Maybe I Have This Twisted

 

Last night, I had the stupidity to forget how kiss-up, punch-down hierarchies work because I have never actually lived in a fully corrupted banana republic before. My dumb ass posted: 

And DOGE undermining the social safety net and intimating that Medicare and Social Security need big cuts is actually very bad? 

Because of course that is--but his antipathy to democracy at all is also really bad. 

I think it gets worse from here for Musk.. And I think I like it that way. As he starts to sink and stink, Trump will cut ties, because that's how he rolls. 

Except that was dumb, because if Trump truly believes he is post-"elections matter", well, he no longer has to care about whether people hate Elon. He just has to protect the guy who can easily dump $100M into his PAC (slush fund). 

Joe Six-Pack with the retirement fund and a MAGA hat isn't his main concern. Elon SuperPAC donor is.

Ergo, he turned the front of the White House into a sales lot for Tesla and cut a promo. They are cutting the Board of Education, Veteran's medical access, Social Security functionality as a whole thing, IRS (the revenue-finders!) and so on, but the White House had to help rescue one stock today.

The DOW lost many points. Tesla had a little unreality rally. Also, too, Trump declared folks vandalizing Tesla dealerships were "domestic terrorists."  

Let me get this straight. Pardon the idjits who attacked the Capitol with great violence on 1/6/2021 but the people protesting Tesla are the real villains against the US? 

TrumpWorld is Riding Until the Wheels Come Off

 

Just so we are clear, when the GOP hit the TrumpWorld Trifecta--they motioned to keep riding the 2025/47 Agenda until the wheels came off. Apparently, though, the vehicle they have chosen is a Cybertruck, so the wheels will come off sooner rather than later.  (Panels, also, too!)  

Best of luck to the State Department on that Tesla contract. Ride in the best of health and luck, which you will need. 

Yes, I am comparing TrumpWorld right now to the Swasticar, 

Musk has fouled the brand of the companies he acquired because of being a wealthy dumbass, not founded because he's not actually what he represents himself as. I don't know why his Frankendick still gets ridden like it is. But it's clearly made up of dead to the game actual founders, who took Elon's money and decided they were good with him doing his thing to their brands.

The Mirror Universe View

 

Just to get this out of my system: it's sad that we creep along in the country from continuing resolution to continuing resolution. We should be able to just get some kind of a budget going. That we just hover on the edge of a government shutdown every couple months is appalling and no damn way to run a country. And I feel the same way the most recent one--hey, no government shutdown, but it only gets us to MARCH. These people have calendars, right? They can count how many days they will even be in Washington to vote, right? 

It would be great to manage a deal on immigration reform, too. There's clearly more to the issue than what I sometimes think of as "the barrier method" (the border wall, a decade-old condom in a ripped wrapper). It would be great to get beyond the stupid GOP rhetoric about an "open border" that simply isn't. 

House Republicans Had Some Kind of Day

 

Things aren't great with the House Republicans. For one thing, some of them are big mad at Speaker Mike Johnson for trying to do something useful like make the government still happen, in part because it involves dealing with Democrats and obviously, that's insane. They tanked some rules just from spite because they're salty about it.  And poor Mike Johnson has to make a pilgrimage to Godfather Trump to get his blessing on the whole avoiding a shutdown thing, which is awkward, because we all know Trump wants the economy to crash because he absolutely said so. 

I have some idea of the kind of arguments that have to be made. If House Republicans are responsible for a shutdown--all Republicans could be blamed, including Trump. Whether Trump can hear arguments like that is dicey, though. Ditto (or maybe that should be "MAGA-dittoes") for the mascots some red districts have elected to Congress--they were elected to sow chaos and it really shows. They want a shutdown for the same reason Patriarch Newt Gingrich normalized Republicans causing shutdowns--just burning spite against the idea of doing government at all. 

This is why the House sucked out loud in 2023. They couldn't pass legislation for shit and just did mascot stuff. Retiring Rep. McHenry referred to it as "a very actively stupid political environment" and that sounds exactly right. 

Much Ado About the Shutdown

 

President Biden has signed CR into law to prevent government shutdown.

Photo via @POTUS pic.twitter.com/eGv2NUsR29

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 1, 2023

The maneuvering to have or not have the government shutdown was very stupid, which means it will likely happen again. For all the folk relieved that it didn't happen, there will be some very disappointed that there was no great, beautiful chaos. (Trump doesn't understand congressional math or the assignment of political liability now any more than he did when he was in office. Some of his little House minions are very loyal and very confused.) McCarthy himself knew better. 

