Continued Stray Thoughts on the Current Political Climate

With the cascade of stupid, immoral, illegal, subversive, un-American, and possibly treasonous things emitted by der Sturmtrumper, his pet Congress, his supporters, and his administration reaching levels that make it nearly impossible for any sane person to keep up with, I’ve started just keeping a running list of observations on the matter.  Every time the list reaches critical mass, I suppose I’ll post it and start a new one.  Can’t hurt; might help.  Here’s the most recent list:

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1. Apparently the new Secretary of State, Wayne “Exxon” Tracker, can’t be bothered to stay awake long enough to do his job.  That’s okay, though.  It’s not like der Sturmtrumper is threatening to get us into a land war in Asia anytime soon.  Wait, what?

2. Sometimes I wonder if the GOP has an actual ideology or whether they’re just into cruelty for the sheer fun of it.  In any given situation, if you want to know what the Party of Values is up to, just ask yourself what the most asshole thing to do would be and wait for the confirmation.  I’m getting tired of using this method, to be honest, but the old baseball truism still holds: “Keep throwing that pitch until they hit it.”  I’ll stop when they do.

3. Didn’t der Sturmtrumper have a secret plan to defeat ISIS in his first thirty days in office?  That expired on February 19th, by my math, and the world still waits.  What is it with Republicans and secret plans to end failing wars?  Didn’t end well for the last guy; won’t end well for this one.

4. You know, for a party that had been out of power for as long as the GOP has, at least on the national level, with a pent-up agenda and full control of the federal government, they actually haven’t managed to get all that much done in the last couple of months.  For which all of humanity should be very, very grateful, of course, but it is something of a surprise.  It’s not like they’re not throwing all kinds of excrement against the wall – it’s just that not much of it seems to be sticking.  This is what happens when a party that has no positive program suddenly has to learn how to govern instead of merely poking sticks into the spokes of society.

5. Dude – if your first reaction to graffiti proclaiming “No to Fascism!” is to take it as an attack on der Sturmtrumper, maybe the problem isn’t the graffiti.

6. Let me get this straight – der Sturmtrumper’s advisor on international terrorism is an actual, card-carrying Nazi?  That the Nazi group in question openly claims him as a member and that he may have lied about this to get his citizenship papers here in the US?  Well, I suppose he’s found a congenial place to work, at least.

7. Meanwhile out in the hinterlands, the GOP war on democracy continues.  Apparently New Hampshire went full-batshit-GOP in the last election, and the net result of that is a new wave of voter suppression laws working their way up through the bubbling mire of GOP sewage, some of which involve law enforcement coming to people’s houses to intimidate them.  Yet another subversive “solution” to a problem that doesn’t actually exist.  It’s not actually difficult to tell the difference between a party that thinks it can win a free and fair election and a party that knows very well that it can’t – the former works to make voting easier and more widespread, and the latter does everything it can to make voting harder and restricted only to those it can count on.

8. The US spent about $97 million on extracurricular activities for Obama and Biden and their families during the entire eight years of the Obama Administration.  Here, about two months into der Sturmtrumper’s reign of terror, the US has already spent $75 million.  Yet strangely there is no uproar from the GOP over this use of taxpayer money now that the rich white guy is doing it.  I wonder what the difference is.

9. It’s fascinating to read that der Sturmtrumper is so worried about the loyalty of his subordinates that he has appointed Kommissars to keep watch on them.  Every cabinet agency now has a political appointee ostensibly there to act as a go-between on policy issues for der Sturmtrumper and his agencies, but who actually functions in much the same capacity as the old Soviet political officers, there to ensure that subordinates are keeping to the official Party line.  This has not made those cabinet agencies happy – the one assigned to the EPA made such a nuisance of himself that Scott Pruitt won’t invite him to meetings anymore.  Good thing the GOP stands for FREEDOM, because otherwise this would seem rather creepily totalitarian.

10. So the FBI has been investigating Russian influence over der Sturmtrumper since last July, but just before the election chose to leak useless information about Clinton’s non-existent email “scandal” instead.  Someone should check to see who James Comey is working for, because my guess is it isn’t the people signing his paycheck.

