Today's Charlie

Charlie Pierce at Esquire:

I try. Lord knows how I try. I try to maintain a certain equilibrium about all of my fellow citizens. We're all in this great democratic experiment together, after all. I think we have an obligation as a self-governing democratic republic to make government work best for all our people. I believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, and in the political commons to which we all have a right and in which we all have a stake. Economic anxiety in de-industrialized America is very real and it is a real danger to all of what we can achieve together. It is now, and it was in 1980, when I drove from Youngstown to Toledo to Flint to Grand Rapids as we wound into the election that brought us Ronald Reagan.

(So, by the way, is the intractable poverty of people, working class and otherwise, who are not white.)

So, I try. Lord knows how I try.

But what am I supposed to do when so many of my fellow citizens guzzle snake oil by the gallon and call it champagne?

I think what hangs us up the most is that we're all clinging rather desperately to the Presumption of Regularity.  We need something that looks and feels more like normal. So we project that need onto an awful lot of what's going on.  Especially with 45* making such forceful and deliberate efforts to vacate the norm.

Add it all up and we're danger-close to a charge of False Consciousness, but what else we got?

AHCA

75% of us are on record saying we don't want ACA repealed. We want it fixed and strengthened.

What's the big bugbear according to Business "conservatives"?  Uncertainty.  

You really can't make a case that AHCA does anything at all to make Americans feel more certain. Especially the way the Repubs are going about it.

But, hey at least they've given us a chance to see it before they jam it up our collective ass. 

The AHCA was released today - in all it's 142 page glory.

I haven't slogged all the way thru it yet, but so far, it's a little like the old bit about watching the original Star Trek - everybody knows the young guy you don't recognize (usually a Red Shirt) will be dead before the opening credits.  And 4 or 5 minutes after that first commercial, you'll know the gist of the story because there's only a handful of themes (kinda like this little blog here), and it always works out just fine for the Executive Elite (not at all like this little blog).  Which frees you up so you can go do something worthwhile - like picking fly shit outa your pepper shaker.

Anyway, so it is with practically everything these GOP boneheads come up with.  They put a nice face on it, but it's pretty much always about taking tax dollars from you and me, and putting them into the pockets of their in-laws, their lobby pals, and their campaign contributors.

It's money laundering. Why do you think the GOP in congress is doing nothing about 45*?  When it comes to washing money, he's one of the best - they're too busy taking lessons from this jagoff.

If you wanna know about a problem here in USAmerica Inc, look to who benefits from the continuing existence of the problem, or who profits from "solving" it. 

If you work it just right, you can get a 2-fer, like The War On Drugs and Coin-Operated Prisons.

AHCA is off to a good start in that regard. The Insurers get to go back to the bad ol' days of a Pick-n-Choose customer base, plus they get to siphon bunches of dollars out of the Treasury by playing in the High Risk Pool.  And that's just the shit I can see from here.

The rich get richer and the rest of us get fucked with our pants on.

Is It Ever Enough

The president has a sworn duty to protect the United States. We have been attacked, folks. Trump is failing his fundamental responsibility. pic.twitter.com/1nsQnOavAb

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 22, 2017

I recall an awful lotta noise from the Repub side about how the first duty of POTUS is to keep us safe - inviting the inference (and sometimes raving loudly) that Obama wasn't doing that. Which of course means they were using that bullshit criticism trying to reclaim the National Security issue.

And btw - I'm still hearing "Yeah, but the Democrats". A lot. And I get the feeling that's because people seem to want the Dems to get after those rotten ol' Repubs, and say some strong things in strong language, and take 'em down no matter what.

In other words, we want the Dems to start acting like Repubs, while we sit back and snipe about how "They're all the same" and "Both Sides Do It" and "two sides of the same coin" and blah blah blah.

Dems are taking all of this a step at a time. It frustrates the fuck outa me too, but taking as much time as it takes to make sure we get as many snakes as possible is actually the proper way to go about this.  

It's also the Conservative thing to do. On this and other issues, the Libruls are now behaving far more conservatively (in keeping with the rule of law) than most "conservatives".  

Use that one in conversation some time.

Seems Pretty Clear

WaPo:

President Trump’s budget calls for sharply reducing funding for programs that shelter the poor and combat homelessness — with a notable exception: It leaves intact a type of federal housing subsidy that is paid directly to private landlords.

One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation’s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump’s 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.

