Tax Cuts, Profits, Markets, and Lies

You don't need to be an economist. A couple of carotid arteries with decent flow, at least one eye and/or ear, and you know that the Republican tax-cuts-for-corporations/soaring-job-growth/pay-for-themselves bullshit is just that. Bullshit.

First of all, corporate profits are already at all-time highs (Thanks, Obama). Unemployment is at its lowest in years (T,O). When there's unmet demand for their products and profits to be made, businesses expand capacity and hire more workers. Cutting corporate taxes has nothing to do with it. Cutting them for working people, maybe so: more to spend, more demand. But the Republican tax plan, by all accounts, gives little or nothing to the middle and lower (ie, purchasing) class. It's a selfish and self-evident ruse.

Corporate CEOs have already made clear that any windfall they get from tax cuts will go to investors (and, therefore, themselves.) The stock market is about investors. Its response to the promise of corporate tax cuts is about potential investors' profits, not a statement of confidence in the economy at large. In fact, one would predict, assuming these dishonest tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations become law, there'll be a lot of profit-taking after an initial rally. Because a tanking economy has always followed Republican tax cuts, and smart investors know it.

Of course, as silly Marko Rubio just said, unbagging several cats, they realize deficits will soar under their plan. "Plan" being the operative word: step two in this pre-programmed calamity will be to tell older Americans, present and future, how sorry they are, but they have no choice, in order to balance the budget, but to cut Social Security and Medicare. Did we promise otherwise? Fake news.

And thus will the circles of hell be completed. It's obvious. It's greedy. It's disastrous for all but the already wealthy. And it'll be cheered by those who'll be hurt the most, i.e., the Foxified, the die-hard Trumpists, the willingly deceived.

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Screamer

Turns out screaming at the top of my lungs and throwing stuff against the wall doesn't help all that much. Shit like this still makes me nuts:

Our asshole-in-chief (sorry for the language, but, I mean, geez: it's the mildest appellation that applies) had this to say via Twitter, regarding a meeting scheduled for today:

"Meeting with “Chuck and Nancy” today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don’t see a deal!"

Surprising only in that it's about time, they had this to say in response:

“Given that the president doesn’t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead.Rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won’t result in an agreement, we’ve asked Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan to meet this afternoon.”

McConnell and Ryan, naturally, said NFW. And Sarah "Huckabee? No, Huckayou" Sanders came back thusly:

“The president’s invitation to the Democrat leaders still stands and he encourages them to put aside their pettiness, stop the political grandstanding, show up and get to work.” 

Right. THEIR pettiness, THEIR political grandstanding. "People need to be responsible toward the property of others," says the arsonist, pouring gasoline on your house and lighting a match.

There is no god. If there were, especially if he were remotely like the one fantasized in the Bible, Ms. Sanders would have been struck dead the moment the words approached her lips.

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A Column In A Different Vein

My latest newspaper column. Took a break from the horrors of Trump, re-tooling one from Surgeonsblog days.

Never, after doing thousands of operations, did my awe and amazement at the human body diminish. Nor did I ever take for granted the gift I’d been given: trusted by another to breach, in the most literal sense, the boundaries between us. From the simplest office procedure to the most complex of operations aimed at defeating some horrible disease, it was hard not to stop in the middle and wonder at it all. 

Nor did I think being a surgeon conferred status higher than my patients. I had the opportunity to learn to operate and to take care of surgical patients, and I committed to it (at the expense of family time) above all else. Many of my patients could have done the same. Recognizing how rare is the privilege, how great the responsibility, granted entry to the body’s secret spaces, I’ve tried, on my surgery blog and elsewhere, to share it. 

