Doñita the Diva

In case you hadn't been paying attention, for the past, I don't know, 27 years, the US Government has been attempting to oust the Chavista regime from Venezuela. Before I start winding up with today's rant 'n' rave, let me be clear: I am no fan of the Chavista regime, either of its previous (Hugo Chavez) or current (Nicolas Maduro) leader. Both were/are venally corrupt; have committed numerous human rights abuses; and, with a little help from US political interference and economic sanctions, managed to run the Venezuelan economy into the ground.

No doubt about it. Maduro needs to go, but por el amor de Dios, not through more gringo imperalismo! Haven't we learned our lessons from trying to play puppet master in the Western Hemisphere? This is a movie we've all seen before, and wasn't good the first time or the reruns, which we were forced to watch again and again and again, especially through the second half of the last century.

And let's not forget the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Our glorioso Presidente, Doñita Trompeta, is only too happy to cozy up to dictators and authoritarians -- Kim Jung Il, Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to name a few -- so why is it he gets all hot 'n' bothered about the lack of democracy and human rights in Venezuela.

Hmmm...could it be, I don't know, the oil? Remember, this is the same knuckle head who opined about the Iraq War, "“I still can’t believe we left Iraq without the oil. It used to be, ‘To the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: take the oil.”

Or maybe he's just looking to distract us again from his myriad political and legal problems with a military adventure that, initially at least, might be less likely to blow up in his face?

Regardless, thanks to the genius of our glorious Presidente, the USG has decided to take off the opera gloves, bulldoze through the niceties of international law and foment a slow onset coup d'état. First, la Doñta had Veep Mike Pence phone our little puppet, Juan "Tally me Banana Republic" Guaidó, to pledge USG support for assuming power. Next, he sent off Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to throw some sharp elbows at the Organization of American States and bully its member states into supporting the USG's little scheme.

And where are the Democrats in all of this? As usual, sticking their collective head in the sand, just as they did right before the needless, criminal wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria (to name but a few...).  It's good to know that elections have consequences. But since they don't, not really, not in the current dispensation, I'll just sit back and enjoy the show, which I shall call Doñita, starring our Presidente playing the lead role, of course.

So Easy...

Thankfully, there's now a brief respite from the insanity of Trump's vanity. He raved, he caved and then he gave his little, teeny weeny thumbs up to fund the government for 3 weeks so that negotiations can take place. In theory, said negotiations will produce a compromise that will both salvage Trump's fragile ego by providing some funding for border security (and his thoroughly useless wall) and fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year.

Frankly, I'm not holding my breath that a grand compromise will be struck...again. Because, remember, there already was a compromise that was voted on and approved by the Senate, and the House recently approved the very same once Nancy & Co. took over a few weeks ago. What has changed in Trump's political calculus since then? The fact that he just got scorched by Speaker Pelosi? Or maybe he'll recognize how many Republican senators had begun to jump ship from the good ship S.S. Trump?

All of these questions presume a level of mental balance and capacity for basic analytical thinking, two constructs that are rarely associated with current resident of the White House. "But wait," you might say. "Surely, the adults in his administration will steer him in the right direction. After all..." After all, what? After it's been reported that Trump's immediate step after capitulation was to cast about among his closest advisers looking for someone to blame, including his very own son-in-law, Jared "the boy blunder" Kushner?

Cynical? Am I? No, not really. I'm more skeptical, since past behavior and performance are usually the best predictors of future action likely to be taken by this narcissistic president who has repeatedly shown very little inclination to heed the counsel, even that of those closest to him. No, he's made it very clear from the beginning, that only he can fix things...especially, since only (or mostly) because he has been responsible for making a complete and utter mess of things in the first place.

Government shutdown? You would think it's a no brainer to prevent a second one, given the profound consequences of the first:

• to individuals - the 800,000 public servants who went without pay for 5 weeks; 
• to institutions - the degradation of federal agencies' capacity to serve and protect us; and 
• to our international standing - yes, now the whole world really is laughing at us. 

