Mad In The Middle

2022-02-25T02:07:00.000-05:00

2021-01-08T00:10:00.004-05:00

Post by JW. Photo Desert News.

Miserable POS. What we saw yesterday was silly. Seriously. It was just silly. For all of my adult life I've watched the so called conservative movement pound the drums and dance round the fire, war dancing its way towards what we saw yesterday.

The "war on xmas", "the liberal media", "frivolous lawsuits", "they're coming for your guns", "marriage is a sacred institution", "States rights". and on and on goes the list of bullshit that they've spewed working themselves up into a frenzy.

Honestly, its a bit disappointing when you consider how long they'd worked towards it. Alas, that's what we'd been waiting for. That was the climax. You can see it on their faces in a lot of the footage from inside of the capital. That "aw shucks golly gee, NOW WHAT?" look that so many of them clearly had. That's because there was never anything to their stupid arguments. There was no child sex ring operating out of a pizza parlor. There are no lizard people. 5g isn't giving them headaches. There is no deep state on the other side of the door to Nancy Pelosi's office.

And so, after all of this, the GOP and Donald Trump led the country to a mass act of vandalism and thuggery. That's it. It's already over. Poof. Those idiots had all of the power of the Presidency of the United States of America, and THATS what they did with it. Think of all of the good they could have used it for. Think of all of the very real problems and threats that we face. Instead of tackling those, they created boogeymen, and episode after episode of political theater culminating in yesterday's show. It was silly.

Everything New Is Old Fiction

2018-05-20T08:29:00.003-04:00

Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington

...Kelton’s core idea ― that the government can’t run out of money or go bankrupt, no matter how much it spends ― hasn’t really changed since the days when Buiter and Krugman were trashing her thinking. But it seems the world has. Today she is a full-fledged member of the American power elite, juggling television bookings with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Bloomberg TV’s Joe Wiesenthal, writing op-eds for The New York Times and being quoted in The Wall Street Journal...

It continues to amaze me that old, recycled ideas are "discovered" by bloggers and politicians and suddenly someone is a genius. Anyone with a smidgen of prognostication could sit back in the 70s and go "What is the logical outgrowth of computers and robotics" and arrive at the conclusion that jobs are going to disappear. The next question, of course, becomes what do we do with all the unemployed people? Solutions vary but the "government job" seems the less onerous and more likely of all the various ideas, which range from the medieval to the ridiculous. All this points toward a favorite hobby horse of mine--- that the deficit doesn't matter because the government can print all the money it wants to and inflation will inevitably lag behind the money supply.

As always, the science fiction writers arrived long before the "scientists." Go here for a reading list.

Hope For The Future

2018-03-15T00:21:00.002-04:00

The kids are all right: American Students Have Simple Demands

So, when tens of thousands of schoolchildren walked out of class all over America on Wednesday, they weren’t merely acting in a brave and proud tradition. (Emma Gonzalez, the firebrand from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, even cited Tinker in her remarkable address in the wake of the massacre in Parkland, Florida.) Depending on how rigid their principals and school boards are, they also were taking a considerable chance.

That they walked anyway should be a warning to petty dictators all over a country that has too damn many of them running school boards, city councils, high schools, manufacturing plants, and corporate offices. And there’s one running the executive branch of the United States government, now that I think of it.

Howdy Doody Gowdy Bids Aideu

2018-01-31T13:33:00.000-05:00

The Benghazi crazed pol from SC has announced his retirement from Congress. Could this be a get out of town move two steps ahead of the Russia probe? You know, the one being sandbagged by his good buddy Rep. Nunes?

Sen. Duckworth Roasts Cadet Bone Spurs

2018-01-21T19:44:00.001-05:00

Triple D X 5 (Draft Dodging Deferments) gets filleted by Iraq vet.

Flynn The Traitor

2017-12-28T09:56:00.004-05:00

From Balloon Juice:

...When the Obama countermeasures were announced, Michael Flynn, who was influential in the Trump transition and who would become Trump’s National Security Advisor, contacted the Russians to tell them that those measures would be rolled back once Trump was in office, immediately undercutting deterrence. The sanctions and expulsions have not been rolled back, but Trump has been careful to avoid saying anything negative about Russia and has praised Russia and Putin. He continues to deny that there was any Russian involvement in the election and has attacked American law-enforcement and intelligence agencies for investigating that involvement...

Simple Math And The 9% Factor

2017-11-08T22:25:00.007-05:00

Keith Oblermann unearthed a statistical nugget and re-visions the 2016 election with the Mango Menace going down in flames. Politically, we should pay close attention to what he came up with.

