The ego begins

One thing to keep in mind is that Donald J. Trump is not the typical Republican. There's nothing particularly "conservative" about him, especially when it comes to being recognized as the smartest guy in the room. Anyone who remembers this

should understand that easily. So this article by Politico should already be tickling some Democrats.

“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” Trump said. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure — which will become, by the way, second to none — and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”

You're looking at every county commissioner and city mayor whose jurisdiction contains one or more of the above.

Trump wants to be known as the 21 century's Justinian II; the guy who saved/restored the Roman Empire (kinda... for a few years.) You can't have that if The Beast is dodging potholes every time the president goes out to review the peasants. This is part of why people like Paul Ryan and mainstream Republicans were leery of getting on board with Trump in the first place. He doesn't play ball in the typical DC fashion and will be loathe to abandon any project that makes him look the magnanimous overlord to plighted Americans. He doesn't answer to the donor class and he doesn't really care about "conservative principles." The problem for all of us is that he doesn't really care about anything that doesn't burnish the image of Trump. But navigating those waters while watching Ryan and Co. wrestle with the more hardcore budgetarians in the House will be endlessly entertaining.

And the crowner of that piece is, of course, the quote from the Heritage Foundation's Dan Holler:

“It would be a mistake to prioritize Big Government endeavors over important issues like repealing Obamacare, reforming our regulatory system and expanding domestic energy production,” Holler said. “Along with confirming a conservative justice to the Supreme Court, these are the type of legislative efforts that will help anxious families and folks struggling all across the country.”

'Cuz, y'know, every former pipefitter stuck working at Home Depot that I know is direly concerned about how a conservative justice on the Court or the profits of Chevron will help his anxious family. I mean, seriously, how could you be thinking about anything else while working for $10 an hour? Priorities, yo.

This is the bed you have made

So... yeah. As I was saying before, this is what happens when utter incompetence becomes the order of the day. Under ordinary circumstances, you'd have to work quite hard to pull off a display that bad but these are, as the proverb says, interesting times and, therefore, not ordinary. The above summary, which was reproduced on Twitter and in various spots around the Intertubes (I wish I knew who originally wrote it so I could give credit; feel free to comment if you know from whence it originates), doesn't even include what I thought was the pinnacle moment. That was when the live chat on the Youtube broadcast of the convention was shut down by the Grand Old Party because an actual elected official there to speak positively about Trump (precious few of those), was given a typical response by a portion of the Donald's base. See, Linda Lingle, the former governor of Hawaii, happens to be Jewish. Consequently, it took not very long for the anti-Semites to come creeping into the daylight of their monitors and begin reciting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Trump's new campaign slogan could be a self-reflective one: This is the bed you have made. That would, of course, require that the candidate be capable of any kind of reflection that didn't involve a mirror.

The biggest story was the one about Melania Trump lifting portions of Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention speech for her performance last night. Some questions on the board were posed about how this could even be possible since it was such an obvious gaffe and suggested that it was an inside job of some sort. My response is to cite the first rule of political journalism, which goes back at least to Goethe and has been much paraphrased since then (and he probably swiped it, too): Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. The Trump campaign has demonstrated an astounding talent for incompetence to date. Last night is just a continuation of that pattern. If the only people you can hire are fools and, even worse in this context, fools that have never run a major political campaign, this is what you'll get. Even Paul Manafort, interim campaign manager and veteran of campaigns going back to the mid-70s, has only ever been a consultant. He's good at putting out fires. But the Trump campaign is an inferno, lit largely by the misplaced anger of his base.

Based on my response to that question, another regular suggested that if the campaign is this bad, what happens when Trump has to hire people to actually run the government? Who will want to work with him? Who will he allow to work with him and his ego? Won't this be a disaster of Biblical proportions?!!