Leave it to a self-centered, amoral, entitled and deeply troubled man to transform the world's "indispensable nation" into a smoldering hot mess of dysfunction and paralysis. And he does all this without so much as blinking an eye. And what of the fact that he got absolutely nothing from his extended temper tantrum? Who cares? The fact that he, on a national stage and, very publicly, got his you-know-what handed to him by Speaker Pelosi? All part of his grand strategy - I'm sure - whatever the heck that might be.

And, finally, will he do it again if he doesn't get exactly what he wants in another three weeks once negotiations have produced the grand bargain on border security? Hard to say, since he probably doesn't even know what it is he wants. I wager he won't hesitate to shut down the government again. And why not? It'll "energize his base" and, more importantly, it's so easy for Trump...

Oh, but wait. Even this "cave" man couldn't manage to do that. But he managed to trash our country while trying anyway.

Old McConnell's Farm

Maybe this cartoon is a bit dated, as a quick scan of the news shows that Trump may announce a deal to end the federal government shutdown for 3 weeks so that the two sides can "negotiate" and find a way to keep the government open for the rest of the fiscal year.

Oh goody.

This rant 'n' rave would like us all to take a step back so that we can see just how far we descended into the muck of dysfunction. We're getting excited, because a deal will keep the government open for three weeks. Great. The 800,000 federal workers will receive back pay (one hopes) and be able to just begin getting back on their feet only to be kneecapped in another few weeks. That's when there's a good chance we're likely to get right back on this gut churning merry-go-round when Trump flakes out (again) and welshes on some grand compromise.

All of this would not be even a remote possibility if the Senate Majority "Leader" assumed his institutional role responsibility and governed as one of the adults in the room. So... people will say that he cannot afford to cross Trump; he's vulnerable on his right flank for the upcoming reelection in 2020. Therefore, he is loathe to do anything that might provide any potential primary opponent with an opening or to tick off his Trump-lovin' constituency. Like I said, if McConnell assumed his institutional role responsibility as Senate Majority "Leader"...

Since when did "duck"-ing tough decisions and instead acting like a "chicken" sh!t coward become the politically preferred course of action for someone who is supposedly a tactical "genius." Is this what passes for leadership these days? Meanwhile, the rest of the GOP follows the Senate Majority "leader" like so many disoriented "sheep" while spouting whatever "bull"-loney to cover their prodigious behinds. With all of these barnyard references you would think I would make the highbrowed literary reference to Animal Farm? Nope, not me. I prefer to keep it simple, so I'll just go with the classic nursery rhyme, Old McConnell's Farm.

E-I-E-I-OMG!

Enjoy the toon...

White Elephants

What inspired me to ink this cartoon was hearing Vice-President Mike Pence, with a straight, blank face - Does he have any other kind of face? (Oh yeah, he does. That face he makes when he gazes lovingly, longingly at the face of his fearless leader) - comparing Donald Trump to Martin Luther King, Jr. Part of me wanted to believe that he was just using the standard Trump administration M.O. of launching the most impossibly outrageous lie and then self-righteously portraying himself as the victim when someone calls BS.

But then I remembered - he is a man of little brain, so I probably shouldn't ascribe such devious behavior or crafty thinking to him. God bless his bitter little stone cold heart; he probably really believes the nonsense he spouted. I imagined that he genuinely wondered why so many people reacted so strongly to his colossally insulting act of racial insensitivity and historical whitewashing.

Speaking of whitewashing, that's exactly what the Trump administration has had to engage in in order to clean up the heaping, reeking mound of horse pucky it has scattered everywhere to make its case for the so-called "border wall." This monstrous vanity project of a delusional sociopathic narcissist fits the (Oxford English Dictionary) definition of a white elephant: "An object, building project, scheme, business venture, facility, etc., considered expensive but without use or value."

