A Useful Idiot

 

     Now that Matt Gaetz is out, we're left with speculating who's the worst nominee of Donald Trump. One could make a case for the resident madman of Hyannisport, RFK, Jr for HHS Secretary. Or one could point the finger at Pete Hegseth, MAGAdonia's most beloved white supremacist and Christian nationalist. Or one could make a case for Pam Bondi, Gaetz's replacement and who dropped a fraud case against Trump University (that was later successfully prosecuted) after getting a $25,000 bribe from Trump.

     But today we're going to talk about my choice for the worst potential installment into Trump's Cabinet, Tulsi Gabbard, his inexplicable pick for Director of National Intelligence.

     Back in the day when Bush was needlessly transforming the intelligence community, he created the Office of the Director for National Intelligence. Prior to this time, the Director of the CIA was the de facto overseer of all 18 acknowledged federal intelligence agencies. It wasn't officially baked into the CIA Director's job description but it was generally acknowledged that as the head of the nation's most prominent intelligence agency, he would have loose oversight over the other 17.

     While the necessity of the ODNI has been far from established, the DNI nonetheless has complete and unrestricted access to all of our nation's most sensitive secrets, including the CIA's and that of our largest intelligence agency, the NSA. And Trump, true to form, has seen fit to give that access to someone who is widely acknowledged to be a Russian mole.

     The Kremlin has been nakedly fulsome of its praise and support for Gabbard, calling her "our girlfriend" on Russian state TV. 

     After a false ballistic missile scare in Hawaii six years ago, Gabbard has been curiously deferential toward Russia. She's said at the time that we needed to stop “escalating tensions with a nuclear-armed Russia. We need to work with Russia to prevent war, not provoke it,” which is exactly what Putin would've wanted her to say.

     She's also said that the war in Ukraine wouldn't have started if NATO hadn't "provoked" Russia, which is so patently and absurdly false, I'm surprised that Gabbard wasn't laughed out of the political arena forever.

     Then there's FISA's Section 702, which Gabbard (And Putin) would love nothing more than to see stricken from the law books. Section 702 empowered the federal government to spy on foreign actors. Section 702 accounts for roughly 60% of the information that the president gets in his PDB. Abolishing Section 702 would essentially blind Uncle Sam to the actions of hostile states such as Russia.

     When she was still in Congress, laughingly posing as a Democratic congresswoman, Gabbard introduced the "Protect Brave Whistleblower Act" that would have essentially removed Section 702 from the books.

     And let's not forget Gabbard's questionable visit to Syria to meet with Assad, who'd used chemical weapons against his own people. Gabbard called into question the very intelligence community's claims, the same community she'd be tasked with overseeing.

     In other words, as with Trump, all of Gabbard's plans and criticisms, every single one, would benefit Putin in some way, shape or form. And if the Senate is stupid enough to insert her into this role, one can easily imagine she'll have Putin's number in the Kremlin on speed dial.

Good Times at Pottersville

 

Get Ready for the Fifth Reich!

 

(By Cyril Blubberpuss, conservative-American)

     To be honest with you, since November fifth, when my friend Donald Trump won the presidency again with a whopping 29% mandate of the US electorate, I've been celebrating at Mar a Lago. And in between shocking the illegal Mexican and Cuban chambermaids with cattle prods and Matt Schlapp chasing the cabana boys, there's been a lot of hard work in the dining rooms and the links at Mar a Lago. Among those things have been strategizing.and forming the president-elect's cabinet.

     Mar a Lago's a regular bee hive of activity. This isn't my first rodeo. I did much the same thing in 2017 that I and members of Trump's orbit are doing now: Angling for Cabinet positions, drawing up hit lists of, er, for military leaders, selling access to the president, etc. And it's been a whirlwind three weeks, let me tell you!

     It's shaping up to be a helluva government, totally unlike the criminal syndicate that makes up Sleepy Joe Biden's administration. With the GOP's four seat command in the Senate and their two member majority in the house, why, anything's possible!

     And, it's true that no one's seen the B side of the Republican ticket, Vice President-elect JD Vance. Rumor has it that he's hard at work on the sequel to his magnum opus and it'll be called Hillbilly Autopsy or maybe Hillbilly Coroner's Inquest, he hasn't decided which. Ether way, Lauras Trump and Loomer won't have to worry about ole JD stealing their Maybelline eyeliner.

     It's gonna be a major shakeup of the government, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. HHS designee RFK, Jr, while he hasn't been busy making his own unpasturized cheese made of stolen milk from cows, has been drafting out legislation and executive orders banning vaccines for polio and a theoretical zombie outbreak. The proposed model legislation is entitled, "Hey, We All Gotta Die From Something, Right? Antivax Act of 2025".

     

     Knowing I was going to be here for several weeks, I even decided to bring my kid brother, Cecil, with me to Palm Beach. He was especially keen to come with me when I told him Donald's handsome, supple, prepubescent grandsons would be there. Cecil has taken quite a liking to them and they're always playing Hide and Seek with my kid brother, although their screams and crying are a bit much to take.

     Of course, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I'm here through some self-interest. For a while, I was in the running for Commerce Secretary until he abruptly gave the nomination to Howard Lutnick. It may have had something to do with the fact that during dinner a few nights ago, Cecil blurted out that he's outgrown Barron (or maybe it was the other way around). Admittedly, Barron is 7' 10" (Oh, wait, since I started this article, he's grown another two inches. Make it 8' even).

     Still, I'm angling for Treasury Secretary and my Wall Street experience and track record makes me a very strong candidate. Like my dear friend Donald, I built up my financial empire the hard way- By having it handed to me by my father. My sainted father, Ambrose, handed me a multi-billion dollar company on his sudden passing and, under my stewardship, it's now a billion dollar company.

