I Get Confused

Arnold Schwartzenegger - Progressive; voice of reason. How the fuck did that happen?  

Oh yeah - Trump.

It's all upside down and backwards. And in some ways, that works out OK.

But don't think 45* gets any credit for it. That's like saying we can best express our gratitude to Dr Fleming for penicillin by sending a nice thank you note to gonorrhea.

Big Fat Loser

WaPo is (finally) starting to get after it in the bigly kinda way we've been needing them to do for - well, let's just say, "For a long fucking time!"

Catherine Rampell:

A month ago, House Republicans — at the White House’s urging — shoved a terrible health-care bill through to a vote. They did so without knowing how much it would cost, how many people would lose insurance under the bill, whether it would meet Senate rules required for a budget reconciliation vote or even what was in the legislation. Some legislators admitted that they had not read it before voting.

This collective ignorance was deliberate. They didn’t want to know the verdict on any of these matters, because if they did, they might have to admit to the public — and to themselves — that they’d come up short. Better to celebrate that they did something than learn how shoddy that something was.

We have a dysfunctional federal government in place, and the reasons for that dysfunction - while not solely the fault of one of our major parties - is largely because Repubs have been winning seats in congress using a tried-n-true formula:

1) Fuck something up

2) Point at it and say, "Hey look, that's all fucked up."

3) Campaign on "fixing" the problem 

4) Once in office, it's "Wow - this is worse than I thought - but I'm willing to make the sacrifice and stay here doing the people's work blah blah cha-ching blah blah".

Remember now - St Ronnie Rayguns always told us the problem is the government, so for a fat slice of the American pie made up of the rubes who swallow any little piece of shit that floats by, plus a bunch of Watch-It-Burn types, somehow it makes sense to put people in charge who say they'll fix it while they stay there for a good long time getting richer by looking for the next opportunity to fuck something up so they can stay on the gravy train that they've convinced their voters is awful and so they need to re-elect them to keep fighting the good fight to shut the whole thing down.

Throw in a negligent (sometimes deliberately complicit) Press, and it really is just a ginormous Reality TV show.

People with living thinking brains don't accept this nonsense as the way it needs to be.

Today's Pix

Today's Charlie

Charlie Pierce at Esquire:

It's going to be about the money. It always was going to be about the money. There is something distinctly rotten at the heart of the president*'s family business, about which the president* and the rest of the Borgias don't want the world to know. The money is all that matters to these people. The money always has been all that matters to these people. The money is central to whatever arrangements the extended clan made with the Russian banks, which is to say with the Russian governments. The money is central to the absurd defense of Michael Flynn and the preposterous alleged double-naught escapades of the Dauphin with the Russian ambassador. The money may be the only thing of which the president* himself is consistently cognitively aware.

Not a big stretch - we're not going too far out on any limbs here - but it's OK to get reminded about who these Trump thieves are and why they do what they do.

And then we can remind ourselves to take a good long look at the Congress Critters who're trying to milk the situation for every last drop of power, so they can move the Daddy State agenda merrily along before they're forced to stand up and be shocked - shocked - to discover there are shenanigans afoot.

Losing Ross Douthat

via Slate: a brief rundown on some of the things floating around regarding 45*'s performance - from people reportedly close to him.

Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sums up the situation aptly:

Read the things that these people, members of his inner circle, his personally selected appointees, say daily through anonymous quotations to the press. (And I assure you they say worse off the record.) They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor.

Today's Tweet

Q: What's the quickest way to tell a Russian bot from an actual Trump supporter?
A: The Bot spells correctly.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) May 30, 2017

Today's Pix

It Seems To Be Dissolving

WaPo:

(Paul Waldman - talking about the rolling cluster fuck that's been taken from the Trump "campaign" and installed as the Trump "administration" - taking some major shots, that somehow got past the editors at WaPo, because this piece would never have appeared in that paper just a few short months ago.)

Taken together, these reports paint a picture of a White House that is convinced that what it has is in large part a media problem. So creating a “war room” to craft and push out better spin seems to be the first item on the agenda. After that, they’re considering some kind of staff shakeup that would involve replacing some personnel with different people who would presumably do a better job.

But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what is ailing this administration. It certainly has a media problem, but it isn’t because the administration hasn’t had the opportunity to get its side of the story out. Its side of the story is out — it’s just that it keeps being contradicted by the facts. If the White House is upset that journalists greet its latest spin with skepticism, that’s only because its lies have been so copious that no reporter can take what administration officials say at face value, and in every new controversy, there’s a strong chance they’re pushing out new lies, which will then inevitably be exposed.
--and--

And now we learn that this ignorant neophyte — who seems, like many rich white guys, to have a confidence utterly unwarranted by his actual abilities — thought he was a character in a Tom Clancy novel, when he’s actually a character right out of “Veep.” His suggestion to the Russians that they set up a secret communications channel in a Russian facility was so ludicrous that even the Russians were shocked.
I loved the part about Steve Bannon trying to spin this as the "vast right wing conspiracy" in reverse.

That's like saying it's inappropriate for the cops to conspire against a gang of car thieves.

