None Dare Call It Sedition

 In some lame attempt to shore up Trump's base, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Calgary) has put forward a "demand" there be a commission set up with presumably Trump flunkies in order to overturn a legitimate election.

Craven Cruz

Cruz is rumored to be a highly intelligent person, with Ivy League credentials all over the place.  Of course, being a Harvard grad especially denotes superior intellect.  Not everybody is proud of how Ted turned out.  More important than his legendary intellect, such as it is, Cruz is known for his naked ambition.  Once a sworn enemy of Trump's and vice versa, now Cruz is a major butt kisser.  Of course, this is all showboating or grandstanding to appease the Trump cultists, but really the correct course of action is not to subvert the Constitution and set a precedent for future elections but instead just let the Trump cultists go through the process of grief.

Hell, we Democrats put up with a lot from the GOP when Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton had elections stolen from them.  But we didn't pull the shit the current GOP pols are doing.

Even former House speaker Paul Ryan says these idiots need to knock it off.

Of course, all of this makes great copy for the media.   That was what their pushing Donald Trump for president was all about in the first place.  Just ask CNN's Jeff Zucker.

Meanwhile, Trump is acting like a mob boss at the same much of the GOP is acting like a crime syndicate:

President Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in the state, according to audio of a Saturday phone call obtained by the Washington Post https://t.co/Bq11goyumy

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 3, 2021

More is here. 

Keith Olbermann on this latest scandal:

In a sane world, Trump would have been removed a long time ago, but this GOP is little more than a criminal syndicate and allows him to get away with anything.

The call in question highlights from the Washington Post.  It was something like an hour long:

The reaction wasn't too favorable even among members of Trump's own party.

I will believe the end of the GOP when I see it:

The die is cast for the Republican Party. It will be destroyed on January 6th in much the same way the Whig party was destroyed by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The act unraveled the Missouri compromise and allowed for the westward expansion of slavery. 1/

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) January 3, 2021

I will also believe a resignation when I see it, Carl. 

The Happiest Day in America's Life

and one of the happiest days of my life was this news about widow's peak dipshit Paul Ryan deciding to call it quits from Congress and will not seek re-election.

The cynic in me says he has presidential ambitions should Trump be ousted, and the even more cynical is that Charles Koch has made him an offer Paul couldn't refuse.

Ryan was always way out of his depth, as was evident in his vice presidential debate in 2012 against Joe Biden.  That debate was stunning to behold because Ryan was so overmatched.  The GOP in the House had to scrape bottom to offer Ryan the speakership when John Boehner threw in the towel, frustrated at the direction his ruinous political party was headed.

Let's take a look at more here:

Explaining his decision to his Republican colleagues Wednesday morning at a meeting in the Capitol, a subdued Mr. Ryan said he wanted to spend more time with his children, who live in the same town where the speaker grew up.

He pledged that he would help fellow Republicans extensively in the 2018 campaign and said he would continue raising money at a powerful pace, according to two lawmakers in the room. Mr. Ryan has become the party’s most important fund-raiser in the House and Republicans have been counting on him to help them collect and spend tens of millions of dollars defending their majority this fall.

Maybe Paul really DOES want to "spend more time with his children," but this is often the excuse made by politicians whose misconduct is about to be exposed.

D.O.A.

Trump and Ryan decided to pull the plug on repealing the Affordable Care Act.

I have had my criticisms of it because of how expensive insurance is, but it appears all that is needed is to put in cost controls so that the premiums and the deductibles can actually be affordable.

Even many GOPers decided not to support the mess Trump and Ryan were pushing. It was dead for all intents and purposes.

From the article:

As Ryan and his allies scrambled to convince wary colleagues to back their health care plan, they watched as conservative and moderates in their caucus began to declare their opposition. As defections mounted, Ryan traveled to the White House to reveal to Trump his faltering whip count – and to discuss whether to pull the bill. But the administration seemed intent on proceeding as planned.

“We want the vote," a senior administration official said as Ryan made his way up Pennsylvania Avenue. "If they want to go against the president, they should do it on live TV."