But here is what the foofaraw amounted to: stripping out the aid to Ukraine, which can be obtained through a separate resolution. It strikes an awful chord, though: are we a nation true to our word, that will support our allies and follows though on our promises? Are we as a nation capable of understanding the risks and rewards of our actions? Do we understand why Putin is the villain here, and what does it mean when some of our elected representatives simply--do not? 

So what was accomplished besides displaying a soft white underbelly of GOP dysfunction and willingness to answer to the voices of un-American fuck-ups? 

Does McCarthy's speakership survive?  Honestly? Who else wants the job? 

Also, the GOP narrowly evaded being stuck with the onus of being the stupidest people of the day, because one Democratic Representative tried to use a shortcut from Cannon to where the action is. Yeah, he was definitely not trying to stop the vote, since he...voted? I think he was trying to get to the vote but definitely misread the signs. 

That is a problem that is certainly going around.  Anyway, I'm glad I don't have to write about shutdown nonsense, because the idea that these stupid, paycheck and service-denying things happen over political snits is fucking shameful. 

The Debt Ceiling Crisis Has Been Averted

 

Breaking news: The Senate has passed a bipartisan bill to suspend the debt ceiling and curb federal spending, sending the legislation to President Biden to sign into law before Monday’s deadline to avert an unprecedented U.S. government default. https://t.co/UjfjMKELsT

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 2, 2023

I need you to know, first and foremost, I hate this shit in theory. The debt ceiling thing should not exist. We should just pay our debts the way the Constitution says we must. If we are concerned about spending, the Congress should act on this with an actual budget that reduces spending and perhaps, and this the important part--considers raising revenues by going for the people who have money. 

But I am very happy that the Democratic House Members under the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries agreed to a bitter debt ceiling deal that was not clean, and that the Democratic Senate also voted to avert a financial catastrophe. The next debt ceiling deadline is in 2025--when maybe a second Biden term will have an even better hand to work with. 

We need to give Shalanda Young from OMB her flowers, because she was a crucial negotiator in this battle. She was determined not to let this default happen. 

And let's really bask in the accomplishments of the Biden economy. Record low unemployment. And a significant lowering of inflation over last year. 

I don't understand anyone wanting to fuck up a good deal for Americans.  I don't understand rooting for failure. I think patriotism is when you want your countrymen and women to do well, right? And I think the side that doesn't do that is...problematic. Maybe they should even be unelectable. Because I don't think anyone should be rewarded for any attempt to screw up the economy upon which so many depend. It is too serious a thing for silly assholes to play games with. 

I Say Mint the Coin.

 

OMG, is it debt ceiling season so soon! I mean, no sooner than Republicans have control of the House of Representatives with a Democratic president in office, and they party like it's 2011?  Look, I hate this conversation. My first opinion is: Take the Uzi from the Babies.  Democrats should have nuked the debt ceiling thing when we had the chance because the Republicans were telegraphing that they are not by any means good faith partners in doing crazy regular things like paying the government's just debts like the Constitution says we should, and like responsible people who don't want a credit crisis would do. 

Barring that, it would have been greeeeaaat if Democrats could have been advertising "SCOREBOARD" every time asshole Republicans pretended they are the fiscally responsible people, when all Republican presidents do is pass tax cuts and run up the deficit. Trump put damn near 8 trillion on the debt. He passed tax cuts. His COVID response was a deadly stupid wasteful expensive mess. And he lost net jobs, which is amazeballs--no one else did that. 

But all Republican presidents recently have run up the debt, fail to really do wonders creating jobs and fuck up the economy. They can't help themselves. They get help from the Republicans in congress after all. 

I Doubt His Influence

 

McCarthy: But I do want to thank especially President Trump. I don’t think anybody should doubt his influence. pic.twitter.com/UJdVKQ5VRA

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 7, 2023

I'd sooner give credit for the rumored "blackmail" threats than Trump for the eventual success of Kevin McCarthy's bid for Speaker, largely because Trump supported him from the beginning, and it went 15 rounds.  If anything, McCarthy is doing the obligatory thing by thanking Trump because at least he didn't get sandbagged for being a loser and then abandoned, which could have just as easily happened. 

