News In Review: Bad Lip Reading Of Trump's State Of The Union

Let's do another Bad Lip Reading to keep this month's absurdity going.

OK, I admit I just featured the "Bad Lip Reading" YouTube videos during the Super Bowl earlier this month, but I can't resist the same YouTube channel's take on Donald Trumps State of the Union address.

In this absurd lip reading world, we learn Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence don't get along (no surprise there).

We also learn how much animosity Bernie Sanders feels toward Trump. In the bad lip reading, Sanders tells a colleague, "I want to roast all of his fingers."

And that famous Pelosi clap back was actually approval when Trump told the Halls of Congress: "I like a pizza party very much."

Here's the rest of the craziness for your deep winter entertainment:

Congress Wants Crazy People With Guns To Shoot Bears From Airplanes

Wolf pup emerging from a den. Is it really OK to go
into dens and shoot hibernating bears and wolves?

I'm not sure why some Republican lawmakers are stumbling over each other trying to outdo each other for most batshit crazy legislation, but that's where we're going.

First, Congress repealed an Obama-era rule meant to limit the sale of guns to some people with mental disabilities.  

Let's let more unstable people have guns!

People who wanted to do away with the rule said lax or incorrect reporting standards meant that people who had mental issues, but who were still safe with guns, were barred from having firearms.

As a person who is high functioning but has a (mild) mental illness, I can see that concern.

After all, I have ADHD, but because of psychiatric counseling, effort on my part and a fairly low daily dose of Adderall, I function just fine. If I were trained to properly use handguns, I'm sure I'd be safe with them.

But wouldn't it be better just to make a case by case judgment on this?

Now that practically everybody can have guns, what are we all gonna sboot?

In Alaska, the answer apparently is, we want to shoot bears and wolves from airplanes, or barge into dens while the animals are hibernating and shoot them there.

Sounds fun! If you're into unsportsmanlike hunting, that is.

Yep, the U.S. House of Representatives, voting along party lines, approved the repeal of laws that prohibited people from shooting bears and wolves from airplanes and entering dens to shoot hibernating animals.

According to Buzzfeed and many other news outlets, this all started last August when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Obama administration, sensibly issued rules banning hunting tactics that then-director Dan Ashe said was "a withering attack on bears and wolves that is wholly at odds with America's long tradition of ethical, sportsmanlike, fair-chase hunting."

More from Buzzfeed:

"The banned activities on Alaska's wildlife refuges including hunting tactics common elsewhere in the US but nevertheless troubling to wildlife advocates: baiting brown bears to draw them to hunters and shooting them; shooting bears ensnared in traps, and shooting bears and wolves in their dens with their cubs or pups."

That last bit is something. Go into a bear den and shoot the mother bear and cubs. Because you can, I guess.

People want to be able to shoot bears and wolves, even if they are in dens, because bear and wolves sometimes eat moose and elk.  

That reduces the number of moose and elk that people can, yes, hunt. So people want to hunt bear and wolves in nonsportsmanlike ways so they can, um, hunt other animals too.

It's true that some Alaskans hunt moose and elk because they rely upon them for food. However, my suspicious mind thinks that Congress approved this change to satisfy their rich contributors who go to Alaska to hunt, but don't rely on wild animals for sustenance.

Basically, what's going on here is, "Let's kill more animals so we can kill more animals."

Wildlife advocates say it's not like they're trying to stop hunting on wildlife refuges. They just want to stop extreme forms of hunting that throw off the ecosystem.

It seems especially galling to go into dens and shoot sleeping bears and cubs. I don't know why anybody would get off on this, but you never know what some people think.

Look, I'm not against hunting. I live in Vermont, where there is a big hunting culture and I have no problem whatsoever with it.  As long as the hunters are responsible and not a bunch of yahoos. Most hunters are great.

But, we're in an anything goes atmosphere now. Time to start shooting everything in sight, I guess.

Maybe Congress Should Get More Blame Than Trump

Will Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell put career and agenda
over the nation? And if so, will it be Congress' fault if Trump
really messes up America? Probably, yes.

