The Krug Man Speaks

Paul Krugman NYT

Donald Trump is a “con artist,” says Marco Rubio — who has promised to enact giant tax cuts, undertake a huge military buildup and balance the budget without any cuts in benefits to Americans over 55.

“There can be no evasion and no games,” thunders Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House — whose much-hyped budgets are completely reliant on “mystery meat,” that is, it claims trillions of dollars in revenue can be collected by closing unspecified tax loopholes and trillions more saved through unspecified spending cuts.

Mr. Ryan also declares that the “party of Lincoln” must “reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.” Has he ever heard of Nixon’s “Southern strategy”; of Ronald Reagan’s invocations of welfare queens and “strapping young bucks” using food stamps; of Willie Horton?

Put it this way: There’s a reason whites in the Deep South vote something like 90 percent Republican, and it’s not their philosophical attachment to libertarian principles.

Chock full of the good stuff - quit fuckin' around here and go read it. Now. 

Deep Tho'ts

The "conservatives" want to save America from The Libruls.  The rubes wanna save the GOP from The Establishment, and The GOP Establishment wants to save itself from the Trumpkinite Rubes.

Guys, I don't think it's unreasonable for us to ask you to let go of all the stoopid adolescent rescue fantasies (not to mention the boarding school bullshit game of My-Dick's-Bigger'n-Your-Dick) and get to work on the fucking problems.  Could we try that for a while?

Every GOP policy in the last 30 years has been pointed at stripping down the Federal Gov't, delivering all that political power to the coin-operated part-timers in State Houses, and liquidating everything at rummage sale prices for the benefit of an increasingly venal Executive Management Class. This is Oligarchy at its very worst, and they've gotten this place in a tangled mess, all of which is shielded from our doing anything about it by a military and a police force totally dependent on the largesse of a wholly-owned subsidiary formerly know as The United States Congress.  

Wanna know why Trump makes such bold assertions about dealing with guys like Putin and Xi Jinping and Assad and whoever's runnin' the joint for ISIS? Kindred spirits. He knows what makes 'em all tick because he is them.

So this is where we are now.  Go with the GOP and we're being led to the future by way of  an 18th century-style birthright-entitlement aristocracy.  And try to remember that it was such a good deal back then, that about a million people who had everything to lose put their lives on hold for 8 years, and their asses on the line so they didn't have to get on their knees before a guy who coulda been named Drumpf and beg for the privilege of breathing one more day.

Fuck these guys.  And I'm constantly amazed and sometimes a little disheartened that I end up thinking I have to state the obvious, but it's always right there in front of me: 

The only way forward from here 

is to go forward from here.

PS - recalling the lede) "The Libruls" want to preserve democracy and bolster our little experiment in self government by pushing that government to live up to the promises made to "ourselves and our posterity" - and that's what the "conservatives" want to save America from.  

Do ya really need any time at all to let that one sink it?

Today's Tweet

Gonna need some brain bleach on this one.

I can never unsee this pic.twitter.com/jx0uApPsNM

— Sarah Parnass (@WordsOfSarah) March 4, 2016

The Threat Of The Threatened

Plenty of folks "on the left" have been harping on this one for quite a while. 

I guess we could call it Authoritarian Fever or some such. Nobody really knows why it happens; it's not like the crazies aren't always with us.  

It's like having these nasty little microbes living inside of us, and for whatever reason, once in a while they go nuts and we come down with a bad cold, or strep, or even a staph infection or meningitis. The good news is that we usually get better, even if we do nothing but bundle up on the couch with some chicken soup and pound the occasional herbal tea with honey lemon and Jack for a few days. The bad news is that sometimes it kills us even when we make it to the ER.

BTW: "Herb T, with Honey Lemon and Jack" is a good name for a band tho - dontcha think?

Anyway, here's a piece from Vox, taking a long look at the phenomenon:

Perhaps strangest of all, it wasn't just Trump but his supporters who seemed to have come out of nowhere, suddenly expressing, in large numbers, ideas far more extreme than anything that has risen to such popularity in recent memory. In South Carolina, a CBS News exit poll found that 75 percent of Republican voters supported banning Muslims from the United States. A PPP poll found that a third of Trump voters support banning gays and lesbians from the country. Twenty percent said Lincoln shouldn't have freed the slaves.

A free press is supposed to act as a national immune system, so this might be touch-n-go for a while.

At this point, talking to each other and getting people out to vote is pretty much the only chicken soup we've got left.

Stay together. Work tgether. Get shit done.

(hat tip = Twitter buddy Athyvaya)

Today's Pix

Truth rising from her well to shame mankind

Today's Tweet

Trump Jr with dead elephant. Because the douche doesn't fall far from the bag. pic.twitter.com/DrSagZgXlK

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) March 2, 2016

Today's (creepy) GIF

Does this finally mean that Godwin's Law is just part of a buncha old intertoobz-ey shit that needs to be trashed already?