Also, giving it a bit of a think, the show-y-ass "opposition" of the 20 or so holdouts that dragged this thing out probably didn't get them much more than they would have gotten anyway. Weird investigations into the politization of the FBI is right in line with the "Twitter files" crap and protecting his fellow Republicans by trying to interfere in potential investigations regarding them seems like something he'd be doing anyway--just from thinking back to his actions regarding the 1/6 Committee. I don't even think giving his bomb-throwers leave to discuss blowing up the economy via a debt default was ever off the table for him. Look back at 2011, 2018, etc. Like government shut-downs, it's another way Republicans can demonstrate that they aren't here to do good government and titillate their base that they are doing something rebellious by giving them nothing, and actually taking away--defunding things.

I think what we just witnessed was a bit of theater. It doesn't miss me that McCarthy got his successful vote two years to the day that the delayed vote certification of Biden's election occurred. 

They are a sorry lot, and for all his hollow, cravenness, McCarthy earned his right to be the leader of these people. And he will wring all the joy from it the "honor" deserves.

What Rhymes With "Ineffective Stunt"?

 

We all take ourselves to the porcelain refuge at one time or another, that watery bastion of comfort, release and repose. Sometimes we go for all the obvious mechanics of our digestive requirements, and at other times it is simply a place of solitude, a place to check one's clothing seams and makeup, or maybe even to escape protestors. 

I'm sympathetic to the idea that one should feel secure in the loo. I am also, however, not feeling charitable to someone who has set out to leave her principles in such doubt that we don't even know why she isn't sticking with what she told us were her principles, but is instead of doing her constituents' business, going to fundraisers and not even answering questions about what she does stand for. 

The activist who cornered Sinema in the ladies' room is an undocumented immigrant young person whose grandparents were deported. Our screwed up immigration and naturalization policies keep families separated for reasons that are needlessly stupid and cruel. We should do better in this country, but aren't. Sinema knows the terrain, but isn't showing follow-through on the mission: taking care of residents of Arizona who need their citizenship status fixed. It's a part of the Democratic agenda, but she's being capricious about that right now.

And she's shown disrespect to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which to me is very concerning. Senator Sanders points out that rather than thinking of Pelosi delaying a vote on legislation as being what Sinema called an "ineffective stunt", it was a procedural move based on the votes--totally within her prerogative. It's not about Kyrsten Sinema's preferences as a first-term senator, but all of Pelosi's understanding of how Congress works. And in the meanwhile, the legislation in question is unquestionably about benefiting her constituents (not ahem! the donors).

Now, you might look at the title of my blogpost, and assume I'm implying something not at all feminist. My goodness people, don't you know me yet? It rhymes with "sometimes you bunt". What matters is getting on base. But Sinema is being very off-base right now. 

We are not retiring shit without a run in this inning. That's how this game is played. I don't know what game Sinema is playing but she isn't playing it in the bathroom. 

Quick Question for Senator Sinema--

 

Activists who helped elect Kyrsten Sinema launch CrowdPAC to fund a primary challenger https://t.co/DPEmIw8ojw

— Salon (@Salon) September 29, 2021

Exactly how much fundraising do you suppose you have to do to hold on to your seat if you somehow have, inexplicably (or at least, inexplicably thus far) done your best to alienate the people who were your base? Because you can not go and get a whole new base, and even if Republicans are looking more favorably on you--look at Arizona Republicans. Look at 'em. They like a Democrat who doesn't function like a Democrat (preferably who doesn't function at all), but they would prefer a Republican who is like them. Which lately...

I mean. Look at them.

Republicans Hate Governing and Nice Things

 

If, as an entire dumb stunt to pretend government is the problem and privileged, elected assholes doing nothing is the obvious solution, I guess, whatever, Okay, GOP, you've had your fun. You're blocking the debt ceiling rise and other valuable things for reasons, and you can't help the kind of useless, signifying creatures you've become since oh, Christ, the 1990's I guess, when Newt Gingrich made government shutdowns exactly your kind of thing. But these two assholes, Louisiana Senators Cassidy and Kennedy, are blocking the measure to avoid defaulting on the debt--imperiling the good faith and credit of this nation they might even allege to love, and are also blocking funding for storm relief for their very own state. 

