Today's Brando

"... they know what's gonna bring everybody to the wrestling matches ..." Brando has touched on that a few times before, and it's worth repeating:

• Trump is a shiny veneer over nothing
• He's all sizzle and no steak
• Style over substance.

He established that on his first day in 2017 during a phone call with Mexico's president Nieto. Basically: "We don't really have to do anything - you talk shit about me and I talk shit about you, and the rubes will focus on that while we pick their pockets." He repeats that scam every chance he gets, and like Brando's said, he knows the Press Poodles will be happy to help him out by reporting on exactly the wrong thing.

There's a lot more than that in this excellent piece. Brando brings it.

Today's Tweet

Pompeo struts around like the Ricky Jay character in House Of Games - when he blows the gag but insists on playing it out, thinking nobody notices what a ridiculous figure he's become.

A lot of comedy and tragedy came out of the Trump administration, but Mike Pompeo swaggering out of that train wreck like he has big baller presidential energy might be both the most hilarious and saddest thing of all.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 5, 2021

Here's the clip

All For Show

This "presidency" is almost literally nothing but a dog-n-pony show for the purpose of distracting us, while the Rent-Seekers go from thinly-disguised embezzlement to looting the joint outright.

AP New York:

Tony Rankins, a formerly homeless, drug-addicted Army veteran, got a standing ovation at the State of the Union after President Donald Trump described how he turned his life around thanks to a construction job at a company using the administration’s “Opportunity Zone” tax breaks targeting poor neighborhoods.

But that’s not completely true.

Rankins, who indeed moved out of his car and into an apartment since landing a job refurbishing a Nashville hotel two years ago, doesn’t work at a site taking advantage of the breaks and never has done so. In fact, he started that job four months before the Treasury Department published its final list of neighborhoods eligible for the breaks. And the hotel where he worked couldn’t benefit even now because it’s an area that didn’t make the cut.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Rankins said he always considered the job that launched him on his new life two years ago to be in an Opportunity Zone and was honored to be invited by the White House to the State of the Union, with a prime seat in the balcony next to Ivanka Trump.

“After struggling with drug addiction, Tony lost his job, his house and his family. He was homeless. But then Tony found a construction company that invests in Opportunity Zones,” the president said in his Feb. 4 speech. “He is now a top tradesman, drug-free, reunited with his family.”

Days later, Trump doubled down on the Rankins story in a speech on his economic initiatives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and invited him up to say a few words.

“First of all, I would like to thank the president for signing this bill, because without it I wouldn’t be standing here before you right now,” Rankins said.

Trump also praised Rankins’ employer, R Investments, for “working to help 200 people rise out of homelessness every year by investing in opportunity zones.”

That is also not quite true.

CEO Travis Steffens said he has hired hundreds of homeless to work at the 400 buildings the company has owned over the years, taking advantage of various tax breaks. But when it comes to Trump’s Opportunity Zone breaks, he said, the company has only one building tapping the program now, a warehouse in Cincinnati where no one seems to be working, homeless or otherwise.

“We’ve not really worked there,” Rankins said, “but we’ve stored things over there.”

Steffens suggested that when Trump said R Investments was helping 200 people rise out of homelessness he was referring to the number the company hopes to teach construction skills to at the warehouse once it has been converted to a training academy.

Blue sky bullshit. And it's a great illustration of the typical Trump-style scam. I take tax money and use it to train people in certain trades. I get paid, and it costs me practically nothing, and 45* can make a bogus claim that he's created jobs for some poor people.

Don't get me wrong, job training is a huge thing. Programs aimed at helping people out of the cycle of poverty are to be celebrated, and I'll sing their praises all day long. But at the end of that training, if there's no real job with no real bennies and no real security, what's the fuckin' point?

All we've got here is a phony "president" and his scammy daughter crowing about what an amazing thing they're doing for us when actually, they're siphoning tax dollars into the pockets of a few of their rich cronies.

This is not a government

This is a robbery

This Just In

The Onion's reporting on Marianne Moonglow:

SACRAMENTO, CA—After reviewing responses to her post, Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson deleted a tweet Wednesday that suggested people use their minds to turn Hurricane Dorian away from land, and later told reporters the nation was not yet ready to harness such awesome powers. 

