Trump And Republican Death Cult Governors Are Following Japan's Lead In Opening Up Business Way Too Early

Shinzo Abe's right wing government opened up for business too fast-- just as Trump is planning to do-- and bullying easily-bullied governors into doing. What's happening in Japan is what's going to happen in, for example, Florida and Texas-- both of which are eager to open up again. COVID-19 infections have been spiking in Florida like mad. Joel Franco of WSVN has been tracking the progression of the pandemic in Florida since it began. Friday he announced the biggest single day jump. Mind you, as of this writing, the curve in Florida and Texas is steepening, not flattening. In Florida there are now 24,119 infections and 686 deaths and GOP Death Cult Governor Ron DeSantis is celebrating by opening the beaches. In Texas there are 17,371, 428 deaths and another GOP Death Cult governor, Greg Abbott, who is focused on opening Texas business by a specific date rather than when he has the pandemic under control.

Trump and his Death Cult have no interest in waiting for the curve to flatten

Writing for the Associated Press, Mari Yamaguchi and Yuri Kageyama, explain exactly what Trump, DeSantis and Abbott should be looking at in Japan before they move ahead with the same ill-conceived plans that Abe used. They wrote that "Hospitals in Japan are increasingly turning away sick people as the country struggles with surging coronavirus infections and its emergency medical system collapses. In one recent case, an ambulance carrying a man with a fever and difficulty breathing was rejected by 80 hospitals and forced to search for hours for a hospital in downtown Tokyo that would treat him. Another feverish man finally reached a hospital after paramedics unsuccessfully contacted 40 clinics. The Japanese Association for Acute Medicine and the Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine say many hospital emergency rooms are refusing to treat people including those suffering strokes, heart attacks and external injuries." Should we expect to see that in Miami, Tampa, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio? Absolutely-- and especially all along the Florida panhandle.

Japan initially seemed to have controlled the outbreak by going after clusters of infections in specific places, usually enclosed spaces such as clubs, gyms and meeting venues. But the spread of virus outpaced this approach and most new cases are untraceable.

The outbreak has highlighted underlying weaknesses in medical care in Japan, which has long been praised for its high quality insurance system and reasonable costs. Apart from a general unwillingness to embrace social distancing, experts fault government incompetence and a widespread shortage of the protective gear and equipment medical workers need to do their jobs.

Japan lacks enough hospital beds, medical workers or equipment. Forcing hospitalization of anyone with the virus, even those with mild symptoms, has left hospitals overcrowded and understaffed.

The “collapse of emergency medicine” has already happened, a precursor to the overall collapse of medicine, the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine and the Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine said in a joint statement. By turning away patients, hospitals are putting an excessive burden on the limited number of advanced and critical emergency centers, the groups said.

“We can no longer carry out normal emergency medicine,” said Takeshi Shimazu, an Osaka University emergency doctor.

There are not enough protective gowns, masks and face shields, raising risks of infection for medical workers and making treatment of COVID-19 patients increasingly difficult, said Yoshitake Yokokura, who heads the Japan Medical Association.

In March, there were 931 cases of ambulances getting rejected by more than five hospitals or driving around for 20 minutes or longer to reach an emergency room, up from 700 in March last year. In the first 11 days of April, that rose to 830, the Tokyo Fire Department said. Department official Hiroshi Tanoue said the number of cases surged largely because suspected coronavirus cases require isolation until test results arrive.

Infections in a number of hospitals have forced medical workers to self-isolate at home, worsening staff shortages.

Tokyo’s new cases started to spike in late March, the day after the Tokyo Olympics was postponed for a year. They’ve been rising at an accelerating pace for a current total of 2,595. Most patients are still hospitalized, pushing treatment capacity to its limits.

With about 10,000 cases and 170 deaths, Japan’s situation is not as dire as New York City’s which has had more than 10,000 deaths, or Italy’s, with more than 21,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.

But there are fears Japan’s outbreak could become much worse.

Doctors say they are stretched thin. Since it takes time for COVID-19 to be diagnosed, patients who show up at hospitals can unintentionally endanger those around them. On Thursday, the medical workers’ union demanded the government pay them high-risk allowances and provide sufficient protective gear.

Medical workers are now reusing N95 masks and making their own face shields. The major city of Osaka has sought contributions of unused plastic raincoats for use as hazmat gowns. Abe has appealed to manufacturers to step up production of masks and gowns, ventilators and other supplies.

A government virus task force has warned that, in a worst-case scenario where no preventive measures were taken, more than 400,000 could die due to shortages of ventilators and other intensive care equipment.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said the government has secured 15,000 ventilators and is getting support of Sony and Toyota Motor Corp. to produce more.

Japanese hospitals also lack ICUs, with only five per 100,000 people, compared to about 30 in Germany, 35 in the U.S. and 12 in Italy, said Osamu Nishida, head of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Italy’s 10% mortality rate, compared to Germany’s 1%, is partly due to the shortage of ICU facilities, Nishida said. “Japan, with ICUs not even half of Italy’s, is expected to face a fatality overshoot very quickly,” he said.

Japan has been limiting testing for the coronavirus mainly because of rules requiring any patients to be hospitalized. Surging infections have prompted the Health Ministry to loosen those rules and move patients with milder symptoms to hotels to free up beds for those requiring more care.

Calls for social distancing have not worked well enough in crowded cities like Tokyo, experts say, with many people still commuting to offices in crowded trains even after the prime minister declared a state of emergency.

Officials fear people may travel during the upcoming “golden week” holiday in early May.

“From the medical field, we are hearing cries of desperation that lives that can be saved may no longer be possible,” Abe said Friday. “I ask you all again, please refrain from going out.”

Ron DeSantis (R-FL), America's worst governor

Will The Establishment's Culture Of Corruption Defeat The #GreenNewDeal?

Everybody does it... except those who don't. Yesterday PhilosophRob, a vegetarian, ran two Open Secrets-based lists of how much money some of the presidential candidates in Congress took from hedge fund managers and from lobbyists so far this cycle. It's easy to talk about cleaning up the corruption in Congress at the root of all the county's problems. But who is willing to walk the walk? Hint: look down at the bottom of the two lists. Not everyone is the same.

