The Short Straw Gambit: facing down madness with cleverness

I've suggested this before. Donald Trump is about personality disorders, not ideology! Indeed, the "worst American" George F. Will has reached the same conclusion about the man occupying the Oval Office.  This overlap of diagnosis does not persuade me to cozy up to Will the Traitor. 

Still, by all means read the man's dissection.

Viewing the problem as psychological, instead of fundamentally ideological, opens up an interesting possibility. For example, last month Trump declared war on the GOP's Freedom Caucus -- the 30+ Republican Tea Party radicals who torched Paul Ryan's "Obamacare replacement" bill, though in fact, he was aggrieved personally not politically. His "dealmaking" for the next version (which just passed the House) was entirely about loyalty. He shows no sign of having read or understood the changes.

Hence, this impudent thought: Trump's short attention span and egomania suggest an action by "Short straw Democrats."

== The principle is simple: flattery works! ==

 Donald Trump responds ferociously to those who dislike him and warmly to those who say nice things. Period. Full stop. There is nothing more. There is nothing less. Nothing left or right. Or anything else. So let me repeat it.

Donald Trump responds ferociously to those who dislike him and warmly to those who say nice things.  Period.

And hence, Democrats should hold a caucus to draw straws. Those with short straws must say nice things about Donald Trump.

This does not demand betraying principles! Your stances and votes can all remain the same! But you'll simply and deliberately end any statement about the president with a compliment. 

Example: "While I respectfully disagree with the President on this and a myriad other issues, I will admit that he is among the best-looking leaders this nation ever had."

Will the pandering be obvious? Sure! Will there be nods and winks? Uh-Huh. Will Hannity & Co. scream denunciations of an obvious ploy? Yep! And Trump's inner circle will rail at him to ignore the blatant manipulativeness of the other side's "short straw" volunteers.

But it won't matter! The compliment will stick in Trump's head, where facts and policy positions do not. He will invite the complimenters to dinner, to golf. He'll listen. He'll sway. I'll put money on it.

(Al Franken could pull this off. So could Chuck Schumer. Nancy Pelosi shouldn't try, but Elizabeth Warren?)

Surely there are a few Democrats with the intelligence and strength of character and stomach to do what clearly must be done?

Well.  No.  I guess we've seen the answer to that one.

== The Siberian Candidate – follow the connections ==

Here’s a fascinating timeline, for those who want to study hypocrisy.  If even one or two of these “coincidences” had been done by Obama or Clinton, it would have raised screams of conspiracy! 

What do you do when the “coincidences” pile up and beggar Goldfinger’s Law?

== Sinking their fangs deeper ==

Marissa Mayer Set to Receive $186 Million for Failing...Because... This Is How Corporate America Works.  In addition to $200M in other "compensation."   How is this justified? Our companies are vampired of value in order to "get top talent into management."  Instead of spending to develop new products, members of the CEO-oligarch caste heap on debt to do stock buy-backs that boost their golden parachutes.

Think.  In any other field, high pay would draw in talent from other fields to compete with these 5000 golf buddy CEOs. That flood of competitors should then pull CEO pay down. It's called supply & demand capitalism -- the thing these folks claim to favor!  But it hasn't happened for 40 years.  Instead, this closed cabal appoints each other onto boards that then hire "indispensable" pals at rates that would fund many world nations.

And now they are so rich that wealth disparities have reached levels of 1789 France, affecting politics so that correction is impossible, short of revolution.

See where I decrypt how we came to this. How "business" leaders became the conniving enemies of Adam Smith:

There are still sectors of the U.S. economy that do capitalism and competitive enterprise.  Autos are vibrant and deliver better products, every year. Elon is forcing competition into spaceflight. Silicon Valley is still filled with folks who emphasize product innovation. I do not want the revolution that the Wall Street and CEO caste seem determined to provoke!

We need to remember how FDR and the Greatest Generation staved off Marxism.  With reform.

== Economic and personal freedom: Victims  of government? ==

Libertarians! Does Size of Government (SoG) negatively affect freedom? Is Big Government the enemy of both Personal Freedom (PF) and Economic Freedom (EF)?  The Cato Institute - supposedly the center of libertarian intellect - collected data to study EF and PF and well-being across 160 nations. Some conclusions were expected - EF and PF tend to rise and fall together.

But a simple analysis at Evonomics - using Cato's own data - shows that economic and personal freedom both correlate positively - strongly - with size of government.   That is strongly... positive. Countries with more government tend to have higher PF and EF.  Blatantly so.