“I wholeheartedly apologize for implying that untrained minds should use mental energy blasts to deter any object, hurricane or otherwise,” said the self-help guru, noting that she had miscalculated the willingness and ability of average citizens to access the part of their brain that allows for weather manipulation, levitation of objects, and telekinesis. “If used with malicious intent, this type of power could, for example, cause the Earth’s rotation to reverse, taking us back in time and potentially ripping apart the space-time continuum. All life on the planet could be wiped out if someone tried to harness a psionic beam while holding a crystal. It is now clear to me that Americans will not be prepared to assume such responsibility for quite some time, perhaps not until my second term.” 

Sources confirmed Williamson’s tweet was replaced by an ad for her latest seminar, “Your Mind, the Weather, and You,” and an offer to use the code “LOVE” at checkout for a discounted ticket price of $199.

Overheard:

Williamson is being forced out of the Democratic primary because liberals are saying mean things about her - which means we're gonna lose the Space Alien Vote. 

Way to go, stoopid libtards.
BTW, be sure to watch for Ms Williamson's next book - anticipated to be a mega-blockbuster - "How To Kick The Self-Help Habit". Pre-order now for only $69.99 at WaldenBooks.

Scam Du Jour

...even though it's been going on for years.

Now that we have a grifter in charge of things, it's getting worse.

RawStory:

Some supporters of President Donald Trump are being manipulated by scammers into investing in the Iraqi dinar based on the false premise that the president predicted its value would soar in the coming years.

As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer reports, scammers who have been promoting the Iraqi dinar as an investment vehicle have been telling Trump supporters that the president and the Iraqi government are conducting negotiations to “revalue” the currency that each dinar is worth three-to-four times the amount of the United States dollar.

This would be a massive boost in the currencies valuation, which now has a value of less than $0.001 for every US dollar.

North Carolina Trump supporter Hayes Kotseos says she became convinced that Trump would raise the value of the dinar after seeing a video clip of the president in 2017 where he vaguely said that all currencies would soon “be on a level playing field.”

“I love my president, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,'” Kotseos tells the Daily Beast of her reaction to the video.

Afterward, she and her husband invested thousands of dollars in Iraqi dinars on the hopes that Trump’s deal-making prowess would soon make them instant millionaires.

Kotseos isn’t alone either: Sommer has found that “court papers related to dinar scams often mention millions of dollars worth of dinar purchases” and that “dinar holders regularly tweet at Trump and various Iraqi government Twitter accounts, demanding to know when they’ll finally enact the ‘RV’ that will let the money flow in.”

Will Sommer at The Daily Beast

The currency is nearly worthless outside of Iraq, but Kotseos bought millions of dinars in April, after watching a video of President Trump at a 2017 press conference. In the clip, Trump says, with characteristic vagueness, that all currencies will soon “be on a level playing field.”

In reality, Trump was talking about trade imbalances with China. But like other Trump supporters who have fallen into the dinar investment scam, which has existed since at least 2012, Kotseos interpreted Trump’s rambling statement as proof that the Iraqi dinar would soon be worth as much or even more than the dollar, making anyone who had been smart enough to buy in early a millionaire.

Her shirt says it all. She can't be both at the same time.

And that's the key.

Once I've convinced the rubes to accept the oxymoron, and internalize its contradiction, they'll believe anything I say and do whatever I ask.

TaxScam 2017

These tax cuts don't work because the numbers don't work. Because the numbers never fucking work on these things.

WaPo:

Republicans would no doubt counter that any time you reduce taxes, you increase the incentives for work. But it’s important to remember that if you’re a regular wage-earning American, this bill is as likely to increase your taxes as decrease them. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’ official scorekeeper on tax issues, every income group under $75,000 a year will on average see a tax increase by 2027. And while many of tax cuts that individuals at lower incomes might benefit from phase out over the course of the next decade, the cuts that most help corporations and the wealthy are permanent. All that is why, as Ryan Grim points out, while the bill has a net cost of $1.5 trillion, it actually cuts $6 trillion in some taxes but increases taxes in other ways by $4.5 trillion.

To be fair, the tax code already favors investments over work; Republicans merely want to reinforce and extend that characteristic. While they often lecture about the “dignity of work” when they’re proposing to take away safety net programs that aid those in need, they are doing little or nothing to change the tax code so that it does more to encourage work. Right now, wage income (i.e., money you work for) gets taxed at a higher rate than investment income (i.e., money you make when your money makes you more money). The salutary effects of labor on an individual’s spirit apparently only operate on the grubby lower classes, while the wealthy should be honored and rewarded for their ability to watch their portfolios grow.

