Cagle World

We assumed all along that the loser would top off his tenure by pardoning a motley crew of crooked politicians and lying felons. And he did so Tuesday night, blessing some bent congressmen who’d shown early fealty to MAGA, as well as some flunkies who’d lied for Der Leader during the federal probe of the Trump-Russia scandal.

But arguably most noteworthy of all was his decree that four murdering war criminals – all serving long prison terms – shall henceforth be free. That’s our boy, shredding American values to the bitter end.

Remember Blackwater? The mercenary firm that made big money in Iraq, thanks to the Bush administration’s unprecedented efforts to outsource the U.S. occupation and entrust war-fighting to profit-motive privateers? The marauding guns for hire who achieved infamy in 2007 by mowing down 14 innocent civilians in a Baghdad square – men, women, and children, many with their hands in the air – one of the most horrific episodes in Bush’s war?

Granted, 2007 feels like ancient history, but bear with me, because the slaughter of those 14 people had international repercussions, staining our global reputation and alienating even more Americans from the war effort. Ultimately, in 2014, a federal jury in Washington convicted four Blackwater mercenaries – one for murder, three for voluntarily manslaughter. One was sentenced to life, two drew 15 years apiece, and the fourth went away for 12.

A massacre like that was bound to happen. Blackwater, which had a $750-million contract to guard State Department personnel, already had a bad rep. Karl Horst, a U.S. brigadier general, had already told author Jeremy Scahill, “These guys are loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them.”

But finally, seven years after the killings, the feds cracked down. One major player – the most prominent person who pushed for justice – was Vice President Joe Biden. The four mercenaries naturally became a right-wing cause celebre, and they were nicknamed “The Biden Four.”

In one memo filed with the federal court, retired U.S. Army colonel David Boslego called the massacre “a grossly excessive use of force…grossly inappropriate for an entity whose only job was to provide personal protection to somebody in an armored vehicle. (The killings) had “a negative effect on our mission.” And FBI investigators who visited the scene described it as “the My Lai massacre of Iraq,” a reference to the infamous massacre of civilians in Vietnam.

After the four mercenaries were sentenced, the federal prosecutor said the trial was America at its best: “These Blackwater contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns, and grenade launchers on innocent men, women, and children. Today, they were held accountable for that outrageous attack and its devastating consequences for so many Iraqi families. This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law.”

Oh well. We all know what Trump thinks about the rule of law.

Why has Trump further degraded the presidency by freeing those killers? It’s easy to connect the dots. Let’s use one of Trump’s Sharpies.

Blackwater was founded and helmed by a guy named Erik Prince. Prince contributed $250,000 to the MAGA campaign mission in 2016, and had close ties to Steve Bannon. Prince’s sister is Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. DeVos is a former Michigan chairwoman of the GOP, and the DeVos family has contributed tens of millions to conservative causes.

And oh, I almost forgot: Shortly before Trump’s Inauguration, Prince had a back-channel meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker close to Vladimir Putin. He was later written up in the Mueller Report, and was accused by the House Intelligence Committee of making “manifest and substantial falsehoods that materially impaired the committee’s investigation” of the Trump-Russia 2016 scandal.

There you have it. Justice for 14 dead Iraqi civilians, including two children, was a disposable commodity. Denizens of the Trump swamp took priority over the rule of law – as did Trump’s abiding desire to screw Joe Biden. What can we possibly say at this point? Congressman Seth Moulton, a former Marine who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, gave it a shot on Twitter:

Those “convicted war criminals…are disgraces to our country, and they belong in jail. Thank God (Trump) is on the way out. Decent people everywhere should speak up against this, and show the world that America’s values are not what the president is displaying.”

One more mess for Joe to mop up.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

MAGA’s last failed gasp – the moronic lawsuit that tried to argue Texas has the right to nullify the will of the people in key states that swung to President-elect Biden – was actually the culmination of the authoritarian impulse that has long been metastasizing inside the Republican party.

Trump didn’t inject this disease. He’s merely unleashed its most deadly elements.

Thirty years ago, Republicans began to nurture the belief that they had a divine right to rule and that the Democrats (buoyed by lots of voters who weren’t white) were, by definition, less than legitimate. As historian David Greenberg pointed out, a conviction took hold of Republicans during the Reagan-Bush years that they were somehow the “majority party” and had a lock on the White House.