Modified below is one of those efforts, respite from the compulsion to address the political horrors to which we’re being subjected daily; from the frustration that pointing it out is invariably greeted by Trumpists as fake news, responded to with absurdities (“It was warmer millions of years ago, libtard!”) Revisiting my surgical writing reminds me there was a time when it made a difference. So:  

The inside of a vein is perfect. No matter the state of the rest of the body, when you open one it's smooth and shiny. The inner wall glistens, lavishing the eye with a creamy khaki surface. Not that it's common to get into one on purpose: but for things as minor as a cut-down (directly opening a vein to insert a large IV), or as major as a portal vein decompression (a finger-in-the-dike procedure to stave off the effects of cirrhosis of the liver), the lumen of a vein seems impervious to the ravages going on around it. It's like searching a house stacked full of junk and finding a hidden closet, empty, clean, sparkling. A private, preserved space, kept pristine against the odds. (Arteries, not so much.)  

Bile ducts, too, if less certainly. When there's obstruction, or with infection, they get swollen, sticky, and thick, the inner surface knobbly and cobbled. Mostly, though, it's a similar wonder: crisp and shiny on the inside. There's something about these specialized tubes that fosters their own brand of admiration. Springy and soft, yet turgid and tough. Sewing a vein, unlike anything else, (as long as it's not during a mad rescue attempt) is almost meditative. Their thin, fragile walls demand particular concentration. It's quiet work. The suture is finer, the instruments more delicate than typical needle-holders. Sewing requires the perfection of needlepoint: evenly-spaced bites, close, careful, exact. With such concentration (true of all surgery, but especially here) the rest of the world drops away for a while.  

There's rubbery resistance to the needle, which gives way with a little recoil. No tissue is quite like it. If creating, say, an arteriovenous fistula for dialysis, or sewing a vein patch onto a narrowed artery, you go through the vein first with the needle, and the textural difference is striking. Sometimes you hold the slender suture between thumb and index finger of one hand, propping the pinkie for stability, gently tugging upward to tent and approximate the edges, while suturing with the other. Or maybe your assistant holds the suture, and you a pleasingly extra-fine forceps. When you release flow, the vein bulges, and holds. It’s satisfying.  

With a bile duct, you might be closing a previously-made access hole, sewing edge to edge. More often it's to make a connection between duct and bowel, and the two couldn't be more different. (If they were, you probably couldn't connect them at all.) Then, it's more of a puzzle: putting together two structures of entirely different thickness and texture, one of gross and separating layers and another of imperceptible ones. It's a challenge with its own rewards, but not the quiet kind that veins provide.  

A vein, laid open but stilled of flow. A silky surface even when lying next to corporeal corruption. It's not a big thing, really; but seeing it on those rare occasions is somehow reassuring. A signal that things might be made right. If one place in this person is still okay, maybe we can help the rest to get there.   

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As Goes California, So Goes...

As Trump turns the US from a beacon of hope for the world to a cesspool of disappointment, European leaders are turning to individual American states and cities -- those run (and rescued) by Democrats. That's pretty amazing. Giving up on a US president, looking to members of the "opposition" (i.e., the one that hasn't gone completely fking nuts) party for partnerships and sanity:

... Nearly a year into the Trump presidency, countries around the world are scrambling to adapt ... Now some nations are finding that even if they are frustrated by President Trump’s Washington, they can still prosper from robust relations with the California Republic and a constellation of like-minded U.S. cities ...

... The trip followed the California governor’s June decision to sign a joint statement with the German government on climate cooperation... Next September, Brown plans to host a global climate summit in San Francisco intended to support the same Paris climate agreement that Trump plans to exit.

Top officials who met with Brown said they were delighted to encounter a friendly American voice.

“The engagement against climate change must be global,” said European Parliament President Antonio Tajani ... “In the United States, there are several governors working in the right direction, even if the Trump government decided to change the line. What they are trying to do in the government of Mr. Brown is very interesting.”...

Can this be a sliver of light? Maybe. Maybe it'll result in progress and jobs and economic growth that even our most blinkered citizens of our most Foxified states might eventually recognize. But if the comments I get to my newspaper columns are any indication of how Trumpists respond to evidence, there ain't no hammer heavy enough to knock sense.

