Americans Today...

Greg Gianforte, Montana's newly elected Republican Representative

A day or so after Montana's sole House seat candidate, Greg Gianforte, physically assaulted a journalist for asking an important question, he became the next Republican Representative from Montana.  Of course, 2/3rds of the ballots had already been cast and couldn't be changed, but that 1/3rd left?  Makes ya' wonder about the people of Montana... well, that's not fair... It makes you wonder about Americans.  Trump won Montana with almost 56% of the vote, well above the national average, but demographically very similar to the rest of rural America, and Montana is very rural - and always controlled by a few powerful resource interests, two essentials for GOP victories, regardless of the species running.

What's happened to us?  We were never the brightest people, Americans.  "The Love Boat," anyone?  But watch a Japanese cartoon for a few minutes and you'll feel much better about yourself.  At least we're sane... but are we anymore?  It would have been unthinkable to me, years ago, cruising down the Jersey Turnpike, listening to Howard Stern and Donald Trump goof around on K-Rock, that one day Howard Stern would be President, and as for Trump, it would have been just acid-trip crazy.

When the movie "Idiocracy" came out, I thought it was kinda clever.  I wasn't surprised that it became kind of the cult classic, as camp.  The way it was made, it was hard to take seriously in any way.  It was no 'Dr. Strangelove' or 'Clockwork Orange,' or even the rather cheesy 'Soylent Green.'  But 'Idiocracy' was more prescient than any of them.  Eventually, we are going to become so stupid, we're simply going to collapse from the weight of the dead brain matter.  If all the great empires eventually die of sin, our fatal sin will be Willful Ignorance.

Here's a story from the WAPO based on a survey from last December.  It's essentially all about Willful Ignorance, tribal identity manifested as ridiculous beliefs.

A boss of mine a few years ago opened a conversation with me by asking, "What church do you go to?"  He assumed I must be a church-going kinda guy because of my personality (in person, I'm very outgoing, warm, and strongly and actively ethical).  I told him, "I don't go to church. I'm not religious."  He said, "Well, I'm not really 'religious' either, but I believe in God," or to that effect - it's a common response to that answer, and sure enough he does attend a non-denominational evangelical, kinda fundy, Christian church and takes his faith very seriously.  Nice guy.  Anyway, I said, "I don't believe anything.  Either I know or I don't.  I'm a big fan of Jesus, but I do not believe in miracles and magic."  And that's exactly how I phrased it.  And he left it at that.

I think the problem we're having these days is a deep insecurity about about the scope and complexity of the modern, rapidly changing, world around us.  So, we pull the blanket up over our heads and hope the scary monster doesn't see us, or goes away.  This is easily on display when you look at the link from WAPO above.  It's the Bogeyman Syndrome.  We're easily distracted by sensationalist Bogeyman stories that keep our attentions away from the serious and troubling real problems we must face.  We need to "man-up" and deal with these issues, but given what many Americans seem to think "being a man" is, I don't think we can.  I think we will become an Idiocracy, if we're not already there.

JMJ

The GOP Cheats to Win Again!

The 2020 Census!

So, while we've been all incessantly distracted by James Comey's firing, meanwhile...

Given the sudden canning of FBI head James Comey on Tuesday, don’t feel bad if you didn’t hear that US Census Bureau director John H. Thompson announced his resignation the same day.

__________

The census plays an essential role in a fair and functional democracy by making sure communities get the right number of representatives in government — and that government builds schools and roads in the right places. The survey’s current woes are an entirely predictable, and predicted, result of congressional shortsightedness. Congress told the bureau it must spend no more on the 2020 operation than it spent in 2010 — $12.5 billion. With a bigger population to count, a better compensated workforce to pay and an outmoded pen-and-paper operation to reinvent, any director would have struggled with that mandate. It does not help that, so far this cycle, Congress has been funding the survey at historic lows.

__________

Ken Prewitt, who led the agency from 1998 to 2001, worries that a long delay in naming a well-qualified replacement for Thompson could be the first step of a long, steep decline in the quality of the federal statistic system, which spans 13 agencies. “That system is fragile, and it wouldn’t take much to damage it severely,” says Prewitt, a professor of social affairs at Columbia University. “My real fear is that they don’t care enough to do a good job with the 2020 census. And then after doing a bad job, they decide to let the private sector take over.”

Get ready folks.  Expect a poorly run census, and yet another round of GOP Gerrymandering to follow unless we as a people wake up and realize what's happening here.  The GOP is already over-represented, thanks to geography and the nature of the Senate - and gerrymandering.  This could be their last chance to retain their unbalance of power before the demographics simply won't allow it anymore.  Given the positions of the GOP, it is clear they have no moral quandary cheating to get what they want.

