NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, a/k/a the Mustache of Understanding set the entire context of the Bush era in this interview soon after the beginning of the Iraq War, which was always a great success!

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?”

You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow?

Well Suck. On. This.

His very learned exhortation to “suck on this” was the Bush era in a nutshell as people who fancied themselves great thinkers, elites as it were, we’re only too happy to get down in the gutter with that (Harvard and Yale educated) Texan president that didn’t speak too good, but had a folksy common wisdom.  Yes, we were going to spread democracy at the end of a gun and it was going to be glorious, most days.  Of course, some days would be lesser glories, or even nightmares.  But that’s okay, it’s part of the process of imposing folksy wisdom on a population that have been undermined by the bigotry of low expectations.  Friedman and Bush understood that they were respecting the Iraqi people enough to believe that the end of the gun would just be an entry point.  The Iraqi people would embrace democracy and then thank us for pointing all those guns and bombs at them – like a slap in the face to a shell shocked soldier bringing them back to rationality.

And if you don’t like it, repeat after me:  well, suck… on… this!

Roseanne was always going to say something that caused the house to collapse.  ABC displayed amazing optimism in giving her a forum again and even announcing a second season after two episodes.  TV Execs are some of the dimmest people on the planet, but there must have been some people in that building knocking wood every day the inevitable didn’t happen.  And then it did.

Sorry to cast and crew who hopefully didn’t put a downpayment on that house in the Palisades. You get to commiserate with the Cosby people who lost decades of residuals because of the sickness of their star.

From racist and impulse control stupid to headshaking, questioning everything stupid, we present Tennessee Congresswoman and gubanatorial candidate Diane Black.    The headline is:

Porn Leads To School Shootings, GOP Congresswoman Says

When you start a sentence “porn leads to school shootings” you really don’t have to finish it “GOP Congresswoman says”, that’s just a given.

Imagine the stunned silence in the room, even from clergy when they’re going down the list of causes of shootings and she says “porn.”  The double takes, the furrowed brows, the trying to be equanimous “um, how so Congresswoman?”

The natural follow-up question:  What kind of porn do you think is having the most effect on would be murderers?  Anal? Plushies?  It’s not tentacle porn because this never happens in Japan, so we can rule that out.

And finally, well not finally, there’s always more stupid to note.  But let’s go with Trump’s latest absolutely soul crushing nonsense… since yesterday’s tweeting that all the dead soldiers would have loved what he was doing with the country on Memorial Day.

Trump tweeted that Mueller is interfering in the midterms.  Not Russians.  Not Trumps.  Not Wikileaks.  Mueller and his 13 Angry Democrats will meddle with the midterms.  Somebody said that his repeated phrase “13 Angry Democrats” is refering to the play and movie “12 Angry Men.”  is there a chance in hell that he’s seen that movie?  No.  No way.

The stupid has been so thick (and thicc, the new cool spelling) that yours spewly has recently taken to bed sickly-like, at least intellectually.

Let’s just review briefly what we know to be true:

Republicans have been sliding down a slippery slope of stupid for two generations since they allowed ideological charlatans like Stone, Helms, Reagan, Vigourie, Falwell, Atwater, Gingrich, etc. take one of the two (just two, take it or leave it) national parties, formerly lead by statesmen and people of good will, down a twisted rabbit hole of bullshit and gang tactics so that now they are lead by a pathological liar and conman. Say what you will about the GOP, but their devolution to a completely irresponsible criminal enterprise has been truly efficient. Less than 50 years from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump.

One big facet of the Republican slide to fraudulence has been their changing attitude towards government itself, adopting a more libertarian (read: irrational) take on regulations. From the Eisenhower view of government as necessary, however restrained in its scope for the protection of the individual, to the modern GOP’s belief that government should do EVERYTHING the red team wants it to do, for the benefit of its political base regardress of science, math, ethics, rationality or sustainability and NOTHING the blue team values, because liberal tears are delicious.

Famously, the putative party of small government, as Reagan named it, has now long stood ready to restrain spending on the commons or human needs, but give a blank check to the Pentagon.  They reverse regulation they formerly saw as reasonable regarding big business, but demand that every uterus be inspected and every public bathroom be monitored.

