Congress had this coming for the last 20 years. They whined and wailed about Hilary this and Obama that, every time a Democrat farted they shrieked like they were about to be donkey-raped.
Now the old bull has Congress by the short hairs and is crawling up their backs and breathing snot down the back of their necks. Even the FBI has been taken down a peg.
And we all know that the old bull is gonna get re-elected. Vlad the Impaler will see to it. We've got 7 more years of this crazy old SOB to go.
I predict that unless somebody slips the old bull a Russian mickey, there won't be a whole lot of the East or West coast left by the time he's gone.
Meanwhile, #flyoverAmerica will have a front row seat to the carnage.
Let's see how those smug, supercilious SOBs Mitch and Paul like being treated like so much garbage to be chewed up and spit out.
Well, it was Republicans who got shot so no big deal, right? We will continue to say terrible things until the mobs on both the left and right act out . And nobody on cable news (Chris Matthews said of Ted Cruz "He's sub-human.") will hold themselves accountable. Neither will any congress man.
For some reason we have gotten to the place where political disagreement is grounds for hatred, where it is acceptable to call names and accuse one opponents of the most despicable crimes and to do so without accepting any responsibility for one's own actions.
It started before Trump and before Obama. It started with Clinton. When fellatio becomes fodder for public discourse the angle of the slope increases. The O.J. trial and the Clinton Impeachment did an awful lot of damage to the public life of this country: it got cable news off the ground. They made it possible to accuse your opponent of ANYTHING. And they began referring to the political opposition as "The Enemy". That means I am justified in any attack on them, right?
The tow truck driver in North Carolina who refused to tow a woman with Bernie Sanders stickers on her car did not break the law. At all. He did nothing illegal. But if we are going to use legal standards as a guide line, we will have a difficult time having a society. We now have politics as a religion: the other side is an arm of the Satanic Church and kills babies.
I watched Rachel Maddow and she acted like the shooting was a mere unfortunate circumstance. Chris Matthews acted like it did not happen. Well, no surprise there. I am certain the Republicans will milk the shootings for their own political purposes.
As far as the wealthy in this country are concerned, they own the government. They own the congress, senate, courts, Wall Street (Barak Obama, champion of the little guy just got paid $400,000 for a speech so you tell me it isn't for the money.) owns both parties. The fix is in. The last real man to sit in the White House was Harry Truman. He drove himself back to Missouri. In his own car. The sign on his desk said "The Buck Stops Here." There is nobody remotely like him in D. C. today. Bad news, Kat. The contributors own the political class.
None of what is going on now with Trump has anything to do with the well being of the country. There are going to be states with no insurance companies participating in the exchanges. And the Democrats will blame the Republicans who will reply, "Well you guys passed this without a single Republican vote. This is all your fault."
What you detailed about the rust belt is what got Trump elected. When he said that area of the country had been neglected, he was correct. No argument. What he didn't say was he was from Queens and had no idea how to fix the problem. I am not certain the vote was for Trump. I think it was a vote against the snotty, arrogant superior attitude of the media in New York and California. I think it was a giant finger to cable news.
Part of what is happening now is a result of the public being misled about the election. It was in the bag. Hillary was destined to be president. The Gods had anointed her. Every single significant media organization endorsed Hillary. ALL of them with the exception of Fox and they are the most successful cable broadcast operation in history. They are about profits and nothing gets in the way. Not that the others are paragons of virtue. They are just not as good at generating profits as Fox. So Trump got elected. The media got the finger and there was nothing they could do about it.
The people you talked about only have one thing left.
Their vote. That is the one thing that cannot be taken from them. When they go into that booth they answer to nobody. Not Wall Street, the congress, the senate, the supreme court, their family, their friends, nobody. It is the last thing they have. They are no longer middle class and they see the $250K speeches, the homes, the security, the life time pensions and they think (rightly so) that Carlin was right. "It's a big club, folks! And you and I ain't in it!"
We now have an oligarchy. You and I and others of our ilk survive. We will get enough table scraps to keep us from really going off the rails, but just barely.
Another reason for the election of Trump is the education system which has succumbed to the nonsense that school should not be difficult and that we will NOT teach critical thinking skills. No authority figure wants citizens capable of critical thought. They want loyalty. They specifically do not want "principles before personalities."