     However, I'd be less than honest if I said there wasn't some occasional chaos and a drop or two of bad blood here at Mar a Lago. We're at the very epicenter of incalculable power and egos will clash from time to time. Take the kerfuffle last week just before a meeting at the Tea Room. Boris Epsteyn had a clash with Elon Musk, who's been kind of a bloated, black flamingo. The exchange got so heated that Boris challenged Elon to a Jell-O wrestling match, a prospect that even turned off my baby brother, Cecil, who's always lobbying for events like that at the middle school level.

     There are signs that Elon's overstaying his welcome and now Donald has to surround himself with his Secret Service protective detail every time he goes to the bathroom so Elon doesn't follow him in. I remember Donald and I were on the 5th hole at Mar a Lago and just before he picked up a ball in the rough and tossed it toward the hole, he said,

     "Just between you and me, Cyril," he said as his grandsons ran all over the fairway as they were pursued by Cecil in his tightie whities. Screaming boys are a constant feature when Cecil's around, they love seeing him so much. "That Elon's getting under my skin," he said as he kicked the ball a few feet. "I know he couch surfs all the time because he's too cheap to buy a house. But what kind of loser spends $44 billion on Twitter but won't buy a house for a few hundred thousand?"

     Afterwards, we all posed for a family photo and Elon grabbed Donald's youngest grandson, which made Cecil green with envy. That's me behind my friend, Donald. I look a little out of focus but that's a trait of we Blubberpusses. We're naturally blurry. Of course, everyone was too diplomatic to notice Melania wasn't in the picture, as usual. Nor were any of us going to mention that a member of Donald's protective detail went AWOL at the same time.

The Republican Party is a Fifth Column.

 

     To paraphrase the late Rodney Dangerfield, Republicans scream about how lousy the government is then they get elected and prove it. 

     And in the past two decades since I'd first begun blogging about politics, hardly a day has gone by when I haven't puzzled over why the Beltway pundits, especially the corporate mainstream media, hasn't come out even once to call the Republican Party out, in unmistakable, unambiguous terms, as being a fifth column. It seems they get the dry heaves at the very thought.

     However, even though they swaddle themselves in the American flag and call themselves staunch Constitutionalists, the Law and Order Party, it's screamingly obvious by now, or should be, that such patriotic posturing is just that- empty bumper sticker slogans they dust off and trowel out every election year tp cadge votes from the rubes stupid enough to take those campaign mottoes at face value.

     And, with the rise and resurrection of Trump, the most unAmerican insurrectionist and traitor since Benedict Arnold, they've gotten more brazen. The only wonder is not so much why the MSM haven't called them out for being the Fifth Column terrorists that they are but that the GOP hasn't leaned into it and embraced it.

     For decades, Republicans have been trying to get rid of government agencies such as the Department of Education, the Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the EPA and they've been trying, since it was first created in 1965, to dismantle Medicaid and Medicare. Since 2010, they've added to their baleful focus the Affordable Care Act, which they cynically rebranded "Obamacare" and fooling gullible, ignorant and just plain stupid voters into believing was different from the ACA.

     Add to that ever-growing list the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Energy, the CFPB, etc. Because it's moved well past the right wing mantra of smaller government, it's already progressed past the point of going after government that actually works for the people.

     It's bad enough they've almost completely corrupted the federal judiciary from the Supreme Court on down. Realizing what a pack of corrupt criminals they are, Republicans decided long ago not to clean up their act but to get rid of any enforcement mechanism available to that judiciary. Which is why they want to get rid of the FBI despite it historically being one of the most right wing agencies the government can offer. The "Back the Blue" crowd actually views law enforcement as a threat.

     Trump's picks for his Cabinet are as dangerous as they're ridiculous. It's tough to see what qualifications any of them have for these very important posts or in deciding which ones are more ridiculous. In the end, one has to conclude that it's not really about how qualified they are but in how successfully they can destroy or at least undermine the agencies and departments they'd be tasked with running.

     And as more clowns come streaming out of the stationary clown car of Trump's brain, we also realize that he's removing any degree of separation or the merest hint of plausible deniability between the GOP and a Fifth Column.

     The first four years of Trump's "presidency"  showed us in stark terms that he views the government and anyone in it as mere actuators of his will, not public servants who are bound by the law to honorably fulfill their duties. Witness all the times Trump referred to "my generals" as if they were mere plastic toy soldiers that h e could move around a board. 

     Remember the time he blurted out, "Where's my Roy Cohn?!" when his first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from any DOJ probe into Trump's obvious collusion with Russia. Because Trump, who's completely blind to the very concept of public service, looks at the Attorney General and the entire Department of Justice, as his private law firm. He looks at the Department of Defense as his personal goon squad. This is the same guy who once asked John Kelly why "my generals" can't be more like Hitler's generals.

     I'm planning on writing a long series of articles on just how manifestly unfit each and every one of these clowns are but let's just use as a springboard the rationale that Trump thinks the government is just part of the Trump Organization and that its entire reason reason for being is to protect him from the consequences of his endless criminal actions and to enrich him.

     Let's start with perhaps the most dangerous nominee: Pete Hogsbreath of Fox & Frauds.

     Not too long ago, he went on a Christian Nationalist podcast and outlined his vision for the future. Here's what Petey said:

"That's what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation. Policy answers like school choice, while they're great, that's phase two stuff later on once the foothold has been taken, once the recruits have graduated boot camp.

"We call it a tactical retreat. We draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like, because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan and kind of the phases that Mao wrote about. We're in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate, and reorganize. And as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way.

"Obviously, all of this is metaphorical and all that good stuff."

     Then he and the host had a good laugh over it.

Good Times at Pottersville

They Also Say...

 

     ...elect a clown, expect a circus.