Three things to do...

Make sure you and everyone you know are counted in the 2020 census.

Tell your representatives and senators that you demand a quality census that counts everyone.

Vote for people of good moral character, whatever their party.  (If you can find a Republican that can be described as such, and you prefer Republicans, then good for you!  But please don't let your morality take a backseat to your partisanship).

JMJ

Trump Said Something True

(Bernie Sander's reaction to Donald Trump praising Australia's healthcare system)

It is really funny.  This is the kind of funny conservatives have a hard time getting, but it is really funny.  Yesterday, the President was doing the obligatory quick, post-meet-and-greet press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and he says to the PM, "I shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia because you have better health care than we do."

Here's the simple wiki on the subject of Healthcare in Australia.  As you can see, they have universal healthcare, with most of the funding, about two-thirds, from their version of Medicare, or as they call it, Medicare.  It's a mixed system, public and private, but the tax scheme for the Medicare is pretty much of the opposite of what we do.  Instead of capping the payroll tax for Medicare so you only pay on your first $127,000 of income, in Australia the tax stays the same, and can rise with higher income, with a conditional 1-1.5% penalty added.  This is actually to encourage use of the private system by the wealthy.  If they use the private system, they don't have to pay the extra.   If you are making a lot of money, you could imagine that 1-1.5% being higher than what you'd pay for private insurance, but you'd have to be really raking it in, and here in America, you'd have to be well up in the six-digits, at least.

Here's the thing...

Australia's healthcare system, when it comes to costs, is far more efficient than ours.  They spend, per capita, almost half what we do.

The WHO ranking, which has really only to do with outcomes, puts Australia a little ahead of us, but in pretty much every category, they have it better than us.

The Australian government, the taxpayers, spend about the same as we do on healthcare, but it covers 2/3rds of all costs, the rest is private insurance and out-of-pocket.  We spend a fortune on private insurance, but our government only covers 45% of all costs, and that's only because getting old is expensive, and we only universally cover people 65 and over.  By covering everyone, you can see the effect of the offset on the higher costs for the elderly in those numbers.

So, we spend double what Australians spend, we live shorter lives, we die unnecessarily at twice the rate, even our infant mortality is higher, therefore I can honestly and with humility admit Trump said something true.

JMJ

Crazy Overload

I haven't posted in quite a few days as of late.  It seems you can't go an hour without some crazy thing happening around us.  The Russia-Trump campaign thing.  The MOAB.  That "Crazy Fat Kid" (gotta love McCain!).  Ben Carson getting stuck in a public housing elevator.  Anti-government ideologues destroying the EPA, the DOE, the USDE, the FCC...  It's just been incessant.  Where does one even begin?

Well, for starters, when the President said he was going to "Make America Great Again," for the people he's put in charge of our federal agencies, it seems like a return to the "Good Old Days" as described in the Weird Al tune, "torturing rats with a hacksaw and pulling the wings off of flies."

Candice Jackson, now acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, is the latest exemplar here.  This is woman who believes she suffered discrimination for being white (though shows no evidence of suffering anything), has neither a civil rights nor education background, and is apparently no fan of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or public, compulsory education, or Title IX (though unlike Betsy DeVos, she actually may know something about it).

Ajit Pai, the Chair of the FCC, is meanwhile trying to destroy Net Neutrality.  Trump voters are not going to like where this goes.  The "Good Old Days" in this case would be like the early 90's, when downloading a single picture was an opportunity to do the dishes and laundry, and maybe trim the hedges.

And then there's Richard Cordray, who now runs the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, who together with the House Financial Services Committee Chair, Jeb Hensarling, (R-His Satanic Majesty's Toilet), are working to...

"...(weaken) the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by stripping the agency of its independence and severely limiting its ability to go after corporations."

"...convert the CFPB into an executive agency with a director who can be removed by the president at will."

"...scale back the agency's enforcement powers and prevent the agency from publishing its consumer complaint database..."

With so much happening all at the same time, it's hard to see the action in the windy forest.  But our education, information, and the safety of your finances are all at high risk right now.  This is not going to "Make America Great Again, " unless by "Great" you mean "Like Putin's Russia, but with Worse Education."  

Please, whatever your political persuasion, whatever your religion, philosophy, ideology, or any other disposition, please, please study up on these issues and let your congress critters know that making America like Russia is NOT what what any of us had in mind!

