Today's Short Reminder

There're 4 individual dudes on this planet who have amassed a combined fortune greater than the combined fortunes of 4 BILLION other people on this planet.

But yeah - the world's problems are all about the lady in front of you at the grocery store buying ramen noodles and peanut butter with her SNAP card.

Today's driftglass

driftglass:

Hey, Matt. I have an idea!

You're from Texas. And the Dixie Chicks are from Texas. So why don't you hop in your spiffy "Country Over Party" pickup truck, hie your tender sensibilities over to their place and have them share with you what life was like for them -- and for Liberals generally -- during the glorious reign of your former boss.

Keith

The GOP has to be held to account on this.  They don't get to pretend they had nothing to do with what many of us knew would happen eventually.

Trump became all but inevitable by 1992 with Pat Buchanan's scary prime time tirade at the GOP convention in Houston.

Just a friendly reminder:

This didn't get all fucked up yesterday, and we won't be able to un-fuck it by tomorrow.

Stay focused

Work together

Get shit done

One For The Chickenhawks

45*, Ted Nugent, et al

About The Weather

hat tip = FB pal Bill D

Today's Quote

Today's Tweet

Ever wonder what White Privilege actually looks like?

White Supremacy is being able to Resist Arrest, fight Police, reach for their GUNS. Don't get punch or kick And no one fears for their life pic.twitter.com/6Pp0jNxCid

— Brother Tyrone X (@tyrone345345) May 31, 2017

A Podcast

Blue Gal and driftglass are pissed off:

The Professional Left

And this week's Bible Bitch segment was dead on, talking about fake news and the bullshit that passes for information coming out of our TV boxes, and especially from Wingnut Media:

People Who Love Listening to Lies

13 1-2 God’s Message came to me: “Son of man, preach against the prophets of Israel who are making things up out of their own heads and calling it ‘prophesying.’

2-6 “Preach to them the real thing. Tell them, ‘Listen to God’s Message!’ God, the Master, pronounces doom on the empty-headed prophets who do their own thing and know nothing of what’s going on! Your prophets, Israel, are like jackals scavenging through the ruins. They haven’t lifted a finger to repair the defenses of the city and have risked nothing to help Israel stand on God’s Day of Judgment. All they do is fantasize comforting illusions and preach lying sermons. They say ‘Godsays . . .’ when God hasn’t so much as breathed in their direction. And yet they stand around thinking that something they said is going to happen.

7-9 “Haven’t you fantasized sheer nonsense? Aren’t your sermons tissues of lies, saying ‘God says . . .’ when I’ve done nothing of the kind? Therefore—and this is the Message of God, the Master, remember—I’m dead set against prophets who substitute illusions for visions and use sermons to tell lies. I’m going to ban them from the council of my people, remove them from membership in Israel, and outlaw them from the land of Israel. Then you’ll realize that I am God, the Master.

10-12 “The fact is that they’ve lied to my people. They’ve said, ‘No problem; everything’s just fine,’ when things are not at all fine. When people build a wall, they’re right behind them slapping on whitewash. Tell those who are slapping on the whitewash, ‘When a torrent of rain comes and the hailstones crash down and the hurricane sweeps in and the wall collapses, what’s the good of the whitewash that you slapped on so liberally, making it look so good?’

13-14 “And that’s exactly what will happen. I, God, the Master, say so: ‘I’ll let the hurricane of my wrath loose, a torrent of my hailstone-anger. I’ll make that wall you’ve slapped with whitewash collapse. I’ll level it to the ground so that only the foundation stones will be left. And in the ruin you’ll all die. You’ll realize then that I am God.

15-16 “‘I’ll dump my wrath on that wall, all of it, and on those who plastered it with whitewash. I will say to them, There is no wall, and those who did such a good job of whitewashing it wasted their time, those prophets of Israel who preached to Jerusalem and announced all their visions telling us things were just fine when they weren’t at all fine. Decree of God, the Master.’

Today's Tweet

Arnold again:

Arnold Schwarzenegger's message for @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/4vgJKrn7N3

— SeriouslyUS? (@USseriously) June 2, 2017

Get It Straight

Climate Change is not a hoax perpetrated against us by the Chinese.

Donald Trump is a hoax perpetrated against us by the Russians.

hat tip = Occupy Democrats

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.