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He's Back Home, But Still At The Brink

My next newspaper column:

Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s backhoe, backed and filled his way across China last week, insisting Trump’s groveling praise of Communist China’s leader was tongue-in-cheek. Given overlapping anatomic nomenclature, it wasn’t entirely clarifying. Later, Trump yukked it up with the self-admitted murderer/dictator of the Philippines. Donald’s mimesis of despots is well-honed by now.  

During what we may presume was his first annual performance review from Putin, in Danang (where I spent my portion of the Vietnam War), Trump called our former intelligence leaders “political hacks” and, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary (which he’s seen), genuflected in Vlad’s general direction, regarding election-meddling innocence. Inexplicably, his followers believe this does us proud. Had President Barack Obama said such things, the right-wing scream machine would have called him a traitor and Congress would be half-way through impeachment. Can there be any doubt?  

Like Putin, Xi must see in Trump a useful buffoon, distractible from their global agendas with a little low-cost flattery. Throw him a parade, dandle his ego. Do a deal with Boeing here, GE there, let him crow about his believe-me negotiating skills. Meanwhile, as Trump greatens America back to the nineteenth century, Xi is leading China to twenty-first century dominance. As Trump pulls out, Xi fashions trade agreements around the world, excluding the US. One such deal was finalized in Vietnam, even as Trump’s tough-guy America-first words were thudding like a deflated football. 

Xi is playing three-dimensional chess, Trump is playing slapjack. It’s embarrassing. Obvious to all but Trump and his co-dependents, the world’s most authoritarian leaders are manipulating his narcissistic neediness like silly putty. 

China is investing huge amounts of money into solar and other alternative energy sources, and working to improve the air quality of its cities. (It produces a third of Earth’s solar power, and, far ahead of second-place US, leads the world in wind power.) Slashing alternative energy funding, boosting coal and other fossil fuels, Trump is deliberately polluting our atmosphere as the rest of the world cleans up. Over Trump’s silence on human rights during his trip, actual world leaders are speaking out. One wonders what Trump expects from capitulating to our adversaries. A golf course in the Forbidden City? Sanctuary in Moscow?  

While Trump drags us into destructive (but, to his dead-enders, crowd-pleasing) rejection of global ties, China is investing a trillion dollars into infrastructure connections with Europe, giving Xi greater access to world markets and more ways to project economic power. Trump belittles science (eschewing a tradition of respect, he won’t be greeting this year’s American Nobel Prize winners). China now has the world’s fastest supercomputers. Trumpists believe he’s putting America first.  

Back home, Congressional Republicans stopped pretending their plans, created in secret, without hearings, help ordinary Americans. “I misspoke,” said Mitch McConnell, after promising tax cuts for middle and lower class Americans. Republicans designed their scheme, expressly, to benefit rich donors, most of whom won’t reinvest their largesse. Lindsey Graham said so. Mike Lee and Chris Collins said so. 

They admit choosing enrichment of their bankrollers (and, thereby, themselves) over helping average citizens: students, veterans, parents who adopt. Teachers, university workers, people with high medical expenses. The disabled, businesses that invest in poor communities. Recipients of Medicare and Medicaid. All harmed, specifically, intentionally, by Republican tax “reform.” Frosting stale cake, Trump just ended a program that supplies veterans with therapy dogs. This is gratuitous cruelty. 

So: Trump demeans our intelligence services while glorifying our adversaries; pig-headedly makes the US a bit player on the world stage. (We’re now the only country to reject the Paris Climate Agreement, benefitting polluters, harming us.) Congressional Republicans gift wealthy donors, paid for by hurting average people, including their supporters, who, incomprehensibly, don’t mind. Is manipulating fears and hatreds really all it takes to deceive them? 

C’mon, old-school Republicans! The man who would be king is even pressuring DOJ to go after his opponents. Surely you see the danger in what’s happening.  