JMJ

Snowflakes on the GOP

I love snowflakes.  I know for those of you up North, you're glad to see April and the end of the snow (?), and to be honest, I don't miss winter very much at all when I reminisce about the North, but I do miss the snow sometimes.  Each little crystal it's own unique creation.  You can see why people believe in God when you behold such simple yet complex, natural yet symmetrical beauty, as if each one was designed by an angel with the hope of momentarily pleasing just any one of God's little creatures.

ThinkProgress did a nice piece this past January (when there was lots of snow to go around) on the recent history of Snowflake as a pejorative in our cultural lexicon...

As insults go, it’s hard to think of one that so clearly conveys so many flaws at once: Fragility and self-importance, weakness and self-delusion.

Its power, (author, Jonathan) Green said, comes largely from that duality. Snowflake “works in two ways. It melts under the heat, it has no backbone, no spine, no guts, no spirit, anything. It just fades away as soon as people are nasty to it. And the other side is the special side of it. Every little snowflake is different and has its own identity.”

And think of what happens to a snowflake once you get your hands on it. It dissolves right in your palm.

It used to be that "snowflake" referred to someone who was psychologically weak, too sheltered, etc.  Now it refers to anyone on the Left of the political spectrum who dares remark on anything they don't like, regardless of the merits.  Sure, sometimes, on a few college campuses here and there, you can find anecdotes of hypersensitive kids guided by hypersensitive grown-ups overreacting to inferred slights and so forth.  But that's the thing about anecdotes, you can always find one to fit your needs...

If you knew me personally, you wouldn't ever call me a a "snowflake," unless you enjoy goblin-like verbal torment or perhaps a punch in the face.  But I'm on the Left.  Hell, I'm so Left I have to go Left three times to make a Right!  Some years ago, at lunch, at work, I wrote a parody of Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit From St. Nicolas" otherwise known as "Twas The Night Before Christmas."  In my version, Santa loses it, goes on a killing spree, and tells everyone to go fuck themselves.  And I emailed it around the office and to some friends and business connections.  Most everyone thought it was hilarious.  But one of my co-workers, a Right-wing religious sort, complained about the parody to HR, and I got the obligatory talk and write-up.  Now, this was an office full of grown-up New Yorkers and Jerseyites, and personnel from around the world, and the humor that flowed through our desktops was often very rambunctious and "inappropriate," NSFW as they say today.  Let me put it this way, NEVER open an email attachment from your Italian office branch without making sure no uptight people are standing nearby!  Italians have no sense of NSFW.  But this coworker, who erstwhile was a pretty close work-friend, was so perturbed by this slight on her sensibilities, she actually got me in some trouble over it!  She also was a Cuban refugee from the really bad post-revolution days who's family lost everything, family members and friends killed, her husband suffered from a terrible affliction that took constant care... Is she a "snowflake?"

I hear right-wingers and Republicans complain incessantly about everything and everyone that bothers them all the time.  Bill O'Reilly, with Judge (omg, could you imagine?) Jeanine Pirro, has a segment on his show called "Outrage of the Week."  here are a couple samples of the "outrages"...

Judge Jeanine Pirro entered the No Spin Zone with more on the decision by Nordstrom to stop carrying Ivanka Trump's signature line of clothing. "Nordstrom is responding to demands of a group on social media that hates the Trumps," she theorized. "The brand was selling very well for many years and then all of a sudden it's going down and other companies are joining Nordstrom. They are caving to the far left and Nordstrom acted at their peril. The Factor agreed, saying, "Many Trump supporters are not going to Nordstrom and this is not going to help them."

Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro joined The Factor and took aim at left-wing entertainers who denounced Donald Trump at last Saturday's march in Washington. "I was at the Women's March," she said, "and I heard the kind of destructive and divisive language that we can't even repeat on television. This is about the disintegration of respect for the First Family, with the First Lady being called ignorant and President Trump being compared to Hitler and the devil. We have a left that is so upset that they lost the election and can't get over it." The Factor surmised, "They play to the crowd and to each other in the hope of being accepted."

Is Jeanine Pirro a "snowflake?"  I doubt she ever complained about the way Obama was regularly portrayed by the Right, and I recall lots of signs depicting Obama with a 'Hitler-mustache.'  Does anyone remember the (in)famous "dining-room table" incident?  You can say what you like about Barney Frank, but he's no "snowflake."

