TRUMP

Shockingly, after the renewal of Celebrity Apprentice our friend Donald Trump has ended his roach-infested, sewer dwelling publicity stunt of a presidential campaign, just as virtually everyone knew he would.

Of course, everyone knowing it was a publicity stunt didn’t prevent our friends in quite a few media outlets from cynically claiming he could be a serious candidate and therefore arguing, and behaving as though his every utterance must be recorded. This entailed many appearances by the Donald for interviews, affording higher ratings to outlets whose viewers tuned in to witness the latest unbelievably stupid and unpleasant headline bait of a comment, and cheerily enabling Trump in his publicity campaign for himself and his NBC show.

The fact that sharks would behave like ravenous, aggressive fish with sharp teeth doesn’t excuse them when the net effect of their combined cynicism is to fritter away valuable public discussion time and to encourage and provide an outlet for a variety of smears, lies, insults and socially, culturally and politically demeaning excrement.

So it’s another large FAIL for our lazy, careerist, cynical, semi-witted Washington press. And The Donald can now return to his full-time job being an engine lubricant

NEWT

Speaking of oil and excrement, Newt seems poised to all but declare that the Confederacy is breaking away from the Union again. There’s virtually no low brow racial appeal or stereotype he has left unturned in the last several weeks as he geared up to wage his futile and pity-worthy campaign for president. He’s referred to Obama as a Kenyan anti-colonialist, food stamp president and venerator of Detroit, not so much coded language as monosyllabic words printed with ten-story letters in neon on the sides of skyscrapers spelling it all out.

Apparently Newt’s visionary approach is to target the lucrative demographic of elderly, white voters uncomfortable with a black president. I imagine his challenge and theirs will be for them to stay alive long enough to cast a vote.

As far as I know he has yet to actually raise the rebel flag above his campaign offices, (or perhaps even have campaign offices), but he’s about that subtle. It’s true that the Republican base which is very white, and the Tea Party, which is even whiter, hate Obama’s guts with a fury that turns their white faces a shade of dark crimson. So the uglier Newt gets the better his chances with his woebegone base.

On the outside chance this multiple adulterer and odoriferous has-been generates enough toxin to win the hearts and minds of the Republican base, and to overcome his numerous past failures, blunders and embarrassments, he’d have the general election appeal of weaponized anthrax.

 But with Trump out, Newt promises to be the go-to guy for abominable banalities and public statements guaranteed to reduce the level of debate, diminish the political process and debase American democracy in general. So you news show bookers, get out your phones right now, and start lining him up and penciling him in. A helpless nation awaits his endless future appearances.

DEBT CEILING

In anticipation of upcoming or ongoing discussions about raising the debt ceiling I only have one thing to ask of President Obama and congressional Democrats: for once, in the name of all that is holy call the Republicans’ bluff. Their attempt to wipe away seventy-five years of progress and fundamentally alter the American landscape while controlling one house of the legislative branch by holding their breath until America turns blue, should be held up to public scrutiny for the destructive, juvenile prank that it is.

Make it clear that Republicans’ price for America not defaulting on its debts and the ensuing economic debacle is the destruction of Medicare and other critical elements of the American safety net, a price that includes an unfair and unreasonable refusal to raise taxes on long pampered upper brackets or to end antiquated subsidies to America’s extortive oil companies in order to reduce the debt. If Republicans insist on the worst happening: let it: Republicans will catch the bulk of the blame, just as they did when they pulled their silly, obstructionist power play to shut the government down in 1994. Expose their radicalism, while protecting a government rational in size and structure for the modern era; retaining a safety net and government infrastructure literally critical to the survival of many Americans; and retaining some vestige of fairness in tax and other policies, a vestige of a connection between American reality and the real world

Any negotiation and any result should be reasonable and realistic.  I don’t mean the new reasonableness whereby Republicans get 90% of what they want in exchange for giving up a full 10%, but genuine reasonableness that reflects a sane, sound economic policy and a decent society capable of progress and modernization and adaption for the future. It’s not a cliché at this juncture to say: if it’s not now it’s never.