September 06, 2020 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized
Welcome to The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.
My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
You might as well include a photo of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton decrying the damage to the U.S. Constitution. The Pretender to the Presidency has a lot for which to answer.
1Let’s not forget that he fought fascists, too…
2Yeah. That. Sorry, Mr. President, we blew it. We’ll spend the next however-long-it-takes trying to get it back.
3I’d be getting all righteous too if it weren’t for the fact that long before the Republicans got there, Democrats were pissing away FDR’s legacy. You can read Thomas Frank’s “Listen Liberal: Whatever happened to the party of the people?” for the full account but for just a few examples:
It was Bill Clinton, colluding with Newt Gingrich’s congress who “ended welfare as we know it.”…a long standing Republican project. Thanks to that “end” a half million adults lost food stamps. Before the “end,” 76% of those needing public assistance got it. After: 26%. Democrats aren’t even the party of the poor any more. And now we have “labor discipline,” the message that you had better take whatever crappy job is on offer, or suffer the indignities of poverty, perhaps homelessness and starvation…or being put in a cage.
Clinton also colluded with the Republicans to deregulate Wall Street and produce a budget surplus, both of which led to the Great Recession (see https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-federal-budget-is-not_b_457404)
But Barack Obama was clearly the garbage president that was a necessary precedent for Trump. He not only did not prosecute the war crimes of Bush / Cheney, he promoted the people who supervised torture and prosecuted the whistle blowers.
For the Savings & Loans scandal, Reagan / Bush 41 regulators filed 30,000+ referrals for criminal prosecution, and prosecuted 1200+ cases with a 90% conviction rate.
The subprime / derivatives scandal Obama faced was 70 times larger than the S&Ls.
So…how many referrals for prosecution from the Obama regulators? Answer: zero. (ZERO!) The crookedest Attorney General in history, Eric Holder, threatened prosecution, then settled for dimes on the dollar of the malefactors’ loot. No one admitted guilt, or went to prison. Heck, no one even lost his job!
So…with the Democrats attacking the poor (and other countries), and legitimizing criminality, you cannot blame the electorate for being angry. Trump is the “f*ck you” to the establishment of both parties.
From Thomas Greene: ““Trump will not be defeated by educating voters, by exposing his many foibles and inadequacies. Highlighting what’s wrong with him is futile; his supporters didn’t elect him because they mistook him for a competent administrator or a decent man. They’re angry, not stupid. Trump is an agent of disruption — indeed, of revenge. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has positioned him as a tragic force-multiplier on a scale that few could have predicted, and the result is verging on catastrophic.”
So let’s stop the end zone dance, and the put down of Trump and his supporters. Let’s stop picking the mote out of our neighbors’ eyes, and remove the beam from our own.
4THAT was different! A sprig of oleander on the morning porridge…
5@Adam Eran
Interesting report of https://www.laprogressive.com/adam-schiff/
How many other places have you trolled?
6@Adam Eran: good reminders of how important it is that we all get serious about getting it right this time. But the party of greed over people has to go; don’t forget that they’re the ones who shot down the things Obama at least tried to get right, and they’ve shot down almost every effort on behalf of the people since then.
7Latest spin-off of the LawnOrder series franchise:
Law & Order: TBU
Law & Order-
8Trump Bullshit Unit
Ah, the trolls are active today.
9Adam Eran @4, While I agree with much of your premises [*], we really have no choice. It’s either the usual Democratic pandering or a certain descent into outright totalitarian fascism.
.
10* Nobody around here has been more critical of WJC [SHAFTA, financial deregulation? Really?], or the many failures and lack of leadership by Barack Obama.
They were still better than the alternatives of the time.
The difference today in 2020 is exponentially greater.
A milquetoast Joe Biden [the Senator from MasterCard], or a certified utterly corrupt treasonous tool of Putin and our own RWNJ fascists.
Not hardly a fair choice, but the only one we have.
When Biden takes office [with major Congressional majorities] it will be up to the more progressive Democrats to keep some heat on him.
@Adam Eran
While the basic facts stated are mostly true, it’s the context that matters.
For instance, when you compare the Reagan/Bush S&L situation to Obama and the 2008 economic meltdown, Reagan/Bush occurred in a relatively normal economy, the other during an unprecedented economic collapse which required all hands on deck. Even the bankers who may have caused it. Personally I would have liked to have seen more bankers held accountable, but I don’t know what went on behind the scenes. Whatever Obama did during the crisis succeeded, so I’m willing to cut him some slack.
11Rick @ 11:
One thing that Adam Eran neglects to mention [on purpose? I’d wager so] is the fact that President Obama spent 6 years battling both houses of Congress to get something – – – anything – – – done.
Even Boehner finally couldn’t stomach what Congress was doing to the president.
It was Congress, after all, that did everything in its power to see to it that the CFPB [the joint venture put together by Obama and Warren] had no teeth from its outset.
That fact, not any weakness on Obama’s part [no matter how Adam Eran would like to spin it], was what kept any convictions in re the 2008 meltdown from occurring.
I, for one, was tickled pink when, after the Senate refused to even meet with Warren when Obama tried to put her forward as the permanent head of the CFPB, she went over their heads to the people of Massachusetts —- and immediately became not just a thorn but a prickly pear in McConnell’s side.
12Gawd, I lurv that woman!
My parents lived through a lot of Presidents but it was only FDR’s death that made them openly cry. Fpr pne thing, they realized that his idea of Social Security meant they needn’t starve to death when they were old and unable to earn their own bread. Some call that Socialism. We call it Christianity.
13Adam Eran is injecting negativity here to discourage us from voting,
14I think he be living under Russky bridge, if he ain’t working for Brad Parscale…
Ormond, you speak truth.