      So, all week, Trump has been "nominating" people to his Cabinet and administration and even announcing the creation of a Cabinet level position for Elon Musk to run, even though that would necessarily involve an Act of Congress and Trump actually being the president, which he is not. This fictional government entity, to be named DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), named after the failed Doge cryptocurrency, would be tasked with slashing $2 trillion from the federal budget, or abut a third of the budget, in the first year.

     In other words, Musk wants to bring the slash and burn tactics that worked out so well on Twitter (firing 80% of the workforce and leaving crucial functions understaffed or outright axed as well as refusing to pay the rent on the office space). Yeah, let's give complete control of the federal budget ($6.1 trillion) to a guy who in just over two years tanked a company to the tune of 79% of its stock valuation.

     Then there are his Cabinet picks. There's Fox's rubber-headed moron Pete Hegseth, who rose no higher than Major in the Army National Guard and who a decade ago became notorious for accidentally striking a military drummer with an axe. Oh, yeah, and he was investigated for sexual assault, which in Trump World seems to be a prerequisite for a powerful government position.

     Now, as if that wasn't Bizarro World enough for you, there's Tulsi Gabbard, the crypto-Nazi who for years posed as a Democrat in Congress only to find her inner Anna Chapman. Trump wants her to oversee our 17 intelligence agencies as the Director of National Intelligence, which of course would give her access to the nation's most sensitive secrets. Installing Gabbard in the ODNI would essentially be a more or less open intelligence pipeline to Putin's Kremlin.

 

     Not crazy enough for you? How about RFK, Jr running our entire health infrastructure? Trump seems to be perfectly fine with letting Kennedy "run wild" while heading up HHS, the CDC and God only knows what else. Essentially, he wants Kennedy to run everything except anything having to do with oil and gas. Of course, this is the same guy who, while posing an environmental activist, has chased one conspiracy theory after another, especially those having to do with vaccines. Kennedy's recent clams to fame are ditching a dead bear cub's body in Central Park, decapitating a dead whale with a chain saw and biting into a barbecued dog.

     Oh, and let's not forget the brain worm and driving his wife to suicide.

 

     But that's still not the most barking mad thing to come out of Mar a Lago. There's Matt Gaetz as Attorney General.

     Gaetz is shaping up to be the third rail, the red line, the Rubicon that that even Senate Republicans, with a newfound majority, aren't willing to cross. The growing opposition to making Gaetz the top law enforcement officer in the land is such that Beltway insiders are openly speculating that Gaetz won't even get a hearing much less get out of committee.

     Gaetz' experience with the DOJ consists entirely being probed not long ago for allegations of drug abuse and having sex with a 17 year-old minor. Of course, the DOJ chose not to press charges, which, in Trumpian fashion, Gaetz publicly pronounced as proof of his innocence.

     But even the Republican-led House decided to reopen a House Ethics Committee investigation of its own, one that was still active, if glacially-paced, when Gaetz abruptly left Congress right after getting re-elected in Florida's 1st district.

                                                                  

      Of course, Gaetz' abrupt resignation from Congress had nothing to do with any arrogant confidence in his ability to get the appointment but because of that probe hanging over his 18" pompadour like the Sword of Damocles. Gaetz' resignation effectively put an end to the Ethics Committee's probe and Gaetz thought that resigning from Congress would prevent the dirt he knew they had on him from coming out.

     However, this is Capitol Hill we're talking about, a place with more leaks than a Bronx tenement. And it won't be just liberals and Democrats providing the leaks to the media but Republicans who are afraid that Gaetz will damage the party's brand.

     And Gaetz has more baggage than the Orient Express. A lot of Republicans are still seething about his role in ousting Kevin McCarthy from his Speaker's role when McCarthy reached across the aisle to work with Democrats to pass a stopgap spending bill that kept the government open. This was a guy who barged into a House Intelligence Committee meeting because they were investigating Trump and acting like a freshman frat boy on a pantie raid.

     Now, Trumpers are tamping down bile on national TV and trying to positively spin the potential nomination of Gaetz into a good thing and claiming that Trump is actually playing four dimensional chess by advancing Gaetz for consideration. The very notion or suggestion that Gaetz should be made the head of the DOJ, the same entity that investigated him for several crimes should alone, in a sane universe, mandate a recall election.

     But, as Amanda Marcotte said in a recent article on Salon, Trump's fake nomination of Gaetz is nothing more or less than a loogie of contempt hocked in the eye of a criminal justice system that he loathes. There's no 4D chess, just a tired old crook trying to stay out of prison, including installing as Attorney General, an office RFK Jr's father once held, who will quash any and every investigation into Trump's inevitable criminal affairs.

     All because we were worried about the price of eggs. Bravo, America.

Reap the Whirlwind, Motherfuckers

     I'd mentioned recently how denialism is the only thing keeping me sane since the shit show of an election. I suppose in some reptilian part of my subconscious, I'm perhaps vainly clinging to the belief that the guardrails will hold firm, that the good guys will eventually prevail. Yet, unlike the fair weather cunts on Twitter who have abandoned the platform in droves (costing me over 120 followers in mere days), I plan on sticking around. I'm still on Twitter, shadowbanning and all, and I've kept all my YouTube subscriptions, including to the MeidasTouch Network. I figure if they can continue sticking to the mission and fighting the good fight, so can I.

     But now, like the momentary numbness right after sustaining a third degree, reality sets in. In this case, I'm finally feeling the anger.

     Now, again, I don't believe for a nanosecond that Trump won this election fair and square. Between Musk's Starlink barging into the election process, Russian computers calling in bomb threats in battleground states, 15,000,000 fewer votes cast than in 2020, Trump "winning" all six battleground states, Trump's little secret that he shares with Musk (that we still haven't been told about), there is no way anyone can convince me that a guy who's cheated all his life to get what he wants (On the draft, his taxes, on the golf course, on his wives, etc) won this election fair and square.

