Midnight Meme Of The Day!

Click on image to enlarge

by Noah

And lately he's been inciting his party to riot, even coupling his encouragement with sly mentions of the 2nd Amendment, a clear signal to create White House approved gun violence if there ever was one. For Trump, it's not enough to just call his fanatical followers "very fine people" He wants them to prove it all over again.

Yep, Trump wants the Republican jihadists out in the streets, crowded together, 6 inches of separation, protesting their own well-being just as Republicans previously took the streets and airwaves to protest Obamacare. We don't need no stinkin' health! Trump is sending out his minions in red states and swing states alike, particularly Virginia, Minnesota, and, first of all, Michigan. It's all about "Death, Mayhem, and Re-election!" How's that for a campaign slogan? He's got "Education" Secretary Betsy DeVos coordinating funding from neo-nazi arms of the Republican Party such as her home state's Michigan Freedom Fund, the semi-deceptively named Michigan Conservative Coalition, and Operation Gridlock. Does she have some pipe bombers in vans lined up, too?

This is the unfolding of a key element of the Trump 2020 re-election strategy being put forth by republican leaders. RNC Chaircretin Ronna Romney McDaniel is still insisting on a physical party convention to nominate the man they all want anyway. Think of all of those Republican delegates and their attendants and servants, crowded together, passing the virus back and forth. Go Ahead. Make my day! Jared The Twit has probably already bought a controlling interest in a casket company. Buy one now! And, for a little extra, each casket can be emblazoned with a bronze Trump logo and a numbered presidential seal!

To Trump and his Republican Party, up to millions of American lives are expendable if their plague-ridden corpses get him re-elected so he can escape various statutes of limitation and do more looting of the United States Treasury of our taxpayer dollars for himself and his donors. Moscow Mitch applauds and you have to know that somewhere off in some damp dark corner ex-Speaker Paul Ryan is rubbing his fetid fecal-encrusted paws together with glee.

And, isn't it strange and ironic that the Republicans are protesting state governments who they see as trying to tell them what they can and can't do with their bodies.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

Click to enlarge for easier reading

by Noah

I'm all about making a better world. I've developed a new coronavirus test kit which I am marketing and suggesting for use exclusively by Trump supporters and Trump accomplices like those found in Congress. It consists of something everyone always has around the house. Hardly a closet in America is without at least one example of this fine technology (and we know how much republicans enjoy their closets). The beauty of my coronavirus test lies in its low cost and its simplicity. I can't believe this isn't being discussed on prime time TV. So, here it is Repugs:

Step One: Go to your closet, or, under your sink.

Step Two: Pull out a plastic bag you got from your local cleaners, or, a nice plastic trashbag. If it has a draw string, even better!

Step Three: Place said plastic apparatus completely over your head and secure it snugly around your neck. Be sure to cover all of your chins. Voila! So easy a Trump could do it!

You may ask, "How do I know this is working?" Easy! Sooo Easy! You will soon discover that you have a shortness of breath. Trust me! Trust me every bit as much as you trust Trump, Putin, or Moscow Mitch! Roll with this testing technique+ and any problems you have will soon become at thing of the past! If you see a light, go to it with haste!

*Must be 18 years of age or over. Some additional disposal costs for loved ones may apply. But you can leave plastic bags for them, too. If you buy your plastic bags at the grocery store, please take only what you need. No hoarding. By the way, you will no longer be needing any toilet paper.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

Click to enlarge

by Noah

During the 2016 campaign, Donnie Lunatic kept telling everyone how rich he is. "I'm really, really rich," he told his goofball hate-hat rally attendees. Way too many people, candidates and voters alike, think that immense wealth alone is a plus when it comes to picking a president. Mr. Lunatic said he was a great business man and that helped con a lot of those people. There's a difference though between former real estate snd casino sleazeball con artist Trump and stinking rich former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Trump's wealth is always going to be in question until, if ever, we see his taxes, but Bloomberg's wealth is known. Trump has already falsely and vastly exaggerated his worth and claimed that he's worth up to $10 Billion. Trump is also clearly motivated by the acquisition of more and more money even if, or maybe even better if, it means selling out the United States Of America to our adversaries. In whole or in part makes little difference to him. Only the amount in his bank accounts and the amount of pain he can sadistically inflict on people matters to Donnie Lunatic.

On the other hand, Michael Bloomberg is provably worth $58 Billion, nearly six times the wealth Donnie claims to possess and likely many more times than that. Bloomberg is a true self-made individual and, apparently, despite any bad flaws such as racial and acquired class insensitivity, or other human failings, quite sane. To me, that sanity doesn't necessarily make him a good presidential candidate all by itself but that doesn't mean Michael Bloomberg has no role to play when it comes to being a benefactor of our country and all mankind. So Mayor Mike, I have a suggestion! My suggestion means you have to sacrifice somewhat but it's a sacrifice that a man of your means can easily absorb. Mayor Mike, rather than spending your money on purchasing the United States presidency, how 'bout you go to the bank and take $10 Billion of your money and pay Donnie Lunatic $10 Billion to not be president anymore, to leave the White House permanently and never darken our door again? If my plan is successful, you will go down in history as a hero who truly gave of himself for his country. Donnie, for the first time, will be able to honestly say that he's worth $10 Billion, and, most importantly, the country will be saved, at least from its immediate and total destruction. It's a win, win, win! Hell, you can even have statues of yourself erected all over the place, and still have over $40 Billion left over. With that $40 Billion, you can get back to $58 Billion in no time at all! Who says a social structure made up of only uber rich Lords and us poor Serfs is all bad?