So, what is with this "snowflake" stuff?  Well folks, it's pretty simple.  For those of us who went to school, public or private, as opposed to the home-schooled (snowflakes?), we all remember how kids taunt and verbally poke at one another.  Bullies, usually deeply insecure sorts, used epithets like "snowflake" (pussy, wussy, faggot...) to emasculate their target.  Peers would pressure one another into getting in trouble, "Aw, c'mon Billy, don't be such a ______ (fill in the blank), let's go egg the police station!"  (I have to admit, I fell into that latter group, literally).  In this past election we saw candidates referencing hand sizes and penis sizes in the Republican primaries.  GOP candidates tumbling over one another to assert how "strong" they would be on the GWOT, or immigration, or crime, or what have you.  The Republican Party is the Insecure White Man's Party now, and either snowflakes or downright sociopaths, or both, are most every one of their pundits and elected officials.  "Snowflake" is today's popular taunt these insecure punks need to sate their insecure male base.

I like snowflakes.  They are unique and beautiful, fragile and momentary, creations of nature.  So, if you're a liberal, like me, and someone calls you a "snowflake," say, "Thank you!  I love snowflakes!  And you have a small penis!"

JMJ

MAKING AMERICA GRATE AGAIN

Today, I visited the blog of William Briggs, author of the new "Uncertainty: The Soul of Modeling, Probability, & Statistics," and climate change skeptic with the perspective of a statistician/antiphilosopher.  Interesting fellow, and if you enjoy heady Thomist theology, or just want to debate climate change, or a priore "evidence," his is the blog for that.

Today, he took on the sound of the "music" we hear around us in the public sphere these days, which he amusingly described:

Ever been to one of those antique engine shows? Or maybe heard a factory pressing widgets. Chickatidah-chickatidah-chickatidah or maybe Eree-eee-kurchunk-chunk-chunk-clink, Eree-eee-kurchunk-chunk-chunk-clink. Those of monotonous droning machines is what we’re after.

Keep that sound going in your head and add to it to the output of a soft jazz synthesizer programmed by a community college Computers-For-Dummies student after a long night bingeing on cold General Tso’s chicken and warm beer.

Have it? Let it ooze through your mind a little. Now infect the whole shebang with the ebola virus, let it bleed and fester a while, then kick it down a hill and into traffic on a busy Los Angeles freeway.

He's not addressing the substance of the music, per se, but as he points out...

The music was full of echos, and occasional voices were heard in the distance, but they weren’t plain voices. They were filtered, warbling, ever fading, with indistinguishable words;

If you can't ascertain the substance, the point is moot.  It's already substanceless.  But, as Briggs often does, he got me thinking.  I know that the sound of popular music these days has it's detractors, with a spectrum of critiques.  There is much to be said on the subject of the sound, but any sound can be music, and be pleasing to the ear, if pared with a moving message or imagery that fits that sound.  So, what about the substance of today's music?  Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" may be really a loud heavy metal song, but the lyrics and message are clear, and the aggressive sound pares well with the subject matter.  Grand Master Flash's "The Message" may sound primitive and clunky, but the message is very clear and important, and again, the sound pares well with it.   Both songs were recorded in 1982, 35 years ago.

Here's the current Billboard Top 100.  If you can stand it, try listening for a minute to any of the songs.  Take the current top single, Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You."  It's cute.  The kind of thing you'd expect a love-lorn teenager to appreciate and forget about in week.  But here's the thing... keep going through the list, just randomly pick songs and plug them into YouTube and listen.  Notice something?  It's ALL like something only a love-lorn teenager would enjoy and forget about in a week.  You would be hard-pressed to find one or two songs on that ENTIRE list of 100 SONGS that offer anything of any deeper artistic value whatsoever.

Go through the Country, Rock, even the Christian charts.  Notice something?  It's most ALL just silly nonsense for kids.  Barely a worthwhile listen in ALL those HUNDREDS of songs.  Now, go to the Billboard Charts Archive.  Take a little trip back in time and look at the top singles throughout the years.  Notice something?  The artistic value of the songs compared to today?  Sure, there are plenty of silly teenager ditties, as usual, but in 1968 we had "Mrs. Robinson" and "Hey Jude."  In 1974 we have "Cat's in the Cradle" and "Time in a Bottle."  By the mid-1980's?  It looks just like today.  You would be very hard-pressed to find songs of the intellectual, spiritual, cultural value of "The Boxer" or "American Pie" from the mid-80's on.  If music taste is a cultural indicator you like, we haven't matured a day over the course of two generations.

Take television or the movies.  Sure, there are some quality programs and movies out there.  But think about this - when's the last time you saw a movie that moved you like "Ordinary People," or bared the tragic-comedy of the powers that be in "Dr. Strangelove," or made serious critique of laizzez faire capitalism like "The Grapes of Wrath?"  Can you compare any television show on today with "All in the Family" or "M.A.S.H.?"  And again, sure, there was plenty of crap back then too, but yet somehow, with far fewer choices and venues, there was so much more culturally valuable movies and television then. 