The freaks running the Trump kakistocracy are engaged in a crazy chase of their twisted, stupid base’s rabid devotion to guns as a way of life. An idea whose basic irrational premise can be tested by repeating the previous sentence and substituting the word “guns” with any other noun. … rabid devotion to toasters as a way of life. … rabid devotion to floor lamps as a way of life… rabid devotion to doorknobs as a way of life… Modern pluralistic democracies do not adopt any one noun as a touchstone of life. That’s for the shamanistic leaders of pre-historic tribes mesmerizing their followers with a magic totem that they’ve imbued with mystical (and mythical) power.

But that’s who they are now – cavemen in suits – rallying support for icons against the misguided nonbelievers who would destroy us all with their elitist facts.

Which brings us to the delicious irony at hand of Republican lawmakers, who stood against Elizabeth Warren and the creation of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, and look the other way as Mick Mulvaney burns it down, turning to said CFPB to protect gun manufacturers from activist banks that are making it harder for the gun makers to use financial services.

Major banks have taken a series of steps this year to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands. They are restricting their credit card and banking services to gun retailers and halting lending to gun makers that do not comply with age limits and background check rules determined by the banks.

It’s quite a brilliant reversal as those most powerful of entities, the financial institutions that Republicans believe should be as unregulated now as they were before 2008 (hell, pre 1929 would suit them fine) listen to their customers and their consciences and turn their sites on the gun makers that create weapons of death with Congressionally decreed impunity.

Asset managers and institutional investors have divested in gun stocks the same way they divested in South African businesses 30 years ago as the public, then as now, was out ahead of our government in recognizing a bad actor and demanding action.

“If you’re going to turn us into a nation of red banks and blue banks, you’re making a mistake….”

Said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Kennedy said he planned to file complaints with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau against banks that are effectively restricting gun sales by setting their own rules…

You know what, conservative tears are not tasty. I do not need them or their salty self-righteousness.  If banks, which have grown to eat our economy and are otherwise hurting our democracy, can impair businesses that profit on human misery, like they put a crimp on apartheid in an earlier age, then I applaud.

For those afeared that this action by banks are problematic actions taken against lawful industry, I point to the cannabis business. A burgeoning business made legal by popular demand but blocked from the full panoply of banking services because of fear by the banks in getting into business with entities that profit from a Schedule I drug. Government could listen to its citizens and help those businesses bank freely. The same Republican senators standing up for guns, are silent for pot, a much larger constituency by the numbers. As the numbers of legal cannibis users grows daily, the number of gun owners contracts with fewer people owning more guns every year so that 3% of Americans own 50% of the guns.

Republicans – defending the indefensible, protecting the people from the products and services they would choose in a real free market, shielding their donors from accountability and making a mockery of democracy.

May God have mercy on their soullessness.

People get it, Ohioans do in droves – gerrymandering is a big part of the problem and its got to go.  What Republicans have done to weaponize elections has poisoned the well for everyone and it’s no longer okey dokey to allow politicians to pick the voters, we need reforms that take it out of the hands of the most interested parties.  Think of that, it’s been totally standard operating procedure throughout our history for legislators to decide who votes for (or against) them by designating who can vote and then designing the districts and who is in them.

With computers the science of redistricting became as pinpoint as laser surgery.  As with most norms we took for granted, the abuse of such a system was just something we thought no honorable politician would do.  Then came the modern Republican Party that, to paraphrase their hero Richard Nixon, said “well, if we do it it’s not a crime, or even wrong.”

The people who believe down to the bottom of their souls that the ends justify the means and that they’re in a holy war against modernity, science, liberalism etc. sought to gain electoral advantage in order to push that advantage to the point of invulnerability.  Then they could do whatever they want, period.  Starting after the 2010 Republican census, legislators gerrymandered states so that even when 52% of Wisconsinites, Pennsylvanians or Michiganders voted for Democrats, 55% (or more) of the seats went to Republicans.  Ohio is a 50-50 state (okay maybe 52-48) but Republicans have 75% of Congressional seats and a 2-1 advantage in the state legislature.  All of that alarmed Democrats in 2016.  In 2016!  Six goddamn years too late.  But you know, they’re doing their best.