11. Of course the main takeaway from his testimony is the fact that there is enough of a connection between der Sturmtrumper and Russian agents to warrant an ongoing FBI criminal investigation.  Remember when all the right-wingers were shouting about how nobody under such an investigation should be president?  Wasn’t that only last year?  I guess it’s different when it’s the rich white guy doing it.

12. The fact that der Sturmtrumper immediately shat out another tweet on the subject – one that was such a bald-faced lie that it was almost comical – is a disturbing sign that either he is deeply mentally disturbed or so far removed from human decency that his falling into a black hole would improve the human species immediately.  The fact that the US president is either psychotic or sociopathic is one of the most profoundly disturbing things in all of American history, right up there with the fact that so many people in this country see nothing wrong with that.

13. Apparently der Sturmtrumper’s approval ratings have sunk to an all-time low for new presidents, somewhere around 37%.  To which I reply a) where the hell were you people when this mattered in November and it was perfectly obvious that we’d get exactly what we have since gotten, and b) it’s kind of sad that more than a third of Americans never leave their bubble to visit this grand and colorful place called reality.

14. You know what else that 37% figure means?  It means a significant chunk of Republicans have gotten sick of that clown already.  I can’t imagine what it is like to be an actual, thoughtful conservative these days – to read the news knowing that there is no party that speaks for you except perhaps some of the more Eisenhower-ish elements of the Democrats (ironically enough, the ones best represented by Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton).  That 37% is pretty much the group that thought der Sturmtrumper was The Guy back in the primaries, when most Republicans were hoping that somebody – ANYBODY – else would end up as the nominee, and it isn’t going anywhere.  Well, unless they took the honorable way out and voted for Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin (or just grit their teeth and voted for Hilary) they either sat out completely or voted for der Sturmtrumper and deserve the blame for his increasingly erratic and dangerous regime as much as the diehard Trumpsters do.  But if they can get their act together and present a credible conservative party that isn’t a threat to the survival of the American republic – in other words what the GOP used to be as recently as 1991 – then it would be good for the rest of us to work with them.

15. What does it tell you that despite controlling Congress and the Presidency, the GOP couldn’t even get a vote on its big bill to replace the ACA.  Apparently Republicare is so divisively stupid that even the party that has spent the last six years in full tantrum mode about Americans actually getting healthcare is unwilling to approve the dog’s breakfast that was set before them by Wisconsin’s own Mr. Ryan – a law so morbidly dysfunctional that it would literally be better for the American people to replace the ACA with nothing at all.  While the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that 24 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage under Republicare (and the White House's own numbers say 26 million) it notes that only 23 million will lose coverage if the ACA is simply erased with nothing further done.  This is a party that has no interest in governing.  They’d have been better off losing in 2016 and continuing their sticks-in-the-spokes approach to American life.  And so would have we all.

16. FFS, even the Koch brothers – the puppeteers who own Wisconsin’s governor and have done so much to make their home state of Kansas an uninhabitable libertarian ruin – think Republicare is a disaster.  In fact, they’re willing to put millions of their own dollars into a new fund to primary any GOP Congresscritter who votes for it.  Say what you will about the Koch brothers – and I have said plenty of rather uncomplimentary things, all of them sincerely – they do put their money where their mouths would be if they were ever to leave their secret lair and speak out.

17.  You know, hours after a nation suffers a multi-fatality attack on its seat of government is really not the best time to go onto Twitter and talk 7th-grade smack to the mayor of that seat of government.  But apparently the apple didn’t fall too far from der Sturmtrumper’s tree.  Seriously, I need to get a sign that says “I didn’t vote for this and I’m just as horrified as the rest of the civilized world that it’s happening.”

18. Der Sturmtrumper has decreed that his pet Congress will either pass Republicare today or he’ll take his marbles and go home.  Good thing he’s willing to let the political process sort things out and encourage a healthy debate on the issues, I suppose.  It’s actually kind of a win/win for the other side, in a grim kind of way.  Either the bill dies and the GOP splits widen, showcasing the utter failure of the Party of Cruelty even to be cruel in an efficient fashion, or the bill passes and the GOP splits widen, showcasing the success of the Party of Cruelty to be cruel in an efficient way and providing precisely the campaign fodder that will make 2018 so very, very interesting.  Tough on the people who are going to die unnecessarily if Republicare passes, but as so often is the case, they are the forgotten people.