Today's Today

What they teach us to think it is

Daylight again, following me to bed
I think about a hundred years ago, how my fathers bled
I think I see a valley, covered with bones in blue
All the brave soldiers that cannot get older 

Been askin' after you

Hear the past a callin', 

From Armageddon's side
When everyone's talkin' and no one is listenin', 

How can we decide?

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down

 What it actually is

Today's Quote

“Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.”

― Molly Ivins

Today's GIF

I keep thinking this is Trump in Europe and then Trump coming home to face the shit storm

Today's Tweet

@jonfavs pic.twitter.com/y8iw0ogfpV

— copyboy1 (@copyboy1) May 27, 2017

Maybe It's A Trend?

...but don't count on it.

Mike Gerson at WaPo last week:

To many observers on the left, the initial embrace of Seth Rich conspiracy theories by conservative media figures was merely a confirmation of the right’s deformed soul. But for those of us who remember that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were once relatively mainstream Reaganites, their extended vacation in the fever swamps is even more disturbing. If once you knew better, the indictment is deeper.

The cruel exploitation of the memory of Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot dead last summer, was horrifying and clarifying. The Hannity right, without evidence, accused Rich rather than the Russians of leaking damaging DNC emails. In doing so, it has proved its willingness to credit anything — no matter how obviously deceptive or toxic — to defend President Trump and harm his opponents. Even if it means becoming a megaphone for Russian influence.

"To many observers on the left..."  

Wow - it's almost like the guy is catching onto his own bullshit. 

Almost.

I could be wrong - not that it doesn't happen pretty often of course - but I'd like to see a few examples of Mr Gerson's writing from the last 15-25 years showing he was in any way concerned about the degeneration he now laments when it was so very obvious to practically everyone who was paying any attention to anything other than monetizing the ignorance of the rubes and furthering his own ("conservative") agenda.

And I absolutely have no qualms about beating the drum some more when it comes to the simple fact that a shitload of people on "The Left" have been warning about this very thing for a very long time.

Maybe we're starting to see a bigger move to get the GOP back under control, and more in line with the Real Real America now that we pretty much know that the Phony-Baloney Real America these boneheads have been peddling for 30 years is exactly the poison we've been saying it is for those same 30 fucking years.

It continues:

But this failure of decency is also politically symbolic. Who is the politician who legitimized conspiracy thinking at the highest level? Who raised the possibility that Ted Cruz’s father might have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Who hinted that Hillary Clinton might have been involved in the death of Vince Foster, or that unnamed liberals might have killed Justice Antonin Scalia? Who not only questioned President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but raised the prospect of the murder of a Hawaiian state official in a coverup? “How amazing,” Trump tweeted in 2013, “the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

--and--

A conspiratorial approach to politics is fully consistent with other forms of dehumanization — of migrants, refugees and “the other” more generally. Men and women are reduced to types and presented as threats. They also become props in an ideological drama. They are presented as representatives of a plot involving invasion and infiltration, rather than being viewed as individuals seeking opportunity or fleeing oppression and violence. This also involves callousness, cruelty and conspiracy thinking.

In Trump’s political world, this project of dehumanization is far along. The future of conservatism now depends on its capacity for revulsion. And it is not at all clear whether this capacity still exists.

You get to own some of this, Mr Gerson. Right along with your buddies, David Brooks and Bill Kristol and Hannity and Limbaugh and and and - either you said way too little or nothing at all, and you were fine with all of it until the lunacy started to threaten your little piece of the empire. 

Your little corner is under threat precisely because you let (ie: helped) the loonies go crazy - and that's always how it works, dummy: "The whole country's a buncha fucked up untrustworthy assholes except for you and me - and I now I'm not so sure about you."

Even if they aren't fully aware of it, a huge number of people can see that you're just looking for a little rehab - you're doing nothing but pretending you had nothing to do with "those freaks" because you need to put some distance between yourself and them so you have a shot at keeping up with the gravy train that you know is starting to pull away for you.

We know who you are and we can see what you're doing.

Tough Guy

Bill Mauldin drew one of the all-time definitive cartoons about how a real badass doesn't walk around trying to prove what a badass he is.

David Clarke is a Daddy State jagoff and exactly the opposite of who we should be holding up as an example.

WaPo:

“Look at this f‑‑‑ing guy’s uniform,” Charles Clymer wrote on Twitter. “You see all that s‑‑t pinned all over his dress uniform jacket? That’s not supposed to be there.”

His objection was that the decorations on Clarke’s uniform project “authority” — but that they themselves are meaningless. “Colin Powell once described a dress uniform as a soldier’s résumé,” he wrote. “You can tell what they’ve done by their ribbons and badges.” More ribbons and medals mean a lengthier résumé, in other words — which wasn’t the case with Clarke’s regalia.

Clymer’s tweets kicked up a whole separate dust storm of criticism and defense of the sheriff. Snopes compiled various views of Clarke’s attire, including critics and defenders.

Who's In Charge Here?

45*'s Grand Alienation Tour has made it pretty clear that almost every one of our old buddy countries is deciding Angela Merkel will be running the show from on out.  

And the US can fuck off until we come to our senses and put a grownup in the Oval Office again.