Advocates say their success in Ohio on Tuesday could be the start of a record-breaking year for redistricting reform, which could be on the ballot in five more states. And that raises the question: Are voters who are sick of Washington now turning their frustration to gerrymandering?

In Ohio, it certainly seems that way. By a 75-to-25 percent vote, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment designed to force state lawmakers to come up with a compromise congressional map in 2020 that doesn’t just benefit the party in control, which is now the GOP.

This electoral action is in addition to the legal actions having been taken in several states leading to state court and Supreme Court cases that have so far been sensible in showing toxic gerrymandering the door.  The Supreme Court will likely render a decision in June that could upend this sort of clearly politically motivated redistricting.

I don’t care who you are, if you are fair minded and want our representatives to do have honest debates on the battlefield of ideas, this is a key part of electoral reform that would make our elections more competitive and our legislatures more representative.

Silver points out that an April Pew Research Center survey found that 61 percent of Americans say “significant changes” are needed in the “design and structure” of American government.

Uh huh.

Solar panels SHOULD be on every new home built everywhere and on every office building, every shopping center, etc.  I would have done this years ago if the universe had listened to me and put me in charge.  There is no reason not to do this before,  certainly no reason not to do this now.  The costs involved are negligible at this point, but the benefits are tremendous.  It’s as if when electricity for home use as developed by Edison and Tesla was a proven technology being utilized in a growing number of applications every year, but new houses were still being built with gas lamps.

The California Energy Commission is scheduled to vote Wednesday, May 9, on new energy standards mandating most new homes have solar panels starting in 2020.

If approved as expected, solar installations on new homes will skyrocket.

About feckin’ time.

There is no bottom for these maniacs, they just keep digging down into the pile of weird and guilty and creating new lows.  But each new low also makes sense in its own way in the Trump universe. NBC is reporting that Trump’s former creepy and somewhat assaulty bodyguard Keith Schiller and other Trump organization shadowy figures “raided” the office of Dr. Bornstein, the original odd doctor who claimed Trump to be a miraculously healthy Rasputin.

They took Trump’s health files and even asked him to take a picture of him and Trump together off the wall.

If you’re thinking what the fuck?  I think you’re not alone.

In February 2017, a top White House aide who was Trump’s longtime personal bodyguard, along with the top lawyer at the Trump Organization and a third man, showed up at the office of Trump’s New York doctor without notice and took all the president’s medical records.

The incident, which Dr. Harold Bornstein described as a “raid,” took place two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine for the president for years.

If you’re thinking this maybe connects to Trump’s subsequent Dr. Feelgood, Dr. Ronny Jackson, you’re right.  Bornstein says there was a letter from Jackson given to him at the time of the raid.  But he doesn’t recall what was in it.  Okay.  No, I wouldn’t have made a copy of that either in all the violation, I’m sure.

So Bornstein leaked the classified information that he had proscribed Propecia for Trump. Trump goons raid his office and take his records.  At that point apparently Admiral Jackson becomes Trump’s personal physician, which he would have anyway… being the White House physician… but whatever.  We all know that Jackson too, like Bornstein, was made to issue a bizarre hostage video in which he claimed trump to have preternatural health.  Then Jackson is nominated to the VA and we find out Jackson has been a drug pusher to the WH elite and scumbag to everybody below him for a long time.  Don’t let the military haircut fool you, Jackson is every bit the freak that Bornstein is.  And he’s ruined now too.

Trump is the reverse Midas, it all turns to shit.

But what was in Trump’s records to be so jealously guarded that he just could not trust Bornstein with them anymore, he had to have his goon “raid” the doctor’s office?  Never mind the obvious question of who does that?  Trump does.

Can the Southern District of NY add this to the list of possible crimes committed before and after January 20, 2017?

What the fuck, indeed!!!

P.S. Sarah “Perfect Smoky Eye” Sanders said that the raid was standard procedure.  All presidents do it.  Of course.  It’s all so normal.  Go back to sleep.  So sleepy.