     But that still doesn't mean I can't feel rage at those who were misguided enough to vote for a twice-impeached convicted criminal who may be sentenced to prison three weeks after the election despite him telling us for months about all the horrors he was prepared to inflict upon us.

     MeidasTouch just put out a video showing clips and screengrabs of idiots who'd voted for Trump against their own and loved ones' interests. On an abstract level, it shows the typical right wing mindset- That words and actions don't have personal consequences. In the videos, we see a young woman weeping that her mother and grandmother will no longer talk to her. A Hispanic Trump voter has the sads because white Trump voters won't let their kids play with his kids.

    The screengrabs on social media show Trump voters now scared shitless that their parents will get deported. That they'll lose their ACA because they voted for Trump and against Obamacare (Yes, they're that stupid). Another is afraid of losing their Social Security. Another is shocked that the non-existent Trump tariffs have already cost him his job. The list goes on.

     As you can expect, I have no sympathy for these fucking idiots. In fact, I wish I could absorb all their tears with cotton balls then drink them in a tumbler and force them to watch as I belch and wipe my mouth on their Trump tee shirts.

     Some voted for Trump over the economy even though our economy is already strong and is the envy of the world. Some voted to deny abortion and reproductive care to women despite having young daughters and sisters. And they apparently didn't realize that Trump's fascist ambitions will be turbocharged with a friendly Republican-dominated Congress.

     As one guy said, "Face, meet leopard."

     But you can always count on the typical American voter to vote against their own interests if they think they can deny someone they don't like the satisfaction of their own interests. Just like the idiots who'd voted for Trump in 2016, landowners along the southern border, didn't realize that Trump's obsession with the wall would result in the federal government essentially stealing their land through eminent domain (in many cases, the wall wasn't built but they still haven't gotten their land back to this day).

     Or farmers and Big Agro voting for Trump without realizing his fascist goons would raid their farms and deport all their migrant help.

    And six days ago, these same morons thought they'd do their part in making America Great Again by reinstalling in the White House a 34 time convicted criminal.

     And they honestly cannot understand the anger, the retribution, the same qualities that for many of them accounted for their own votes for a bloated Nazi who'd several times threatened to sic the military on our people in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

     The late Maya Angelou once famously said that when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Trump doesn't care what you think. He doesn't care if his rancid policies detrimentally affect you. Hell, he even said he didn't want or need your vote. 

     In part three, chapter three of 1984, when Winston Smith is tortured by O'Brien, the  latter tells him, "There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance. It is time for you to enter upon the second stage."

     I'm still wondering when the learning  and understanding part is going to happen.

Humble Pie

 

     This fall has been a humbling one for me (Yes, of course it would be named "fall".). I'd taken the road test at the AZDOT in Glendale twice and by Halloween, I'd failed it twice. I finally took and passed it the day after election day last Wednesday. I learned that when the road examiner is on a first name basis with you, you're a fuckup.

     Just before my third and final road test, she turned to me and said, "I'm going to do you a favor- We're going on a simpler route. I'm not supposed to do this for you so please don't tell anyone I'm doing this." So we went on that simpler route throughout Glendale that involved going through just one school zone (where the speed has to be reduced to 15 mph), driving down the endless straightaway of 59th Avenue and parking backwards alongside a curb.

     About 15 minutes later, she said I'd finally passed but still warned me about driving over speed bumps too quickly (I wasn't exactly doing layouts over them but still). So, essentially, while she could see I'm a safe, experienced driver, she saw fit to give me sort of a remedial road test. I should've been happier to get the news but the election results the night before and lack of sleep put me in a funk. Plus, I was given a simpler road test because maybe she felt sorry for me because of my age.

     It could be said that I failed the first two road tests because I'm not used to Glendale but the plain fact is I failed because I didn't see certain road signs, didn't signal when I should've, etc. The rules of the road are still the rules of the road and the signs are universal.

     Still, you take what you can get at my age and getting my Arizona driver's license was a big monkey off my back. But that was just part of the humbling experience I've had this fall. The other was the election.

     I've been wrong before when making predictions. In fact if you were to look at the ones I've made over the years and matched them against historical actuality, you'll see I'm a shitty oracle. Maybe I misread the tea leaves or maybe I simply underestimated the power of stupid people in large numbers or the duplicitous industry of the scumbags in the Republican Party.

     And the only thing keeping me from jumping into the abyss of irretrievable insanity is denial. I know Trump was declared the winner despite the fact that the numbers don't add up. There's some numb, cold hope in the back of my mind that things won't be as bad as all that, that there will be some guardrails that will protect us somewhat from Trump's worst, most evil impulses. And, make no mistake about it, he is an evil, evil man.

     But denial is a shitty coping mechanism. It's just a way of sticking your head in the sand and praying that whatever catastrophe engulfs the landscape will somehow wash over you and leave you and your own relatively unscathed.

     However, we have four years of history as our guide. It will not be like that. Trump is angrier and more demented than he was four years ago and he's going to march back into Washington like some conquering hero armed with a shit list longer than your arm. America will be the last thing he'll want to make great again. If 2017-2021 isn't prologue enough then nothing will be.

     Now, I still intend on blogging about national politics. That won't change. Since blogging has been literally the only constant in my life since January 2005, someone will probably find me slumped over my laptop in the middle of a post no one would've read, my head on the keyboard while random letters are endlessly generated across the monitor.

     But, for one reason or another, it's obvious through my recent failures, for one reason or another, I've lost a step or two. So in the future I'll refrain from making any more predictions. I will never live down my prediction that Harris would get over 80,000,000 votes and at least 310 electoral votes. Maybe in reality she did and the GOP just made fools out of all of us Harris supporters.

