Method to Musk's Madness?

Many observers assume that Elon Musk has been unraveling a bit lately, because that's what it looks like.

But we've got to remember that Musk has occasionally been pretty good at putting over a public perception. Remember, for example, when people thought he was a nice guy who invented all sorts of stuff and didn't care about money and just wanted to save the planet? That was because Musk wanted people to believe that.

Maybe Musk's recent announcement that he has switched from Democrat to Republican, claiming that the Democratic Party has become "the party of division and hate," is just more calculated shaping of his public image.

 

Maybe it's part of his exit strategy from Tesla. It would fit in with a time-honoured tradition of people moving from Left to Right politically, and then proclaiming that their younger selves meant well, but were hopelessly naive. In Musk's case, the stereotypical headshaking over his younger librul self could go something like: "Once I, too, believed that mankind could survive without oil. And I tried my best to make that hopelessly naive dream a reality [...]" And then he becomes a US Senator from Montana, taking some of Montana's wealthy Democrats with him into the GOP. 

Either that, or he really is going completely crazy. Because, Republican and the owner/Dear Leader of one of the world's largest EV manufacturers at the same time -- that's not a good fit.

It didn't occur to me until just this moment that perhaps Musk has announced that he's a Republican precisely because it's a bad fit with leading Tesla. And because he senses that he may have pumped about as much money out of Tesla as he can -- if he can sell his Tesla shares before they become relatively worthless.

Biden Says the Transition is Going Well

Joe Biden says that the transition from the Trump administration to his own is going well, and that outreach from the present administration, across the board, has been sincere and not begrudging.

In short, Biden says that the behavior of the Trump administration has been the exact opposite of what the public has seen and heard from President Trump himself.

If you've been reading a lot news from Washington over the past four years, as I have, then surely it has struck you have often members of Trump's administration, as well as Republicans in Congress, have expressed strong opposition, even horror and disgust, to Trump, off the record. 

What a strange approach: to privately oppose a leader whom you publicly slavishly follow and extravagantly praise. Will all of these Republicans ever go on the record and actually tell the truth right out in public about what they have been thinking and doing during the Trump Presidency?

Or, on the contrary, will there been so many Republicans who claim to have been secretly anti-Trump, secretly saving the world from Trump from within the belly of the beast, that it will be damned hard to believe all of them?

There's a problem with believing anyone who says, I was lying all that time, but now I'm telling the truth. Hey, come to think of it, that's sort of the whole point of that story which has been told to so many children, about the boy who lied about wolves being around.

There's a definite advantage to just telling the truth, publicly, privately, on the record, off the record, every which way. Several advantages. Several huge advantages. Several huge obvious advantages.

But if some Trump administration official or Republican Congressperson or Senator wants to try to explain to me why he or she was saying one thing in public and the exact opposite off the record, for four long years, and wants to explain to me how that behavior actually made some sort of sense, I'll listen.

For a little while, anyway.

Are Right-Wingers Basically Just Lonely Old Guys?

A Facebook friend expressed the opinion that many of Trump's fanatical supporters are lonely old white men with no friends, no support group. I think he may be on to something, and I think it may apply to more than just Trump's hard-core base.

I just spoke to my brother today. Yesterday I'd left him a voicemail saying it was about time for "our monthly time to disagree about... everything." My brother is not part of Trump's hard-core base; he belongs to the part of Trump's support that hates him, but still supports him because they hate Democrats much more (that group probably also include many Republican Senators and Congresspeople). My brother's a libertarian loonie who believes in worldwide conspiracies of Evil being run by Hillary, Soros, Israel and The Media.

So I screamed at him for a half hour or so on the phone, telling him repeatedly that he has his head up his ass and doesn't know shit about politics, history or culture, then he said he had to go and I told him I loved him and to take care, and sorry about the yelling.

And most likely, in November we'll do it again.

Actually we don't disagree about absolutely everything. He's a scientist and doesn't deny that humans cause global warming and need to stop it. I repeatedly make a point of acknowledging that he is well-informed about science, technology, engineering and math, highly educated in those areas. He agrees with me that Trump is both an idiot and a career criminal. We both hate Elon Musk, although probably not for identical reasons.

Anyway, if my friend is on to something here, if there's a basic link between right-wing lunacy and loneliness, maybe we all should be calling our crazy right-wing relatives more often, and hugging them more and reminding them more often that we love them even though their heads are completely up their asses.

Maybe even scream at them a little bit less, although I'm not totally sure about that part. That would be asking a lot.

The "Heartland" Vote

Democrats have been trying for a long time to take the "heartland" vote away from the GOP. But what exactly is the "heartland" vote? Is it anything more than just code for the racist vote, the xenophobic vote, the Islamophobic vote, the homophobic vote, the sexist vote, in short: the stupid vote? The GOP keeps winning that fight. Why wouldn't they? The stupid vote is their natural constituency. How about if we drop that fight and go hard 180 degrees away from it? Go openly and honestly for the anti-stupid vote: the anti-racist, anti-sexist, gay-friendly, xenophile, one-world, well-educated, eco, vegan, anti-conspiracy-theory vote -- in short: the anti-stupid vote? We could even call it that. Or we could call it something like, for example: Warren/Booker 2020.

Call the deplorables deplorable. Why are we trying to hide? Every single poll for 2 1/2 years, Trump's unfavorable rating has been over 50%. In other words: the anti-stupid vote is most of the people in the US. Go right straight for it. No more BS. And as for the dumb-asses, they'll benefit from rational policy just like everyone else, and some of them might actually learn things.