Then there's the enablers behind this deluded grabby little brat - the Grand Old Party - whose symbol, an elephant, has become decidedly much more white and, more to the point, white supremacist over the past 50-odd years. They can blather on as much as they like about border security but the facts-based, facts-using adults in the room have already made the following abundantly clear:

1. A border wall offers little to no real protection; it is one of the least cost-effective measure we could possibly use to achieve the objective of border security.
2. What exactly is the Trump administration's objective anyway? Feeding more read meat to its rabidly racist base? Barring entry for legitimate immigrants and asylum seekers? TV ratings?
3. The real threats are self-made: the consequences of the past century of U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.

So we're left with the useless pursuit of a worthless Caucasian pachyderm, a "partially" shut down federal government (with all of its attendant social costs), absolutely zero progress on the issues we all pretend to care about, and a bunch of clowns running around clobbering each other on the head.

Smells like the circus to me...

Brokelaw Mountain

Did Trump tell his fixer/consigliere, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about his business deals in Russia or didn't he?

Did Trump collude with the Russians to influence the 2016 elections or didn't he?

Did he have extramarital affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal or didn't he?

Did he instruct Cohen to use his campaign funds to pay off these women or didn't he?

Does Trump have a multitude of conflicts of interests with various foreign governments and do these business dealings influence how he steers U.S. foreign policy towards those countries?

Did Trump share top secret information in his private conversations with Putin or didn't he?

Did he engage in multiple examples of self-dealing with the Trump Foundation or didn't he?

Have Trump and members of his cabinet engaged in a plethora of corrupt practices, using their public office to advance their own private financial interests...or didn't they?

And the list goes on and on and on and on...

Many have already written how difficult it is trying to keep up with Trump's potentially (and often likely) illegal acts - something akin to trying to drink from a water cannon. I'm truly grateful to the folks who do just that - investigative journalists, especially - undertaking the Herculean task to maintain at least a modicum of cleanliness in the filthy stables that are our government.

Despite what seems to be a mounting list of high crimes (felonies) and misdemeanors the mavens and machers of the Washington Insider Baseball League have poo-pooed the idea of taking any concrete steps towards initiating impeachment proceedings. Instead, they have insisted that we wait for the publication of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, which may or may not see the light of day, according to Robert Barr, Trump's nominee for Attorney General.

And while I get the importance of getting the facts right and while I am aware that some House committees are preparing separate investigations into Trump Administration malfeasance, at some point we're going to have to realize that the perfect may actually be the enemy not only of the good but of getting something done. As Rabbi Hillel famously once said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?" (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14)

Even if such efforts need to fly under the radar for the time being, the time to begin...was last year. Work those relationships and reach out across the aisle to build common cause with the few members of the Republican Party that are still willing to place the national interest over those of the GOP. Raise public awareness among the American public about the threat Trump and his cronies pose to our institutions of governance. Reach out to major social, broadcast and print media outlets to execute an effective communication plan that counteracts the Right wing fake news factories, spreading alternative facts and Trump-scripted agit-propaganda.

There's too much work that can and needs to be done now for us to wait around for some sort of harmonic convergence of optimal political conditions. And as the Trump Administration's potential crimes continue to increase daily, they'll soon reach mountain-like proportions, giving us the grand peak of corrupt practices: Brokelaw Mountain.

Bowl of Mush

I've been watching with a mixture of amusement, sympathy and sadness as Brexit inexorably sucks the once proud United Kingdom into the black hole of white nationalist isolation. As a dear friend of mine once said about another country hellbent on self-destruction, "There's always one more swish in the toilet bowl." So, too, sadly - or so it appears - for the UK. As Theresa May puts the country through the traumatizing experience of multiple failed attempts to pass Brexit implementing legislation, I can only imagine what most Brits must feel like: shite, which has an uncanny resemblance to a bowl of Weetabix, once properly soddened with one's favorite tasty accompanying beverage of choice. 