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

Click to enlarge

by Noah

As readers know, we at DWT love Tom Tomorrow and his accurate presentations of the world we live in. The Tom Tomorrow cartoon that I'm using as tonight's meme may be my all-time favorite of his. But, that could change in a flash. After all, the material that is being provided by Trump, his party, and the usual assortment of media goons and spineless democrats on an hourly basis is providing a nonstop tsunami of material for more and more top-level cartooning.

The above version of This Modern World depicts Trump's "reasoning" and current chosen defenses for his unlawful Ukraine caper perfectly. It's a perfect cartoon, much much more perfect than a certain phone call. The cartoon is also perfect in that it accurately portrays the essence of republican "logic," denial, and hypocrisy.

Read The Cartoon! Read The Cartoon! Read The Cartoon! Read The Cartoon!

And remember: This type of behavior will go on and on, not just by Trump, but even to the time of some future president, unless and until Trump and the treasonous and sycophantic enablers and participants among his staff, congress, and the media are completely removed from the scene and spend the rest of their lives in maximum security prisons, living on gruel, caged with no hopes of parole, book deals, or even conversations with the outside world that they have held in such contempt. They should be shunned into oblivion. Just tell us when they die.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Every damn day, Trump and the rest of his Crime Family of political "associates" and media "dumbfellas" talk about how the whole Ukraine thing is about trying to find "the real colluders and conspirators" kind reminds me of O.J. Simpson claiming that he was going to "find the real killers."

Click on the cartoon for easier reading. In a better world, you could just click on the cartoon to make the assholes go away, real permanent like. Sleep with the fishes Donnie.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The above cartoon (You can click on it to enlarge) goes a long way in summing up the idiocy of our American culture these days. I especially like the Schrodinger's Impeachment explanation depicted in the first frame. On the one hand we have Rep. Nadler at least saying the right words, effectual or not, that would steer us toward the possibility of impeaching the disease called Trump. On the other hand, we have Speaker Pelosi who has chosen, of her own free will, to be an accomplice to Trump's treachery, if not outright treason, and represent the impossibility of impeaching Trump. In Schrodinger's thought experiment (Schrodinger's Cat), he called the two possible outcomes superpositions. He gave no weight advantage to either position. It was just pure quantum mechanics, left to outside forces if you will. It is in the realm of physical possibility that we could be such a force, but only if we exert our own free will as enough of a counter balance to the forces of evil. A less dumbed down populace did exactly that when we provided FDR with the necessary ammunition to act for at least some benefit of the citizenry, or, way before then, when we took up arms against a lunatic king and his red-coated (instead of red-hatted) minions.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

As we hit the end of March 2019, I think this brief Tom Tomorrow summary of lowlights of the month (minus the Mueller Report and any of its ongoing fallout) is sadly appropriate. Any one of the people depicted is, of course, deserving of special recognition as Douchebag Of The Month, and so much more, but let's be fair and go with the everyone gets a trophy approach.

But wait! There's more!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. -Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY)

You can click on the above "Tom Tomorrow" cartoon to enlarge it for easier reading. It goes a long way in explaining how we even got to the state of lunacy we've been in, not just in this most recent election cycle, but for quite some time.

The media isn't solely to blame for the sick status of current political discourse, of course. That would take a book to explain, and I don't mean the kinds of school textbooks that are overseen by rightwing Christian loons and other crackpot republican subsets. But the media's insistence that all sides and all opinions are equally valid and that "Alternative Facts" should be treated with respect and not be seriously challenged has amounted to way, way too many news programs being, at best, half fact and half Tokyo Rose, with goon platoons of wingnuts that tell the gullible, all too willing to believe anything public that the Earth is 6000 years old and that a "caravan" of small pox-bearing brown people is headed our way; never mind the fact that small pox was eradicated decades ago and, at most, only exists in germ warfare labs, not in the bloodstreams of Central Americans. FOX "News," in particular might as well just move their whole operation back in time to 1942 Japan, but that doesn't let the other news outlets off the bloody hook. The others, also run by fascist-favoring corporations who are addicted to the advertising dollars of Big Pharma, Big Oil, and car companies, eagerly broadcast Herr Trump's perverse "fireside chats" into America's homes every night of the 2016 campaign, slyly giving Trump $2 Billion in free advertising and promotion. It will only get worse as propaganda outlets such as Sinclair, Smart News (aka Bot News) continue to expand.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The President's Brain is Missing

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, like many people, that the above tweet can't possibly be real. But, no, the above tweet is not fake. It's not something I made up. It is all too real. It comes, completely, from the mind of Donald Trump as he continues the sick farce of trying to defend the utter quackery of his presidency with all the rational of a concussed 6-year-old who found his way into mommy and daddy's liquor cabinet or drank something found under the kitchen sink.

Traitor Don has completely lost his mind now. His de-evolution down to polluted water pond scum is nearly complete. His phone is just one of the toys in his attic. His mind is gone, shot, eaten away by demons real and imagined. If we didn't know this before, this Tuesday morning tweet from the toilet of Donald Trump cinches it. Even after Putin stated, before the entire world, that he wanted Trump to win all along, this lunatic says Putin is siding with the Democrats against him and his supporters. He has now even deleted that particular Putin statement from the White House transcript of his Helsinki treachery.

