CSotD: False Starts and Other Penalties
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Bill Day takes what I believe to be an unnecessarily pessimistic look at the year ahead.
He’s correct that the gloves are off and that Trump and his fellow travelers are not hiding their ambitions. Homeland Security has posted this declaration of plans to deport 100,000,000 “third world” people and if you need a translator to explain who they mean, I can’t help you.
They’re not pretending they aren’t white supremacists and we shouldn’t pretend we don’t know it.
However, they’ve been losing in the courts and losing at the ballot box. There is a genuine danger that they will attempt to disrupt the midterm elections in November, and anyone who cares about the nation needs to keep an eye on that, but we have to believe the old chant from the Sixties, “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.”
There is yet another attempt to discredit the vote in Georgia because Fulton County poll workers did not sign a large number of ballots on election day. But the accusation is nonsense, and that’s the opinion of the Wall Street Journal, which is hardly a leftwing publication.
First of all, signing the form is a procedural rule, not a law. And those ballots, each of them cast by a verified, qualified voter, were recounted twice by machine and once more by hand. As they say down South, that ol’ dog won’t hunt.
Day is right that Trump is getting bolder and louder, but he has to, because he’s losing ground. The challenge in 2026 will be to keep the train on the rails, because it seems to be heading in the right direction, eventually.
Molina jokes about the proposed requirement that anyone seeking a visa to enter the US must furnish five years of social media records, and the proposal is a joke, though not a funny one.
The idea that there are enough bureaucrats to sort through that much nonsensical trivia for each person wishing to enter the country is ridiculous, and the only real effect — aside from providing an excuse to reject hand-selected visitors — is to make the government look stupid and overbearing.
Two Bulls has it right: Trump continues to beam with pride, but he’s becoming a burden to the Republican Party, particularly as they begin to face the prospects of the midterms and as they hear from angry constituents in their home districts.
The implacable, united GOP that has formed a bloc in Congress is beginning to break up. The major media stars of their movement have been quarreling in public, and there have been a significant number of retirements of legislators who have had enough.
This is not to say that purists among progressives won’t be able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Stahler captures the response of many on the left to MTG’s retirement and rejection of the MAGA movement. It’s not that she has suddenly donned a Che Guevara T-shirt and shouted ‘Viva la huelga!” but as others follow her lead and break away, they shouldn’t be condemned for past sins.
Mike Pence is forming what looks to be a less strident conservative movement, and while it may not offer everything progressives want, it is attracting disheartened conservatives away from the Heritage Foundation and could signal a return to occasional bipartisan cooperation.
Meanwhile, the far right seems to be grasping at straws.
Juxtaposition of the Day
If we start with the assumption that all Americans have reasonable access to the full spectrum of media, we can make reasonable demands for informed opinion.
Varvel says Gov. Walz did nothing about the fraud surrounding child care centers in Minnesota, but there have been investigations, prosecutions and convictions. While it’s certainly reasonable to say they should have done more, it’s untrue to say they’ve done nothing.
And Kelley should know better than to join the rush to make a hero of a callow 23-year-old would-be propagandist. Nick Shirley’s videos are an imitation of the hoaxes that sprang up around Planned Parenthood a decade ago and similar dishonest videos that doomed ACORN five years before that.
Although the claims Trump and his associates leveled against Haitians were absolute lies, a number of Somalis have been involved in the Minnesota daycare fraud. But there’s a difference between identifying the community in which fraud has occurred and extending the accusation to an entire ethnic group.
It’s a familiar piece of bigoted illogic: Most Mafia members may be Italian, but it does not follow that most Italians are members of the Mafia. Ditto with Somalis and daycare fraud, and when the president calls an entire racial/ethnic group “garbage,” you may wish to question his reasoning and his motivations.
A backgrounder on the locked doors Shirley and his camera crew encountered:
I’ve visited hundreds of classrooms, sometimes as a media educator, sometimes as a reporter. The procedure on cameras was simple but firm: You needed permission and you had to respect certain restrictions.
Some children are in foster care for very good reasons, and Child Protective Services does not want abusive parents or those involved in highly contentious custody battles to know where the kids are. It’s no joke: I encountered a case in which an abusive mother found out where her daughter was and stormed the school in an attempt to seize her.
The procedure was discreet and simple: In some cases, when you arrived, the teacher would quietly tell you to avoid the kid in the blue sweatshirt. Other times, she’d say, “Amber, why don’t you come sit with me?” and then stay at the edge, out of any shots.
As for not being allowed to wander in uninvited, Nick Shirley is 23, which means he was not yet born in 1999 when the Columbine massacre took place. He has never known a world in which school doors were not locked. Pull the other leg, punk.
But let’s not close on that note. It’s a new year, and yet only the number on the calendar has changed. What hasn’t changed is the fact that things only improve if you want them to, and if you’re willing to make the effort.
Keep the faith.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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