The daily Trump show continues apace, with all kinds of weird tweets, orders, meltdowns and whatnot that is an everyday occurance.

Lots of people, including me, have long been appalled by Trump, and continue to be. We fear he's ruining the country, and we fear he and minions like Steve Bannon are trying to turn the United States into an undemocratic autocracy.

Maybe we're blaming the wrong guy, though.

The reason I say this is I read an interesting article by Ezra Klein in Vox that matched my suspicions.

In short, it's Congress' fault.

Klein writes:

"The President can do little without Congress's express permission. He cannot raise money. He cannot declare war. He cannot even staff his government. If Congress, tomorrow, wanted to compel Trump to release his tax returns, they could. If Congress, tomorrow, wanted to impeach Trump unless he turned his assets over to a blind trust, they could. If Congress, tomorrow, wanted to take Trump's power to choose who can and cannot enter the country, they could." 

The problem is, Congress can do all these things and more, but they won't.

The Founding Fathers knew that presidents had the potential to become autocratic, hence the power of the purse and other advantages they bestowed on Congress.

Klein goes on:

"If Trump builds an autocracy, his congressional enablers will, if anything, be more responsible than him. After all, in amassing power and breaking troublesome norms, Trump will be doing what the Founders expected.   But in letting any president do that, Congress will be violating the role they were built to play. We need to stop talking so much about what Trump will do ad begin speaking in terms of what Congress lets him do."

Look, the GOP controls Congress now. We should expect them to try to push through their agenda as forcefully as possible. That's what majorities in Congress always have done and always will. That's life whether we like it or not.

Seems to me that Congressional Republicans are so afraid of upsetting our Snowflake President Trump that they won't reign him in. Because they probably figure that if they prompt more Trump meltdowns, they won't get their agenda through.

Or they're playing Trump.

Back in January, Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton who has turned himself into a bit of a liberal firebrand, posited the notion Congress is taking advantage of Trump and will hammer down on him when he stops being useful.

Reich recounted a conversation about Republicans in Congress  he had with an unidentified  Republican friend:

"They'll play along for awhile.....They'll get as much as they want - tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare - and blame him. And he's such a fool, he'll want to take credit for everything."

Of course I have no way of knowing if Reich's recounting of this conversation is accurate.

But if so, it's chilling. Republicans in Congress know what they're proposing is unpopular. The reason they're pursuing the agenda seems to be to enrich their "One Percent" rich friends and by extension, themselves.

These Congress Creatures also know that if voters focused their anger on them when things go south under this agenda, their jobs are in jeopardy.

So, find a stool pigeon who will take the blame instead. That would be Trump.

Then, when Trump does something over the top stupid, they'll find an excuse to impeach him and install Vice President Mike Pence as president.

Now, Pence is a right wing zealot, but he's sane, people in Congress like him, and the hope is he'll get things done.

However, as noted in many publications, liberals are learning lessons from the ultra-conservative radical Tea Party of all people. The Tea Party focused on Congress, and now liberals are doing the same.

In other words, people are trying to hold Congressional Republicans accountable.

We'll see if it works, but it's clear the GOP is feeling some pressure.

Getting back to Klein, he writes:

"Already, congressonl Republicans are complaining that their phone lines are jammed, that their town halls are swarmed, that protesters, as Rep. Dave Brat said, 'in my grills no matter where I go.' And already, congressional Republicans are beginning to slo cown on repealing Obamacare and peel off from Trump's most unqualified nominees, like Betsy DeVos."

True, the more liberal wing of the the nation has a huge uphill battle, at least so far. DeVos was ultimately confirmed, despite two moderate Republicans who voted against her.

It's also largely full steam ahead with the GOP agenda.

But the liberal pressure remains. The fact that it's causing headaches for some GOP Congress Creatures is bound to slow things down, or even make them think twice about overreaching if they want to keep their jobs.

