You Don't Get One Without The Other

Zeeshan Aleem at Vox:

Democrats, not Donald Trump, are the real populists on trade in Washington. 

That’s the major takeaway from the Democrats’ bold new trade platform that they unveiled on Wednesday morning, the second rollout of their “Better Deal” messaging agenda in the runup to midterm elections in 2018. 

It's a collection of proposals aimed at protecting American workers from foreign competition — and it’s designed to edge out Trump's own messaging on how he's going to transform US trade to help bring back jobs to America.
The first 34 items on the 2016 Democratic Party Platform are all about helping everyday American Workin' Folk get a better chance to participate (to a slightly greater degree) in a system that actually fucking depends on their participation.

Don't gimme no shit about how the Dems fucked up by not addressing the problems of middle America.

If people missed it, then they weren't listening, cuz Hillary and Bernie and Tim all hit it plenty hard every time they stepped into the box last fall.

And maybe this had something to do with how we've been missing the point for 30 years:

The idea of evaluating foreign investment to ensure it doesn’t pose a threat to American jobs is bound to be incredibly controversial in Washington.

-snip-

That kind of scrutiny and interference with foreign investment would be unprecedented for the United States, says Edward Alden, a trade expert and senior fellow at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. “The US has had a very open stance on foreign investment — it’s only restricted if it’s considered a national security threat,” he told me. (*)
'Scuse me, Mr Alden - the health of our economy kinda depends on Americans having jobs that pay them enough to live on, so it seems pretty important to ask, "When did you decide a fucked up US Economy was somehow disconnected from a threat to US National Security?"

Keith

Score it 517 to 5. So much winning.

Watch this video on The Scene.

It Only Works When You Work It

Quick reminder: Checks and Balances is a metaphor, not a mechanism.

AP News:

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware plan to introduce the legislation Thursday. The bill would allow any special counsel for the Department of Justice to challenge his or her removal in court, with a review by a three-judge panel within 14 days of the challenge.

The bill would be retroactive to May 17, 2017 — the day Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to Donald Trump’s campaign.

“It is critical that special counsels have the independence and resources they need to lead investigations,” Tillis said in a statement. “A back-end judicial review process to prevent unmerited removals of special counsels not only helps to ensure their investigatory independence, but also reaffirms our nation’s system of check and balances.”
Legislators have been ceding power to the Executive for decades - this is one of a very few times Congress Critters have reared up and made a noise like they understand the idea of "First Among Equals".

Defend your institutions or lose them forever.

So way to go, guys. 

But seriously - it's about fuckin' time.

Today's Aww

And here it is - your moment of manly cuteness.

the most normal thing in 2017 so far pic.twitter.com/X05h6nQFrG

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) August 3, 2017

hat tip = @kfury

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

DONALD TRUMP is the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and we're really supposed to believe mediocre white people aren't getting a fair shake

— Emily (@emilydawnlove) August 2, 2017

Spit Ballin'

Looking for something that explains why "conservatives" are so dead set against policies aimed at equalizing treatment (ie: rights, opportunities, etc) for women and minorities under the law, we always eventually bump into an underlying thingie that translates to: 

"What if black people treat us like we've always treated them?"

-or-

"If we give gays the same rights as the rest of us, we're afraid they'll treat us just like we've always treated women".

So let's take that as a template, and overlay the shitty attitude held by so many "conservatives" towards immigrants.

OK so far?

Now consider this - the American population is at an average of 56 years old.

In 15 or 20 years, those "conservatives" are looking at an increasing probability of being taken care of by women and minorities and - wait for it - immigrants!!!

Karma's a bitch, motherfucker.

You Know What They Say

"Well, y'know [insert any compliment about anybody here], but he cheats at golf, so...yeah - fuck that guy"

Starting with Dana Milbank at WaPo:

Golf is a game of humility: Even the best players are brought low by nature and chance. And it’s a game of honor: You keep your own score and are often unseen by other players.

Then there is Trump golf. He breaks rules, exaggerates scores and ignores the game’s decorum. Sound familiar? He is, Sports Illustrated asserted, “easily the best golfer” ever to occupy the White House. Likewise, he is an enormously talented politician, with a genius for marketing. Yet in golf, as in life, he doesn’t leave it at that. He gilds the lily with dishonesty.
Golf.com - With special reporting by Michael Bamberger, Ben Baskin and Pete Madden.

[This article appears in the Aug. 7, 2017, edition of Sports Illustrated.]

Trump will sometimes respond to a shot he duffed by simply playing a second ball and carrying on as if the first shot never happened. In the parlance of the game, Trump takes floating mulligans, usually more than one during a round. Because of them it is impossible to say what he has actually shot on any given day, according to 18 people who have teed it up with Trump over the last decade, including SI senior writer Michael Bamberger, who has done so nine times. In 2007, Trump called Bamberger to brag about a 68 he had shot at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles. Trump's handicap index is officially 2.8, but he has posted only three scores since '14. Els, a South Florida resident who has known Trump for many years, estimates he is "an eight or a nine." For Trump to shoot 68 on a tough course like Bel-Air would require him to play nearly perfectly from tee to green while making a number of substantial putts. One of his playing partners that day confirmed that Trump played "good," but that he took all the usual liberties common among everyday golfers: mulligans, gimmes, improved lies, etc. There was no mention of the 68 in a subsequent story, and Bamberger heard about it from Trump.

