Trump? Who Cares? Jimmy McNulty Instructs

There is a scene in "The Wire" which keeps coming back now in the post election funk.



Jimmy McNulty is finally out to dinner in a swanky restaurant with Theresa D'Agostino. Their relationship until this moment has consisted of  running home, tearing off their clothes and having sex, but this time they decide to actually have dinner together.

D'Agostino grew up in Baltimore, of humble origins, but is now living in Washinton, D.C., leading an upscale life, managing political campaigns and acting as a consultant to Democratic candidates. (She will ultimately manage the successful mayoral campaign of a white candidate.)

Jimmy reveals he didn't vote in the presidential election when Bush ran against what's his name--and Theresa helpful supplies, "Kerry."
She is taken aback. Why did he not vote? For Theresa, voting against Bush was a very important act, a defining action. 

Well, neither Bush nor Kerry would ever matter to Baltimore, Jimmy explains,  and the only way either of them would ever even know West Baltimore, with all its problems, even existed would be if Air Force One crashed into Martin Luther King Boulevard.

You can see the steam coming of of Ms. D'Agostino's ears. She is so angry and turned off she shuts the door behind her when they get home, leaving McNulty baffled, on her door step.

For D'Agostino, McNulty's indifference to the fight she fights every day is outrageous. In her eyes, it makes him a knuckle dragger, indifferent to the important issues which animate her life. How can he think these national politicians and national elections do not matter? 

But of course, what McNulty is saying is he feels the same way, simply in reverse. To her, the local concerns of who gets shot on a corner, who gets put into jail are irrelevant and beneath her notice.  She does not live on the street corner. She thinks she lives in the clouds of Mt. Olympus.

But for McNulty, the strife among the national gods doesn't matter. All that matters in his life is what happens in Baltimore, and in fact in the inner city, where he sees lives destroyed or ruined daily. For the people he deals with every day it is local government, namely the police and the mayor's office,  whose decisions really matter. 
What happens in Washington seems remote and irrelevant.
(Of course, McNulty learns differently eventually, years later, when he finds he needs help from the FBI to help establish wire taps crucial to building his cases to imprison and bring down drug king pins,  but the Republicans in Washington, who will have to authorize and fund the program, don't care about Democratic Baltimore or its Democratic mayor. 
Like Theresa, they have "bigger" concerns.)
"The trouble is," one friendly FBI agent tells McNulty, "If you were chasing down Ahkmed or Abdul with this wire tap, well then they might be more interested. But catching Shakeel or Tyrell or Stringer Bell,  not so much."

This is the scene, I imagine, we have just played out with all us impassioned Democrats out here on the coasts furious and disdainful of all those apathetic Rust Belt yahoos who don't care about policy or principle or Washington, which is not much more than an abstraction to them.  

They just want their jobs back and they want someone who thinks as incoherently as they do.

It doesn't matter to them if the Donald can't do anything, if his idea of policy is grandstanding at an air conditioner plant, or Tweeting about the cost of Air Force One. 

Far as they're concerned, none of the smart people who talk about policy, and global trade ever did anything for them.  What mattered to them is Donald knew where the Carrier air conditioning factory was.  He didn't have to crash Air Force One into Indiana to find them.

Flynn, Bannon, Price: Hey, This Could be Fun!

Lt. General Flynn-Strangelove

According to a story in the New York Times, President Trump's National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn during the campaign, ran a Twitter account accusing Hillary Clinton and her "tope aides" of running a pedophile racket.  "You be the judge," the general urged. And you know how that goes: If the lady in the parking lot tells you something, it must be true!
I'm not exactly clear what a National Security Advisor does, outside of what I saw in the "West Wing" TV show, but the woman who played the role looked very serious most of the time, and seemed to be talking a lot about terrorists who liked to lop off heads.

Dark is Good

Steve Bannon, who Saturday Night Live depicts as a dark, skeletal Death figure, has embraced the dark side as a good thing. Might see him wearing one of those black hats with the death's head pin worn by the SS in the Third Reich. They liked that dark side, too.  Others have suggested he might like a Darth Vader helmet. But Black seems to be the operating motif. Bannon has spoken ruefully about that big middle class America has created in Asia by giving away all those wonderful, high paying factory jobs American workers once held, stamping out toy metal cars and fishing line and cheap lawn tools and sending those wonderful jobs off  to China and Vietnam and Cambodia, where the workers could be paid slave wages to make the same stuff and they could then call themselves middle class.