Trump wants personal loyalty before law. We've been a country of laws and not leaders. The constitution comes first. I think Barack dislike the constitution but was willing to tolerate it. Trump dislikes it but is willing to ignore it. But they both have massive egos and nobody will make me change my mind. "My mind is made up, don't try to confuse me with the facts."
Have a good day. Say yer prayers. And bless yer little red head.
Arlo C. Hipps.
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worry about things which are beyond the power of our will. Epictetus.
What frustrates me the most about the country right now is the mental gymnastics The Far Right media has trained Citizens into performing whenever certain words or phrases are spoken or seen.
The original word has been hijacked -- to the point where people automatically start foaming at the mouth when that word is used. It's called Dog-Whistle propaganda. A word or phrase is used, creating a Dog-Whistle Word. Say the word and the human blanks out everything but the propaganda about that word.
I'm gonna hit the edge of this with the phrase 'Vanishing Middle Class' because The Far Right has really done a number on us.
I grew up in a middle class community, all my friends and family were dyed-in-the-wool Middle Class. Then the economic woes of the Nixon years, hit and all the jobs dried up and blew away in about 10 years time. By 1979, when I graduated, the economy of our small town had tanked and about 20k families left town in search of jobs.
We, the children of the Middle Class and our parents, didn't "vanish" we didn't fade away like ghosts. We struggled with increasing and ever more crushing poverty, unable to get jobs that paid Middle Class wages, unless we had family connections that could get us one of the few 'good' jobs in town.
Many of us fled -- some more than once -- heading south or west until we found someplace where we could settle. But thousands didn't have the means to flee, or their family ties were too strong, so they stayed and suffered the long agonizing slide into soul-crushing poverty and despair.
Women struggled the most, because one of the first things that happens when the local economy tanks is that couples stop getting married -- a girl gets pregnant and the father, (aka the Baby Daddy), bolts like horse in a thunderstorm. Any support from the government, no matter how badly needed puts them at risk of being labeled with a Dog-Whistle Word, so many women don't dare apply, unless they work for Wal-mar; there it's company police to Fleece The Beast and sign their workers up for government benefits in lue of wages.
Wal-mart replaced GM as the #1 employer in the USA decades ago. That company is owned by the richest family in America, a family that pays less taxes than any other in the 1% richest in America. Their company also pay wages well below the poverty line -- but no one calls the Waltons Welfare Queens -- that Dog-Whistle Word is for the single mothers who work for them.
This is where Generational Poverty moves in and takes over Fly Over America. Just as predicted in the 1970's, when the economy tanked the first time, the wages of the Service Economy couldn't sustain Middle Class, so an entire social class slid down the economic razor blade into the burning vat of poverty.
So here we are, 40 years later and once bustling small towns are now Fly Over Zones, or The Rust Belt, and the people scraping a living in these places are Red Necks, Hillbillies, and Pillbillies; frightening degenerates who are Dog-Whistled by The Far Right like attack trained pit bulls.
And the attack word is 'Liberal'.
The rage that helped put a completely inappropriate human in the White House stems from the fact that these Pillbillies were raised in Middle Class families, without Middle Class jobs. Their TV networks are filled with propaganda that enrages them. They KNOW they've been shafted, over and over again, by the same asshats who programmed them to respond to Dog-Whistles.
Everybody knows that Washington kisses the asses of the 400 richest families in the USA, like the Waltons, and pees on fallen middle class families, as well as the veterans leaving the military.
Education, health care and jobs (i.e. Hope) have been stripped from most Fly Over Zone communities and everybody is expendable as soon as they are injured or get sick. Big Pharma moves in with pain-pills and people who's souls are wounded by poverty and inflamed by propaganda eat opiods by the handful and wash it down with cheap booze.
Meanwhile, the GOP answer to Health Care is still: Die Faster Dammit!
So why is Congress so stunned that somebody went hunting Republicans on their home turf?
After all -- school shootings didn't effect Congress, their kids go to private schools. Church shootings don't effect them either because Congress is full of fake-Christians and outright Anti-Christians. (Somebody once said "You know the tree by it's fruit" so yes, they are Anti-Christians.)
Nothing is going to change -- the Anti-Christians in Congress will continue to kiss the asses of The 400 Families who donate while killing Social Security, Medicare, Health Care, VA Benefits, Education and Science because those all benefit the impoverished former Middle Class and Veterans.