That answer is a bit more nuanced (inasmuch as anything can be nuanced that involves The Donald.) The federal government is a huge and lethargic entity, as any Trump supporter will be glad to tell you (many of them while cashing checks.) There's a certain degree of autonomy and inertia at the Cabinet level that tends to persist unless there's a crisis. That's how we got "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!",because nobody really gave a shit who the apparatchik was that was running FEMA until he actually, you know, had to do something. A lot of people get into Cabinet posts as simply a way into the Beltway circles (I will forever recommend Mark Leibovich's This Town on this topic; it is, without a doubt, the best book on modern politics that I've ever read) so they can make money post-"public service." As long as nothing too crisis-like happens, they coast and get paid handsomely by whomever they've made deals with while in office and the country isn't too much the worse for wear. Or they take all of that inside knowledge and use it to exploit the system, typically working against the very interests they were supposed to be supporting while in office. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you former Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder.

Obviously, State and a couple other agencies are a bit more pertinent to the hourly situation in the world, but that's just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic in a Trump administration, anyway, since he'll be the equivalent of the racist old uncle that everyone endures at Thanksgiving in almost any situation. In the event of President Trump, I won't be able to sit still thinking about that loon at a state dinner with any national leader from a culture that's not white. Or France. The comedic possibilities are almost limitless.

But in terms of how disastrous his election could be, my suspicion is that there's not a ton of difference, tonally, between Trump's band of anti-government newcomers and the cadre of hardcore Cold Warriors that George W. Bush brought with him. They're both so suffused in their own ideology that it doesn't matter if reality conflicts with it. It's almost solipsistic. I remember that a year or so after the Iraq invasion, there was an interview in the NYT magazine where Ron Suskind sat down with some flack from the White House who decried the "reality-based community" (i.e. all of us) because they (the GWB administration) "create our own reality... and you'll just be left to study what we do." Does that sound like a quote that could emerge from the Great Oompah Loompah? It does to me. Bush did a lot of damage, but he basically just kept pursuing the policies that have been part of our government for a long time. The Iraq War is, of course, the huge, glaring exception but I'd suggest that Trump, xenophobe that he is, would be even less likely to hie off on some military adventure than Clinton, as she's expressed far more interest during her career of laying waste to whomever even thinks of threatening US cash flow. Plus, she'll carry the burden of constantly having to prove her "toughness" as a consequence of her gender because, y'know, American society is stupid like that. Yes, Trump may decide to spend billions on a sixty-foot wall, but he'll at least be creating a market for sixty-one-foot ladders, so.., job creation! Woo.

What that means, of course, is that the suggested campaign slogan isn't just for the Trump campaign. It's for the American electorate as a whole. This is what's been presented to you as "choice" by those that control the message, backed up as they are by nebulous things like "tradition" and the fallacious concepts of "wasting your vote" and so on ("Those who control the past control the future. Those who control the present control the past.") There are other choices out there. You don't have to lie down in that bed and take only what you're offered. I do, however, suggest that you take time out to watch the rest of the GOP convention, because it's going to continue to be high comedy.

The fascism of the oompah-loompahs

Now that Donald Trump has become the most likely winner of the GOP presidential nominating contest, the attitude toward him from most of the major media outlets has transformed from one of disdain to one of outright fear and concern. Where before the hook was "How could modern America actually be nominating this guy for president?", now it's become "How could modern America actually be looking like 1930s Italy or Germany?!" And that is a many-layered question and, consequently, a many-layered response.

First off, there's a certain segment of America that's always looked like 1930s Italy or Germany. Always. From the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Know-Nothings, determined that immigrants shouldn't ruin the glory that was America, the Immigrant Nation, there's always been a portion of the electorate only too happy to blame their problems on "the other." The modern manifestation of it was, of course, Nixon's Southern Strategy, where it was convenient to sweep up racist Southern Democrats' votes because the Johnson Democrats new policies wouldn't let them continue in the historic tradition (i.e  telling poor white folks that their misery, created by rich white folks, was actually caused somehow by poor black folks.) Trump's other is two-fold: it's not only poor Mexicans stealing your jobs but it's also Muslims coming here to kill you (who are, inevitably, Arabic Muslims because how else could you tell them apart from non-Muslims at the border? Plus, what other kind of Muslims are there?!)

Psst. Don't look here.

Interestingly, though, the original fascists, Italy's National Fascist party, didn't really have an "other". There was no racial or religious component to the Italian Fascist ideology. It was simply hyper-nationalist: the idea that Italy should be great because ancient Rome was great and ruled most of the ancient Western world at one point. Sounds like Trump, right? "Make America great again!" Why? No reason. Just because America should be great because it's... America. City on the hill. Greatest nation evah.