Trump is 100% stark, raving mad now. Case Closed. He has gone too far down the dark path of insanity. His mind is never coming back and we are stuck with this nightmarish reality as long as his complicit co-traitors and co-conspirators in the White House, Congress, and Korporate Amerika keep going along to get along, to get rich, and to turn America from step by step fascism into the maximum full blown fascist empire of their dreams. Republicans see no insanity. They see no threat to America. Sure, a tiny handful of them mouth a few of the right words, but judge them by what they actually do. What we see is that they march along with their leader, taking us all off a cliff for the benefits of their bank accounts and their Don of Dons, Vladimir Putin.

During the 2016 campaign, and every day since, it's always amazed me that anyone could watch the Diaper Don speak for more than 2 minutes without coming to the realization that he is severely mentally ill. Whatever the reason, be it syphilis, dementia, a head full of tumors or all of the above, it doesn't take much to see that something is terribly wrong with Trump's mind and his actions are no different than some of the sickest autocrats and nutjob dictators in human history.

Of course, the idea that Trump is laying the groundwork for an insanity defense has occurred to me, but, this portrayal of insanity is too good. You'd have to be De Niro, Streep, or at least Nicholson to do this level of acting and that requires an IQ over 70. It would be more likely that one of the knuckle-dragging shitgibbons on the White House staff (like Conway, that new guy form FOX "News," or someone we've not heard of yet) thought this is a good way to discredit the election of any democrats come November. Maybe the idea was even something that came up during Traitor Don's infamous secret meeting under the cone of silence in Helsinki.

I'm not a shrink but you don't have to be a shrink to know when someone is this stone crazy. I'll leave the why's and wherefores to the medical communities of the future. Trump's mind will be the subject of books and many many grad students will write their doctoral thesis about Trump's brain for decades, maybe hundreds of years, if he is allowed to continue in office. I do know enough, though, to know that someone as sick as Trump would be every bit as mentally ill no matter what party they belonged to. The issue of his mental illness abides separately from his politics and his bad character. It just exacerbates the situation. It's the conduit. I would normally have compassion for someone as far gone as our president. We still have some institutions for poor souls who are similarly afflicted as Trump is, even after Ronald Reagan threw so many of the mentally ill into our streets. But, just so you know, I make exceptions when it comes to people who are evil by nature. Trump would be horrific even if he was sane. The mental illness, however, increases the danger he presents exponentially. Tuesday's lunacy is a prime example of his sick desire to propagandize his base with the classic Big Lie. His base and the rest of his Republican Party have bought into the brainwashing and surrendered their sovereignty, their lives, and their well-being to him. Tuesday's tweet is totally Orwellian

Vladimir Putin knows all of this, which means he knows a lot more about the Diaper Don than those who voted for him and plan on doing so again. Advantage Russia.

Why Are Our Political Elites Always Such Patsies For Authoritarianism?

My grandfather, a Socialist, always warned me to never trust the Democratic Party as a real alternative to the fascists (which is how he referred to Nazis, Republicans, Southern Democrats and any other parties on the right). In the last week, we've been looking at how the Democratic Establishment and the Republican Establishment banded together to defeat Alan Grayson's amendment against militarization of local police departments. As it turns out, the Democratic floor manager of the bill was Military Industrial Complex shill Pete Visclosky, who represents a heavily Democratic district in northwest Indiana (Gary and Hammond). But more than the folks in Gary and Hammond, Visclosky represents the makers of arms and the consultants of death-- the war machine that has helped finance his career. The only Member of Congress who is still in office (and not retiring) and who has taken over a million dollars from the war machine is… Visclosky ($1,025,000). Steny Hoyer is #2 ($992,040) and Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen is #3 ($948,606). Those are the 3… and those are the 3 who stopped the Grayson amendment. Frelinghuysen tried with a parliamentary procedure that forced Grayson to rewrite the amendment. Hoyer assigned Vislosky to manage the bill on the floor and then "accepted" his recommendation that Democrats vote against it.

Grayson had lined up enough Republicans-- 19-- to pass the amendment if the Democrats were on board. He even got a handful of cross-over Democrats who usually got with the GOP-- particularly Blue Dogs Jim Matheson (UT) and John Barrow (GA)-- to vote for the amendment. But once Visclosky and Hoyer (the # 1 and #2 congressional bribe takers from the war machine) gave it the thumbs down, dull-minded, knee-jerk Democrats deserted in droves. 145 Democrats voted with 210 Republicans against the amendment-- not just the usual militaristic shitheads like Adam Schiff (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Steve Israel (NY), Colleen Hanabusa (HI), Patrick Murphy (FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY) and Joe Crowley (NY), but even including both Missouri Democrats, Emanuel Cleaver and William Lacy Clay (who represents Ferguson) and usually dependable liberals like Mike Capuano (MA), Jared Huffman (CA), Hakeem Jeffries (NY), and Yvette Clarke (NY).

Murtha passed the secret of getting the Military Industrial Complex to underwrite your career to Pete Visclosky

Why? One of my friends explained, when I asked him, that it's because politicians find it expedient to always side with the police. Yesterday, Conor Friedersdorf looked into why so many Americans no longer share this mentality with our political elites. Personal experience and video is what he asserts has changed it, especially for people under 40.