In the past couple of days,  we've had Republican congress people hold town meetings that didn't go all that well.

One widely distributed video was certainly bad optics for Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee.

A young girl named Hannah Bradshaw asked the climate-denying Chaffetz, "Do you believe in science?"

The whole Chaffetz town hall was a complete mess, with a large crowd booing and shutting him down. True, many of these people were activists who never voted for Chaffetz and never will, but the scene had to take him aback a bit.

Especially since the crowd yelled "Do Your Job!" After all, part of Chaffetz's job is to investigate the Trump administration if there's funny business going on.

Chaffetz seems awfully reluctant to do that, but there's also public pressure, so, we'll see.

No doubt there is going to be LOTS of pressure on wimpy Republicans who won't stand up to Trump by the 2018 elections. Activists are already organizing campaigns and money and activism to be sure some incumbents sweat in two years.

I don't know where that will go, but Republican Congress Creatures are sure playing a risky game by sucking up to Trump. Risky for them, and even more risky for the nation.

Will they put country before career? I don't have confidence that they will, but one can hope, right?

Some Congress Creatures Are Profoundly Mentally Ill, And We're All Suffering For It.

A few relatively sane people managed to save the nation from an economic crisis with the budget deal last week,  so maybe, just maybe,  the inmates aren't running the asylum. 

But don't count on it. We haven't heard the last of that awful contingent in Congress that is profoundly mentally ill.
  
Think about it. The strange Tea Party wing that shut down the government and almost caused a global recession live in their own alternative reality where facts are besides the point. 

They just make up their own facts. It's more fun that way. 

They are so narcissitic that they expect the rest of the country to bend to their will, no matter how crazy their ideas and how many people oppose them.  And they delight in dragging the rest of us into their sad, twisted psycho drama.

Sounds like a severe mental illness to me.

Let's pick these symptoms apart.

Facts:

Most people base their decisions on the facts in front of them. Since everybody's different, people will  respond to the facts in various ways. That's why some politicians take a liberal course and others react in a conservative fashion when dealing with the facts, with reality.

That's fine. Eventually, the liberals and conservatives, using the facts as a guide, will argue a bit then work out some sort of compromise.  In the real world, maybe sane conservatives and liberals each have ideas that might improve Obamacare, improve the economy, improve our lives. Each side is worth listening to. 

However, the mentally ill Congress creatures, mostly Tea Party, that precipitated this mess didn't like the facts, so they just created their own reality, by retreating to their own bubble, brought to them by Fox News and lobbying groups like the ironically named Americans For Prosperity. 

So now, instead of dealing with facts, they think the economy won't suffer because they decide not to pay the nation's bills,  that shutting down the government will somehow lead to cost savings when in the real world it's worsening the deficit and made our economy take a $24 billion hit, that everybody supports them when in reality all the polls show most Americans really, really, really hate them.

Plus, they've gerrymandered their Congressional districts so much that they preside over what I might call weird shaped Tea Party ghettos.   

The alternate reality these Congress creatures live in is fed by a weird media and lobbying apparatus that tells them  our socialist terrorist Muslim Kenyan not legitimate president  put down his Quran, stop taking our guns away, and stop sending cash to terrorists, everything will be OK.  

It's why demonstrators, OK, one demonstrator, during a protest amid the shutdown decided to wave a Confederate flag in front of the White House, prompting  journalist Jeff Goldberg to Tweet:

"In many parts of America, waving a Confederate flag outside the home of a black family would be considered a very hostile act."

Note: Right now it's hard right conservatives who have this mental illness. But it can afflict the hard left, too. Chemtrails and 9/11 conspiracy theories, anyone?

Bottom line: That Congress creatures that created this mess are clinging to a fantasy world  is one sign that something is weird mentally. And they insist, are convinced they are right, that they are our saviors, that everyone else is wrong, and we should do whatever they say, no matter what people in the real world think

Which brings us to the next aspect of this mental illness:

Narcissism and No Responsibility:

The whole episode brought us a lot of weird moments that demonstrated this aspect of mental illness.