And how about if we stop making these drastic geographical over-simplifications such as speaking about "the heartland" as if it as if it were entirely Republican and urban America were entirely Democratic? Neither assertion is true. Geography might influence political orientation, but it doesn't determine it. People are free to be who they are. How about some respect for Democrats in places which have been mostly red lately? Oh, that's right: the Electoral College, that proud 18th-century institution. We have to deal with Trump first, then we can deal with other things like modernizing the Constitution, and in the meantime, Democrats in places like Wyoming, where it takes a bit more guts to be a Democrat than it does in NYC or LA, will continue to be unfairly boned in terms of national recognition. It's not fair at all. Oh well. Wyoming Democrats: hang in there. Not all of us have forgotten you!

And as for Joe Biden, the great "heartland vote" candidate: how about if we let him just join the GOP, toward which he's been drifting for over 40 years? He could be the new Joe Lieberman -- or is he already the new Joe Lieberman?

"Urban Democratic Elitists" Don't Exist

(PS, Later the Same Day: Okay, I was a little angry when I wrote that and blamed the rural Democrats for their own problems. I felt I was being lashed out at, and in return I lashed out. Maybe the best approach would be if all Democrats try to appreciate and support other Democrats, and to always think about how they themselves can improve what they're doing. All of this time and energy Democrats spend blaming each other for this and that could be much better spent making the case for the entire party and against the Republicans.)

I am so sick of hearing about "urban Democratic elitists." The Republican Party is the elitist party in the US; they're the ones cutting taxes for the rich and cutting support for the poor. The Republicans, not the Democrats, are the ones who marginalize, exclude, exploit and otherwise eff over people who are not white, male, and heterosexual and do their best to look like they just stepped out of the 1950's.

It's one thing to hear the "urban elitist" charge from Fox News and their proletarian dupes. It's quite another to hear rural Democrats blaming things on the Democratic elitists who don't exist. Rural Democrats such as Terry Goodin, a Democrat who's been in the Indiana House of Representative since 2000, and the subject of this below-average analysis from POLITICO. Goodin describes the main planks of his political platform as "the importance of public education, affordable health care and a living wage, and the moral necessity of addressing the opioids scourge."

And with that platform, he couldn't sell Hillary Clinton to his constituents over Donald Trump.

And it doesn't seem to occur to Goodin and some other rural Democrats that their inability to get out the vote for Democrats might be their own damn fault.

That maybe the divisiveness in the Democratic Party might be partly their own damn fault. Goodin complains about "identity politics." What the Hell is identity politics except another Fox News talking point, another spoonful of Republican snake oil swallowed by a lot of dumb people, not all of whom are Republicans? Goodin claims that the Democratic "urban elites" are no longer "inclusive," because they don't understand him and his people. But when people complain about "identity politics," what are they complaining about? They're complaining that traditionally-oppressed demographics, such as African-Americans, Native Americans and LGBT's, are finally, gradually -- PARTIALLY -- getting more rights and more equality. Who's resisting inclusion here?

From the POLITICO article:

"Goodin’s Indiana District 66 went heavy for Trump. One reason: It used to have plenty of decent-paying, union-boosted jobs, anchored by the Morgan Packing plant."

Jesus H Christ: These people were too dumb to see which party is pro-union and which party is rabidly anti-union? And the fault with people misunderstanding something so basic and plain lays with -- urban Democrats hundreds or thousands of miles away?

You want party unity, Terry Goodin? You want all of us Democrats pulling on the same rope? How about you enjoy a nice steaming-hot mug of STFU about these "elitist urban Democrats" who supposedly don't care about you and your constituents, and take a good long look in the mirror instead? Yes, there is some divisiveness in the party. But when it comes to who's responsible for it and who needs to shape up to fix it, you got it exactly backwards, my friend. We urban Democrats are on the side of people who need help, just like you are. You need to do a much better job of explaining to your friends and neighbors who we are.

When Lyndon Johnson was an up-and-coming politician -- you don't get a whole lot more Democratic and rural than Lyndon Johnson -- did he complain about that God-damned urban elitist FDR? No! He was known as a "110% FDR man." To the many people in the Hill Country outside Johnson City, Texas, who were suspicious of "that Commy" FDR, he explained to them who FDR really was. And that he was on their side.

Worked pretty well. Among many other things, it brought rural electrification to the Hill Country for the very first time, and it started a politician on his way to the White House, who signed the major civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965. Food for thought, maybe.

How Long Can This Go On?

What's today's most frivolous legal action: Trump attempting to get Bannon to cease and desist being interviewed in a book written by someone else, or Paul Manafort suing the Justice Department for arresting him? And when are Republicans in the White House and Congress going to start saying publicly what they've been saying privately, and what Republicans not in the White House or public office have been saying publicly all along -- along with the rest of the God damn world? Namely, that Trump is crazy, stupid, a crook, a thug, a traitor, and utterly unfit to lead?

How long will the Trump administration adhere to its policy of determining which side is the most popular with regard to an issue, and then taking the other side, after having lied by saying it would never do any such thing? (Today Jeff Sessions reversed Obama-era policy allowing states to declare marijuana legal, and Trump signed an executive order allowing offshore oil drilling in areas which have been legally off limits since the 1970's.)

How badly do the Republicans want to lose in November? Are some of them moles whose real endgame is to destroy the party once and for all? Or are they all just really, really, really stupid?