Ultimately, though, Ryan prevailed. Moderate Republicans such as Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock and Ohio Rep. David Joyce disclosed their opposition even as Ryan was meeting with Trump. It became clear early Friday afternoon that the bill was poised for defeat, as members on the fence broke against it.

Most Republican officials know they are toast if they had repealed it.

Ryan is Full of Beans,

and unfortunately, they aren't fartless. The stench has finally undergoing media scruntiny:

In last night's Vice Presidential debate (October 11), Republican congressman Ryan told a story about how his daughter Liza got the nickname Bean, when answering a question about abortion.

Gawker reports that it was quickly pointed out by Twitter users that Ryan's story was similar to Cobain's, who said he gave his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, her unique middle name because she looked like a kidney bean on his wife Courtney Love's ultrasound scan. Ryan has stated that he is a big fan of Nirvana, as well as Rage Against The Machine.

The Whole World Saw Paul Ryan for What He Is,

and it isn't pretty. It calls into question Romney's judgment on important matters. Just what in the hell was he thinking when he selected Ryan as his running mate.

Without even trying, Biden showed the world this emperor has no clothes at all:

Moreover, the battering that Biden gave Ryan brought something into sharp relief that the Republican party has been fudging ever since Romney put the zombie-eyed granny-starver on the ticket — that, for his entire political career up to that point, on critical economic issues, Paul Ryan was an extremist even by the standards of the modern Republican party, which are considerably high indeed. He was for full privatization of Social Security. He was for the absolute elimination of the defined-benefit Medicare and Medicaid programs. Since being selected, it has become clear that the Romney people have forced him to soften these positions. (His stance on Medicare, for example, has evolved from Kill It Now to Arrange for Its Slow Death Later.) On Thursday night, Biden dragged out the old Paul Ryan — and, I would argue, the real Paul Ryan — and put him on display, and he made the new Paul Ryan own him. For one brief moment, he almost got Ryan to commit to Social Security privatization again. You could hear the screams from Romney headquarters all the way up the Charles to where I was watching.

"Zombie-eyed granny-starver" is a perfect description of Ryan.

The VP Bloodbath for Those Who Didn't See It

It was something to watch Ryan get his head handed to him:

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The wrong man was nominated as president by the Democratic Party. It should have been Biden.

One thing Biden didn't get the chance to nail Ryan on was Social Security and Ryan's idea it would be privatized for younger workers. Just how would Ryan pay for this, for younger workers are paying taxes for CURRENT retirees? They would have to be doubly taxed to pay for current retirees and for their own retirement accounts. Biden didn't have the chance to collar Ryan on his bullshit.

The moderator lied when she said the "entitlements" are going "bankrupt." No federal program can go bankrupt anyway since the United States has a sovereign currency. It is impossible. Even without this, none of these programs are going "bankrupt." The only way they can be endangered is through policies reflecting the insane right-wing, neoliberal ideology that favors rich parasites over everybody else.

VP Debate Cartoons

The media are trying to spin last night's bloodbath to make Ryan look good, but truth is truth. It was the most lopsided debate ever. It is impossible to win when you are up against a D.C. veteran who knows policy, both foreign and domestic, by heart and who is as sharp and smart as Joe Biden.

What infuriates me is the wrong person was elected president. It should have been Joe Biden. He is what is called a leader, a statesman. I would be volunteering for his campaign this year if he had won the presidency.

Instead we have a neolib closet Republican pretending to be a Democrat as standardbearer of the Democratic Party who is hellbent on destroying the New Deal and public education.

It makes me sick.

Another cartoon:

Assault and Battery AKA the VP Debate

Joe Biden destroys the little pipsqueak in tonight's debate:

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Biden v. Davy Crock It

Live stream of the only VP debate is here

One of many places to view it, of course, if you don't watch it on television.

I'll put up the debate when it becomes available or whenever I feel like it, whichever comes last.

Biden is eating Ryan for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and midnight snack. Not even close. Ryan is way, way, way, way in over his head up against somebody who has been in Washington for nearly 40 years.

If Biden had been on the top of the ticket, I would have no problem voting for him for re-election. Unfortunately, that arrogant neolib is on the ticket.

I am still voting for Anderson.

