"And he controls our nuclear codes. God help us all."

"The Right Can't Fight the Future" By Joy-Ann Reid

Source: The Daily Beast


<snip>


In every way, Donald Trump is a president built for the past; a benighted, late 19th Century figure who spun his supporters a tale that he could restore a bygone era when coal fires burned, factories hummed, steel mills belched out soot and opportunity and a (white) man with a sturdy back, a high school diploma and a song in his heart could buy a little house, marry a little wife and have 3 cherry-cheeked kids he didn’t ever have to cook or clean for, plus if he can afford it, a hot mistress on the side. Trump is the slovenly but brash, gold-plated emblem of a time when in the imagination of his followers, black women hummed a tune while they cleaned your house or did the washing, black men tipped their hat on the street but didn’t dare look you in the eye, and neither would dream of moving in next door. A time when women asked their husbands for an allowance, not their boss for a promotion, men were “allowed to be men” complete with ribald jokes and a slap on the fanny for the pretty secretary at work, and there were no gays, no trans people, no birth control … they somehow just didn’t exist! The rural folks were the salt of the earth and we only let in “a certain kind of immigrant” whose only goal was to shake off his ethnicity and “assimilate.” Everyone went to (separate) church on Sundays and everyone “got along.” It’s a plasticine world that for many must feel like it truly existed, though of course it never did.

Going backward, to a world without ambiguity on race, gender and work is a powerfully attractive idea, particularly for those who fear losing their cultural and social hegemony as the nation browns, and their economic ascendancy as technology creates new industries they scarcely understand.

But here’s the thing: the past really is past. Coal is still a dying industry and America will never again have an industrial revolution. It’s other countries’ turn to do that now. Black and brown people aren’t giving up our dignity, including the right to protest and to survive mundane encounters with police. Immigrants aren’t going away (and in fact we need them to keep the economy and the safety net flush). LGBT people aren’t going back into the closet. And women are staying in the workforce, with many aiming to become the CEO, while insisting on hanging onto our reproductive liberty. There is indeed a sizable minority of Americans who want to go back to the old times. But we aren’t going back.

More at https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-right-cant-fight-the-future

"Don't you get paid to fix it?"

Trump Being Trump Makes Him Less Popular

Source: NYMag.com


<snip>


During the last three weeks, political news has been dominated by fresh evidence of turmoil in the White House (punctuated by the Porter scandal that represented a combo platter of incompetence and insensitivity about domestic violence), new developments in the Mueller investigation, and erratic Trump behavior on Twitter and elsewhere. A particularly dangerous juncture for Trump may have been the Presidents’ Day weekend when he went on an extended Twitter rampage, mostly about the FBI and the Mueller investigation, even as media focused on the Parkland massacre. The jury’s still out on the effect of the president’s personal involvement in the post-massacre debate on gun control, though his steadily increasing investment in the loopy idea of arming teachers doesn’t bode well for him.

If this theory is right, or even half right, we should expect some more short-term deterioration in the president’s approval ratings and the GOP’s standing in the generic ballot. More importantly, it underscores a persistent dilemma for the president’s team. Without question, Trump being Trump is important to the maintenance of maximum excitement within his electoral base, and that is an asset of great importance in relatively low-turnout midterm elections. But if Republicans need the simmering anti-liberal resentments of the MAGA crowd to remain at a near-boiling-point as November approaches, the presidential behavior that most reliably keeps the heat on also appears to repel voters who might be otherwise persuaded to stick with Trump’s party on policy grounds.

How to balance base mobilization and swing-voter persuasion is a perennial puzzle for any political party. But it’s especially complicated when the base glories in the very characteristics of a leader that actually frighten others. If Republicans become convinced that revving up the base is the only thing they care about in this midterm election cycle, they won’t have to do a whole lot to encourage Trump to go absolutely wild for weeks on end. Lord help us all if that’s where we are headed for the balance of 2018.

More at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/trump-being-trump-seems-to-make-him-less-popular.html

False vs. Fake

Found on Facebook.

Maybe it's just me, but I think John Dean has very little respect for Dotard.

Borrowed from the Comments Section of Tom Toles' Strip on GoComics.com

It looked extremely rocky for the Trump White House that year

With Mueller breathing down their necks, the crooks all shook with fear

Their treason, money-laundering, their high crimes (and their low!)

They knew when Mueller got the goods, then off to jail they’d go

But then a ray of sunshine: they’d forgotten Pardon Pence!

(Whose honesty is none the best, whose brain is rather dense)

Though Jerry Ford played Pardoner, no-one had done it since

No need to serve a prison term, because of Pardon Pence!

He pardoned both the Donalds, also Flynn and Manafort

Jared, Ivanka, Sessions, and all others of that sort

Pence pardoned all that he could find, the traitors and the crooks

(Though, to be fair, Pence met the glare of many dirty looks)

But, sad to say, our story ends in ways to make us weep

For Pence, that mighty Pardoner, picked Ryan for his Veep.

"Why can't you love me like you love him?"

The GOP, when it comes to gun legislation

"It's like watching Devin Nunes drown in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese"