Day 753

Day 753 Tuesday January 29, 2019    841 Days to Go

I was going to call this post “Tidbits.” Then I thought “Weird and Wacky.”

How about “Weird and Wacky Tidbits”?

The problem is that what was weird and wacky has now become normal. 

In Shakespearean time there was the idea of a world order. There were seven spheres and they were all perfectly round. A comedy was when something got out of order. Like when a person woke up and fell in love with the first thing they saw. In Columbus’ time the belief was there was a giant mountain at the southern end of the world and from it flowed four rivers. When people look back at our time what weird belief will it be that we held? What things will seem a comedy because they are so out of order?

There were so many little things, that are actually big things but we don’t have time to do all of them justice. They were tumbling out on the news yesterday that upon reflection it’s hard to know what to make of it all. Much like Galileo and Leonardo, who did not have the benefit of scientific rigor; they just reported stuff. Jupiter has seven moons, water swirls in odd ways, etc. I too will report, but it’s hard to make sense of it all, to put it in a framework that comports with sense. In fact there seems little sense. It is without sense. There must be a word for this? This non-sense. I’ve got it! Nonsense! I’ve invented a new word! Nonsense. Wow. It’s already in the dictionary. That was fast.

And so it goes.

I’ll try to categorize where I can.

First, there’e DeWhiteGuyz Party, or DWG for short. It is made up of – you guessed it – white guys, and a token OGs (Other Guys) as well. Maybe some HCs (Hot Chicks) as well. (Okay, I’m really stretching here.)

But the world has gone mad, I tell you. Things are not as they seem. The order as we knew it is in chaos, and there are no super heroes around to save us.

Remember Paul Ryan? I love that guy. Looks like Eddie Munster all growed up. Says really vacuous things with a straight face. That’s okay. What gets me is he expects someone to believe him. And he keeps finding suckers, or he did. Maybe they knew all along that he was saying BS and didn’t care. That would make them cunning and smart. However, the evidence is piling up that that is not the case. It’s a case of the stupid and the blind chasing each other in circles. Maybe, there’s a cabal that rules the world that is directing everything from behind the green curtain? That may be true. At least, it’s more plausible than what has been going on out in the open. I mean when we are debating, like we are, if something is no longer a crime because the actions taken are done so right out in the open then we are in new strange territory, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Remember the tax cut? The one that was going to power the economy? The one that was going to keep the economy going by giving money to the rich – Sorry, to industry – so they could reinvest in America? The one that was going to keep the Obama economy climbing ever upward? The one that Paulie Ryan with his simplistic economic view and his hesitant pursing of the lips before he started babbling a bunch of fake Ann Randian philosophy and supposed government statistical data? Yeah. in essence the idea was give the rich more money and it will trickle down faster, remember that? Did it sound like BS to you at the time? Well, if so, you were right. 

Okay, here’s the deal, or here was the deal: “Give us $1.5 trillion, that’s $1,500,000,000.00, and we’ll revive the economy by investing in America. Didn’t work. Sorry. Well, at least we got $1.5T, see ya.”

Recent data by credible sources (ie not Fox Business) has shown that the tax cut had little or no effect on the economy. Huh. I wonder why giving companies that already had boatloads of cash and weren’t investing it in America more money didn’t work? 

Okay, here’s where it gets really really weird. Politicians are talking about taxes in an election season. First, rule number one, never talk about taxes in an elections season. Mention it only in passing after the election is won and you are trying to slip a little sumptin’ sumptin’ through the committee for your buds. This is standard operating procedure (SOP) for the DWG. Whoa! What happened? There’s not one tax plan being talked about, not two, but three? Three tax plans! WTF? Oh, they are all being discussed by women. This is really weird. And hey, none of the women can claim to be all white. WTF? WTF? Indian, Black, Latino, Indian. Wait that’s four. Yeah, Kamala is a twofer, and her Indian is different that Warren’s Indian so ya gotta put Indian in there twice.

 

Warren wants to tax the rich. Radical baby. No, that’s not the radical part. She wants to tax there total wealth, not just what they “earned” this year. Why? Well, she’s trying to help them. See 1/10 of 1% have as much wealth as 90% of us. That’s a ratio that says 1/1000 of X is equal to 900/1000 of X and that means if X is the pie there isn’t much pie left. Somehow that example really muddles the point. But we’ve all seen the movies where the rich become too rich and it takes a kid (girl, young person, guy wearing a spiffy aftershave) to overturn the tables of the money changers and rock the world (okay, maybe a dirty bare foot Jewish guy yelling he’s the messiah) to set the world on a new course.

So Warren has a tax plan. Harris has a tax plan, and AOC* has a tax plan. 

*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

Two are running for president and one isn’t old enough to run, but in six years she will be! Hey listen, a bartender from Brooklynn has a better tax plan than a real estate developer from Manhattan (or is it the Bronx?) Oh wait he has no plan – forget him… or a white guy from Wisconsin.

Yeah, we are going to be talking about tax plans this election season! Pretty exciting. I think we should call it “rich welfare.” In that if you have too much money it is bad for you. You’ll do stupid things, think crazy thoughts and generally get yourself in trouble as you desperately try to hang on to every nickel. 