The Brazile Effect

2017-11-08T09:31:00.001-05:00

Last night's election results were surprising in one regard: the Brazile Effect didn't cost the Democrats the governorship of Virginia. Many Democrats were running around wringing their hands and screaming the sky is falling after Brazile accused SOS Clinton of rigging last years primary election. Of course, the claim was pure nonsense, which Josh Marshall, among others, deconstructed quite effectively. (Here is an excellent summary post.)

No one knows what was clattering through Brazile's mind when she made her specious charges. Some people, like me, were suspicious that she was deliberating creating another round of chaos between Sanders and Clinton supporters, who are trying to get together, though many of the Sanders supporters continue promulgating their CDS. But it looks like the Brazile Effect was negligible, which gives me hope for the future. Perhaps, voters can actually see beyond and through all the propaganda and misinformation spewed by the GOP in general and Fox News and the Russians in particular.

How tRump Wins

2017-11-01T08:09:00.002-04:00

From USA Today:

...The question is not whether Trump has any decency left, but whether we have any decency left.

Trump is not against the ropes. Not even close. Republicans are marching in lockstep. What frightens me is that what Trump is unleashing, he cannot control. When I look at what happened months back in Charlottesville, Va., I realize it doesn’t take much to change a cadence — how easily marching in lockstep morphs into a goosestep.

Flake wrote, “We can no longer remain silent, merely observing this train wreck, passively, as if waiting for someone else to do something. The longer we wait, the greater the damage, the harsher the judgment of history.”

True. But if Flake believes what he said, he should go down losing. So should other Republicans fearful of Trump or Steve Bannon or some other boogeyman with a slogan-branded hat.

If sensible Republicans cede the playground to the bullies, the bullies win. Flake said we can no longer stand silent. Talking while walking away is not an improvement.

Katrina Commander Speaks Out

2017-09-30T23:52:00.004-04:00

I've been ranting for several days about not having the military ready to deploy the minute the hurricane cleared the island. As a nation, we need to think about re-purposing our military and adding emergency response as a secondary mission. From HuffPost:

...Honoré said the military response to the 3.5 million people without power and supplies should have happened much sooner.

“Not giving the mission to the military” was the first mistake, Honoré said in his interview with CBS. “Look, we got Army units that go do port openings. Not called. We got special forces that could’ve been in every town. Not employed.”

In another interview with CNN, Honoré tied Trump’s response to a overall lack of compassion to marginalized people.

“And the president has shown again, you don’t give a damn about poor people,” Honoré told CNN. “You don’t give a damn about people of color and the SOB that rides around in Air Force One is denying services needed by the people of Puerto Rico...”

Karma Comes A-Calling

2017-09-27T17:45:00.001-04:00

Paul Horner, Fake News Purveyor Who Claimed Credit For Trump's Win, Found Dead At 38

..."I mean that's how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it's false, then they look like idiots," he told the Post. "But Trump supporters — they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he's in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels [bad]..."

Well, yeah, regret and a quarter might buy you cup of coffee. Meanwhile, tRump sits in office ruining our democracy while non-voters, Bernie-write-in voters, Steiners, Greenies, and all the others who did not vote for Clinton sit and wait for their visit from Karma.

Corrupt Media Attacking Clinton Again

2017-09-14T23:09:00.000-04:00

...We’ve seen this kind of bandwagon journalism before. Rather than focus fire on a person who was clearly mentally incapable of holding the most powerful position on the planet, far too much of the media was consumed by Hillary Clinton. A new Harvard study found during the 2016 election, the Clinton email scandal dominated news coverage. As we know now, some of this coverage was fueled by the emails released by Wikileaks, obtained from Russia’s hacking of the DNC...

Comment of the Day: Clinton Winning Edition

2017-09-14T20:02:00.001-04:00

From TPM

cabchi

Not only won it, but won it by very big numbers. No wonder Trump gets freaked out by it. I have looked at the vote totals for every post war presidential election. And here are the facts. Hillary Clinton beat Trump by more votes than Truman beat Dewey in 1948; more votes than Kennedy beat Nixon in '60; more votes than Nixon beat Humphrey in '68; more votes than Cater beat Ford in '76; and more votes than "President" Gore beat Bush in 2000.
So, I am (bitterly) amused by all the "analyses" of how Hillary didn't connect with the voting public. Well, she sure as Hell connected with more of the voting public than Donald Trump did, and she won a bigger victory than a lot of post war presidents, including at least two -- JFK and Jimmy Carter -- who are venerated by the commentariat left. Moreover, she won it by warning the country about Donald Trump; she was right about him, just as she was right about so much more.

Thoughts on the eclipse

2017-08-24T11:24:00.000-04:00

Time, if not life, is not measured in calendar days or minutes and hours, it is measured in memories. Events. Yesterday was one of those life event days that take the yardstick of a lifetime and put a great big huge tick mark on that ruler.