Mountains Out of Molehills

Of course I am referring the latest on Paul "Pinocchio" Ryan. I wonder if he will claim a back injury caused him to misremember his mountaineering achievements:

Ryan: “My mom was very outdoorsy … We spent our summers doing backpacking trips in the (Colorado) back-country, you know, Snowmass Lake, Capital Peak, spent all our summers doing that … went all over White River National Forest, just the whole Elk range. I mean I’ve climbed every fourteener in that range and the three around there … So I got into climbing fourteeners when I was 12, with my brother, Stan. My mom got us into that."

Question: "How many fourteeners have you climbed? Or how many times?"

Ryan: "38. I think that’s my last count."

Question: "Those are just climbing peaks that are 14,000 feet?"

Ryan: "I’ve done it 38 times. … I’ve done 38, but I think the number of unique peaks is something like twenty… no, no it’s like thirty or something like that. I counted it up a year or two ago."

Whatever.

Paul "Pinocchio" Ryan

For the first time in medical history, a back injury is credited with lengthening the nose on a person's face:

“I hurt my back when I was in my mid-20s, so I had to stop running. So obviously, my perception of races and times was off,” Ryan said when asked why he told a radio show that he had run a marathon in under three hours. His actual time was closer to four. “I thought that was an ordinary time until my brother showed me a three-hour marathon is, you know, crazy fast. It’s just the fact that I did it 22 years ago.”

I don't think many people are buying his explanation. He is in excellent physical shape, and I don't doubt he ran a good time in his marathon when he was young, but he wasn't Olympic caliber.

He would, however, be a world-class competitor for the World's Biggest Liar competition.

Etc.

The death of Sun Myung Moon yesterday at 92 is yet another example of the good dying young:

It has long been amazing that Official Washington has been so blasé about the curious case of the Washington Times, where a Korean theocrat – known for brainwashing his followers and for maintaining close ties with international drug cartels and foreign intelligence agencies – has been allowed to spend billions of unregulated dollars to influence U.S. political decision-making.

The fact that Moon wrapped himself in “conservative” political garb – and was quick to denounce any investigations of his organization as “religious bigotry” – helped fend off inquiries into exactly where his money was coming from.

But what proved most important was how Moon made himself useful to Ronald Reagan, the Bush Family and other Republican heavy-hitters – often by putting into play propaganda smearing their political enemies. These Republicans, in turn, helped protect Moon, at least since the late 1970s.

Like I wrote yesterday, Moon wound up wielding power behind the scenes.
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Paul Ryan has been caught in so many lies, both major and minor, he is becoming about as notorious as Pinocchio.

The most laughable was the one where he claimed to have run a marathon in under three hours.

It sounds like the infamous Rosie Ruiz, the "winner" of the women's division in the Boston Marathon who was shortly exposed as a cheat.

Ryan wanted to be as well-remembered:

t started when Hugh Hewitt, a Right-wing talk-radio host, interviewed Mr Ryan. In that interview, the vice-presidential candidate boasted about his fitness, declaring that he had once run a marathon in less than three hours.

This claim piqued the interest of Runner’s World magazine, which noted that marathon times are recorded — and that it was unable to find any evidence of Mr Ryan’s accomplishment. It eventually transpired that Mr Ryan had indeed once run a marathon, but that his time was actually more than four hours.

In a statement issued by a spokesman, Mr Ryan tried to laugh the whole thing off as a simple error. But serious runners find that implausible: the difference between sub-three and over-four is the difference between extraordinary and perfectly ordinary, and it’s not something a runner could get wrong, unless he’s a fabulist who imagines his own reality. And does suggesting that Mr Ryan is delusional rather than dishonest actually make the situation any better?

It's just another example of Ryan's grandiosity.

Speaking of Rosie Ruiz, here is a video clip after her "victory" in the Boston Marathon:

Cartoons of the Day

Somebody is Going to Get Fired

for pointing out the obvious with Paul Ryan's speech last night at the Republican National Convention. It's a nice summary for those of you who were fortunate enough to miss it.

