Coming This Week: The Biggest RNC Clown Show In 28 Years

"It's always worth it to get the best seats in the center and enjoy our master's best melt downs!"


The  RNC begins this week, which elicits the question: Why would anyone with anything between the ears pay attention to what these screwballs claim, or their over the top displays of Trump love?   As most sensible citizens can agree it will most likely be the biggest clown show on Earth.  I have no intention of watching that 4-ring (4-day) circus, but predict the following "highlights" over the week:

1) Trump will resort to more  lies  about the alleged "great economy".  Like Adolf Hitler, his hero, Trump believes the more you tell a lie the greater chance it will be believed.  This may be one reason he keeps repeating the "strongest economy" ever which is bollocks.

Fact:  He has claimed more than 360 times that the economy on his watch was the “strongest ever.” Not even close.  No way and no how. Annualized growth under Trump ranked seventh among his 11 predecessors. And growth actually slowed during each of Trump’s three years.   Lastly, his terrible handling of the pandemic directly translated into the enormous problems we now face: an economy in its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

How Trump keeps an edge in polls (over Biden) concerning the economy and its performance is a question for the political cognoscenti to address.  All I know is he doesn't deserve any edge at all.   People who signal in polls they prefer Trump for the economy are either blind, brain dead,  fact-free ignoramuses  or inbred fools and morons.  There's no other explanation.

2) "Freedom" dog whistles to be sounded - on guns and masks

First, by Missourian Mark McCloskey who  - with his wife Patricia - will live on in infamy for the stunt they pulled back in May - pointing weapons at racial justice  protesters.



Expect Mark to wax  long and hard on "liberty" and how owning a gun - preferably an AR-15- helps to define it  Especially if you can point a loaded weapon at black protesters under the pretense they might raid your  property.  McCloskey's bunkum will be especially important given how the NRA has recently fallen from grace after reports of their financial shenanigans and misdirected funds.

Second, expect a known anti-Masker to claim - likely in a prerecorded session- how masks are an infringement on personal liberty and after all, shouldn't one be permitted to do with one's own body what he will? No thought that masks protect others from your germs.  

 3) Fear mongering on steroids:

- Expect to hear this canard (with some minor variations)  endlessly repeated: 

"If Biden wins expect Antifa goons to ransack cities, beat innocents and wreck businesses."   

Trump will also bellow: "If you like socialists and carnage then elect Biden!"   Of course, the truth is we've already seen all the carnage compliments of Trump, including infants separated from mothers and locked in cages, and innocent protesters being shot by impact weapons, tear gassed and beaten with truncheons.   Trump said it was done in the interest of "law and order.".  What's truly choice here is the most defiantly criminal resident ever invoking the "law and order soap box to dog whistle to whiteys, white racists, that he is their only protection against the "socialist, radical" hordes.  No one ever said the RNC lacked a sense of irony!

4) Making excuses and specious justifications for inaction on the HEROES Act.

For not putting another cent into a new stimulus program, and continuing to assert (without any viable data) that if a $600 bonus unemployment had been approved, people would have just sat on their bums all day eating Twinkies.  This inaction now as it is estimated 40 million Americans could face eviction by year's end, and 17 million will need food stamps - which Trump now plans to reduce access to by adding a new stipulation, i.e. that the person be able to produce pay slips to show s/he has been working.

The Repukes will also continue to have Trump's back (butt?) by insisting mail voting is a pathway to perdition, and will lead to massive fraud or even - god forbid  - unfairly taking the election.  All of which is nonsense given that-  as I showed in my August 21st post -  mail ballots are basically fool proof, hack proof, and Trump proof. Which is why Trump hates them.

5)  When the 4 days are concluded the foul air lingering in the location - and over the airwaves and "Twitterverse" - will surpass that left behind in 1992 when Pat Buchanan bloviated about the "great culture war."  See:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?31255-1/pat-buchanan-1992-republican-convention-address

The bottom line is don't expect anything constructive to come from this four day liar and traitor extravaganza.   It will be the same ol' lies and distractions we've been subjected to for 3 1/2 years, mainly how the country will go to hell in a handbasket if the Dems are given control. (Especially if they take the Senate too).  Oh, and how great leader Trump has been, as if the ongoing debacle people have beheld with their own eyes and ears doesn't count.

Wifey and I have concluded we will get more out of binge -watching the Game of Thrones, which is what we plan to do.

