Well folks, we’re there.  Let’s just let it happen.  Republicans are now the party of fascism and stupidity, and they’re showing it in spades with this latest assault on the US government.  Yes, they’ve been hostage takers for the last quarter century, holding a gun to the heads of the economy, everyone not white, veterans, active duty military, children, Dream kids, LGBT identified, and everyone else who happens to disagree with them.  Until TFG took over, though, we all knew that most of it was Kabuki play, threatening to wreck everyone’s lives to gain some kind of political gain which was almost always either destructive or pointless.  The unspoken feature of that hostage taking was they weren’t really serious.  They knew that adults in the room would win out, pull us off of the brink and extract some political ransom for doing so.

Watching the catastrophe of today makes the recent past look quaint.  Today’s Republicans, now controlled by a small group of political terrorists, have thrown out that historical tactic.  Led by idiots like Matt Gaetz, Paul Gaza, MTG, and Lauren Gropert, all those rules are out the window.  The Insurrectionist Wing of the GOP really do want to wreck the government to impose their will on 330 Americans whether they want it or not.  They’ve been elected to lead our constitutional democracy when their goal is to destroy it.  Kevin McCarthy, who’s proven to be a shithead in all things, really doesn’t want to destroy the government, but he sold his soul to the Insurrectionists just so he could fondle the Speaker’s gavel if just for a minute.  We’re less than 40 hours from a government shutdown, and the terrorists have also stated their goal to next defund the government by refusing to raise the debt limit their favorite hostage.

After years of worry and stress over this constant barrage of political and economic attacks, I say let’s let them do it.  Shut down the government; throw the economy into chaos; destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ value.  Hell, while we’re at it, defund the US government and default on the debt.  The destruction, which is indescribable, will hopefully be enough to jolt US voters out of their collective coma to relegate these fascists to the dustbin of history, at least for another 5 or 6 decades.

Nothing else has worked or will work until these ignoramuses get what they want.  They won’t like it when they do, and it will hurt millions of people, but I have concluded that the only way we rid ourselves of these goons is to let them destroy themselves, then get them replaced with more normal people, and then our laws and regulations strengthened to make it harder to do this the next time they want to try it.  We’ll have to pick up the pieces, rebuild, and then move forward.

The solution to this relentless siege on our democracy will only happen by taking back local, state, and federal governments, arresting, charging, and jailing all insurrectionists and passing laws to keep other terrorists away from the levers of power when they crawl out from under their rock and try it again.

So, let’s do it.

Republican politics is just a more tightly wound ecosystem than anything on the left. There are a couple of things you can expect from Republicans during election season. They will complain about how extreme Democrats are on gun control. They will complain about how much Democrats spend with the added benefit of blaming inflation on them. However, one thing you can count on is the fact that high crime rates are the fault of the Democrats and being soft on crime.

So, let’s talk about crime. First, let’s take a look at national trends in crime. From 1990 to 2020, the crime rate went down and went down considerably. The two biggest dips in crime occurred during Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s presidencies. Does this mean they were responsible? What we know is that crime remained fairly flat under George W. Bush overall and went up under Donald Trump.

If we focus on Texas we would see that Texas ranks 11th in the nation in terms of being dangerous on a per capita basis. Republicans have controlled both chambers in the Texas Legislature, the governor’s chair, and the lieutenant governor’s chair for nearly 20 years now. However, this hasn’t stopped them from blaming the Democrats for crime.

The big target in Texas are undocumented immigrants. Naturally, that might be something we would want to study. Sure enough, undocumented immigrants actually committed less crime than their native counterparts. In fact, it’s not particularly close. However, that just doesn’t feel like it’s true. The fact that red states are more dangerous than blue states doesn’t feel like it’s true. After all, isn’t New York, Portland, and Chicago a war zone? In actuality, when you look at crime rates (and not total crimes) the exact opposite is true.

