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. “I just fired the head of the FBI.  He was crazy, a real nut job. … I faced great pressure because of Russia.  That’s taken off.”  Words of wisdom from der Sturmtrumper, who clearly doesn’t understand the concept of “obstruction of justice.”  Nor does he understand the idea of keeping his mouth shut and not doing his opponents’ jobs for them, and for that I suppose we should all be grateful.

2. How bad is it for der Sturmtrumper when even his allies are convinced he is on Russia’s payroll?  Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Majority Leader of the House, is actually on tape saying that directly to Paul Ryan.  They’ve resorted to the standby defense of every politician caught saying something he shouldn’t have said (“just a joke, folks!”) but after a while that defense gets a bit thin.

3. Der Sturmtrumper, following in Nixon’s footsteps in this as in so many other ways, spent some time abroad this month to try to deflect attention from the mounting crisis at home.  And his “big foreign trip” (his own words) was received with the same outright derision that he faces here whenever serious people pause to consider him.  “The dominant reaction to Trump right now is mockery,” said the editor of the conservative German journal, National Interest.  “The Trump administration is becoming an international laughingstock,” added Michael Werz, an expert on German politics here in the US.  Werz has been amazed by “how rapidly the American brand is depreciating over the last 20 weeks.”  Remember when all der Sturmtrumper’s supporters were howling about how weak a Hillary Clinton administration would make us look to the world?  Once again, the best way to understand who the GOP is these days is to see what they accuse their opponents of being.

4. This is why, of course, NATO spent so much time child-proofing their meetings with der Sturmtrumper.  “The president of the United States has a 12-second attention span,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg after meeting with him in the Oval Office.  Unprepared, ill-informed, a loose cannon – this is the American president these days.  NATO therefore took serious steps to minimize the demands on der Sturmtrumper at their next meeting this month – keeping their remarks to 2-4 minutes, limiting the opportunities for der Sturmtrumper to speak and go off the rails, finding some symbolic little thing that they can give to der Sturmtrumper so he can proclaim victory on Twitter.  The man is a menace to American security and a threat to US interests around the globe.  ISIS couldn’t have found a better way to attack the US than to get der Sturmtrumper into office.

5. Der Sturmtrumper managed to piss off Israel on this trip even before he set foot in the country.  He wasn’t allowed to land his helicopter on the World Heritage Site of Masada for fear of damaging it, so he took that off his agenda, and his visit to the Holocaust memorial was cut to a drive-by.  I guess he decided not to antagonize his neo-Nazi endorsers from last year, though he may want to think hard about US security and how it relates to the middle east sometime. 

6. The House GOP threw the rules into the gutter on the 19th in order to defeat a measure that would have promoted more equality for American citizens.  An amendment that would have stripped bigoted language from the NDAA had the votes to pass (217-206) when time was called, but rather than close the vote the GOP leadership held the vote open (a direct contradiction of Paul Ryan’s vow to obey House rules in such matters) while they pressured weak and spineless members to change their vote but also they refused to have vote switchers march to the front of the House and do so publicly as is normal procedure.  Even many Republicans thought this was beyond the pale – “This is bullshit,” said Robert Dold (R-IL), and Charlie Dent (R-PA) told Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Whip, to “get lost” when he tried to pressure Dent to change his vote.  At some point things will get so bad that the GOP will collapse and we may then get a grown-up conservative party in this country, but today is not that day.

7. The winner for this year’s “Most Blatantly Symbolic Geological Event” contest has already been declared, with the prize going to the giant sinkhole that suddenly appeared in front of der Sturmtrumper’s Florida compound.  Sorry folks – nothing can top that.  Try again next year.

8. Continuing on the theme of der Sturmtrumper’s unique ability to alienate strong US allies while kowtowing to enemies, both Israel and the UK are now so thoroughly disgusted by his toddler-level inability to keep from blabbing things that grown-ups understand should be kept confidential that they are revamping their intelligence-sharing programs with the US.  This leaves the US at a disadvantage in this hostile world, with gaping holes where we should have knowledge of possible threats on the horizon or actual threats here in our midst.  Think about that, folks – our strongest allies no longer trust the US with intelligence because the president is a child and his enablers and sycophants see nothing wrong with that.

9. As if on cue, der Sturmtrumper called his new BFF, Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte, whose version of the War on Drugs has seen roughly 3000 Filipinos murdered by police, and casually mentioned that the US has nuclear submarines stationed off the coast of North Korea – highly classified information that has made those submarines targets in ways that submarines are not generally supposed to be.  The whole point of a submarine, after all, is stealth.  Honestly, they should just replace his computer with an Etch-a-Sketch and set him up with a beauty pageant somewhere.

10. Der Sturmtrumper has released his “budget” upon the world and it is every bit as cruel, stupid, and destructive as expected.  Just to start with big-picture Stupid bit, there is the simple fact that supply-side economics does not work in a demand side economy and giving away wealth to the already wealthy is not going to do a damned thing for anyone else other than to make them poorer.  This has been proven statistically in any number of actual studies over the last half century, but the GOP does not deal in reality and so they will make the average American pay for welfare for the rich one more time, because doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the hallmark of right-wing thinking in the US.

11. The more you drill down into this budget proposal, the more Stupid you find.  Der Sturmtrumper (or, more accurately, his minions – there is no way he has read, let alone understood, more than half a dozen words in this proposal, and if you tell me he wrote any part of it whatsoever I will hire someone to follow you around and laugh at you full time) assumes that somehow, magically, the American GDP will accelerate from its post-recession average of 2%/year to an annual rate of 3%/year – a 50% increase in the rate of expansion of the GDP, if you do the math – and it will continue to do so for the next ten years.  This on top of what is already the longest continuous stretch of economic growth in American history (thanks, Obama!).  “It assumes you’re going to go 206 months without a recession, which has never happened,” said former Reagan budget director David Stockman.  It also assumes that the labor force will grow at about 1.5%/year and hourly productivity will expand at more than 2%/year, despite the fact that those figures over the last decade have averaged 0.5% and less than 1% respectively.   “Without violating some of the most basic laws of economics and history, we are not going to get the kind of growth that will yield a balanced budget in ten years,” said Steve Bell, former staff director at the Senate Budget Committee.  Most people grow out of magical thinking by the time they hit fourth grade, but the American right wing can exist only within that bubble and so does not.

12. It’s worth noting that this budget will also collect a higher percentage of the GDP in taxes than Obama’s budget currently does, even with the welfare for the rich. 

