My Dad was fond of saying "There's no fool like an old fool!" when some politician or public figure did or said something egregiously stupid or reactionary. Mind you, my Dad was what was once considered to be moderate conservative, a GOP faction now reduced to being little more than useful-idiot status to aid the Ryans' and the Kochs' reactionary agendas.

Regardless of my Dad's political opinions, I still believe that he was right. Several decades of living can give you experience as to who's who and what's what. Used properly, it gives you the experience to go with the observation to inform you who is lying to you, who is incompetent, and what looks like Bee S.

Figuring out which politicians or broadcasters (secular and religious both) were lying to you isn't that hard or all that time-consuming. I believe anyone with a high school diploma and average intelligence can do it.

My beef with Trump voters is that they had days, weeks, months, and years to figure out that Trump and the Republicans were lying to them and they refused to pick up the tools provided by experience, literacy, and, I'll say it, prayer and meditation to make wiser choices this fall, AND THEY REFUSED TO USE THEM.

My belief about older Trump voters is they go-created what's about to fall on them (And the rest of us too) and they were old enough to know better.

I believe that today's Republican Party has turned into an oligarchical party. I know this isn't news here at DU, but I don't think most of us realize what sort of oligarchical party the Republican Party has transformed itself into. I strongly believe that the GOP has turned itself into an oligarchical party with behaviors and norms of a typical 20th century Latin American oligarchical party found in Central America, South America, and the Spanish Caribbean.

We've got most of the behaviors of an oligarchy: the use of the state for self-enrichment, corruption of the electoral process, the refusal to use the power of the state to better the lot of the common man and woman.

But we also have: the use of race-baiting and the disdain for darker-skinned folks, attacks on political dissident, and a tolerance for foreign meddling in its internal affairs.

One of the entertaining ironies of this elections is that alt-right and more garden-variety immigrant-bashers have unwittingly collaborated in creating the same sorts of political and economic structures that so many of those darker-skinned people fled when they crossed into the USA.

But I'm not going to say "Congratulations" Señor Tromp.

I'm thinking that some of the folks over at the other place deserve heaping helpings of ridicule.

Having had some of my posts deleted here and there over the years for purported (but non-existent) sexual innuendo and alleged (but non-existent) obscenity, I intend to keep my posts PG rated, but thoroughly unpleasant.

putting Harriet Tubman on the twenty dollar would somehow undermine property rights because she helped bought-and-paid-for slaves escape to freedom.

One of my beefs with the Chavez-ista regime in Venezuela is that it has failed what I strongly believe is one of the major roles of government: to promote general prosperity. The Chavez regime failed to create a healthy private sector or run its state-owned businesses properly, triggering inflation, capital flight, uncertainty, unemployment and poverty.

This is not to trash socialism as an ideal or as practice. There are some government-run enterprises here and there around the planet, some of which generate positive returns for their citizens. But economically healthy socialist states also have healthy private economic sectors, too. Sadly, Venezuela lacks both and is unlikely to acquire either as long as the current party continues to run it.

That won't stop some of Bernie's fan-boys and fan-girls from making T O S complaints. I had a couple of my post hidden because some indignant little dear thought my swipes at the Republicans actually referred to them.

For the benefit of Bernie's fan-base, when I call a certain political faction a Gathering Of Psychotics, I am making a word-play mocking the Republican Party calling themselves the Grand Old Party. GOP. Gathering Of Psychotics. There isn't ANYTHING about Senator Sanders and his followers UNLESS YOU PUT IT THERE WITH YOUR OWN MINDS. I was referring to the REPUBLICANS.

Get it?

Geez, I hope so.

The Wall Street Journal has been prancing through the daisies on the road to journalistic perdition well before Rupert Murdoch took it over. Paul Krugman delivered an on-time, on-target salvo.

Brett Stephens, you don't work for a reputable publication; you work for a publication that turned to blatant partisan w###### decades ago, and you're being called out for it.

Count your blessings, bub. At least it ain't physical. No post-liberation head-shaving, no scarlet "A."

What, all the Republicans who have ( and ought to) reservations about Trump's economic and foreign policy proposals are going to dutifully line up and vote for him?

And The majority of AA and Latino voters are going to become Trimpsters too, especially as the racist dog whistles go audible?

Sorry, I don't buy that.

The right-wing hate machine was already active before the fall 2008 campaign started. I doubt anything close to a plurality of the folks who listen to RW talk radio or read Breibart would vote for Team Donkey even if Bernie Sanders got annointed in public by G*d's holy angels and Old Testament prophets.

I think Hillary has a shot of capturing a lot of the Republican vote, that portion that is eclipsed in GOP primaries by the nutcases but still has tangential connections with sanity.

For once I concur with the Donald. The WSJ probably DOES hate him.

My personal politics are probably far enough right to incite Bernistas to label me a Jesse Helms Republican (And I admit I like Hillary and think her proposals are more achievable than the honorable senator from Vermont's), but nevertheless I came to the conclusion decades ago that the Wall Street Journal's editorial page was rank propaganda, and not even informed opinion. Even BEFORE the WSJ was taken over by Rupert Murdoch, I had come to believe that the whacko-bird mindset of the editorial pages was seeping onto the accuracy and reliability of what was printed on the WSJ's news pages like what flows from a bank of plugged toilets at sold-out football stadium.

Marco Rubio reminds me of a Bible Mis-quote: "Old wine in new skins."


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And not the good stuff either!