Until I was 11, I trusted police officers, for reasons that Hans Fiene captures in The Federalist. "For many conservatives, especially those of us living in nice, comfy suburbs, it’s hard to apply the 'power corrupts' doctrine to law enforcement because we’ve never seen corrupted enforcers of the law," he writes. "We’ve never been wrongly arrested. We’ve never witnessed our children put in jail based on the false reports of police officers. We’ve never seen our neighbors beaten or tased without cause. And in the extremely unlikely scenario that a police officer drove into our neighborhood and murdered our unarmed friend in cold blood, we cannot possibly fathom a scenario where the justice system wouldn’t be on our side and where that police officer wouldn’t spend the rest of his life in jail."

…As events in Ferguson, Missouri unfold, several observers have noticed that "this time is different." Unlike during past instances of police officers killing or assaulting young black men in suspicious though not yet demonstrably criminal circumstances, some prominent conservatives are doubting the official police narrative or criticizing their militarized response to protesters. Some attribute this to a growing libertarian influence in the GOP, and it's no accident that Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has offered one of the strongest calls for police reform.

My colleagues Peter Beinart and Ross Douthat persuasively argue that falling crime has made the American public less inclined to reflexively side with police, which has changed political incentives. Douthat posits that this is a generational shift.

But when it comes to how reflexively or instinctively cops are presumed to be truthful and honorable, the importance of video shouldn't be discounted. A generation ago, footage of police officers in the Deep South turning snarling dogs and firehoses on Civil Rights protesters made a deep impression on my parents, even though they grew up a continent away in an overwhelmingly white suburb where their personal experiences would've made police behaving that way seem unfathomable. Watching Jim Crow's enforcers with their own eyes couldn't be ignored. If anyone thought in 1991 that such brutality was a vestige of the past, or something that could only happen among racist cops in the South, the Rodney King tape disabused them of that notion, kicking off an era of cheap, increasingly ubiquitous recording equipment that was bound to capture more police misbehavior.

Of course young people growing up with YouTube will trust police officers less. The many videos of brutality don't lie-- and they confirm that, sometimes, cops do lie.

…Yet they're often afforded a presumption that their version of events is true, no matter how many times individual cops are caught falsifying reports or lying on the stand.

In that item from The Federalist quoted at the beginning of this article, Hans Fiene urges conservatives who reflexively trust the police to show a bit more skepticism. "Police brutality is not the Bogeyman," he writes. "It’s not an urban legend witnessed by none but told by many. It’s not a myth created by a primitive tribe that is too simple to understand the true source of the brokenness in its communities. Black people believe in police brutality for the same reason they believe in rain-- because they’ve felt it ... For those of us who have never experienced law enforcement corrupted by power, basic human decency should require that we try to understand and consider the perspective of those who have..."

That's true. But trusting that minority groups aren't fabricating police misconduct isn't even as necessary as it was for, say, the white suburbanite of 1985, limited by what he'd seen with his eyes, read in the local paper, or watched on CBS. Any doubt that excessive force by law enforcement is a widespread problem can now be laid to rest in a single hour with nothing more than access to YouTube.

Start here or here or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. If you keep searching, you'll come to the conclusion that this sort of violence is epidemic long before you run out of video confirmation. Then remember the vast majority of these incidents are never videotaped. 

Not completely unrelated, what do you think would happen if a cop pumped six bullets into an actual dangerous criminal, say Jamie Dimon, Vikram Pandit, Tim Geithner, Brian Moynihan, Lloyd Blankfein, Robert Ruben, or John Mack? Would he get public adulation for protecting society and saving the taxpayers tens of millions in trial courts and appeals? Is that not law and order? What do you think?

Befuddled by the odd coalition anchoring the Farthest Right? Meet Tom Tomorrow's Tea Party Tim and Plutocrat Pete

Tea Party Tim and Plutocrat Pete
by Tom Tomorrow

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

by Ken

As happens so often when Tom Tomorrow is on the job, I really don't have much to add. I'm just pleased to see our man train his gaze on this weird alliance now forming the hunchbackbone of the Farthest Right. Wouldn't you think it would matter just a tad that the Teabaggers and the Plutocrats have practically nothing in common? That, in fact, each comes close -- if we were going by reality -- to being the Thing the Other Hates Most.

Howie has been kicking around various aspects of this chasm, for example in his post yesterday "No New Texans!") on the plutocrats' struggle, now that that Man of No People, T-Paw, has gone down in flames, to find a candidate who can sucker the 'Baggers into thinking he (or she) is one of them, the new hopeful being one of the dumbest and most corrupt and swinish creatures on the face of the earth, Rick Perry. I mean, really, effing Rick Perry???

Yes, they both Hate Government, but of course they mean very different things by hating government. And they all hate Obama, but again, Hating Obama means very different things to them. The Teabaggers have absolutely no idea what Obama believes, has done, or plans to do, while the Plutocrats have a very good idea, and really don't have much quarrel with it -- it's just that once he does their dirty work of getting congressional Democrats to support reactionary initiatives that would have gone nowhere if offered by a Republican president, the nabobs can go back to propping up One of Their Own.

Hey, remember when we thought the 2008 GOP presidential field was about as preposterous as the mind of man could imagine?


UPDATE: TOM TOMORROW LINK

Don't know how I forgot to include the link (as I normally do), but I've added it above (and here it is again). Sorry! -- Ken

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Man, does Tom Tomorrow nail "Debtpocalypse"! And James Surowiecki adds useful notes in "The New Yorker"

Debtpocalypse deferred!
by Tom Tomorrow

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

" Austerity during an economic slowdown isn't just bad for the unemployed. It's also bad for business."