13. Assuming the magic works, pigs start flying, and entropy goes into reverse, der Sturmtrumper’s minions estimate that this budget will generate two trillion dollars of extra revenue over the next decade.  They use this made-up number to justify the massive tax cuts for the wealthy and claim that this will be revenue-neutral and pay for itself.  The extra revenue, in other words, will pay for the tax cuts.  Let’s just assume for the sake of argument that rational economics hasn’t been invented yet and this is even remotely plausible.  It still doesn’t balance the books – you’re still not going to get a balanced budget at the end of it.  There is a deficit that needs to be eliminated.  Oh, but the minions say, that two trillion will pay for that!  Except that the two trillion is already paying for the tax cuts, and one of the first things that most people learn when it comes to money is that you can only count income once.  They’re lying to you, folks, and they don’t care if you know it.

14.  As for Cruel and Destructive, well, destroying the social safety net in order to provide lucre to the already wealthy is pretty much all you need to know.  As a historian it is interesting to be living through the re-imposition of an ancien-regime society of nobles and peasants onto what was once a thriving middle-class democracy, but two things here.  First, nobles by definition are a very small class, and most of the people who currently think they’re going to be part of it are going to be very surprised to find themselves turned into peasants when it inevitably works out that way.  And second, the ancien regime didn’t end very well in most places, often spectacularly so.  That ought to be a lesson, for those with the wit to see it.

15. I suppose I could go into the details of this budget – the slashing of health care for all but the wealthy, the destruction of American R&D, the blindly anti-science assault on progress, the weakening of American security and leadership, and so on – but really, nothing is all that surprising here.  This is what happens when the ignorant and the callous rule.

16. The Russian noose continues to tighten around der Sturmtrumper’s neck.  Now we have credible reports that der Sturmtrumper tried to get the DNI and the head of the NSA to publicly deny the existence of evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russian intelligence.  Both Daniel Coats and Admiral Michael Rogers, respectively, refused.  Meanwhile senior administration officials were apparently working to pressure the intelligence community to get the FBI probe of Michael Flynn dropped.  More and more comes to light with each passing day, and eventually even the most slavish of der Sturmtrumper’s supporters will have to face the fact that their guy is at best a subversive and at worst an actual traitor.  And then they will have to decide if they care.  My money is on no, actually, but we’ll see.

17. American spies were monitoring Russian intelligence and political officials last summer as they discussed how to exert influence over der Sturmtrumper and his minions, but at least we didn’t elect the woman, amiright?

18. And in Mississippi, where the 19th century never seems to have ended, a state representative named Karl Oliver publicly declared on his Facebook page that people who remove monuments celebrating the treason of the Confederacy “should be LYNCHED!”  Two of his fellow GOP legislators – John Read and Doug McLeod – liked the post.  This, it turned out, was too obscene even for the Mississippi GOP – several of whom were rather publicly unhappy at Oliver – and of course Oliver beat a hasty retreat from this once it hit the media, but that’s what happens when people like that get caught.  They’re sorry they got caught.  

19. Der Sturmtrumper really, really wanted to get into the front row of that picture, so naturally he shoved aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro.  Because that’s what happens when you elect a child.

20. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Montana GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte decided that assaulting a journalist was a good idea, and to be honest given the rhetoric that comes out of der Sturmtrumper and his minions these days I can see where he got that idea.  He was charged with assault and several major Montana newspapers took the unprecedented step of rescinding their endorsement on the grounds that he was a mindless thug who shouldn’t be walking the streets unsupervised let alone representing them in the seat of power, but his campaign recorded more than $100,000 in donations after the assault was made public and the good citizens of Montana did in fact elect this criminal as their representative.  So the GOP is now openly electing criminals because, well, why bother to hide it, really?  The GOP base certainly approves.  They elected a president who openly bragged about sexual assault, didn’t they?

21. This just made my day when it came across my Facebook feed.

It’s a variation of a joke that goes back at least to Barry Goldwater.  “They told me that if I voted for Goldwater the war in Vietnam would escalate.  I did, and it did!”  It often gets attributed to William F. Buckley, since he was a conservative who could actually put together complete sentences and logical arguments (and don’t we miss those!), but it seems to have been fairly common back in 1965 and I’ve heard variations of it targeted at everyone from Reagan to Obama.  Doesn’t make it any less true in this situation, though.

22. Apparently the GOP now wants to make it legal for them to cold call your cell phone and leave you a voicemail without your phone ever ringing, because they’re the party of less intrusive government or something.  The sheer power-mad hypocrisy of the GOP knows no ceiling and, apparently no floor – there is nothing so petty that it won’t be tried.

23. So der Sturmtrumper wants to stop the sales of German cars in the US.  Does he realize how many of those cars are made here in the US?  Probably not.

24. How bad are things when reporters start to feel sorry for Sean Spicer?  The man is a devout Catholic and was probably the staffer most hoping to meet with the Pope, yet he was bundled aside and never got to do so.  Even the White House press corps – a group that has no love for Spicer and even less cause to have any – thought that was petty.  It “speaks to a small-mindedness I find incredibly depressing” said NY Times reporter Glenn Thrush, whose clashes with Spicer have become staples of Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of Spicer on Saturday Night Live.  But that’s der Sturmtrumper for you.

25. Tourism to the US has dropped 11% compared to last year when der Sturmtrumper was just a fringe candidate wallowing in his own corruption and ignorance.  Meanwhile, tourism in the rest of the world has increased by 6%.  Do the math, and that’s a 17-point relative decline over this time last year.  And honestly, who can blame the tourists for not wanting to visit this country right now?  Between the random unlawful searches of phones and other devices, the decline of the rule of law, and the general rise of militant ignorance and head-in-the-sand America-First disease, I certainly wouldn’t advise people to come here right now.  This is a shame.  We’re a great country currently ruled by a criminal junta, and it’s costing us both respect and money.

26. Remember when der Sturmtrumper fired all the US attorneys and all the right-wingers said this was Perfectly Normal because those attorneys are always replaced by incoming presidents?  We’re well past 100 days into this authoritarian regime, and they still haven’t been replaced yet.  What’s the excuse now?

27. Der Sturmtrumper’s recent European Vacation was an unmitigated disaster for American security and leadership.  He was humiliated on an international stage by foreign leaders who understand how utterly hollow and easy to manipulate he is, and those leaders are now talking openly about going it alone without American leadership since none of that leadership is left anymore.  Under this president the US is no longer the leader of what was once called the free world, and as long as he remains in power we will never be again.  We have sacrificed whatever moral authority we once had on the altar of right-wing nonsense, and we are poorer for it.  When you elect a clown, you get a circus.

28. Jared Kushner – the utility infielder of der Sturmtrumper’s administration and family – seems to have been working for the Russians for quite some time now, if all those “secret backchannel” stories have any weight to them at all.  Remember when conspiring with Russian agents in direct contradiction of federal law was treason?  Poor Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – born seventy years too soon.