Another list: the probable chairs of the House committees starting January 3:

• Agriculture- Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Appropriations- Nita Lowey (D-NY)
• Armed Services- Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Budget- John Yarmuth (D-KY)
• Education and Labor- Bobby Scott (D-VA)
• Energy and Commerce- Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
• Ethics- Ted Deutch (D-FL)
• Financial Services- Maxine Waters (D-CA)
• Foreign Affairs- Eliot Engel (New Dem-Israel)
• Homeland Security- Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
• House Administration- Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
• Judiciary- Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
• National Resources- Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ)
• Oversight and Government Reform- Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
• Rules- Jim McGovern- (D-MA)
• Science, Space and Technology- Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
• Small Business- Nydia Velázquez (D-NY)
• Transportation and Infrastructure- Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
• Veterans Affairs- Mark Takano (D-CA)
• Ways and Means- Richard Neal (D-MA)
• Human Rights- Jim McGovern (D-MA)
• Intelligence- Adam Schiff (New Dem-CA)

Now, in light of Pelosi's much ballyhooed H.R. 1 (which I totally support, even though it doesn't go nearly far enough towards reform), keep these logical and pretty obvious words from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in mind:

I took a look at who the biggest contributors are to each of the incoming chairmen to see if there is any connection to favors they could do as chairs of their committees. And, there were. We've been talking about how corrupt and deceitful New Jersey hack, Frank Pallone, is blocking the creation of a Climate Change Committee, or at least blocking the idea of the committee having any power at all. It's a turf war based on the bribes he gets from Oil and Gas. We'll get back to him in a moment.

A reminder: certain committees are honey pots for corrupt members looking for cash. Generally speaking, congress members flocking to the Financial Services Committee, for example, are looking for bribes from Wall Street. Ditto for the House Ways and Means Committee. The Agriculture Committee is also a get-rich-quick scheme. Same with Armed Services and the notorious Energy and Commerce Committee. I should mention there are also members who go to those committees in order to reform them00 but not many. Let's start with Agriculture, which Collin Peterson-- a super-corrupt Blue Dog-- has ruin before and used as a meeting ground for Blue Dogs interested in his quid pro quo way of dealing with Agribusiness. What businesses have been most generous to Mr. Peterson? Well, this cycle the top half dozen in order of generosity: Crop Production & Basic Processing, Agricultural Services/Products, Food Processing & Sales, Securities & Investment, Dairy and Forestry & Forest Products. Overall this quarter, his top sector for collecting bribes as... Agribusiness and he took $533,825, a nice haul. At the height of his chairman glory days (2006), Agribusiness paid off Peterson to the tune of $393,586. Since 2000, Peterson has gobbled up over $4 million from Agribusiness. During a time period when the sector has given almost double to Republicans ($204,052,583) than Democrats ($107,213,690) Peterson has done very well for himself. He is a living case study for bribery in Congress. It's a disgrace that at the same time Pelosi is introducing H.R. 1, she is also giving Collin Peterson back the chair of the Agriculture Committee, making a mockery of her call for reform.

A half dozen who should be rotting in prison cells

Let me take the 4 committees involved with money-- Appropriations (Nita Lowey), Budget (John Yarmuth), Financial Services (Maxine Waters) and Ways and Means (Richard Neal) in one shot. In way of comparison, let me start by showing you how much the out-going Republican chairs have taken from the Finance Sector (since 2000):

Appropriations- Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)- $1,714,880
Budget- Steve Womack (R-AR)- $681,143
Financial Services- Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $7,916,748
Ways and Means- Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $4,160,535

OK, now let's look at the incoming Democratic chairs, who you might think are less corrupt than the Republicans. Mixed bag on that one:

• Appropriations- Nita Lowey (D-NY)- $5,215,043
• Budget- John Yarmuth (D-KY)- $689,012
• Financial Services- Maxine Waters (D-CA)- $1,826,285
• Ways and Means- Richard Neal (D-MA)- $5,481,179

Let's just look at the current cycle. Lowey's top sector for contributions: Finance ($323,030). Yarmuth's top sector: Labor ($141,000). Waters' top sector: Finance ($412,579). And Neal's top sector: Finance ($894,530). Certainly Lowey, Waters and Neal will all be in, let's say, awkward ethical situations when considering and writing legislation on banks, investments, insurance, real estate, taxes, etc.

Let's move to Armed Services. Adam Smith is considered a friend of the Military Industrial Complex. This cycle his biggest sector for bribes was, of course, Defense ($206,950). His #1 industry-- Defense Aerospace; among his top half dozen: Defense Electronics, Electronics Manufacturing and Equipment, Miscellaneous Defense. Career long he's taken $1,140,050 from the Defense sector. The current chairman, Mac Thornberry (R-TX) has taken $1,562,150. No doubt Smith will quickly surpass him.

Bobby Scott (D-VA) will chair the Education and Labor Committee. His top sector this cycle was-- no surprise-- labor ($136,000). Among his contributors, the half dozen industries that forked over the most: #1- Public Sector Unions, #2- Building Trade Unions, #4- Education, #5- Industrial Unions. Since 2000, unions have contributed $1,437,250 to Scott's campaigns. Education isn't one of the high rolling sectors but the sector contributed $20,400 to his campaign this cycle (and $120,254 career-long).

Energy and Commerce has it's fingers in a lot of pies-- as does the incoming chairman, Frank Pallone. This cycle his 5 biggest contributing cycles were sectors his committee writes legislation for:

• Health- $724,700
• Communications/Electronics- $333,451
• Finance- $214,450
• Labor- $187,525
• Energy and Natural Resources- $178,199

His biggest industries this cycle were health professionals, Pharmaceuticals and Telecom services, industries he will be writing legislation for in the next Congress. but career-long, this is what he's gotten from the sectors that are most eagle to influence him:

• Health- $6,067,900, the most of any member of the House, past or present!
• Communications/Electronics- $1,536,862
• Finance- $2,179,885
• Labor- $2,891,945
• Energy and Natural Resources- $862,516

I think I'm going to stick with Pallone and what he's up to in terms of the turf war he's waging against Alexandria Ocasio, or against her proposal to establish a select committee to deal with the #GreenNewDeal. Some of the other chairs are screaming bloody murder over this as well, since if an effective committee was re-authorized-- the Dems had one in 2007-11 but Boehner immediately abolished it upon the GOP victory in 2010-- it could have jurisdiction or co-jurisdiction in many areas and threaten the ability of committees to squeeze bribes out of almost every industry.

First off, Pelosi, who faced this in 2007 when she first established a Select Committee on Climate Change. She compromised and made it into more of an investigative committee with no real powers and it is likely that she will do the same thing because of Pallone's squawking and temper tantrums. The Sunrise Movement and other progressive groups are working to pressure Pelosi to make it stronger and more strategic than what it turned out to be in 2007. The pressure on her will mount as more members sign up as supporters. Right now there are 35 congressmembers who are on board. These:

So where are all the freshmen who just campaigned on the #GreenNewDeal issues? The only freshmen so far are Mike Levin (D-CA), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Deb Haaland (D-NM) and, of course, Alexandria Ocasio (D-NY), who is helping the Sunrise Movement with their efforts in Congress.

Yesterday, author Ellen Brown, in an OpEd for TruthDig, This Radical Plan to Fund the 'Green New Deal' Just Might Work, explained how the Green New Deal could transform the country and why the arguments by conservatives against it can all be overcome. "With what author and activist Naomi Klein calls 'galloping momentum,' the Green New Deal promoted by Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop," she wrote. "Her plan would give a House select committee 'a mandate that connects the dots' between energy, transportation, housing, health care, living wages, a jobs guarantee and more. But even to critics on the left, it is merely political theater, because 'everyone knows' a program of that scope cannot be funded without a massive redistribution of wealth and slashing of other programs (notably the military), which is not politically feasible." Brown doesn't believe that and neither do I.

That may be the case, but Ocasio-Cortez and the 22 35 representatives joining her in calling for a select committee also are proposing a novel way to fund the program, one that could actually work. The resolution says funding will come primarily from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.”

A network of public banks could fund the Green New Deal in the same way President Franklin Roosevelt funded the original New Deal. At a time when the banks were bankrupt, he used the publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation as a public infrastructure bank. The Federal Reserve could also fund any program Congress wanted, if mandated to do so. Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act and can amend it. Or the Treasury itself could do it, without the need to even change any laws. The Constitution authorizes Congress to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and that power has been delegated to the Treasury. It could mint a few trillion-dollar platinum coins, put them in its bank account and start writing checks against them. What stops legislators from exercising those constitutional powers is simply that “everyone knows” Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation will result. But will it? Compelling historical precedent shows that this need not be the case.

Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has studied the hyperinflation question extensively. He writes that disasters such as Zimbabwe’s fiscal troubles were not due to the government printing money to stimulate the economy. Rather, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”

As long as workers and materials are available and the money is added in a way that reaches consumers, adding money will create the demand necessary to prompt producers to create more supply. Supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable. The reverse is also true. If demand (money) is not increased, supply and gross domestic product (GDP) will not go up. New demand needs to precede new supply.

The Public Bank Option: The Precedent of Roosevelt’s New Deal

Infrastructure projects of the sort proposed in the Green New Deal are “self-funding,” generating resources and fees that can repay the loans. For these loans, advancing funds through a network of publicly owned banks would not require taxpayer money and could actually generate a profit for the government. That was how the original New Deal rebuilt the country in the 1930s at a time when the economy was desperately short of money.

The publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was a remarkable publicly owned credit machine that allowed the government to finance the New Deal and World War II without turning to Congress or the taxpayers for appropriations. First instituted in 1932 by President Herbert Hoover, the RFC was not called an infrastructure bank and was not even a bank, but it served the same basic functions. It was continually enlarged and modified by Roosevelt to meet the crisis of the times, until it became America’s largest corporation and the world’s largest financial organization. Its semi-independent status let it work quickly, allowing New Deal agencies to be financed as the need arose.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act of 1932 provided the financial organization with capital stock of $500 million and the authority to extend credit up to $1.5 billion (subsequently increased several times). The initial capital came from a stock sale to the U.S. Treasury. With those resources, from 1932 to 1957 the RFC loaned or invested more than $40 billion. A small part of this came from its initial capitalization. The rest was borrowed, chiefly from the government itself. Bonds were sold to the Treasury, some of which were then sold to the public, although most were held by the Treasury. All in all, the RFC ended up borrowing a total of $51.3 billion from the Treasury and $3.1 billion from the public.

In this arrangement, the Treasury was therefore the lender, not the borrower. As the self-funding loans were repaid, so were the bonds that were sold to the Treasury, leaving the RFC with a net profit. The financial organization was the lender for thousands of infrastructure and small-business projects that revitalized the economy, and these loans produced a total net income of $690,017,232 on the RFC’s “normal” lending functions (omitting such things as extraordinary grants for wartime). The RFC financed roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms and much more, and it funded all this while generating income for the government.

The Central Bank Option: How Japan Is Funding Abenomics with Quantitative Easing

The Federal Reserve is another Green New Deal funding option. The Fed showed what it can do with “quantitative easing” when it created the funds to buy $2.46 trillion in federal debt and $1.77 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, all without inflating consumer prices. The Fed could use the same tool to buy bonds earmarked for a Green New Deal, and because it returns its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, the bonds would be nearly interest-free. If they were rolled over from year to year, the government, in effect, would be issuing new money.

What if Trump heard about from his pal, Abe?