-- The New Yorker's James Surowiecki, on his "Financial
Page" this week (Aug. 15 & 22), "The Business of Austerity"

by Ken

And the few loose ends Tom leaves are nailed down by James Surowiecki on his "Financial Page" in this week's New Yorker, "The Business of Austerity."

When Congress finally reached an agreement to lift the debt ceiling, a week ago, many predicted that investors would react with a sigh of relief. After all, on the surface the deal looked good for business, allowing the U.S. to avoid defaulting on its debt while preserving corporate tax loopholes and avoiding a tax hike for the wealthy. And it was a clear victory for congressional Republicans, traditionally corporate America's best friends in Washington. (The Chamber of Commerce spent more than thirty-four million dollars in the 2010 election, almost entirely on Republican candidates.) Yet the prophesied relief rally never materialized. Instead, investors spent the week dumping stocks as fast as they could.

The debt deal alone didn't send stocks spiralling downward, obviously. But the market's plunge was largely the product of fears about the prospects for corporate profit in an increasingly weak economy, and the debt agreement amplified those fears. . . .

Pointing out that markets "tend to be spooked by uncertainty," Surowiecki makes a chilling point:

[T]he debt-ceiling agreement has increased uncertainty by making it more likely that we'll see down-to-the-wire, default-risking negotiations in the future. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was explicit about this last week, saying that there would be no more "clean" debt-ceiling increases in the future -- in other words, Republicans will keep using the threat of default as a political weapon. This approach may well be extended to bargaining over budget resolutions as well, with Republicans threatening a government shutdown unless they get what they want. If that sounds improbably reckless, consider that every Republican Presidential candidate except Jon Huntsman came out against the final debt-ceiling deal. Even if you explain this as pandering to Tea Party voters, there's no ignoring the fact that these candidates were advising congressional Republicans to let the United States default. Once games of chicken become the accepted way to resolve budget issues, the U.S. economy will become a much riskier place.

"The deal also hurts business in more concrete ways," Surowiecki writes. The spending cuts, he says,

will likely hit precisely the kind of public spending -- on infrastructure, basic research, and defense -- from which corporate America reaps great, if often unacknowledged, benefits. More important, the debt-ceiling fight made clear that, even as the economy struggles to avoid recession, no help can be expected from Washington. President Obama may be talking about the need to create jobs, but, with the advocates of austerity in charge, it's hard to see where support for any new government initiatives is going to come from. Indeed, it's possible that Republicans will block the extension of unemployment-insurance benefits and of the current payroll-tax cut. That would deliver a significant hit to the economy next year.

And Surowiecki argues provocatively that the rich aren't even being served by the imposition of austerity.

Decades ago, America's rich were a true rentier class. They got most of their income from bonds and lived off their investments, and their main priority was keeping inflation low, regardless of anything else that happened. So austerity suited them nicely. The rich of today, by contrast, get much more of their income from their jobs and from the stock market, which means that they do better when growth is strong. And, while companies have figured out how to make money even during steep downturns -- during this very weak recovery, corporate profits have rebounded strongly -- over-all corporate profits are below where they were in 2006. . . . So, while corporate America has been doing well relative to everyone else, it would be doing much better, and investors would be much happier, if growth were stronger and unemployment were lower, even if inflation and government spending were higher. Austerity during an economic slowdown isn't just bad for the unemployed. It's also bad for business.

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On the debt-limit front, by this point it was all long since over but the retching

Thomas Friedman, Private Eye
by Tom Tomorrow

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

by Ken

I admit was surprised that "the deal" was struck yesterday, which was merely August 1, a full day ahead of the August 2 "deadline." Those who don't understand much about negotiations, at least of the political kind, seem to imagine that putting a deadline on the matter facilitates negotiations and compromise, whereas in reality it almost always assures that no serious negotiating happens until the deadline is a whisper away. Otherwise neither party can go back to its "people" without being accused of having made all manner of unnecessary concessions. How could they possibly have been necessary if there was still XXX length-of-time left?

And you'll notice that over on the Loonified Right, they're hoppin' mad, despite having gotten everything they could possibly have hoped to. But of course there's no reason or sense over there. Their fallback position is always an unbroken: "We're mad as hell, and we're mad as hell."

In the wake of the mournful day there's been no lack of highly sensible writing on the subject, and I had this plan of lifting extracts from half a dozen or so pieces that I read with appreciation. But somehow it all seems beside the point, since sense never had anything to do with it. Over there in the Party of Hello No, they seem almost proud of the fact that not only do they not understand any aspect of either the debt or debt-ceiling problem, they don't know anyone who does, having already thrown anyone who showed signs of having a lick of sense over the edge of the flat earth.

In this vein, it seems to me rather beside the point to upbraid members of Congress for their vote, whichever way they voted. Yes, it might have been interesting if one or both houses had refused to go along with the deal, just as a sign of resistance. But does anyone believe there was any chance of achieving a less onerous deal? There were no votes to be had among the Hell No-ers, and without at least some of them no deal would have been possible -- not to mention the panic all those Fraidy-Scared Pols in the Middle are feeling having to face an electorate that thinks all the pols have been acting like "spoiled children," as CNN's pollsters are reporting. Well, of course the poll-makers undoubtedly designed the poll to prove that point, but still, that tells us something, doesn't it?

About the only vote I can imagine having any force of reason would have been to vote "present," since there was no "good" vote, only a choice of bad ones. As Jonathan Cohn wrote in his fine tnr.com blogpost, "This Is Not Leadership," one of the pieces I planned to cannibalize:

Out of exasperation as much as curiosity, I e-mailed a Washington insider who happens to be among President Obama's most loyal supporters. How, I asked, could Obama agree to such a lopsided deal? This person answered with a different question: What would I have done instead? It took me a few minutes to realize that I didn't have an answer.