29. The thinking conservatives who remain in this country are starting to realize that they have nobody representing them at all.  Steve Schmidt managed John McCain’s 2008 campaign – you know, the one that foisted Sarah Palin off onto the world? – and his verdict in the wake of the Montana Debacle is fairly clear.  “The MT incident is one more example of the rotten, fetid and corrupt culture that has metastasized around an intellectually bankrupt GOP and conservative movement,” he wrote on May 25.  “The rotten culture is derivative of an epic leadership deficit on the part of the GOP’s elected leaders and the voices of the conservative media complex.  The disintegration of the conservative movement and GOP on a moral and values basis is not just tragic but terrible for the country.  The work of restoring trust, credibility and decency will take many years.”  If they’re lucky.

30. According to Newsweek, nearly half of the 31 million followers on der Sturmtrumper’s Twitter account – just over 15 million – are fake.  That’s 49% fake followers, for those mathematically inclined.  This is a sharp increase since the inauguration in January, when only (“only”!) 32% of his followers were fake accounts.  In April 2016, when der Sturmtrumper was still a long-shot candidate for the presidency, only 8% of his followers were fake.  It must be nice to live in a bubble.  More to the point, that’s a lot of amplification for whatever lies, idiocy, and misdirection der Sturmtrumper wishes to unleash upon an unsuspecting public.

32. I’m not really sure why I persist in noting all of these things here.  Perhaps it is simply that I want it documented that I refuse to accept this monstrous administration or its actions.  This is my country, and I will not see it torn down in the name of shallow greed and malevolent ignorance without protesting.  Perhaps that is enough.  For now.

No Stuff For You

I recently made a Large Purchase.

This is not something I do every day.  The joys of being an academic in modern America do not include wealth or material excess no matter what the uninformed and politically ignorant will tell you, and Large Purchases are not the sort of thing I can afford on a regular basis.  But eventually they become necessary, and so bullets must be bitten and Purchases made.

This is an incredibly stressful thing to me. 

However much that Large Purchase needed to be made, the fact is that it was Large, and spending that kind of money always makes me nervous.  Don’t even ask what I was like when we bought our house, which was several orders of magnitude Larger.  You don’t want to know.  It took me months to get to the point where I was ready to make this particular Purchase, and even once the decision was made and the Purchase sitting there in my little electronic shopping cart, I still hesitated to push the final button.

Stress: not as much fun as it looks on television.

I also made a couple of Auxiliary Purchases while I was at it, items designed to make the Large Purchase more effective and useful and thus postpone the next Large Purchase for even more years than I would have otherwise planned.  I’ve got kids headed toward college.  Long gaps between Large Purchases are a goal these days.

This turned out to be a good move in another way as well, as both of those Auxiliary Purchases were declined by my credit card company.  As was my original Large Purchase, as I discovered when I explored the matter further.

This was odd.

My credit is good.  I don’t make very many Large Purchases.  This makes it relatively easy to pay my bills, and I have not missed a payment in decades, if ever.  I have a credit card that had room for both the Large and Auxiliary Purchases that were made that evening.  Nothing seemed to warrant the situation. 

I called the credit card company to find out what was going on.

It turned out that my track record of not making Large Purchases is so well established that they decided there must be fraud afoot now that one had been made. 

It took about 45 minutes to straighten everything out, particularly since at least one of the denied Auxiliary Purchases I chose to leave denied as I had found a better deal somewhere else moments later when I still thought the problem was with the vendor and not me.  It probably didn’t help much that it took me a while to remember the answers to the security questions (which email is on the account?  Lawsey, I have so many…). 

Eventually the matter was resolved and both the Large Purchase and the appropriate Auxiliary Purchases arrived safely this week.

Except that this week I also got an email from the credit card company announcing that my card had been canceled for fraudulent charges and I should expect a new one sometime soon.

So I called them again, making sure to call the number on my card and not any of the ones in the email because I’m onto that trick.  Most people are.  The following dialogue then ensued:

Didn’t we straighten this out the other day?

Why yes, sir, we did.

So why is my card canceled?

It has not been canceled.  That email must be fraudulent.

[Describes email in detail.]

Well, that doesn’t sound fraudulent, but it is mistaken.  You can ignore it.

Sigh.

On the one hand, I am actually pretty happy that the credit card company is watchful about this sort of thing.  I’ve done the Identity Theft Tango a couple of times and it’s no fun at all.  So I’m not going to complain about them, much as I’d like to do so for having caused me stress.

Because, on the other hand, the real problem is the fact that this sort of thing is necessary these days – that their caution is warranted and the additional stress that this put on me in an already stressful time is just par for the course and indeed commendable.  It’s a sad commentary, really.

So I have my Purchases and to the best of my knowledge my card is intact and unjacked.  For now.

We’ll call that a win.

A Taxing Affair

I paid my taxes a couple of months ago.

I know that out in the great American public there are a great many fools, economic illiterates, and people who think unadulterated short-term greed is a political principle, and that these folks regard taxes as evil and little different from theft.  I also know that such people are best left alone to stew in their own stupidity while the grown-ups get on with the hard work of human civilization.  I try not to engage with them anymore.  It’s just a waste of time.

Taxes are the price you pay for a functional society.  If that’s not good enough for you, that tells me more about you than it does about taxes.

So I pay them.  I’m not thrilled to be writing checks to the various levels of government that make their claims on me – I’d rather spend that money on books, barbecue, and/or visits to friends and family – but I recognize the bargain and pay my fair share.

I expect this share to be recognized, however.

And with the IRS, it always has been.  For all the horror stories that people love to tell about the IRS, I can say truthfully that I have never had a bad experience dealing with them.  They have been polite, professional, and constructive, and we have resolved whatever differences between us fairly quickly and amicably.  Usually they win, of course – the tax code is complicated enough that even with software I’m never sure I’m getting it right – but they always explain it so I understand and on occasion they have agreed with me.  Regardless, once I have managed to get hold of them (a process that often involves eons sitting on hold on the phone) it has all gone well.

Today’s visit with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue did not go so well.

Earlier this week I got a notice asking for a fairly decent chunk of money.  The notice said that they had made some adjustments to my tax forms – and, in fairness, this has happened in the past – but the numbers they gave me didn’t show any actual changes.  There were three columns, one for my numbers, one labeled “Our Changes,” and another purportedly showing the new numbers.  The middle column was all zeroes, which of course meant that the first and third columns were identical.

After looking through the paper copy of my tax return, I noticed that the sum they wanted was my tax bill this year, plus interest.