Trumpists claim he’s turning the economy around after Obama ruined it; insist Trump is respected around the world. That’s impressively ossified Foxification, but clarifying: attempting to enlighten such people is effort wasted. What must take precedence is reaching the reachable: those who didn’t vote, regretful Trump supporters, people capable of processing the urgency of turning these deplorables out of office. People like those who just voted in Virginia.

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Modelling Kansas

I've just written about the dangers facing our planet. A nearly equal warning of impending danger is this article about Kansas, the sealed-off laboratory of Reaganomics, the window into what will happen when Republicans pass their tax and budget bills. If humanity is destroying the planet, Republicans have destroyed Kansas, and are ready to do the same to America.

... What’s hidden are stories of regular Kansans who have suffered inside the silence. 

In the course of its investigation, The Star found that: 

▪ Children known to the state’s Department for Children and Families suffer horrific abuse, while the agency cloaks its involvement with their cases, even shredding notes after meetings where children’s deaths are discussed, according to a former high-ranking DCF official. One grieving father told The Star he was pressured to sign a “gag order” days after his son was killed that would prevent him from discussing DCF’s role in the case. Even lawmakers trying to fix the troubled system say they cannot trust information coming from agency officials. 

▪ In the past decade, more than 90 percent of the laws passed by the Kansas Legislature have come from anonymous authors. Kansans often had no way of knowing who was pushing which legislation and why, and the topics have included abortion, concealed weapons and school funding. Kansas is one of only a few states that allow the practice. 

▪ When Kansas police shoot and kill someone, law enforcement agencies often escape scrutiny because they are allowed to provide scant details to the public. The release of body-cam video has become common practice around the country after several high-profile, police-involved shootings. But in Kansas, a new state law is one of the most restrictive in the nation, allowing agencies to shelve footage that could shed more light on controversial cases. 

▪ Kansas became the first state to fully privatize Medicaid services in 2013, and now some caregivers for people with disabilities say they have been asked to sign off on blank treatment plans — without knowing what’s being provided. In some of those cases, caregivers later discovered their services had been dramatically cut. 

The examples, when stitched together, form a quilt of secrecy that envelops much of state government...

There's much more chew-worthy stuff in the article, which deserves a full read. It translates exactly to the inevitable consequences of Republican economic plans; and to the attempts by Trump to discredit investigative journalism and to censor what its departments may tell citizens. What words and phrases are not allowed. As the article says, a spokesman for the Kansas highway department was fired after explaining they don't have the money to fix a deadly stretch of road. Because, you know, tax cuts pay for themselves.

It's well-known to all but the Foxolimjonesified how dramatically Kansas' government is failing its people. And yet our R-controlled national government can't wait to do the same. In the name of enriching their donors.

And in the name of Jesus.

We've Been Warned

At the root of all of our ecological problems, including climate change, is continued rapid population growth. Any way you look at it, it's unsustainable. It impacts everything:

... By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivise renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere...

Along with perpetual demand for products that use up resources, capitalism depends on it as its most fundamental principle. But, in one way or another, so does nearly every society. The above-quoted sobering article, a statement by 15,000 scientists around the world, is unequivocal and compelling. The only factor it refers to as having improved since their statement from several years back is the ozone hole. From the world's response to it, they take some hope.

But really, stopping the use of hydrofluorocarbons wasn't all that hard: there were alternatives available which didn't require much in the way of re-prioritizing our lives. Going deeper and broader will demand major change, and there's little evidence of willingness to engage in it. Particularly among the current leaders of the USA.

Some things need an undeniable, disastrous occurrence to wake people up. In the case of the health and sustainability of the planet, by the time enough people are awake it'll be too late.

Despite all the evidence of what's needed, the US has announced to the world its intention to ignore it all; to make it worse, in fact. Deliberately. In-your-face-edly. So, in a historic role reversal, it falls on the rest of the world to save us. But it's what Trumpists consider making America great again. When I'm not angry, I'm just deeply sad.