This is not just theory. Japan is actually doing it, without creating even the modest 2 percent inflation the government is aiming for. “Abenomics,” the economic agenda of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, combines central bank quantitative easing with fiscal stimulus (large-scale increases in government spending). Since Abe came into power in 2012, Japan has seen steady economic growth, and its unemployment rate has fallen by nearly half, yet inflation remains very low, at 0.7 percent. Social Security-related expenses accounted for 55 percent of general expenditure in Japan’s 2018 federal budget, and a universal health care insurance system is maintained for all citizens. Nominal GDP is up 11 percent since the end of the first quarter of 2013, a much better record than during the prior two decades of Japanese stagnation, and the Nikkei stock market is at levels not seen since the early 1990s, driven by improved company earnings. Growth remains below targeted levels, but according to Finacial Times this is because fiscal stimulus has actually been too small. While spending with the left hand, the government has been taking the money back with the right, increasing the sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent.

Abenomics has been declared a success even by the once-critical International Monetary Fund. After Abe crushed his opponents in 2017, Noah Smith wrote in Bloomberg, “Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party has figured out a novel and interesting way to stay in power—govern pragmatically, focus on the economy and give people what they want.” Smith said everyone who wanted a job had one, small and midsize businesses were doing well; and the Bank of Japan’s unprecedented program of monetary easing had provided easy credit for corporate restructuring without generating inflation. Abe had also vowed to make both preschool and college free.

Not that all is idyllic in Japan. Forty percent of Japanese workers lack secure full-time employment and adequate pensions. But the point underscored here is that large-scale digital money-printing by the central bank to buy back the government’s debt, combined with fiscal stimulus by the government (spending on “what the people want”), has not inflated Japanese prices, the alleged concern preventing other countries from doing the same.

Abe’s novel economic program has done more than just stimulate growth. By selling its debt to its own central bank, which returns the interest to the government, the Japanese government has, in effect, been canceling its debt. Until recently, it was doing this at the rate of a whopping $720 billion per year. According to fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article:

The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%). BOJ holdings are part of the consolidated government balance sheet. So its holdings are in fact the accounting equivalent of a debt cancellation. If I buy back my own mortgage, I don’t have a mortgage.

If the Federal Reserve followed suit and bought 40 percent of the U.S. national debt, it would be holding $8 trillion in federal securities, three times its current holdings from its quantitative easing programs. Yet liquidating a full 40 percent of Japan’s government debt has not triggered price inflation.

Filling the Gap Between Wages, Debt and GDP

Rather than stepping up its bond-buying, the Federal Reserve is now bent on “quantitative tightening,” raising interest rates and reducing the money supply by selling its bonds into the market in anticipation of “full employment” driving up prices. “Full employment” is considered to be 4.7 percent unemployment, taking into account the “natural rate of unemployment” of people between jobs or voluntarily out of work. But the economy has now hit that level and prices are not in the danger zone, despite nearly 10 years of “accommodative” monetary policy. In fact, the economy is not near true full employment nor full productive capacity, with GDP remaining well below both the long-run trend and the level predicted by forecasters a decade ago. In 2016, real per capita GDP was 10 percent below the 2006 forecast of the Congressional Budget Office, and it shows no signs of returning to the predicted level.

In 2017, U.S. GDP was $19.4 trillion. Assuming that sum is 10 percent below full productive capacity, the money circulating in the economy needs to be increased by another $2 trillion to create the demand to bring it up to full capacity. That means $2 trillion could be injected into the economy every year without creating price inflation. New supply would just be generated to meet the new demand, bringing GDP to full capacity while keeping prices stable.

UPDATE: Jumpin' The Fence

Allow me to include some of Kurt Bardella's fascinating weekend essay for USA Today, even though the connection is somewhat tenuous. Last year he switched parties and announced he was becoming a Democrat. He seems happy to have done so... more or less. "My first year as a Democrat," he wrote, "has given me an appreciation of the gulf between the world views of Republicans and Democrats. Even how we digest and process information is so different. In the decade I spent working in Republican politics here in Washington, I don’t think I ever heard climate change come up as a serious topic of social conversation."

Shocking as it may be to learn, Republicans do not sit around and talk about the environment. As a Democrat, I feel like this topic is a consistent focal point of social conversations. In fact, I’ve found the same thing to be true about gun-law reform, racial inequality, social injustice and sexism. As a Republican, I just never talked about these things, but as a Democrat, I talk about them all the time.

I’ll tell you, being a Democrat is a heck of a lot more emotionally exhausting than being a Republican was, because I care about a lot more things than I used to. There must be some wisdom in the old saying that “ignorance is bliss.” It’s funny, because I remember as a Republican, we would often mock “bleeding-heart liberals” who are always “caring” so much. I think to myself now, what the hell is wrong with these Republicans who don’t seem to care about anything at all?

On a personal level, one of the biggest changes for me has been how I view issues of race. I’ve spent the bulk of my life avoiding race. My first name is German, my last name is Italian and I was born in Seoul, South Korea-- I’m adopted. I grew up in a very rough part of upstate New York where I was taunted and at times beat up by kids because I was (and looked) different. On some level, I was conditioned through this treatment to believe that being different was a bad thing and so I avoided it.

I’ve spent the bulk of my life rejecting my Asian-American heritage. Quite frankly, as a Republican, this was very easy to do. The Republican Party’s attitude toward anyone who isn’t white speaks for itself. Why would I want to even pursue an association as a “minority” in a political party that spouts hateful rhetoric about minorities and pushes policies that discriminate against anyone who isn’t white? It was a pretty cowardly attitude considering how many have brave enough to take a stand and fight for minority rights and confront social injustice.

But once I stepped away from the Republican Party, its efforts to promote racism through rhetoric and policies offended me on a very personal level. I began engaging in these issues and exploring what it means to be a minority in America. One of my favorite moments of this year was participating in a panel at Politi-con called “Crazy Political Asians.” At one point, the moderator, MSNBC’s Richard Lui, asked our panel what year each of us owned up to being a member of the Asian-American Pacific Islander community. Most people gave answers like kindergarten or middle school. My response was “2018.” It may seem like a small thing, but saying this in public for the first time was a big deal for me.

