Krugman compares the fall of the Roman Empire to modern day US politics.  And it’s scary.

About Republicans:

They approve of the American farmer — but they are willing to help him go broke.

They stand four-square for the American home — but not for housing.

They are strong for labor — but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights.

They favor a minimum wage — the smaller the minimum the better.

They indorse educational opportunity for all — but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools.

They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine — for people who can afford them.

They approve of Social Security benefits — so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.

They believe in international trade — so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.

They favor the admission of displaced persons — but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.

They consider electric power a great blessing — but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.

They say TVA is wonderful — but we ought never to try it again.

They condemn “cruelly high prices” — but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.

They think the American standard of living is a fine thing — so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people.

And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Now, my friends, that is the Wall Street Republican way of life. But there is another way — there is another way — the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party.

Who said it?  Harry Truman, October 13, 1948.  So there.

UPDATE:  As Juanita Jean has already pointed out, Congressional Republicans reversed themselves on dismantling the Office of Congressional Ethics after withering criticism from everyone including Cheeto Jesus.  An embarrassing start to what promises to be an embarrassing Congressional session.

Oh, and BTW – Best Tweet of the Day:

Well, we now know how this is going to go.  In it’s first action of the new Congress, Republicans dismantled the independent Office of Congressional Ethics which was put in place after the Jack Abramoff scandal.  You remember Jack, don’t you?  He was the guy who confessed to multiple counts of corruption during the GWB administration leading to the conviction of 21 officials all the way up to the White House.  I guess we don’t need no oversight anymore, yes?

Thanks, Republicans for your great leadership.  Shutting down Lite-Up Texas, which helped poor Texans keep the lights and heat on was a GREAT idea, right?

Yeah, he wishes.

Republican Colorado Senator Cory Gardner has been getting a mess of phone calls.

Gardner said his office is getting so many calls and emails, his has staff assigned to do nothing except respond to them. In one night, his office received 3,000 voicemails. Many of them were from what Gardner calls paid protesters from other parts of the U.S.

Paid protestors?  Yeah, whistle past that graveyard, Buddy.

I guess he meant to say “pissed off protestor” and it just came out “paid protestors.”

To their credit, the Denver teevee station adds this —

Editor’s Note: CBS4 has asked Sen. Cory Gardner’s office for evidence of out-of-state paid protesters calling the office, and CBS4 plans to follow up on the story this week.

Bless Cory’s heart, Hillary carried Colorado.  So, you know, you might give him a call.  His Denver office number is (303) 391-5777.  You might let him know you’re not being paid.

Asset forfeiture is a damn mess in Texas.  Law enforcement can seize the property of those arrested for a crime and have not been found guilty.  That means that they can take your stuff without due process.

Law enforcement says it really, really helps them with convicting drug dealers and terrorists.

Yeah, but … it would also help them convict me if I was arrested with trumped up (see what I did there?) charges. If they took all my assets, I couldn’t hire a lawyer or an investigator, eat actual food before trial, or pay the electricity bill.

The sheriff of Rockwall County, Texas (think suburb of Dallas) went to the White House and met with Trump.  Trump loves asset forfeiture and, coincidently, so does the sheriff.

Trump announced to the public at this meeting that he would like to know the name of the state senator supporting reforming asset forfeiture …

 “President Donald Trump invited the sheriff of a small Texas County to ‘destroy’ the career of a state senator who sought to ban a controversial law enforcement practice by naming the lawmaker during a White House meeting.”

The issue is being debated in the Texas State Senate. Republican State Senator Konni Burton and Democratic State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa are the two people leading this fight in the Texas Senate.

Being that Konni represents a district near the sheriff’s county, and she is the Republican fighting for due process, it’s most likely that Konni is the one who Trump wants to destroy. Of course, Konni is a woman so destroying her puts another notch in Trump’s belt.

Sumbitch.

Look, I am no Konni Burton cheerleader. She’s anti-choice and kisses up to Greg Abbott, but for Trump to use the White House to “destroy” a damn state senator he doesn’t even know, is … yeah, crazy. It’s crazy.

