Froth Slosh B'Gosh

Well, It Seems....

That "Send her back" will be the "Lock her up" of the 2020 campaign.  

This sort of rhetoric gets people killed.

Vaccines DO NOT Cause Autism

Yet another scientific study shows that the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism.

Researchers at Copenhagen’s Statens Serum Institut examined data for Danish children born from 1999 through the end of 2010, more than half a million people all together. The epidemiologists and statisticians then used population registries to link information on vaccination status to autism diagnoses, as well as to sibling history of autism and other risk factors.
The findings show that the vaccine does not increase the risk of autism, lending new statistical certainty to what was already medical consensus. The researchers further concluded that vaccination is not likely to trigger the developmental disorder in susceptible populations and is not associated with a clustering of cases appearing after immunization.

But seeing how all opinions are equally valid in the marketplace of ideas, as Billy Bragg would put it, we're probably going to be whacking this mole again and again for decades.

And There You Have It=

Its necessary to comfort the comfortable by cutting their tax obligations, and as a result, add over a trillion dollars to the deficit, hence, we can no longer afford to comfort the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable.  

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that congressional Republicans will aim next year to reduce spending on both federal health care and anti-poverty programs, citing the need to reduce America's deficit.
“We're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,”

Which of course, was the plan all along.

IOKIYAR

Because it always is.

"And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options," Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist in Pittsburgh with whom the congressman admitted last month to having a relationship, wrote to Mr. Murphy on Jan. 25, in the midst of an unfounded pregnancy scare.
A text from Mr. Murphy’s cell phone number that same day in response says, "I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more. I will."
The congressman has been lauded by the Family Research Council, for his stance on abortion, as well as for family values, generally. He also has been endorsed by LifePAC, which opposes abortion rights, and is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, an affiliation that is often cited by his office.

And he will pay no price politically, because he's a Republican.

I've Often Said...

If you don't want to be called an ignorant,  racist bigot, stop acting like an ignorant, racist bigot. 

Frankly, The Shame of Butler County deserves more than having papers thrown in his pig-ignorant face.  He really thinks he can insult, question the patriotism of,  and belittle people he doesn't like with impunity.

Can The GOP Be Saved?

I remember reading way back when that the Republican party can survive a Trump loss, but they'll never survive a Trump win.  Its looking increasingly likely to me that the GOP is determined to go down with the Trump ship. If these week's revelations about Trump sharing highly secretive intel with the Russians, to the detriment of our intelligence gathering abilities doesn't move Congress to act,  then nothing can save the party.  The investigations will continue, the revelations will only get worse.  At this point in time, the only thing I can think is that the party itself colluded with the Russians.  What else can explain the inability of Republican leaders in Washington to act in light the what's happened in the last 48 hours?

They can save themselves, by acting to remove Trump from office, as it is abundantly clear that he is unfit.  If they do not, then they are as guilty as he is.

Government By Clusterfuck

We're three days in, and Trump and his minions have lurched from one unforced error to another.  Shutting down the Department of the Interior's Twitter feed because it showed the small size of the inauguration crowd, having a plagiarized Styrofoam cake at the reception, blatantly lying in an appearance for the CIA's weekend crew, and doing it in front of the most sacred spot at Langley, to having your lickspittles lie repeatedly to the media and being called out on it by Chuck Todd, of all people.

In my job, I do a lot  of feather-smoothing, it just goes with the territory.  There are diplomatic ways of doing things, and ways of acknowledging disappointment without looking like a raving loon.  For example, this is what Trump, Spicer, and Company should have said: "Sure, we're disappointed with the turnout, but it was rainy day, and that had a depressing effect on turnout."  and MOVE ON.  Instead, they're getting into arguments with people who buy ink by the barrel.

I'm afraid that when they have to deal with a real crisis, this bunch will fail spectacularly and with tragic consequences.  I hope I'm wrong about that.

What Is In The Files??

So Hair Furor stands with a bunch of files on the table, claiming the files show how he's divesting himself from his business interests, but then won't let anybody examine the files?

When I worked in the theatre, we did something similar.  We had these things, called "props."  The props looked real, but they were just plastic or wooden facsimiles, and of course, we would never let the audience come on stage to examine them.

What we will witness for the next four years is Presidential Theatre.

I Wish I Had A Camera

So much to blog about!  There was the FBI's announcement that the e-mail search turned up nothing, the non-assassination attempt on Trump, or the Post-Gazette's cowardly non-endorsement, but something on my way home from work really struck me.

I work in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, primarily in Bethel Park and South Park townships.  Now these areas, especially Bethel Park, are pretty affluent.  So what do I see  at the main intersection?  A Trump supporter with a brown cardboard box sign on a pole reading Vote Trump.  Now this part of Allegheny County has a fairly large population of Republican or Republican-leaning voters, so seeing a Trumpkin there wasn't unusual.  What was unusual was his garb.  He was dressed in a manner that someone who knew nothing of steel working might imagine how a steel worker dresses.  He was wearing some sort of overall, and had what looked like a grey-plastic civil defense helmet from a costume shop atop his head, I guess to emulate a hardhat.  Like I typed earlier, I wish I had a camera! 

I suspect he might have been an out-of-town operative attempting to garner working class votes by pretending to be a steel worker?  Of course, most of the mills are long gone from this area, and as noted, Bethel Park is pretty affluent, it is unlikely to harbor a large number of blue collar workers.

But I guess that's what you get when you have no GOTV operation.  A show, instead of an effort.

Trump Went To Gettysburg

From the content of his speech, he should have delivered it at Waterloo.

The speech was a laundry list of familiar promises on the economy, national security, immigration and other issues, though the candidate’s message was muddled by his assertions of coming lawsuits against the women accusing him of sexual misconduct and his pledges to break up media companies that he said are trying to deny him the presidency.

So, win or lose, he's going to throw a temper tantrum and lash out at perceived enemies.