“When Bill Clinton debated whether to run for president in 1992, Hillary Clinton warned him that the Republicans considered themselves ‘anointed,’ almost entitled by natural law to win the presidency every time,” Greenberg wrote in the Atlantic last month. “Clinton’s victory did not dispel the resentment: Throughout Clinton’s presidency, Republicans branded him as ‘illegitimate’.”

Their big beef at the time was that Clinton had won only 43 percent of the popular vote in 1992. The fact that it was a three-person race, and that Clinton won a solid majority in the Electoral College, didn’t budge the GOP. And four years later, when incumbent Clinton was on the ballot and gliding to victory, Republican candidate Bob Dole publicly railed that dark forces in “the media” were trying to “steal the election.”

Flash forward to 2008. As Barack Obama gained momentum, the Republican right began to whisper that he was a foreign-born Muslim and therefore an illegitimate candidate. This was long before Trump, the failed casino magnate, began to exploit the lie on Twitter.

The whispers got traction with the willfully ignorant. In one focus group, seven out of 12 participants falsely said that Obama was Muslim. This was Melinda, clearly the GOP’s dream voter: “I just really feel like he’s not a people pleaser as in the Americans, but the other people who don’t necessarily need to be pleased, the other, the enemies if you will, I don’t know. I’m just not real positive on that.”

This attitude got worse during Obama’s first term, with the rise of the tea party. At one rally, an Idaho Republican congressman was wildly cheered when he said, “I’m fortunate enough to be an American citizen by birth, and I have the birth certificate to prove it!” When Republican House Speaker John Boehner was pressed to condemn such talk, he merely replied, “The American people have the right to think what they think.”

Then consider this assessment of the GOP, written by two nonpartisan Washington observers:

Republicans “have become more loyal to party than to country…at a time when the country faces unusually serious problems and grave threats. (Republicans have become) ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition…all but declaring war on the government.”

Sure sounds like Trumpism. That was written this week, yes?

Nope. Veteran political scholars Norm Ornstein (headquartered at the conservative American Enterprise Institute) and Thomas Mann (at the liberal Brookings Institution) penned that conclusion eight years ago.

They correctly traced much of the Republican rot to Newt Gingrich, the 1990s rhetorical bomb-thrower, whose “attacks on partisan adversaries in the White House and Congress created a norm in which colleagues with different views became mortal enemies.”

Most notably, Ornstein and Mann said that most Americans were not aware of the GOP’s dangerous evolution because the mainstream press was not reporting it. Alas, they said, there was “a reflexive tendency of many in the mainstream press to use false equivalence” – at a time when Republican hostility to facts and science had no Democratic equivalents.

And when you factor in the racial component, it’s clear that today’s authoritarian behavior has deep roots. Trump is no outlier. He rose from the same swamp where Republicans have long chosen to swim. He has merely given them permission to indulge their un-American id.

So what we’re seeing, on the cusp of the Biden-Harris era, is their last-ditch attempt to overthrow democracy and peremptorily install a home-grown thug in the spirit of Putin and Erdogan.

At this point, only one major party is still committed to small-d democracy. If anti-MAGA Republicans don’t fight back during the next four years, it bodes ill for us as a nation.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

I suppose this is progress: On Sunday, Trump’s vaccine “czar,” Moncef Slaoui, endorsed President-elect Biden’s plan to ask all Americans to wear masks during his first 100 days. Slaoui’s said, “I think it’s a good idea…We all need to take our precaution, have our masks…We will not all have the vaccine in our arms before May or June. So we need to be very cautious and vigilant.”

Alas, and oh so predictably, Slaoui’s message was undercut 24 hours later by his lame-duck boss, who proceeded to violate CDC guidelines by hosting a maskless ceremony in the Oval Office. How many more people will he kill on his way out?

He’s our most prominent menace to public health, but he’s hardly alone.

Two random examples: Last week, a viral photo showed maskless patrons of a popular D.C. bar whooping it up in tight quarters, all of them exercising their God-given freedom to infect. And last month, out in Oregon, a high-profile doctor named Steven LaTulippe appeared at a Trump rally and told the cultists to “take off the mask off shame” (few wore masks anyway). He also boasted that none of his clinic staffers wore masks. The cultists cheered for that one. (The state has since suspended LaTulippe’s medical license, so now he’s a martyr.)