But, I thought to myself, I have paid that.  I wrote a check for that amount – and indeed, here is the duplicate check in my records, sitting here right in front of me now that I have retrieved it from the archives – and physically fastened that check to the return.  They got the return.  What happened to the check?

I checked with my bank and the original check had not been cashed.  It’s still out there somewhere.

So I called the Wisconsin Department of Revenue this morning.

It turns out that when the Wisconsin Department of Revenue loses your check, you’re responsible for all of the costs.  Who knew?

A polite man on the other end of the line confirmed that they did receive my return.  But he insisted there were no records of my check.  And that was all he was willing to say on the subject.  I believe he told me that information, more or less verbatim, six times over a seven minute call until I finally told him to stop doing so.

They want a new check for the bill, plus interest.  The interest was non-negotiable.

“So what happens if I write you a new check and then a month later someone in your office finds the old one and cashes it?”

“We’ll cash it and credit your account for next year.”

“That’s not helpful, you know that.”

And he did, but that was as far as he was willing to acknowledge anything.

“So what you’re saying,” I finally said, “is that I sent you a return with a check physically attached to it and you acknowledge receiving the return but insist that there was no check, and because you lost the check I am now responsible for both interest and any stop-payment fee my bank imposes.”

“That’s right.”

“You understand why people get angry with you, right?”

[Pause]

“Is there anything else I can help you with today?”


“You haven’t helped me yet, actually.”

So the next check goes in stapled to the coupon, with a little note that says “Try not to lose this one.”

My tax dollars at work.

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. Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, doesn’t this guy take a break?  Der Sturmtrumper has managed to commit impeachable offenses at a rate of about one a day over the last week or so and still he has the solid support of Republican voters, who apparently are incapable of moving past their partisan allegiances when it comes to criminals in office.  Only 2% of people who voted for der Sturmtrumper will admit to regretting that vote now, according to one study.  I guess der Sturmtrumper was right during the campaign when he bragged that he could shoot someone in broad daylight and not lose any support.  Remember folks – this is the party that claims morality, Christianity, and values all for their little old selves.  And if you wonder why the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to have no religion has tripled since 1992 when Pat Buchanan declared the Culture War at the GOP nominating convention, well, now you know.

2. Can we just put Sally Yates into the presidency instead?  She’d be such an improvement.

3. The House of Representatives finally managed to pass Republicare the other day, and a moral abomination it certainly was.  Millions of Americans will lose their health care coverage – more so than if the GOP had just killed the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with nothing at all.  Pre-existing conditions will not be priced out of the insurance market.  Being a woman is essentially a pre-existing condition now.  So is being a victim of domestic violence.  Doctor groups, hospital groups, and insurance groups all protested that this was a historically bad law, and when you have all three of those groups on the same side against you, you know you’ve got something special.  And then they went out to celebrate.  The modern GOP is an exercise in gratuitous cruelty, and one that they don’t even bother to hide anymore.

4. They did think to take the promise that people with pre-existing conditions wouldn’t lose their health care off of their website, though.  Do they think we’ll forget?  It’s bad enough that these people lie to me.  It’s insulting that they think I’m stupid enough to buy their lies.  Or maybe they don’t care anymore about that either.

5. Is there anyone surprised by the fact that the GOP healthcare working group in the House consisted entirely of white men?

6. For those of you who think the GOP has any morals at all, my advice is to take a look at North Carolina – a one-party state where the GOP’s open contempt for democracy and American citizens is on full display.  Last week, at 3am, the GOP-led North Carolina legislature stripped state educational funding from Democratic districts and gave it to Republican districts – yes, they are that fucking petty and that fucking callous and that willing to sacrifice other people's children to achieve their own partisan goals.  These people need to be run out of town on a rail and dumped into the sea.

7. Meanwhile in Wisconsin, a new study has demonstrated that the Voter Suppression Bill worked as planned.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 legal Wisconsin voters were unable to cast their ballot because of the nonsensical restrictions placed on their right of suffrage by the Wisconsin GOP (only marginally less contemptuous of democracy than the North Carolina crew).  Note that a) the vast majority of those voters historically have voted against the GOP and the Voter Suppression Bill was expressly designed with that in mind, and b) der Sturmtrumper won Wisconsin by less than 23,000 votes.  But sure, tell me again about voter fraud.

8. Another study has demonstrated that the primary motivation for people voting for der Sturmtrumper last year was “cultural anxiety.”  Not economics.  In fact, recent analysis has shown that those working class white Americans whose finances could be labeled as “troubled” – i.e. those who in theory voted for der Sturmtrumper to express their economic discontent – actually tended to vote for Clinton.  Economics was not the motivator, in other words.  “Cultural anxiety” is a broad term that essentially boils down to “those damned people who are Not Like Us are taking over” and is functionally the same as “racism” – “all them brown people who think that just because they were born here and live here and serve in the military and pay taxes and play football and have children and do all the things that everyone else in this country does that makes them Real MURCANS” and of course the people with “cultural anxiety” voted for Trump.  So yeah, racism.  Imagine!  The guy publicly endorsed by the KKK and every major neo-Nazi group in America as the best hope for their agenda is the guy whose voters were motivated by racism!  Who knew?  Well, besides everyone.  It’s pretty much what we all knew all along but wouldn’t admit, but now backed by research.

9. The Director of the US Census has resigned, which means that a new director will have to be appointed.  And if you think the GOP won’t twist that to their advantage, think again.  Who gets counted has become a very sensitive issue in this day of Culture War and rapacious gerrymandering.  My guess is that whoever they pick will do a very careful job of counting straight white men but a rather more slipshod job of counting everyone else.  They’ve already declared they won’t count LGBTQ Americans, because if you don’t count them they don’t exist, right?  And if they don’t exist, then they certainly don’t have rights that any straight white man is bound to respect.  Roger Taney haunts the modern GOP.

10. I’m not even going to get into the firing of James Comey too much other than to point out that every independent agent investigating der Sturmtrumper has now been fired and the GOP is perfectly fine with this obstruction of justice.  And yes, it is obstruction of justice – der Sturmtrumper went on television and admitted as much, directly contradicting the story he had his administration pumping out not hours beforehand.

11. Meeting with Henry Kissinger in the middle of all that was a positively Nixonian touch that no doubt made the more authoritarian elements of the GOP click their boot heels with glee.

12.  Hosting the Russian press in the Oval Office while barring the American media and doing so while evidence of collusion with Russian intelligence during the 2016 election gets firmer and more compelling might not have been the smartest of ideas.  One wonders how many listening devices and other spyware were planted by those “journalists” during that trip.

