Somebody Voted for These Morons

It has been another week of transcendent stupidity and borderline evil from the Trump administration, but Curmie intends to cling to his pledge to avoid talking about the Embarrassment-in-Chief and his various minions except in passing.

Still, the week gives us plenty of examples of politicians proving themselves utterly unfit for positions of greater responsibility than night-shift assistant manager at the E-Z-Squeeze convenience store. We’ll look at three, but you must understand, Gentle Reader, that there are plenty more. We’re skipping over stuff like Curmie’s own Congresscritter Loony Louie Gohmert’s petulant tantrum, for example, because saying that Gohmert would have to grow up to be considered a bratty toddler ceased being news years ago.

Greg Abbott:
It’s everyone's fault but his.  Just ask him.

We start, then, with another embarrassment to the state of Texas, Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott gave a press conference this week, touting personal responsibility while, of course, avoiding even the suggestion that his own incompetent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic might have played a role in Texas’s surging numbers of new infections. There was a time when it appeared that the governor was actually paying attention. A few weeks back, when Abbott revealed his plan to re-open the state, it all seemed pretty reasonable. Well, except for one thing: it was too soon by at least two weeks. Curmie remembers saying so (both approval of the general strategy and opposition to the timeline) on a friend’s Facebook post. Sometimes, Curmie hates being right.

Now, in the wake of numbers that are alarming even to those who are trying to pretend everything is under control, we’re backtracking again... at least sort of. I’d say it’s to no one’s surprise, but frankly the dismissal of public safety concerns by virtually the entire Republican Party did make it less than entirely predictable that Abbott would even acknowledge the problem. (Side note: a recent article about former Vice President Cheney’s endorsement of wearing masks carries a headline saying that in doing so he “crosses party lines.” Was there ever a more scathing denunciation of the GOP?) So it’s probably too much to expect Governor Abbott to be a grown-up admit his own culpability in facilitating the scale of the outbreak.

Mike Johnson:
Smug, stupid, and amoral.

In related COVID-19 news, a hitherto unknown little turd named Mike Johnson, who happens to be a Congresscritter from Louisiana, made his play for the coveted title of Asshole of the Week. Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, was about to testify remotely regarding the (alleged) politically-motivated interference of Attorney General William Barr in the Roger Stone case. As is so often the case among those who seek to curry favor with the powerful but obviously guilty, and in the spirit of the badly performed farces that were the Kavanaugh hearings and the Trump impeachment trial, Johnson scrambled to find a way to prevent or at least discredit relevant testimony: because nothing says “nothing to hide” like suppressing evidence.

In this case, Johnson claimed (not merely without evidence, but indeed intentionally falsely) that House rules disallowed remote testimony, and then, upon hearing that Zelinsky was physically absent under the advice of his pediatrician in order to protect his newborn child, Johnson began mocking Zelinsky for “phoning it in.” Curmie would pronounce Mr. Johnson as evil, except one doubts the Congresscritter is sufficiently intelligent to be immoral. Amoral it is, then. Either way, Johnson seems to be begging for someone to remove the reptilian smirk from his visage… with a tire iron, perhaps.

Lyda Krewson:
long on intimidation, short on sense

But lest this week’s review seem too partisan, there’s the Democratic mayor of St. Louis, whose outrageous behavior this week may even surpass Johnson’s in audacity. Mayor Lyda Krewson responded to a question in a Facebook Live briefing by reading out the names and addresses of citizens who had urged defunding of the police. It’s tacky but not altogether unreasonable to identify the protestors by name: anonymity is no more appropriate among those we agree with than among those we don’t. But the addresses? Yes, the Alderwoman who accused the Mayor of “doxxing [her] constituents” is exactly correct. 

There is no reason to release that information publicly except to attempt to intimidate the citizenry into compliance with mayoral and police dictates. People don’t trust the police—and St. Louis has had at least its share of not merely questionable incidents (the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson case), but of less-reported but well-documented cases of police gleefully strutting their toxic masculinity at the expense of demonstrators. Obviously, the solution to that problem, in the bizarro universe inhabited by Mayor Krewson, is to tell those same armed, arrogant, and often racist cops where protestors live. She subsequently apologized. That isn’t enough.

Anyway, there’s this week’s round-up of despicable pols… well, some of them, at least.

And herewith a poll. Vote for your... erm... favorite.