You have to wonder how many more deaths and hospitalizations and illnesses and quarantines we must endure, on the cusp of our darkest winter, before the selfish idiots among us finally recognize their responsibility to their fellow citizens.

Actually, I remember pondering that question when the death toll hit 1,000. But now it’s 280,000, and I’m pondering anew not just because that stat is so horrific, but because one of my pen pals – a reader – has emailed me a blast of ignorance that epitomizes the worst of America.

He signed the email “Beowulf,” so let’s call him that. Beowulf was upset with a recent column where I criticized Scott Atlas, Trump’s incompetent (and now-departed) coronavirus adviser. After a few insults, Beowulf wrote:

“You are without objectivity. One example; where in this piece is the switching positions of both Fauci and the concerning masks? Why do you not say why he was originally against them? And do you know that the average mask mesh size compared to virus size is the same as that of a chain link fence and a swarm of flies?”

This is what we’re up against, folks. People like Beowulf are still assailing Anthony Fauci for what he initially said about masks way back on March 8. They’re still mimicking Trump’s fake claim that Fauci was against masks – whereas, in truth, Fauci was trying to prevent a mask shortage for health workers.

Also, at that time, the extent of asymptomatic spread was unknown. But as health authorities learned more – about the spread of the disease and the efficacy of masks – their recommendations changed. That’s called science. The CDC endorsed masks for the general public on April 3, and Fauci has confirmed that in countless interviews ever since.

Beowulf’s other argument – that the virus passes through masks with the ease of insects flying through “a chain link fence” – is a viral Facebook lie that’s persistently popular among deniers. But infectious disease expert Brian Labus, a member of Nevada’s coronavirus task force, had the best response:

“First, the viral particles don’t leave your mouth at that size. They start out larger and shrink due to evaporation. Second, they don’t come out in a nice, single-file line with the ability to navigate the mask. They all come out together, bang into each other, hit the mask and so on. Lots of them get caught. That’s the idea. Go sneeze on a window screen and see how much crap is left on it. Same idea. It doesn’t have to be perfect – we are talking about risk reduction, not risk elimination. Quit your bulls—- and put on your mask.”

That last part is what I told Beowulf, quoting Labus. I shared Labus’ refutation of the chain link lie, and explained Fauci’s stance on masks.

You might be tempted to ask me whether Beowulf was swayed by my response, but you know the answer. As Thomas Paine famously said, “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason…is like administering medicine to the dead.”

Thanks to science, there’s hope on the horizon. But alas, there’s no vaccination against ignorance.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

It’s nice to get good news for a change.

On Monday, two more swing states certified Joe Biden’s solid victory. And in Washington, MAGA doctor Scott Atlas quit his job.

In the spirit of a famous children’s book, I say to him: “Good night, loon.”

As Trump’s criminally negligent regime withers and dies, it’s imperative that we sift the wreckage and vow – via the ballot box – never to wreak such havoc on America again. If the Biden administration can succeed in restoring faith in governance – particularly in the realm of public health – it would be a gift to humanity. It would be the ultimate rebuke to death-cult dolts like Scott Atlas.

Atlas, the White House pandemic adviser, was the ultimate MAGA appointee: ill-qualified for the job he got, woefully over his head while doing it, and people died because he did it. One former senior White House official reportedly said, “He was the worst thing to happen to Trump in 2020.” Actually, that’s not quite true. Atlas didn’t “happen to Trump.” Trump made Atlas happen.

Atlas was not an infectious disease expert. He was not an epidemiologist. He had no background in public health. He’s a radiologist; hiring him to fight the pandemic was like hiring a plumber to drill your teeth. But Atlas got the job for two reasons: He looked good on Fox News (silver hair, distinguished demeanor) and he spouted Trump-pleasing gibberish on Fox News.

His pitch, as you probably know, was that masks were overrated, social distancing was overrated, the pandemic was nearly over and would wane further if we simply allowed the virus to spread among young healthy people, thus helping America reach “herd immunity.” This quack advice, which Trump lapped up, was so Orwellian that the faculty at Stanford University (where Atlas was a fellow) passed a resolution stating that his “disdain for established medical knowledge violates medical ethics.”

Trump had basically given up on curbing the pandemic – his surrender was arguably the biggest reason why 80.2 million voters ousted him – and Atlas gave him permission to fail. Former Bush White House medical adviser Jonathan Reiner said the damage Atlas wrought, in terms of spreading lies and causing needless deaths, “is incalculable.”