There's nothing particularly new about marketing crap.  In the pop culture biz the target audience has long been young people.  They consume more pop culture than older people, and they buy more stuff that is advertised with it.  It's a business, after all.  But today we have "niche-marketing," programming targeted for most every demographic you can describe, yet we still can't find an "All in the Family" or a "M.A.S.H." in any of it.  It's as if the demographic, "intelligent," is assumed to no longer exist.  But again, we're talking about a business - and intelligent, cultured consumers don't buy crap.  It's not that they don't exist.  It's just that they aren't consuming the popular culture products.

One of the few bastions of quality programming of the arts, news and educational programming is public broadcasting, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which brings us PBS, NPR, PRI, etc.  The highest quality news show on television?  The NewsHour on PBS.  The best science-news show?  "Science Friday" on NPR.  The best science show?  NOVA.  The best in-depth news studies?  Frontline.  The best music and arts show?  Masterpiece Theater.  The best young-children's educational programming?  Sesame Street.  Teaching children to read?  Reading Rainbow.  New and controversial subject matter in a thoughtful and digestible form?  Independent Lens.  Nature?  NATURE.  The best children's educational programming, higher arts and culture, documentaries, foreign culture, science, stage, you name it, it comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ("and the support of viewers like you").  Because the audience for PBS and NPR and such are by definition not teenagerish silly pop consumers, it requires a public investment to make them so.  And it costs $1.35 a year of your per capita federal taxes.  Without it?  We'd be an even dumber society.  There would be even less substance.

Critics of the CPB make arguments ranging from my good pal FreeThinke's position that we should be wary of government-funded arts and news, to those who flatly assert, "Well, if there's a market for it, it will come."  To wit I say, "If there was a market for quality private schools for poor children, we'd have it already."  (The irony of demanding tax payer money for private schools is lost on the "School Choice" movement.)  Just because something isn't a viable private market endeavor, does not mean that it has no value.  And just because something sells, that doesn't mean it is substantive, meaningful, educational, or spiritual, that it is valuable beyond a week for a love-lorn teenager.  President Donald Trump, though, is apparently one the latter type of CPB's critics.  "Sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise!"

So now, the President wants to eliminate funding for the CPB.  How's that for irony?  We can't force people to watch PBS or listen to NPR, but at least it's out there.  At least, when you're flipping the dial, you can come across something that can teach you, elevate you, broaden your horizons, something that has real substance and life-long value.  It may not be reaching the audience it once did, what with all this niche-marketing and the internet, but I would suggest the CPB get more funding, advertise it's presence a lot more, get the word out that it is out there, and explain that it is something we desperately need as a culture.  We are not going to have new, quality, substantive arts if the people are not exposed to anything but the same substance of the past or no substance at all.  And we're going to dumb down our society even more without it.  Think about this - Donald Trump is now the President of the United States.  What about that suggests to you we do not desperately, more than ever, need the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?

JMJ

Insecurity and Distraction

A couple days ago, Sean Spicer, our WH Press Secretary, was confronted in an Apple store by an admittedly "impolite" critic of the President, a young woman of Indian descent, born here, no discernible accent, seems like her heart's in the right place, who asked him some annoying and rude questions, saying Trump is a "fascist" and so forth, and at one point Sean Spicer said this:  "It's such a great country that allows you to be here."

Now, I understand how annoying it can be to visit one of those telecom stores.  My wife and I have a scheme for dealing with it.  We play sane shopper/insane shopper.  They can either deal with her quickly and give us the best deal they have, or, I act like a silly lunatic in the store, creating distraction and chaos, and getting the other customers to join in, without actually bothering anyone, just creating General Disarray, but forcing the salesperson to hurry up and get us the hell out of there.  Learned it from my Dad.  I am fun to shop with.

So, I can imagine being confronted in one of these stores, and getting a little flustered with the lady asking the rather crude, lumpy questions about Russia and Treason and Fascism, but Spicer's response was very telling...

Yesterday, Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa long known being a One-Trick-Pony (immigrant-bashing), tweeted, "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."  And he doubled down... 

And King himself refused to back away from the tweet. On CNN Monday morning, King said, "I meant exactly what I said," and that he'd "like to see an America that's just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective."