It would be easy to blame the poor sods who actually voted "leave" during the referendum some two and a half years ago. Bless their hearts, they probably really believed the shite (notice a theme here?) they were fed by the Brexiteer propagandists. That Brexit would result in untold billions of savings once the UK was out from underneath of the yoke of the Eurocrats. That the savings would pay for all that the same public goods the Brexiteer right-wingers had stripped from British society over the past nearly 40 years: a functioning social safety net, a properly funded NHS, an equitable economic development model that extended beyond north of Watford, etc. That there really was an Easter Bunny. 

Instead, they're not getting...well, shite...and are forced to watch the spectacle of their elected officials race to outdo each other in their utter incompetence and stupidity with each side unwilling to admit their part in this massive cock up and hit the reset button. Of course, much of this feels familiar to those of us on this side of the pond where the Cheeto Antichrist is finally being challenged by the newly emboldened Democratic opposition, which decided to make its first bold move in reclaiming our democracy by promptly getting into, to borrow Speaker Pelosi's phrase, a "peeing match with a skunk." Glad she followed her own advice. 

So, to me sisses and bruvs on the other side of the pond, we feel your pain...and are are likely to feel a whole lot more of it as the Orange Cheezebub continues to wrench us out of those few global institutions that actually contribute to the common good. While he's busy doing that abroad, he'll continue to trash our economy with his regular temper tantrums, virulent corruption and breathtaking incompetence. I'm not even going to start on how he's ripped the happy face band aid off of our broken (social contract) leg with his openly white supremacist rhetoric, about which our Republican Party maintains a lockstep, disciplined Omertà silence. 

Once Trump and his ilk have finished with us, we'll probably wind up in a place not too dissimilar from where you are now...swirling in the inescapable downward vortex of the bog of history, racing to meet the big pile of weetabix that awaits all of us.

GOP Congressional Caucasian

There's nothing like the Midwest, aka, the flyover states, aka the "real" America, where folks are folks, where the moral compass always points to our true north, and where white supremacy remains not-so-hidden below the surface, just like the "surprise" in the region's Chicken Alfredo casserole. 

N.B. I'm half Minnesotan and spent 4 years in the Midwest at college (M Blo Gue!), so I know something of which I speak.

Okay, back on topic...Representative Steve "Chicken à la" King (R-Iowa) has based his entire political career on bringing out the surprise in our national noodle zeitgeist. The New York Times recently published an interview with him, in which he wrapped himself in the bloody flag of white angst and victimhood to bemoan how the language of hatred and exclusion had "suddenly" become so unfashionable and verboten in public discourse. Clearly, this same language caused involuntary urinary discharge in their lower haberdashery of many members of the GOP leadership, causing many of them to go onto the airwaves, furrow their brows, and speak very sternly about how King's pronouncements had no place in their party's vision for this nation. 

Really?

Mind you, they have no problem whatsoever with actual substantive policy objectives that this language would promote and defend. This is a blog and not a historical essay, so I won't be able to provide the exhaustive account of the GOP's efforts to rollback the civil rights and other social reforms that were initiated in the 1950s and 1960s even before the ink on them had begun to dry. Suffice it to say that the Richard M. Nixon's Southern strategy was the beginning of the political legitimization or normalization of white supremacy. Before politicians and garden variety yahoos had no need for such niceties as nuanced political strategies and messaging. They simply strung the dad gum (censored) up and had themselves a good ol' lynchin'. 

Thanks to the deviant minds of folks like Pat "America First - and Second, and Third" Buchanan, Lee "Willie Horton" Atwater and Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove, somehow the GOP was able to bridge from its core of plutocratic elites to working class Americans, the so-called "Reagan Democrats," by appealing to their collective sense of grievance, which has been suppressed by the brief moment of progress towards racial equality. From the late 1960s onward, the GOP milked the pus from America's foundational wound of racist genocide even while it did everything in its power to prevent the wound from ever healing properly. They pursued policies that shredded the social safety net, rolled back hard fought gains in civil rights, and promoted mass incarceration of mostly people of color.

