Angry Mom: Hauling out the Time-Out Chair

This week has been a disaster — yet another week of disasters — and it’s only Thursday. Every time I check my news feed I see something that makes me want to march an overgrown child toward the time-out chair.

How did we devolve to this point where the basics of civilized human behavior we teach preschoolers are thrown out the door like quaint but useless antique artifacts?

Like Turkey’s Erdogan inciting goons to rough up protesters protester on U.S. soil.

Time out. NO. You do NOT abuse your host’s hospitality by disregarding their laws. I hope law enforcement has tracked down one identified offending minion to his New Jersey construction firm to have a chat with them about their violent behavior.

Or Montana’s GOP Congressional candidate roughing up a journalist during a tantrum over questions about the House AHCA bill’s CBO numbers.

Time out. NO. You do NOT assault and batter anyone, especially a journalist who represents your constituency by exercising a First Amendment right.

Both of these ugly incidents would fail this mom’s rule: DO. NOT. TOUCH. ANYBODY. WITHOUT. THEIR. CONSENT.

How many conflicts are violations of this simple rule?

Just KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF.

Failure to do so here is an automatic grounding after a stint in time-out and a loss of privileges. I hope Montana’s voters punish Gianforte at the polls, but if they rely on the example Trump set in response to Erdogan’s abuse on our land, they won’t. Fundraising after the assault unfortunately suggests many GOP voters are a lost cause.

Now AG Jeff Sessions claims he was advised not to disclose his interactions with foreign agents while completing his security clearance forms.

Time out. NO. You do NOT offer a “dog ate my homework” excuse and prevaricate about anything related to security clearance while blaming somebody else. Fess up. Further, you should step down since you have not demonstrated by leadership the honesty and integrity required of our nation’s law enforcement by lying under oath more than once.

We’re also told GOP Congressman Mark Meadows was teary-eyed after he read yesterday’s CBO numbers analyzing the latest House version of the AHCA.

Time out. NO. You do NOT cry after the fact about your lack of spine after you voted for that death sentence for many Americans who would lose their insurance coverage. You didn’t do your homework nor check your work before you voted for it. You didn’t vote against it based on incomplete work. Buck up, wipe your eyes and march right into your office now. Issue an apology to every one of your constituents for failing to faithfully execute your office, and then contact your state’s senators and tell them you regret you didn’t do your job before offering to assist with a remedy.

The capper: the lies, lies, LIES from Budget Director Mark Mulvaney’s mouth yesterday. Do NOT sit there and tell the public 3% percent growth is realistic when your party is planning to:

— cut health care coverage for those who can least afford it; hello, escalating health care-driven bankruptcies?

cut after-school programs and food aid to children whose families can least afford it; these families won’t be spending money on transportation and better housing if they can’t buy food already.

mess with college tuition loans and forgiveness;

— cut funding to science and art in many different ways; just how do you think artists and researchers make a living? They can’t and don’t all work in private sector; corporations depend on the output from publicly-funded science and art.

I could go on but the problem isn’t details ignored but the lies. Mulvaney and his team didn’t crunch numbers and they’re lying that they did, or they did crunch the numbers and they’re lying that they ran them properly. There’s simply no way TWO TRILLION DOLLARS can be yanked out of the economy without a corresponding Jenga-effect, when nearly a third of Americans pay half their wages for housing leaving too little left as a buffer. There’s simply no way we should allow this brazen deceit to be shoved in our faces without repercussions.

Time. Out. Mulvaney should step down because he’s simply unable to do the execute his job in a manner which safeguards the public’s welfare. ALL of the public, not just the One Percent who can afford to buy all the health care they want.

It just doesn’t stop. While I sit here and fume, wishing I could put this entire administration and nearly all GOP members elected and otherwise in time out, Trump is bullying Europe, being rude during handshakes, literally shoving Montenegro around during a photo op and badgering our EU allies about money.