There have been large shifts in the demographics of the world over the past couple-thousand years.  We are still in the midst of this shifting.  The US is a very recent product of this shifting.  We are a country made up mostly of immigrants.  During certain periods in our history, we had unprecedentedly high levels of upward mobility, and most always more than the rest of the world.  We absorbed new, usually rather poor, immigrants as the last wave moved up.  Now that upward mobility is down, below that of Europe, irony, the Right blames the immigrants and minorities, irony of ironies, for that lack of upward mobility.  In case you don't know, immigrants and minorities, pretty much by definition, only hold so much power.  They are not politically capable of holding back those above the mobility-ladder from them, and it is not in their interest to hold down themselves.

The Grown-Up Question raised here should be, "How do we increase upward mobility?"

Well, here's how not to do it...

The Congressional Budget Office projects that 14 million people will lose coverage by 2018 under the Republican ObamaCare replacement bill.

“I’ve been telling you why don’t we wait, just let (Obamacare) implode and let’s not take the blame,” Trump said to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price,... “I’ve been telling you that as an option. It’s not an option I like, frankly, but it’s certainly an option.”

..both the new president and some of his closest allies have expressed both a strong opposition to net neutrality and a profound ignorance of what the concept actually means.

 America's infrastructure is close to failing.

And it just goes on...

You can blame immigrants and minorities if you like, but if you don't want to have the babies, and you don't want to build the roads, and you don't care if you can get proper health care, maybe you should just get the fuck out of the way and let someone "else's" BABY take care of things.

JMJ 

Promises, Promises...

I always really hated this song... so, listen to it, LISTEN TO IT AND SUFFER LIKE WE ALL HAD TO IN THE EIGHTIES!!!

So, back to Crazy Promises...

Crazy Promise #3:  Banning the Muslim Immigrants

On Dec 7, 2015, the anniversary of the "day which will live in infamy," then-candidate Donald Trump and his team pronounced a demand that was essentially a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, much to the delight of the his devotees and right-wing pundits, without much of a further thought on the subject, let alone that little anniversary thing, beyond digging the hole deeper.

By May of the following year, it was "merely an idea, not a proposal."

So then, on Jan 27 of this year, President Donald "Wow, didja' ever imagine that?" Trump signed Executive Order 13769, banning travel from seven mostly poor, troubled, war-torn (including war-torn by us!) and mostly Muslim countries.  It was done with people banned already in flight to the US.  Banned in mid-air.  The Trump people said it was intentionally done as such - wouldn't want to give a heads-up to the ter'ists, DUH!  Not that many ter'ists ever came here from any of those countries, as opposed to from say, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, or any of the more developed and "friendly" (with friends like that...) nations we have over there.  It included people who had risked theirs and their families lives to collaborate with the US on our completely failed "Mission Accomplished" in the Middle East.  Lawsuits followed quickly, Trump had to fire the acting-AG and others as they couldn't comply on ethical and legal grounds, and the courts found the ban violated the Establishment Clause, harmed the States, and had to be re-written in a competent and Constitutional way.

So, today, March 6th, we have a new Executive Order.  It's certainly more polished than the Cuneiform  product we got last time, so we'll see how it stands up.  But it's the same idea.

It doesn't "ban all Muslims," folks.  Just one's from some really poor, screwed-up places.  At least he had the decency to remove Iraqis from the list.  That was just horrible on soooo many levels.  But the name of the order, "PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES," is a crazy promise that is not here kept.  Expect the courts to be swept into this again shortly.

JMJ

Crazy Promises...

Donald Trump took Crazy Promises to a whole new level this past campaign season, but it's not like the GOP hasn't been playing the same game a long time now.  Well, now the GOP - and Trump is ostensibly one of them now - has majority control of the White House, Congress, the courts, and 2/3rds of the state governments.  So, what about all those Crazy Promises?

Crazy Promise #1:  The Wall

The other day, a Mexican politician climbed a section of wall that was already built and sat there, to prove a point.

“I was able to scale it, climb it, and sit myself right here,” (Mexican congressman) Guerra said in a video. “It would be simple for me to jump into the United States, which shows that it is unnecessary and totally absurd to build a wall.”

Tangentially, Trump also realized that there's no way we're getting rid of millions of people, most of whom have been here for a long time now, and it's time to start talking at least 'legal status,' if not citizenship.  Conservatives and are not happy with this.

The Wall itself is estimated at anywhere from 12-22 billion dollars, of which DHS has identified 20 million dollars so far to put toward it.  To pay for it, Trump floated a 20% tax on imports from Mexico, which lasted about a day, and then maybe just on exports, no, and then morphed into this BAT (border-adjusted tax) idea, which actually may be a very good way, in general, to compete with countries that rely heavily on VAT taxes (value-added taxes which, in a practical sense, often work the same way) instead of income taxes.  Of course, most all those countries also have universal healthcare too, so employers there still have a big edge.  Either way, Mexico will not be paying for this silly Wall - you will.

