It's The Autonomy, Stupid

Bluff And Bluster

No, Bluff & Bluster isn't the name of Trump's favorite law firm, and as easy as it might be to believe, it's not the GOP's Media Consulting Company. 

It is, however, pretty much 45*'s general approach to everything he tries to do.

He makes a big noise - he stomps and stumbles and wrecks the jungle - but it's almost always little more than display. All he wants to do is get people riled up enough that they do something they think he wanted them to do (or something they think will thwart whatever they think he's trying to get somebody to do), and then he makes a decision on which way to move after they've acted - so he can put himself in a position that best suits his own ambitions.

Get the other guy to commit, then counterpunch.

And always always always remember - the guy has no principles. Everything is fungible to him.

The first three words in 45*'s bible are GET THE MONEY.

But through it all, the one thing he's never wavered on is the question of What's Good For Vladimir Putin.

So I don't know what's up with the Iran thing, but what I think we can be dead solid sure about is that nobody in this total clusterfuck we call the US government right now is telling us the truth about much of anything.

WaPo:

The Trump administration has been on high alert in response to what military and intelligence officials have deemed specific and credible threats from Iran against U.S. personnel in the Middle East.

But President Trump is frustrated with some of his top advisers, who he thinks could rush the United States into a military confrontation with Iran and shatter his long-standing pledge to withdraw from costly foreign wars, according to several U.S. officials. Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions and wants to speak directly with Iran’s leaders.

Disagreements over assessing and responding to the recent intelligence — which includes a directive from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that some American officials interpret as a threat to U.S. personnel in the Middle East — are also fraying alliances with foreign allies, according to multiple officials in the United States and Europe.

So a coupla things:

• 45* is a chickenshit. As soon as he's assured that a couple of his buddies have a firm grip on him, he's the guy who makes a big show of "wanting to fight" while looking straight into the camera saying he could kill the guy if he wanted to, but not right now and blah blah blah.
• He can't commit until he knows more about what Putin wants, and even then he has to weigh it against what he can get from the Saudis &/or the Israelis in terms of money in his pockets.

This is strictly a private-enterprise WWE-type production - the ultimate reality show - dressed up to look like government.

Today's Tweet

Nobody goes broke overestimating the gullibility of the average rube.

For $45, Lance Wallnau and Jim Bakker will sell you a Trump/Cyrus coin that you can use as a "point of contact" between you and God as you pray for Trump's re-election in 2020. pic.twitter.com/EwKgGL7sNp

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 14, 2019

Esquire has the full accounting of it:

More than that, though, his presidency persists despite the eruptions of public insanity and the felonies in office and the obvious corruption and the authoritarian onslaught against the institutions of our democracy because other people are making money. The market has mostly been strong, so Wall Street and Big Business have been happy, and then you throw in his trillion-dollar tax-cut giveaway to rich people and corporations. (What constitutional crisis? I'm on a yacht!) The lobbyists and special interests are thriving in the New Swamp—now headquartered at the Trump International Hotel, a beacon of the most brazen corruption—and must surely be enjoying this more direct model of crony capitalism. 

There's nothing like a televangelist to remind you this is a nation of salesmen.

Grifters from all over have greased into his Cabinet and administration, either to live high on the hog on the taxpayer dime or do some favors for industry so they'll get handed a sack of cash when they head through the Revolving Door. Fox News and conservative media and right-wing youth groups are all feeding The Base of aging Caucasians a steady diet of resentment and fear of a changing world in exchange for advertising revenue and donor cash.

And of course, the Evangelical leaders who backed Trump without regard for any discernible Christian principle are having a grand old time. There's nothing like a televangelist to remind you this is a nation of salesmen, and that more often than not, they're peddling snake oil. The latest example comes to us via the Jim Bakker Show, and an intriguing chap who goes by Dr. Lance Wallnau.

That's right: this man says The Lord—the Almighty God who created the Universe, and who exists in the realm beyond space and time—told him this coin is the "point of contact" between people praying for President Trump's success. And it's only $45! And, as luck would have it, the same guy who spoke to God Himself about this coin is also selling the coin, right now!

We are so fucked.

It Serves Their Purpose

Cult45 will no longer defend the ban on Female Genital Mutilation here in The Land Of The Free.

First off, it seems a bit odd that you'd have to spell out in the law that you're not allowed to surgically remove a little girl's clitoris in order to keep her from thinking impure thoughts or whatever the fuck it is these idiots think is a good rationale for their barbarity, but hey - this is Dumbass America, and we can't be left without adult supervision.

So anyway, it occurs to me that abandoning our efforts to look out for women's rights is the main theme of the Extreme-Rightward-Lurch Project of the Daddy State pimps.

I think I can see this as a multi-purpose policy for them. It lets the Mike Pence faction crow about how tolerant they are of a "religious conviction" on the part of some Muslims, while hammering away at the rights of women in general - which allows the extremists of both Christianity and Islam a chance to fake a little common cause because they share a strong Gynophobia, and outright Misogyny.

That last part - the fear and loathing - it's obvious and it starts to feel stale. But getting us to think of it as old and passé is an important aspect of propaganda. As the concept passes into "common knowledge", it becomes normalized - we start to accept it as "just the way it is".

Today's Tweet

The guy had a heart valve replaced recently, and he's turning 76 in a coupla months.

pic.twitter.com/nx5JFB2ZuJ

— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) May 15, 2019

Today's Pix

Click it

Today's Tweet

Cries and lamentations

"I never thought dragons would burn MY city," sobs woman who voted for the Dragons Burning Peoples' Cities Party.

— Jared Rizzi (@JaredRizzi) May 13, 2019

Overheard

A president who knows practically nothing about economics started a trade war - because they're "easy to win" - which made it nearly impossible for farmers to sell their goods, so he put them on welfare, paying them money our government has to borrow from the countries he started the war with.

Instead of profiting from the sale of American food to China, 45*'s trade policy has us paying interest to China while our farmers have become dependent on government handouts because they can't sell their crops to China.

And still, this makes enough sense to the rubes that they go right on supporting him.

hat tip = @Mikel_Jollett

Richard D Wolff

It's definitely possible I'm just indulging myself in some Confirmation Bias, but there's always something that smells more than a little fishy when Repubs (mostly) make a shitload of noise about "rigged numbers" the whole time the Dems hold power, and then fall eerily silent as soon as their guys take over. And it's especially suspicious when they don't just go quiet, but start squawking in the opposite direction.

Anyway, Professor Wolff has a few things we need to keep in mind - a few things, btw, that Obama tried to tell us about, even as he was touting his administration's progress pushing the thing in the right direction, even as Mitch McConnell et al kept getting in the way. 

This is not something that gets fixed any time soon, but we have absolutely no chance to make anything better when the "information" we get outa Washington is mostly just happy talk and bullshit.

Safety Glasses Off

John Oliver