It was only later that the racial elements become dominant in the popular conception of fascism because they were so integral to the German brand of the ideology, tied up in the concepts of eugenics and the Master Race and so on. Germany couldn't be great because some ancient precursor had been great. There's wasn't one. Germany had to be great because its people were inherently great. And because die Juden were keeping it from being great. Of course, Godwin's Law springs into effect as soon as any comparison is made between Trump and the Nazis because, of course, no one can be as bad as the Nazis! (Certain regimes, like Stalin's USSR and Pol Pot's Cambodia, beg to differ. Actually, they probably wouldn't beg.) But I don't think anyone is saying (now) that Trump is as bad as the Nazis. They're drawing a comparison between the movement supporting him and the historical movements that emerged around people like Mussolini and Hitler because the similarities abound.

Take, for example, the polls that indicate the number of Trump supporters who dislike Muslims, in general. This is indicative of a populace who's been given a boogeyman without any foundation in reality. It doesn't help that the leader of their particular political movement of the moment fuels that fire by suggesting that he'd institute a way to register and track Muslims in the US. I mean, obviously you probably won't tag them with a yellow Star of David like they did back in the day, but I guess a yellow crescent would be OK? Maybe? The hilarious part of this is that the "news" outlet so responsible for creating the boogeyman that Trump is so interested in tracking, Fox News, has been one of the leading voices trying to kill the Frankenstein's monster that they created, usually kind of sidling their way into the idea that Americans aren't really racists (read: fascists.) But, of course they are.

The Tea Party began as a response to one man: President Obama. And, no, it's not because Obama is a socialist. Far from it. As I've mentioned before, nothing in Obama's record or anything he's done in the Oval Office would indicate that he's a socialist. What he is, of course, is black. The kneejerk response to this disruption of the social hierarchy ("It's not just black people takin' OUR jobs! Now they've taken THE job!") was to form a party that spoke for the Common White Man, since neither of the major parties was interested in doing that anymore (Just FYI: They never really have been.) Hence, the Tea Party and the immediate labels of Obama being a Muslim, a socialist, not an American (Remember one of the loudest voices proclaiming the birth certificate controversy? One Donald J. Trump...) or anything else that would get an immediate response from the bulk of the electorate that is both ignorant and has been encouraged to think that they have no impact on the political process and no avenue by which to change that status, other than to vote for rich, white guys who promise to change it. Somehow.

Fascism, of either stripe, is not new to Americans. It's been here for a long time. The fact that it's now the dominant aspect of one half of the major party is as inevitable as the Mississippi changing course. A lot of people just don't like to admit it because things like systematic racism (in the name of freedom!) and registration (in the name of freedom!) and internment camps (in the name of freedom!) just don't tend to ring out the tones of the Land of Opportunity and Liberty for All. But those have always been nice illusions, too.

So, yeah, calling Trump a fascist is not a label that anyone should shy away from. He could also be labeled "demagogue" because he's that, too. But the bigger question is why it takes the public and the assembled media so long to admit the truth that's been right there in front of them. The real question isn't why a buffoon who looks like the loudest and most abrasive of the Oompah-loompahs is a leading candidate for president. It's why the apparently most popular candidate opposing him is a war criminal (among a host of other less-than-salutary activities over the past 20 years) and why that whole situation seems to be acceptable to the bulk of the populace. It's just like what happens after every time someone pulls a gun and commits a mass murder: "There's nothing we can do!" says the only industrialized nation in which this happens on a regular basis. At some point, you'd think people would get tired of it.

Clown Car, part deux

So, 10 guys go to a funeral to meet up with this one woman who knew it was actually a business meeting... That's pretty much the encapsulation of last night's clownshow which was only too ready for punchline after punchline. The continued pontificating and breathless grasping at the MLK moment ("I have a dream... that someone might say something of actual substance so that we may measure the content of their character instead of CNN's constant trolling...") all came in utter contrast to the one person who talked in blunt terms and short sentences. That's why many people think Carly Fiorina "won" the "debate", which is like saying someone outran a bunch of toddlers to the juice box table where everyone still got one. Hooray?