It really doesn't matter to them that the federal government is all that keeps Louisiana alive. So far as they are concerned, this mass of broken tourist destinations, fishers and oil workers are all some kind of doomed, so fuck you, you elected them, The whole state is sinking into the gulf anyways--and these guys are fine with it. They could do better for their constituents or even pretend the folks back home are watching and what they do isn't great.  They should know that. They are party animals and are okay with the continued suffering of their own constituents because of partisan stuff. You never saw anyone so up Trump's ass before John (no not that one) Kennedy, did you?

Republicans are assholes who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We could replace lead pipes and make sure older folks have hearing aids and teeth and we could make sure our bridges don't even fall down around our necessary workaday commutes, but Republicans don't fucking care. 

I Wish This Woman Well, But

 

Chuck Todd put Meghan McCain on his panel this morning and said "it's good to have a McCain back on Meet the Press" because we live in a constant state of right-wing propaganda pic.twitter.com/Qs75M6T3b7

— Matt Negrin, HOST OF HARDBALL AT 7PM ON MSNBC (@MattNegrin) September 26, 2021

I have defended Meghan McCain at certain junctures because taking potshots at her figure (voluptuous, or zaftig, so, you know, I am in her corner about that) or her youth back when she was younger is just missing the point. The thing that sucks about Meghan McCain is giving credence to someone for having opinions as if those opinions matter more because they are importance-adjacent, not because they are informed. This grown woman child is now speaking as a Republican with no elected office with two exact bona fides: Senator John McCain (deceased)'s daughter and Ben Domenech (alive, propagandist)'s wife. Her expertise in politics is being a person the media pays attention to. She hasn't the least fucks whether what she says is right, and it is not.

He Couldn't Throw Away His Trash Card

"Prisoner of his own impulse": Inside Trump’s cave to end shutdown without wall https://t.co/db2hTlBGxN

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 27, 2019

I touched on where Trump stood with regards to the shutdown and how he could just do the right thing a few days ago. But in all honesty, he never should have shut the government down. It actually shouldn't be a thing that ever happens. He should have, if he really wanted the wall, and if he thought there was a national emergency, accepted the offer the Democrats once made of $25 billion dollars worth of wall money, made fully one year ago. Instead of getting anything like that, after 35 days he's accepted reopening the government to wait and see if he can negotiate getting his wall, and if this doesn't happen, well, maybe he'll call it a national emergency.

The kind of national emergency that you can sit on for a whole year after rejecting full (ish) funding, then have a 35 day tantrum about, then admit you'll wait 15 days over because (SOTU, the planes won't take rich folks to the Super Bowl, needing to regroup because shit got entirely too stupid), and then, and only then, call a national emergency because you have not got funding for your big, beautiful wall, is not a national emergency, but a massive erection fetish gone badly wrong. A big old wall will take years to build and more dollars than Trump has even been asking to be made a reality. It is prone to tunnels and escalations of the ladderly variety. There are better, smarter, more targeted ways to address illegal immigration anyway, like eVerify and the Dept of Labor addressing employers who behaved illegally, not people looking to work. There has always been the option of tightening border security by increasing people-power and technology at entrance-points to locate contraband and note who seems to be carrying people who don't appear to leave. The wall was always bad posturing for this fight--he wanted it too much, and so the only work Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer ever had to do was say "No" to it.

It was a false argument for a bad gimmick. Democratic voters never fell for the immigration rhetoric, which Trump should have known because of the outcome of the midterms, which was largely based on his caravan-scaring. There was no reason they would change their mind just because he did not understand that the maxim "Elections have consequences" applied to his midterm defeat, and that his duct-taped women fear-mongering would start to seem so over-the-top weird and propagandistic.

Funding for the wall was never a good card. It was only a shiny object that appealed to his base. There was never any reason he should have thought Democrats would be impressed by any pretended need for it. He should have discarded it at once upon realizing it was a trash card and played the hand where opening the government was good for him as a guy who gets things done.

But he already showed how much value he placed in the wall. He will never get it now. Ever. He can shutdown the government again. And no Democrat will cry, because he won't get his shiny, and his approval ratings can sink like a stone, and he will give up in less time, next time. Because it already has been proven--the shut down doesn't work, and next time, there probably will be strikes. And he will be given all the more reason to cave--sooner than later.

Trump is an ex-casino guy. When Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House, Trump could have been playing with "house money". But leave it to a guy who got multiply-bankrupted while running casinos to not understand that the House had the advantage when Nancy Pelosi was in charge of it. Mr. Art of the Deal couldn't even start to make a deal with her. He got trashed in every which way.