Donald the Joffrey

I loved the story Steve Jobs told about having an epiphany one night, when he realized his Apple phones really needed tempered glass screens rather than plastic screens which could get scratched by the keys everyone kept in the same pockets where they carried their phones. So, he called up his Chinese manufacturer to say all those phones needed to be re done and all the new ones changed to include glass screens. All the Chinese manufacturer had to do was to sound the alarm and pull all his workers out of their bunk beds in their dormitories, and march them across the alley to their machines in the factories where 100,000 screens were replaced overnight and the phones were ready to go the next day.


I could never have done that with US workers, Jobs noted. It might have taken weeks to do that kind of corrective turn around.


Of course, had it taken weeks, Jobs would still have sold the same number of phones, just 3 weeks later, but it would not have been nearly as good a story.

800 jobs safe for Christmas

And then there were those great stories about all the jobs making air conditioners in Indiana--you remember Indiana, where that judge with the Mexican parents was from. Well, Donald drove a tough deal with Carrier. In return for some tax breaks and the continuation of $16 billion dollars in defense contracts, Carrier and its parent company agreed to keep 800 to 1000 of the 2000 jobs slated to go South to Mexico this year. Of course, next year those jobs may be in Tijuana. But it was a great Christmas story--Tiny Tim gets his Christmas goose, God Bless us, one and all.


I could really get into this new administration.


We have Ben Carson, who looks to be in early stages of Alzheimer's, is going to run Housing and Urban Development, which is a department, like the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, which Trump and his supporters would like to see die a quick and decisive death.  So you appoint Ben Carson and that Department will go up in flames.

If Sarah's not available, how about Maria in the Red Dress?

I would have bet on Sarah Palin for Education. She would have been the obvious choice, but that crack about crony capitalism might have killed her appointment. Oh, well. There's that ex governor of North Carolina who needs a job.  Or maybe, Tim Tebow. He'd be my choice. He's tried football and baseball, so he has a broad background in the NCAA.


The EPA requires some thought. Chris Christie would be the obvious choice, as anyone who has ever driven along the New Jersey turnpike toward the GW Bridge would know--all that ghastly oil refinery dystopia, burning black plumes into the air 24/7/365. But there you go mentioning the GW Bridge again, and that's a problem for Chris.

I want my job back

I would think you'd want that guy who owned that Big Branch coal mine which exploded in West Virginia would be the obvious choice for the EPA or at least for the Occupational Safety Administration, but the thing is, nobody is willing to admit who actually own and ran that mine.


NASA needs Tom Hanks.
Defense, I know, has lots of contenders, but can anyone doubt Stephen Spielberg would be just an inspired choice? Or, if he's not available, George Lucas.

What I'm hoping is the Donald will stay true to form and he'll start a new reality TV show called, "My Cabinet: You're Fired!" and every few weeks, when he starts dropping out of the lead sentences on Fox and CNN he'll haul in some cabinet member and get the cameras and lighting all set and say, "You're fired!"
It'd be better than gladiators in the Coliseum. 


Really, I'd stay up to watch that.

Freeloading in the Heartland

No Senators, No Congressman, Pays more taxes than 29 states

What I have always found particularly appalling about the South, but really about most rural states, like Wyoming, the Dakotas and rural parts of the Midwest is how much hell they raise about their taxes going to support welfare cheats in big cities, when in fact, it is these very white, indignant voters who are getting the welfare from our federal government.  

This Sunday's New York Times carries an article by Steven Johnson in which he details the way densely populated coastal states (New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, California and Washington in particular) subside those great massive states like Wyoming, Alaska, the Dakotas, Montana and all the Southern states save Florida and North Carolina. 

Those rural white males are the takers, not the givers.  For every dollar a citizen of New Jersey pays the federal government, he gets just 61 cents back; for the same dollar the white nationalist in Wyoming gets back $1.10. 