Let’s play Putin’s favorite movie for you, the end of Ghaddafi. The part where his fellow citizens literally rip him a new asshole. Or how about Sadam? Hey, that won’t happen here in America. Did you see the photo of Mussolini and his mistress hung by their heels in the town square? Or what about the hunting lodge of a guy named Frederick? Lots of antelope heads mounted on the walls. That didn’t stop some pissed off guy from shooting old Frederick in the back and starting World War I. Think of the children. I mean if you are so filthy friggin’ rich that the American dream of struggling to make it is a joke because you’ve already got more money than you can blow on crack and sex in one hundred lifetimes why bother? So reducing that amount of money for the little shits would be a good thing.

Dick Moves and Movies: 

It seems there is no end to the outrageous dick moves that the Republicans will resort to to try to screw things up. I love their chest pounding whining when not in power and their phony patriotism with their little cloisonné American flag lapel pins (Made in China) when not in power and Mitch’s “the American people won’t” whatever when he’s trying to gum up the works. 

But now we got a new one. Don’t seat any members on a committee so the committee can’t get to work and therefore can’t hand transcripts over to the Special Counsel, which might show the president is the lying, cheating, commie asset he appears to be. Great idea. This is a new one. The old ones of robbing the middle class, voter suppression, poll place closing in poor and black area, packing courts with right wing out of touch white guys, that’s your typical dickishness, but this? This is new. Like Trump, every time you think they’ve reached the bottom you find the barrel to be a bottomless pit of swill.

Now onto the movies! The President of the Untied States is reputed to have access to some of the best intel in the world, Heck, he’s got seventeen agencies that do that kind of stuff. They send him a report everyday. Wow. 

Did you know that women were getting bound with tape and thrown in the backs of cars to be driven across the border?

Did you know that these cars are super fast and can out run whatever our pathetic border patrol agents have?

Did you know that our agents have found prayer rugs in the middle of the desert?

 No?

Well, neither did any of those 17 agencies.

But the movie Sicario does! Here’s part of the promotional blurb:

critically acclaimed thriller filled with pulse-pounding suspense. After an idealistic FBI agent (Emily Blunt) is recruited by a government task-force official (Josh Brolin) to pursue a drug lord, she begins a perilous mission that forces her to question everything she believes—and pits her against a shadowy consultant

Right. Okay then. This is the only known place – this film – where women are bound with tape and thrown in the backs of cars, and where said cars can outrun the drug enforcement people at the border. and where prayer rugs were found in the middle of the desert.

My question is “How did our border patrol folks miss the prayer rugs?”

To think that the president of the United States is referring to events in a movie as if they are really true beggars the imagination of even the most cynical jaded script writer in Hollywood. I mean if you went to some producer with the “Hey, I got an idea” pitch and you told him (or her) “Imagine the President of the Untied States …” you wouldn’t make it too far. (“Believe me. “, “Why? [should I believe you?}”, “Believe me.” {old boy trick – keep repeating whatever] )

Then there’s Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, Randy Radico, Paul Manafort, and I can’t remember who else in a circular firing squad of BS.  OMG! Gag me with a monkey wrench. Okay, Roger did nothing wrong. Except, for everything he’s done for the last forty years. And now there’s this indictment which lays out the very things he, Roger, says he didn’t do. I mean, really? We’ve got a bunch of chuckle headed conspiracists that will do or say anything and these are the people linking Trump and the rest of his crew to the Russians. Not that Trump hasn’t done his own linking with the Russians: in plain sight, behind closed doors, in hotel rooms, on TV. You name it Trump and his family members are awash in Russian oligarchs, bit players, spies, and Putin.

The best defense they have now, and this is openly being talked about is that they, Team Trump, are so inept that they couldn’t have possibly colluded because they aren’t smart enough. 

Meanwhile Mr. Art-of-the-Deal has been discovered to not only be a liar and really bad negotiator and doesn’t learn from the past (mistakes or otherwise) that he is threatening to shut down the government again. Is this more puffery? We have to ask the savant Ann Coulter. If she says it’s puffery then big Donnie will too. The figure are in as to the cost of the shutdown to the U.S. economy $11B. Not bad if that’s all it is. Hey, if it didn’t work before let’s do it again. btw In a closed door session with Republican Senators they told the president that if he tried that stuff again the vote would 70 against. We’ll see.

There’s more, a lot more in the tidbits department, but I’ve already forgotten what they are. It’s just washed over me.

Oh wait One more thing, I love this, from John Brennan:

“Your cabal of unprincipled, unethical, dishonest, and sycophantic cronies is being methodically brought to justice. We all know where this trail leads. If your utter incompetence is not enough to run you out of office, your increasingly obvious political corruption surely will.”

Hum, I wonder how he really feels about this? I hope he’s right.

Oh yeah, then there’s Howard Shultz, the former head of Starbucks. He says he might run as an independent. He’s got tons of money, created a string of coffee shops that over charge for crappy coffee that made him rich and many poor, and with no real political base he wants to spend his millions siphoning off votes from other candidates. His pitch? He’s a businessman. Wow. That’s worked so well. There were three (claimed to be) businessmen that have been president: Coolidge, Hoover, and Trump. How did that work out?

So, to summarize:

Our president can not separate fantasy from reality.

He’s surrounded himself with liars, cheaters, hucksters and third rate talent, and his policies and lack of any effort on his part other than a racist silly idea are ruining our country.

There are people who are rising up and joining together to take the country back.

 841 Days to Go

PS La Grande Odalisque, by Lalla Essaydi, VMFA