13.  Of course, the don’t need spyware when der Sturmtrumper is going to blurt out highly classified information anytime he wants to do so.  He’s right that he has broken no law by doing so, though he may well have violated his oath of office in the process.  They’re separate things, after all.  Remember when the GOP lathered itself into a froth at the mere possibility that Hillary Clinton might have left some low-level classified information open to foreigners in her email, even though she denied it?  Here you have der Sturmtrumper actually giving high-level intelligence to a foreign power and then bragging about it, and the GOP collectively says, "So?"

14.  Didn’t Paul Ryan say that people who couldn’t be trusted with classified information shouldn’t have access to it anymore?  I look forward to him pressing that case against der Sturmtrumper.  Oh, wait.  It’s okay when Republicans commit subversive and/or treasonous acts.  Rules don’t apply to Republicans.  Sorry – I forget sometimes.

15. Apparently the intelligence that has been compromised came from Israel.  Israel is not a nation that screws around when it comes to national security.  That could be very bad news for der Sturmtrumper if they decide he represents a clear and present danger to their national survival.

16. How bad is it when Erick Erickson, one of the biggest cheerleaders of the far right in modern America, flat out says that “what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported.”  The only hope this country has is that der Sturmtrumper’s supporters will finally turn on him – the fact that everyone else already has makes no difference – and this is a good first step.  Of course, given that the headline on pretty much every major news organization’s website when the intelligence scandal broke was about the scandal except for Fox, which promoted a bogus story about Hillary’s emails, this may take some time.

17. Did der Sturmtrumper really threaten James Comey with releasing White House tapes?  Bring it on, Chuckles – there isn’t a prosecutor in America who wouldn’t give their eye teeth to have access to those tapes.  The mere fact that such tapes might exist is enough to provoke all sorts of subpoena requests.  This just gets uglier and uglier, and der Sturmtrumper gets more malignant and stupid with each passing tantrum.

18. Apparently one of the things that Comey did to annoy der Sturmtrumper was to reject his request to end the FBI investigation into Michael Flynn.  And a good thing too, since that would have been a clear-cut case of obstruction of justice.  Honestly, at what point do Republicans grow a spine, accept the reality that their president is a corrupt and dangerous buffoon, put their country ahead of their narrow partisan interests, and get rid of this guy?  Yeah, I’m not holding my breath either.

19. Our Confederate Attorney General is calling for a return to harsh sentences for drug offenders despite decades of evidence that this does nothing to solve any of the problems associated with illegal drugs.  For crying out loud, the states mostly figured that out years ago and it was only recently that the Obama Administration caught up with them.  And now der Sturmtrumper’s minions will go back to the kind of knee-jerk punitive reactions that make them look like macho manly men doing manly things to other men because that’s all they care about, even if the actual job at hand is left undone and the situation gets worse. 

20. The “I” word is being openly thrown around in Congress today by both Republican and Democratic representatives.  “Impeachment” – it’s what’s for dinner.

21.  Apparently the stock market has finally figured out that der Sturmtrumper is bad for business.  Yes, folks, unpredictable authoritarianism is not conducive to long-term profits!  Who knew?  Besides every economic historian and self-aware corporate executive in the civilized world, I mean.  Really, who knew?  We’ll see if today’s dip was simply a minor wobble or the start of something bigger, but don’t be surprised if a lot of money starts leaving the US for more stable shores sometime soon.

22. What does it tell you that the most cogent defense offered by der Sturmtrumper’s minions regarding his blabbing highly classified intelligence to foreign visitors is the idea that he is so blisteringly incompetent that it couldn’t have done any harm?  It tells you that we are well and truly screwed in this country for as long as der Sturmtrumper and his cronies, minions, and lackeys hold sway, that’s what it tells you.

All the Buzz

Last week was the 4H Drama Festival.

It is a sign of just how hectic this past week was that it has taken me this long to gather my thoughts and photographs together and write this blog post.  Between track meets, orchestra concerts and rehearsals, meetings, and the 2017 revival of that great 1973 hit, “The Saturday Night Massacre,” it has been hard to keep up.  

And this is a shame, because our Players put on a marvelous if underrated performance.

For this year’s production we decided to adapt a play we did back in 2011, the first year we were involved in 4H Drama.  The play, entitled, “Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears,” is based on an African folk tale and was originally written by our first Drama leader, Jamie.  Our cast this year was both older and fewer, which meant we could have more speaking lines and fewer random cast members.  It adapts well.

We rehearsed Monday nights in March and April, gradually getting things put together.  We had a dedicated cast and an eager spotlight operator, and by the last week it was all coming together nicely.

The Festival happens down at Home Campus every year, and as the Performing Arts Guy I generally end up as the campus rep for it all.  This means I end up arriving at 7am to help set up and answer questions.  Fortunately we’ve been doing this a while now and people pretty much know what to do and where to go.  It also meant that I had to delegate my usual photographer duties to one of our other 4H’ers who was working the food booth.  Thank you, Lauren!

Eventually our intrepid Players arrived and set to work getting makeup and costumes.

We then repaired to the outside lawn, where it was a beautiful spring day, and the kids ran their lines one last time before it was finally showtime.

The narrator comes on and lets the audience know that it is Mother Owl who wakes the sun each morning.

Then we meet Mosquito and Iguana.  Mosquito is very small, but tells the tallest tales.  Eventually Iguana decides she’d rather be deaf than listen to such nonsense and puts sticks in her ears.

Somehow between Friday night’s rehearsal and Saturday’s performance the rig I put together for the sticks disappeared.  We still haven’t found it.  Fortunately a substitute was cobbled together in time for the performance.

Iguana, now deaf, does not hear her friend Python’s greeting.  Naturally, this being both a play and a folk tale, Python assumes mischief is afoot.  He hides in Rabbit’s burrow, which panics Rabbit, which alarms Crow, which scares Monkey, who goes running off into the forest and, by swinging on a branch and breaking it, manages to kill one of Mother Owl’s owlets.

This year the owlet was played by a stuffed animal.  In the original production we had a lot of very young kids playing various owlets.  Things change.

Mother Owl is both grieved and angry (and you should have heard our actress work her way through the Stages of Grief, one by one – really, you should) and won’t wake up the sun.  So Lion comes in and gets to the bottom of things.

Eventually it all gets resolved (yes, we played “Here Comes the Sun” at this point, because of course we did) and all ends well except for Mosquito, who is forever doomed to buzzing in people's ears, asking if people are still mad at her, and, well, getting whacked in response.  Because that's what happens to mosquitoes.

It was an excited and happy group that met in the hall afterward.

The judges seemed pretty happy with the show, though in the end they only awarded us red ribbons which I thought was unduly harsh.  Oh well.  Judges do what judges do and life moves on.  They also awarded us best costumes and best original drama, which we appreciated!

