It’s Saturday morning and I am watching a Bill Maher show that I taped last night. I always watch Bill Maher because he’s clever, funny, opinionated and smart as hell. He usually has guests who fit the same description and that means I will learn something if I pay attention. This show was no exception.
This week he had Nancy Pelosi on as his interview guest, and she killed it. I am a huge Nancy Pelosi fan. I think that aside from Eleanor Roosevelt, she is probably the most influential woman in the history of politics because she sees what has to be done and knows how to accomplish it.
Maher’s two discussion guests were John McWhorter, Associate Professor of linguistics at Columbia university and Peter Hamby editor of Puck, two of the smartest guys around. I say this because their weapons of war are almost always logic and reason, which means they will come to provable conclusions that make sense to even the least intellectually grounded dolt.
This night the discussion revolved around the Harris/Walz interview by Dana Bash and the insights and opinions expressed by the trio as well as Donald Trump’s reactions to it. McWhorter is working over Trump’s misuse of the language and Hamby is scouring Bash’s inability to corner Harris, both in very funny ways.
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The discovery of the bodies of six more Israeli hostages should close the case against Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu who has kept the war and the hostage negotiations from being resolved so that he can keep his sorry ass from going to jail.
Despite the criminal responsibilities of Hamas and Iran in the instigation of this war it is Netanyahu’s personal legal struggles that encouraged him to provide financial, as well as other help, that allowed Hamas to embark on their October 7th attack which resulted in the complete destruction of Gaza, the murder of thousands of Palestinians and the starvation of thousands more children.
The Jewish people have for centuries been the victims of almost universal persecution. But when they had an opportunity to do something to help a suffering people escape their own unfortunate history, they instead followed the least moral path possible in a persecution which they should have known enough to avoid and which they could see would eventually lead to a bloodbath.
After the bloodbath became a reality the fact that they didn’t have enough moral outrage to rise up and stop Netanyahu is hard to believe.
There is only one solution to the Palestinian problem. They are a people in need of a homeland. That means “Two State.” To accomplish that they must get rid of Bibi.
There is no chance that any of the negotiations that we have put in motion to end the hostilities and free the hostages will come to a successful conclusion as long as Bibi is the head of Israel. They have to get rid of him. Everything that leads to any kind of successful solution to any of the problems in that part of the world demands the removal of Bibi Netanyahu. Its either inevitable or it’s war.
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Sean O’Brien, President of the International Teamsters, was questioned on Face the Nation about the fact that the Teamsters are the only major union not to endorse a presidential candidate yet. In fact, all the other major unions have endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. This is not surprising considering Trump’s history of union busting going all the way back to the time he was putting up buildings in NYC.
Like any good union leader, O’Brien kept everything close to the vest but it’s fairly obvious that his failure to endorse has something to do with the Democrats failure to book him as a speaker at their convention.
But that would only be one part of the equation. O’Brien wants us to think that it was because Harris has yet to appear before the union’s endorsement committee, but the smart money says the real reason is the makeup of the union’s membership. There is a hell of a lot of white, working-class members of the teamsters and a hell of a lot of them supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 and will vote for him again. Of course, this is true of many unions, but the Teamsters seem to have had less conflict with Trump than say, the construction unions.
Long ago, in another field of endeavor I worked closely with the Teamsters, and I can say without fear of contradiction, that at least 90% of the Teamsters I worked with then, would today be Trump voters. Now that’s a reason for Sean O’Brien to drag his feet.
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Maura Healy governor of Massachusetts was interviewed by sub-hostess Nancy Cordes on Face the Nation. It started off badly when Cordes threw a dumb question at Healy who is way too smart and lacking in patience to put up with that sort of nonsense.
Cordes prefaced by repeating Trump’s statement that he would require insurance companies to pay for IVF treatments Healy smiled and then snapped that Cordes shouldn’t believe anything Trump says. She then wet on to say that as Attorney General of Massachusetts she had to sue Trump over a hundred times for his lies. She then finished ripping him a new one by by stating that she didn’t think Trump could spell IVF. But Cordes kept asking her simplistic questions and finally Healy regarded her with a look that said, “Pay attention or I’m outta here.”
All in all, Cordes needs a lot more gravitas before she takes on the likes of Maura Healy again.
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Thursday the bomb dropped. Not only was Liz Cheney not voting for Donald Trump, who she had voted for in 2016 and 2020, but she is voting for Kamala Harris. It was unheard of in Republican circles. Liz Cheney, daughter of the hardest hardliner in GOP history, the man who was the brain behind George Bush, is actually going to vote for a Democrat.
Don’t kid yourself it took a mountain to make this happen. It took a man so twisted, so criminally bent, that Cheney actively fears for the country, for its ability to maintain a democracy with Trump in the White House again. And of course that’s the problem. The danger of a criminal sociopath with dictatorial leanings, having access to the nuclear codes was just too much for Liz to handle. She had seen others, men like Adam Kinzinger, men who are the only hope of the Republican Party, speak up. These few are only chance that the party of Lincoln has to keep itself from sliding into the slush pail of history.
The question is, “Is it too late?” Have the current leaders of the GOP, in their futile attempts to emulate Trump, lied so many times to their followers that they are now just shadow paintings of their devious leader? Is there anything recoverable there? Even if they can get rid of Trump. Are there enough former GOP leaders who have seen the light to put together a functioning party? Or will the worst of the lot, the Ted Cruzes, the Lindsay Grahams, the Tom Cottons, the Rick Scotts and the Marco Rubios ever be able to pull enough of the crumbling shambles together to create a functioning party after Trump goes down in flames?