See the bit above about KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF — this guy simply doesn’t get this rule, whether shoving the newest member of NATO, snatching at Melania’s hand on the tarmac, or grabbing some other woman’s pussy.

He also can’t be bothered with doing his homework, going off about NATO members’ economic contributions without any obvious effort to understand how NATO works. He’d rather suck up to vicious and deadly bullies like the Philippines’ Duterte while spilling more intelligence. Not to mention the blatant lies he made to his supporters during his campaign about Medicaid — now squarely on the chopping block.

But worst of all is the GOP’s reaction to the AHCA. Sure, Meadow’s all torn up a little too late. What about the rest of the damned Republican Party? They’re completely okay with voting party-over-country for a pig-in-a-poke which turns out to be a deadly xenomorph for 23 million Americans? They’re peachy-keen with offering a nearly insignificant number of Americans some financial reward they don’t actually need?

If you’re a billionaire, you can only be on so many yachts at the same time. You can only reside in so many multi-million dollar urban luxury apartments or vineyards you can’t staff cheaply without breaking immigration laws. You don’t need the money. Your country does, however.

As a society we teach our children universal ethics, valuing love, truthfulness, fairness, freedom, unity, tolerance, responsibility, respect for life. These ethics transcend all boundaries between people.

And yet the individuals and the groups to which the misbehaved belong appear to have misplaced these shared values. How can you love and tolerate your fellow human when you’re grabbing them by the throat to obstruct their freedom or incite violence against them? How can you demonstrate truthfulness and responsibility by lying repeatedly to the people you have sworn to serve? How can you show unity with humanity and respect for their lives when you offer only pretense at protecting them?

Time out to the poorly behaved. Go to a corner and think about this. Don’t come out until you are ready to take responsibility for your actions, be accountable for your deeds, and act like a adult.

The true adults among us must wield some discipline. Lives are at stake. We no longer have the luxury of standing by and ignoring others’ poorly behaved children. They’re all ours; it’s on us.

Use this as an open thread while we wait for the final results of today’s special election in Montana.

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11 replies
  1. MB says:

    The not touching bit….what about giving someone a hug when they’ve not asked for it? You know, colleagues leaving for a new job – happened to me yesterday.

  2. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Your web filter suddenly deletes comments originating from Tor browser.  To coin a phrase, fix that hole in your pocket, please.  Thanks.

  3. Alan says:

    Speaking of children:

    Theresa May and the British Tories have started to come unstuck. May is a child who managed to pass an an adult in the media up until about a week or so ago. Apparently attacking pensioners, your core voting constituency, isn’t such a good electoral strategy. Normally one would also think that an event like the Manchester bombing would play to Tory “law and order” strengths but it turns out that the Manchester police (there’s video of this) as well as the Libyan community have been warning her about the threat of radicalization for several years and all she’s done is cut police and community support. Oops. The Tories are still ahead in the polls and the betting has to be that they will still win (because we know Labour haven’t got the wherewithal to stick the political knife in deep and twist when they get the opportunity) but she and they are damaged and looking anything but “Strong and Stable”. It may be wishful thinking but we might get a hung parliament and a “coalition of chaos”.

    Also, Saturday is the 40th Anniversary of the release of God Save the Queen –as applicable to little england as it ever was, maybe more so:
    …God save your mad parade
    Oh Lord God have mercy…
    There is no future
    And England’s dreaming…

    • P J Evans says:

      I understand that the Muslims had reported that particular guy already, as being a problem. And that he’d been kicked out of at least one mosque, probably two, as he had been attending one that wasn’t near his home.

  4. Charles says:

    Welcome to Planet Psychopath, where every day is a new adventure in the abnormal.

    Can’t wait for the Friday night news dump, which should be coming in about 15 minutes from this post.

    • P J Evans says:

      And we have two wonderful stories in it:

      The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked for docs from the shitgibbon’s campaign, back to 2015.

      Kushner asked Kislyak for a channel to Moscow, using Russian diplomatic facilities. Kislyak was floored by the request.

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