We'll See

Time Magazine Online:

According to a Gallup poll released Monday, Americans have significantly less faith in Trump than they had in his predecessors. Only 44% said they are confident Trump will avoid major scandals in his Administration, 46% said they are confident in Trump’s ability to handle an international crisis, and 47% said they trust him to use military force wisely. When the same questions were asked at the start of Barack Obama’s, George W. Bush’s and Bill Clinton’s terms, roughly three-quarters of Americans said they had confidence in the newly elected President in these areas.

When compared with Gallup’s averages of confidence polling in his predecessors, Trump comes up short: he has a 32-point confidence deficit in his ability to avoid scandals in his Administration, a 29-point deficit in his ability to use military force well and a 28-point deficit in his ability to manage the Executive Branch. Most Americans (60%) believe Trump will be able to get things done with Congress, but even there he comes up far behind his predecessors — the average number of Americans with confidence in Obama, Bush and Clinton to work with Congress was 82%.

The main thing (for me), is that Trump has benefited greatly from Low Expectations. And that's become kind of a standard play with the GOP in the last 25 years or so - The Empty Vessel; the guy with no experience and no practical know-how or training; coming in to do a job that he's woefully unprepared to do.  

We've become so dis-enamored with politicians that we've gone completely the opposite direction, arriving at a point where we've adopted a straight-up contradiction as our guiding principle:

Anybody with the right qualifications for the job is obviously unqualified.

That weird sound you hear is Ayn Rand doing a series of over-exaggerated zombie face palms.

Today's Tweet

grifters gonna grift.

remember when DC press had collective 6-yr heart attack re: Dems and Lincoln Bedroom? https://t.co/rjxX1X1JMr

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 2, 2017

It's a short piece with not much new, but that's the point: the corruption doesn't become thoroughly normalized and embedded until we get bored with hearing about it, so the one thing we can't allow ourselves is to get used to it - to accept official corruption as an everyday thing.

A person who travels in Palm Beach society circles said that tickets to the party were being sold for $525 each for members and $575 each for guests.
Trump’s transition team declined to comment on the ticket prices.

Incoming White House Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks rejected criticisms that Mar-a-Lago was selling access to the president-elect.

“The transition is not concerned about the appearance of a conflict,” she said.

“This is an annual celebratory event at the private club, like others that have continued to occur since the election. Additionally, the president cannot and does not have a conflict.”

Yes - I know - it's a corrupt system that was pretty fucked up way before this most recent election.

And yes - I know - that's the general theme of the 2016 election, because it seems enough of us got fooled into thinking Donald Trump is somehow the GOP version of FDR, and they actually voted in favor of Kleptocratic Kakistocracy, and now a guy who's possibly the most corrupt asshole in the history of corrupt assholes will be sworn in as POTUS on the 20th of this month.

And yes - of course - let's be sure to throw in some bullshit about "Both Sides"...

• and "The Evil Duopoly"
• and what a lousy candidate Hillary was
• and how stoopidly inept the DNC is (even tho' it's also all-powerful and able to dictate the results for any given candidacy)
• and how the Dems just can't figure out how to blah blah fucking blah (see fucked up corrupt system above)
• and, "we was robbed!"
• and don't forget, "Bernie! If only Bernie!".

We all have our pet reasons for voting for a certain candidate, and we all have our pet reasons for voting against the others, and we all have our pet reasons for what went wrong when it it doesn't turn out the way we want.

Remember though that it comes down to having to put together a coalition of 60-70 million voters. When it works, you have a shitload of reasons it worked. And when it doesn't work, you have a shitload of reasons it didn't work.

So nurse your grudges and pick at each other all ya want, but don't bring that shit to me. We have to stop preaching at each other about it now and get back to work. We have dragons to slay and villages to rescue.

Meet The New Boss

Today's Quote

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor, and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.