...Relief that I was finally able to speak my truth. For the better part of two years, I had felt like a fraud still calling myself a “Republican.” I guess on some level, I had hoped that the cancer that is Trumpism would be isolated to a smaller segment of the Republican Party. Instead, it spread to infect the entire GOP with so-called “leaders” like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell becoming the biggest enablers and defenders of Trump’s unique brand of toxicity.

Their refusal to forge a different identity within the Republican Party divorced from Trumpism forced me to confront a reality I had tried to avoid-- that there really was no virtue in trying to be a sane voice within the GOP, and it was time to embrace a different way.

The View from Japan on Trump and the Korean Crisis

Kim Jong-il, with whose government the U.S. negotiated the 1994 agreement

-by Reese Erlich

My recent visit to Japan drove home one main point: President Donald Trump has managed to piss off just about everyone in that nation.

After Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spent the last several months stroking Trump’s ego and stressing the similarity of their conservative political views, Trump waived aluminum and steel tariffs for Canada, Australia, and the European Union-- but not Japan. And Trump caught Japanese leaders by surprise when he agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Japanese of different political persuasions don’t trust Trump and they voice doubt over whether the talks between Trump and Kim will bear results.

“They are both unpredictable characters,” Koichi Nakano, professor of political science and dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Tokyo’s Sophia University, told me. “But Kim has a method to his madness. Trump is driven by ego.”

Sue Kim, a reporter with the rightwing South Korean daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo, told me South Koreans and Japanese are worried about the Trump Team’s previous calls for a pre-emptive military attack on Pyongyang. “Trump is sending out confusing messages,” she told me. “That’s the scary part for us. What is the end goal?”

President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) is scheduled to meet with Kim Jong-un on April 27. Then Trump and Kim are supposed to meet in May or June. But the United States has sabotaged previous accords, and that was before North Korea had nuclear weapons.

Back in 1994, the United States President Bill Clinton and then President Kim Jong-il, father of the country’s current leader, signed an agreement that allowed North Korea to develop nuclear power but not atomic weapons-- a historic breakthrough after years of hot and cold war.

North Korea agreed to stop its nuclear weapons program while western powers agreed to help it construct two light-water nuclear reactors, whose spent fuel couldn’t be used to develop bombs. While waiting for the reactors to be built, the West would provide heavy fuel oil to power the country’s electric grid. In response, the United States pledged to eliminate sanctions and remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

North Korea lived up to its end of the bargain, but hawkish Republicans and Democrats didn’t like Clinton’s “Agreed Framework,” claiming it would allow North Korea to develop nuclear weapons. Congress refused to approve the full cost of fuel oil, and the western allies never built the promised reactors.

The Clinton Administration only lifted some sanctions and didn’t take North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. By the time George W. Bush was elected in 2000, Washington was ready to scuttle the agreement entirely, even blaming North Korea for the failure.

In 2002, Bush came up with his cockamamie campaign against the “Axis of Evil,” which included Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and North Korea. An orthodox Marxist-Leninist state, a nationalist dictatorship and an theocratic Islamic regime were somehow in cahoots to destroy the United States. The Agreed Framework was buried.

Had Washington carried out the signed agreement, the current U.S.-Korea crisis could have been avoided. Instead, in 2006, North Korea tested its first nuclear bomb, claiming it had the right to defend itself from outside attack. The United States still has 28,500 troops stationed in the Republic of Korea, and navy vessels carrying nuclear missiles cruise nearby.

North Korea’s dictatorial regime has angered ordinary Japanese in a variety of ways. In the 1970s and 1980s, the country’s soldiers kidnapped Japanese citizens and forced them to become language instructors and spies. For years, North Korea officials denied the kidnappings. Now they say all the victims have been returned to Japan or have died. Conservative Japanese politicians say some are still missing, and use the issue to stir up support for a stronger military.

Last year, North Korea test fired conventional ballistic missiles over Japan that landed in the Pacific Ocean. While the missiles weren’t aimed at Japan, they scared people. Prime Minister Abe won the 2017 parliamentary elections, in part, by playing on fears of a North Korean attack.

Abe and other conservatives use concerns about a Korean attack to justify expansion of Japan's military.

Leftist opponents of Abe say Japan doesn't need an offensive military. The North Korea threat is exaggerated, according to Professor Nakano.

The Trump Administration claims North Korea poses an immediate threat to the United States because its missiles may reach the U.S. mainland. In reality, North Korea is highly unlikely to launch an offensive attack since any first strike would bring a devastating response by the United States and South Korea, wiping out Pyongyang.

“North Korea is not going to launch a missile and end its regime,” Nakano said. “It sees the missiles as defense against the United States... If Iraq or Libya had nuclear weapons, the United States wouldn’t have attacked.”

Conservative reporter Kim strongly opposes the North Korean regime, but doesn't think it will act irrationally. “I used to think Kim was a crazy maniac,” she said. “He is controlling, but rational. Above all Kim wants his regime to survive."

North Korea will not likely give up its nuclear weapons. The best outcome of negotiations would halt expansion of the nuclear program in return for economic aid and normalization of relations with the west. At worst, the talks could fall apart in mutual recriminations and heighten the possibility of war.

The choice is up to Washington.

What Does Japan's Snap Election Tomorrow Mean? More Than You Probably Know If You Read The American Media

If you're a regular DWT reader, you already know we're not big fans of fascists like Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, going all the way back to when he was palling around with George W. Bush when the latter was President. Tomorrow, sullen Japanese voters go to the polls, probably to reelect the unpopular and failed Abe to another term. Abenomics, his right-wing economic agenda-- pretty much the Paul Ryan budget-- has been a complete bust for Japan-- except for Big Business and the very wealthy. Like I said, pretty much the Paul Ryan budget.

Public opinion polls conducted ahead of Sunday's general election nevertheless indicate that Mr Abe is on course for a resounding victory and a mandate to continue with his economic reforms.

The polls indicate that 34.1 per cent of the public will vote for the ruling LDP, with the main opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan, a long way back with 11.7 per cent. Support rates for the other eight parties that have put forward candidates are all in single figures, underlining the fractured and fractious nature of Mr Abe's political rivals.