Trump’s business empire intersects with government in countless ways, from taxation to permitting to the issuing of patents, but the housing subsidy is one of the clearest examples of the conflicts experts have predicted. While there is no indication that Trump himself was involved in the decision, it is nonetheless a stark illustration of how his financial interests can directly rise or fall on the policies of his administration.
Intentional or otherwise, this is exactly the Selective Political Fuckery we try to prevent with little things like the Emoluments Clause and the Office of Government Ethics.

If 45* was a Dungeons and Dragons character, he'd be strictly Chaotic Neutral. He has no discernible moral code other than "whatever gets me what I think I want right now".

We thought is was bad when Bush43 brought the Manichean crap - where it's all and only one way, or it's all and only the other way, and there's no such thing as middle ground?  Yeah - wow, those were the days, huh?

Weirdly, this 45* guy turns that knee-jerk outlook to his advantage by vacating the narrowly-defined black-n-white moral positions that "conservatives" always claim; substituting himself; and putting the finishing touches on the GOP's attempts to make the equation read backwards: "What's good for Trump is good for the GOP, and what's good for the GOP is good for the country."

And this is nothing new.

And this is exactly what "The Left" has been warning us about for decades.

And 45* is exactly the guy the system was built to keep out.

And he's exactly the guy that same system almost guaranteed would eventually rise by taking full advantage of the system's loop holes.

Because

Unfortunately, the structure of restraint is built around the presumption of honorability, and allows for someone devoid of honor to go more than a little crazy with the power it conveys.

Today's Tweet

I AM IN TEARS pic.twitter.com/VUX8OcM4eo

— Chanel #45 (@monicamenzeI) June 19, 2017

And a reminder of what we're losing:

President Obama spoke truth last year about trashy trump & his words are more relevant today than ever before. 🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/64MPKWUbWf

— Ricky Davila (@TheRickyDavila) June 19, 2017

Down We Go

CNN:

The two agencies that protect the country's coast lines and its residents, NOAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are still without leaders -- positions that must be appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate.

"That should scare the hell out of everybody," retired US Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré told CNN. "These positions help save lives."

Honoré knows all too well the value that leadership plays during a crisis, as he commanded Joint Task Force Katrina. He coordinated military relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

--and--

But according to Honoré, things could be anything but orderly. "These operations will not function as they should with temporary people doing the jobs." 

"Just look back to Hurricane Katrina to see how important leadership was. If someone is slow in making decisions it can be costly -- imagine having no one at all," Honoré said, referring to the criticism and eventual resignation of then-FEMA director Mike Brown over the bungled response after Katrina hit.

We'll see how it shakes out, of course, but is anybody really expecting good things? This is another play to Privatize (I think - prob'y), as per the usual shit the GOP is always trying to pull:

1) Fuck up the system of Federal Response and Aid to natural disasters

2) Point at it and say, "Oh look, that whole FEMA thing's fucked up"

3) Have your son-in-law's buddies step in and collect a shit-ton of tax dollars for doing something it would've cost a third of a shit-ton of tax dollars to get it handled by somebody who actually knows what the fuck they're doing.

How sure are we that those buddies of the son-in-law aren't working for a shell company?

- with a mailing address in Panama?

- that hides the fact that somebody's raking in nice fat profits from the misery of average Americans?

And how sure are we that those tax dollars aren't being funneled to a bunch Russian Oligarchs?

This is not governance - this is a fucking robbery.

Keith

45* is self-destructing.

Today's Tech Tip

Weeks of trouble-shooting your code can save you hours of planning.

Today's Wonderment

David Brooks - NYT:

He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.
--and--

Our institutions depend on people who have enough engraved character traits to fulfill their assigned duties. But there is perpetually less to Trump than it appears. When we analyze a president’s utterances we tend to assume that there is some substantive process behind the words, that it’s part of some strategic intent.

But Trump’s statements don’t necessarily come from anywhere, lead anywhere or have a permanent reality beyond his wish to be liked at any given instant.
As driftglass is consistently pointing out for us, David Brooks is the Poodliest of all the Pundit Poodles, and he's paid handsomely to maintain the Both Sides bullshit.  But oddly, there's no razor blade hidden in this particular apple.  Brooks puts up a very sharp critique of 45* and manages to get through the whole piece without saying it's all the liberals' fault because of they smoked some pot 50 years ago, or "But what about those Democrats?"

Won't wonders never cease?

Today's Tweet

When you post a controversial tweet pic.twitter.com/O3AyICAqTz

— Gautam Trivedi (@Gotham3) June 17, 2017