     Yet in their own ways, the pollsters, the pundits, the media were all wrong, as well. We were told it was a neck and neck race from the moment Harris entered the race and it was anything but, if we're to trust the results (and we shouldn't).

     For years, decades, we've been told that polls are the closest thing we have a crystal ball but in reality, they're no more accurate than Magic 8 Balls and probably even less accurate. These so-called experts are wrong year after year yet they still get to keep their jobs. Ann Selzer fucked up. Even Allan Lichtman was wrong. They were all wrong.

     So who the hell am I to make predictions? But at least I own up to my shortcomings. The way I now see it, I'm here to analyze and comment, not to make prognostications. That I can still do.

     So I will but no more.

No, Assholes, You Are Going Back

 

     First and foremost, I'd like to reiterate that I don't believe Trump legitimately won this election any more than I believe he won in 2016. There's a serious gap between the enthusiasm generated by the Harris campaign and the early voting totals and the actual election results. I don't truck in conspiracy theories but I will ask questions when the facts don't jibe with the official narrative force-fed to us by the MSM and the government.

     

 

     For instance, why should we believe that Kari Lake got more votes in her Senate campaign than Kamala Harris in her presidential race, with 83% reporting? And how could it be possible that Harris underperformed in all 3244 US counties and county equivalents compared to Biden's numbers in 2020?

     She also got fewer votes than Jon Tester in Montana.

 

     I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. 

     Now, we're less than a week since the election and right wing voters are already showing buyer's remorse. Take a look at this alarming graph that was tabulated by Google the night of the election. 

 

 

     Just hours after voting, people were asking the search engine how they could change their vote. And not only is that telling, look at the top five states where that question was asked: Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, all states that Trump "won".

     Now, the fact alone that these morons were asking a search engine how they could change their vote, which is of course impossible, shows you the faulty grasp, let's charitably put it, that they had on the issues. So, what was the cause for alarm?

     Well, in a classic case of being a day late and a dollar short, many of these voters who voted to deny women reproductive freedom, the loss of transgender rights and protections, immigration, or whatever their single issue was realized hours after casting their vote for the fascist that his proposed tariffs would hit them in the wallet.

     Several people fanned out on election day and asked them if they understood tariffs as well as they thought they had and many of them were gobsmacked to find out they didn't. Of course, the way tariffs work, when you raise them, the countries affected simply pass those added tariffs onto the countries buying their goods. This means that American companies and consumers would pay those additional tariffs.

     So it only goes to show that it's only natural that such ignorant voters would in turn vote for an idiot who also refuses to learn how tariffs work.

     This has already resulted in a ripple effect. In anticipation of another ruinous round of tariffs from the incoming Trump administration, companies have already begun buying up goods before the tariffs take effect, which will result in higher storage costs. Nissan has also just announced 9,000 layoffs at their plant in Tennessee, another redneck state that went for Trump.

     And, yes, it was about the tariffs.

     Like Rick Wilson once famously titled a book, "Everything Trump Touches Dies."

     Now, willful ignorance is bad enough but we have years of precedent to guide us. For instance, this is what happened the last time Trump imposed these idiotic tariffs on China: Mid-Continent Nail in Poplar Bluff, Missouri was the largest nail manufacturer in America, employing up to 500 people. But by June 2018, they'd laid off 150 of those workers. Only a meeting with then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross saved the company from shutting its doors forever when Ross granted them an exclusion from the tariffs.

     Some weren't so lucky. There were other companies that were killed outright by Trump's tariffs. And today, companies are already planning on moving out of China because they've been made moving targets by these tariffs that could, theoretically, crash the entire planet's economy. Nearly five years ago, Heather Long of the Washington Post wrote,

     “U.S. economic growth slowed, business investment froze, and companies didn’t hire as many people. Across the nation, a lot of farmers went bankrupt, and the manufacturing and freight transportation sectors have hit lows not seen since the last recession. Trump’s actions amounted to one of the largest tax increases in years.”

     Moody's Analytics had discovered, about a year before that, that the Trump tariffs would cost 300,000 jobs (A big reason why Trump's the only occupant of the White House in the modern era who'd actually lost jobs) by September 2019. At the same time as that, Bloomberg Economics predicted that the tariffs would cost the American economy $316 billion. And a joint study by Columbia University and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discovered US corporations lost $1.7 trillion of their stock valuation as a direct result of the Trump tariffs.

     So it's not as if we weren't warned or as if history couldn't act as our guide. And now, this psychopath who's about to sleaze back into the Oval Office on a tidal wave of electoral fraud is promising 2000% tariffs, which alone ought to prove how batshit insane Trump is. Trump's argument is that tariffs would bring trillions into the national economy but the plain fact is, it would go into the pockets of foreign corporations, essentially making it the biggest lateral income redistribution in world history.

     And I'm just talking about part of the economic forecast. I could devote a multi thousand word post on how Trump will affect women's health care and how ruinous this will be on public education. In fact, the psychopath put in charge of Oklahoma's schools is already preparing schools for the complete destruction of the Department of Education.

     So, sorry, assholes. Now's a little late for sticker shock and buyer's remorse.

Fuck You, Mitch McConnell

    As pundits pick over the bones and dried out organs of the Harris-Walz campaign, there will be dredged up a myriad of reasons as to how the American people could be so collectively brain-dead to install back in the Oval Office a convicted fraudster and rapist who, legally, isn't allowed to travel to at least 40 countries, including our allies in the United Kingdom.

    Yes, we can endlessly debate what caused the most inexplicable and catastrophic outcome of perhaps any US presidential election. But, as Lewis Carroll once wrote in Alice in Wonderland, "Begin at the beginning."

    This is all on Mitch McConnell's hunched shoulders. McConnell had not one but two opportunities to prevent what had happened on Tuesday night.