The best-case scenario I can envision is that the generation of my grandkids, ages one and three, is the last one that has a chance of enjoying life as our planet has always provided it. Following theirs, it seems doubtful. Maybe they'll even be the last generation entirely, either by choice or law or having been rendered chemically unable to reproduce by pollutants.

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Stay Real, Democrats

Tomorrow's newspaper column:

Collusion or not, it’s obvious Vladimir Putin intended to influence the election that put Trump into the White House. Collusion or not, Mitch McConnell sure didn’t want the public to know about it. And, given what we’re learning of Russia’s massive distribution of fake news, we can infer their ultimate goal was, and remains, to divide us against ourselves; to exploit the strengths of democracy and turn them into vulnerabilities. To let us do their work for them.

With Trump they got a twofer: an incurious narcissist, and a man who, because of his thin-skinned vindictiveness, could be expected to add his own poisonous divisiveness, which, along with embarrassing America worldwide, he has. (“Never knew we had so many countries!”) Trumpists consider America’s free press the enemy. They’re certain millions voted illegally. They’re convinced news which challenges Trump is fake and people who write columns about it are liars. Surely, Putin succeeded beyond his expectations.  

Russia’s reach was broad and deep and, planned or not, enhanced by decades of credulity-enhancing, truth-erasing efforts by rightwing media. Not to mention, particularly in Trump-loving red states, devolution of public education. On average and not by accident, we’re getting dumber.  

I’ve fallen for deception in the past, too, but have learned to be skeptical, to seek confirmation when a claim seems either too good or too bad to be true. I try to correct falsehoods whether on “liberal” or “conservative” sites. Trumpists email regularly, credulously forwarding ridiculous claims they received about Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or liberals in general. Ignoring the factual debunkery I send, they’re back, predictably, with more flimsy falsehoods. 

And if there’s guilt on both sides, there’s no parity. Liberal bogosity is rarely received. When corrected, senders write back with apologies. There’s neither a quantitative nor qualitative liberal equivalent to Foxolimjonesian nescience.  

Of late, though, there’s a disturbing trend, as several websites have appeared featuring click-bait headlines touting news liberals would love to be true. The promised stories either contain nothing of the sort, or a bunch of unsupported hearsay. Since there’s plenty of real news, it’s troublesome. We have no need to make stuff up, for, as Stephen Colbert famously said, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Maybe they’re just looking for ad revenue; if so, it’s no excuse. Among the worst are Occupy Democrats, Bipartisan Report, Blue Dot Daily, Politicus USA, Addicting Info. Use with caution. Call your doctor for misdirection lasting more than four hours. 

Related or not, some liberals appear ready to blow the next national elections, too. Out of perceived moral superiority and/or political purity, extremists in the party are, yet again, falling upon the impure, even if it means letting democracy die. Despite so much being at stake – climate, environment, healthcare, clean energy, free and fair elections, free press, theocracy, fair taxation, women’s rights, LGBT rights, public education, food and drug safety, help for the needy, science, my grandchildren’s quality of life – it looks like a pride of proclaimed progressives prefer to re-litigate 2016. There’s data suggesting enough embittered Bernie supporters voted for Trump to have swung the election. “Burn it down, that’ll show ‘em.” Look what it got us.  

Trump’s support is down to the rock-bottom incorrigibles, as only a third of Americans remain unawakened to the dangers he represents. It ought to mean Democrats will retake Congress next year, and the White House in 2020, no matter who occupies it by then. But, no. 

Rife with already-debunked claims of rigging the primary, talk on the left is all about Donna Brazile’s book. You’d almost think the Russians (and their adjuvants in rightwing media) are stoking it, just as they promoted fake rallies around the country and got people from both sides to show up and start fighting.  

The DNC’s fecklessness notwithstanding, after mere months of Trumpic corruption, incompetence, and threats to democracy itself, I’d vote for a pastrami sandwich over anyone offered up by the party of Trump, Bannon, Pruitt, DeVos, Zinke, Price, Moore… Progressives need to look ahead, not back. Tuesday was a good day. Stop the infighting; increase the outfighting. They’re toasting you with fine vodka in the Kremlin and expensive champagne in Trump’s cabinet room. 