The best that Fly Over America could do was send a mad pseudo-Billionaire to the White House and hope that 'shaking things up' would get them a break of some kind.
Too few people voted in 2016 and we all got the shaft as the result.
There is more reason to vote now than ever.
More need for voters and fresh faces running for local offices, because parts of the system are rigged and we need to tend our backyards while Congress and the White House thrash like a giant beheaded snake.
We need to get rid of Zombie Senators and Congressmen who have grown old and senile during their decades in office. We need to un-do the Gerrymandering that returns these zombies to office when they haven't had a pulse in decades.
The 1% families, like the Waltons, need to start paying 20% of their income in taxes, just like the rest of us. That money needs to go to Healthcare, Education and VA Benefits because working class America pays for their own Social Security and Medicare.
It might be late in the game, but it's not too late. We must tend our back yards in the next four years, to make sure we don't get fooled again.
Those of us who thought we had the election in the bag now have to take off the sack-cloth and wash off the ashes. We've wailed and pointed our fingers, some have taken to the streets and others watch from the sidelines and swear a lot. The TV talking heads on the Right are sounding more like Henny Penny all the time.
But, as stated in a previous post our big bull of a President is out of the chute. We know he can't buck off Uncle Sam (Congress) for the next four years. He can buck, spin and fish tail all he wants. You can be sure we will get an ear-full of his antics every day.
Frankly, it's starting to sound like 'The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight'. They are poorly prepared to fill those 600 odd jobs that are critical to the running of the country, and require only a simple vetting to fill. Plus all the fussing over divesting when everyone knows it's going to have to happen or the Ethics Committee is gonna be on him like white on rice. Then there is his Cabinet nominees - the Democrats have broken out the pitch forks and torches, and rightly so.
Or it could be terrified Millennial news reporters are simply nit-picking and shrieking in hysteria. We survived two terms of Bush/Chaney after all.
No one doubts that Trump is already in charge of an extensive empire of his own. We're just totally creeped-out by the bromance between Trump and Putin.
I watched the new President and his lovely bride dance to 'I Did It My Way' and felt an unaccustomed emotion for him.
I felt sorry for him.
He might have gotten into office by doing it his way, but he's all ready racking up a back log on his To-Do list. It will take months, if not years, to clear the table. He might never get anything else done his first term at this rate.
While Obama came in and went out with stellar approval ratings, President Trump doesn't have the approval of the people, or Congress. He's never held political office and is an outsider in the political machine. His new job has one of the steepest learning curves on the planet, and many suspect he hasn't been doing his homework.
His every move is under a microscope that would make an atomic particle nervous.
Will he deliver on all those lavish and perhaps misguided promises? Just for example - Health Care - will he 'fix it' or will he kill three times as many people annually as died in the Wars?
If somebody (Ivanka?) cribbed the notes from a country that has a Universal Health Care systems that works, he might pull that little miracle off. Since nearly every other civilized nation in the world has one, even Russia, it can't be that hard to get a copy. He's not getting any help from McConnell - that's for damn sure.
Can his performance silence the critics (doubt it - they never shut up for the last 4 Presidents, why would he be any different?)
IMHO - our new President is going to be SWAMPED by Monday morning and DRAINED by Friday. We might not see or hear much from him for the next few months, or even his first year, as he bawls, bucks, spins and fish-tails his way around the Oval Office.
But I've failed to stock up on popcorn. No, really, I don't want to watch this play out. I watched Obama go from 'Lamb to Slaughter' to 'Scapegoat' (it was so bad my dad called him "Bambi") vilified on Faux News almost as bad as Hilary (Lucifer Incarnated) Clinton. While I'm sure that both the Obamas and their daughters will remain activists, they will have to take a break and rest up.
I hope that Bill and Hilary Clinton will take some much needed personal time. They are entitled to enjoy their grandchild, just like anybody else.
My uncle Howard served an Ohio Senator back in the 1950's - he used to say that you know a person's power by their enemies. So Hilary will always in my mind be measured by fact that Vlad Putin had to sic the KGB on her to stop her from becoming President. WOW! that's some enemy!
I'm cancelling my DVR recordings of MSNBC, The Daily Show and The Late Show - because I can't imagine 4 more years of their coverage of the Trump Presidency. I'm burned out. Let the old bull rip.