Should you be surprised?  As proved during the Greatest Generation - (who adored FDR) - shared investments in infrastructure, schools, health etc. all result in vastly raising the fraction and number of children who can then confidently participate as competitors in vigorous markets, or do the science that stimulates all growth. 

Yes, government bureaucracies can stifle!  But history shows that danger to be far smaller than the threat of re-established cheater-oligarchy.

Finally, it's time to banish the mythos that "democrats favor personal freedom and republicans favor economic freedom."  It is an outright lie.  If 'economic freedom' stands for healthy entrepreneurship, small business startups, competitiveness, innovation, level-competitive playing fields and strong economy-metrics, then democrats score vastly better in that freedom, too.

Republicans only serve the concentration of economic power in an ever-narrowing aristocratic class. 

Name one exception, a vigorously enacted GOP policy that did not pursue that one and only, central Republican goal.

One. Name one.

== Weaponized satire ==

Borowitz is brilliant. "Appearing at his first public event since leaving office, Obama fired off a punishing fusillade of grammatically correct sentences, the likes of which the American people have not heard from the White House since he departed... in what was widely seen as a brutal attack on his successor, without ever once referring to or mentioning Donald Trump." -- writes Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker.

“About five or six sentences in, I noticed that all of his sentences had both nouns and verbs in them,” Carol Foyler said. “I couldn’t believe he was going after Trump like that.” "Obama’s blistering deployment of complete sentences clearly got under the skin of their intended target, who, moments after the event, responded with an angry tweet: “Obama bad (or sick) guy. Failing. Sad!”

So what is on the Congressional plate?

== Outcomes in Question ==

I frequently demand of our friends who are still loyal Republicans to name any positive, assertive steps that the party of Bush and Cheney will actually attempt to accomplish, now that they control both houses of Congress. 

Nu? Repeal Obamacare? Puh-lease.  The GOP leadership never wanted it repealed, since it is their own… damn… plan -- cloned from Heritage plans, Romney-care, Gingrichcare and the GOP platform.  They just want to yell and pretend, while letting it work.

Seriously, I ask again! Given that every GOP-run Congress since 1996 scored among the laziest and least productive in the nation’s history, what’s on their agenda now?

Deregulation?  Republicans sure do talk and talk about that! So is it strange that, despite many periods when they held every rein of power, they have only ever deregulated one industry? Wall Street/Finance (with results we all know)?

By comparison, dems have deregulated eight. I listed them elsewhere: (e.g. the ICC, CAB, ATT, and the Freaking INTERNET...)

Oh, Republicans like to NIBBLE deregulate.  Never eliminating bureaucracies, but reducing their effectiveness. Now they want to retract their own "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) and weaken its testing standards, leaving each test to the state. Why? 

Because All the red states (except Utah and somewhat Texas) are doing worse in student testing than predicted, because their schools have been torched. They test far worse than most Blue States and it's getting worse(r) daily. NCLB teststing lays out the embarrassment clear, so they must now abandon their own baby...

== At last, a sincere deregulation by the GOP? ==

Oh, but patience is rewarded! Suddenly, among Republican leaders, there is talk about a great big, bad regulatory target! Actually repealing and eliminating an actual bureaucracy!

  The Export Import Bank...

...which helps US companies to compete with mercantilist exporters like China. Okay but can we afford it when times are tight and when deficits are, er, um... steeply declining?

Okay, then, Mr. Boehner. What's the bottom line here?  How much is the EIB costing us?

Fact check: the EIB regularly pays billions in profits to the U.S. Treasury, having only lost money in one year out of the last 30.  

Please dig that again. The EIB both expands U.S. exports and makes a profit for the taxpayer. But suddenly the USEIB is the devil! How can that be? Why is the EIB the GOP's top target... since they "deregulated" away the Congressional Office of Science and Technology Assessment?

Because the tech companies that the EIB mostly benefits are generally democratic-leaning while the GOP-leaning corporations — in finance and resource (theft) extraction — don’t use the USEIB much.

Give it a read. And yes, I am impressed that the laziest and most corrupt politicians in US history actually have lifted their gaze to want to actually do something!  Something wrongheaded, venial and dumb. But something.

== About that "lazy" accusation ==

Already the House leadership has begun setting expectations, making clear they plan to blame President Obama for the coming two years of Congressional noise and inaction. They know folks have started noticing that...

... recent GOP Congresses have been the laziest in US history, holding the fewest hearings and introducing the fewest bills since 1792. Despite all their anger they have even issued among the lowest numbers of subpoenas!  Without the utterly banal/trivial Benghazi and IRS probes? Almost none at all.

Just to be clear.  For 6 years, under G.W. Bush, the Republican Party (and the Murdoch-Koch-Adelson-Saudi owners) controlled ALL branches of the US government.  They could have done anything on their agenda, anything at all. 