Fiorina answers questions like she's in a boardroom, which is precisely what you want if you want someone to talk about basic facts. She's still evasive as hell when someone asks a direct policy question (it's way too early to establish positions that could be picked apart for their inadequacy) but she keeps it short, spares everyone the flowery prose, and makes her case. People appreciate that, especially when it's down the dais from the bloviating Trump and his ego which only barely share space between themselves, much less Dexter Bush and the Right Reverend Huckabee. That makes Fiorina come across as halfway intelligent, even if she wasn't already standing out as the only female clown on stage. And on matters of sex and sexism, she did have the best genuinely funny moment (as opposed to all of the unintentionally funny moments) when she responded to Trump's idiocy from the last debate with her simple line: "I think every woman in America knew exactly what Mr. Trump said." That was worth a Kelso:

Of course, as soon as she wandered off the rez and decided to try to impress us with her prose, she withered. Note the pseudo-closing statement (dressed up nicely by CNN with their softball about what their respective presidencies would look like (You mean other than The Handmaid's Tale?)) where she blathered on about her personal manifest destiny, the return to the glory of the City on the Hill, and yadda yadda yadda (Gotta include the Yiddish phrase for all the Israel references when people were talking about what their American presidency would look like...)

[Tangent: It's hilarious to note the omnipresence of said references to Israel in most GOP discussions of foreign policy as perhaps the one hot button they can still press to get a visceral, red meat response from the masses. Said masses don't really know shit about foreign issues other than "Foreigners are weak [French], out to steal our jobs [Mexican], communists [Europeans, in general], and crave American leadership." but you can name drop "Israel" into almost anything and immediately get the kneejerk that equates to "Spend billions on the military to protect pseduo-Christians from evil Muslims and prepare for the Second Coming!" That latter part is most important to people like Huckabee, who always fail to see the disconnect between supporting the militarists in Tel Aviv so that they may bring about their own damnation when only Christians are allowed into Heaven. /tangent]

Speaking of CNN and their softballs... Ugh. These things are a complete farce in the first place, even if we weren't watching in glee over just how many clowns will do a pratfall as they climb out of the car, but CNN's questions were brutally bad. I know they're ratings-conscious and are aware that a large segment of the audience is watching for entertainment and not because they'll even consider voting for one of these idiots, but could they at least give a nod to propriety? The vast majority of the questions were the equivalent of conversation on a middle school playground: "Hey! I heard he said X about you! What are you gonna do about it?!" All they're doing is continuing to feed the perception that "the media" (whoever the hell they are) is out to get the GOP/right-wing/Trump/America's hayseed population. Even if that perception is inevitable, at least try to show a little class.

A couple highlights:

Christie: "Don't prosecute these people after the crime is committed, intervene before the crime happens!" I know what his intent probably was, but given all the other 1984 trappings that hang over much of GOP discussions these days (including the oft-quoted "Strength is peace!"; Ignorance, therefore...) that was totally a Minority Report moment.

Huckabee: "Vaccinations are a part of big government!" Why, yes. Yes, they are. Most people don't complain about the eradication of things like polio.

Trump: "We're three trillion in debt!" followed by "We're not spending enough on our military!"

This, of course, is a perfect example of the disconnect between the embedded disdain for George and Dick's Excellent Iraqi Adventure walking hand-in-hand with the earnest shouts to go balls out in Syria, because that worked so well the last time. Your Republican candidates, America. Exxon's biggest nightmare is someone hooking up a power cable to Goldwater's grave because he's not gonna stop spinning anytime soon.

Casino Republic

Casino Royale is an excellent Bond movie. In fact, it may be the best Bond movie ever. Not only did it revive the franchise from the doldrums initiated by Roger Moore's later work and regrettably sustained by Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan, but it also returned the series to its roots: the Fleming novels, in which Bond was a ruthless killer, allowing for almost anyone to be expendable in the name of Queen and Country. Just the same, it was clear that Bond was intended to be the "hero" in the murky world of covert activity and Cold War politics.

In sticking with the title theme, the producers chose to follow the most recent trend of gambling heroics and used no-limit Texas hold'em as the game upon which the premise rested.

