Jackie Kennedy was probably smarter than JFK and if she wants to call it Camelot that’s fine. LBJ of all people had to defend civil rights (to his credit) yet realised the proxy war with Russia over Indochina was a no-win and left it to RFK. Nixon and Kissenger thought it was a win and everything was, as they’d say in the 60’s onwards, a “real drag” till about one month in 1990.
I had Trump’s inauguration speech on BBC and only looked up to see what Biden was doing when Trump trashed and said he’d roll back everything “the previous administration” had done and I’m pretty sure he dropped a couple “rigged elections” in there.
So if JFK was Camelot, we have Trump riding about with a horses head on a stick and Elon Musk banging two coconuts halves together.
I saw a meme on social media describing Trump’s governing process that seems pretty accurate:
1). Make stupid decision
2). Something bad happens
3). Tell the MAGA base the outcome is actually strong and beautiful and what everyone wanted
4). Reverse decision
5). Repeat step 1).
Something I put elsewhere … in the runup to the 2024 election:
Let’s say – God help us all – he does regain the White House. What kind of chaotic free-for-all awaits us – a Hellish nightmare of societal and governmental dysfunction, largely of his own making.
Who wants this??
Trump is the ultimate example of “firefighter as arsonist.” He’s burning it all down, promising that “only he can save us.” But he’s not the solution. He’s the problem.
Yes, very much so! The odd thing is this time, with the tariffs, he is telling people his previous work is horrible (USMCA) and Canada is ripping us off because of it. Of course, he is not directly saying the current trade deal is his.
NAFTA (north american free trade agreement) signed in 1994 so *Blame" CanadaClinton! really put the hurt on American Industry. You may have read how the tariffs on Mexico would be especially hurtful to the Auto Industry as parts go back and forth across the border lots. Wal-mart and cheap stuff from China also put a lot of hurt on American Labor.
I was referring to “Monty Python & The Holy Grail”, and somewhere in the movie there is a meta-reference to Arthur & Co not really riding horses and the guy banging coconuts as the diegetic foley sounds. In fact, Terry Gilliam first intended to use horses yet that was out of budget so hobby horses and coconuts it is.
I must have a vivid imagination yet the sticks would not work at all with this fashion. Graham Chapman as King Arthur was such a great actor that I can envision a hobby horse - if not the mighty steed he’d deserve for his quest.
“Emperor’s New Clothes” was brought up a lot in Trump I. Now he’s got Elon to bang the coconut halves together.
Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. both advance to the full Senate on a party-line vote.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Bad enough to confirm unqualified lightweights like Hegseth, but apparently the Republican senators are also going to push through the conspiracy theorists, kooks, and nutjobs.
Our country is turning into a kakistocracy before our eyes.
I’ve been trying to properly articulate how I feel about the last few weeks and its effect on my country and have settled on the following analogy.
Imagine that a dozen or so chimps hopped up on cocaine with explosive diarrhea have suddenly taken residency in you home, and they are running around randomly breaking stuff shitting on the carpet and flinging excrement, and I’m looking around mentally assessing the cost and effort of replacing the dishes and television and steam cleaning the carpet and just generally getting things back in order. And the it strikes me, that the monkey’s aren’t leaving they will still be here tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that. Even if they eventually do run out of energy and stop breaking things quite so fast, it will be four years minimum before I can get a cleaning crew in to start putting things together again, and thats assuming that my house hasn’t been totally destroyed, and in that time I will have to live continually surrounded by shit and broken furniture.
I have just resigned myself that I am now living in a war torn, unpredictable country.
The borough I live in is now tearing up all of the streets to replace water pipes so I just pretend my town has been bombed for now.
It’s a real mess.
So my metaphoric and real life environments are linked at the moment.
When I was young I thought RFK would have been a great president, though over the years I’ve gotten to be more cynical on what he’d really have done with Vietnam and if he’d have appointed a Drug Czar or been a Drug Czar and he’d still have J Edgar Hoover to deal with whom even Nixon dared not fire.
That his son became a conspiracy crackpot I thought was due to mental illness or too many drugs. Maybe it is. And Tulsi Gabbard has at least an honorable military record, and being pro-Russian, a “likely Russian asset” as Elizabeth Warren called her and Pro-Putin and even on Putin’s payroll doesn’t necessarily disqualify someone from serving. Well, maybe the payroll thing yet we won’t know how much payola other GOP congressman have been enriched by Putin and his friends for many years.
Chuck Schumer may have capitulated and said “these nominations aren’t worth fighting for” yet he, especially as the minority leader, better not leave Senator Shatz to fight back alone as the senator from New York helps drag the Dems further rightwards.
As the minority leader, even if Schumer has every Democrat and Independent voting against, that still requires a couple Republican defections to avoid a confirmation. Confirmations only require a simple majority of the Senate, and the Republicans already have that on their own.
I get that people hoped the Democrats had done better in the last elections, but elections have consequences. One of those consequences is that if you aren’t the majority party, your ability to get things done is necessarily limited.
The hope is not that Schumer pulls some kind of extra-legal shenanigans (if we’re already relying on extra-legal means, why rely on elected officials in the first place?) but that there are still enough sane Republicans to avoid the worst possibilities. I’m not optimistic on that score, but that’s where things stand, if we’re in the realm of staying within the bounds of the Constitution.
I’ll just say there’s a difference between being a good minority leader and a good opposition leader.
Chuck doesn’t impress me as either.
ETA: Maybe I ought to have “good” minority leader and “great” opposition leader.
I realise he doesn’t have all that much to fight with and if McConnell has said the filibuster will stay, even if he said the nuclear option would not be considered, I’d not believe him.
If you want the Democrats to pull a bunch of illegal nonsense to fight back, just say so.
I disagree with the notion that to save the Republic we have to destroy the principles on which it was built, but I’ll at least respect the viewpoint, if stated openly. Otherwise, it’s a bunch of whining directed not at the people who are actually aiding and abetting the shenanigans but at the ones who are doing what little they can do (within the bounds of law) to prevent it.
You fight a war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.