So who's the welfare queen now, bitch?

What's really sweet for those downstream, aggrieved whites is the voter in Wyoming has three times the voting power of the voter from New Jersey, owing to the two Senators from Wyoming and the electoral college rigging.

I don't know there's any way to correct this rigging, to right the wrong of this imbalance, but for the next four years, folks from the giver states ought to be thinking of ways of taking back America for the folks who really make it run, who drive its economy, who stoke its engines of innovation and productivity.

Let those coal miners in Kentucky and West Virginia stew in their burrows; let those malcontents in Arizona and Idaho pull their own weight for a change. 

It's the populous coastal states who need a Tea Party

There's a great scene in "Hamilton" where Jefferson chides Hamilton because the South is productive, doing the work,  growing things, creating things from seed while all the Northerners do is move money around.  Hamilton replies we all know who's really doing the planting in Jefferson's home state, and the only reason he's doing well is the free ride he's taking on the backs of slaves. 

Well, the white Trump voters are taking and have been taking that free ride for too long. 

We ought to start thinking up here in New Hampshire, how we can stop that free ride, how we can make them squirm in the free loading rural parts of America.

Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare

Hey, I like that Donald going and telling those Carrier bosses they can't move those jobs to Mexico. That's what I'm talking about.
Now he can build that wall and keep those Mexicans from coming here to get those jobs. And raping. 
And he can slap a 35% tax on everything they make coming into this country and he can lower the corporate tax rate to 15% so the big shots in the corporations can stay right here in the USA making things.
But the thing is, I don't want to be sitting in front of no keyboard, operating no robots. I want my old job back, running the forklift.

My Mom and Dad are telling me they're losing their Social Security, so they'll have to move in with me. Maybe we can get a mobile home and park it in our driveway for them, just as long as that thing is made right here in the US of A. I'm proud to be an American, which is now great again.
Mom's a little overweight and got diabetes but she lost her doctor when they changed Medicare to a voucher program. 
Dad's voucher covered $50,000 for his heart surgery. Trouble is, the bill was $500,000, which I'm told is ten times the voucher, so we have to find a bankruptcy lawyer now.

Those damn Democrats got us into trouble with Medicare. I wish they'd keep their goddamn government hands off my Medicare. I got it when I was 55 because I hurt my back and was out on disability and now they're saying all I get is a voucher. 

It's all Hillary's fault. Her and Obama. She's so crooked. Is she in jail yet?

The Only News That Matters In The Rust Belt

So here's the news all those Rust Belt Trump voters were waiting for: Vote Trump, keep your jobs.
No regrets (yet) in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan or Ohio.

Trump to Announce Carrier Plant Will Keep Jobs in U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/business/trump-to-announce-carrier-plant-will-keep-jobs-in-us.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

The 1919 World Series and the 2016 Election: When the Fix Is In

click to enlarge

Still, it really doesn't matter,

After all, who wins the flag.

Good clean sport is what we're after,

And we aim to make our brag

To each near or distant nation

Whereon shines the sporting sun

That of all our games gymnastic

Base ball is the cleanest one!

The team from Chicago should have beat the team from Ohio, but lost.
It was 1919 and the fix, we now know, was in.
"Say it ain't so, Joe," summed it up.
Nobody likes to think something as sacred as baseball could be rigged, fixed.
But if you were going to fix something, then you hide it in plain sight. You start bawling about how you can't trust even the most sacrosanct of things and you get the whole world, most especially the opposition, insisting even bringing up the subject is heresy, and when the outcome is a surprise, well the one thing it cannot be is what you said could happen and they said could not.
It's a classic double ploy, the deeper game.

There's only one thing that could be the fly in the ointment. That one, independent, check which, in the past, kept things honest: The exit polls.  You might be able to catch the final pipelines in four or five key states, hack those, and nobody can tell because nobody knows how people voted on those secret ballots. Except for the exit polls, where every 4th person walking out is asked how they voted. That is not hackable.

But here's the thing, if the pre voting polls are discredited by the voting, then who will believe any polls, even exit polls?

Check mate. 