See Also:
Republicans’ ‘uplifting’ convention becomes a festival of fear

And:

Get Ready for TrumpFest, America — There's No Republican Party Anymore

And:
Republican Convention Takes on the Weighty Task of Boosting Trump’s Bruised Ego

Don't Buy the BS: Maddow Shows GOOPs Only Want to "Stop Obama'- AGAIN!

Rachel Maddow: Showed an RNC News Conference proving these turds have no interest working with Obama.

All across the corpora-media the refrain is being heard that the Reepos intend to meet Obama "half way" and do compromise, because well, their long term interests dictate this sane path. The media loves the word "bipartisanship" but we already know to the Repukes it's considered "date rape" (Google Grover Norquist and the term together and learn more).

One notable exception has been MSNBC analyst Rachel Maddow two nights ago, who actually televised clips you will never see on most other stations, including FOX. She noted:

 "If the Republicans REALLY want to do something other than 'stop Obama' here's a chance to actually make policy - to fund a response to ISIS and Ebola- as Obama has proposed.. To decide on a response. Day one, did Republicans go to Washington to make any sort of policy? Or did they just go there to destroy the President. This is a test. This is the first test and it arrived early on day one."

She then  referred to a Reepo Press Conference featuring all the usual top dogs of the RNC and there in the background, a glaring red sign: STOP OBAMA - FIRE REID. She also played a clip from Limburger's show in which he referred to a Republican "mandate" (which is more hog shit) and then showed the porker howling:

"It is very clear what that mandate is: It is to stop Barack Obama. It is to stop the Democrat Party. There is no other reason why Republicans were elected yesterday. Republicans were not elected to govern. How can you govern with a President that disobeys the Constitution?  How can you govern with a President that is demonstrably lawless? The Republican Party was not elected to fix a broken system. The Republican Party was not elected to compromise."

If anyone with half a functioning brain had any doubts that this was how things would play out, they got their wake up call. And it makes total sense. Why the fuck should the GOOPrs change a damned thing when it's already worked so well for them? Why change one tune in their retread, sick obstruction song when it even led them to win likely 54 seats in the Senate when all the dust clears? There is absolutely no reason to change!

So this is how these assholes intend to work with Obama to get something done? STOP Obama, a mild variant of their original pig call from Obama's term one?  Block him at ever turn- no stimulus votes (think of the Depression we'd be in now if that's happened and no Dem majority existed), no energy or infrastructure repair legislation, no food stamps, no nothing!

Look, any sensible person understands, as if Maddow even had to show the evidence, that these mutants intend no compromise and no working with the President on ANYTHING! It will be their way or the highway, including passing the odious Keystone XL Pipeline, lowering all regulations on the banks so they can spread credit default swaps again in bonds to create another financial meltdown, no working on immigration, and hold your breath- REPEALING Obamacare!

The news conference with Boehner was especially laughable when he referred to Obama "playing with matches" if he intends any executive actions to get things done. But the long and short of it, from a strategic perspective, is that this will be the only way for him to get things done because Boehner and his Reepo crazies (some of whom were quoted in the press as saying Hillary was "the antichrist" and "women need to obey their husbands") have no intent to work seriously with him anyway.

Also, as Chris Hayes noted in his own show ('UP'), Obama playing the executive action card is guaranteed to incite the unhinged GOP factions, i.e.  the rabid Tea Party  ("Constitutionalist")  nuts and their ilk, and show Americans again why these fools aren't fit to have the Presidency in 2016. Why the fuck should they be rewarded with the presidency when they can't even cooperate to bring one single positive bit of legislation through? And we know this, in advance, never mind what much of the bought and sold whore media says.

One of the most insightful takes on it all was offered in a salon.com piece by Jim Newell yesterday from which I quote a segment:

"Let’s do a thought experiment. Say Barack Obama dropped his plan to take executive action on immigration in order to foster cooperation with Republicans on passing comprehensive immigration reform. What would happen? He’d be denounced by a significant portion of the Democratic base, perhaps irreparably. And then the Republican leaders in the House and Senate would proceed to do exactly nothing on immigration, because it’s not in their members’ interests to cut a comprehensive immigration reform deal with Barack Obama. And then Obama, because he is the president, would get the blame for nothing “getting done” in Washington. What possible reason is there for him to delay executive action on immigration? He can either improve the lives of millions of people, excite the members of his party, and have Republicans hate him or improve the lives of no one, depress the members of his party, and have Republicans hate him."