-and-

In a 2013 tweet aimed at entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Trump wrote, "Golf match? I've won 18 Club Championships including this weekend. @mcuban swings like a little girl with no power or talent. Mark's a loser." Trump has never made public a list of his club titles, and fact-checking calls to all of the Trump properties on this subject went universally un-returned. Winged Foot is the one non-Trump club at which the President is a member, and his name does not appear on any of the honor boards in the old clubhouse.

It seems the guy is simply not capable of telling the truth abut anything.

Bonus BTW:

Here Trump interjected, "It's a crazy—no, I actually I said I was the best golfer of all the rich people, to be exact, and then I got a hole in one. So it was sort of cool."

That little slice of a story is probably not totally untrue - it's likely as close to "the truth" as 45* will ever get - but the point here is that I'll bet you dollars to dingleberries he's said exactly the same thing on many many occasions just before stepping up and shanking one into the lake.

But it paid off that one time, so he throws up a little variation on a Logical Fallacy called The Texas Sharpshooter.

Hump Day Tunes

This is often the day my savage breast requires a little soothing charm.

Lawrence

The Last Word - Lawrence O'Donnell

It seems a bit overblown. It's easy to assume a pathology with a guy like 45*.  And fake lord knows he gives us plenty of reason to believe he's fuckin' nuts.

But I think 45*'s "incoherence" - eg: saying he has no comment in the middle of making a comment, and then not giving a real answer on whether he'll try to fire Mueller or not - is just 45*'s instinct always to keep everybody guessing; never giving anyone a good solid place to stand in opposition.

The real point though - 2 points actually:
1) Words do indeed mean nothing to 45*. But that's a little too simple. Actually, he thinks he can make words mean whatever he needs them to mean in any given situation.

If the facts don't support your conclusion, change the facts.

So he says whatever he thinks will get him past this particular moment, and/or whatever puts people off-balance so he can look for something that might get him some advantage a little later on. And he knows the rubes are Etch-A-Sketchable pretty much on the fly, so it doesn't matter if everything he says today contradicts everything he said yesterday.

Classic Shitty Salesman behavior, on triple-shot Red Bull with a side of steroids. And nuclear-fucking-weapons - let's not forget that little wrinkle.


2) Press Poodles are short-handing this daily bizarro shit. It's not so much they're accepting it all as "just the way the guy is" - I think they've caught on that this is dangerous and scary; and they're starting to remember what the old-timers tried to tell them about this weird archaic practice called Journalism.

What gives me heartburn is that an awful lot of people are not able to be tuned in very closely.

But there's a "but" - and it's a big one. The audience numbers continue to shift away from DumFux News, and towards MSNBC and CNN and some of the traditional print outlets.

So I go out with this hopeful little thought, from Mr Churchill:
“You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”

Today's Tweet

...and GIF

ok, this gif made my entire evening. pic.twitter.com/z5SefC3UFf

— Swedish Spaceman (@SwedishSpaceman) July 30, 2017

Keith

The Olbermann we all know and love

Dots

... sometimes they lead to some interesting places.

45* ... The Mooch ... BayRock ... Felix Sater ... Russian Mob.

BTW - Nicolas Maduro moves Venezuela into the Asshole Dictatorship column, and 45* himself has nothing to say one way or another.  So maybe that can be seen as 45* making some kind of "progress" cuz at least he isn't standing and cheering for the prick - the way he's done with almost every other Asshole Dictator.

WaPo:

Citing Maduro’s “outrageous seizure of absolute power,” the U.S. government froze any American assets he may have and banned Americans from doing business with him. The move came after Maduro heralded the Sunday vote creating a new super-congress made up entirely of government backers. The newly cast legislators included his wife and son. The body will have sweeping powers to rewrite the constitution and redraw Venezuela’s governing system.

“Maduro is not just a bad leader,” said President Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster. “He is now a dictator.”

But BTW BTW - Where the fuck is Rex Tillerson?

Sir John of Oliver

I think I understand the impulse to "keep a civil tongue in your head".  Taking steps to prevent rhetorical violence turning into physical violence is an important part of the foundation of American Democracy.

But when a legitimate news item has that violent rhetoric at its core, I think I'd prefer to hear it straight out.

That's why we're better served when the "news" is presented to us by John Oliver and Samantha Bee and Bill Maher, et al.

And that's why I bitch about having to rely on half-hour comedy shows to get something approaching the real story.

C'mon, Press Poodles - dial it up a little.

Keith

By the time I get a blog post ready to go, the "news" I'm posting about has already gone outa date.  Glad to know it's happening to somebody else too.