Today's Pix

Sam B Brings It

Let's review:

1. Eggs ain't chickens
2. Tadpoles ain't frogs
3. Ain't nuthin' goin' on in my daughter's uterus that's any of your goddamned business

So fuck off, motherfucker. And then fuck off some more. And keep fucking off until you get all the way back here - and then fuck off again.

And let's try to remember that abortion restrictions have almost no effect on any woman living at or above the basic Middle Class level.  The women in Jagoff Dan Flynn's life will hop on a plane to Montreal or Vancouver (to visit an old friend - or to attend an important Jesus-ey thing), and be back all spiffed up, and in plenty of time to make Sunday services where I'm sure they'll be praying for re-election and for a god-sent firebomb to mysteriously destroy whatever's left of those evil Planned Parenthood clinics.  

This shit has nothing to do with health - women's or otherwise - it has everything to do with power.

Logic Error

Thinking it's pretty amazing that we can know this with such certainty and precision.  Yay nerds - not kidding - Fucking Yay Nerds.  

It gets real easy to imagine how eager the (eg) Mayan rubes would be to confer power on the guys who could predict a solar eclipse 8 or 9 hundred years ago and who would then claim it to be their ability to discern what was on the minds of their gods.

Then I think about people today still making claims they can channel a god thru all kinds of magical mystical bullshit, and who then presume to tell us what their god wants the law to be.

I get that the Magic, the Woo, the whatever; it's about power and politics.  It always comes down to that transactional thing where I disconnect part of my living thinking brain in trade for the warm fuzzy feeling of safety within the shelter of the herd, or the arms of a protector, or whatever I get in return for my willingness to self-infantalize - and I'm right back to thinking religion really is a mental illness.

Today's Tweet

Breaking: https://t.co/jMVYmgaIWw pic.twitter.com/7eH16D8B60

— Tengrain (@Tengrain) March 1, 2016

Tunes For A Tuesday

Lake Street Dive via NPR Tiny Desk Concerts

Rachel Price - Lead vocal
Mike (McDuck) Olson - Guitar
Mike Calabrese - Drums
Bridget Kearney - Standing bass

"I Don't Care About You"
"How Good It Feels"
"Godawful Things"

Obama Bond

Why do they hate him?  

Cuz they know they wanna be - and they know they'll never be - this fucking cool.

Today's Tweet

this gif was never more relevant pic.twitter.com/lXPAzNRGw2

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 29, 2016

John Oliver

" ... written in gold Sharpie, which is so quintessentially Trump: something that gives the passing appearance of wealth, but is actually just a cheap tool."

Today's Pix

Chris Rock Rocks

We might be talkin' about this for a while.

And this too.

And the winner for least funny #Oscars bit goes to @FoxNews' @REALStaceyDash: https://t.co/p0FsTAtxPe pic.twitter.com/Qao1iRSKsv

— Matt Wilstein (@TheMattWilstein) February 29, 2016

Today's GIF

And Now We Know

Thinking about Trump's famous bit about "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

Now in the last coupla days:

I've been saying for a while that Trump wants out, and that all the weird shit he says is an attempt to find the exit. In that light, the decoded version of the quote sounded like this to me: "What do I have to do to get you idiots to let me go?"

But maybe I've been wrong (now there's a shocker, eh?).  Being wrong is part of the game - I'll prob'ly get over it.  

Anyway, if this is a real thing, then we've got a pretty simple equation: Voter = Customer.  To Trump, it doesn't matter what the customer thinks or says or does, as long as that customer shows up and spends - nobody's money (ie: vote) is worth more or less than anybody else's money (ie: vote).  So his ridiculously blatant pandering is just something he does because he's a good salesman who understands that his business is to grow his business.

What matters is that you make your numbers - plan your work and work your plan - the strategic goal is to achieve the strategic goals, and your tactics are of no great concern to executive management.  Just get me those results.

Putting it tritely - Trump is all about the end justifying the means. At the very least, he's exploiting an opportunity to upend what's left of a process that was intended to protect us from people like Donald Trump. It's not like he doesn't know that. Why would a good Rentier pass on a golden opportunity to own a controlling interest in USAmerica Inc?

There's a lot to look at concerning Process, and Lord knows the process has been getting bent up and fucked over for quite a while, and is long overdue for some serious refit, but we're supposed to be all about The Process here in USAmerica, and an awful lot of that process has been pimp-slapped in the usual way by people with the power to ignore the consequences of the law.

So we need to get back to caring about - and caring for - the process.  And here's the short-cut version of it all: In a democracy, the death of process is nothing less that the death of the democracy itself.

Stay together. Work together. Get shit done.

Saturday's For The Blues

Back To The Blues --Dinah Washington