open Thread Sunday, June 6, 2021

The media must feel sheepish. For five years they treated every rally the Last Guy held as Big News, breathlessly reporting on how many of the slack-jawed gathered for his hatefests while rarely noting that, as a stump speaker, he’s dreadful — rambling, disjointed, frequently turning to his greatest hates for cheap applause. When it comes to public speaking, Hitler he’s not.

So last night he chewed through the restraints at Mar-a-Lago and went to the North Carolina GOP’s annual convention (reportedly because his handlers knew he couldn’t fill an arena himself anymore) and gave a rambling, disjointed recitation of his greatest hates, this time with some slurred speech thrown in. It’s mostly not being reported that way, of course — the media desperately wants to revisit its glory days of everyone tuning in to see what the madman in charge would fuck up next — but them’s the facts, Jack. Remember, every Republican accusation is a confession. They think Biden is a senile fool being controlled by radicals because their own Captain Fatass is a senile fool being controlled by radicals.

Last night’s re-emergence came shortly after his national humiliation over his underperforming, now-defunct blog. Ana Marie Cox makes an interesting observation about Trump’s obsession with ratings: Most people want to be popular so they can have power. Trump had it exactly backward — he thought he could use power to gain public love and affection. She put it much better: “Trump broke the cardinal rule of fame: He made it clear how much he wanted it.” She gives a better armchair analysis of Trump than any psychologist I’ve read.

We call the Republican Party a death cult, but maybe we should be more specific and call it a suicide cult. Republicans, following the lead of their senile mob boss, have loudly proclaimed that elections are rigged. That strategy backfired in New Mexico, where mistrust of the system is being blamed for a significant drop in GOP turnout. This is of a piece with the Trump-driven demonization of mail-in voting. Data shows that the richer people are, the more likely they are to a) vote Republican and b) vote by mail.

On the other hand, Texas AG Ken Paxton admits that if Texas had allowed mail-in voting, Trump would have lost the state. This is why they panic — if we make it easy to vote, Democrats win, leading to the obvious conclusion that Democratic voters are lazy.

Voter suppression is crucial to the survival of the GOP, because its base of religious fanatics is shrinking while Democratic demographics are growing.

As I have long predicted, the death of the Republican Party presents problems for Democrats, mainly that so-called “moderate Republicans” like Mike Castle and Chris Coons will now present themselves as Democrats — Coons already does — and they’ll bring their money-grubbing ways with them. The New York City mayoral race, for example, has two pretend progressives, including the execrable Andrew Yang, being funded by conservative billionaires.

I know Republicans hate it when we compare them to Nazis. Maybe we wouldn’t do it so much if they acted less like Nazis. Latest example: The state of Arizona, eager to execute prisoners and unable to get the drugs fo lethal injection, are turning to their gas chamber, in which they will kill people with Zyklon-B — yessiree, the same gas the Nazis used at Auschwitz. I’d really love to hear the discussion that went into that decision.

Interesting story from the Economist (it’s free if you give them your email address) on a concerted movement by First World governments kill off tax havens with a global minimum tax on multinational corporations of 15%, which happens to be the same compromise offer Biden made to the GOP on corporate taxes.

Remember Katie Hill, the California Congresswoman who resigned after her soon-to-be-ex-husband posted revenge porn photos of her with a female aide? She sued and not only lost, she’s been ordered to pay the legal fees of the newspapers she sued for publishing them. Of all the bullshit this country swallows about itself, the notion that we have some kind of exemplary justice system is right at the top of the list.

The floor is yours.