Everything we do in government - everything we support our government for doing - is a statement of our values. And we need to dig a lot deeper into what we think we're supporting. There are no simple 10-word answers.

We deserve a closer look. We have the right to know everything that's in every bill under consideration.

When the GOP (eg) huddles in private and pushes for a vote with no hearings and no disclosure, we're being treated like serfs - like we only have the right to agree and obey. We are not being well-served.

It's dismissive and condescending and disrespectful.

There's no honor in it.

Meet President Pence

First, I really don't know what I'm talking about here. Because nobody knows what's really going on with the exception of some dedicated spooks and insiders who've been in Washington for a good long time, and who won't be telling us everything that's going on for just as long a time.

Even when (or if) somebody blows it open, we'll see the top layers - maybe several layers - but while we'll be told this is the most amazing revelation of the inner workings of the political machinery, we won't ever know the whole thing. Because if we did, we'd burn the joint down with everybody inside.  But - 'twas ever thus and ever thus 'twill be.

So anyway, Mike Pence.

Pence seems to be under the impression that he's supposed to be 45*'s righthand man; that he'll fill the Veep spot the way the last 3 Veeps have done - as a close advisor for POTUS, and a kind of partner who's in on the top level meetings, helping shape policy and politicking the agenda behind the scenes - more or less The President's Apprentice if you will (Sorry. I knew that one was coming as I was typing it, but I couldn't stop myself)

But it would seem Pence has been kept in the dark. They loaded him up with bullshit and sent him out to be the picket line of the castle's defense, and he ends up looking really stoopid. If he didn't know, then he's a dope, and if he did know, then he's a co-conspirator. Lose and lose some more.

And also but - it's started to look like the White House didn't fuck him over on purpose and they didn't just keep him out of the loop. It now seems this gang is so dysfunctional, Pence didn't know because communications and the decision-making process are completely FUBAR.

WaPo:
First

“The vice president is a very forgiving man,” said one White House official.

(translation: Chump; easily played; ambition overrides integrity; useful fool)

Next

Nonetheless, the two-week lag between when Trump, Bannon and Priebus learned of Flynn’s misdirection and when Pence himself found out through news reports has raised speculation as to Pence’s true clout — or lack thereof — within the White House.

If they're gonna go after 45*, they know it has to be a long slow process of getting an infrastructure (or a shadow version of the administration) in place that can keep things running as Pence gets his feet under him. Somebody has to guide a stealth transition while making sure 45* stays out of trouble as much as possible. 

Yeah - good luck with that whole coup d'etat thing, fellas. We're being told that there could be a monster constitutional crisis in the making, but it kinda looks like we're already in one.

Things have to happen quickly but can't be rushed.  I'm pretty sure it gets worse for a while.

Piercing The Veil

In all the huffing and puffing about the significance of a few off-year elections, there's one or two little items that got lost in the shuffle.

Here's Charlie Pierce, on trying to see beyond the trees, and into the forest - or something.

This was a raid, plain and simple. These pensions are not retirement plans. They are deferred compensation. They are money that workers are owed because they and their unions were willing to compromise on salaries in exchange for moe money after the workers retired. This is the kind of thing that has been going on all over the country for quite some time under the guise of "unfunded liabilities," which, in most cases, are "unfunded" because the people who were supposed to fund these plans reneged over decades to do so. (It is also a scam beloved of new brotastic centrist Governor Chris Christie, among others.) It is generally sold by the grifters promoting it as a rank appeal to worker jealousy. (That garbageman has a pension and you don't? No fair! And everybody forgets to ask why private-sector workers don't have pensions any more.) As such, it has worked extremely well. It certainly should have sold itself in Cincinnati. Instead, mirabile dictu, the voters saw through the charade and shredded it at the polls.

--and--

This was an assault on money owed to city workers, money that got itself squandered by, among other people, the vulpine bastards on Wall Street. The vote in Cincinnati was a carefully selected test case for ripping off workers for the benefit of large financial services institutions. That it failed was one reason to cheer last night. The next time someone tells you the Tea Party is a vehicle of protest for ordinary Joes and Janes, feel free to laugh in that person's face.