Dream Log: A Piece of Urban Real Estate, Status Uncertain

I dreamed that I and a few other poor people were living in abandoned cars parked on a rectangular patch which was about fifty yards wide and jutted out about twenty yards, like a cliff, from the middle of the downtown of a city with many tall buildings. One of the fifty-yard-long sides of the area was level with the developed city around it; off of the other three sides, there was a fifty-foot drop to another relatively-flat area covered with limited-access roads.

At the beginning of the dream there were three abandoned vehicles on this patch of ground, and five of us living in them. But more people kept moving in, some bringing vehicles or tents with them.

It was entirely unclear how much the ground we were living on was man-made and built up from the lower level, and how much had been there, with the upper level of ground, before humans built anything there. The mix of concrete and earth, and of jumbles of pipes and trees sticking out from the concrete and earth, made it very hard to tell which was more primary, and which had been added on.

At some point it started to seem to me like a good idea to encourage the homeless people who were passing through to stay and to build up actual homes here, and to invite other people to do the same. There was a vague feeling that developers were going to come and claim the -- the land? the building? whatever it was -- and have us all kicked out. They hadn't tried to do that so far, but it seemed to me that the more of us there were, and the more we had done to make the place a real home, the harder it would be to remove us, when and if someone tried.

Someone donated some solar panels and batteries to us, and soon that led to our having electrical heat on cold nights, and cold for storing food, and heat for cooking it without having to build a campfire. Some lawyers started working building a case for our right to stay, when and if someone challenged that right. We started to hold free classes on engineering, architecture and law, and used what we learned in those classes to strengthen our hold on the area, physically and legally.

Television news crews stopped in now and then to film and to talk to us. Republicans sometimes yelled and threw rocks or beer cans at us out of the windows of their trucks as they drove past on the street adjacent to and level with us. Democrats walked past and were much friendlier. Often they waved and flashed peace signs or held up clenched fists. Sometimes they stopped to talk.

No one was charged any money to stay there as long as they wanted, or to eat some of our food, or to take something else if they needed or wanted it: clothes, or books, or a phone, or what have you. It got to the point where the thing which most frequently made people want to move on was overcrowding. Ordinarily, I'm one of the first to feel crowded. But in this place, my fascination with everything that was going on outweighed my discomfort over the crowding.

A lot of what was going on was high-level education. It had started out with engineering, architecture, law and medicine, for purposes of the self-preservation of the community, and although classes quickly branched out into many other subjects, those four areas remained prominent among the things we taught. It had started out with people coming and helping us, but soon we were going out into the city to help people install solar power or repair their dwellings, or to represent them in court, or to check on their physical health, or to volunteer in other ways.

One area of the law in which we soon became well-known was advocating in favor of the legalization of marijuana. Some of the people who lived with us began to complain about the pot smoke, and so we agreed to smoke pot only in one designated area, which was designed to ventilate and blow the smoke away from the rest of the community, puffing merrily out through a smokestack and carried by the prevailing winds safely away from those who chose not to partake. If you wanted to get high, and you went to the designated smoking area, at some times it wasn't necessary to puff on anything, because enough people were in there going to town on bongs and joints, and the smoke was so thick, that if you just stood or sat there for a few minutes, you'd definitely get high.

Vegans were very prominent in our community. Some of them, unfortunately, were intolerant in their rhetoric about non-vegans. It was very tiresome. On the other hand, they made vegan food which, everyone agreed, was amazingly delicious.

I had begun there as a homeless person who'd crawled into an abandoned car to try to keep from freezing to death. But soon -- despite the overcrowding, which was definitely an issue for me -- it became the best home I had ever had.

And then I woke up.

How The Tax Bill Actually Could Be a Win For the GOP

I finally figured out one way that passing the most unpopular piece of major Federal legislation since the 1980's actually could be considered a win for the GOP. It still doesn't make them look like better human beings. In fact, if anything, it might make them look a bit worse.

You may recall that a few days ago there was a strange story about Paul Ryan: a supposedly reliable source said that the Speaker was very moody and had talked about not running for re-election in 2018, and ending his political career.

Then very quickly after that Ryan denied that this story was true. He said that everything was wonderful and that he had no plans to retire. But a lot of reporters continued to act as if the story hadn't been a mistake at all. And if anyone might be in a position to know where the story had come from and how reliable it was -- it's those reporters.

Now, all reliable polling on the planet shows that the Republicans just keep getting less and less popular, and that many Republican members of Congress might be retired after the 2018 mid-terms -- voluntarily or not. Whether Ryan runs or not, the Speaker of the House might well be a Democrat after the mid-terms. Their sinking popularity might mean that this tax bill -- if it passes. It hasn't passed yet -- might not just be the first big bill passed by the GOP during Trump's term in office -- it might be the first and the last.

And so, it might very well be that many Republican Senators and Congresspeople regard this bill as their retirement program, their golden parachutes. They feel they can't impeach Trump -- it doesn't make sense to me that they feel can't impeach him, but it seems more and more as if they feel that they just can't. Trump is extremely unpopular, and getting more unpopular, and he is dragging the rest of the GOP down with him. And so the Republicans in the Senate and House are cashing in, as big as they can, before the voters retire them.

Now, that's certainly evil, but it's a rational sort of evil, based on a realistic assumption about the future: the assumption that the Democrats will control Congress after the 2018 mid-terms, and that if the Republicans want to get richer by ripping of the US in a huge way, they have to do it right now, because right now is going to be their last chance.