Are Republicans to blame for crime? I’m not necessarily going there. I do think we need to start acknowledging some common sense facts about crime before we lose our collective heads. First, does anyone think real hardened criminals really think about sentencing before committing a crime? I was going to rob that store, but this Republican judge would give me 20 years instead of 10. Does anyone really believe that criminals actually think that way?

So, if harsher penalties don’t deter crime then what can we attribute an increase of crime to? Obviously, the first thing we need to do is acknowledge whether there is an increase in the first place and what that increase means in context with the data over a longer period of time. Is it statistically significant?

However, statistical significance and other high brow terms like that obviously confuses people. Their eyes glaze over. So, let’s set that aside and assume it is happening. Why? There are more Republican judges nationwide and in Texas than Democratic judges. It’s not sentencing. Our police departments have actually expanded during that time as well. Sure, we could double the police force, but I suspect that isn’t it either.

One thing conservatives seem to think is that allowing everyone unfettered access to guns will lower crime rates. Ask yourself this question: does that make any logical sense? However, I would suggest something else. People commit crimes when they are angry or anxious. They commit crimes when they think they need something they don’t have. They commit crimes because they are desperate. That points to the economy more than values, stiffer penalties, and even easy access to guns. Maybe that’s why crime goes down under Democrats. Maybe that’s why we saw a spike at the end of the last presidency. Of course, all of that doesn’t fit into a 30 second or 60 second television commercial. So, just be afraid. Very afraid.

Immediately after World War II we had the most important choice in our nation’s history. It may not have seemed like it at the time, but the decision in how to proceed has governed our lives for the past 80 years. We could choose to invest in the people or we could build the biggest army the world has ever seen.

Make no mistake, we tried to do both for awhile. The post World War II economy was the greatest in the nation’s history. Any marker that you wanted to use to measure prosperity tells us this. The challenge of history isn’t about remembering what was. Fortunately, we still have people that can tell us first hand about the post-war boom in the economy.

The challenge of history is in determining why. Simply put, we as a country chose to invest in our own people. The GI bill has literally sent millions of people to college. Home ownership rates skyrocketed as America saw the development of a modern and thriving middle class. We owe all of that to those government programs and a strong presence of unions.

In the early 1990s we had a decision to make. The Cold War was over and we had ultimately won. The world will always be a dangerous place, but we had the decision of whether to keep investing in the American people or whether we wanted to keep investing in being a super power.

In 1990 the Cold War was more or less over. In 1990 we were spending 325.1 billion on defense. It reached it’s peak at 752.2 billion in 2011. The chart referenced only goes to 2019, but you get the general idea. Obviously, statistics can cut a number of ways. The same chart has the budget as a percentage of gross domestic product. Those numbers look very different.

Yet, one cannot help but imagine the possibilities. No one would suggest defense spending go to zero or even hold at 1990 levels, but we ultimately spent north of seven trillion dollars on the war on terror. Of course, that’s just one source. Different sources have different amounts. Sure, we killed Saddam Hussein and we killed Osama Bin Laden, but it is fair to ask how the world is a better place after 20 years.

It’s also fair to ask how America is a better place after the last 30 years. We could have retreated to a place of relative strength but one that was more or less an equal partner with the other nations in NATO. We could have heavily invested in our own people.

We could have a stronger living wage. We could have universal health care. We could have free community college at the very least. We could have invested in newer energies and prepared for the 21st century economy. We could have done all of these things and more. They will tell you that we can’t afford those things. Trillions of dollars on the war on terror says otherwise.

It has never been about whether we have the money. It has been about who should get the money. The right decided a long time ago that corporations and national defense needed that money a lot more than people did. They’ll tell you that we can’t afford to help poor people. They’ll tell you that they need to help themselves. They’ll tell you that we can’t afford a standard of living for every human being in the country. We know none of that is true. We choose not to.