I don’t think Trump meant Democratic State Senator Chuy Hinojosa.  Chu is a damn American hero and Trump couldn’t touch him with a fifty foot pole. In fact, Chuy might use “Trump wants to destroy me” on his campaign literature.

Thanks to Kyle for the heads up.

The former chair of the Colorado Republican Party and current rightwing talk radio host (translation: he’s so unsexy that he couldn’t get laid at the Chicken Ranch with a hen under each arm and a fifty dollar bill taped to his forehead), has had a visit from the Karma Fairy.

Steve Curtis spend a portion of his radio show before the November election screaming about voter fraud.

“It seems to me,” Curtis said in the 42-minute segment, “that virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats.”

There was “something about being a Democrat,” he said, that made people prone to criminal behavior. At multiple points, the two brought up fraudulent mail-in ballots and “double voting” specifically.

Yeah, he’s been accused of voter fraud.  Here he is, a self-described Tea Party Patriot, misusing mail-in ballots.

It seems that Curtis filled out his ex-wife’s ballot and mailed it in for her because she had divorced him and moved to South Carolina.  She called Colorado to find out how she could vote and they told her that her completed ballot had already been mailed.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Oklahoma Republican Congressman (you’re already cringing, aren’t you?) Markwayne Mullin had a town hall meeting in his district, where is was reminded that we pay his salary.

That just pissed him off.  He was spitting nails and sawing steel.

“You say you pay for me to do this? That’s bullcrap,” Mullin said at the town hall in Jay, Okla., according to a video of the incident.

“I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got here and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go,” he added.

After constituents pushed back, Mullin reiterated that being a lawmaker is not “how I make my living.”

When he calmed down and realized a day later that he sounded like a real butthole (plus, he couldn’t explain why he takes the salary we give him), he had his poor little spokeswoman tell everybody …

“The congressman reiterates in the video that his work as the representative of the Second District of Oklahoma is a service,” Lawrence said.

“His aspiration is to be a career legislator and not a career politician. He is not, nor does he ever aspire to be, a career politician. His priority will always be to serve his constituents to the best of his ability.”

And the difference between a career politician and a career legislator would be …. spelling?

The best I can figure is that the congressman thinks he’s doing his constituents a favor by screwing them.

I think he attended the Sean Spicer School of ‘Splainin’ Things.

Yesterday, Newsweek published a story accusing Bernie voters of tipping the 2016 election to Trump.  It uses data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, compiled by Political Wire, that showed that, indeed, 10% of Bernie primary voters went for Trump in the general. It then goes into a swing state analysis that showed that Trump’s winning margin was less than the Bernie’s voters who went for Trump.  The implication was clear – stubborn Bernie voters wrecked Hillary’s bid for the presidency.  How evil they were and inconsiderate of Hillary and all of her supporters.  Fair enough.

There was an interesting mention, though, of a few not insignificant details at the very end of the article…First, the 10% of Bernie voters that went for Trump paled in comparison to the TWENTY FIVE percent of Hillary voters who went for McCain in 2008 (hypocrisy, anyone?).  More important, and one that I hadn’t realized was so large, was that almost 30% of Bernie voters were actually self identified Republican or leaned Republican.  Conversely, Hillary only attracted about 6 or 7% of the same demographic.

So, was it Bernie and his evil bots who wrecked Hillary’s election, or was it actually the fact that Hillary failed to attract the same demographic that Bernie did?  Trump certainly attracted a wide demographic of support.  Bernie attracted a wide demographic of support.  Hillary simply did not.  So, should the headline of the Newsweek article have been BERNIE SANDERS VOTERS HELPED TRUMP WIN AND HERE’S PROOF,  or should it have been HILLARY CLINTON LOST BECAUSE SHE FAILED TO ATTRACT A WIDER DEMOGRAPHIC THAN TRUMP?

I know the answer, but Hillary’s supporters, and many in the party, still cling to the myth that Bernie wrecked her election.  The inconvenient truth is that the numbers are the numbers and they speak for themselves; this lesson must be learned by the Democratic party lest it have to re-learn it in 2020.