“He understood something that really resonated with the president. He understood that it’s easy to convince somebody that you’re right when you tell them exactly what they want to hear. He told the president exactly what he wanted to hear,” Reiner said Monday. “Other than that, it was a bravura performance.”

And what a performance it was. Atlas aped his imbecilic boss in all kinds of ways. When the Michigan governor imposed new restrictions, Atlas tweeted some militia machismo: “The only way this stops is if people rise up. #FreedomMatters #StepUp.”

Another time, when Atlas tweeted that masks were not effective in slowing the spread of the virus – directly contradicting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Twitter removed Atlas’ lie because, according to a Twitter spokesman, it “was in violation of our COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy.” But Atlas had other ways to get his message out, like sitting for an interview on Russia’s RT network on the eve of the presidential election.

And his most infamous claim – that the virus would be curbed if only 25 percent of the population is allowed to get infected – was denounced by one prominent infectious disease expert as “the most amazing combination of pixie dust and pseudoscience,” a prescription for more needless deaths. And speaking of needless deaths, that toll has now topped 267,000. On Atlas’ last day on the job, more than 1,000 Americans died. That’s double the number of Americans who died each day during the Civil War.

In his resignation letter, Atlas said that “my advice was always focused on minimizing the harms,” whereas in truth he violated the Hippocratic oath that (in its origin language) compels doctors to “utterly reject harm and mischief.”

Leave it to Trump to sideline Anthony Fauci and bring in a guy who commits malpractice. Atlas may be gone – and his boss will soon follow (escorted from the building, if necessary) – but neither will ever able to scrub the blood from his hands.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

More than two weeks since being named President-elect, Joe Biden is anxious to plan as best he can to save the lives of as many Americans as possible. Yet, oh so predictably, we still have a Trump apparatchik gumming up the works.

How does Emily Murphy sleep at night, knowing that every day she refuses to launch the presidential transition with a stroke of the pen, she makes it more difficult for the incoming Biden team to fully weaponize its war against the worst pandemic in 102 years?

Murphy heads the General Services Administration, and it’s her job to sign off on what Biden needs -namely, $6.3 million in public and private money that’s earmarked for the transition team, federal office space and equipment, and, most importantly, access to the insiders who are handling threats to the American people at home (the pandemic) and abroad.

But alas, as CNN reports: “Murphy is struggling with the weight of the presidential election being dropped on her shoulders, feeling like she’s been put in a no-win situation, according to people who have spoken to her recently.”

Where’s my violin?

The only reason she’s “struggling” with a “no-win situation” is because she’s terrified of ticking off the authoritarian toddler who gave her the job. The toddler doesn’t care whether Biden gets up to speed on the pandemic, or whether more Americans die needlessly. He’s too busy sucking on his Twitter binky, thumbing inanities about how he “WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!”

Murphy has gotten the message, and that clearly trumps her duty to follow the law. That’s how things work in a cult.

According to the federal statutes, it’s the GSA administrator’s job to ascertain “the apparent successful candidates for the office of President and Vice President.” That ascertainment is a slam dunk.

Biden is on track to win 306 electoral votes, with no evidence whatsoever that his win will be reversed. His combined winning margin in the pivotal Rustbelt states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) is now three times larger than Trump’s winning margin in those states, and Biden’s 51 percent share of the popular vote is bigger than 9 of the last 15 winners, including JFK’s in 1960 and Ronald Reagan’s in 1980.

But because Murphy remains fixated on her bat-crazy boss’ bat signal, she’s clearly deaf to what sane Americans are saying. Walter Shaub, ex-director of the federal Office of Government Ethics, writes: “Expertise will carry the Biden-Harris transition team for a while, but there are limits to what can be done (on the pandemic) without then government’s cooperation if Murphy remains obstinate.” And four ex-leaders of Homeland Security – two Republicans, two Democrats – are pleading with Murphy to act in the national interest: “At this period of heightened risk for our nation, we do not have a single day to spare to begin the transition.”

The business community is weighing in as well. Tom Donahue, longtime Republican insider and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has issued a statement: “President-elect Biden and the team around him have a wealth of executive branch experience that should allow them to hit the ground running…(F)or the sake of Americans’ safety and well-being, (Trump’s regime) should not delay the transition a moment longer.”