    The first time was nearly five years ago, when the House voted to impeach Trump on December 18, 2019. By February 5th the following year, Republican scum in the US Senate voted to acquit Trump of both articles, thereby keeping him in office for nearly another year. He rewarded them by siccing a violent mob on the Capitol building and putting all their lives in danger.

    That set up the second impeachment and McConnell's second opportunity to rid us of Trump once and for all. By January 13th, 2021, a week after that riot, the House voted on another article of impeachment. Both times, McConnell voted to acquit.

     As the Republican leader in the Senate both times, McConnell had the juice to kick out of office and prevent from running for federal office ever again a man who'd repeatedly attacked him and his wife, Elaine Chao, Trump's former Transportation Secretary. A conviction in the Senate would've immediately put to a halt Trump's political future. The first impeachment could've and should've kicked him out of office, barred him from even running for that office and would've even cost him his Secret Service protective detail, his pension, everything.

     But obviously, that's not what happened.

     Despite essentially laying the blame for January 6th squarely at Trump's feet, stating, “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people,” McConnell still couldn't find it in his withered soul to do the right thing. He put partisanship over principle, party over country all because Trump cynically put a capital R after his name. He relied on the ultimate cop out, that if Trump was to be held accountable for January 6th, then it should be by the courts.

     How's that working out? Oh, right. Jack Smith is busy cleaning out his desk, his insurrection case against Trump about to vanish as abruptly as his documents case in Fort Pierce, Florida. As far as federal court and the Supreme Court goes, Trump is invulnerable and invincible.

    All because Mitch McConnell didn't use his power to pressure other Republicans to do the right thing and convict the most shameless and prolific criminal that ever sat behind the Resolute Desk.

    And McConnell doesn't give a shit. He'll be out of the Senate soon enough and he'll easily be able to ignore Trump as he sneers at him from Truth Social while he's in Kentucky wondering why he's wandering around outside without his pants on.

     Aside from that, McConnell will be immune to the rack and ruin that Trump promises to unleash on this country. Republicans are already loudly sneering that Project 2025 will be Trump's agenda from Day One. Women will die from lack of access to reproductive care. Migrants will be deported en masse, sending the US economy into a tailspin. And whatever economy we'll have left will be destroyed when Trump levies another round of ruinous tariffs on other countries which, of course, we'll have to pay for.

     Ukraine is essentially fucked and will have its US funding pulled, thereby allowing Putin to take over that country. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe and the most important bulwark between the rest of Europe and Russia. Trump will pull us out of NATO and the Paris Climate Accord yet again. Social Security and Medicare will be on the chopping block. Trump will be a lame duck president from the start. He won't have to worry about re-election.

     With Trump at the top of the Republican ticket, it set the stage for the GOP taking over the Senate, opening the doors for vastly unfit assclowns like Jim Justice (the Senate's first billionaire), Bernie Moreno and Tim Sheehy. With only 27 seats in the House still up for grabs, the GOP is just eight seats away from gaining a majority in the House. Ruben Gallego's win here in Arizona is very cold comfort, indeed.

     All because of Mitch McConnell. McConnell helped Trump put three right wing ideologues on the Supreme Court and, with Trump's "victory", Alito and Thomas will be able to retire, knowing that Trump will replace them with much younger and surely more dangerous ideologues. The filibuster will suddenly be on life support, denying Senate Democrats an actual voice.

     Yes, we gave the White House and the Senate and quite possibly the House to the most useless, most ruinous party ever to infest the Beltway. Kudos, Mitch.

     If there was any justice left in heaven, McConnell will be tarred and feathered right before getting his withered ass kicked out the door. But that won't happen. He'll be able to depart with all his dignity and fortune intact, with every honor possible bestowed upon him as he mistakes the Senate cloak room for the front door.

What the Fuck Was That?!

 

     "That's not the way it was supposed to end."

     That's what I said moments after Super Bowl XLII ended. Until the last 43 seconds of the game, the brilliant Patriots defense held the Giants to just 10 points. The Pats were 18-0 in the regular and playoff season and broke just about every record there was to break. The Giants were a mediocre 10-6 in the regular season. All auguries were of good fortune. 

     Then, somehow, Eli Manning found Plaxico Burress in the corner of the end zone.

     We learned pretty damned quickly that 18-1 doesn't count for shit of the 1 comes during the Super Bowl. It was like leading the pack during an entire marathon only to break your ankle within 100 yards of the finish line.

     My stepson was several miles away at his college boarding house and wound up breaking his right hand when he punched a wall. Back home, I just sat numbly looking at the Giants celebrate as the Patriots slunk off the gridiron. No, this wasn't the way it was supposed to end.

     In the previous six years of the Brady-Belichick dynasty, we'd already gotten spoiled. We thought winning was our birthright. Any other outcome was literally unthinkable. We deserved this!

     Super Bowl XLII was like a violation of the natural order of things. It was as if we were reading a book by a literary master only to have some clown hijack the book in the epilogue and rewrite an ending we'd be guaranteed to hate. No, we didn't just see that.

     Last night brought back the same exact feeling I had on February 3, 2008.

     The difference was that, in 2007, the Patriots really were invincible. Tom Brady threw for an NFL record 50 TD passes. Randy Moss shattered the NFL record for the most touchdown receptions. And people began forgetting the punter's name.

     Except Kamala Harris wasn't as infallible as the 2007 Tom Brady. She made some unforced errors, sure. For instance, her campaign rejected nearly $8,000,000 when the Congressional Black Caucus gave them a roadmap for Black voter outreach. Instead, her campaign relied on legacy media, online influencers and celebrities. And it can't be said her outreach in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, that she lost by over 200,000 votes, was flawless, either.

     She looked and seemed flawless. We relied on that perception. We clung to it like grim death.