What did they give us? Two trillion dollar wars, a tsunami tax gift for the uber-rich that achieved zero supply-side aims, deregulation of Banking/WallStreet (leading to disaster)… plus Medicare Part D, the only entitlement that passed with zero provision for paying for it.  NAME ONE OTHER major action taken by the GOP during the long stretch when they had total power.

It’s one thing to be crazy, dogmatic servants of oligarchy with a long list of social-political grievances.  It is another thing to yammer your grievances endlessly — while being too lazy to lift a finger about any of them.

== Their one positive-assertive agenda item ==

Any positives? Certainly not the Infrastructure Bill to repair 10,000 decaying bridges and put 100,000 men to work, generating high velocity, demand side economic activity. If that had passed 3 years ago, we'd be all the way into a boom, by now, and the results of the last election... oh, I get it. Pretty clever, guys. Treason. But clever.

Keystone. That's it. The only positive-assertive thing. Keystone! Subsidize petro zillionaires to ship Canadian tar over the most vulnerable and precious agricultural aquifer in the world and stink our air, to they can ship it to China... and what's OUR cut? Zero.

But at least Keystone is positive assertive!  

Now name one other positive assertive item. One. even one.  Just one.

== Anything else? ==

A large number of newly elected Republican Senators intend to vote to eliminate the food stamps program. Is this news item faked?  Well... in fact it comes from one of the many "satire" sites that simply do not understand one of the rules of true satire... do not call "satire" a story that is entirely plausible.  It's just not funny. 

Meanwhile, U.S. healthcare spending grew 3.6 percent in 2013, the slowest rate on record since 1960, federal health officials reported Wednesday.

== Guaranteed NOT to be on the agenda ==

2014 is in the running to be the hottest year globally on record, according to the latest data from the Japan Meteorological Agency.... the previous record years of 1998, 2005 and 2010 will be overtaken by a narrow margin.

Oh, by the way.... “The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Retreating at a Much Higher Rate Than Previously Thought."

The only way to ignore all this is to join the cult of “scientists are sniveling liar/cheater/coward/lemmings — ALL of them! Who scrabble after “grants” that one side does NOT have to list or point to or document.  Because vague is good!  As is belittling the smartest, wisest and most competitive humans our species ever produced.”

== My own top priority ==

Okay so now Ted (Joe McCarthy's clone) Cruz heads the committee overseeing NASA? Ooooog. My own priority it adamant. Mr. Obama stop letting them attach lunacies to must-pass budget extensions. (The GOP Congress has not passed an ACTUAL budget in ages.) Me? I'd veto every single thing till they reinstate the Congressional Office of Science and Technology Assessment. Destroying OTA was the smoking gun that this was no longer Barry Goldwater's GOP.

It is the biggest Know-Nothing movement since the 1840s.

(Join the petition to restore West Virginia's science standards in schools. http://www.wvsta.org )

 == Krugman on the Economy ==

Paul Krugman explains How Soaring Inequality May Lead the World Down the Path to Fascism: Whether your reflexes are "left" or "right," you should be disturbed by the picture painted here, and willing to ponder it.  You conservatives, when do you picture the ideal hey-day of capitalism that delivers for everyone? The fifties and sixties?  Certainly our parents in the Greatest Generation delivered one thing - a stunningly rapid rate of middle class growth, a burst of wealth and education that their children then used, to break old habits like racism, sexism etc.  The left is insane to ignore that it was wealth and middle class well-being that fostered those reforms...

...but the right is even crazier, to ignore cause and effect -- that capitalism was at its flattest, healthiest, fairest and most productive under regulatory and tax regimes instituted by the Greatest Generation's favorite person, the man they adored above all others, but whom Fox and its Murdochian-Saudi owners want you to envision as Satan.

          Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In contrast, for close to thirty years, Republicans have told us..."Tax-break gifts to the rich will make EVERYONE rich and erase government deficits!"  Supply Side Voodoo Economics (SSVE) has been tried over and over, and not ONE prediction ever came true -- and did  I mention not ever?  Scientists know what to make of such a theory... which is why the Right now wages war on science.

You liberals, use this.  Hammer it. Flat-open-fair capitalism is one of the main VICTIMS of the current oligarchic putsch.  Study Adam Smith, who founded liberalism AND libertarianism. And stop listening to your mad leftist allies.  FDR saved us from both insanities, communism and fascism. Focus on him and on Smith, and you can demolish the Fox-oligarch bullshit mountain.

see:

Liberals Must Reclaim Adam Smith.