I’m not holding my breath.

Michael Wolff’s new book is dominating the airwaves and has all week.  Except on Fox Noise, of course.  The release date of the book was moved up to today, and Trumpland is doing everything it can do to increase sales, including threatening the author and his publisher as well as slandering everyone who spoke ill of Trump.  Steve Bannon, the Darth Vader of political strategy, has been renamed Sloppy Steve by His Orangeness.  Amongst all this firestorm, other news has been announced today, and the timing is just a little coinkydink:

The FBI has announced that it has reopened an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.  This comes after months of Trump screaming about “Crooked Hillary”, and demanding the FBI investigate what’s already been investigated ad nauseam. Word got out today of the investigation, apparently leaked by, you guessed it, congressional Republicans.  Second, Senate Republicans have made the very first criminal referral in connection to the Russia interference investigations against…wait for it…Christopher Steele, the retired British intelligence agent who wrote the famous dossier about Trump’s relationship with the Russians.  That’s right, folks…the VERY FIRST CRIMINAL REFERRAL from Republicans in the Trump-Russia investigation is against the guy trying to expose Trump’s collusion with the Russians.

The fact that these two announcements come on the same day as the release of Fire and Fury is, like I said already, purely a coninkydink.  Nothing to see here…move along.

In the richness of multiple metaphors, the train carrying congressional Republicans to their retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck this morning.  This is a breaking story; apparently injuries on the train are minor, but unknown so far is if anyone in the truck or surrounding area were injured.

I just find it ironic that the train wreck that is the congressional Republicans was in an actual train wreck today – with a garbage truck.  The symbolism is overwhelming.

You just thought that the Amtrak train carrying congressional Republicans rammed a garbage truck killing one and injuring others.  That didn’t happen at all.  What REALLY happened was that a cement truck, a big KAMIKAZE cement truck, RAMMED the train to kill Paul Ryan and others on the train.  The reliable source for this blockbuster story?  That’s right, it’s Alex Jones of sending-children-to-Mars-to-enslave-them fame.  That’s right, within a few hours of the tragic accident, Jones had determined that it was an attack on conservatives.  Jesus, this guy needs more drugs.

During a congressional hearing yesterday, director of national intelligence Dan Coats testified that the “United States is under attack by the Russians to meddle in the 2018 elections after their successful meddling in the 2016 election.  The White House and congressional Republicans are silent on any action that could prevent (or at least disrupt) these efforts.  Why?  That’s easy.  The Russians are working to help the Republicans stay in power even though their voter base is shrinking.  You can be sure that if a foreign country, say Kenya, was conducting regular cyber attacks on the US to help Barack Obama stay in office, we would be bombing Nairobi right now.  Since this unprecedented attack on US sovereignty is helping them, Trump and Republicans are more than happy to allow it to continue.

That’s called, at the minimum gross negligence.  What it really is? Treason.

Yes, I’m weary with it.  Most people are numb to it because it doesn’t affect them directly.  Government workers hate it, and business persons should be marching in the streets to demand that it stop being used as a political weapon.  I’m talking about the now frequent use of the government shutdown as a bludgeon to override democracy.  It started in the 70s after passage of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 in response to Nixon impounding funds (refusing to spend) funds appropriated by Congress.  The Congress reasserted its control over federal spending after Nixon (and other presidents) had sought greater autonomy over federal spending.  What this set up, though, was budget showdowns that pitted the Congress against the White House.

The shutdown-as-weapon started in 1976 under Ford when he vetoed a funding bill for the departments of education and labor that had just been established by splitting the old department.  It didn’t last long when Democrats overrode the veto.  The next 4 out of 5 shutdowns were over abortion funding under Carter.  Reagan was the one who started playing brinksmanship with the shutdown, furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal employees, mostly demanding deep spending cuts.  He shut down the government eight times, an average of once a year during his terms.  HW Bush shut down the government once in 1990 over deficit spending.