Some of Trump's die-hards are doing back-flips on these Internets trying to pretend Trump made a strategic retreat and will do better the next go-around.

Bet? Because Trump doesn't really look like a strategy guy, and it actually looks like trying a shutdown again will only demonstrate a failure to learn from past mistakes. And the National Emergency argument should be a clear non-starter.

Donald J. Coyote--Super Genius

The recent shutdown (the third of Trump's term in office, all three with Republicans in the majority for both houses of Congress) over Trump's desire for a big beautiful wall (or "Steel Slat Barrier", which is aesthetically more attractive, maybe, more politically correct, entirely as racist, and of course, see-through, which is important because Safety! and Transparency!) seems to have a lot to do with whether Trump is seen as weak in the eyes of such brilliants minds as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. He knows that if he disappoints them, he will never hear the end of it from his base, who largely exist because of the brain-tenderizing skills of people like Limbaugh, Coulter and Ingraham. He could have had some pretty sweet funding for his wall, a shutdown or two ago, if he only agreed to DACA, but his fear of pundit disdain killed that notion. And Dems caved, because they didn't want to be seen as the problem, here.

This difference this time around though, is Trump already took vocal ownership of the shutdown and can't re-gift that son-of-a-bitch for political Pollyanna. And unlike last time, the House of Representatives is going to change parties in literally a matter of days. He might be facing quite a different situation.

One thing is, it's Christmas and he's just told a couple hundred thousand federal workers they need to work through this thing without a paycheck, a few hundred thousand others they don't actually know when they will be working or seeing a paycheck again (and sure, they could, would, should get back pay, but your bills are due when they are due, and that can be a problem for working and middle class people who may be living paycheck to paycheck especially when expenditures have been made to celebrate a holiday). And he's done so over a wall that won't work and appeals to really just his base.

Which would all by itself be a big old "whut?" that leaves us questioning his priorities and whether he gets what government is about at all. But when he also says things that makes us wonder if he knows that the "coyotes" we worry about on the border are not four-footed, then we are at the point where it is hard to parody Trump, because he is just so underprepared to fulfill the requirements of this job, even two years in, that it is hard to find the humor. He says he knows things, but he gets all his information, even after having gained access to the US' top intelligence, from goddamn Fox News. And Lou Dobbs has had brain worms for a very long time.

This could look like a situation to play solely for laughs, if we forgot that thousands of migrant children are held in US custody, and the head of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen can't say how many people have died in DHS custody, even though she should have intuited that this was sort of question she might have been asked in the wake of the death of a seven-year old girl, Jaklin Caal Maquin. The "wall" has become such an item of importance to DHS that they've lost their articles over it, because we needs wall, precious, and filthy libses thwarts us!

I have half a notion that if this wears on, instead of caving, Schumer and Pelosi should actually put DACA back on the table. Just give him the original $1.6 billion he originally rejected because he got his ass reddened by the RW talkers, and make a demand regarding how he even gets that much out of Dems. Because Trump's cards are all on the table. He wants his wall funding and he needs it to make his base happy. (His "art of the deal" is so terribly naked and on display here.)

Dems don't love a shutdown, but it might be really nice to see Trump's "My way or the highway" attitude get greeted with "Eat asphalt".  Because he is by no means a super genius. He's just, sadly, what the Republicans have got, and this is why they are sticking with him. And if what he wants is wall, well wall is just a major fucking concession to unracist our policies away. Let's leverage that shit.

Also wall will still not work and the separation policy is inhumane and Tornillo should be shut down.

I feel like there is a way to get better out of this schmuck. In spite of himself.

TWBG: No One Promised You a Rose Garden

This has been a pretty crappy week for President Trump so far, what with the ongoing search for a replacement for outgoing CoS John Kelly (who Trump blabbed was leaving without giving Kelly himself a chance to so announce, and who will presumably now stay on until the end of the year) going poorly enough that regular CNN commentator and former US Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum pled out of the job, citing that he has a family, and sort-of front-runner Mark Meadows was let off the hook because Trump needs somebody in the House, and with setting his ownself up to basically own a government shutdown because being Mr. Art of the Deal, Chuck and Nancy got him flustered in front of a camera. And he stayed flustered, got his manhood questioned, and spent Wednesday morning up in his residence, watching cable and presumably still out of sorts.