--Oscar Ameringer

hat tip = FB friend Doug R

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

The definition of irony, FOX News reporting on fake news! pic.twitter.com/xEbwfJNJZq

— philip harris (@pharris830) January 1, 2017

When the main subject of "the news" is "the news", we've gone beyond the reach of even the most sophisticated and sardonic irony.

This has to be a strong indication that we've been running in tighter and tighter circles for so long that we are now ready to complete the process of political evolution by disappearing up our own assholes (Allan Sherman --The Rape Of The A*P*E).

Pick A Side

In today's little fit of nostalgia, I'll say that we used to have movies for grownups where the lines were drawn pretty clearly. I'm not saying there's always a perfect dichotomy, but most of the time, there's a fairly obvious distinction between what's right and what's not, and art should illustrate those values for us - or at least reflect the values we manifest in living our everyday lives.

At some point you have to be able to step back and take a look at your own position. An art-form is supposed to help us with this self-examination thing, but it seems like something's shifted, and we've been pushed off kilter.

When I look back on some of the great movies that helped us figure ourselves out, and I start to wonder about overlaying those lessons onto our ideological alignments today, I can't help but think an awful lotta people would find themselves on the wrong side.

12 Angry Men

Seven Days In May

It's A Wonderful Life

Executive Suite

I promise this is not just me wanting to go back to some simpler time - there's no such thing in the first place. 

But what I'm always going to be harping on is that we have to be committed to believing as many true things as possible and not believing as many false things as possible. And we have to keep learning and relearning the skills we need to know the difference.

Raising My Hand

An asshole like Trump will always call you an asshole because he's trying desperately to hide the fact that he's the asshole, while knowing with some certainty that you're not.

And now he calls us "enemy".

The Passing

Today's Podcast

The Adventures Of The Cornfield Resistance

⇩ click here ⇩

☞ The Professional Left ☜

Glad That One's Over

Like a man who's had a thoroughly unsatisfying breakfast, and sees no great prospects for lunch.

John Oliver:

However, Vox begs to differ:

To get help making sense of all these upheavals and tragedies, I reached out to Harvard psychology professor and polymath Steven Pinker. A cognitive scientist and linguist, Pinker focused his study of human nature on our propensity for violence — and conversely, cooperation — in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. In the book, Pinker meticulously documented a steady decline in violence over the past several centuries, which, he writes, "may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species."

In August, he told me the world is still in a more peaceful period than at any other time in history. (You can read the whole conversation here.) A few days ago, I reached out to him again. I wanted to see how Pinker was looking back over the year that was 2016 — if the election of Trump, and all the global violence that followed, had changed anything. The email conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.

But then again, these things run in cycles - and we're only just now entering the Trump Era - so there's always a fair chance for the whole thing to go straight into the shitter after all.

Today's Joke

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat on a lake below. She shouted to him:

"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat.

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "And you must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well, madam" said the man, "You don't know where you are; you don't know how you got here, and you don't know where you are going. You've risen to where you are, due to practically nothing but hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem for you. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

hat tip = FB friend Bill D, via quora.com

It Is To Laugh

Turnabout's Fair Play

When a Trump fans tells you to "respect" your president... SHO...
Let's re. how they treated Pres. Obama, shall we? pic.twitter.com/HALa9AbhkO

— vlh (@coton_luver) December 30, 2016

It seems at first blush I'd be exposing myself to the Hypocrite charge, but that presupposes Obama and Trump are the same and that fits perfectly into the False Equivalence fallacy.

Point being that Obama didn't have any of it comin' because it was all just a buncha made-up bullshit, while it looks like practically everything Trump's taking flak for is either true or has a pretty high probability of being true.

The GOP lost their minds and set the rules that are getting them bitch-slapped right now, so they don't get to whine about how unfair they think it is.

Karma's a motherfucker.

More Bad News

Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková will NOT destroy the earth this time around, so our long global nightmare will continue for (probably) another 5.25 years - until it comes back around.

Of course, with "President" Chaos in the White House, the odds improve greatly for the end to come a little sooner.

Sleep well.