Coalescence

The Reality of Our National Divide

Out of the shock, confusion and anger over the Trump win, the stages of mourning progress from anger, through bargaining to denial toward acceptance. 

President Obama, typically, was the most insightful, when he observed the way he had won was going to every fish fry in Iowa, a trenchant criticism of Hillary Clinton's failure to do that. She relied on outspending Trump 5 to 1, sometimes 9 to 1 on TV ads, on organizations for her "ground game" while Trump kept flying to rural areas, suburban areas, holding rallies for 40,000 people and then appearing constantly on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, everywhere on TV and radio and Twitter.

He and his team came up with a more 21st century campaign strategy, which bypassed traditional media, ignored debate preparation (which few of his voter's minded) and focused on the "forgotten."

Just look at the map of where his voters were and where Hillary's voters were.  While 62% of the population lives in urban areas along the coasts, the vast majority of the geography of the nation is occupied by the losers in our capitalistic game.His appeal went beyond the yokels of  "Deliverance," to a lot of people whose prospects are pretty dim for the rewards of "The American Dream" which is a stupid way of saying, "Acquiring wealth."

What It Meant for Clinton to Win Illinois

Visiting Cleveland once, I was struck by what my cab driver said about selections for the All Star baseball team, and how few Cleveland baseball players would be selected and how the New York Yankees always have lots of All Star selections: "Well, nobody notices Cleveland."
When the Chicago Cubs beat Cleveland in the World Series, I thought, "Uh-oh, there goes Ohio for Trump. Now the resentment is going to boil over."

When I left New York City, after 8 years of schooling there, I moved to South County, Rhode Island, a land of farmers and lobsterman and I looked around at the people living there and thought, "This is where the ragged people go," to quote Paul Simon. Look at that map. That is where the ragged people are. 

And yes, we well educated city folk do look with a certain contempt at these rubes, and that is not lost on the rubes. In some ways, the losers in this economic competition seem to embrace their status. I see twenty-five year old men every day, dressed in a football jersey or a hockey jersey, wearing blue jeans and a Red Sox baseball cap, and unlaced athletic shoes, looking like over grown eight year olds, and right next to them are a few kids dressed exactly as they are. It's hard to pick out the overgrown child who is the father, as they walk down the street. He's usually the one with the most facial hair. The wife, typically, looks like the only adult in the family.  She looks her age. Often, the wife accompanies this man/child to his doctor's appointments as she would be there for the visit to the pediatrician, because everyone knows the father/man/child won't be able to comprehend what the educated professional tells him. 

It's pathetic. It's prevalent. And it's a symptom of dysfunction. It's not that these men are stupid; they're defeated. They've given up. They've been told from grade school they'll never make it and they have become a self fulfilling prophecy.

And along comes Donald, a clear winner in his slick suit and his ties, and he tells them he knows how to make them winners. Just sign up for Trump U. Just vote for me. Notice he did not do the Mitt Romney dungarees and open neck shirt thing.  It would have looked like pandering. He is a billionaire and proud of it and he's gonna tell you how you can be a winner cause he's a winner and knows how. 

The slick part of the story is it took the ultimate city slicker to appeal to the dispossessed masses, the forgotten men and women. This is nothing new: Just watch day time Evangelical preachers who flaunt their wealth and tell their audiences:  Send me money and God will reward you with wealth. 

Yup, and that Red Slice Is Where Trump Focused

Much talk about whether or not we would be better off without the electoral college. It sure would change the number of people who actually vote--people in safe states would matter again. But, right now, people in Idaho have roughly 30 times the voting power people in New York have.  Of course, that's a rigged system. But isn't that the bone we tossed?  If we had a straight popular vote, then the government would not have to listen at all to people occupying the rest of the country, and when you drove from New York to Seattle, you would be passing through hostile territory, much as the wagon trains once did when those parts were occupied by Comanches. 

Well, maybe we haven't progress all that far, but occupying territory must count for something. 

Anyway, I'm pulling into the station of acceptance. Trump figure out how to disrupt the system and none of the smart guys at Harvard or 538 really saw it coming. In a capitalist, free wheeling society, that guy wins.