And the National Association of Manufacturers, citing the public health crisis and the need to ensure the efficient distribution of vaccines, released this statement yesterday: “It is highly appropriate that the Trump administration allow key individuals from the Biden team to access critical government personnel and information now…We call on the administrator of the General Services Administration to sign the letter of ascertainment immediately so that this consistent process in American democracy can begin and the exchange of critical information can commence.”

How tragic it is – how predictable – that the narcissistic loser of this election is holding American lives hostage, and that a key flunky in a key post continues to abet him. In 2017, when Murphy testified at her confirmation hearing, she said her sole goal was to make government “more efficient, effective, and responsive to the American people…I am not here to garner headlines or make a name for myself.”

Too late. But if she wants to salvage her name at this late hour, she’ll shred the MAGA armband and be truly responsive to the American people. Because in this election, the people have spoken.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Ray Charles famously sang, “I said Georgia / Ooh Georgia / No peace I find.”

Ray got that right. It’s perversely fitting that the 2020 freak show will bleed into 2021, capped by twin Senate contests in a traditional red state that’s tilting purple. We’ll get no semblance of peace, however fleeting, until the voters of Georgia decide whether President-elect Joe Biden will have a cooperative or obstructive Senate.

If the Democrats can sweep both Georgia elections on Jan. 5 – probably a tall order – the Senate would be deadlocked at 50-50. Vice President Harris would get the tie-breaking vote, which means that Democrats would effectively run the place, Mitch McConnell would be ousted as leader, and Biden would have a leg up on governing.

If you’re wondering why most Republicans continue to detestably indulge Donald Trump’s delusions about the presidential race, the answer is: Georgia. Republican leaders are banking on robust right-wing turnout for incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, and the best way to get those folks to the polls is to stoke their MAGA fantasies about how the presidential election was “stolen,” especially in Georgia. Keep ’em angry. Give ’em a (fake) reason to tick off the libs and keep the Senate in Republican hands.

You may also be wondering: why the heck are we having these elections in January? It’s a Georgia thing. If no candidates reach the 50 percent threshold in November, the top two finishers square off again. Perdue didn’t hit 50 percent in his race with Democrat Jon Ossoff, and Loeffler didn’t come close to 50 – finishing second behind Raphael Warnock, a pastor who’s trying to make history as the first Black Democrat ever elected to the Senate in the Deep South.

And thanks to the prodigious grassroots efforts of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidates are actually in play. Roughly 800,000 new voters have been signed up since 2018 – half of them are non-white – and Purdue, from his Republican perch, has taken notice. In a private conference call leaked Monday to the press, Perdue said that Abrams and her team have “changed, dramatically, the face of the electorate in Georgia.”

Republicans fear that the expanded Georgia electorate will flood the runoffs, just as it did for Biden’s Georgia win. So Republican strategy is to dig in by doing what they do best: lie with impunity, even if it means throwing some of their own people under the bus.

You’ve got to feel sorry for Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state and loyal Republican. He oversaw a clean election, and it’s certainly not his fault that Biden won the state. But under prodding from the White House, Perdue and Loeffler have demanded that Raffensperger quit his job – implying that Georgia’s results for Biden were rigged, while offering zero evidence. As a result, Raffensperger and his family have received death threats.

Raffensperger’s reaction to all this: “Other than getting you angry, it’s also very disillusioning, particularly when it comes from people on my side of the aisle…I don’t think it’s helpful when you create doubt in the election process.”

Welcome to MAGA, pal. What made you think that the cult had any interest in democracy?

Raffensperger said Monday that one of Trump’s top poodles, Lindsey Graham, has been pressuring him to change the Georgia presidential results by throwing out some legal ballots. (Lindsey denies it, for what that’s worth. But we all know he’d do anything for his alpha dog.)

You can tell that the GOP is spooked. If Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other key states officially certify their results for Biden – as expected in the days ahead – Trump will truly look like a loser by Jan. 5, and Republicans fear that the “stolen” election meme will lose steam and hurt turnout. Perdue said in the leaked conference call, “President Trump, it looks like now, may not be able to hold out…We’re going to be standing out here alone.”

Republicans do have history on their side, however. Democrats have traditionally fared poorly in runoff elections, and Georgia hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in 20 years. Heck, in 2002, Georgia even ousted a Democratic senator who’d lost both legs as a Bronze Star soldier in Vietnam. And Republicans might still wow their Georgia base with fears of Democratic “socialism” and a Senate run by Chuck Schumer.