I was one of those people who said he would not drive ten minutes to see a total eclipse. I just did not think it would be that big of a deal. I was completely, totally, utterly wrong.

For approximately two minutes and 20 seconds, I experienced a magical event, one where reality seem to change around me. At the very instant of totality, I saw something amazing. I've noticed a few people on Facebook have described it as seeing snakes. The three tubes I saw were the most intense and brilliant shades of red, green, and blue--- all discrete in three bright bands. Not everyone saw that.

One of the most fascinating things about totality is that apparently so many people saw so many different things at the instant of totality. I did not see some of the things that other people described, though I did see the famous arcs, the diamond effect, and so on.

I believe the thing that got me the most, though, was that during totality it actually felt like reality had changed. The ''vibe'' was totally different then compared to what it was before the advent of totality. It actually was like we were transported to a different more magical place.

I know for certain that science can explain everything I saw and probably everything I felt. That's fine. I believe in science-- it has given us freedom from superstition and oppression for the most part. In the future, I believe it will deliver the entire human race to a much better place, but we have a ways to go first. But what I hope science can never explain is the feeling I got during the eclipse--- that was magic and we need magic in our lives.

Something remarkable also happened in the hours immediately before and after the eclipse. Literally millions of people jammed our nation's highways trying to get to a viewing spot, and everyone around here knows about The Mother Of All Traffic Jams that stretched from Atlanta to Asheville to Greenville to Charlotte, yet I've read no reports of road rage or anything other than a few random “minor incidents,” which were so minor as to not even be worthy of any detail. The apparent harmony is extending even into Tuesday. Sometimes I feel like I have experienced the mythos of the Star of Bethlehem.

Of course, people will attribute experiences to God, which is just fine, for “God is in the rain” and God is in the eclipse and in all things. Imagine how you felt during the eclipse and then translate that back tens of thousands of years to primitive man, who had absolutely no inkling of what was actually going on and the feeling it must have given those people. The power of the eclipse gives us all something that perhaps we were missing, besides the obvious things that people have been talking about, and that is a connection to our distant ancestors who knew no better, but they looked up to into the sky and wondered and marveled at what they beheld.

I am thankful I lived long enough to have this experience.

Comment Of The Day: Democratic Positons Edition

2017-07-17T22:39:00.001-04:00

Trump’s childish antics leaving his voters feeling conned — but they’re still mad at liberals for shaming them

Ann Early • 3 hours ago

I'm sick of hearing how Democrats don't stand for anything. We stand for health care as a human right. We stand for protecting the environment, nature, and animals. We stand for the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions. We stand for separation of church and state, the importance of science, research and public education, and the value of promoting the general welfare, all of us together as a country.

As You Should Be

2017-07-16T07:07:00.001-04:00

CEO of JPMorgan: ‘It’s almost embarrassing being an American citizen’ - The Washington Post:

...But in a series of calls on Friday to discuss the big bank’s quarterly profits, Dimon vented his frustration with gridlock in Washington. “It’s almost embarrassing being an American citizen … and listening to the stupid s— we have to deal with in this country,” Dimon said in one conference call. The inability to make headway on significant legislation is “holding us back and it is hurting the average American. It isn’t a Republican issue; it is not a Democratic issue...”

Bill & George

2017-07-16T07:03:00.001-04:00

Bill Clinton And George W. Bush Bond In Conversation About Leadership : NPR

Clinton: The best thing for a politician "is to be consistently underestimated"

Bush: "I was pretty good at that"

We Know About CDS

2017-07-13T09:36:00.001-04:00

Donald Trump Is Right: Hillary Was Held To A Different Standard | HuffPost

Comment Of The Day: HRC v. tRump Edition

2017-07-11T17:43:00.001-04:00

Neocon Max Boot: Time To Put Interests Of The Country Before Party | Crooks and Liars
bootster • 3 hours ago

I think the GOP really don't realize what they have done here. They made a HUGE case before the election that Hillary Clinton should be "locked up" simply because she had a private server and there were emails on it that "could be" considered classified, and possibly subjected to a hacker if they chose to violate the law and intentionally hack into her email server to gather data. Nothing was proven to anyone that she broke any laws, and she was legally using a private server, under the advice of Colin Powell, her predecessor. The appearance of illegal activities, especially intentional deceit or recklessness was clearly not proven to be true, as much as the Benghazi investigators would like you to believe.

The entire GOP were pushing the notion that HRC was guilty of "something", so they were just trying to make sure that they had something valid to indict her for, so they tried to accuse her of recklessly handling emails that "could possibly" be available to a hacker and exploited for a security breach. That never happened, and it was concluded that she was innocent of the charges levied against her by the FBI.

