I don't need to be a speech writer to see this coming

Funny, I was listening to NPR this morning (no, that is not funny, it is habitual), and they had David Frum on (speechwriter for George W Bush) promoting his article on the Atlantic "How to Build an Autocracy" and talking about our disturbing times.  His is an interesting and long, very very long (notice the double "verys", I am speaking like Trump these days) article that says nothing more and nothing less than I have been writing, without all the knowledge of how the government of this country is supposed to work that he has, since that Orange Mophead made it to President....

The future still looks scary as shit and I await it, powerless, with sana paura.

A Nightmare and Google Irony

Every day I wake up thinking the news can't be worse than the day before and that Orange Haired Puppet can't possibly make a more egregious decision than the ones he has made a day earlier; but every day the puppet masters that are pulling his strings get him to do something scarier than the day before (today, as I blogged before, it is Bannon installing himself in the National Security Council)... It's a four year (let's hope it is that short) nightmare.

The Google Irony statement of the day is that when you open a new tab today Google reminds us that it is Fred Korematsu's birthday today...

sigh

Fascism

This weekend I told my husband that we were devolving into fascism.  He told me that no, not yet, fascism was a breakdown of all procedural law...  

Steve Bannon in Nacional Security Council -> FASCISM

I've been "learning" Italian

A year or so ago I was introduced to the language app Duolingo and decided to start using it to ostensibly learn to speak Italian. I don't know how much I have really learned, but most lessons have hilarious phrases that reinforce the (un/fair?) stereotypes we hold about their culture.  A lot of the phrases have do with cars, theft, death, design, mothers and love.  Phrases such as:

È più facile morrire que amare  :  It is easier to die than to love.

Or

Il mio fratello non ruba  :  My brother does not steal

And one that shows up a lot and that I particularly like:

Il direttore del museo è in prigione  :  the museum director is 
                                                       in prison 

(-;  

And today's phrase struck me as being particularly reflective of the way I feel at the moment:

La nostra è una sana paura  :  Ours is a sane fear.    

…I am not making this stuff up.

Two things I already got from President Trump

1) He took Nikki Haley away from South Carolina so that we can finally raise some money to fix our once great and now deplorable roadway system,

2) The intuitive knowledge (versus academic knowledge) of how something like World War II and the Final Solution can organically happen.

Banana Republic

When I came to the US from Brazil several decades ago, I wrote to friends and family that America seemed to be just like Brazil but that you needed more money to bribe the people in power. ... I still think that what I observed then holds true then and especially now, the difference being that then the great and beautiful middle here still functioned honestly and in first world fashion.  ... “first world” being a descriptor shunned by the privileged left because it implies that there is a third one, which then implies a hierarchy whose existence the left refuses to admit to... ...and thus contemporary humanities trouble with "reality"… any-who…

...With Trump coming into office, the tendency towards “third world-ness” of this nation that I first perceived as a teenager, 40 years ago, moves from the background to full frontal.  Yep, America you've finally turned into a Banana Republic (yes, lefties, they exist, I was born in one), though this one has somewhat of a Russian Oligarchy flavor to it, so maybe we’ve turned into a Caviar Republic.  …Caviar, Bananas… no matter the food, still a third world kleptocracy.

Welcome to the "Best and Most Amazing" present "ever"....  Oy.

Life Contemporary

ugh

Affordable Healthcare...

...So upon waking up to the news on Tuesday, I heard an interview on NPR with Zeke Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Healthcare Act, on the future of the aforementioned which is now being referred to mostly by its name, but that for the past 8 years has been called Obama Care...  The interview was mostly propaganda with the takeaway being that Zeke was calling for the Dems and Republicans to work together to modify it; and I quote:


EMANUEL: Right, but consistency suggests that they want a - they would want a bipartisan bill. And I understand that the president-elect, Donald Trump, wants a bipartisan bill. He really does I think genuinely want a bill and a health care system that works for all Americans, that achieves universal coverage, no preexisting disease exclusions. And I think therefore there is some ray of optimism that we could actually get a compromise bill rather than just something rammed down the country's throat by the Republicans.


That's rich, since the act was passed in the first place by a majority Democratic Congress ramming it down the minority Republican throat! 

I love politics: verify and never trust.