The night before, Michael Flynn, Trump's top foreign policy advisor and hand-picked NSA until that totally blew up, offered a sentencing memo requesting no time to be served because of his timely cooperation once he understood his situation, and grousing that he sort of thought the FBI done set him up by not telling him to shut up and get a lawyer. This is very much in line with the sort of thing TrumpWorld seems to believe, with peripheral Trumpists sort of saying this one-sided statement from the Flynn defense should let him (and Trump) off the hook.

Let me get this out of the way--I do not know what is worse, assuming that one is so poor of reading comprehension to misunderstand the situation to the effect that a statement that there is a process to call on the White House Counsel actually equals a consultation not to engage an attorney, because then it would be some kind of thing and that a grown man who is not new to this rodeo somehow is receiving compensation from foreign governments (plural, Turkey and Russia) without filing the correct FARA paperwork, knows this to be true, and faces the line of questioning he should certainly expect without for a quick minute thinking of getting either an attorney consult or, maybe, and I'm standing out on a ledge over here--not lying; or being so disingenuous to have grasped these things and then presented them, however dim and unworthy of supposition, as one's best defense for a person who is already in a cooperating agreement and whose best defense in reality is coughing up information that sort of invalidates all pretense at innocence. I am unfamiliar with Byron York's compensation arrangement, but I personally would skip a paycheck before presenting anything this fucking stupid. Or demand a "walk-away" amount. 

But I digress, because the star of the day was clearly Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to 36 months and some fines and restitution. This is less than the 51 to 63 months that was recommended by the sentencing guidelines. Part of his sentencing included the plea regarding campaign finance violations, and before the claim that the Edwards defense might pertain to Trump (even though Edwards was indicted) escaped the lips of Trump defenders, AMI, the parent company of National Enquirer which helped facilitate the McDougal payoff, entirely agreed: this was all about the 2016 presidential campaign of--some guy. 

Now, Trump has a reason to be seething as Cohen maintains he was directed to do much of what he did by Trump (not the tax evasion stuff, and nothing to do with the taxi medallions, but hot damn the bribery things!) And really, who takes out a loan on their house to pay off a person who is only claiming to have had sex with a potential presidential candidate because that certainly sounds like a really great use of your credit rating, unless specifically told to by someone you anticipate will make good on the ask? Only Trump's direction makes sense. And the direction is because the claim is probably good (they did it) and Trump would for some reason, prefer not to have another credible claim against him (among already so many?) during a campaign that he now has to win because?

Not winning queers his deal.

My best guess is Trump is indebted to do the White House thing until he is somehow removed from office, and I think he hates it, and I sort of like the prospect that this makes him suffer a little. As with the Trump Tower Moscow project, maybe doing this POTUS thing was a dream too far, with a serious price. 

But there definitely was a Moscow Trump Tower thing going, and Trump also may have met with people he thought might help him make it happen. Or for sure his son did, more than once. And we now understand that Mueller is looking more closely at these Russia/NRA contacts, especially now that Maria Butina is cooperating. Her boyfriend seems to have already produced interesting leads. 

Now, if his bind is what I think it is, Trump always has resigning and coming correct as a possible out (although being as crooked as a corkscrew and having to wind his pants on each morning makes this a remote possibility). But I really feel like the evidence here indicates that he's up to his orange peel ass in fuckery, and the other alternatives are not going to be pretty. 

Paul Ryan is Tired of this Crap

I think I've made a regular point of noting that Paul Ryan is a little overrated and has been given a very strange reputation for seriousness--and the idea that Ryan's retirement means that "Trumpism" will follow his departure or that he looked at a potential "blue wave" coming up in the 2018 mid-term elections equally sound a little false to me.   Speaker of the House Ryan made his mind up in 2016 that if he could work with the Freedom Caucus, he could work with Trump, so long as his agenda got accomplished.  And there was nothing about that that really surprised me, there. It's one thing to note that Paul Ryan didn't so much "run" for his speakership, so much as happen to be the least awful person for the job, and even then he made clear he still wanted his family time. 

The reason why should be clear--the job sucks. It sucked when John Boehner was doing it. Boehner looks like a healthier man after his retirement. Weathering the whims of the Freedom Caucus and Trump and trying to maintain his reputation for seriousness, and dealing with what could be a loss of the GOP House majority sounds like a courage-sucking tightrope act. Of course he's ready to bail.