But I could be completely wrong. Time after time I've given the Republican leadership way too much credit: Assuming that they wouldn't be dumb enough to actually impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 with the ridiculous case that Kenneth Starr handed them. Assuming that they would manage to nominate someone other than Trump. Assuming that they would impeach Trump rather than let Trump destroy their political careers along with his own. Etc, etc. Perhaps, again, in this case, they're simply less fact-based than I could imagine, and they really believe that their tax bill will lead to budget surpluses instead of deficits, and that they will win instead of lose in the mid-terms, and that Trump will be re-elected and go down in history as the greatest American President of all time, and that Trump and Sarah Huckabee are honest and straightforward. Etc.

Again, though -- the bill hasn't passed yet. There still is time for individual Republican legislators to figure that their prospects for a political career in the future are worth more than what they would make from the bill. Or even to have a fit of conscience, and to stand up and say that this bill is wrong and disgusting and that they can't vote for it for those reasons. No, I don't think that's likely. But you never know. It might play very well politically for some individuals in the GOP. And they actually are human beings.

Trump's Going on Vacation for 17 Days -- What Does it Mean?

Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it's as pointless to look for meaning in this as in many things Trump does, doesn't do and says.

Maybe it means he's close to taking a permanent vacation from the job, resigning, retiring, working on his golf game full-time. He doesn't seem to be having fun Presidentin', he's complained about how hard the job is.

Maybe new White House chief of staff General Kelly, highly praised by Republicans and Democrats alike as someone highly skilled in bringer order to chaotic situations, encouraged the Main Agent of Chaos to take a very long vacation, hoping to make the White House as orderly as possible during those 17 days. And maybe Kelly will make the administration ship-shape. Still, when/if Trump returns on August 21, how long could the most stable state of order last?

Mueller is not taking a vacation. He's begun issuing grand jury subpoenas. Talking heads on TV, specialists in such things, are opining that the President has already publicly admitted to obstruction of justice, in an interview with Lester Holt. Prosecutors are saying they've indicted people for much less than what everybody already knows Trump has done. More Congressional Republicans are standing up to Trump. Polls show that his approval rating among his base is finally beginning to erode -- which may be the only reason that more Republican Congresspeople have found the guts to openly talk about what a mess he is. Trump's job can't be getting more fun.

Go ahead, Donald: work on your golf game full-time. Except when you take the time to tell wildly-cheering crowds of sheer idiots about how your Presidency was sabotaged and ended by a witch hunt by the liberal elites.

You Can't Compromise With Extremists

I'm so sick of all these dodos saying, "Both parties need to sit down and compromise and work things out," as if the Democrats and Republicans were equally to blame for Everything. This seems to be more of the damage done by so-called objective journalism, making people unwilling or unable to see that one party may actually be more to blame for some things than the other.

In reaction to the latest Republican health-care proposal, the one they put together in a completely unprecedented secretive manner and apparently hoped to slip past the Democrats and parts of their own party into law while no one was watching, just what exactly would it mean for the Democrats to "come together" with the Republicans and "work together"? Only causing 11 million people to lose their health insurance instead of 22 million? Something like that?

"Working together" with them -- would that mean re-allowing only some of the toxins going back into our air and water since the Trump administration took over? Deporting only some of the people the Republicans want to deport based on ethnicity or religion? Acting as if only some of the things Trump pulls out of his ass are facts? Saying that maximum sentences are okay in only some drug-related cases? Allowing only some of their anti-LGBT legislation? Acting as if it's only sort of the 1950's?

What the Democrats need to is tell the truth and get out the vote. Not just every 4 years, and not just every 2 years, although even that, sadly, would be a great improvement. No, Democrats need to turn out for every election. Republicans do this better than we Democrats do, and that is why they keep kicking our asses even though there are more of us than of them. We need to vote for President, Senator, Representative, Governor, Mayor, City Council, School Board, Judge, Sheriff, Comptroller, EVERYTHING. There are more of us than there are of them! If we ACTED like it, their right-wing evil bullshit would be left in the past where it belongs.

Comey vs Ryan on Trump

Today, James Comey said:

"It confused me when I saw on television the president saying that he actually fired me because of the Russia investigation, and learned again from the media that he was telling privately other parties that my firing had relieved great pressure on the Russian investigation. I was also confused by the initial explanation that was offered publicly that I was fired because of the decisions I had made during the election year. That didn't make sense to me for a whole bunch of reasons, including the time and all the water that had gone under the bridge since those hard decisions that had to be made. That didn't make any sense to me. And although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple."

That's the kind of comment that earns you a reputation for honesty.

Today, Paul Ryan said:

"The president’s new at this. He’s new to government, and so he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He’s just new to this."

That's not.

What Comey said was surprising, not because it's news to anybody that the President is a pathological liar, one of the biggest liars most of us have ever had the misfortune to encounter. It's surprising because so few of the leaders of the US and so few of the leading journalists covering US politics are coming right out and saying what we all know. It was also surprising because Comey is a Republican, and almost all of the Republicans are still doing what Ryan is doing: saying ridiculous things to try to cover up what everybody can plainly see: that the President is a liar, a crook, a bully, a sociopath and utterly unfit to hold any public office.

The Republicans are wasting so much time, saying so much weasel-mouthed infuriating garbage like Ryan excusing the President's behavior with comments like "He's new to this," letting things get so much worse and worse, before doing what we all know they are going to have to do: remove Trump from office. Unless they actually put that off until after the 2018 mid-term elections, when, if they still haven't done it, presumably enough of them will lose their seats to Democrats that removing Trump from office won't be up to them any more.