One of those critters isn't like the other - and like the results of the election - a quick glance isn't going to give you the whole picture.
The internet is flooded with both 'The Democrats Didn't Get it' posts and an equal number of 'Middle Americans voted against their best interest' posts.
That's on top of the 'Rednecks are sexist bigots' posts.
It's true, the plight of Fly Over Americans has been ignored by people who are more interested in 'those poor _____ who have ____'. A big complaint that I've heard since childhood is that the government wastes billions of dollars overseas when there are people here in the USA suffering more.
Headlines about bathroom "issues" are adding insult to injury.
Nobody in Fly Over America gives a damn, just flush the john and wash your hands.
But how about some help for the millions of Americans addicted to opiates? Instead of getting help for the problem, Naloxone or Narcan is being passed out to police, EMTs and anybody who might save a life.
It's a game of 'inject and release' with addicts left to their own devices to get help. Like that's going to happen?
Shame on the GOP, for cherry picking their issues from their own sounding box, but more shame on liberals for ignoring the massive streams of propaganda that run through Fly Over America like a stream of dirty water from a septic tank. They've had blinders on for decades.
When the national stage is overtaken by bathroom issues, while people who are floundering in a economic siege with opiates killing friends and family daily, regular folks are going to be pissed off; especially when Talk Radio and Fox News have been hammering the same message home for decades: "You need to take your country back."
The results is that everybody except Sanders looks like a damn fool.
Propaganda Trumped social issues this election. (Not sorry for the pun this time.)
Propaganda won this time. The non-breathing citizens who used money as their free speech won this election. Even the people who don't understand the problem, can see what happened.
Take this quote from Forsetti's Justice where the writer blames the denizens of Fly Over America for their own problems:
The real problem isn’t east coast elites don’t understand or care about rural America.
The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out.
They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of choices they’ve made and horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.
The italics are mine.
Forsetti and #FlyOverAmericans might not know the source of the misinformation, but that doesn't mean that nobody knows. Somebody knows, Roger Ales, the Murdocs, maybe even Putin, if you aren't afraid of taking the problem global. The narrative is a unending, mind-numbing, bludgeoning of the listener that resonates because there's a kernel of truth: Fly Over Americans don't matter to those living large on either coast.
It would be interesting to see a map comparing the places where Fox News is on the local network TV station and the results of the election. The correlation would be eye-popping.
If there is a way to console Clinton, it might be this: "You called it: "a vast Right Wing Conspiracy" and you were right, it exists. But it isn't just you they're after. They are inciting unrest in all middle America. Your best act of public service might be in the private sector after all."
I'm wondering what Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are having for breakfast?
Whiskey? Valium? Xanex?
Crow?
Oh yes! Big heaping plates of crow!
Buckets and buckets of crow, covered in Paranoia Gravy.
Yes, the Congress and Senate that did less in 8 years, that has the lowest approval rating EVER has a new boss. One who is more infamous for running his mouth than for suffering in silence.
This President won't need Key & Peele to emote for him. He has an East Coast Hit Squad already tracking down his enemies one by one to get even with each and every one of them.
Even Stephen Colbert acknowledges there is trouble afoot.
I live in "Fly Over America" so named because when the majority of manufacturing left the United States, it hollowed out the middle of America and left rotting husks behind. "Everybody who wanted to be somebody" moved to the East or West coast.
The frozen-out Middle America has been battling to rebuild for decades, ignored by the toasty Coasties, the only manufacturing: basement Meth labs. That fact, with Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ales pounding Middle America with propaganda for decades, unleashed a revolution.
So many people faced the choices in the voting booth with disgust and dismay. Who to send to Washington - the woman who would only be dismissed and reviled by likes of McConnell and Ryan - two men even more sexist than racist?
Or the one man who would make both Congress and the Senate kiss his 'feet' and bark like the sonsofbitches they really are?
#KarmaIsaBitchMitch
So my friends let's stop squabbling with each other, grab some popcorn and watch the show. Washington is getting it's just deserts.
Let's face the facts:
1) Nobody in Washington is going to help Middle America rebuild our economy. They are too busy fighting each other and collecting payola from special interests.
2) Clinton would have been treated even WORSE by Congress and the Senate, because she's a woman. (America might have done her a favor by turning her loose to be a private citizen.)
