Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Saturday, June 30, 2018

Frog Boiling

Josh Marshall has  a post titled Clear and Present Danger, and he doesn't bury the lede:

We’re far past the point where it matters whether President Trump is a ignorant and destructive fool or operates as some sort of agent of the Russian Federation. The upshot appears to be the same.
He's been talking about withdrawing from NATO and the World Trade Organization, trying to break up the European Union, and he's endorsed the Russian seizure of Crimea, among other alarming comments. Now he plans to meet with Vladimir Putin right after the upcoming NATO summit, for no stated reason. He also doesn't understand anything about economics or international trade, and even the commies who run General Motors are terrified of a trade war devastating their business. This is industry he claims the tariffs are supposed to benefit.

It's pretty clear that he has in fact been a Russian stooge since 2013, if not earlier. Which is obviously why Putin put him in office, which is no longer even a questionable assertion. And come on, his campaign chair is a Russian agent, we know that.

One might think this would be viewed as a national emergency requiring some sort of response from congress.  Not to mention the news media. But evidently they've all been flipped too.

11 comments:

Don Quixote said...

It's all just absolutely mind-boggling.

But when Cheney ran the government as the de facto president, I wondered why he didn't go even further at that time. I mean, the country could be led into a war under completely false pretenses; and whatever happened on 9/11, whatever one believes, we know it wasn't what we were told. Because nothing, absolutely nothing, that criminal administration said was ever anything but a lie, including the day Bush spoke in my hometown of Buffalo, NY, and lectured his audience about how FISA warrants had to be obtained for wiretapping legally ... at the very moment his administration was illegally wiretapping people. Or "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Everything they said was a bunch of lies. They could have gone even further than they did, but I don't think they had Trump's megalomaniacal aspirations.

My point is this: the country has been "running itself" for some time now--or, rather, corporations have been running things according to their own self-interest, and they buy the congresspeople (especially the Republicans), so the government is literally up for grabs.

And even a complete charlatan like Donald J. Fucking Asshole Trump can grab it.

But he couldn't do it alone. So he had the Russians help him. The same Russians who dope their athletes, invade sovereign countries ... the descendants of the same Russians who killed my ancestors in Ukraine.

Most congresspeople are concerned with one thing: incumbency (= money).

Many Americans are concerned more about their armpit odor, their breasts and pecs, what Kim Kardashian (whoever the fuck she is), their drugs, and just plain scraping together a living than they are with history, which they largely do not know.

So it's tragic: Trump probably can shoot--or eat, whatever--someone at this point and his supporters, including Mitch Strawman Highly-Disturbing-Waddle-Under-His-Neck, and Neil "Asshole" Gorsuch (even his last name is an Asshole name)--will do nothing but cheer him on and comment that, Hey, He was just hungry.

It is a Roman circus, a free-for-all. It's chaos. My tenth-grade European History teacher, Dorothy Coveney, bless her soul, used to make us repeat the following mantra; "Democracy, Anarchy, Tyranny."

Even in 1976, she saw where it was all headed.

And it's all about to come apart. Next it will be Trump supporters killing their neighbors of color and religion, martial law, whatever.

As the Chinese have said for thousands of years: "If we don't change our direction we'll end up where we're going."

Don Quixote said...

PS There simply isn't enough awareness and outrage. Too many people believe in playing by the rules, and they can't see that the folks in power are playing a completely different game.

Cervantes said...

Well, at least Chimpy and Cheney weren't Russian stooges. Although I suppose as far as results are concerned they might as well have been.

Don Quixote said...

A real-life Manchurian candidate. Funny, that's what Krugman said he was over a year ago ... it is so weird, as you point out, how the mainstream media and congress act as if it's not happening. The denial is incredible. I tuned in to a program called "Hardball" tonight and a bunch of chuckleheads (Chris Mathews, etc.) are sitting around joking about how "the president" fires people after a short time, only to hire others ... the tragedy is that they call him "the president," as if that is what he truly is ... instead of what he actually is: a mentally ill, profoundly narcisstically disturbed, megalomaniacal, traitorous failed real-estate fraud.

Give 'em the ol' razzle-dazzle ... razzle-dazzle 'em ...

This country makes me want to simultaneously weep and vomit.

Anonymous said...


Someone should tell Mueller.

Don Quixote said...

Someone should make damn sure Mueller's work reaches its ugly denouement.

Anonymous said...


The really interesting part is Mueller has all of the resources and know-how to get to the bottom of this investigation.

However, Cervantes et al dawn need no steenkin' investigation to tell them Trump is guilty. Their powers of second sight are truly amazing!

My question to the critics is: "Will you accept the conclusion of the investigation?"


Don Quixote said...

Well, "Cervantes et al" have common sense; they don't need to follow the lead of the populace "et al" and disbelieve the obvious so that they can accept the improbable.

It's like "weapons of mass destruction." Remember those? How does a whole country go to war on another country whose name it can't even pronounce (there is no "eye-RACK") on false pretenses? Like in Vietnam as well (Gulf of Tonkin incident).

The answer: Because idiots like "Anonymous" are always willing to follow hucksters, shysters and con men over the cliff.

Don Quixote said...

PS It's actually pretty funny--albeit in a tragic way, of course--that people like "Anonymous," above, are prey to any old scam. Many people are susceptible in this way because they simply have no bullshit detector. There are people who will never see Trump for what he is--a pathological liar, a megalomaniac, a mentally-ill narcissist. You can see whatever you want to see. But this clown is very, very dangerous because he has been installed into the Oval Office with the help of a foreign power. That we already know from the mountain of evidence about Russian straw men using the internet to weaponize data from Facebook and other metadata sources.

What "Anonymous" refers to as "second sight" is what intelligent, critically-thinking people call "the obvious." "Anonymous" is not an intelligent, critically-thinking person; he is an all-too-typical example of a human acting like a sheep.

Even after Trump comes tumbling down in his house of lies, people like "Anonymous" will say, "We didn't know."

That's because they refuse to believe the obvious and continue to accept the improbably, which is the weapon con men use against them.

Anonymous said...


I'm willing to state in advance that I will accept the outcome of the investigation... good, bad or ugly. To say otherwise would be an admission of prejudice.

If you can't say that, then the investigation is a joke and you're just a tool for those who find the election of President Trump inconvenient to the promotion of a political agenda.




Don Quixote said...

Update (10/3/19): I wonder if "Anonymous" accepted the findings of the Mueller investigation? Or did he just accept the OUTCOME--namely, Bill Barr's enabling of the propaganda war that fuels the insane oligarchs in power, the idea that Shitler isn't guilty of anything wrong? As I said, it seems that, to his followers, he can kill and eat his children and the sycophantic cult followers will just say, "Hey, the man was hungry ... pass him the ketchup ..."