     Now, as usual, the pundits, when they do their grim duty autopsying this election, will come up with countless manifold reasons as to how and why she lost to the most prolific criminal in American history.

     White men hating her. Latino men hating her. Black men hating her. The glass ceiling. Flip-flopping on fracking, her soft stance on Israel. Blah blah blah.

     It's all of those things and none of them. 

     Here's what we do know-

     Granted, not all the states have finished counting their votes as of this writing. That includes California, the most populous state with 39.5 million people. But having said that, as of right now, 140,439,667 votes have been counted.

     Four years ago, 155,507.476 votes were counted for Trump and Biden.

     That's more than 15,000,000 fewer votes than four years ago. The US population has grown by millions in the last four years, which includes a lot of new voters. Plus, a record 78,000,000 people, about half the electorate, turned out to vote early within the last week. Early voting records were crushed in several states.

     What happened to 15,000,000 voters? The math doesn't add up.

     We'll likely never know what the exact reasons for Harris' catastrophic failure last night. Not only did she not win, she never once had the lead. All I know is the reasons for Harris' loss are ones no one is telling us.

There Is Something Terribly Wrong With This Country, Isn't There?

 

     So now we find ourselves at a precipice but not merely that of another damned election.

     Once again, we find ourselves in thrall of one professional politician or another. Once again, we are tempted by the seductive but cynical allure of purity tests. But all too often, elections are used for personal gratification, revenge and validating one's identity.

     It is true that in a political system that is a duopoly more or less successfully masquerading as a democratic republic, we are forced in every quadrennial election through one of two doors and, more often than not, we shrink from the destinations and resent the choices already made for us.

     I can understand why you would feel that resentment and succumb to the false allure of non-engagement in some feeble and ultimately self-defeating exercise in rebellion and independence. But to those patriots trying to defend this democracy, and you true patriots know who you are, the fate of our country far outweighs any individual's identity. While all politics is local, as a man once said, there comes a time when we must elevate our gaze from the merely parochial to the much bigger picture.

     And there is something very wrong with this country, isn't there?

     And one of those parties has seen fit to nominate for the third consecutive time a vastly imperfect man, one with no parallel and no precedent in human history and not in any admirable sense. He is one of bottomless superficiality, one who had publicly lied to us 10,000 times in four years, ignored the most ruinous pandemic in a century and clung to our most coveted secrets for unknowable and unspeakable reasons. He let slip an army of rabid supporters to attack his, our, own government, in a last gasp to cling to power to which he was no longer entitled. And yet, he still walks among us, a convicted criminal, a free man.

     He has turned on its ear any and every admirable trait a statesman should possess. Bigotry is now patriotism, belligerence is now strength and falsehoods and propaganda are worthy rivals to the the truth. And you have been seduced by him and betrayed by him time and again.

     Nothing about him is honest, not even the color of his skin. Even his hair is dishonest.

     So today, we as a people have a choice to make, likely the most important and consequential one in your or anyone's lifetime. And you have four ruinous years of precedent to guide you.

     Yet, you have been trained to not believe your own eyes and ears, that what you have seen and heard is not true so that dark is light, down is up and everything must be suspected if it deviates from that failed leader's lies.

     But you have not been robbed of your reason, your powers of discrimination. No one can do that but you.

     Time and again, he has denigrated half the country and he especially despises women of power. He has insulted Latinos, he has insulted Gold Star families, he has insulted African Americans, he has insulted Jews. In short, he has demeaned and dehumanized every demographic except the factions who seek to tear down our democracy: fascists, white nationalists, bigots and misogynists.

     Today, we can figuratively turn this page and put behind us the hatred that twists and contorts this nation. Because more is at stake than your mere identity. This is about the identity of a nation. And together, we will show these purveyors of hate a November 5th that will never, ever be forgot.

A Pillar is Missing

 

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

The mainstream media, both before and after corporate ownership and influence, has always had a high-minded and haughty way of looking at itself. "The Watchdog of Democracy". "History's First Draft". "The Fourth Estate". 

     "A Pillar of Democracy".

     It seems "history's first draft" doesn't seem very interested in how posterity will look upon it. In fact, it appears as if the media, whether it's print or TV journalism, doesn't see any further into the future than the next sweeps week or Pulitzer Prizes.

     So it's inevitable, or should be inevitable, that thinking people, noting the dreadful coverage of the entire 2024 election cycle, will wonder how "history's first draft" will be viewed by actual historians of the future, those who are far more invested in it than its first draft.

     I can easily see them sadly shaking their heads.

    They will walk away from their exhaustive analyses before writing the only history that really counts with a profound sense of disappointment and bewilderment at how so many people, wealthy people, those with journalism degrees, got it so wrong and gave all the benefits of the doubt and deference to one presidential candidate in this sad, strange year, and virtually none to the other.

     Obviously, 2024 is not the year the media consistently fell down on the job. 18 years ago, Norm Solomon wrote a seminal book on the subject entitled War Made Easy, a book that is, sad to say, barely clinging within the top 2,000,000 in books on Amazon (my own books, incredibly, consistently have a higher sales ranking).

     Solomon's book was primarily concerned with how the mainstream media essentially act like a stenographic service for whatever regime is in power on the Beltway when we decide it's time to go to war against one small nation or another. And the truth, or lies, that always go behind these imperial declarations be damned.

     And the reasons for the media, that lapdog of democracy, playing ball with any administration that wants to rattle sabres are manifold and never changing. The first reason is access. No one in the mainstream media would be content with a mere daily press pass. The "hard passes", as they're known in the news business, can be used day in and day out. Those are the ones worth coveting, those are the ones that guarantee you entry into the sanctum sanctorum: The White House press briefing room.

     So, if you're part of the corporate mainstream media, access is primary and key.