The high number of voters who have no preferred party is indicative, however, of the widespread antipathy among the Japanese public for both the government and the opposition.

"Mr Abe is effectively going to win by default," said Jun Okumura, a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs.

"I suspect there will be a very low turnout on election day but that Mr Abe will emerge victorious, which he will take as a mandate to continue with these economic policies," he added.

...Analysts say that the prime minister is aware that his public support rate is eroding, albeit gradually, and he called the election two years earlier than he needed purely because he is unlikely to ever again be as popular as he is today. And he has effectively framed the debate as offering Japanese people the choice between backing his economic policies or sacking him.

And if the election was simply a question of economics, he would be on far more nervous about the outcome on Sunday night. Given that the opposition parties are such a shambles, lacking leadership, meaningful policies and direction, it means that Mr Abe has little in the way of a rival for his position.

Although U.S. media-- when it bothers covering the election at all-- treats it as mundane political horserace, context is available from non-U.S. media. The English-language Japan Times, for example, published an OpEd Saturday on how Abe has undermined democracy, something you'll never find in the NY Times or Washington Post. It sounds like Abe and his fascist supporters are getting ready for something particularly nasty:

On Dec. 10, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new special secrets law took effect despite overwhelming public opposition.

The new law gives bureaucrats enormous powers to withhold information produced in the course of their public duties that they deem a secret-- entirely at their own discretion-- and with no effective oversight mechanism to question or overturn such designations. The law also grants the government powers to imprison whistle-blowers, and prohibits disclosure of classified material even if its intention is to protect the public interest. This Draconian law also gives the government power to imprison journalists merely for soliciting information that is classified a secret.

...There are good reasons why 80 percent of the public opposes this bill. Would the investigations into the causes of the Fukushima nuclear accident and the collusive relations between coopted regulators and the utilities that compromised reactor safety have been made public under the new law?

Actually, to be fair, the Wall Street Journal actually did cover the Abe phenom competently, in a story by Yuka Hayashi that explains how Abe's family history (bound up in brutal, savage Japanese fascism) still haunts Japanese politics. Abe's grandfather, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, wanted to build up Japan's military after World War II. He failed but his grandson is fulfilling his vision today.

Kishi was accused-- though never indicted-- of war crimes for helping to build imperial Japan’s war machine in the 1930s and 1940s.

He helped lead Japan’s occupation of Chinese Manchuria, a region of northeast China rich in coal and fertile farmland where Mr. Kishi oversaw a system that used conscripted Chinese labor and Chinese natural resources to feed Japan’s growth, historians say.

Later, as prime minister in the 1950s, he sought to rewrite the U.S.-imposed postwar Japanese constitution that renounced militarism—a step that Mr. Abe also would like to take.

Mr. Abe’s push to revive his grandfather’s policies and ambitions has worried some Japanese voters, especially because of the negative reaction of the Chinese government, whose relationship with Japan has soured in recent years.

“A lot of what they say is the same. They both want constitutional revision and they both want rearmament of Japan,” said Takashi Ito, a Tokyo University emeritus history professor and a prominent expert on Mr. Kishi.

...After Japan’s defeat in 1945, Mr. Kishi was arrested by the U.S.-led occupation on suspicion of being a Class-A war criminal. The Tokyo war tribunal accused him of playing “a leading part in the preparation and enforcement” of Manchukuo’s economic model, which it said was “designed to enable Japan to carry on an aggressive war.”

He spent three years in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, reading Crime and Punishment, writing poems for his wife and sewing his own underwear, according to his journal.

In December 1948, wartime military leader Hideki Tojo was hanged in Sugamo Prison along with six others.

But Mr. Kishi, a senior member of Gen. Tojo’s cabinet, was never indicted and was freed. With the Cold War starting, the U.S. wanted Japan to get back on its feet quickly and to rearm to an extent. Technocrats like Mr. Kishi were considered indispensable, historians say.

...In his first stint as prime minister in 2006, Mr. Abe pursued his grandfather’s goal of revising the constitution. He also made his appreciation for his grandfather better-known.

During a visit to India in 2007, he included a stop to meet the son of an Indian judge who served on the Tokyo war tribunal and who had argued that Japan’s wartime leaders weren’t guilty. Mr. Kishi had praised the judge, Radhabinod Pal, for his “sense of justice” and “courage” in his prison journal.

A few months later, Mr. Abe resigned, with some voters wary of his steps to reopen Japan’s constitution.

In his second stint as prime minister, Mr. Abe has focused more heavily on economic policies, with mixed success. His Abenomics program has helped boost corporate profits and share prices.

His poll ratings have slipped considerably, however, as Japan has fallen into recession after an April tax increase.

By calling elections now, aides say, Mr. Abe hopes to lock in more time in office. It will also give him another chance to realize his grandfather’s aim of a more powerful Japan playing a bigger role in world politics.

In July, Mr. Abe’s cabinet approved a reinterpretation of the constitution to allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to come to the aid of allies such as the U.S. even if Japan itself isn’t attacked. Mr. Abe has signaled he wants to go further in the years ahead.

So, despite a quadruple-dip recession and utterly incompetent handling of the economy, there's almost no chance Abe will be turned out of office tomorrow. Voters sense that if they do turn him and his trickle down nonsense out, their pensions will go up in smoke fast and for sure (rather than maybe and less immediately), as Abe's ability to manipulate stock prices ends. The Japanese people are screwwed no matter what they do. They should have paid closer attention when they elected Abe in the first second place. This will be the third-- and far from the charm. Tokyo's municipal government said turnout in the city was lower than the last election 2 years ago, with 26% of voters showing by midafternoon, compared with nearly 32% as of that time in the previous lower house election in 2012. The final nationwide turnout in that election was a record-low 59.3 million people. By the press is already reporting a "landslide" win for Abe.