It’s hard to envision Democrats winning a double-header on Jan. 5. But it’s nice that the GOP is so worried. As Loeffler said in the conference call, “The question is about the Democratic turnout. We don’t know. We can’t take for granted that we’re going to keep everyone motivated.”

Rest assured, the Abrams team won’t have a problem.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

If anyone out there still thinks voting is a waste of time, I can quash that canard with two words: Vivek Murthy.

Rather than focusing on the demagogic loser’s pathetic attempts to bandage his eggshell ego with bogus lawsuits, let’s look on the bright side of life. Thanks to President-elect Joe Biden and the eleventh-hour wisdom of the voting majority, the pandemic will be fought not by incompetent quacks, but by seasoned public health professionals who actually know what they’re doing – starting with Murthy, who will co-chair Biden’s coronavirus task force.

The name may not ring a bell. In 2014, Murthy was nominated by President Obama for the post of U.S. Surgeon General, putting him in charge of the nation’s 6,700 federal public health workers.

It was easy to see why Obama wanted him. Murthy, an Indian-American, was a Yale-trained internist at the top-notch Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and a Harvard Med School teacher. He was endorsed by (among others) the American Public Health Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and American Hospital Association. He’d co-founded a nonprofit group that had worked since 1995 to fight HIV/AIDS, and he launched a software technology company that aimed to improve the efficiency of clinical drug trials.

The only hitch: He had to be confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate, which proceeded to block him. Care to guess why? Because the NRA didn’t like him.

Murthy, in his stints as an ER doctor, had treated lots of gunshot victims, and believed that gun violence was a public health issue. (With 30,000 annual gun deaths and 80,000 annual gun woundings, I can’t imagine where he got that idea.) Senate Republicans – fearful as always of the NRA, along with some red-state Senate Democrats – ganged up on Murthy and put his nomination in limbo for nine months.

Long story short – I’ll skip the parliamentary maneuvers – Murthy was finally confirmed during the lame-duck session after the 2014 midterms,. While serving as Surgeon General, he fought the spread of Ebola and the Zika virus, among other public health challenges. He was safe in the job – until April 17, 2017.

That’s when Trump fired him.

No reasons given, but we all know that his Obama taint was sufficient cause. So Murthy had to wander in the wilderness, so to speak, taking his expertise into exile. But this year, as soon as Americans started dying from COVID-19, he started to surface in public forums. Way back in March, when Trump was babbling that “we’ve done a great job” and that COVID “will go away,” Murthy was a tad more realistic.

He told NPR, “This is an all-in moment for America and for the world. And every now and then, these moments come about in the world’s history, where we have to come together to overcome a challenge that’s bigger than any one of us can take on alone. And this is one of those moments. This is a serious pandemic.”

Another long story short: Murthy joined the Biden campaign as an in-house medical advisor. Now he’s back on top – propelled, at last check, by a record 76 million voters – and he’ll be working with Biden task force member Rick Bright, a vaccine development expert who blew the whistle on Trump and got fired from his prominent federal job. He’s back on top, too.

That’s why we vote.

So put your hands together for science and competence. As Vivek Murthy said in August, “We have the talent, resources and technology. What we are missing is leadership.”

Now we’ll get it. Thanks, democracy.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

No matter what happens in this presidential election, it has been deeply satisfying to watch the Joe and Hunter scandal hooey explode on the launch pad.

Republicans have long been adept at smearing the opposition with lies. In 1988, they said that Michael Dukakis polluted Boston Harbor and unleashed black rapists in the white suburbs. In 2000, they said that Al Gore boasted of having invented the Internet. In 2004, they said that John Kerry’s Vietnam medals were phony. And in 2016, they said that Hillary Clinton was an existential threat to national security because her emails blah blah you know that story.

This time, the gist of the GOP’s purported October surprise – concocted by Donald Trump’s hacks and hyped by the right-wing echo chamber – was that Hunter Biden ginned up business in Ukraine and cut his father in on 10 percent of the profits. Or something like that. I won’t bother to detail the claim lest I risk dignifying it. What interests me is why the smear on Joe never got traction with the general public that lives outside the MAGA bubble.