Focus on the doughnut next year, Democrats, not the hole, and get to work. Lives are at stake, Republicans, so stick with the usual thoughts and prayers.

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Played Like A Guqin

Trump's in China now, heaping praise on their leader and blaming the US for all inequities in trade relations. (Tillerson, Trump's backhoe, is pretending it was "tongue in cheek.") Having no ability to think long or deep, as Xi plays three-dimensional chess to Trump's slapjack, Donald's the perfect stooge for world leaders anxious to overtake America's role in the world. His aims are personal glory, or the perception thereof. A smart and powerful guy like Xi must be rubbing the skin off his hands in delight.

To American exceptionalists, this ought to be sobering:

... At the World Economic Forum in January, Mr. Xi proclaimed China the new champion of free trade and globalization. His “One Belt, One Road” initiative — with funding from the made-in-Beijing Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank — will invest $1 trillion in linking Asia with Europe through a network of sea routes, roads, railways and, yes, bridges. China will gain access to resources, export its excess industrial capacity and peacefully secure strategic footholds from which to project power...  

... The Trump administration has belittled the United Nations, withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, jettisoned America’s commitment to the Paris climate accord, tried to renege on the nuclear deal with Iran, questioned America’s core alliances in Europe and Asia, disparaged the World Trade Organization and multicountry trade deals, and sought to shut the door on immigrants. 

Mr. Xi? He has grabbed leadership of the climate-change agenda, embraced the World Trade Organization’s dispute-resolution system and increased China’s voting shares at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Beijing is forging ahead with a trade pact that would include the major Asian economies plus Australia and New Zealand, but not the United States...

All those world leaders whose power Trump envies and glorifies surely see him as their wildest-dream opportunity to turn the US into a second-rate power. And they needn't try all that hard, as Trump is doing most of it himself.

The above-linked opinion piece is by a former Assistant Secretary of State. Read the whole thing. It's hard to find fault with his reasoning.

Make America Great Again. As Trump does the opposite in every way, every day, his supporters, blinded by their fears and hate, stupidly stand by, cheering it on, missing the point entirely.

Bullet Points For Trumpists

Tomorrow's newspaper column:

Bullet points for Trumpists:

·   Trump said he’d protect Medicare and Medicaid. His budget cuts them by $1.5 trillion. Depending on the study, it also adds two to ten+ trillions to our national debt, while cynically dodging CBO scoring. After outrage at Obama’s deficits, lowered by two-thirds from when he took office, your silence is clamorous.

·  You’re alone in a room. Jeff Bezos enters. The net worth in the room now averages $45 billion. Sarah “Huckayou” Sanders says the average tax break for families is four thousand bucks. Get it?

·   Likely no one reading this benefits from eliminating the estate tax. Everyone in Trump’s politburo does; some, including Trump, by over a billion.

·   Trump takes credit for not (yet) bending downward the trajectory of the Obama economic recovery; brags about employment growth, also set in motion by Obama. Neither he nor Congress have done anything significant to stimulate this boom, but they’re insisting we need tax breaks for corporations and their wealthy donors to stimulate a boom, about the current splendor of which they’re bragging. Make sense?

·   They expect you to agree cuts should be paid for by those hits to Medicare and Medicaid, and by taking money from people whose spending actually does stimulate growth. (Tax cuts, economic boom: Kansas, Wisconsin. California before and after Democrats took over. Minnesota. Look it up. It’ll be a learning experience.)

·   That no bid-contract, which granted a pal of Trump’s swampy Interior Secretary $300 million to find people to repair Puerto Rico’s electric grid, also precluded government audits or penalties. It specified hourly wages of over $300, daily lodging of even more, meal allowance of $80 a day. The governor, previously lauded by Trump, wised to the scam. Trump passed the buck faster than a Russell Wilson toss with twenty seconds to go.