Above is the final scene of the poker game. The game was established as a 10-player table with each player beginning with $10 million in chips. There was also a permitted $5 million re-buy, by which a player who had been knocked out could re-enter the game. Despite the rather farcical nature of the poker presented for the camera (if these players were genuinely skilled and practiced, the betting patterns were... odd, to say the least, based on the flops), one can accept that the game had to be dramatically presented, which meant a certain amount of melodrama was expected. That's all well and good until you come to the topic of the re-buy.

First off, allowing someone back to the table after they've lost their initial stake defeats the purpose of a winner-take-all tournament and puts more pressure on those players who, either through good cards or good play (or both) have managed to stay and prosper at the table. Secondly, allowing players back in with a half-stake is tantamount to suicide and something that no sensible person would do, as they would expect to do nothing but sacrifice another 5 million based on simple facts.

If we assume that the players who lost took some time to do so, that means the big and small blinds have risen considerably by the time they buy their way back in, such that they're significantly hit every time either blind rolls around to their position. Furthermore, if we naturally assume that fewer players buy back in than have lost out of the game, one can also assume that those players remaining at the table have considerably more money than their initial stake. What that means is that the bets will be played at a higher level than someone returning to the game can manage, even with what they assume is a solid hand. If someone is sitting at 14 million and the player returning with 5 million decides to bet $50K on a hand, that's a significant outlay of his available cash. But it's relatively chump change to the player sitting with 3 times that much in front of him. He can casually raise to $500K and still not feel a horrible sting, but that would be 10% of the re-buyer's entire roll in one hand. In other words, all that the remaining players have to do to eliminate the returners is to lean on them for a few hands. Soon enough, between competitive hands and the blinds, they'll be pushed to an all-in position and likely lose their roll again.

This is precisely the situation which perfectly embodies the current American economic and political situations.

The owning class (the top 5% or so) has a catastrophically-larger share of the wealth in this nation. Any challenge to their control can simply be leaned upon until it wilts under the pressure of that much money. How so? Perhaps by manipulating the stock market for political gain? After all, if "It's the economy, stupid" then powerful financial groups can certainly make sure that the economy stays flaccid if their puppets start to get uppity. This is, of course, presuming that said puppets aren't of the owning class and prefer things as they are, anyway. Oh, wait...

A similar situation exists in the world of political parties, wherein the Democrats and Republicans have been in control for so long that they've not only gerrymandered districts to either completely distort the desires of neighborhoods and communities or make it virtually impossible for the current party in control to ever be removed, but they've also established any number of regulations that make gaining and retaining ballot access for minor parties a frequently nonviable goal. If those don't work, it's a relatively simple task for either wing of the major party to lean on smaller competitors in a similar economic manner to that described above. After all, if elections are all about money ("It's the political economy, stupid!"), then he who has the gold still makes the rules. Where do they get this gold? Why, from the ownership class, of course. Convenient, that.

In short, they own the government. They own the economy. They essentially own you and everyone around you and no fantastical re-buy is going to get the other 95% of us back in the game and even if one existed, all they need to do is pool resources and lean upon any intruder to the system until they give up. Certainly, expecting the next Democrat blowing smoke about "hope and change" is an utter lost cause (at it has been for at least 60 years now; have you learned? please?)... unless we, the underclass, start fighting back.

How does one "fight back" against that kind of economic weight? Well, the easy answer is violence. The only slightly less easy answer (and far more palatable) is to exclude ourselves from the system. What worked in the past were strikes and mass disruptions to said system a la the Arab Spring but that takes a level of coordinated action that generally only emerges with some kind of significant shock like, say, a financial implosion...

There have been two last-minute saves in the past 3 years: the bailout of the banks and AIG in 2008 and the recent "debt ceiling" crisis. Either of those events allowed to proceed to their natural conclusion might have stirred up just enough suffering and consequent outrage to put people back in the streets for real. But that's exactly what they don't want to see, so it might be time for some low-level initiative. I'm not holding my breath for it, but it's either that or we wait for "Vote Palin/Bachmann 2012: It's a no-brainer!"

Sell enough of those and I'll finance the damn revolution myself.