Random Thoughts

• Fox News is not allowed on our house so I admit that I may be out of touch with what's happening in that alternate universe.  But all of a sudden I started seeing the term "Snowflake" appearing in my Facebook feed from some conservative friends (yes I have a few).  Well, I eventually was able to read between the lines and discern the definition.  Snowflake: the opposite of Fascist.
• I don't know what on earth conservatives would do without the Hollywood/entertainment industry to serve as its last resort deflection tool.  "Hey, Trump and the Repubs just doomed our planet!".  "But yeah, what about that Kathy Griffin.  Isn't she horrible?"  No matter what the topic, all they have to do is blame it all on Hollywood. Sheesh.
• Paul Ryan tweeted this recently: "BREAKING NEWS → Next week, the House will vote to dismantle #DoddFrank. The era of taxpayer bailouts and #TooBigToFail is over."  Now read this and tell me how much better things will be if only we can get rid of Donald Trump.  Be careful what you wish for: things could get worse.

Four Months of Trump

Well, we've lived through four months of the Trump presidency.  The crazy thing is that there really haven't been many surprises, except perhaps that his (imagined) populism turned out to be a total scam job.  That has been surprising to some but not so much to me.  Donald Trump is first and foremost from and of the 1%, so for me it would have been more surprising if he had turned out to really mean it.

On a personal level, President Trump is pretty awful. It's possible that the fifty-year-old Donald Trump was more personable and capable of speaking in complete sentences (albeit still a jerk).  But the seventy-year-old Trump is is a thin-skinned and weak-kneed whiner, and obviously in possession of some sort of personality disorder.  The surprising thing to me is how many people still mistake bluster for strength, whether it's from Dick Cheney, John Bolton, or Donald Trump.

But, having said that, it is a mistake for progressives to dwell so much on the personal side of all this.  The problem we face--in terms of policy and politics--is a Republican problem (coupled with a tendency of too many Democrats to tack to the neo-liberal center and right).  If President Trump was removed from office tomorrow, the policy fights we face would be the same, possible worse.  A President Pence, working with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would be more dangerous than what we have now.  The Republican Party agenda's on immigration, health care, income distribution, labor, race, war and peace, education, and..the list is endless...would be the same no matter which of the scary list of Republicans were president. Maybe worse.  Actually, replacing Trump with Pence would be a gift to conservatives, one we shouldn't give them.

Instead, we should make the Republicans live with Trump, leveraging his unpopularity in order oppose everything.  Focus on the policy and the agenda, not on the man so much.  Slow down the agenda wherever possible and work for 2018 with a 50-state strategy.

A Few Things That Popped into My Mind Today

• I don't want to hear about the US having the highest (marginal) corporate tax rate compared to Europe unless we also talk about those countries having universal health care and a far superior safety net. I'm ready....
• I have been reading The Nation for about 50 years I think.  During the eight years of the Obama administration, I would say that they were probably about 50/50 in terms of their articles being supportive or critical of President Obama and his policies. What strikes me--admittedly anecdotally--about Trump supporters is that there seems to be nothing he can do that will draw even a hint of criticism from those supporters.
• I was finally able to finish Matt Taibbi's The Divide.  It was very hard to get through, making me extremely sad for my country and angry at the unpunished criminal behavior of America's entire financial services industry.
• I love curling!
• I grew up in Wisconsin during the Lombardi years and was a crazy Packer fan like everyone else.  Today I am amazed at how uninterested I am in football.
• I am also amazed at how so many people are able to translate Trump's thin-skinned whining into strength.

Headline of the Day

Headline from this article on Vox.com:

"If you're a millionaire, the AHCA gives you $50K. If you're poor, it costs you $1,420."

A Brief Encyclopedia for the Right

Offering a quick reference encyclopedia of, by, and about the Political and Religious Right.  The first several entries, in random order:

• Irrelevance:  Dinesh D'Souza
• Pharisee:  Matt Walsh (see also Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, et al)
• Overrated:  Paul Ryan
• Con Man: Paul Ryan
• Holy Trinity: (a) for Christians: Father, Son, Holy Spirit (b) for the Religious Right: Second Amendment, American Exceptionalism, Supply-Side Economics
• Affordable Care Act: Slavery
• Slaves: Immigrants
• Hoax:  Science
• Science:  Creationism
• Death Panel: The 2017 version of the House of Representatives
• Air Quotes:  Apparently, something that should be put around almost everything Donald Trump says.

Goobledygook

On Twitter today, Ezra Klein (whom I follow) tweeted this article from Vox.com.  It is rather lengthy, and I guess its purpose is to say that leftist politics are worthless for the defeat of Trumpism. The problem is, after slogging through the article, I am not left with any indication as to what exactly is worth doing. Perhaps it's because there are too many passages like this one:

"This isn’t to say that there aren’t drawbacks to European welfare states. There’s real evidence that excessive regulation can stymie innovation and make it harder to start new firms, and that some welfare state labor protections (like the notorious French laws limiting corporations’ ability to fire employees) can make doing business maddeningly difficult."

This is the kind of meaningless blah-blah you expect to hear on CNBC's Squawk Box. Let's see..."real evidence"?..."excessive regulation"?..."innovation"?( ah, yes, one can always pull out the "stymie innovation" card to justify almost any point)..."maddeningly difficult"?  There is so much meaningless fluff packed onto this one paragraph that it's hard to take the whole thing seriously.

If the purpose of this piece is to convince progressives that political success is only to be achieved through more tacking to the right (i.e., the political equivalent of "we had to burn the village to save it"), then the author is wasting my time. I will trust The Nation, Jacobin, and other outlets to discuss strategies that are actually worth pursuing.

Ain't Freedom Great?

One prominent Republican--now a member of President Trump's Cabinet--said that the Affordable Care Act was the worst thing since slavery.  (If this is the case then I wonder why it wasn't repealed outright on January 21st ?!?)

From what I can tell, the replacement plan of the Repubs has done away with this slavery in a way that is entirely worthy of the GOP scam artists.  You don't like the enslavement of your ACA subsidy?  Well, good news!  Now you can try to buy health insurance with a tax credit that is entirely inadequate.  And some of you will be given the ultimate freedom, since you probably won't be able to afford health insurance at all and you will be totally free of that enslavement.

All this so they can give a tax cut to the rich, who need it so badly.  Ain't freedom a wonderful thing?  Thank you, Paul Ryan.  You make Ayn Rand so proud.