·   While Trump ignores those US citizens’ growing health crisis, the Clinton Foundation just airlifted 76 tons of medicine and medical supplies there.

·   Because Democrats paid for investigations into Trump’s relations with Russia, he wants you to believe it’s collusion. You do. Research that was begun by “Never Trump” Republicans. Research whose findings, if true, are hugely important. Think of it this way: Suspecting your spouse is cheating, you hire a P.I. who finds lovers. You don’t use the evidence. Your spouse claims you colluded … with the lovers! Seriously, that’s what they’re saying, because they think you’re stupid. (Also: Opposition research is older than all of us.)

·   To distract you from his malfeasance, counting on your gullibility, Trump and his enablers are lying about Hillary and uranium, too. He prefers lies, but you needn’t. Here’s the truth: No uranium left our country. The sale was approved, as required, by all nine members of CFIUS (Google it), independent of Hillary. Years before his donation, the guy who gifted gazillion dollars to the Clinton Foundation sold his stake in the involved Canadian uranium company. (Okay, for something this important, we need links again: This, and this. Assuming you found your brush with reality refreshing, check this out.)

·   Trump refuses to enforce Russia sanctions imposed by Congress and signed by him. Why don’t you wonder why?

·   Benefitting only Dow Chemical, which donated a million to his inauguration, Trump overturned a ban on a nerve-gas/pesticide known to cause severe brain damage in children. Your children. While, presumably from inside his impenetrable shipping container (not-kidding), away from his 18-person security squad, environment-killer Scott Pruitt fires expert scientists in favor of corporate shills. This doesn’t bother you?

·   Trump’s long-delayed response to the opioid crisis includes, so far, $56,000 in funding. And various words.

·   Law requires the science adviser to the USDA be “a distinguished scientist…” Trump nominated Sam Clovis. Look him up. Assistant secretary of energy: a Meineke muffler salesman. “The best people.”

·   After 9/11, George Bush spoke of American unity. After this week’s attack in NYC, Trump tweeted division. And called our justice system (i.e., the Constitution) “a laughing stock.” Patriotically, though.

·   Oh, there were indictments, too? Nothing to do with Trump, says Sarah “Daddy likes my lies” Sanders. Manafort? Never heard of him.

Donald Trump assumes he can manipulate you into overlooking his corporatist, self-enriching tax plan, his disregard for people like you, and let him lie his way out of the Mueller investigation. If you don’t, he might just wag the deadliest dog in inhuman history. Your call. Admittedly, a tough one.

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What Will Said...

It's as if Democrats are determined to lose. We're (they're, more precisely) gonna resurrect the bitterness of the last election over and over until the hardened on both sides (Bernie's, Hillary's) are gonna wall themselves off in moral certainty of their righteousness and shut themselves out. And those of us in the middle, who would vote for a mushroom over anyone the Rs put up, will watch in horror as the chances for sanity prevailing in our government disappear like a Trump campaign promise.

Hillary this. Bernie that. Vote for Trump. That'll show 'em. Wake the country up.

Yeah. How'd that work out? Jesus.

There's nothing -- NOTHING -- more important to the future of democracy than getting Trump (or Pence, or whoever's left) out of the White House and regaining at least one chamber of Congress. Voter suppression. Gerrymandering. Free press. Theocrats in control, of Congress and the Supreme Court. Climate change. Renewable energy. Pollution. Women's rights. Minority rights. Religious freedom. LGBT rights. Healthcare. All of it on the line, dangling over the edge.

If we're not already past the point of no return, it's damn close. If "liberals" can't get their shit together, can't stop relitigating the last election, it's over. Over.

But the hard-core don't seem to care any more than Trumpists care about his lies or his attacks on Constitutional democracy. I no longer give a rat's ass about the last election (well, other than how it was stolen by voter suppression, fake news, possibly direct interference with voting machines.) Let's focus the fk on the next one, okay?