I just don't think what come after is worse or more necessarily "Trumpist". Let Scalise and McCarthy fight over leading the House GOP. Let Wisconsin Republicans try to find someone less odious than Paul Nehlen to run in Ryan's district. I don't think the next handful of months is going to show us a new, more liberated Paul Ryan who will, say, yank Devin Nunes from the Intelligence committee or anything really stunning like that. He's already done his big act--planning an exit. And if that puts the GOP in a tighter spot?

They deserve it. 

Look Who Shut Down the Government

The US government has shut down (again) but Congress is working overnight to reopen it. The last shutdown was 3 weeks ago https://t.co/VhjSV43Vx5

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 9, 2018

Did Rand son of Ron Paul also vote for the tax cut bill that promised to increase the almighty fuck out of the deficit (and thereby, the debt?).  He sure the hell did. Doesn't this mean he's just being self-aggrandizing right here? Yeppers.

Unless he's pretty much decided a shutdown was going to happen one way or another, so he might as well get weird and put his name on it. But this technically makes this a Republican shutdown.  After Trump went out of his way to insist he was cool with a shutdown it is really great to see his fellow Republican pitch in this way. Of course, this has nothing to do with DACA.

Nancy Pelosi had some things to say about DACA, but of course, she has no power to make a shut down happen. She just thought it would be great to talk about some fine undocumented but totally American folks for a handful of hours in her four inch heels.

Now, some kind of budget will get passed, and DACA might get shut out--but Dems stood for them and will remain there. It's Republican self-owning that keeps the CR a thing and the regular bickering over what should be easy choices alive. The GOP majority looks like "Rand Pauls" all the way down to us libs, anyway.

UPDATE: We've got six more weeks of government!

Zinke Deficiency

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke would probably prefer people think about him as a rugged outdoors-type, as evidenced by his coming to work on the above steed, Tonto Silvershoes. And yet, he has definitely evidenced that he has a more, shall we say, "high-flying" side, with his own office challenge coin and flag ritual, and with his actual private flight preferences. Sometimes he has even combined his love of taxpayer-funded flight and horse-riding.

He would probably not prefer people think he and his office just make really stupid decisions about resource allocation, such as the decision this summer to spend nearly $40,000 from wildfire preparedness funds for a helicopter tour. Given the year we've had for wildfires, this looks pretty awful. Zinke's office indicated that the helicopter ride was charged to the wrong internal account in error, but there seems to be a trend, here.

It just seems to me would should have someone more careful of our government resources, managing the department overseeing our natural ones, and all evidence suggests natural resources will be poorly managed as well.

The Gift of The Wiseguy

This isn't a very nice prank, but it does have some seasonal appropriateness:

A man who appears to be the person who left a gift-wrapped box of horse manure outside the home of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Saturday spoke with AL.com via phone late Sunday evening, calling the incident an "act of political theater."

L.A. psychologist Robby Strong provided AL.com with convincing evidence that he is the man behind the now-infamous incident, which attracted the LAPD's bomb squad and other law enforcement personnel to Mnuchin's home in the city's Bel Air neighborhood.

He defended his decision to drop the box of manure - which he says he got from a horse-owning friend - off at Mnuchin's house as a "prank" aimed at raising the awareness of Americans about the idea that "Republicans have done nothing for the American worker" and other political topics.

"The thing I live by is a rule of transparency and I was exercising my First Amendment rights," Strong told AL.com. "A few years ago when [a Supreme Court ruling] said that corporations are persons and money equals free speech, that is so absurd and my rule of thumb is now that if corporations are free speech, then so is horses***t."

He also likened his act to that of the individual whose birthday we now celebrate, who became famously irate at the money changers who gouged regular folks in the name of religion.

It makes a certain kind of timely poetic sense--if this tax bill was rushed to be signed for the holidays, then it is practically simple good manners to return a gift to the Trump Administration in kind. And while we enjoy the benefits of a court ruling that labelled money as "speech", and then produced politicians who would only recognize their big money donors as their true constituency, how then are we to discern why boxes of poo or any other physical item of value, can't be speech, if it is used as a means to convey grievance to the effect that people in high places have forgotten the people who don't have dollars at their ready disposal, but can bestir great loads of shit?