Read it carefully, and if you're a Dem especially, or even independent, tell me with a straight face that you disagree with that assessment. If you do, I really want to know what brand of rope you're smoking.  As the author also adds, for good effect:

"the current Republican Party’s identity is forged on being oppositional to Barack Obama. If it were to agree with him on some significant piece of legislation, then that would make Barack Obama something less-than-Satan, which would make the Republican Party … what?"

Read it and weep, my friends, but don't look for anything positive politically to emerge over the next two years. As I said before, Obama needs to have his veto pen at the ready....and now his executive action pen too. Don't give one bloody inch to these rabid refuseniks!

Romney's GOP Circus: Some Quick Takeaways.....

Now that the three day GOP dog and pony extravaganza is finished, partially upstaged by Hurricane Isaac, we can examine aspects of the farce. First, the objective was to convert the Mittster into a “human”, i.e. give him a human face – as opposed to the cyborg persona. For this reason, Mitt’s speech writers worked hundreds of hours on his keynote speech and had him practice it for days - even training his facial muscles to evoke the right emotions!

The entire gimmick was to try to lure “undecided voters” into voting for this clown. I mean, give me a break already! If the undecided really want to behold the “real Mitt” they can harken back to the episodes when he slammed a gay kid’s head into the floor at his posh private high school, or directed a blind teacher into a wall at the same school. Think his character changed since then? If so, I have a beachfront home to sell you in Barbados, for a song!

If you don’t want to go back that far, then go back to a half a year or so ago when, during a campaign stop, Mitt unleashed a hysterical outburst (see photo) at a protestor who merely asked why he let so many go at Bain Capital. Unable to countenance such effrontery from an unshaved Occupy guy, Mitt demanded if he didn’t like it he could “move to North Korea”. Really, Mitt? Just because a protestor challenges your bunkum?

Other aspects of this circus didn’t help Mitt much at all. Clint Eastwood - who used to be what Bajans called a “hard seed” actor- now seems to have descended into some kind of Alzheimers' haze resembling Charlon Heston’s after he gave his “pull this rifle from my cold, dead hands” speech. I mean, Clint! Talking to an empty chair? Get your act together there, Rowdy Yates! March thyself into the nearest Alzheimers' Ward! You couldn't have embarrassed your adopted party any more with that sad and sorry sideshow!

Eastwood’s entrance was by surprise, dislocating the convention’s timing last night and delaying the Mittster by a good fifteen minutes. It was definitely a momentum disruptor. Moreover, Eastwood seems to have delivered his anti-Obama spiel ex tempore accusing Obama of being a “lawyer” (Jeez, that’s bad? Ask those wounded, hurting people in Aurora, CO if they’d like to do without them!)

More hilarious, Eastwood went on to say that lawyers “always look carefully at things, make well-reasoned decisions”, and so on. That's bad? How so, again? If this was supposed to be hurting Romney, maybe Clint needs a proper speech writer next time.

Then there was Jeb Bush, the brother of Dumbya who – with Katherine Harris – used Choice point voter rolls to disenfranchise tens of thousands of African American Florida voters so his brother could win Florida in 2000. For those who want to read the sordid details, get hold of Greg Palast’s book, ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy', and read Chapter One. People need to see exactly HOW elections get stolen, especially in the lead up to this one on Nov. 6.

Jeb’s main refrain was for Obama to “stop blaming my brother for your own failures on the economy”. Come on, Jeb, you’re supposed to be the smarter brother. The fact is that the financial meltdown which occurred on Bush Jr’s watch rivaled – in financial terms- the destruction and loss of life that transpired from the terror attacks on 9/11 also on his watch. (He ignored a white paper from national security sources head ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S.’ given him in August.)

We now know, that the 2007-08 financial holocaust was incepted by the unregulated dispersal of over- the- counter (OTC) derivatives called credit default swaps, and was far worse in terms of economic damage than first estimated. While the year after the meltdown (2009) was initially forecast to have about minus 1.5% growth, the actually recession turned out to be nearly twice that, or minus 3.4%. In other words, the devastation left in the wake would take years to correct. Also, given the negative growth, the stimulus should have been twice the size of the one actually passed.

The ensuing devastation, meanwhile, commenced with the collapse of the housing market, but then extended to the credit markets and even bank- to- bank lending (since no bank knew how many credit default swaps its peers held). Because of the market collapse and credit contraction, approaching what could have become a depression, business activity also contracted and more than 14 million people were left without jobs. Many businesses, on account of no bank lending, couldn't even get enough money to sustain day to day operations for a month. ALL this was on Bush!