For years now, Republicans in elected office have failed to do the most important thing political leaders are supposed to do: lead. They've been following the base, and this has shown what following the base does: it makes the base stupider. It seems clear that the only thing which will cause the Republicans to impeach and remove Trump is Trump's approval rating sinking to a certain point. Now, if they were real leaders, and explaining to their constituents how horrible Trump is and how important it is to get rid of him, that would surely make Trump's approval ratings sink quickly. But that would be leadership. That would be integrity. That would be country over party. That would improve the party, give it some dignity. That would be the sort of thing Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt did. But of course, today's Republicans are just about exactly the opposite of Lincoln and Teddy. One of the last times I can remember a Republican elected official leading instead of following was during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when John McCain was taking questions at a campaign event, and a woman in the crowd said some birther nonsense about Obama, and McCain corrected her. I don't like John McCain very much, but unlike Paul Ryan, he does seem to have at least some principle and backbone.

Although today, at the hearing where Comey was testifying, McCain was very interested in Hillary's email, and at one point addressed Comey as "President Comey." McCain insisted that Comey was setting a "double standard" because the FBI investigation into Hillary's possible improper behavior with her emails was now closed, and this investigation into the Trump administration was not.

Yesterday McCain seemed very troubled by the state of the Trump administration. It seems we can't be sure which McCain we're going to get from one day to the next. He may not be the man to turn the GOP toward leadership, toward integrity, and toward doing the right thing with Trump.

Trump Is Threatening GOP Lawmakers

Trump is threatening Republican Congresspeople and Senators with consequences if they don't pass the messed-up GOP replacement for Obamacare, and pronto. (News flash: the Republican repeal-and-replace bill is going nowhere pronto.)

What consequences? That's the question those Republicans are asking themselves if they're smart, I think. Trump's approval rating is 37% and dropping. One poll says that only 3% of Trump voters regret voting for him. But I think people may be giving that poll too much weight. I think that questions which are equally important, or more, are: how many people who didn't vote in the 2016 Presidential election, or voted for Stein or Johnson or someone else, now regret not voting for Hillary? Over 110 million people eligible to vote didn't vote, and Johnson got 4,489,221 votes, Stein 1,457,216, and 1,884,459 votes were cast for someone other than Trump, Hillary, Stein or Johnson. That's over 117,830,896 people who didn't vote for either Trump or Hillary. What do they think of Trump? how will they be voting in the future? Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't imagine how the numbers add up to anything but good news for Democrats and bad news for Republicans, and especially bad news for Trump and those Republicans seen as especially close to Trump.

Let me repeat that Trump's approval rating is 37% and dropping. The Presidency of the United States is the brightest spotlight in the history of the human race so far, it's the position which gives its occupant less room to hide than any other, and although Donald has his niche, the more that humanity in general gets a good look at him, the less they like what they see.

Most of the Republican Congresspeople and Senators who are not with Trump and Ryan on this health care bill are from districts and states which were either close in the Presidential election or went for Hillary. For those politicians, it may be worse for them if Trump supports them than if he doesn't.

The special election for Georgia's 6th congressional district will be held on April 18, to fill the seat vacated by Tom Price, who resigned to become Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. A lot of politicians are watching this special election very carefully. The 6th district has been Republican since 1979, since Newt Gingrich won the first of his 10 consecutive terms there from 1979 to 1999. A lot of those Republican wins since Newt won his first term have been quite lopsided. The 6th district in Georgia has been considered a very safe seat for the Republicans. But Donald Trump has a way if changing things. It looks quite possible that a Democrat, John Ossoff, could win the special election in April, despite the GOP spending a huge amount of money to try to keep the seat. If Ossoff wins, or even if he come close to winning, it could be seen as one more sign that Republican politicians don't need to feel threatened by Trump, except in the sense that being closely associated with him could hurt them.

Trump, Brilliance, Capitalism

Don't Dismiss Trump's Attacks on the Media as Mere Stupidity. We should assume they are darkly brilliant, says Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal in Time.

Both Trump and Stephens, who begins his piece in Time with ridiculous assertions about the integrity of his employer, the Wall Street Journal, which in reality has become just another right-wing Murdoch noise machine, should be seen for the morons they are. You've got to be pretty stupid not to see that Trump is stupid, or not to see how Murdoch has turned the Journal into a joke.

I'm tired of claims that Trump is brilliant. He's not merely pretending to be a buffoon, he actually is one, unlike many other leading Republicans, who, although certainly not rocket scientists, are also not the idiots they are currently pretending to be in their agonized efforts to argue that the President is making sense about something, and/or not really saying the idiotic things he obviously is saying. Kellyanne Conway is perhaps the most strikingly obvious example, in the way that she has said utterly different things about Trump before and after he hired her.

Many of the scientists and engineers who are improving solar and wind power and developing other green sources of energy, and many of the entrepreneurs getting them up and running, actually are brilliant. Trump, and his boss Putin, embody the stupid approach to energy policy: double down on petrochemicals. Artists, teachers, philosophers often are downright brilliant, and in the US we are pearls currently cast before the swine Trump.

Trump, along with the AIDS Medication Douchebag Martin Shkreli, embodies pure capitalism, and demonstrates that it requires crudity and insensitivity rather than intelligence. You remember the infuriatingly stupid grin on Shkreli's face as he confronted intense scrutiny by the media and by legislators after he obtained the manufacturing license for the AIDS medication Daraprim and immediately raised its price from $13.50 to $750 per dosage? Of course you remember. That sort of grin, in that sort of situation, is the sort of thing which sears itself into the memory. He was grinning because he knew that he had followed the rules of capitalism perfectly.

What he didn't know -- has he learned it in the meantime? -- is that becoming the most despised jerk in the US was going to have an effect on his life, no matter how closely he followed those rules.

