Where the hell are the Dems?

Every day I get emails from various Democratic fund raising committees begging for money. I have not seen a single thing they do with the money they get. The funniest one is from the "Instant Response" team. Their response to everything is to ask for more money. Where are the ads showing the GOP legislators kissing up to Moscow, the cruelty on the border, and especially the House GOP committee proposing a budget to cut Medicare and Medicaid and defund CHIP? No more from me, until they do something.

Three dogs that didn't bark.

The people who voted for Trump out of "economic anxiety" not complaining about $3 gas.

Complete absence of armored vehicles and SWAT teams along Royal Wedding parade route.

Another school massacre and right wing media not considering guns part of the problem.

Puzzle solved

It has long puzzled me why the Congressional GOP has gone to such great lengths to use its legislative power​ to obstruct the Mueller probe.

They could have diverted by holding legitimate inquiry into Russian attempts to affect our electoral process.

Instead they chose an institutional attack on our counterintelligence capability.

To protect that wonderful individual DJT? I don't think so. Pence would sign their same crappy legislation. So why?

The answer is blindingly clear. Various parts of the GOP have been colluding with the Russians for years.

Details to follow.

Not quite a lie.

Apparently Perdue and Cotton think it's ok to say Trump didn't say shithole because they heard him say shithole.

All you have to know about Trump and his cronies is that the White House, in the name of the United States, issued a false transcript of the televised DACA meeting.

Back in the game.

I'm​ getting back in the game with political content here, and leaving Facebook for social stuff.

Both sides do it.

Thomas Mann and Norman Orenstein, a centrist and a conservative, have written a book, and WaPo op ed, clearly stating that Washington gridlock is almost entirely the fault of the GOP. Neither has been invited on the Sunday talk shows to discus this thesis, even though they are widely regarded for their anaylsis on many issues. It seems pretty clear that the reason for this is that the professional centrists who are the establishment media can't bear the thought of actually discussing any issue without constructing false equivalences. They are invested in decrying policy differences as extremism. Artificially manufactured consensus is their vision of the future.

Their influence is unmistakable, as Democrats now enthusiastically speak of "Grand Bargains", which are really just way stations on the road to right wing evisceration of the social safety net and economic mobility. No matter what happens in the November election, the lame duck session of Congress will be a nightmare for progressives and for peopleof no particular political ideology who rely on the social contract they have honored for their whole lives.

The participation of certain Dems, including Bill Clinton, in Pete Peterson's annual "kill social security" event is a grim harbinger of things to come.