To make matters worse, the party that now blames Obama for deflecting responsibility (to Bush Jr), was itself responsible for making matters worse by: a) refusing to allocate a large enough stimulus where it could most efficiently work (i.e. to food stamps, unemployment benefit extensions rather than 1/3 being tax cuts) and b) totally blocking all Obama’s legislative Jobs initiatives in order to make him a “one termer”.

Then, having mastered such total obstruction for political gain, Jeb has the outright gall to assert Obama stop blaming his bro. Well, ok, maybe Obama now needs to extend blame to all the obstructionists in the GOP too!

Then there was Staples CEO Tom Stemberg who led the resident troglydytes in a chant “They just don’t get it”. Really? We don’t get that you all are mindlessly cheering for a guy to be prez who shipped off more than 2 million jobs out of country- and cost 1 million others- using his vulture capitalist company? A guy who screams at protestors to “move to North Korea”, and a guy who absolutely refuses to release any tax returns beyond the absolute minimum.. Returns that would show he has no respect for the country he claims to love, since he keeps nearly all his $400 million gains (from complex money shell games.......errrrr....tax avoidance schemes) housed in the Caymans and Swiss banks.

And this is a guy you expect us to TRUST?

Stemberg then tried to compare Romney’s “effective business mastery” at Bain, with Solyndra, the solar energy company where he claims $535 million was “wasted” by Obama. But this is false analogy, because Obama was not CEO of Solyndra like Romney was of Bain, so had no control of how Solyndra used the stimulus money it was awarded. Most energy experts in hindsight believe that was a good decision, given our alternative energy needs and dependence on oil, and but for a number of Solyndra missteps it might have turned out differently.

Meanwhile, at Bain, Romney used company buyouts then selling them for a song and releasing millions of workers to make his profits. Is this something to cheer about? Maybe for a doofus like Stemberg. (And btw, after that bullshit, I won’t be buying any more paper, protector sheets, or staples….at Staples. )

Romney was, what can I say? Pathetic. Like Paul Ryan, he talked about college students returning home to live with parents, as if this had nothing to do with his party (obstructing Obama’s jobs legislation) Worse, he concealed the fact his own pro-Ryanesque budget includes increasing college loan interest rates to at least 6% which would keep those kids having to pay off loans almost their whole lives – and staying indefinitely with parents.

But what can you expect from a two-faced lying hypocrite? Hopefully enough people will see through this bullshit façade.

Romney then asked the audience:

“How many days have you woken up thinking something really special was going to happen in America?”

Right! But how could anything special happen when obstructionist assholes, egged on by Tea Bagger morons, refused to pass the legislation that would allow those special things to materialize?

Mitt’s choicest pitch was that he’s a “businessman” and that Obama “took office without the basic qualification most Americans have: He’d never worked in a business.”

But is “business” a be- all and end- all attribute, say that can make one more worthy of being a president? G. Dumbya Bush was a “businessman” too when inserted into office in 2000. Trouble was, he wrecked two businesses: Arbusto Oil (which he had to sell when it was losing) and the forlorn Texas Rangers which Bush also had to ditch after piling up humongous debt.

Meanwhile, Romney’s business experience has been devoted to destroying American jobs, either outsourcing them or simply snuffing them via venture capitalist transactions - like he did to Joe Soptic. Oh…..then taking the enormous profits and stuffing them in offshore tax avoidance locations in the Caymans and Swtizerland.

This guy brags about being a “real American”. But with many more Americans like him we won’t have much of a country left, especially if he gets elected. (Blogger Bud Budowsky has, correctly I believe, referred to this coming election as the country's "last stand" for any more social progress or domestic priorities. If the nation goes nuts or punts to elect Romney -Ryan we're not in for a return of Reaganism, but a return of the "Robber Barons".)

What the GOP Convention proved, if nothing else, is they’re still not ready to be handed any reins of power. Not yet, and not for some time to come. If Americans are foolish enough to hand them power, they will have effectively committed national suicide.

Hopefully people realize that! If we have a reincarnation of Bush II, with that sucking sound accompanying it in terms of lost jobs, more lost wars, exploding deficits, crumbling infrastructure, and burgeoning poor, there may not be another chance to recover....ever. Look for our decline to be permanent and .....final.