Now lest folks think, "There he goes again, bashing the GOP." Let's also remember a few important facts. The Southern strategy was a response to the legislative juggernaut that was Lyndon Baines Johnson. He both destroyed the Dixiecrat-dominated Democratic Party and re-created it into one that stood for prosperity for all, racial equality, and protection of the most vulnerable with greater access to better quality public services. However, it wasn't long before his successors in the Democratic Party leadership, after getting smacked in the mouth a few too many times at the ballot box, began to adopt a "Lite" version of the GOP's strategy, all to win back the Reagan Democrats. 

They gave us Slick Willy Clinton's "Ending Welfare as We Know It," Hilary Clinton's law 'n' order dog whistle about "Superpredators," and Obama's tough guy "Deporter-in-Chief" shtick, all to prove that they could outdo the GOP in appealing to whites' anxiety about losing their status in our increasingly racially diverse society. At the same time, the Democratic Party began to rely more on corporate donors and less on its union and other movement-based allies for campaign support and policy ideas. Indeed, if you follow the money ("He who pays the piper...), it's been pretty difficult to distinguish between the two parties with the main difference being the Democrats' capability to speak out of both sides of their mouths: reassurances to military and corporate elite that they would maintain an unjust, militaristic status quo while weeping crocodile tears to the masses about feeling their pain. 

Anyway, back to Congressman Noodle Head, his biggest mistake was to rip off the frayed smiley face sticker that the GOP (and many in the Democratic Party) have slapped onto their sordid policy agenda of white supremacy and ever-greater economic inequality. I guess he crossed a line and, as a result, is no longer considered useful by his party's leadership. He'll have to content himself with eating a casserole of his own making: crow.

Public Servitude

Here we are: day 24 in the longest shutdown of the U.S. federal government...ever. So sad. I want to give a big shout out to all the folks who have chosen to devote their careers to public service. I'm not including the military in this statement, not because they don't deserve but because folks already give them plenty of props. It's almost a national fetish: how many times can we all scream, "We support our troops!" at the top of our lungs. We're only to happy send them to their potential deaths in the battlefield and equally happy to let them rot upon their return from overseas...but I digress.

Let me instead focus my appreciation on U.S. federal government employees. Both of my parents devoted significant parts of their professional careers to public service, working in or with all three branches of the government. I'm proud of their contribution to good governance here in the U.S. as well as imparting on me an ethos of service, solidarity and advocacy with and for those who have been historically marginalized and treated unjustly by our society's institutions.

And then there is Donald Trump, who has never met a vendor or contractor he hasn't stiffed with his slime ball business practices. Rather than pay good working women and men for services rendered, he prefers to sic a pack of rabid shysters on them, threatening a whole lifetime of litigation. It's no surprise then that he has had to declare bankruptcy a half dozen times. He's only been able to maintain his lifestyle of the rich and famous with huge infusions of cash from his daddy and with systematic massive tax dodges (see previous point - pack of rabid shysters).

So is it any surprise that he's treating U.S. federal workers like crap, the same way he's treated contractors and vendors? And you don't hear much from the GOP, certainly not after it has spent the better part of the last 35 plus years, demonizing the institutions and people of the public sector. Meanwhile, they - and let's be honest, the Democrats, too - have lionized the private sector as the source of all things dynamic, innovative and worthwhile. Sorry all of you corporate groupies, enablers and sycophants. As Elizabeth Warren and Barrack Obama both said, "You didn't build that."

"That," of course, would be the physical, legal, regulatory and social infrastructure that sustains our society and economy. "That" was built by public servants working for the government, which is to say, us - you know, the government of, by and for the people? So let's get off of our collective duff and stand in solidarity with our furloughed sisters and brothers. They deserve better than this, and it's long past time for us to end this nonsense so that they can get back to work and ensure the safety and fairness of our food, environment, transportation and financial systems.

Hey, Donald! Time's up. You need to go to your room now, where you can tweet, whine, grab, grope and mope as much as you like, so that the adults get back to running our country.