     And the White House, through either the Press Secretary's office, or even the Oval Office, can revoke press credentials at will without having to worry about that pesky First Amendment thingie. We discovered this when the Trump junta briefly revoked Jim Acosta's own hard pass back when he still covered the White House.

 

"Oh, no, he didn't just say that! Really, he didn't!"

Another way that the MSM are poorly serving us is their sanewashing of virtually anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. The other day, during an interview with Tucker Carlson, Trump said of Liz Cheney,

     “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘oh, gee, we’ll, let’s send — let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’”

     Then, typically, it dropped into the media memory hole within a day or two. And no one in the MSM had the guts to call out this language for what it was- Trump using dog whistle language to his Second Amendment people to do something about Cheney.

     Meanwhile, at the same time, the media went into a frenzy over what Biden had allegedly said about Trump supporters being garbage. When they put the president's words into written form, they elected to delete the invisible apostrophe that should've been put after the word, "supporters". The NY Times has been especially egregious in its alleged coverage of this election, with publisher Arthur Sulzberger going on the warpath with Joe Biden when he was still at the top of the ticket because Biden refused to grant the Times an interview.

     All we've been hearing about was, "Biden's old," "Biden's slipping" then, even after he dropped out on July 21st and Trump became the oldest man to run for president, suddenly, Trump's age wasn't a factor. Biden makes gaffes once in a while (who doesn't?). But when Trump starts yelling about sharks and electric batteries, Hannibal Lecter and Arnold Palmer's penis, they harrumph and move on.

     If the mainstream media were doing their job, they'd remind the American people that Trump is not normal and nothing about the Republican side of the ticket is normal. That would not be biased, it would be decidedly objective and non-biased because some things, like a presidential candidate's descent into obvious dementia, is objective and self-evident.

"Only we can read the tea leaves, so tune in!"

Another thing they do every four years is to give the American news consumer the added false impression that any presidential race is going to be a neck and neck contest so you don't want to miss our coverage on election night!

     A lot of presidential elections are blowouts. But tell that to TV networks who really don't toss the bones. Because they want you tuning in to their networks and channels on Election Night. They did the same thing in 1972 when Nixon was well on his way to kicking George McGovern's ass back to the Stone Age. Nixon took 520 of 538 electoral votes and won 49 of 50 states (He couldn't take Massachusetts, which will forever remain a point of pride with me).

     It was the most lopsided (and most inexplicable) landslide in US history. Everyone knew how it would shake out and yet the networks implored us to tune in, pretending it was a presidential election and not the political slaughter it was.

     They did it again in 1984, when Reagan was about to win 525 electoral votes to Walter Mondale's 13 (he carried just his home state of Minnesota and DC) in what is still the most one-sided presidential election of all time.

     This is all in the name of ad buys and Nielsen ratings. They sacrifice actual analysis and playing fair with the American voter so they can bloat their bottom line and richly compensate their top executives and shareholders. After all, who wants to tune in to election results that the networks had already decided was a foregone conclusion?

     This is exacerbated by the media parroting the results of polls that falsely show results one way or the other, especially if they conclude that a presidential election is tighter than it actually is. Remember, those same pollsters told us as recently on Election Day 2016 that Hillary had it in the bag. It used to be that polls got more accurate the closer it got to Election Day but the 2016 election defenestrated that.

Coda

The only conclusion that a thinking and discriminating person can make is that the mainstream media are not very invested in playing fair with the American people. To them, there are much bigger prizes at stake, like ratings and ad buys from well-financed parties and PACS. They will join in the drumbeat to war as they had in 2002-03 when Bush when rattling his sabre against Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction and connections to 9/11.

    The media's complicity in that debacle was shameless and bordered on the criminal. Then CBS decided to play the moralist when it axed 60 Minutes II over a technicality regarding Bush's lack of war service during Vietnam while endlessly amplifying the blatant lies parroted by the Swiftboat Veterans For Truth regarding John Kerry's honorable wartime service during that same war.

     The media beat its war drums during the '64 election cycle when the Johnson administration, lacking any evidence, accused the North Vietnamese of attacking our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, thereby "justifying" escalating bombing raids in North Vietnam that killed countless villagers.

     And they do what they do all in the name of access, power, money and ratings. And when you stack the truth up against powerful motivators like that, the truth is the proverbial idiot who brings a knife to a gunfight.

     Another way that the MSM are complicit in this institutionalized dishonesty are large national papers deliberately withholding endorsing one candidate or another (But, really, refusing to endorse Kamala Harris.). It started with Jeff Bezos' Washington Post that, over a half century ago, took down a corrupt presidential administration. Bezos had dictated from the shadows that the editorial staff was not to endorse either candidate. Soon, the LA Times and their own billionaire owner issued the same edict and, within days, USA Today followed suit.

     USA Today's own fecklessness, which stands in stark contrast to its stance just four years ago when it endorsed Biden, is especially egregious because USA Today isn't just the fourth largest newspaper in the nation but the flagship operation of over 200 media outlets in the Gannett media empire. And then there's The Arizona Republic, the Detroit Free Press, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as well as the Palm Beach Post, all owned by Gannet.

     Obviously, this dearth of endorsements is manifold- They don't want to incur the wrath of a clearly insane man who really has no power outside of a disorganized mob. Or it could be the billionaire oligarchs who own these media outlets are doing their best to make sure Trump gets back in the White House.

     Now, they could hide behind journalistic ethics and pretend they're strenuously remaining unbiased in these highly polarized times. But newspapers have been endorsing candidates since the 18th century, so that pose is a nonstarter. They know exactly how influential they are and what they don't say is often as powerful, if not moreso, than what they say. So, while they may pretend to be non-biased, these billionaire media-shaping scum are keeping their grubby fingers crossed behind their backs.

     And, as possession is nine tenths of the law, so perception is nine tenths of reality.