Crazy Promise #2:  Repeal Obamacare

During President Obama's terms, the Republicans in the House voted to repeal Obamacare 67 times.  They haven't voted on it since Trump's swearing-in.  Say's John Boehner (who shortly after a few rods with the Pope, quit his job), “They’ll fix Obamacare, and I shouldn’t have called it repeal and replace because that’s not what’s going to happen. They’re basically going to fix the flaws and put a more conservative box around it.”

Let's keep to these two for now.  Any more, and we'll have more comments than I could possibly address!

JMJ

While You Were Distracted...

So, while we were all unpleasantly distracted...

From CNET: FCC chips away at net neutrality rules

This under-the-radar issue IS going to affect all of us.   Net Neutrality, basically, treats ISPs (internet service providers like cable and satellite and phone companies) as utilities.  After all, those towers, lines, satellites and such are utilizing our public transportation systems and airspace to provide the signals we use, they get plenty of money from us to maintain that system, and they've already got a dependent market often with very few, if any, choices.  Now, they want to control the flow of particular information.  When you consider just a few huge corporations already control most of the media access, from radio to TV to movies to ISPs, this is a recipe for complete corporate control of information.  Who thinks that's a good idea?

From CommonDreams: Trump's FCC Blocks ISPs from Giving Low-Income Families Web Access

This one is another attack as above.  In the "Information Age," in a time of economic stagnation in the working class, helping the poor get broadband was a wonderful idea, and very inexpensive.  But hey, they don't consume much!  They're poor, after all.  So, fuck them, right?  I say fuck you, Trump's FCC.

From TheIntercept: Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest

This is just ridiculous.  From the article: "In North Dakota, for instance, Republicans introduced a bill last week that would allow motorists to run over and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as a driver does so accidentally. ...Although the bill ostensibly requires drivers to have acted “negligently” or accidentally in killing a protestor, the bill’s co-sponsor, Republican state Rep. Keith Kempenich, has said that some accidents might occur if motorists “punched the accelerator rather than the brakes,” according to the Bismarck Tribune."  I wonder what would happen if a "Stand Your Ground" defense came up against the "Run Over a Protester by Accident" defense (aside from the bloody mess)?

From The Hill: Leaked ObamaCare bill would defund Planned Parenthood

Ah, good ol' Planned Parenthood, the bane of people who've never used Planned Parenthood or have any substantive reason to even have an opinion about it.  Well, about 1 in 5 women do, and most not for abortion, but for a wide variety of health and personal reasons.  It's a necessary thing, PP, and if we harm it, we're harming the country.  This is placing ideological zealotry ahead of the real world health needs of the people.  It's bad enough we're the only developed nation on the planet without universal healthcare, but here comes worse!

From the NYT: President Trump Takes Aim at the Environment
  

This one is heartbreaking.  The coal industry has been in decline for years, as new technology has made natural gas cheaper and cleaner (well, it was always cleaner, as the whole notion of "Clean Coal" is a myth).  But Trump promised all those poor Appalachian unemployed coal miners a return to the days of King Coal, and this will do nothing to address their situation, but rather just make it easier to ruin even more of their land and water.
  

From Stars and Stripes: Shulkin promises ‘major changes’ at Veterans Affairs

If anyone thinks privatization of the VA is a good idea, and let's not pretend this is not what this is about, here are some thoughts for you: These vets put up their LIVES for this country, US, and WE have to take care of them.  It is OUR responsibility.  If we want to make the VA better, well, just like everything else, WE have to spend the money and do the work to make it so.  ALL of that money should be going to THEIR care, NOT the profits of some corporation.

This goes on, from privatizing PBS and ending the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, because, as we all know, Americans are already so very cultured, to an infrastructure plan that has pretty much nothing to do with our nation's crumbling and outdated infrastructure and everything to do with profiteering your tax dollars.

Are we Making America Great yet?  Anyone even paying attention?  Or was it always just bullshit, disguising the real impetus for the Trump presidency, just plain ol' hatred of one another?

JMJ

Anti-Trump Uber Alles

Malczewski's Meduza, ca.,1900

With the rise of Donald Trump many on the Left, like myself, have been hoping and praying that successful business folks of our particular political bent need to try to get to get close to him, to get in his ear.  But there seems to be a belief among Trump's critics, and though I am a critic I do not share this belief, that to get close to Trump is like coming into the gaze of the Medusa, turning anyone into stone, or maybe dumb as a stone, or maybe just a stone-thrower...

When Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, announced he would be departing Trump's economic advisory board the other day, under severe pressure from peers and employees, and a loss of 200,000 subscribers, it became clear the Left will simply not allow any engagement with the new President beyond opposition.  This is a 'Uuuuge' mistake.

I have a little familiarity with Chinese culture.  There is nothing worse that can happen to a Chinese person than to be ascribed an "outsider," to be without friends or kin.  Why?  Not as a matter of pride or dependence on incessant socializing, but because they understand the inter-connectivity of society, that without some connection to that network, one is helpless to accomplish anything.  It is probably why communism, which has failed miserably most everywhere else, has been much better to the Chinese (not that I am personally a supporter of communism!).

When you Google "Trump Malleable" you get page after page of articles and opinions for or against an aspect of Trump's personality that seems well-known and accepted - he is not an ideologue, he is malleable.  By now, this should be clear to everyone.  Well, you can't form clay if you're not within distance to put your hands on it, and we're not going to influence Trump by standing at a distance and shouting at him to stop doing whatever someone else has convinced him to do.

When I was a younger man, in the NYC area, I remember hearing Trump on the Howard Stern radio show.  He was pretty much a regular.  He was very different from the man we think we see today.  On Thursday, Stern, who knows the President well, said of Trump to CNN...

"I personally wish that he had never run, I told him that, because I actually think this is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved," Stern said. "He wants people to cheer for him."

"I don't think it's going to be a healthy experience. And by the way, he's now on this anti-Hollywood kick. He loves Hollywood. First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants hobnob with them. All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. It's not good for him. It's not good."

The key there is "he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved," and it's not something new said of Trump.  He can see his conservative moves just anger people and fail.  He will see this continue.  If we are going to avert another Great Recession or Great Depression, or worse, people on the Left, people with popular heft and power, need to get in Trump's ear, and we need to trust them and support them in their efforts, not shout at them for trying.

JMJ

Well, here we are.  The day after Trump's inauguration, huge, mass demonstrations, the day after he orders a make-shift ban on immigration from the tiredest, poorest, huddledest, wretchedest places on the planet, more huge, mass demonstrations.  Again, I can not thank our new President enough for what he has done for liberalism in just his first nine days.

A Brooklyn federal judge blocked part of the order.  GOP leaders are squirming.  The order does little to address it's ostensible aim, and seems to be nothing but a political distraction, and a very poorly planned one at that.  But while this goes on, along with the ongoing silly drama of The Wall, Net Neutrality is doomed, and we can expect rightwing assaults on our healthcare, education, pollution, and consumer protections with the aid of his cadre in the cabinet, and a drooling GOP Hill.

Though he may mobilize the Left for the future, the damage that's being done now will take a loooooong time to undo.  Let's hope his distractions are the GOP's undoing come the next couple of election cycles.  The good things Trump says he wants to do would only be doable then anyway.

JMJ

I'm Back

I'm back.  I have no excuse, as my good buddies have churned away for years and are now retiring from posting, I have decided I will return to posting, something I haven't done regularly in years.

"Jersey McJones" was a moniker I picked out of thin air on the Hannity board back in the very early 2000's, when I first started blogging, mostly against the war and the then-GOP One Party State.  ANYONE REMEMBER THAT?  Anyways... The "Darths" as they were known back then (co-opting the negative connotation liberals had ascribed to Dick Cheney), kicked me off.  So I went through a bunch of other monikers, and kept getting kicked off, so I moved on, but I took Jersey McJones with me.  It was the name the Darths all knew me by.  Jersey McJones was banned again, this time by Gillespie over at Hit 'n Run.  So much for Reason.  The Confederate Yankee even tried to get me in trouble at my work, until my IT buddies stepped in and put a quick stop to that sleaziness.

For many years now, I have only commented, and only on a few blogs that I like (see the listed).  One's I mainly agree with, I read, but rarely if ever comment.  They're there more for your perusal.  I prefer to debate.  And Lord knows we have a lot to debate about.

First let me say, I am glad Donald Trump won the election.  He has already mobilized more popular support for the Left than Bernie Sanders to the tenth.  I am not glad to see the GOP back in charge of literally everything.  If their main complaint is that government doesn't work, than perhaps it is they who are making that so, for it is they who have been the majority party at the local, state, and federal level for decades now.  It is no coincidence, in my anything but humble opinion, that the country has been in the doldrums ever since.  Now they have even more power.  How badly will they use it?  What about Trump?  What happens when they fail spectacularly?

So let's start off like that.  I'll deck out the page more in coming days.

JMJ