The lies and coverup continue

The crazier Republicans get defending this felonious, heinous president, the more I want to scream! The deal they’ve made with the devil—and I mean that literally—is to give Trump a pass on the unforgivable things he’s doing to America, just so they can get their tax cuts, federal judgeships and anti-abortion agenda. As a strategy it makes some sense, I suppose. But Germans in the early 1930s made the same deal with another authoritarian fascist, and that didn’t work out so well.

For evidence of the irrationality and sheer effrontery of this Republican Party, you need look no further than the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. It’s sad that this newspaper, which once was respected, has fallen so low in moral vision. One gets the sense that its stable of columnists has either become completely unhinged, or—knowing what’s expected of them from the Murdochs—deliberately sets out to write the most dishonest, provocative propaganda they can dream up to make their billionaire overlords happy.

Let’s take a look at some recent entries.

First, there’s Kimberley Strassel’s Feb. 9 screed against Christopher Steele. Now, I know, and you know, that every attack against Steele is nothing other than a smokescreen to deflect attention away from Trump’s behavior, which probably was criminal. Steele was not a Democratic operative. Besides, what difference does his motive in compiling it make? What’s important is the content of the dossier, not who wrote it or why he wrote it. Many if not most of what Steele documented has turned out to be true. And I would venture to say that Trump’s suspicious behavior in protecting Putin and Russia, and in refusing even to indirectly criticize Russia’s meddling in our election, suggests that Putin has something very dark and heavy over Trump. Like a sex tape. Anyhow, here’s Strassel giving her gigantic, Goebbelsian lie: “No credible Steele, no credible dossier.” Well, the dossier’s credibility has already been accepted by Robert Mueller and all rational Americans. Moral of the story: No credible Strassel.

In the same paper, another day, another smear. Here’s a columnist equating Keith Ellison, the deputy DNC Chair, to “Louis Farrakhan.” The strategy here is to choose one of the most hated Black men in America, Farrakhan, and then to make it sound like Ellison is cut from the same mold. I had never heard of this columnist, Jeryl Bier, but a brief Google search told me everything I need to know about him. Among his other articles is one attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center, of all things, which tells me Bier sympathizes with neo-nazis and white supremacists. He also writes for the Weekly Standard’s blog, where, in one of his posts, he snidely summarized the battle over Obamacare this way:

Short Summary of Obamacare and Proposed ‘Repeal and Replace’

Congress passes law to give lots of people free stuff.
Congress considers repealing law.
Headlines: People will lose free stuff.

So healthcare is just socialistic “free stuff” for “lots of people.” What an insult. Maybe Jeryl Bier is auditioning to work for that bastion of truth and objective journalism, Breitbart.

Then there was Andy Puzder’s Feb. 7 op-ed piece bashing people who call the current economy “the Obama boom.” Here are three things to know: One, the boom clearly began under Obama; here’s the Dow’s performance since 2009.

It clearly proves the recovery began in Obama’s first weeks in office. Next, here’s the Dow’s performance over the past week. Would Puzder call this the Trump Crash?

Finally, Puzder ran Carl’s Jr. for 17 years, until 2017. Under his tenure, the city of Los Angeles fined Carl’s Jr. $1.45 million for “paying its workers less than the minimum wage.”

 Here’s Andy Puzder’s lovely home, in the tony Southern California village of Montecito:

A lot of workers were ripped off so his could afford that McMansion.

Puzder also was Trump’s first nominee for Secretary of Labor, but had to pull his name “after footage surfaced of his ex-wife saying he had physically abused her.” Well, that qualifies Puzder to be a Trump nominee: another abusive straight white male who beats his woman.

Speaking of white men, David R. Henderson, in a Feb. 9 WSJ op-ed entitled “A war on the rich won’t help the poor,” pretends that “closing the gap” between poverty and wealth in America has nothing to do with tax policy! Yes, you read that right. Raising taxes on the rich, according to Henderson, isn’t a fair way to transfer wealth from the one percent down to everybody else; it’s “a war on the rich.” It is very hard to understand such a willful distortion of common sense, except to note that Henderson is paid by the arch-conservative Hoover Institution, which long has lobbied for lower taxes on rich people.

So you can see why I sometimes want to scream. The Republican lies pile up, the GOP’s enablers curry favor with Trump, and meanwhile the shame in the Oval Office continues.