5 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. R's, by way of their Chief Ideological* Enforcer, have told us what they're going to do for quite a while now:

   "All we have to do is replace Obama. …  We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it.

   "The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

   "Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared." 

   Ryan was drooling about this the other day. 

   "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is the kind of thing that most of us have only dreamed about. I know, because I used to dream about this a lot." 

   They've got their stump.

   They've got their mission statement:

   "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

   And they've got the very real force of Norquist's anti-tax, anti-government rhetorical sledge hammer:

   Norquist the Enforcer has moved the Republican Party solidly to the right.

   A whole slew of Blue Dogs, ConservaDems, and other Conservatives who identify as Democrats went right there with them. Any kind of reasonable debate about taxes, realistic flexibilty in budgets, or policies that rebuilt the Middle Class became verboten.

   But maybe Trump's tiny hands will prevent him from signing whatever is put in front of him, including Ryan's budget: 

   [Ryan's] assumption was clearly that if Trump won, congressional Republicans would have a rubber stamp for their policies in the White House. For that, who cares that Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, is a serial liar, and exhibits no grounding in reality? 

   Well, now a little sweet justice is coming right back at Ryan, who spent part of last week trying to gain the incoming pr*sident's support for his tax plan. Rachel Bade writes:

   For more than two hours, the speaker laid out his alternative to Trump’s plan to slap tariffs on companies that move jobs overseas, which he believed would encourage companies to stay in the U.S.

   But not even a week later, Trump dismissed Ryan’s idea, calling it “too complicated.” And now Ryan is left with a potential trillion-dollars hole in his tax plan. […]

   His most recent dismissal of a cornerstone of Ryan’s tax plan is perhaps the most surprising yet, given the impossible position it puts the speaker in.

   Let's hope Trump puts the kibosh on Ryan's bullshit plan to run a cutlass through our economy and democracy

   Though they are good in at least one of life's endeavors, the Ignorant Billionaire Class is proving to be quite the disappointment in other areas. They still have Norquist's Nirvana in sight and they know his zealous efforts have made their insatiable greed much less objectionable.

   Ignore Norquist all you want.

   Conveniently adopt Republican rhetoric at your everyone else's peril.

   Republicans have been working on this plan since Reagan I, and it is more likely now than ever that they are in a position to repeal Obamacare, then repeal the Great Society, and then repeal the New Deal before the rest of us have even had our second cup of coffee.

    

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2. Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.

   The DNC Contenders Are Not Interested In Your Populist Moment

   The candidates almost universally agreed that lobbyists should be allowed to keep giving money to the DNC. President Barack Obama banned lobbyist contributions to the party in 2008, a ban then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz quietly lifted in the 2016 election. Even Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the most outspoken progressive in this DNC race, downplayed his prior commitment to reinstate the ban.

   “If I do become DNC chair, I am not going to impose a policy on anybody. We’re going to have a democratic process on how we arrive at funding the Democratic Party,” he said. Ellison, who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said he would make sure the ban came up for debate but said he would leave the ultimate decision up to the broader DNC body ― a deference that neither Obama [who banned 'em] nor Wasserman Schultz [who un-banned 'em] showed.

   How y'all gonna grab Trump by the pussy when your prospective leaders can't even find the balls to be about something.

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3. First a traitor, now a terrorist.

   Tells you all you need to know about the moral compass of fearless leader.

   Oscar Rivera planted 130 bombs in the US killing at least 5 people.

   He was set to die in prison, now he can lecture at a campus near you.

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4. 

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5. Comrade President Trumpski has a serious case of missile envy:

   Part of being a great president is showing off America’s military strength, according to President-elect Donald Trump.

   The military “may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump told the Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday. “That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”

   During the preparation for Friday’s transfer-of-power, a member of Trump’s transition team floated the idea of including tanks and missile launchers in the inaugural parade, a source involved in inaugural planning told The Huffington Post. “They were legit thinking Red Square/North Korea-style parade,” the source said, referring to massive military parades in Moscow and Pyongyang, typically seen as an aggressive display of muscle-flexing.

   Fortunately, someone with an actual clue shot the suggestion down.

   It's gonna be a long 4 years…

    

    

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-military-equipment-inauguration_us_58811f4ae4b096b4a23091f7?ijatt9

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