By the time we reached this stage, I don't have an answer either. Earlier on there might have been some possibilities, as our friend David Dayen outlined in his fine TAP post, "Turning Points: Five chances to avoid the debt-ceiling fight that Obama missed," but by this month it was all over but the shouting, or should I say retching?


Actual Audio: Obama On the Debt Deal
by scottbateman

I'm not sure what makes this a "comic," or really what it thinks it's doing, but it makes for pretty nauseating listening, and just now it seems like a helpful thing to have concrete reasons for feeling nauseous, seeing as how it's how most of us are feeling anyways.

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Tom Tomorrow asks how Fox Noise can be chided for breaching news ethics when it isn't in the news business

Scandal? What scandal?

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

"No one at this network would ever hack into someone's voicemail in pursuit of a news story . . . because we're not a news organization! I mean, seriously -- have you ever watched this channel?"

by Ken

It remains to be seen whether the News Corp people will seize on this obvious strategy to defend their, er, honor. Oh, it won't insulate them from any incidental law-breaking that's become part of the fabric of their "news"-gathering, but it will put an end to all the yammering about their shoddy journalistic ethics and culture of corruption and suchlike.

Of course it's true, though. In much the same way that Republicans -- and for that matter more and more Democrats -- facing aspersions regarding their ethical standards ought to be presenting the obvious defense: what ethical standards? How can you be guilty of ethical lapses if you have no ethics? And each house of Congress, after all, has its very own committee to vouch for the ethics of its outstandingly upstanding members.

If the government decides to raise some cash by going into the naming-opportunity game, high on the list should be a Tom DeLay Memorial Ethics Lobby.

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Can't stand to hear one more word about tensions over the debt-ceiling crisis? Well, how 'bout that Tweeting Pope?

Middle-Man and the Debt Ceiling Debacle

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

by Ken

Well, Tom, that's pretty much where I am on the Events of the Day. Sick to death, tired of it all, and . . . and . . .

Does anyone else think back in stray moments to Inauguration Day 2009, and remember what it felt like, after the grueling and terrifying years of the Bush regime, to feel hope? And then feel some combination of cheated, stupid, and desperate over the pass we've come to?

Hope? Is it possible to have any hope now except that What Happens Next may not be as hideous as it shows every sign of being? With the only thing standing between us and the ghastliest imaginable outcome being Middle-Man, who we now know is much more a part of the problem than any conceivable part of any solution.

Intending no disrespect to the truly inspiring work of the "It Gets Better" campaign aimed at communicating to besieged younger LGBT folk that their lives can yet take meaningful, satisfying shape, despite the evidence to the contrary in their daily lives, I find myself in daily "It Gets Worse" mode when it comes to the news of the day. A moment ago I took a peek at the NYT afternoon update and found these as the top items:

Cost-Cutters, Except When the Spending Is Back Home
By RON NIXON
House Republicans who rode a wave of voter discontent into office last year may be pushing for spending cuts, but they're also quietly funneling millions of federal dollars back home.

Bipartisan Plan for Budget Deal Buoys President
By JACKIE CALMES and JENNIFER STEINHAUER
A group of senators made a new push to win backing for an ambitious deficit-reduction proposal that includes new revenues and deep spending cuts.
THE CAUCUS: How the Gang of Six Revived the Grand Deal

I hope I don't have to tell you that I didn't read either story. I've read them, in one form or another, way too often. (And I certainly wasn't going to waste precious NYT "clicks" on them.)

So let me instead offer you two bits of actual reading, one apt to make you still angrier (yes though, it doesn't seem possible, let alone fair, it really is possible to feel angrier), the other likely to make you feel just a bit giddy.


APART FROM THIS PHONE-HACKING OUTRAGE,
EVERYTHING AT NEWS CORP IS A-OK, RIGHT?

I know we've covered this ground before, what with my misguided sense that while of course criminal behavior by a major "news" organization is important, that's kind of the least of what's wrong with News Corp, or maybe it's most important as an inevitable outgrowth of the company's deeply corrupt and corrupting propaganda mission ("Postscript on the problem with "news" coverage Murdoch-style: Joyce Purnick recalls the New York Post takeover").

AlterNet's Sarah Seltzer reports on an AP report by Raphael G. Satter, "With Brooks arrested, tabloid insiders open up":

Misogyny, Made-Up Facts and More: Working in a News Corp Newsroom

The AP has an explosive little story based on interviews with disgruntled former News Corp employees of British tabloids who are opening up to the press now that their former boss, Rebekah Brooks, has resigned and faces a criminal probe for the phone hacking scandals that have horrified and enthralled the world.

The scandal itself has certainly made the daily life of a News Corp employee at the News of the World and The Sun an object of curiosity. The ruthlessness and top-down authority of the newsrooms--as described by these former staffers--is remarkable, including the strange story of a reporter forced to wear a Harry Potter costume who was chastised for forgoing said mandatory outfit -- even on September 11th.

Misogyny and fact-fudging were also part of the routine, these former employees claim. . . .