This is good:

Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

In other words, never trust a man with a widow's peak:

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A chance to be dishonest and display it to all the world is why Ryan chose a career in the very government he hates. What is hilarious is he doesn't point out that the reason Obama failed to do this or that is because of GOP obstruction. This is good:

And when Ryan riffed on the handful of jobs he briefly held, his Ayn Randian roots were clear. “When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life, he said. [Perhaps that's because he wasn't; he grew up in a wealthy family.] I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream. That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.” That’s straight out of Rand, and ’50s anti-Communist paranoia.

And he went to college thanks to those Social Security survivors' checks he got when his dad died. Just like his idol Ayn Rand collected Social Security and used Medicare.

Etc.

At least we know Ayn Ryan hasn't sold his mother--yet.

I doubt his mother is destitute.
_____

Another dumb shit teacher gets convicted for "consensual" sex with FIVE students.

What kills me is the "libertarian" "argument" that because these kids are around 18, they have "consented" to this. Teachers, the "argument" goes, shouldn't go to jail for predatory activities just because the kids are over 16.

Well, no. "Age of consent" has NOTHING to do with this. It's the power, stupid, and the abuse thereof. "Consent" is irrelevant when a teacher has control of their grades and where it is mandatory they attend school in order to graduate.

Some 23 states have made such inappropriate relationships subject to criminal charges when in the old days people didn't see a whole lot wrong with it even to the point where marriages resulted. That's before sexual harassment became a big issue with all of the liability involved if the relationships go sour and also some high-profile idiot teachers getting into trouble with students. There is something terribly demented with teachers who get involved with young students instead of socializing with people their own age.
_____

Obituary? Until there is an official report, I removed the hoax obit on William Windom.

A good actor like that shouldn't have an obit before he is even pronounced dead.

Etc.

Obituary: Actress Phyllix Thaxter, 92, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

She was one of the performers who made numerous television appearances in the fifties and sixties. Her first husband was disgraced CBS executive James T. Aubrey. For the record, they were divorced before he became disgraced.
_____

I haven't played the Powerball lottery for several weeks, so I wasn't in the running for the $377 million jackpot. Somebody in Michigan has the winning ticket.
_____

The media have gone out of their way to legitimize an extremist.
_____

Speaking of Ryan's extremist philosophy, in this piece from the distant past, the late writer Gore Vidal thought very little of Ayn Rand:

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the “freedom is slavery” sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her “philosophy,” but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the “welfare” state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.

He saw through her just like Mike Wallace did.

She was actually on the Tonight Show in 1967.

Her "philosophy" was fatally flawed because she regarded altruism as "evil." Well, humans have to have the capacity for altruism because it is in their "self-interest." Without regard to other people's feelings or lives, humans could not exist. Those without altruism or empathy generally need to be locked up or get extensive psychiatric help. They are dangerous to themselves and to society.

People who are without any kind of altruism or empathy are regarded as sociopaths.

The tragedy here is this abortion of a philosophy has run rampant in political and economic circles.

It's been said Rand may have had Asperger syndrome, which was largely unknown in her lifetime, and its limitations had a lot to do with such a warped outlook.

Ayn and Ryan

In case you missed it, Lawrence O'Donnell last night gave the run-down on Paul Ryan's long love affair with the "philosophy" of crackpot author and failed screenwriter Ayn Rand:

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Pretty good summary of the "relationship," from which Ryan is trying to distance himself.

The Passion of Ayn Ryan

Note this piece was written some time ago before the superstar attained national status:

Leave it to Matt Taibbi to rip apart who he calls one of the "young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres" who is in a good position to drown the government in a bathtub, just as his handlers Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers desire.

The rest of us can go die for all he cares:

Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.

Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse.

The reason for this is always the same: the Republicans, quite smartly, recognize that there is great political hay to be made in the appearance of deficit reduction, and that white middle class voters will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm to any call for reductions in the “welfare state,” a term which said voters will instantly associate with black welfare moms and Mexicans sneaking over the border to visit American emergency rooms.

...

The absurd thing is that Ryan’s act isn’t even politically courageous. It’s canny calculation, but courage it is not. It would be courageous if Ryan were, say, the president of the United States, and leaning on that budget with his full might. But Ryan is proposing a budget he knows would have no chance of passing in the Senate. He is simply playing out a part, a non-candidate for the presidency pushing a rhetorical flank for an out-of-power party leading into a presidential campaign year. If the budget is a hit with the public, the 2012 Republican candidate can run on it. If it isn’t, the Republican candidate can triangulate Ryan’s ass back into the obscurity from whence it came, and be done with him.