And a Brat Shall Lead Them

I guess I'm getting sick and tired of the back and forth about Trump's epic temper tantrum over funding for his border wall, which is emblematic of his entire presidency. His MO has been to avoid doing the hard work required to successfully formulate policy recommendations and then build sufficient political support to advance his policy agenda. Instead, he'd rather whine, insult, taunt and complain when nobody wants to support the hot mess that he and his minions ends up proposing.

There's two sides to said hot mess. First, there's the (smelly, usually brown) substance of it. What do we expect when we elect someone with the intellectual capacity of a grapefruit (or is that an orange?) to the presidency. Who do you think he surrounds himself with? None other than the dregs of the policy underworld - know-nothings who wouldn't be hired to make coffee, never mind serve as senior policy advisers at most legit think tanks. Invariably, they generate the same racist dystopian garbage they were producing when they were working for some über-wealthy right wing social Darwinist's social media outlet.

And then there's the politics of this hot mess, which is where there's a real silver lining. Thanks to Trump and his ham-fisted push for this policy agenda, he has effectively stripped away whatever veneer of intellectual credibility GOP "thought leaders" might have enjoyed when cooking up their junk public policy recommendations. These policy white papers sought to legitimize climate change denial, gutting the social safety net and public services more broadly, funding endless wars as an excuse to fatten the bloated military-intelligence complex, etc. Now we can see them for what they are - flimsy, specious rationales for increased militarism abroad, and race-based inequality and institutionalized white minority rule at home. 

The only thing Trump has done in trashing the so-called norms was to strip off the happy face stickers to reveal the big hairy knuckled middle finger he and his plutocratic white supremacist backers have forever hoisted to remind us to stay in our place. Time to crack a few knuckles and chuck these knuckleheads out. La luta continua!

A Manhood Thing

First off, props to Speaker Pelosi, for nailing it when she describe Trump's obsession with securing funding for his border wall. She called it, "like a manhood thing." Key word being "like," as in resembling but not truly the real article, because let's face it: when it comes to Donald Trump, you probably wouldn't associate anything about him with manhood, would you? More like infant hood, what with all of the whining, grabbing, pouting and temper tantrums (props to Chuck Schumer, too).

N.B. While everyone has been watching this psychodrama play out between Trump and the House Democrats, folks might have missed some pretty important news: it turned out that Paul Man-a-Snort was sharing polling data with the Ruskies. Can you say collusion, boys and girls? How about smoky gun? Good grief, can we all just end the charade here? Donald Trump was most certainly not Putin's plant/Manchurian candidate/whatever. Clearly, he was just looking to pay back Putin or position himself for whatever Chump Organization venture he was planning in Russia. He probably never gave it a second thought about how his actions might affect the election outcome. He just didn't want to fall flat on his face with yet another failed business venture...again.

Okay, so back to the shiny object we've all been distracted into watching - the border wall and associated U.S. federal government shutdown. Did it ever occur to anyone who is fulminating about this act of political hostage taking that nobody has bothered to talk about the root causes and drivers of the Central American migration? I'm talking about the bloody civil wars and authoritarian dictatorships that the U.S. underwrote financially and supported with military training and diplomatic cover during the 1980s. And then there was the subsequent botched national reconstruction programs that didn't bother to address the ginormous socioeconomic and political inequalities between the elites and the rural and urban poor who comprised the vast majority of the countries' populations.

Yes, back in the day there were some Democrats and even a few principled Republicans who tried to put a check on the Reagan and Bush I regimes for the international war crimes they were committing. But, no, we're not hearing a peep about it now from all of the huffy, puffy self-righteous politicos, mostly Democrats, expressing their outrage and indignation about Trump's manhood thing. Sure, there's some talk about Trump creating the very humanitarian crisis he now claims he needs funding to address through his own inhumane, xenophobic actions, but that's just one more consequence of more than a century of U.S. imperialism in the Central American region.

Guess it must be a U.S. thing.

Enjoy the toon.