Then came Newt.  After taking the house and becoming speaker, Gingrich used the shutdown to assert control over the entire government.  His shutdowns in November of 1995 and again from December to January of 1996 shattered Americans’ confidence in government and the Republicans.  Clinton’s popularity soared, and he cruised to reelection that year.  Gingrich was hounded out of the speaker’s office not long after.

Gingrich’s stupidity weighed on the Republicans so heavily that they didn’t dare to shut the government down again until 2013, when Ted Cruz used the shutdown in an attempt to strip healthcare from over 20 million Americans who were finally getting it as a result of the Affordable Care Act.  That shutdown lasted 16 days after the Republicans finally caved, but not before costing the US economy an estimated $24 billion dollars.  In between these shutdown attempts, Republicans started playing brinksmanship with the debt limit until finally S&P downgraded the US federal debt rating citing the instability of congressional Republicans and their brinksmanship.

Immune to learning anything from history, Trump has stupidly used the government shutdown to please his base of mouth-breathers, who hate everyone not white and every program that might help them.  This is the third shutdown in a YEAR, and this time during Christmas because Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh demanded their stupid border wall that won’t work.  This one won’t end well for Trump and his merry band of cronies.  The Dems take the House on January 3, and will make Trump’s life a living hell, especially after he has blundered into what is likely his largest mistake (among a legion of mistakes) he’s made since infesting the White House in 2017.  Pelosi and Schumer are going to use this move to their greatest advantage, and will be happy to just sit there and stare at him until the pressure on him becomes so great that either his head explodes or he caves.

If this shutdown wasn’t so destructive it would be entertaining, but Trump’s stupidity will will cost tens of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and will wreck the holidays for millions of Americans.  I just hope it hurts more Trumpists than it does normal people.

As JJ pointed out this morning, Trump’s Rump Nosers are going after Adam Schiff with a vengeance, especially after His Orangeness demanded that he should somehow be forced to resign over the Mueller report that no one outside of the Justice Department has seen.  Fortunately, Schiff is having none of it, and dropped the hammer on said Nosers during the House Intelligence Committee meeting today.  It’s worth the time watching the whole thing:

Just like in the Robin Williams’ movie, Awakenings, comatose patients in the Senate came out of their Trumpist comas long enough to speak out against Trump’s latest power grab that would destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of economic growth for no good reason.  His idiotic tariff against Mexican imports over illegal immigration is one of Stephen Miller’s (Trump’s resident white supremacist) worst yet, so bad, in fact, that the comatose have risen to finally say no.  It will be interesting now if Trump is dumb enough to push it to a vote.

I’m popping popcorn and pulling a few beers out of the fridge for this one.

I thought I had seen the lowest of the lows, but Republicans continue to shatter the floor for dishonesty.  Today, while North Carolina Democrats were at a 9/11 memorial ceremony,  Republicans pulled a fast one and held a rush vote to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of the Republican budget bill.  The Repubs have been trying to override the veto for 2 months, but couldn’t get the 3/5 majority.  Earlier, Republican chairman of the rules committee, David Lewis, lied to Democratic leader Darren Lewis that there would be no votes while the Democratic caucus was at the 9/11 ceremony.  As soon as they left, he held the vote and rammed through the vote, overriding Cooper’s veto.  Democratic Rep. Deb Butler shouted her objection and Repub Speaker Tim Moore tried to have her arrested.

They can’t win by the rules anymore, so they just break them.

In Harris County yesterday, lines of voters were long and the wait was up to 5 hours.  Why?  There are two primary reasons:

• Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act Texas has closed 542 polling places, most in historically black and Latino areas.  If you include 2012 closings, that number rises to 750.
• In Harris County at least, the Republican party refused to allow a joint primary with Dems.  What that meant was that the voting machines were divided in 2, half for Repubs, half for Dems.  Since Trump essentially had no opponent, turnout in the GOP primary was very low so HALF of voting machines remained essentially unused.