I'd prefer not to take a chance on the pair just in the event they actually DO carry out the extremism they run on.

We should know it is up to the "third way" "Democrats" like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to do the dirty work the Republicans talk about but rarely enact. It's been mentioned many times it took Nixon to go to China, but it took Clinton to enact "welfare reform" as a way to "triangulate" his opponents.

It's disastrous shit for Democrats to pull.

Speaking of Ryan's idol, the most destructive thing about Rand was her disciple Alan Greenspan.

He was totally brainwashed by her "philosophy," but unfortunately he was put in a position in government where he gambled with millions of lives with his anti-regulation nonsense.

Ayn Ryan

You might just as well call the Romney-Ryan ticket the first full-blown fascist ticket in American history:

From an ideological standpoint, Ryan represents the most right-wing candidate to be nominated on a major party ticket in at least a century. By one rating system, he ties with Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, the failed Republican presidential candidate, in the ranking of right-wing legislators. Ryan is not a Christian fundamentalist like Bachmann, but his record on social issues like abortion rights is equally right-wing.

Exploiting the transparent indifference of the Obama administration to the social misery created by the crisis of American and world capitalism, Ryan, Romney and the Republicans are seeking to posture as advocates of working people despite their ultra-right program. In his remarks in Norfolk, Ryan denounced “higher unemployment, declining incomes and crushing debt” and claimed that the Romney-Ryan ticket would “lead to more jobs and more take home pay for working Americans.”

Liberal apologists for the Democratic Party, like the New York Times, seized on the Ryan nomination to make an argument for a vote for Obama’s reelection. “Voters will now be able to see with painful clarify just what the Republican Party has in store for them,” its editorial Sunday claimed.

The truth is that both the Romney-Ryan and Obama-Biden tickets represent the interests of the capitalist ruling elite. Whichever pair of millionaire politicians wins the November election, the new administration will intensify the assault on working-class living standards and carry out unprecedented attacks on basic social program.

Yep, unfortunately. Ryan represents the Koch brothers and Norquist, while Obama represents Wall Street.

What a hell of a fucking "choice."

Most likely Ryan is being groomed for 2016 rather than this year.

Some Sunday Reads: Paul Ryan

To save yours truly from seeking the articles out, Bill Moyers has a roundup of links of everything you never wanted to know about presumptuous GOP running mate Rep. Paul Ryan.

It's astounding this former personal trainer or whatever he was bases his entire political philosophy on a novel written by a failed Hollywood screenwriter and full-time crackpot.

It's scary shit because it isn't just limited to Ryan. Hell, how much difference is Ayn's "philosophy" from the crackpot Austrian/Chicago school of economics?

It's all about this: If I don't need it or use it, why should I pay for it?
_____

Speaking of Ryan, Robert Reich says the guy isn't any kind of firebrand, actually fairly innocuous, until one actually listens to the crackpottery he has to say:

Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late nineteenth century. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim the fortune he accumulated through his giant Standard Oil Trust was “merely a survival of the fittest… the working out of a law of nature and of God.”

The social Darwinism of that era also undermined all efforts to build a more broadly based prosperity and rescue our democracy from the tight grip of a very few at the top. It was used by the privileged and powerful to convince everyone else that government shouldn’t do much of anything.

Not until the twentieth century did America reject social Darwinism. We created a large middle class that became the engine of our economy and our democracy. We built safety nets to catch Americans who fell downward, often through no fault of their own.

The cruelties of Social Darwinism are why the New Deal was created in the first place. We KNOW what works; however, this country is increasingly being run by a cadre of sociopaths.
_____

Whether it is Romney, Ryan, or Grover Norquist really calling the shots, the extremism may be enough for people to actually re-elect a neoliberal who is likely to do the same or similar thing.
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Twelve things you should know about this nightmare pick is the subject of this article, not least among them his adoration of crackpot novelist Ayn Rand.

Rand died thirty years ago, but her demented cult lives on. Unfortunately, many of her fans are in high government positions.