All the world’s a stage.

Congratulations, Players!  You did well.

The Time Has Come

Donald Trump will be impeached within the next eighteen months.

Possibly by the end of this year.

It is by now indelibly clear that he has engaged in a broad pattern of abuse and illegality, of high crimes and misdemeanors, and has brought upon himself and this nation a Constitutional crisis that can only be resolved by removing him from office and prosecuting him to the fullest extent of the law.

The list of these crimes, this abuse, this flagrant disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution has been well documented elsewhere and there is no particular need to rehash it here.  The recent firing of FBI Head James Comey is a tipping point, however.

Every independent agent investigating Trump has now been fired by Trump.

We have reached our Watergate moment.

Of course, you may argue that this assumes that the Republican-led Congress actually gives a rat’s ass about the law, the Constitution, or anything other than their grip on absolute power. 

And you would be correct to note that there is precious little evidence of this.

Again, there is no particular need to rehash what has been well documented here and elsewhere.  It gets tiresome, to be honest.

Oh, there are a few Republicans who understand that there is a time to put patriotism above partisanship, and three cheers for them, I say.  They may well be instrumental in bringing about what really needs to happen, just as they were for Nixon.  People forget that Nixon only resigned when it became clear that he had lost the support of his own party – that his crimes were so blatant, so beyond the pale, that even partisanship wouldn’t save him.

Do we have enough Republicans who care about this country more than they care about their party? 

Maybe.  I’m not going to argue the point.

My point is that we don’t need to rely on them.  Even pure unadulterated power-hungry partisanship will make the GOP get rid of Trump.

Trump is the gift that keeps on giving to Democrats.  He is a one-man sideshow, a festival of stupidity, criminality, subversion, and moral failure, incapable of reform, education, or productive labor.  His first 100 days in office were among the least effective of any president in American history, up to and including William Henry Harrison, and this is especially notable in light of the fact that his party controls both houses of Congress.  He’s managed to piss off the Navy, the FBI, and the CIA, as well as almost every other federal agency under his control.  His public approval ratings are historically bad, which tells you that even many Republicans don’t like him.  His unpredictability is borderline psychotic and undermines everything that the GOP would like to do.  His ability to energize progressive voters and candidates is unparalleled, as several unfathomably close mid-cycle elections in what had been safe GOP areas have already shown.  He is the focal point of rage for the thinking American, and it is that rage that is translating thinking into doing.

He is, in other words, an obstacle to everything the GOP wants to achieve.  The Faustian bargain that the GOP made with Trump is that they would tolerate – even celebrate – his venality, criminality, and subversion as long as they got to impose their will on the majority of Americans who actively reject it.  And this bargain is now in question.

As of right now, Trump’s presidency and the divisions within the GOP that he encourages and abets are so damning that the GOP is in serious danger of losing the House of Representatives in 2018. 

That fact is shocking.  The House is so effectively gerrymandered that the GOP has controlled it despite losing the overall popular vote for Representatives more often than not of late, and with their control over state legislatures this gerrymandering is not likely to change.  The fact that the House is even in play at all is a testament to the colossal moral and political failure of the modern GOP.

The GOP knows this.

They also know that if Trump goes, it is entirely likely that Pence will go with him.  Pence has already implicated himself in a number of the scandals of this administration – notably the Russian collusion to subvert the 2016 election – and his position is only slightly less precarious than Trump’s.

Third in line is the Speaker of the House.

At the moment, that’s Paul Ryan, the wunderkind of the Ayn Rand right wing and as pliable an extremist water-carrier as you could hope for.  This is the guy who shepherded the moral abomination of Republicare through the House of Representatives, after all.  The GOP could live happily under President Ryan.

But if they lose the House, two things happen.

First, their ability to quash probes, investigations, and ultimately impeachment itself is lost with it.  They know very well that a Democratic House would bring the charges that the GOP House has so far been unwilling even to investigate as a threat to their own power.  They also know that if there is enough of a progressive wave to win the House it will likely turn the Senate as well, which means that when you add in what Republicans are willing to be patriots instead of partisans conviction on those impeachment charges becomes all but certain.

And second, once Trump and Pence go in that scenario, the new Speaker of the House will be a Democrat.

Under the Constitution, that incoming President would still be eligible for two full terms, which means that he or she could be president for a full decade.  Given that the only thing that got Jimmy Carter elected in 1976 was the disgust and rejection that voters felt for the party of Nixon, it is entirely likely that the former Speaker of the House would get at least one full term as president, and if the GOP continues to tear itself apart (as any attempt to get rid of Trump likely will, given the vast gulf between the GOP elite and its Trump-voting base) possibly both terms.

The partisanship of the GOP won’t have that.

They’ll get rid of Trump while they can still replace him with someone of their own party, and they’ll spin it as patriotism, rule of law, and respect for the Constitution.  And for all I know some of them will be sincere.

But Trump’s time is limited either way.

He will be gone.  For the survival of the American republic, he needs to be gone.  Even if it’s just partisanship, he has to be gone.

Interesting times indeed.

News and Updates

1. The first week of May is always a madhouse around here.  The semester is coming to an end, various projects and tasks are ramping up, and people always think it is a good time to schedule events because it’s far enough from the end of the school year(s) that they think folks can still focus but deep enough into those same school years that people have had time to prepare.  And then they are surprised when these events all pile up.  It’s a pattern, folks!

2. I took my daughter to work a couple Fridays ago.  Actually I took her whole class.  At the last parent/teacher night down at Mighty Clever Guy Middle School a couple months ago I got to talking with Lauren’s history teacher, and the upshot of it was that her whole TAG class came to Home Campus and sat in on my US2 course.  All my regular students are two hundred miles away and connecting in by compressed video, which means I have plenty of seating.  And it was nice to let Lauren's class see how a college class was similar or different from what they are used to.  We gave them a tour of the campus, and my colleagues spoke to them on things like advising and financial aid (i.e. you can do this, and we can help).  I also had a couple of students talk to them about college from their perspective.  It seemed to go well.  And by the time Lauren showed up she had relaxed a bit on the “do not let them know you’re my dad” thing – I’m guessing that cat got let out of the bag pretty early, to be honest.  One of the weirder things about the whole process was having to sign a permission slip so my daughter could go on a field trip to see … me.

3. Tabitha was inducted today into the French Honor Society, which has an actual name in French that I will not even begin to attempt here because medieval French scribes were paid by the letter and to type this out in French would use up all the pixels on the internet.  But it was a nice ceremony down at Local Businessman High School.  They had any number of awards, medals, pins, and flowers, and it was a lovely thing.  Congratulations, Tabitha!