And why not horseshit? For twenty years, we have known of the great good Christmas spirit of Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo, and for years before him, there was the Caga Tio of Catalan.  Christmas, lest ye forget, is based on the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which represented a turning of the tables where the rich and poor would change places and prank gifts were a part of the merry-making.

I rather hope, then, that Robby Strong is granted a little leniency for his high spirits .In fairness to the family Mnuchin, I do believe it would have been fairer had he spread it around, though. Surely there are many others who deserve something carbon-based, and not actually coal, in their stockings.

God Damn You All to Hell!

It's pretty much what we should have expected: a Republican POTUS and both houses of Congress being Republican--tax cuts were the irresistible force against which pretend moderate Republicans proved no immovable object. So tax cuts, for corporations and rich folks, is what got passed.  It's great news for Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who dreamed of screwing with poor people's access to health care benefits and giving tax cuts to the wealthy since he was just a nipper, the passage of the Senate tax bill means he gets to vote on his best favorite thing again. I do believe his release from the first passage of this monstrosity was damn-near sexual. If this is the culmination of his congressional career, I surely wouldn't mind if he did decide to call it a day and retire. 

I know Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell puts this day right up there with employing Constitution-stretching measures to deny Barack Obama his SCOTUS pick, and Merrick Garland his vote. Mitch McConnell does not care about anything but Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell is probably biodegradable, but I would recommend lead lined interment for that toxic SOB when fate finally closes his chapter.  

The failed attempts to repeal the ACA gave us some kind of hope, didn't it, that Republican Senators, at least a few of them, wouldn't pass a giant giveaway to the rich and pass that cost along to future generations in the form of increased federal debt. The dramatic postures of folks like Sen. Corker, Sen, Flake, Sen. Collins and Sen. Murkowski, almost looked like hope that they wouldn't fuck up the economy for sheer partisan fanservice to GOP donors and wealthy motherfuckers. (I am leaving out Sen. McCain because of his condition, but if he was entirely healthy, he'd probably be doing the same damn two-step.)

Corker, of course, was "bribed" as were several other Republican Senators of means (well, they probably would have gone for it anyway) by a provision that benefits real-estate partnerships.  The kind even the President might be familiar with. Does a man who has already announced his retirement from the Senate and already has a net worth of nearly $70 million really need this juice? He's getting it. Senator Flake, despite what anyone thinks, is as Republican as a Republican can be. He never had to be bribed to screw over the poor and middle class and his posturing about DACA was just that. Posturing. 

Senator Murkowski wore her Incredible Hulk earrings to this vote in memory of Sen. Ted Stevens because finally, the Senate was voting to violate ANWR with stupid fossil fuel drilling for stupid jobs that will not grow the Alaskan economy and will hurt wildlife there, because she is a Republican, and believes stupid things.  Pro-tip: Wearing Hulk earrings to a showing of "Thor: Ragnarok" --totally appropriate. While voting to spoil a wildlife refuge, kill an important provision of the ACA that keeps people covered and premiums down, and will hurt your constituents? Not appropriate! 

And let's talk about Sen Collins, who was hailed as a hero for stopping the repeal of the ACA. She was going to wait and see if she got certain provisions regarding health care coverage, and didn't. And criticizing her for voting yes on this turd is sexist! (Why was the coverage so focused on Collins? Because she made it seem like she had a reason to vote no and was reachable. Our bad, obviously--but criticism of a US Senator isn't sexist--it's about whether she's good on her word. Was she being seen as reachable because she's a woman--or because she said she was? Hm. Seems like it's on her.)

I don't see an upside to this vote. I think what trickle-down optimists feel about the bill regarding economic growth are just wishful thinking. The debt issue bothers me, the curtailing of government support on the state level is frustrating, the idea that this bill was in part crafted to "stick it" to Blue States is abominable. This bill favors foreign investors and practically incentivizes off-shoring.   It does many things Trump the candidate implied he would never do, and sets the stage for "entitlement program" (Ahem! "Earned Benefit"!) programs getting cut to "pay" for a giveaway to the already well-off. This is reverse-Robin Hood. This is a tactic of shock and awe devoted to increasing income inequality. 

This is bullshit in each and every way, but it is entirely and solely Republican bullshit. Trump owns the economy that stems from this, as does every participant in this vote. I only hope Democrats run hard against this shit. It is a recipe for so much suffering. Trickle-down is a lie.