Capitalism teaches that the person with the greatest amount of wealth has achieved the greatest amount of success. That's all that capitalism teaches about success: buy low, sell high, done. Most capitalists realize, sometimes consciously, often not, that there are many other factors in success and failure than the size of one's stack. When a person's ideas of success and failure are really, actually, exclusively about the bottom line, which is actually only rarely the case, the result is horrible and repulsive, like Shkreli, and like the current President of the United States.

Unfortunately, the realization that capitalism has some big problems is often not conscious. In the United States more than in some other places, the unwillingness to treat capitalism as something which can and should be examined critically, is very widespread. Capitalism is often talked about as if it were as inevitable as gravity, and as impossible to wish away, and that nothing better will ever be able to replace it.

It seems to me that the 2007-2008 financial crisis led more people to criticize capitalism as a whole than had done so previously. Maybe Trump will wake up still more people about it.

Republican Senators, Republican Congresspeople --

-- we're all waiting on you. The entire non-insane world is watching, listening, waiting for you to speak up against Trump. If just a few of you suddenly grow some backbones and/or moral scruples, we can impeach Trump and convict him of any of a wide variety of crimes -- or invoke the 25th Amendment and say right out loud in public that he's insane. That'll work just as well -- and get on with a non-insane Pence presidency. We Democrats won't like the Pence presidency at all, but most of us are non-insane enough to recognize that Pence is non-insane and non-totalitarian and has respect for the rule of law. Very few Democrats won't be able to see that Pence is a huge, huge improvement over Trump.

Robert Reich says he talked to an unnamed former Republican Congressperson who told him that the plan is for you to get what you want out of Trump, and then get rid of him. Is that right? And are you actually expecting to emerge from that smelling like roses? Do you actually expect people to forget that many of you assumed that Trump wouldn't be elected, and publicly denounced Trump's craziness right up until he was elected, surprising you as much as it surprised anyone? Do you actually expect people not to notice how suddenly your attitudes toward Trump once he was President-elect, and how suddenly they're going to change again once you've decided that the time has come to remove him from office?

Let me just point out the extremely-obvious to you: with every day of the Trump presidency, the more you stand by him and grin and applaud as if this were all perfectly sensible, as if Trump didn't constantly and obviously lie, and constantly contradict himself, and didn't show utter contempt for our country's laws -- the longer you wait until you stand up in opposition to him, the more of Trump's stink will attach to you. The longer you act as if you see nothing wrong with Trump's actions, the harder it will be to wash that stink off, the harder it will be ever again to convince anyone that you stand for anything. Not to mention that with each passing day it will be harder to remove him. Harder and more costly, above all, for you Republican office-holders.

I'm just trying to help, by reaching across the aisle and talking sense to you. Hey, if you don't want to listen, if you wait too long, if you ride the tiger for too long, we Democrats will ride this out, and, assuming Trump hasn't killed the entire human race with nukes, we'll be perfectly happy to see Democrats vs Greens, with an irrelevant Republican Party, replace Democrats vs Republicans, with an irrelevant Green Party.

How Many Of Trump's Supporters Are Hard-Core?

By "hard-core" I mean the idiots who will always believe that he can do no wrong.

The thing is, not all of the people who are currently behind Trump are those hard-core supporters. I see stories about people regretting voting for Trump, but they're anecdotal: so far I haven't seen any estimates of the number of the people who voted for Trump, out of the 3 million less than voted for Hillary, who already regret it.

However, I have seen reports that approval ratings for Trump have already fallen into the 30's. That's low. For a President-elect who hasn't taken office yet, I'm pretty sure it's unprecedented. The hard-core supporters make a lot of noise and grab a lot of attention, but they're not the whole story. In the country as a whole people seem to be backing away from him. How about the fact that just about all of Trump's nominees for Cabinet positions seem to contradict him on some major policy position or another? Not just Congress, not just Congressional Republicans, but his own Cabinet nominees.

Paul Krugman has already mournfully declared that American democracy is over with, that it has ended because Trump has successfully pulled off a totalitarian coup-d'etat. Well, as I've often said on this blog: screw Paul Krugman! The President-elect looks weak to me, and I just can't imagine any way that his hold on power won't get very rapidly weaker as soon as he takes office and starts officially screwing up. The Breitbart crowd will continue to adore him no matter what he does or says, but they're not a majority of Republicans, let alone a majority of the country. For everybody else he will become more unbearable by the day.

And that will be that: impeachment, ejection from office, bring in the next right-wing asshole, Mike Pence, and we'll deal with him for the better part of 4 years.

Assuming Trump doesn't actually resign before his inauguration, because of this or that Russian entanglement, or because somebody finally leaks that "Apprentice" video which is, we're assured, far worse than the "Access Hollywood" clip, or because one of the many other time-bombs all around Trump suddenly goes off.

Approval ratings in the 30's before inauguration. Cheer up, my fellow Democrats.

Straight Democratic Ticket, Is What I Recommend

At 4:02 today, Ex-US Representative Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom of Illinois tweeted:

On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump.

On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket.

You in?

About an hour later, having apparently suffered in a meantime a backlash over that tweet severe enough to alarm even him, Walsh explained in an interview that he was "talking metaphorically."

Walsh is an unbearable jackass.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. He's not actually a donkey. That part was metaphorical.

The part about him being unbearable was not. And I'm not the only one who feels that way. Walsh was one of the Tea Party freshmen Congesspeople voted in in 2010 and voted out again in 2012. He has repeatedly gotten into trouble for speaking in a racially insensitive manner and repeatedly had to explain that he was speaking metaphorically and so forth and that what he really meant was, and so forth.