4. Yesterday was the 4H Drama Festival, and when I have all my pictures sorted out I will dedicate an entire post to it.  I’m always proud of the kids and the job they do, but I’m always glad when it’s over.

5. Kim and I went to an event in honor of the political activism of a couple of friends of ours tonight.  It was packed, as you would expect when people have been active for half a century and are also very nice people to begin with.  It was a good time, though union halls are not known for their acoustics and I can never hear anyone talk at those things.  The main speaker was a lot of fun.  Some people can just work a crowd.

6. It’s been warm enough that we have been letting the turkeys out into their run in the morning.  They love, love, love being outside.  You open up the little door on the side of the barn and they come boiling out, making those inquisitive little squawks that they make.  At night when you come back they’re all just sitting there enjoying the breeze.  It’s always kind of a shame to shoo them back in.

7. Lauren’s track meets are a lot of fun to go to.  She does well in her events, and I enjoy all the running and jumping.  Those meets are always an exercise in barely controlled chaos, which is good preparation for life I suppose.

8. When it comes to the lawn, I am That Neighbor.  I don’t care about the lawn.  I categorize dandelions as spring flowers and look forward to Creeping Charlie since it’s low ground cover and has nice purple flowers.  I think the grass looks good long.  But this is all rather a minority view in modern America, so today I dragged out the lawn mower and set it to work for the first time all year.  It will only have to be done again, you know.

9. It is not fun to be far away from people who need you to be not far away.  It is good that there are people who can be there.

10.  It's AP time, folks!  And you know what that means!  Yes, you can actually hear the buzzing of the stressed out high school students in your area!  Isn't that grand?  Tabitha has completed one of her three exams, and the other two happen this week.  The nice thing about exams, though, is that they start and then … they end.  They’re not like papers, which can always be revised.  It’s good to have definitive end points.  Win, lose, or draw, you’re done.

11. We knew this past week would be something of a lost cause, between 4H Drama rehearsals, track meets, Tabitha’s tech week for the LBHS play, and everything else that had to be done (Kim spent all weekend at Home Campus running chemistry labs for students, for example, and that isn’t something you can just wing at the time, which is why my high school chemistry grade was what it was), so last Sunday I whomped up a giant batch of chili and another of gravy (spaghetti sauce to you midwesterners).  These are good, but I’m looking forward to eating something else now.

12.  EDIT: You know it's been a long week when an entire concert gets lost in the shuffle.  But Tabitha had her Local Youth Orchestra concert on Thursday, and they were lovely to hear.  They performed half a dozen interesting pieces - and when you get most of the woodwinds to play percussion, interesting things do happen - and we all left happy.  

A Weighty Tome

I’m reading a book.

This is not news.  I’m always reading a book.  Sometimes more than one, though lately I’ve tried to keep it to a single book at a time because otherwise the mental whiplash of shifting from world to world gets to be a bit much.  But always at least one.  I carry them around with me and pull them out at what are no doubt socially inopportune moments, and I’m not particularly bothered by these moments.  If enough people get annoyed at me reading when they would rather I be doing the tasks they have assigned to me then eventually I will no longer be invited to gatherings where people attempt to assign me tasks and I can read in peace.

You have your long-term strategies, I have mine.

It’s actually a pretty good book – one of those big, broad, synthetic histories that I like, the sort of book that attempts to tie together any number of disparate and seemingly unrelated themes and make them into a coherent argument.  It has its rough spots, but overall I’m enjoying it and if I ever do get to revise that one class that I’ve been meaning to revise since 2015, perhaps I will incorporate material from this book into it as well.

What makes this book somewhat unique, though, is that it appears to have been printed on paper made from depleted uranium and grief.

It’s not that big a book, really – maybe 420pp, hardback, probably just a bit over an inch thick and roughly the usual dimensions of a hardback book – but it exists in a permanent twilight because light bends around it.  It exerts its own gravitational pull.  It cannot be stored on malleable surfaces without distorting them.

Lately I have taken to walking up to unsuspecting friends and colleagues and saying, “Here, hold this!” before handing them the book, just to see how they react as their wrists bend downward and they instinctively grasp it harder to avoid having it fall and crush their toes.

As Calvin & Hobbes once said, “It’s that moment of dawning comprehension that I live for.”

You have to have some diversion from the collapse of American civilization that is going on around us these days.  This is as good as any, I suppose.

I’m almost done with it now, and I will then move on to another, rather more buoyant book.  No doubt for the first few days every time I pick the new one up I will involuntarily end up raising it above my head as if surrendering to a Book Army, until eventually my Up muscles get used to having to do less work for equivalent Up distance and bring it to a halt at a more convenient reading altitude.

And then it will all seem like a vague notion that I had once upon a time.  But it was real, oh yes it was.

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:

--

1. Our Confederate Attorney General came out and admitted that he has neither the resources nor the plans to round up all the illegal immigrants that are in the US, the way der Sturmtrumper has been thumping on about since before the election, so instead they’re going to focus on deporting the criminals.  In other words, they are going to pursue EXACTLY THE SAME POLICY THAT OBAMA HAD – precisely the policy that caused the right-wing to go into full-blown nativist meltdown last year.  You know, that one?  I suppose it’s different when it’s the white guys in charge.

2. Continuing the theme of GOP snowflakes melting under the glare of student questioning, der Sturmtrumper’s senior counterterrorism and cybersecurity advisor (and Brietbart fanboy) Sebastian Gorka stormed angrily out of a meeting with Georgetown University students after they had the temerity to continue questioning him after his line of bullshit was delivered.  Honestly, where do they find these people and why am I expected to take them seriously?  Dude, take it from a teacher: if you can’t survive students, you’re not going to survive terrorists.

3. Not only has der Sturmtrumper not actually managed to nominate – let alone get confirmed – candidates for the vast majority of the executive branch positions he is responsible for, apparently he can’t even remember the few he has.  Or maybe he just hires idiots because he’s comfortable with them.  A week or two ago the White House emailed out a transcript of that day’s briefings and listed Steven Mnuchin as the Secretary of Commerce.  Mnuchin is the Secretary of the Treasury.  Those at the top set the tone for those underneath, and the tone for this group is incompetent.

4. The circular firing squad that is Republicare continues to fire away.  One would think that the embarrassment of watching something you’ve spent over half a decade promising to do collapse into an ignominious pile of failure despite controlling every relevant branch of government would be enough to convince the GOP to avoid pissing on that particular electric fence again, but then you don’t know the rigid ideological fanaticism of the modern GOP.  Of course they’re back.  And of course this version is even more punitive, cruel, and dysfunctional than the last one.  The current plan is to get rid of every popular feature of the ACA, especially the coverage for pre-existing conditions, and then exempt themselves from the plan so that Congress can continue to have the taxpayer-funded healthcare that they insist is immoral for people like you to have.  I have often wondered what the Romans felt when they saw the Visigoths at the gates of the city, and now I know.