Abe's Big Win: Power But No Mandate

The Guardian reports a big win for Abe and his fascists in terms of seats in the Diet, but not any enthusiasm from the voters, who showed what they thought of them by staying away from the polls.

Japanese media exit polls forecast that Abe’s LDP and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, would retain their two-thirds majority in the lower house, enabling them to push legislation through both houses with ease.

Private broadcaster TV Asahi said the ruling parties had together won 333 of the 475 seats, while TBS put the figure at 328. They needed at least 317 seats to retain their “super majority”-- giving them the power to override bills rejected by the upper house and pass them into law.

But the vote was hardly a ringing endorsement of Abe’s policies, despite forecasts that the LDP alone would win between 290 and 310 seats.

The public broadcaster NHK and other media forecast turnout at around 52%-- seven percentage points down from the last election in 2012 and the lowest since the end of the second world war.

The result also underlines the precarious state of the main opposition Democratic party of Japan (DPJ) and confirms its failure to rebuild its support base after its trouncing by Abe’s LDP two years ago.

“This is not so much a vote of confidence in Abe and the LDP as a vote of no-confidence in the political opposition,” Professor Gerry Curtis of Columbia University told Reuters.

Ian Welsh on "countries which cannot produce what the rest of the world needs, nor produce what they need"

"Countries which cannot produce what the rest of the world needs, nor produce what they need, are always in great danger from other nations which can cut them off.  They give up power over their own fate."

-- Ian Welsh, in the post "Japan refuses
to eliminate agricultural tariffs, and spikes the TPP"

by Ken

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been giving off nasty vibes the whole time it has been aborning, not least because of the pathological secrecy in which it has been shrouded. This has been more than a little suspicious given the track record of regional trade pacts that have come into being over the last couple of decades, often flying the happy-sounding flag of "free trade," which have had a way of working hard for entrenched elite interests, requiring outsize givebacks from the world's "have not"s and "have less"es.

In a new post, Ian Welsh takes off on a specific stumbling block the TPP has encountered: Japan's refusal to eliminate agricultural tariffs. And Ian ventures that "Japan is entirely correct in this." Why?

Japan’s agriculture is not efficient: it costs more to grow food in Japan than it does in many other nations.  If Japan removed its tariffs, its agricultural sector would either be eliminated or forced to consolidate and specialize in crops it has a comparative advantage in.  Whatever these are (perhaps silk), they wouldn’t be staple food crops.  Japan would thus lose what ability it has to feed itself and would have to buy even more food on world markets than it does today.

"Regular readers," Ian writes, "will recognize this pattern from the article on why the third world is even more impoverished today than it was 40 years ago, and it seems worth noting that the linked post was called "Why Africa Can’t Handle Ebola: the Destruction of the 3rd World." In it Ian traced the African nations' inability to cope with a health crisis like ebola back to this same kind of process of forced dependency.

He's quick to add that "Japan is by no means a third world country, and money would be loaned to it to buy said food."

[B]ut Japan is not a healthy economy either.  The Japanese recently lowered the value of the Yen significantly, and  their exports didn’t increase.

Contrary to economic dogma that sort of thing happens fairly often: people simply are already buying as much of what Japan makes as they want.

Japan is not what it was 30 years ago, or even 10.  It runs an export deficit and a current account deficit. Even when the economy was healthy, having to buy much of its energy was painful, having to buy its food would be even more so.

And here things start to get really interesting. "More importantly," Ian says, borrowing to pay for its food supply "would make Japan vulnerable to anyone who controlled foreign currency loans they need to buy the food, and to the major food producers."

Japan can print money, to be sure, and has, but there comes a point where you can’t, where people won’t take it.  Japan isn’t there yet, but they risk being there someday soon.  And bear in mind that as global warming bites, food will become more and more scarce. Right now we have a huge food surplus, that will not remain the case.

Countries which cannot produce what the rest of the world needs, nor produce what they need, are always in great danger from other nations which can cut them off. They give up power over their own fate, and others will take advantage of it to force them to do as they wish, including opening up their markets to allow the commanding heights of the economy to be purchased.

This is beginning to sound a little closer to home, no?

Japan has been badly run for decades, and made the same mistake the US did when its bubble collapsed: they did not wipe the debts off the books, but instead extended and pretended. That led to the long “bright depression”, but it is now leading them into a much worse period.

They are, however, doing something right in refusing to remove their tariffs. To be sure, they are doing so for domestic political reasons (the small rural farmers are politically powerful), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still the correct thing to do.

And Ian concludes:

Since the TPP is, overall, a terrible trade agreement (they virtually all are) let us hope the Japanese stick to their guns and that it does scupper the agreement. It’ll be best for them, and for us.

I find it extremely useful to have these patterns in the new wave of trade agreements spotlighted. There are economic interests that would be served by pressuring Japan into this kind of economic dependency. But riding shotgun for those interests isn't any more in the interest of most Americans than it is of most Japanese.

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Imagine A Country With A Peace Clause In It's Constitution

But imagine it quickly but what's left of it is being deconstructed as you read this. Although the American media doesn't cover Japanese politics, we tried warning DWT readers that Japanese voters had decided to get on a neo-fascist path again last year. Much to the delight of U.S. Republicans and militarists, Japan elected a new nationalist extremist and right-winger with shit for brains, Shinzo Abe. The Japanese economy headed right into the toilet as he adopted a Japanese version of the Paul Ryan budget. Now he's building up Japan's military in a way that is worrying to all of Japan's neighbor. Before going any further let me just say that Japanese students are not taught about Japan's aggression and atrocities during World War II-- and all their neighbors know it. Most Japanese in their 20s and 30s are stunned when they are told what Japan did in the '30s and '40s and many flat out refuse to believe it is possible.

This is Article 9 of Japan's Constitution which Abe's fascist cabinet has decided to "reinterpret" without consulting Parliament:

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. (2) To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

In theory, changing it would require a plebiscite. but just a few years after the Constitution was adopted, Japanese (and American) militarists had already started looking for ways to subvert it or ignore it. Much like Hitler had after WWI, they called their new army a National Police Reserve and renamed tanks "special vehicles." In 1954 the "Reserve" was renamed the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Abe is eager to go whole hog and acquire nuclear weapons. That's quite an "interpretation."