1. There’s no proof that Joe ever took a dime. Two Republican-run Senate committees, Homeland Security and Finance, delved into the claims but found zero evidence that Joe had taken any money, committed any misdeeds, or compromised American policy toward Ukraine while he was vice president. On the contrary, the Republican Senate’s investigators spoke with witnesses who said Joe was clean.

2. The story about how Hunter left an incriminating laptop in a Delaware computer repair shop surfaced in the right-wing New York Post, and it was so dubious that reporters wanted their names removed. Not even Fox News was able to verify it. Nor could The Wall Street Journal; in the end, that newspaper declared, in a headline, that “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.”

3. The main characters seeking to flog the Hunter-Joe malarkey were tainted Trumpists Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani. ‘Nuff said.

4. Yeah, Hunter Biden drummed up some business for himself by leveraging his father’s famous name – a routine form of legal corruption. That’s a legitimate story, as far as it goes. But in the words of sane conservative commentator Matt Lewis, Hunter’s deed is the equivalent of “being told there is gambling taking place at Rick’s Cafe. Heaven knows, the Trump kids and their spouses do this, and more…In the context of what happens in Washington, (Hunter) is small potatoes. Donald Trump is guilty of much, much worse.”

5. Speaking of Donald, the guy wasn’t even capable of hyping the faux Hunter-Joe narrative with any semblance of coherence. Maybe the MAGA cultists could decode the gibberish he spouted during the final presidential debate, but the average person could not – and didn’t care to.

6. Hunter is not on the ballot, and whatever he did has nothing to do with the lives of voters. Nearly 230,000 Americans are dead and 8 million more are infected while Trump brays about how we’ve “rounded the turn.” That’s what voters care about. Even Trump toady Ted Cruz has said of the Hunter narrative, “I don’t think it moves a single voter.” Erick Erickson, the Trump-leaning conservative pundit laments that the Hunter narrative is “obscure” and “a distraction at this point.”

Meanwhile, on Thursday Tucker Carlson was blathering on the air about how he’d possessed damning Hunter materials, but that they’d mysteriously vanished in the mail – but wait, the USPS finally found the materials, so they hadn’t mysteriously vanish after all…or something like that. Then he did a 180-degree turn and told viewers: “Probably too strong to say we feel sorry for Hunter Biden, but the point is pounding on a man, jumping on, and piling on when he’s already down is something we don’t want to be involved in.”

Seems about right.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Some Democrats freaked out the other night when Joe Biden said that we should slowly transition from oil to renewable energy. Oh no, they cried, he’s blown the election! He’s gifted a “gaffe” to the twisted grifter!

Chill out, folks. It’s 2020, not 1950.

Most Americans alive today don’t worship Big Oil. They want to transition to renewable energy. Biden, a conventionally mainstream politician, merely stated a mainstream position. Anyone who thinks that Trump can ride Biden’s remarks to victory should be awarded a political science degree from Trump University.

On the debate stage Thursday night, during an exchange about climate change (which Trump has long dismissed as a hoax), Biden said oil needs to be “replaced by renewable energy over time.” He also reiterated his plan to end federal subsidies for the oil industry.
“Basically, what he is saying is he’s going to destroy the oil industry,” Trump shot back, taken Biden out of context.

Trump and his desperate enablers may think that Biden has handed them a game-changer, but, as always, they’re not living in the real world. Biden didn’t say anything controversial. At a time when the reality of climate change is self-evident (intensifying wildfires, floods, hurricanes, derechos), what Biden said is now conventional wisdom.

Even Big Oil knows what needs to happen. BP has announced a plan to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050. We’ve already been trending away from oil; according to the federal government’s own stats, domestic oil consumption has been falling for the past 15 years. And most Americans are fine with the idea of ending all federal subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. A national poll four years ago found that 62 percent of registered voters – including 54 percent of Republicans — want to cut off that money.

In the aftermath of Biden’s remarks on debate night, 52 percent of independent voters are in favor of phasing out oil in the long run, according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll. Even among Republican voters, 41 percent said yes. And when all voters were asked which candidate is trusted to tackle climate change, Biden beat Trump by 30 points (59-29).

Those stats are in sync with what the Pew Research Center found in June: “A broad majority of Americans (79 percent) say the more important priority for the country is to develop alternative sources, such as wind and solar; far fewer (20 percent) say the more important energy priority is to expand the production of oil, coal and natural gas. Views on this question are about the same as they were in October 2019.”