That's why we had one Congress Creature, Randy Neugebauer,  yelling at a park ranger for closing a national monument that HE helped close and the ranger had nothing to do with. We had another one, Lee Terry of Nebraska saying he wouldn't give up his salary during the shutdown, so that he could afford his "nice house."   (Both later apologized after the expected horrible press)

And we had another one saying the Democrats had to give the Republicans lots of concessions, because, well, they have to. 

"We're not going to be disrespected... We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is," said Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind. early in the shutdown.

Yeah, he didn't know what, but they have to get something to be respected. Um, don't you have to earn respect? 

Not all Tea Party and strongly conservative lawmakers are afflicted with this mental illness, of course. I heard one Tea Party Congressman from Virginia speak on NPR the other night who gave all the Tea Party talking points, but opposed the past two weeks of shenanigans because it harmed the country, didn't get them what they want, and avoided what he sensibly called "principled compromise."

Another conservative, Peter King, a conservative Congressman from New York who does not appear to be affected by this mental illness, was moved to say this last week:

"The party is going nuts.... So many people I run into who are normal people--and I hate to use that term--just don't understand what is going on."

To understand what's going on, what King and the rest of us should do is just examine U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is widely considered the ringleader of this debacle.

He's the one that did that weird, pointless 21 hour speech as the shutdown loomed railing against Obamacare. During the shutdown, he kept insisting he and the GOP were "winning" the fight, despite plunging poll numbers.

And when it was all over the other day, when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was saying a deal had been reached, Cruz tried to steal the media spotlight outside at that very moment saying he'd fight on

And Thursday,  Cruz said Thursday he wouldn't rule out causing another government shutdown to stop Obamacare. 

So they're all delusional. The sad thing is, had more sane people who oppose Obamacare, who have different ideas on how to coax the economy along, they might have made some progress had it not been for the crazies.

And the economy, Americans, wouldn't have suffered as a result. 

Of course, the whole point of trotting out these crazies is to make barely less crazy right wing ideas seem a bit less off the wall, thereby making them acceptable to us.

Hey, sequestration, which use to be regarded as completely off the wall, seems like the norm now.

Obviously, I have no good ideas on how to get out of this mess. I'm not a psychiatrist, so I can't fix Congress. I don't think anybody can. That's the disheartening thing about living with someone with a mental illness.

You're trapped in their chronic, sad condition.

All you can do is make jokes about it. The Onion had it right with its story last week about a broken sewer pipe. You've GOT to read it to make you feel better. (click on this hyperlink)  

U.S. Government Not Working, So Chris Cox Of South Carolina Steps In, Perfectly

My new hero is a guy named Chris Cox of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

My new hero Chris  Cox tidied up the grounds
around the Lincoln Memorial because the
government shutdown made the landscape look shabby  

Cox. 45, is a chain saw sculptor who is in Washington DC for an art show.

The government shutdown means that the grounds around national treasures like the Lincoln Memorial are not being maintained, so they're starting to look shabby.

So Cox got to work, big time.  

He bought a $200 leaf blower at Home Depot, spent $100 on a used lawn mower at a thrift shop and got to work.

He mowed the lawn around the Lincoln Memorial, cleared pathways with his leaf blower, used his chain saw to get rid of a huge branch that fell across a walkway during a Monday storm, and cleaned out the trash barrels.

The U.S. Parks Service, which isn't doing any work except shooing people away from national monuments, shooed Cox away, too, but he got most of his work done (I don't blame the park rangers for doing this. They're kind of under orders to do so thanks to the idiots shutting down the government.)

I love this bit about Cox in the Washington Post:

"He said her does not have a political position on the shutdown. 'I'm not here to point fingers,' he said. 'I only want to inspire people to come out and make a difference.'"

"The building behind me serves as a moral compass, not only for our country but for the world. And over my dead body are we going to find trash pouring out of these trash cans,' he said. 'At the end of the day, we are the stewards of these huildings that are memorials."