3) Trump has a list of enemies a mile long, Omarosa said revenge is going to be his top priority, so nothing in Middle America is going to change for a very long time, if ever, see point # 1.
4) The Constitution set up a series of checks and balances that can keep a President from doing much of anything. We've had 8 years of that already, it works pretty good.
Relax - move on. It's going to be okay.
The people who are going to be hurt the worst by this election are already in Washington.
Get some popcorn, watch who is scrambling to kiss the 'feet' of the new President and laugh.
Saw it yesterday - the Official Voice of the GOP hasn't got enough advertisers to fill the next two weeks. His bosses at Premiere Radio have thrown open all his spots to local ad because everyone else has fled.
In fact, it was reported there was 5 minutes of DEAD AIR (complete silence) on his home show. That's right, not even enough 10 second or 30 second spots to keep out the flow going.
What a victory for women!
Yeah, he still ran his mouth about 'Nags' and other female-centric insults. But the proof is in the dead air, because radio will do ANYTHING to avoid silence. But they didn't even have enough Public Service Announcements to fill the time.
So, to all the FemiNazi's like myself who complained to advertisers, filed FCC complaints, and generally raised Hell with the Official Voice of the GOP - pat yourselves on the back, ladies. We've put the old boar's balls between a rock and a hard place and squeezed until Rush, Premiere and Clear Channel all squealed like the cowardly swine they are.
Now, if the GOP has any collective intelligence at all - they will tip-toe as far from Rush as they can get - so the smell of dead, blasted ego doesn't get on them.
Because, ladies, we have won a Great Victory. Any time a celebrity is taken to task by a pissed-off public, those who fawn on said celebrity will desert him like rats from a sinking ship.
There's one bad thing about women - we take a lot of shit from people who should know better. You know who I mean, not friends and family (though they are often guilty) but certain celebrities, and politicians.
One in particular has gotten his short-hairs on fire this week - Rush Limbaugh.
He's opened his mouth, yet again, and like the Shock Jock Imus before him, riled up a bunch of women.
Women don't like to be called 'hos', 'sluts' or 'prostitutes' when we are being responsible and respectable. That's enough to get any man into hot water.
But when Rush called for 'sextapes of women using birth control' - that was simply obscene. The thought of that fat slug drooling over decent women having responsible sex with their loved ones - that was more than enough.
Like thousands of other women, I hit Face Book, Twitter and the blogs to find first his sponsors, then my senator, congressman, the FCC, Premiere Radio and Clear Channel.
Next week, hmmm, I'm going to see which targets are vulnerable for attack. But I think we've got that pig on the run - I'm smelling blood and am looking forward to hearing him squeal under the heel of the FCC.
What too many men forget (but all women know) is that as the 'weaker sex' women tend to co-operate in order to get things done. The downfall of Imus was the death knell of the Shock Jock. He insulted a basketball team of young women - but Rush - Rush got every woman in America whose EVER used birth control and called for them to be videotaped like criminals. THEN to have that video tape sent to HIM.
Oh - that is so goddamn obscene!
Yep - like hundreds of thousands of women - I saw red, I smelled blood - and when I found out I wasn't the only one - I jumped at the chance to cut him down to size. And Rush is going to be a very small man when the women are done with him.
I don't get this GOP War On Women - but once these idiots started chewing into Women's Rights to Health Care and responsible birth control - it's only a matter of time before they make all forms of birth control illegal.
Why the hell would ANY man do something so stupid? Do they really want the consequences of no birth control beyond 'putting an aspirin between your knees' - seriously?
Only an idiot like Rush Limbaugh would do something so stupid...but Rush appears to be running the GOP - still.
No wonder the GOP isn't able to get a serious candidate in this election.
If - and this is a BIG if - Romney WAS a moderate and was allowed to RUN as a moderate he'd would have a shot with Independent voters. But as is - he's running in a pack of fools and making himself look just as stupid as Santorium. (Though both are behaving with more intelligence than Newt.) So no sane person can vote for him.
I'm convinced the silencing of Rush the Roach will bring sanity back to the GOP. This boycott is not just for 100% of the women who gag at the thought of Rush watching sextapes - but for National Security ( and Sanity) as well.
I'm going to put on my Warpaint and sharpen my spear - there's pork on the menu tomorrow.