Earlier this year, Walsh Twitter account was suspended -- not for the musket tweet, but for something much worse which Twitter deleted, which I won't repeat here. Walsh had to explain that he hadn't really meant what he said and promise to cut it out to get his account back. In an interview the next day, Walsh said of what was in the deleted tweet which he hadn't really meant that way:

That's crazy and stupid and wrong. It would end my career and it's wrong."

It would end his career -- AND it's wrong. Nice to see a man of integrity who has his priorities right.

My point is just to remind my readers, once again, that Trump didn't come out of a vacuum, that Trump really isn't even much of an anomaly in the GOP. As much as the Republican primaries seemed to be a complete cluster****, they in fact did not nominate him completely by accident.

Of course, for those of you who live in the many parts of the US represented by Republicans who aren't distancing themselves from Donald Trump, it's probably not even necessary for me to point out that Trump is not an anomaly. This is more for those of you watching all the Republicans running full speed away from Trump on the nationwide news and in places where he's messing up the campaigns of the local Republicans.

You know of any Republicans running for office or for re-election in areas where Trump leads Clinton in the polls, who are distancing themselves from him? Me neither. Isn't it a remarkable coincidence how closely bad poll numbers for Republicans and Republican moral outrage at Trump coincide?

No Republican politicians running for office anywhere should be considered completely free of association with Trump. The main difference between "moderate" Republicans and jackasses like Trump and Walsh is that the "moderates" have a better sense of when it's expedient to keep their mouths shut -- or, for example, to distance themselves from a colleague who's going down like the Hindenburg, or to pretend that they think Hillary is just swell and always have thought so. And, of course, the "moderates" are running for office in places where people like Trump and Walsh are very unpopular.

Cheer Up, Everybody

And by everybody, I mean: Democrats. Republicans: don't cheer up. You have no reason to do so. As FiverThirtyEight, Nate Silver's website, points out, Trump really is losing badly.

The main question now is how many Republican Senators, Congresspeople, governors, mayors, judges, city councilpeople, dog catchers, etc, etc, Trump will drag down to defeat with him. And there's nothing for Republicans to cheer up about there, either. A few months ago very few people were talking about the possibility of the GOP losing control of the Senate. Now we see headlines like: it's possible the GOP will keep the Senate, despite Trump.

Yeah, and it's also possible that your guy won't keep shooting his mouth off, GOP. And that the huge and growing wave of prominent Republicans renouncing Trump won't convince a lot of people that Trump isn't really your guy. It's possible, in sort of the same way that monkeys might fly out of my butt.

Also possible, and much more likely, in my opinion, is that Trump has peaked, and that his peak looked a whole lot bigger in the GOP primaries than it will from here on in, and that it's all downhill from here for him. Nothing gets more people more intimately familiar with someone than running as a Democrat or Republican for POTUS, and it's possible that the better the general public gets to know Trump, the less they will like him.

It also seems that as people get to know Hillary better, less of them hate, distrust and fear her. Seems some people are beginning to see through some of the bullshit which the GOP had flung at her over the decades and which stuck. Trump's base may never get tired of hearing nonsense about Hillary's emails and about Ben-Gazhi; the general public seems to be getting tired of that sort of thing.

And that's just more bad news for Republicans, because, unlike the jaw-dropping things Donald says, the smear campaign against Hillary is mainstream Republican stuff. The less Republicans succeed in making Hillary look bad, the more dishonest and unprincipled they themselves seem.

And all of this is before we even get to the actual issues of policy on things like women's health and freedom to choose, green energy, tax breaks for Big Oil, labor unions, whether one fears that the government has too much control over corporations or that corporations have too much control over the government, whether the best way to help all of us is to help the poorest and weakest or the richest and most powerful, whether or not everyone should have access to affordable health care, whether too many tax breaks are available to corporate CEO's making 8 figures a year or more or to teachers and firemen making $50,000 a year or less, whether GLBT's don't have enough rights or whether they have too many, whether or not it's time to revoke the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, whether or not drilling for oil and gas in national parks would be a good idea, whether it should be easier or more difficult for people in the US to obtain guns and ammo, whether or not Obama is a secret Kenyan Muslim Communist, etc. On every single one of those topics, the majority of voters favor Democratic positions more than Republican ones.

Imagine if undecided voters actually educated themselves on things like candidates' positions on things like those, and voted accordingly... *sigh* That'd be sweet.

Straight Democratic ticket is what I recommend. On some ballets you can still choose a straight party ticket. On others you have to try a little harder to make sure you actually voted the way you wanted to. Resources like Vote 411 are helpful with that. Or ask your local Democratic Party HQ.

Republicans Aren't Much Different Than Trump

These same Republicans who are saying how they oppose Trump are the same ones who've been making it harder for ethnic minorities to vote, who oppose a woman's right to choose, who want to raise taxes on poor people and lower them on rich people, who oppose raising the minimum wage, and oppose full human rights for LGBT's, and take money from oil companies and deny that global warming is happening, etc.

Don't let them fool you. What they dislike about Trump is his complete lack of subtlety and tact about his plans to screw over everybody except rich white straight Republican men. The main difference between them and Trump, and also the reason that Trump did so much better in the GOP primaries than he's doing with the general voting public, is that they're a little bit sneakier about it.

Only a little bit.

Is Trump falling in the polls because of the Republicans distancing themselves from him, or are they distancing themselves from him because he's falling in the polls? I think it's the latter, and that the Republicans who distanced themselves from Trump earlier just had a hunch earlier that Trump was going to lose big.