Well, Chris Cox is totally the breath of fresh air we needed!

Frankly, though, it's my experience that most people really want to do the right thing. They might be imperfect, mistaken, wrong, stupid sometimes, but overall, they get things right and make things in their path better.

But when egos get in the way, it all goes south. Really, certain members of Congress seem like they would rather save face than save their country. Totally disgusting.

You want to fall into despair, but then people like Cox come along. He makes you think that maybe, yeah the idiots running the show are causing a huge clusterfuck, but maybe the rest of us can clean up the mess.

Cox used a mower, a leaf blower, and his generous frame of mind to clean up the mess. Not all of us have a mower or a leaf blower that will do any good easing this government shutdown.  I do feel a bit helpless as Congress careens out of control. But at least we had Cox to put just a tiny bit of order into the chaos.

Thank you Chris!!

Most Blunt News Headline Ever: N.Y. Daily News And Congressional "Turds"

Tell us how you really feel, New York Daily News!

Today's New York Daily News  

There's widespread disgust with Congress with the shutdown and the failure to do their job and all that.

I saw a poll yesterday that shows Americans like Vladimir Putin more than they like Congress.  The sour, dour Putin gets a 19 percent approval rating while the Congressional approval rate is 10 percent.

I'd like to know who the 10 percent who like Congress. I haven't met any of them lately.

Today's New York Daily News cover, though, as you can see by the image in this post, takes the disgust with Congress to a new level.

So what do you think of the Daily News cover? Does it take things too far? Tell the truth? Prod people or Congress into action? Something else? Other opinions? I want to hear them. Just for fun, I guess

Poll says Congress is worse than Ebola and the Kardashians

Apparently, Congress is worse than root canals, traffic jams, colonoscopies, cockroaches and Nickelback, but better than telemarketers,  the ebola virus, communism, North Korea, playground bullies and Lindsay Lohan.

That's the result of a strange public opinion poll is making the rounds today from Public Policy Polling.

Are some of the people who work here worse than
the Kardashians?

We all know that Congress has a low public approval rating, hovering in the 8 to 10 percent range. (Who are the people who like the job Congress is doing?)

I wonder why Public Policy picked the items that could be better or worse than Congress, but I suppose they're worth pondering for a moment.

Let's start with things that are better than Congress, according to the poll:

Root canals and colonoscopies: I can see how they might be better. You're either drugged or knocked out when experiencing these. You need drugs to watch the news about Congress, so this all makes sense.

Cockroaches: It's fairly easy to get an exterminator to rid a home or business of cockroaches. Some incumbent Congress people who seem, well, spectacularly stupid seem to keep getting re-elected, so it is harder to get rid of them. So I get this.

Traffic jams: At least you can listen to decent music or something while stuck. Congressional debate isn't exactly melodious, so this makes sense, too.

Nickleback: Why do people so vicerallly hate this band, yet they sell so many records and get such crowds at their concerts?  To me, Nickleback is a bit boring and I'm not a fan, but I've heard much worse. So yes, Nickleback is better than Congress.

Now let's move on to things the public thinks, at least for now, are worse than Congress.

Ebola: You usually die of that, and Congress doesn't kill everybody, so Congress does have the edge here.

Telemarketers: I don't know. Congressional campaigns are not subject to the Do Not Call list, so they can robocall you with impunity during election season. Telemarketers can be stopped if they call Do Not Call numbers, so I think Congress is worse here.

Playground bullies: But aren't some members of Congress playground bullies? Let's call this one a tie.

Fidel Castro. A tyrant, worse than Congress. And Fidel's long winded speeches are far worse than anything the likes of Michelle Bachmann can come up with. So yes, Fidel is worse.

North Korea: The country's leaders are about as bad as they can come, and they kill people who criticize them. At least Congress won't kill me for criticizing them here. At least I hope not.

The Kardashians: They're just as tiresome as Congress. Call this one another tie.

So, readers, what things do YOU think are either better or worse than Congress? I welcome your suggestions.