Abe, is not just a typical sick conservative, he's a born criminal. His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a prominent fascist and Minister of Munitions in Tojo's cabinet until the end of the War, when he was imprisoned at Sugamo Prison as a "Class A" war criminal for using slave labor in occupied Manchuria. Connections helped him escape being hung like many of his colleagues and fellow fascists. And now the U.S. in encouraging his grandson-- an unrepentant fascist in the same way he and Tojo were-- to rearm. Abe has already empowered Japan's military to take action against other countries.

Polls have shown that a majority of Japan’s citizens oppose the doctrine of “collective self-defense,” as the right to exercise force is known. Yet those who support Mr. Abe’s cabinet continue to outnumber those who don’t. An Asahi Shimbun poll conducted in late June found 56 percent against collective self-defense and only 28 percent in favor, with 43 percent supporting the Abe cabinet and 33 percent opposed.

This odd concurrence of overall approval for the Abe administration with disapproval for specific policies has been the rule in past months, during which Mr. Abe has let his nationalism run unbridled. Late last year, he rammed through a “Special Secret Protection Bill” that guards state interests while violating freedoms of the press and expression. He also became the first sitting prime minister since 2006 to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, said to house the spirits of Japan’s war dead, including Class-A war criminals.

In each case, the media focused on popular opposition to these actions, emphasizing dips in Mr. Abe’s popularity. But the crucial point is that even with these dips, the prime minister has consistently drawn more support than opposition. If this had not been the case, he would almost certainly have decided not to rush ahead with his overbearing plan to alter the interpretation of Article 9.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which Mr. Abe leads, has promoted a nationalist agenda ever since its establishment in 1955. For decades, L.D.P. cabinets were itching to revise the “peace constitution” imposed by the United States following Japan’s defeat in World War II.

L.D.P. politicians also looked for ways to instill nationalist feelings in Japan’s schoolchildren-- and, to some degree, they were successful in using the government’s system for approving textbooks to accomplish that goal. Until now, though, the party failed to make much headway on the constitutional issue.

Popular distrust of the state ran so deep and an abhorrence of memories of wartime militarism was so strong that Article 9 became a third rail in Japanese politics. All these years, a widespread pacifism kept the L.D.P. in check.

Seven decades after the 1945 defeat, anti-militarist sentiment in Japan is running out of steam.

Food Watch: Should we maybe look for a second opinion about these cat-shaped marshmallows?

by Ken

Maybe the simplest way to approach this is to ask, what do you think of when you look at the picture above?

One possible reaction:

"Oh goody, there's a pussycat-shaped thing floating on top of my whatever-the-hell-that-viscous-liquid-is-in-the-mug."

My first thought was that it was coffee, or maybe soup, but since the floating thing turns out to be a cat-shaped marshmallow, I certainly hope it's not coffee or soup. The only thing I can think of that might come in a mug which might lend itself to marshmallow inhabitation is cocoa. Sure, you could top off your cocoa with some of those tiny little marshmallows, or I suppose maybe one big marshmallow, but --

But, that brings us to --

Another possible reaction:

"Jeez, that's creepy! Why the hell is there something shaped like a cat floating on top of my damn cocoa?"

As you may recall, I take the website The Frisky as pretty much my bible when it comes to explaining men to women and explaining women to women and explaining, well, most everything else that's culture-related to women. (Sometimes they even undertake to try to explain women to men -- not so much because they have much doubt about the subject being self-explanatory as because they realize that men are so clueless, and yet somehow hold all the power when it comes to relations between men and women, which is why women are apparently in need of so much explaining).

Which brings us, more or less, to the cat-shaped marshmallows.

In a post called "Want: Cat-Shaped Marshmallows That Float To The Top Of Your Drink," Claire Hannum begins by asking, "How cute are CafeCats, a line of kitty-themed marshmallows?"

Claire goes on to say (links onsite):

How cute are CafeCats, a line of kitty-themed marshmallows? Made by Japanese confectioner Yawahada, the cats float to the top of your hot beverage to peek out as you sip. Yawahada also makes marshmallows that melt in your mug to reveal a little pink cat paw floating in your drink. Too cute! As of right now, the marshmallows are only available in Japan, though the company hopes to sell to international customers in the future. If you don’t live in Japan but plan to visit in the future, you can preorder the treats to be delivered when you’re in town. I feel these could make a great gift for those awkward social gatherings where you only sort of know the host -- everyone loves cute desserts!

Yes, Claire goes on to say all of this, but by this time I'm playing catch-up, because I'm still stuck on "How cute are CafeCats, a line of kitty-themed marshmallows?" Huh?

Let's say you have someone serving you breakfast, possibly one of those hosts "you only sort of know." Okay, so you sort of stumble and shuffle your way to the table, trying to think which of the great philosophers it was who said, "It's too damn early!" So you sit down, and the next thing you know you're having a mug shoved in your face, a mug that contains what appears to be heavily used machine or maybe motor oil with something that looks like a cat coming up to the surface for the last time. (Or possibly the machine or maybe motor oil is viscous enough to support flotation of the cat-looking thing for an extended time?) Let's pretend we're all cool with the idea that we're being served a mug of heavily used machine or maybe motor oil -- not that this doesn't raise legitimate questions, but we can investigate only so many puzzlements at a time.

Claire, I gather, would look at the floaty thing and say, "How cute is that?" I would say something more like, "Why the hell is there something that looks like a cat trapped in my heavily used machine or maybe motor oil?"

Thinking there might possibly be some illumination or clarification to be had there, I tried the supplied link for Yawahada, which is mostly in Japanese. Is this any help?


Hmm, not really, is it?

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

I looked back at the Frisky webpage for the cat-shaped marshmallows and noticed these comments:


These seem to represent the poles of thought about the cat-themed marshmallows. Let me just say, I hear ya, RoyalEagle0408.

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