In the stretch drive to election day, Trump will crank up the hyperbole (Sleepy Joe will destroy the oil industry!), particularly in fossil fuel-producing states like Texas and Pennsylvania, in the hopes of scaring a pivotal share of people to vote red. Granted, he may sway some (and a few Democratic congressional candidates in oil-producing states have tiptoed away from Biden’s debate remarks). But other voters – particularly young people – may be more energized by Biden’s stated determination to combat climate change.

And, lest we forget, Trump has virtually no credibility outside his cult to score with any of his lies. Marinating in his climate change denial, he’s still ranting nonsense about wind turbines “killing all the birds,” and about how Biden supposedly would “knock down buildings and build buildings with little tiny small windows” – a twisted reference to Biden’s plan to retrofit buildings and make them more energy efficient.

One other thing. Trump owns the most deadly pandemic of the last 100 years – with new record highs in America – yet he’s still telling voters that we’re “rounding the corner.”

Nothing in climate policy that Biden foresees for 2050 can possibly trump the illness, joblessness, and death that the demagogue is sowing in 2020.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Few things in our benighted nation are more pathetic than the spectacle of Trump toadies trying to worm their way back to some semblance of respectability.

Now that the tinpot authoritarian seems destined for defeat (he’s even trashing Dr. Fauci – a brilliant strategy), some of his seasoned Republican enablers, anxious not be sucked down the drain as well, are starting to say that, gee, maybe this fellow Trump really is a tad unhinged.

Case in point: Republican John Cornyn, second in the U.S. Senate hierarchy, currently locked in a tight re-election race thanks to Trump’s unpopularity in the Texas suburbs – and thanks to his own long fealty to Trump. The other day, it finally dawned on Cornyn that it might be a good idea to put a wee distance between himself and the demagogue.

Too late, pal.

In a meeting with a Texas newspaper’s editorial board, he confessed that his relationship with Trump has been “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t work out very well. I think that what we found is that we’re not going to change President Trump. He is who he is….What I tried to do is not get into public confrontations and fights with him because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”

Wow. I am reminded of T. S. Eliot’s poem entitled “The Hollow Men.” Eliot captured the essence of cowardice: “Our dried voices, when / We whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass / Or rats’ feet over broken glass / In our dry cellar.”

Meaningless indeed. A purportedly powerful U.S. senator says that he’s nothing more than an abused spouse who’s been cowed into submission; that the abusive hubby “is who he is,” so there’s no point in doing anything about it.

The apparent solution (Cornyn’s as well) was to keep the hubby in office by exonerating him during the impeachment trial. Things were sure different in 1974, when top Senate Republicans went to the White House and told corrupt Richard Nixon that it was time to go. Those Republicans didn’t rationalize by saying “he is who he is,” or “we’re not gonna change him.” Precisely for those reasons, they took decisive action.

Cornyn also said he has disagreed with Trump on numerous issues, but that he has preferred to do so “privately” (thus keeping the public in the dark about his true feelings). He said that by airing his disagreements behind closed doors, “I have found that has allowed me to be much more effective, I believe, than to satisfy those who say I ought to call him out.”

For instance, Cornyn said that he privately opposed Trump’s decision (remember this one?) to swipe money from the defense budget and use it to build his fantasy border wall. But what Cornyn purportedly said in private is meaningless. Twice in 2019 he publicly supported Trump’s maneuver, voting in the Senate to swipe that defense money, insisting that “border security is part of national security.”

In other words, there’s zero evidence that any private dissent has made Cornyn more “effective.” What he basically told the Texas newspaper was that he stayed mum in public because he didn’t want Trump to say mean things about him on Twitter.

Actually, his hapless mea culpa boils down to this: He and other Republicans have known all along how bad Trump is, so apparently the only choice they had was to go along and vote for his wall money, vote to exonerate him, vote to repeal Obamacare, vote with him 95 percent of the time (Cornyn’s stat), stay silent while he tweeted racist insults and demagoguery, and stay silent while the anti-science dolt fueled a pandemic that continues to ravage the nation.

Back in April 2018, I wrote that “as Trump creeps ever closer toward emulating the autocrats in Russia, Turkey, and Hungary, the Republicans who run a so-called equal branch of government continue to disgrace themselves.” Cornyn, by dint of his eleventh-hour rationalizations, has compounded that disgrace.

Long after Trump is gone, the GOP Cowardice Corps will live in infamy.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]