Read it and weep. Or --


BUT THEN, ON THE LIGHTER SIDE, PAUL RUDNICK
GOES KIND OF NUTS OVER THE TWEETING POPE

In a "Shouts and Murmurs" piece in the July 25 New Yorker, "The Pope's Tweets," Paul gets crazy over an AP report of the 84-year-old Pope Cardinal Ratguts' giddy entry into the world of Twitter. My first thought for a post was just to copy all 21 of his imaginary tweets, but I decided that no, that would be wrong. So I decided to limit myself arbitrarily to the first five. When the dust settled, I found I'd reached a bipartisan compromise: nine.

Sometimes, when I'm all alone, I like to put on my cassock and spin around really fast and pretend I'm a tepee.

During a papal audience, I put folks at ease by asking, "Are you gay?" Then I say, "Kidding!" Then I go, "No, seriously, are you gay?"

It's hard to tell all the cardinals apart, so sometimes I put different dinosaur stickers on their backs.

This is so embarrassing, but whenever I see Orthodox Jews I always think they're waiters.

If people ask, "Why does God allow war and evil?," I ask, "Why do the high-school students on 'Glee' look forty?"

When I stand on my balcony and wave to the faithful and millions more via satellite, I think, Kate Middleton must hate me!

If someone questions papal infallibility, I reply, "I know one thing for sure: you shouldn't be wearing horizontal stripes."

When I ponder why I was elected Pope over so many others, I wonder if it's just a popularity contest. Then I think, Gosh, I hope so.

Proof of God's existence: St. Patrick's is right next to Saks.

Now are you going to tell me you don't want to read the rest?

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The future is our oyster, suggests Tom Tomorrow, as long as we watch out for the organ harvesters and mutant slavers

Good morning, children!

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

by Ken

We've been encountering a lot of grim prognosticating from worryworts like Ian Welsh and even that normally reasonable E. J. Dionne Jr. (See my post yesterday, "Can we save ourselves from ourselves? E. J. Dionne Jr. hopes so, Ian Welsh is doubtful.") Ian is projecting, "What we deserve is what's going to happen: war and revolution, famine and drought, climate change on a scale we truly don't understand." which doesn't sound like much fun, while E.J., looking at the way the Teabaggish Right now insists on misreading the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, with apocalyptically mischievous intent, warns of drawing "wrong conclusions" that lead to "remarkably foolish choices," which reads like a full Cassandra coming from him.

What a relief it is, then, to turn to that eternal optimist Tom Tomorrow and imagine future centuries looking back on our follies with mirth. As long as they keep a sharp eye peeled for those organ harvesters and mutant slavers.

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Tom Tomorrow says: "Welcome to the Never-Ending Conservative Carnival of Crazy"

And just imagine, this was before the news of Jon Huntsman's entry into the fray! (Jon Huntsman? Do any U.S. voters outside Utah even recognize the name?)

Jon Huntsman to seek Republican nomination for White House race
Former US ambassador to China served under Obama and had praised the president in the leaked diplomatic cables

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 June 2011 20.30 BST

Jon Huntsman announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and intention to take on former boss Barack Obama.

There are only a few positive remarks about Barack Obama dotted about in the embassy cables sent by former American ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, and subsequently leaked to WikiLeaks.

But they will be enough to cause problems for the latest Republican president candidate in the months ahead.

Huntsman, from a podium in New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, announced on Tuesday that he would join the race to take on his old boss for the White House next year.

Confirming his intention to seek the nomination, he criticised the president's record and, in contrast with his time as ambassador when he projected American strength, portrayed the US as vulnerable.

"For the first time in our history, we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive and less confident than the one we got. This, ladies and gentlemen, is totally unacceptable and totally un-American," he said.

Huntsman, 51, could be a formidable presidential candidate, given his experience in foreign affairs and as a former governor of Utah. But many Republicans cannot forgive the fact that he served in the Obama administration.

The president approached Huntsman in 2009 and asked him to be the ambassador to Beijing, and Huntsman accepted, serving until this April. In that time, he worked alongside the Obama on issues ranging from climate change to human rights, and stood side by side with him when the president visited China.

It is rare in US politics for someone who worked for one president to turn around and challenge him. Huntsman's work in the Obama administration is almost certain to be raised by Republican rivals. It could also undercut his attacks on the president. . . .

COMMENTERS, PLEASE KEEP YOUR
FINGER OFF THE "CAPS LOCK" KEY

As I indicated in my reply, I had a tough call on a comment that didn't seem to me really on topic -- but that seemed heartfelt and not definitively off topic. I gave the commenter the benefit of the doubt, but with this proviso:

"What will be a deal-breaker next time is the use of all caps. That's an unforgivable imposition on readers, and please don't you or anyone else do that again. I didn't know till now that I have a rule against it. Now I know, and you do too."

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It's not hard to make sense of the world around you if you have no tools, indeed no desire, to make sense of anything

Crazy Liberals

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by Ken

I often quote a great line from the late educational reformer John Holt, from his second book, How Children Learn, the sequel to his surprise-hit How Children Fail (and even after all these decades I think I remember it pretty well): "A child has no greater desire than to make sense of the world around him." He was registering skepticism about the educational establishment's obsession with "motivating" kids to learn, and his point -- at least as I've always taken it -- seemed on the money: that not just the educational system but the society at large seems to do everything in its power to obliterate the natural curiosity that, as John put it so beautifully, makes children want to make sense of the world around them. As I've mentioned here a number of times, I long ago adopted this formulation -- learning to make sense of the world around us -- as my working definition of education.