6. And it looks like a party in control of both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch still cannot pass a bill it has been promising to pass since 2010.  On the one hand, I suppose I should be grateful.  The more we find out about Republicare 2.0, the more cruel and immoral it gets.  Only the modern GOP would think allowing insurance companies to price the sick out of the market while denying coverage for maternity care or cancer treatment would be acceptable.  On the other hand, do these people even know how to govern?  The Gang That Can’t Think Straight continues to demonstrate why only the most ideologically blinded support them.

6. So der Sturmtrumper called the entire Senate to the White House to talk about North Korea.  First of all, senators of either party do not like being treated as page boys to be summoned at the master’s pleasure so I doubt this did him any favors even with the GOP.  Second, by all accounts nobody really had any idea what to make of this, since nothing of any real substance was discussed.  If you’re going to call the entire Senate to make a special trip to see you, it sort of behooves you to have something big to tell them.  I’d say der Sturmtrumper is his own worst enemy except that there are so many Americans vying for that job that it’s hard to tell.

7. Mauricio Macri, the president of Argentina and one of the first world leaders to call der Sturmtrumper and congratulate him on his victory in November, was going to give former President Jimmy Carter the Order of the Liberator General San Martin, the highest award Argentina has for foreigners, in recognition of Carter’s work to strengthen human rights during the period of military dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970s and early 80s.  The presentation ceremony would have happened during Macri’s visit to the US in the first week of May.  According to CNN, however, the ceremony was canceled on the explicit demand of der Sturmtrumper, who apparently cannot stand to have anyone else be recognized for achievements, especially for something as paltry and anti-business as human rights.  If there is an Argentinean prize for sheer spiteful pettiness in the service of a wounded ego, perhaps Macri can award it to the current US president while he’s here.

8.  Add Oklahoma to the list of GOP-mutilated economies, sucked in by the false promises of supply-side economics in a demand side world.  They slashed taxes, expecting to see the economic growth that right-wingers always promise when they cut taxes for the wealthy, and lo and behold their infrastructure is failing, their schools are cutting back to 4-day weeks, their state troopers can’t even fill up their gas tanks, and the GOP refuses to recognize the obvious: supply-side economics does not work in a demand-side economy.  Never has.  Never will.  The Kansas Miracle didn’t work in Kansas and it isn’t going to work anywhere else either, no matter how hard they try to sell it or how thin they slice it.  I’m not sure whether I should be more offended by the sheer destructive bull-headedness of the GOP or by the fact that they think I’m stupid enough to fall for it.

9. If you ever truly want to lose your faith in humanity, just try reading a defense of der Sturmtrumper in your local newspaper’s letters to the editor column.  A more toxic combination of magical thinking, blame shifting, willful ignorance, and sheer mendacity you will never find.

10. Every time I think der Sturmtrumper has outdone himself with weaponized ignorance, that there is no further depth he can sink to when it comes to demonstrating how utterly unqualified he is to be an American citizen let alone occupy a position of political power, that he has reached the bedrock beneath rock bottom, the man starts to dig.  “People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War?”  Seriously?  The Civil War is the single most written-about event in all of American history by an order of magnitude.  There are literally tens of thousands of books that address this very issue, and the volume of ink spilled discussing it probably exceeds the volume of blood spilled in the conquest of the treasonous South by whole number multiples.  Don’t even get me started on der Sturmtrumper’s bizarre fixation on Andrew Jackson who, for the record, died fifteen years before the Civil War started.  Of course this is the guy who thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive, so when it comes to historical ignorance there are no surprises here.

11. Is it my imagination or is a Republican President with a Republican House of Representatives and a Republican Senate openly calling for a government shut down because he can’t get what he wants?  Is this really a thing?  At some point, can we just admit the farce here and turn over the actual governing of the country to somebody capable of doing so?

12. In an interview on April 30, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (no, really, that’s his name) publicly stated that der Sturmtrumper is looking to repeal the First Amendment.  You know, the one that guarantees free speech?  Freedom of religion?  That one?  Because it gets in the way of the things der Sturmtrumper wants to do to the nation, that’s why.  Of course, that’s why the First Amendment was put there, but apparently Reince Priebus (really, I’m not making that up – I couldn’t if I tried) seems to have missed that point.  The Founders had a word for people like that.  That word was “tyrant.”  They also had a solution for that problem.

13. There is nothing that puts the sheer moral bankruptcy of the modern GOP more starkly into relief than getting them to talk about healthcare in this country.  Did you know that pre-existing conditions are the mark of a failed life?  That the poor and the sick should die before any God-fearin’ MURCAN has to part with one thin dime of his precious, precious lucre?  Yeah, this is also the party that claims Christianity as its very own.  Jesus would be so proud of them.  Bless their shriveled, crusty hearts.

14. It’s not all that surprising that the loudest GOP voice leading the “fuck you Jack, I got mine” chorus on healthcare at the moment is Joe Walsh, a deadbeat dad more than $100,000 behind on child support payments for his own kids.  The man doesn’t give a damn about his own flesh and blood.  He’s not going to care about yours.  The modern GOP in a nutshell.

15. The fact that this bill will be voted on without a CBO score – without the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office evaluating it for its financial impact – tells you all you need to know.  This isn’t about saving money.  It isn’t about serving the American people.  It’s not about improving healthcare in the United States.  It’s about scoring points for the wealthy donors who pull the GOP’s strings, providing a massive tax break for the already wealthy at the expense of sick children, and gleeful cruelty toward those incapable of fighting back.  It’s a cowardly and despicable act without any redeeming moral quality, and it should be treated as such.

16. Meanwhile in North Carolina, the GOP drive toward absolutism continues apace.  If you want to see what the modern right wing has in store for the nation, the czarist state of North Carolina is your model.  A thoroughly gerrymandered GOP legislature has systematically changed whatever rules were necessary in order to deny the express will of the North Carolinian electorate and impose their autocratic will on a formerly democratic society. 

17.  Do you think it’s a coincidence that der Sturmtrumper reaches out to dictators and tyrants while insulting democracies and republics?

18. Remember when executive orders were a sign of dictatorship?  That was when the black guy was issuing them, of course.  Now that der Sturmtrumper is in power, they’re just fine.  The current occupant of the White House issued 29 executive orders in his first 100 days.  Obama had 19.  Still no objections from the GOP.