One of the lies Trump and his sycophants repeat ad nauseam is that simply because of him, the economy is “booming” and growing like “never before in US history”.  That’s complete bullshit of course, and NO economic performance number supports Trump’s boasting.   Trump’s greatest accomplishment has been fortunate to have followed Barack Obama who bucked huge political obstruction to kick start the economy by pumping billions into rebuilding industries and extending unemployment benefits to out of work Americans.  Anyone who has studied Economics 101 knows that a key tool for bringing an economy out of a downturn is INCREASING government spending to get people back to work.  Obama fought the Repubs tooth and nail, and succeeded.  Trump is the beneficiary of that courage, as our economy is simply on the same trend line established by Obama policy.  In fact, Trump is trailing behind some measures established by Obama because of his idiotic trade war.

Here are a few examples:

US GDP Growth

S&P 500

Job Growth

Remember when Trump promised 6% GDP growth?  To bring coal back? To increase manufacturing jobs?  None of those promises have been kept.  None.  Essentially, the economy has continued its up and to the right trend more in spite of Trump rather that because of Trump.

Even though it’s denied by Trumpists, truth does matter.  And the truth is that the economy left by Obama is strong enough to so far resist Trump’s destructive infestation of the White House.

Trumpists can never defend their support of the criminal sitting in the Oval Office without bringing up 2 subjects: 1) What about Hillary, and 2) The economy is booming.  The problem is that both answers are bullshit.  The whole Hillary thing is a simple dodge that Trump and his sycophants use on a daily basis to deflect attention away from the damage he is inflicting with the deepening constitutional crisis of his own making; but what about the economy?  True, the stock market (at least the S&P) touched an all time high on Friday, a whopping $2.00 over the previous high attained in January of this year.  The Dow remains about $1,000 below its January high.  Never hesitant to give himself credit for something, Trump tweeted this just as John McCain passed away:

Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder aside, is the economy really booming?  The answer depends on where you actually sit.  For those who received unnecessary tax cuts that are now overheating the economy, exploding the national debt, and kicking off inflation, yes, they are receiving a windfall that they are using for stock buybacks and acquiring more personal goods.  For those who are on the other end, not so much.  Wages have been stagnated since Reagan.  42% of Americans earn below $15 per hour.  One third of Americans earn less than $12.  The minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 since 2009.  Wages are only rising at 2.9% per year, and inflation is now outpacing increases in wages.  Interest rates are rising to keep the economy from overheating further, and debt rates are increasing because of the supply of more and more federal debt.  To make matters worse, healthcare costs are rising 20% this year, credit card debt is now over $1 trillion, and student loan debt is burdening a huge part of the next generation of Americans.

In short, the economy is NOT booming for working classes of Americans.  The income gap is widening, and anger is increasing as Republicans in Congress and state houses step up their efforts to destroy the healthcare system, defund public schools, refuse to raise the minimum wage, keep the homeless in the streets, refuse to fund infrastructure, refuse to fix our voting system, ignore Russian interference in our lives, ignore the opioid crisis, refuse to reform the immigration system, jail children on the border, and pile on the national debt by spending over $700 billion a year on defense (not counting military retirement and healthcare) while slashing taxes. Pile on top of that Trump’s idiotic trade war based on lies that’s destroying jobs and kicking off hyper-inflation is some sectors, and you have a volatile combination that is unsustainable.

Conservative leaders all over the country pledging fealty to His Orangeness do so at their own peril.  However, we can begin to fix this only if normal people show up at the polls and vote.  If we do that, then we can declare an end to this long national nightmare and rebuild our much damaged society.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

Remember how Donald Trump was going to bring back all those coal mining jobs?

Well, maybe not so much.

The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum in Benham is owned by Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College. Communications Director Brandon Robinson told WYMT, they’re hoping to save money by the switch.

“We believe that this project will help save at least eight to ten thousand dollars, off the energy costs on this building alone, so it’s a very worthy effort and it’s going to save the college money in the long run,” said Robinson.

The museum says they fully understand the irony of this but they had budget cutbacks and this will save them a ton of money.

Featured in the next solar power teevee ad:  The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum.

Thanks to Bernie for the heads up.