Now we find out that the Trump campaign, were totally willing to get some damaging information from a foreign liaison to Russia when it appeared offered to them. Upon learning of this news, the GOP in it's entirety, are sticking up for the GOP, no matter what is revealed about them.

Just before the election, Jason Chafe-itch was so intent on having damaging emails show up that would put HRC in jeopardy, he tried to get the impression that some of HRC's emails were contained on his laptop. Wiener was the husband of HRC's personal confidant/assistant, who had been caught up in a sex scandal.

The point here, is that the GOP were so intent on trying to find something, anything, on HRC to prove that she was a security risk, that Paul Ryan publicly announced that HRC should have her security credentials suspended, just before the election to discredit her. The emails were not there,and this was just an imagined story aimed at smearing Hillary Clinton's reputation.

Now we have emails that are proving the deliberate intent of collusion with Russia by Donald Trump Jr, to smear HRC even more. Instead of admitting wrongdoing by the Trump campaign, which was admitted by DTJr, the GOP are, once again, covering for the party, and dismissing any wrongdoing in this instance. Every time something damaging comes up to prove that the GOP were intent on forming a political smear campaign illegally, using the Benghazi investigation as a "hub", the GOP are complicit in saying nothing about anything that looks like it would damage the credentials of the GOP. Every single thing that would look like it would harm HRC's reputation was exploited by the GOP, and to the contrary, anything that even gave the appearance of discrediting the GOP was dismissed, and excuses were made to cover up any appearance of impropriety of their political party. Some of these instances are close, if not proven, as being collusion, or at the worse case scenario treason.

The GOP are proving their lack of sincerity when it comes to protecting our country from against nefarious actors, as long as they have an "R" next to their name. This is not acceptable behavior, and the GOP are showing how weak the entire party is when it comes to being morally culpable, and seeing to the responsibility they are expected to provide in their role as elected government officials. They are totally shameless.

Josh Nails CNN Issue

2017-07-06T09:46:00.001-04:00

A Right to Free Speech, Not Anonymity – Talking Points Memo:

I want to share a thought about the on-going CNN/Reddit controversy, the question – reasonably – whether CNN should have maintained the privacy of the racist, violence-inciting Reddit user who had his anti-CNN gif picked up by President Trump. I don’t take seriously the idea that CNN ‘blackmailed’ this guy, a middle-aged man who as yet remains unidentified. But in any case I’d like suggest that newsworthiness rather than privacy is the proper prism through which to look at the question....

The Offensive Trump

2017-07-04T13:44:00.001-04:00

The Hijacked American Presidency - The New York Times:

...There is something insidious and corrosive about trying to evaluate the severity of every offense, trying to give each an individual grade on the scale of absurdity. Trump himself is the offense. Everything that springs from him, every person who supports him, every staffer who shields him, every legislator who defends him, is an offense. Every partisan who uses him — against all he or she has ever claimed to champion — to advance a political agenda and, in so doing, places party over country, is an offense...

Broken Arm Blogging And Prosing

2017-06-18T18:07:00.000-04:00

I broke my upper arm yesterday so I'm tediously using the on-screen keyboard. Don't expect much from me. Too much pain.

Leave Clinton Alone!

2017-06-18T18:01:00.001-04:00

Everybody Needs To Stop Telling Hillary Clinton To Shut Up | HuffPost:

...So let’s be clear about this. If you don’t like Hillary Clinton, that’s fine. If you want to disagree with the substance of something she says in her occasional public appearances, that’s fine, too. But if seeing an article about her giving a relatively anodyne commencement speech makes you seethe with rage and demand that she go away forevermore, you’re the one with the problem...

Smoke, Mirrors, and Destroying Healthcare

2017-06-16T17:35:00.001-04:00

Vice President Pence Lawyers Up – Mother Jones:

This is just astonishing. The FBI is actively investigating ties between the president’s campaign and a hostile foreign power. Ditto for his former national security adviser. The FBI director has been fired for refusing to kill the investigation. The attorney general has recused himself. The deputy attorney general has appointed a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is busily hiring experts in money laundering. A few days ago Mueller widened the scope of his inquiry to include a criminal investigation of the president. Bipartisan congressional committees are holding hearings. The president himself has lawyered up, and now the vice president has lawyered up too.

This would not be completely unprecedented if it happened in 2022, six years into Trump’s presidency. But it’s happened in Trump’s first five months. And while we’re all busy gaping at the spectacle of the whole thing, Republicans are trying to take health coverage away from millions of people so they can use the money to fund tax cuts for the rich...