I've always thought of that process of learning how we perceive bits of reality and how they fit together and what's real and what isn't, that all of that is part of the essential process of human maturing -- and, all in all, kind of an interesting one at that. But for a lot of people in society, people given to seeking control of other people for various reasons of their own (the authoritarian agenda comes in an assortment of flavors), natural curiosity, far from being a welcome thing, is a danger. It leads to questions and possibly unorthodox thinking. And let's face it, a lot of people are happy to be spared the task of, well, making sense of the world around them, and are more than happy, indeed happier, to just be told what to think.

It always seemed to me the special genius of Ronald Reagan to appreciate this quality in people and to understand that people would be delighted to be told that they don't have to grapple with reality, but instead can simply trust to two sources:

(1) any stray neural impulse that fires in their brains,

(2) what they're told by their controlling authorities -- religious or whatever, but mainly religious, unless you're partial to, say, Rush Limbaugh.

The neat thing is that any "evaluation" of those realities is automatic. With regard to (1), Reagan's inspiration was to tell people that the only measure of the truth of those impulses firing in their brains is: What does it make you feel best to believe? If you want to believe it, it's true, and if you don't, then to hell with it! People who might have felt a tad sheepish about being so plug-ignorant suddenly learned that they were in charge of their realities. And it was Morning in America! Of course with regard to (2), there isn't even any need for "evaluation." If you accepted authority says it, it's true, end of discussion.

Which is what I love about this week's Tom Tomorrow strip. He's gotten both processes down perfectly. Global warming? Fuhgeddaboutit! Look at all that snow! And if you try to reframe the discussion in terms of "climate change" rather than just global warming (although goodness knows the global warming is happening, and disastrously so, it's part of a more complex process), with particulars . . . well, then the person determined not to think can turn to his "authorities." Where do you suppose this poor chap heard about obviously not being able "to draw long-term conclusions from a handful of isolated events"? Do you suppose he has the slightest clue what it means?

Because, after all, drawing permanent conclusions from no facts at all is basically the principle he's been brought up to apply to, well, all of life.

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If this is anything to go by, the latest addition to the DailyKos comics lineup looks OK

Mark Fiore

"Tea Bag -- because other languages are just too hard!"

by Ken

Yesterday on DailyKos Markos introduced the latest addition to the DK Comics lineup (updating my last post on the subject), Mark Fiore:

You may have already seen Mark Fiore's animated work at its home base at SFGate.com [with a sample included onsite].

You may have heard about him when this piece [meaning the "Learn to Speak Tea Bag" piece I've put up top] elicited howls of protests from the teabaggers while Bill O'Reilly blew a fuse.

You may have heard about Fiore when some pigheaded person at Apple declined his iPhone app because it "ridicule(d) public figures" (and it does!). Apple later reversed its decision.

And you may have heard about Fiore when he became the first animated and online-only cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Markos even gets off a pretty good quip after running through the DK comics lineup as it now stands: "Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World on Mondays, Jen Sorensen's Slowpoke on Wednesdays, Mark Fiore on Thursday, Matt Bors on Fridays, and Eric Lewis' Animal Nuz on Saturday."

As I read those names, Fiore, Bors, Sorensen, Tomorrow, Lewis, I'm filled with gratitude that I'm a liberal. Because if I was a conservative, I'd have to pretend that Mallard Filmore was funny.

I just looked at today's Slowpoke, "Tax Evasion Funnies," and I'm still not getting Jen Sorensen. Ditto Matt Bors's Friday outing, "Bin Laden's Porn Collection." (Hmm, suddenly Mallard Filmore isn't looking so ridiculous.) I'll try to remember to check out Fiore tomorrow, though.

I always try to remember to check out the incomparable Tom Tomorrow, but I forget a lot. For the benefit of other forgetters, here's Monday's strip:

The Slow Boil

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FINALLY, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO LIKE ME
CAN'T FIND DK COMICS WITHOUT DOING A SEARCH --

Let's all try to remember the URL: comics.dailykos.com. Shouldn't be that difficult to remember, wouldn't you think?

Still, it seems kind of crazy to me that there isn't any obvious link -- at least not obvious enough for me to find -- on the DK home page.

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Tom Tomorrow begins to assemble a comics team at Daily Kos

Once upon a time
by Tom Tomorrow

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by Ken

When Tom Tomorrow signed on with Daily Kos following his long stint with Salon, one of his stated reasons was the opportunity to build an actual comics team there. Assuming you can find the Comics section (the link is http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Comics, but unless I remember that, am I doomed to continue searching every time for "Tom Tomorrow" or "This Modern World" to eventually get there?), you can now see the rollout of some of what he had in mind.

Animal Nuz, which I confess I don't really get, has been appearing for a while. Now two new strips have been introduced. (Again, don't forget to click on each to enlarge it.)

Now appearing on Wednesdays: Jen Sorensen's Slowpoke

Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer best known for her weekly comic "Slowpoke" which appears in alternative newspapers around the nation. Her work has been published in the Village Voice, Ms. Magazine, LA Times, Nickelodeon, and NPR.org. In 2010, Jen received a Grambs Aronson "Cartoonist With a Conscience" award, part of the James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism given out by Hunter College. She has also won several awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. More of her writing and art can be seen at Slowpoke Comics.

Now appearing on Fridays: Matt Bors

Matt Bors is a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist based in Portland, OR. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Village Voice, among others. His first graphic novel, War Is Boring, a collaboration with journalist David Axe, was published last year by New American Library. He has reported from Afghanistan and is the Comics Journalism Editor for Cartoon Movement.

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