Both of these moves by Republicans made it harder for Texans to vote, which has been their goal for over 20 years as demographics started moving against them.  I got to experience their strategy yesterday since my polling place was one of those closed.  It took me three attempts at two different polling places to finally cast my vote, and I had to drive 15 minutes from one polling place to another to accomplish that.  After discovering my polling place was closed, I drove to my old polling place only to find the line out the door and down the block. I went to have some lunch and returned about an hour later to find the line almost as long.  A nice young poll worker for Ben Rose had information on other polling places, so I drove all the way out to Buffalo Speedway to vote at a church there.  The line there was about half an hour (and it was air-conditioned) so I waited it out.  When I got into the polling place, HALF of the voting machines were being unused while Republican poll workers twiddled their thumbs.  On the other side, Dems were forced to wait in multiple lines to access the other half.  Total time not including lunch was about two hours of waiting and a lot of driving just to vote in a goddam primary.

It’s shameful that the Republican party has been allowed to continuously and increasingly restrict access to the Constitutional right to vote.  Their rationale, of course, is based on lies since their actual goal is voter suppression not “election integrity” which is one of their standard lies.  Texas Republicans are perfectly happy to make the lives of their fellow Texans miserable simply for political gain.  This reason alone should be enough to vote the bastards out.

You knew it would happen.  Trump’s incompetent response to the COVID-19 outbreak is one of the few crises in the last three years that is not of his own making, and his sycophants have come to realize that he can’t lie or tweet his way out of this one.  The response?  Gen up the Noise Machine, WhatAbout Version.  One of the loudest blowhards in the Machine is PJ Media formerly called Pajamas Media, one of the biggest manure shovelers on the web.

The WhatAbout target this time?  Barack Obama, of course, and this time it was his response to the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009, days after he had taken office.  H1N1 became apparent in January 2009 and being researched by the WHO then.  The first case of H1N1 was discovered on April 15, 2009, the WHO declared a medical emergency on April 25, and the CDC began releasing anti-viral drugs to fight the disease. Obama declared a US medical emergency on April 30.  He requested $1.9 billion then and as the pandemic grew, requested another $9 billion for response and vaccines.  In October of 2009 Obama did declare a national emergency, but only after multiple efforts to control the virus.  Today, H1N1 continues as a recurring flu virus and has killed an estimated 75,000 Americans since 2009.  It’s part of the annual flu vaccine today that many Americans still refuse to receive.

Let’s talk about how Republicans responded to the virus back in 2009 versus what they are saying now.  During the funding debates of 2009, Republicans opposed Obama’s request because, well, they’re Republicans.  Also, the noise machine cranked up led by Gleen Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Rush Limbaugh.  Glenn Beck, who at that time had a big show on Fox Noise said, “…you don’t know if this is going to cause neurological damage like it did in the 1970s,” adding that he would do “the exact opposite” of what the federal government recommended and might even attend a swine flu party to deliberately infect himself before the virus could mutate.  Rush Limbaugh said, “I am not going to take it [the H1N1 vaccine], precisely because you are now telling me I must. . . . I don’t want to take your vaccine. I don’t get flu shots.” He added that if “you have some idiot government official demanding, telling me I must take this vaccine, I’ll never take it.”  In Congress Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) commented, “We can’t let all of our spending and our reaction be media-driven in responding to a panic so that we don’t get Katrina-ed. . . . It’s important because what we are talking about as we discuss the appropriateness of spending $2 billion to produce a vaccine that may never be used—that is a very important decision that our country has to make.”  Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) added, “I don’t think we need to spend $1.5 billion on flu vaccine when . . . the research shows that it’s not going to be very virulent. . . . We are stealing our grandchildren’s future by borrowing and spending. . . . This hysteria over the flu is driving the media, and it’s driving the administration, driving the leadership here. We’ve got to stop that.”

The funding was passed, but after intense anti-vaxxer misinformation and loud Republican opposition, the distribution of the vaccine was greatly suppressed and even THAT was affected by party.  Democrats outnumbered Republicans by almost 50% in saying they would take the vaccine.

The Repubs are singing the same song this time, too, calling the outbreak of COVID-19 a hoax and supporting Trump’s idiotic and incoherent blabbering and tweeting about it.  Even as they try to cover for Trump, they’re attacking Obama for doing exactly the opposite of what he actually did.

Same song, different pandemic.