Adam talks about motes and beams — here are a few beams
in our neighbor’s eyes — and I know I’m leaving a whole bunch out:
the Southern Strategy
Watergate
the Red State Strategy and its concurrent voter suppression
Reagan negotiating behind Carter’s back to keep the hostages in Iran until the moment of his own swearing in [talk about disrespecting the people who serve our nation . . . ]
Iran/Contra
Sarah Palin [that was a close call]
G. W. — that other president all other heads of democracies used to snicker at
Rick Snyder and Flint Michigan
Rick Santorum and his not wanting to give his money to blah people
McConnell making up the rules as he went along such as refusing to meet with both Elizabeth Warren and Merrick Garland [I’m certain there were plenty more] so he could complete his life’s missions: to stack the courts with far right wingers and to protect corporations from the people.
I could go on but I’m sure you can sing along in harmony with your own list.
Adam, otoh, would like us all to forget and to think that voting isn’t important — iow, to suppress our own votes and save the R’s the trouble.
That would suit Putin just fine.
15But Adam is right about one thing, kicking the trumpig is futile as the people supporting him LIKE his policies and they like having a prez no better then they are. And yes the Dems are not perfect as they are just as interested in power as the rePUKEians BUT bringing a small water bottle to the fire is NOT the same as bringing a large can of gasoline!!!
16Apparently people here subscribe to the notion that “Anyone who tells me what I don’t want to hear is a troll.” The problem is the superiority complex of the D’s who believe “they like having a prez no better than they are.”
But I tell you you’re exactly the same. You supported people who legitimized sexual predation (Clinton) and criminality (Obama). And now you’re surprised that a mobbed-up thug who disrespects women has been elected!
Perhaps the biggest problem with Trump is that he’s cut funding for the CDC’s pandemic team (before the COVID-19 came) and for the early warning researchers in China.
Why? Because austerity! But the D’s led the way even there. The first presidential campaign to promote austerity: Edmund Muskie’s. Our last liberal president was Richard Nixon (says Noam Chomsky).
Then there’s the accusation that I’m telling people to not vote! (But it’s only those Trumpists who are delusional!). Nope. Never said any such thing. Please do vote. Just please stop lording your ever-so-illegitimate superiority over our Trump-voting friends.
Here’s a passage that should clear up what’s going on:
[from Thomas Greene, Noteworthy]. “Trump will not be defeated by educating voters, by exposing his many foibles and inadequacies. Highlighting what’s wrong with him is futile; his supporters didn’t elect him because they mistook him for a competent administrator or a decent man. They’re angry, not stupid. Trump is an agent of disruption — indeed, of revenge. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has positioned him as a tragic force-multiplier on a scale that few could have predicted, and the result is verging on catastrophic. Still, that might not be enough to prevent his re-election. Workers now sense that economic justice — a condition in which labor and capital recognize and value each other — is permanently out of reach; the class war is over and it was an absolute rout: insatiable parasites control everything now, and even drain us gratuitously, as if exacting reparations for the money and effort they spent taming us. The economy itself, and the institutions protecting it, must be attacked, and actually crippled, to get the attention of the smug patricians in charge. Two decades of appealing to justice, proportion, and common decency have yielded nothing. I’d rather not see four more years of Donald, but I understand the impulse to use him as a cat’s paw.”
Also worth a look: Thomas Frank’s latest: “The People, No”
17Catch any fish lately?
18There’s a lot of reasons Trumpf needs to be gone. Maybe I mis-read that “perhaps the biggest problem with Trump is that he’s cut funding to the CDC’s pandemic team…..”. Really?
Republicans were too chicken shit to find a sane candidate to run against Biden so they get what they have.
And McConnell.
I admit ahead of time that I have a short attention span and didn’t read a lot of the replies past Adam Eran #4.
What caught my attention from AE’s post was this quote:
From Thomas Greene: ““Trump will not be defeated by educating voters, by exposing his many foibles and inadequacies. Highlighting what’s wrong with him is futile; his supporters didn’t elect him because they mistook him for a competent administrator or a decent man. They’re angry, not stupid. Trump is an agent of disruption — indeed, of revenge. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has positioned him as a tragic force-multiplier on a scale that few could have predicted, and the result is verging on catastrophic.”
THAT’s what knocked me on my pins. Particularly where Greene says 45’s supporters, “[are] angry, not stupid.” This has to be true of the 45 supporters with whom I am friends and who are members of my family. They are NOT STUPID, so it must be something else.
I come from a place in Pennsylvania that used to be solidly Democratic. Now, it’s solid Republican. The Democrats abandoned their constituents in my home county in the 1990’s and I lay that squarely at Bill Clinton’s feet. We Dems are not perfect.
19@ Adam Eran
You comment about aspects of the Democratic Party. Some of us responded with specific challenges to your specific examples.
Then, do you defend your flimsy arguments? No, instead you itemize our faults and our weaknesses and provide a litany of more facts with even less context than your first time around.
The pompous professor act might be effective in a 101 intro level class filled with 18 year old first year college students, but even the simplest examples you scratch across the chalkboard belay your recognition that some of us read. And have lived through the history you cite.
Example:
Trump voters – “They’re angry, not stupid.”
You left out that they also drink bleach. Believe Mexico will pay for a wall. And that Donald Trump is a friend of Jesus and the working class.
There’s more, but I have a cup of coffee that requires my undivided attention.
20If you want to diss Democratic presidents, Truman is your boy. But politics is the art of the possible. What Truman acquiesced in was awful but what the Republicans were pushing for was a lot worse.
40% of Americans long for a fuehrer. That’s been true — within a few percentage points — all my life. now they’ve got one.
21