There's more going on than the Russia investigation, Stormy Daniels, and pee tapes

"He succeeded in dragging the Republican Party into the White House with a minority of the votes. And this is a Republican Party that is one of the most radical mainstream political parties in all of American history, perhaps with the exception of the pro-secessionist Democrats at the time of the Civil War. And they’ve been in there, they’ve been implementing a rightist revolution, doing the massive transfer of wealth in part via the tax bill, but also an important part by systematically, agency by agency, trying to gut the constraints on large corporations and the oligarchs, regarding the environment, their treatment of labor, their ability to discriminate, their ability to commit fraud without fear of being sued by the public, increasing the rights of rich individuals to intervene in politics, decreasing the rights of collectives of working people to intervene in politics, like the Gorsuch-led Supreme Court decision just the other day, inhibiting the ability of workers to file class-action lawsuits against their employers.

"It’s a systematic program that’s been in the works since 1980, really. In a sense, it dates back to the old Powell memorandum, where Powell, who later joined the Supreme Court, said we, the representatives of the rich, we’ve got to fight back against this new environmental movement, against this consumer movement, against the labor movement, and also implicitly against the Civil Rights movement. 'These people have been making too many gains, we’ve got to organize ourselves.'

"And they did!"

The rest of the story:
Allan Nairn On How Trump Dragged a Rightist Revolution to Power by Jeremy Scahill (The Intercept)

Advice

"Leap Before You Look"

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.

-- W. H. Auden

quote unquote: J. M. Keynes

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” ― John Maynard Keynes

What's wrong with this picture?

2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than for military service members. You are safer in our various and sundry war zones than you are in school.

"Running, With Confidence, to Topple a Dictator"

"Election in Venezuela Looms as Crossroad for Democracy." -- N.Y. Times headline and subhead, front page, 2018/05/18

Put it this way: a foreign leader is a dictator if the Times isn't pleased with him or her. An election is "democratic" only when it achieves the outcome the Times desires.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Venezuela, an act of economic warfare, to influence the outcome.

We've been down this road dozens of times in Central and South America. It never works out well for the country targeted by our bullying.

Rebel Beat - The Story of LA Rockabilly (2007)

Our long-running political theater of the absurd

Closing soon?

When Scott Pruitt is fired he will be replaced by his deputy, Andrew Wheeler (not incidently a coal lobbyist and former aid to Jim Inhofe, the Senate’s most prominent denier of climate change), who will calmly, efficiently, and unostentaciously proceed along the same course as Pruitt, polluting air and water, trashcanning regulations, shutting down enforcement, highjacking public lands, and generally undermining 70 years of hard-won progress on the environment.

The system will have worked, however: the corrupt and "extremist" Pruitt will be banished (but, not to worry, he will in all certainty spin through the revolving door to a high-paying precinct from which he will pester his former employees for special treatment for the same industries he currently -- nominally -- regulates).

The same dynamic will follow Donald Trump's departure. We will be told ad nauseum that our "exceptional," "democratic" system of checks

Dan Wasserman twitter@wassermantoons

and balances has rescued us from a narcissitic, unlettered, wannabe dictator and replaced him with the moderate, unassuming, grown-up Mr. Pence. Ignored in this account will be Mike Pence's history as a right-wing fanatic and fundamentalist religious lunatic whose real job will be to put lipstick on the pig of the Right's determination to turn back the clock, if not all the way to the 11th century, at least to 1876.

If the system worked, it hardly needs to be said, we wouldn't have a Pence or a Trump in the first place. Nor for that matter, would we be burdened with elected officials like blue dog Democrats Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly who helped to deploy Andrew Wheeler for his assault of the environment.

Extra credit:
✓ If scandals oust Pruitt, Andrew Wheeler is an ex-coal industry lobbyist pledged to end the ‘pure hell’ of Obama regulations: Scott Pruitt's new EPA deputy could surpass boss in scrapping protections by Oliver Milman (The Guardian)
✓ The US election and the systematic failure of modern politics by Benjamin Farrand (Critical Legal Thinking)

How other countries keep money out of politics

What does he think, drone pilots grow on trees?

Barack Obama made a point of criticizing electronic devices in a commencement speech to more than 1,000 graduates and thousands of their family and friends gathered on the football field at Hampton University, a historically black college in

southeastern Virginia.

"Obama said today’s college graduates are coming of age at a time of great difficulty for the United States. They face a tough economy for jobs, two wars and a 24/7 media environment not always dedicated to the truth, he said.

"Added to the mix are the distractions offered by popular electronic devices that entertain millions of Americans.

“'With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,' Obama said."

The rest of the story:
Obama criticizes iPods & iPads; Xboxes & PlayStations -- Reuters news story.