Don't forget how much Obama's hands have been tied because he faces Republican majorities in Congress, and also among the country's Governors and city councils and so on. You like Hillary's policies better than Trump's? Then you need to vote for the rest of the Democrats too, not just for her, because all of us Democrats have pretty much all the same positions. (Bernie was never special and different. Never was, isn't now, never will be. Progressive politics are Democratic politics, and Bernie has only been a Democrat since 2015.)

You also need to vote more than just once every 4 years! Republicans are much better at getting to the polls in all of the elections in between the ones for President. That's why they have those majorities in Congress, and among the Governors and so forth. I'm starting to feel very optimistic about Hillary beating Trump, but Democrats need to win those other elections too. We need to get into the habit of showing up for every single election: primaries, Governors, mayors, judges, city councils, budget proposals. I know, it's a lot of work keeping track of all of those things. And all we would get for going to all that trouble is a completely different world.

I'm Glad Republicans Are Denouncing Trump

I'm glad that Republicans are denouncing Trump, because I want the biggest possible Democratic landslide in November. But the denunciations are hypocritical, because the only thing Trump is doing wrong from a Republican perspective is saying and doing things publicly which they say and do behind closed doors, away from live cameras and microphones -- usually, hello, 47 percent Mitt! Hey, by the way, when are we going to see your tax returns?

It's nice to see Republicans distancing themselves from Trump, but it's too bad that non-Republicans are giving them too much credit for doing so, saying what swell people they are. Do you see any Republicans anywhere denouncing the systematic Republican interference with the attempts of ethnic minorities to vote? Has there suddenly been a huge drop in Republican support for oil companies? No, because, of course, that would mean a big drop in financial support by oil companies for Republican political campaigns, and, just in case you hadn't noticed, Republican politicians are for sale.

Is there a big wave of Republicans suddenly acknowledging the findings of climatology and supporting wind, solar or other clean energy? Are Republicans suddenly in favor of affordable health care care for everyone? Women's right to choose? LGBT rights? Spending on education and infrastructure? No, no, no, no and no.

In fact, in a way it's not so great to see Republican politicians distancing themselves from Trump, because they're doing so out of a desire to be elected or re-elected in November, which doesn't fit in at all with the aforementioned Democratic landslide.

Don't suddenly forget who these people were their whole careers long, right up until they spoke out against Trump, and who they continue to be.

Stave Off Idiocracy, Call An idiot an Idiot Today!

I suppose nothing should surprise me which goes through the weak minds of people who think that it'd be a good idea to elect Donald Trump President of the United States, but the level of their idiocy has still managed to surprise me twice in the past couple of days, both times having to do with the intersection of politics and show biz.

First, fans of the movie Murrkin Sniper were outraged because the star of the movie, Bradley Cooper, attended the Democratic National Convention, in clear violation of the agreement he signed, never to attend any political function without the approval of Murrkin Sniper's director, Clint Eastwood --

Wait, wait. I forgot: Cooper never signed such an agreement. No actor has ever signed such an agreement upon making a movie, no author when publishing a book, no recording artist, ever, either (more about that shortly).

And even if Cooper did sign such an agreement, which apparently exists in the minds of some of his most moronic fans, not even Clint Eastwood, enormously overrated as an artist, and dumb enough to talk to an empty chair at a Republican National Convention for the length of an entire excruciating sketch, not even Mumblin' Clint is stupid enough to think he has any right to tell actors what their politics need to be just because they've slummed and worked with him.

Then I saw a headline about how Katy Perry's fans were furious with her for singing at the Democratic Convention. I stared at that headline and strained to imagine how Katy Perry's fans could think this was somehow there business. I've thought of her music, her videos, her general demeanor all as exuding messages like "You are amazing, everybody!" and "Sexuality is fun, hahaha!" rather than things like "Bow down in shame before Jesus!" Has Katy Perry recorded some gospel music? Yes, it turns out she has, but not since she was a teenager in the earliest months of the 21st century. But what is ticking these fans off is not what Katy did when she was a teenager, but before that: she was born to evangelical pastors. Because of how she was born, some of her Republicans fans are trying to tell her what's what. Those parents are still around, and they're still evangelicals and they're Republicans, but as far as I can tell they still get along with Katy and treat as if she has the right to live her own life.

Oh, but parents is one thing, fans is another.

I might not ever get famous before I die. I hope I do, and that I get a whole bunch of crazy fans I can insult in my daily life and in my work and in interviews, and take out restraining orders against. But just in case I die before I get fans who expect things from me, let me just say to each and every one of them right now, in a special individual posthumous message for each one: Fuck you, you psycho. Get your own damn life. This one was mine.

Of course, that's just me talking to imaginary posthumous fans. How Cooper or Perry react to their psycho fans -- is no more my business than what Cooper or Perry do is those fans' business.

But I feel like I do have more of a right, somewhat more, to say to the MSM: tell us all how stupid these people are. Say it, on the air and in print, don't wait until the commercial break to explode, if you do that you're wasting the best you have to give: the TRUTH. Tell us how stupid, how frigging INSANE they are. Tell them. Admit to yourselves, at long last, that that whole thing about "objective journalism" was a mirage and a mistake. Give the public the benefit of your knowledge before morons who think the politics of movie stars and recording artists is their business take over the whole damn country because you were too "objective" to warn anyone. When one side is normal, clear-thinking people and the other side is a bunch of idiots and sociopaths, and you struggle and strive to act as if both sides were the same, that's not objectivity, it's a strong right-wing bias.

Sing us out, Katy, Snoop!