"Fun Fact: The word 'tariff' comes from an old Ottoman Turkish word which, loosely translated, means 'I can't believe these fucking meatheads keep falling for this grifter's bullshit'. " -- driftglass
The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
In this week's episode, we break down Trump's chaotic new trade war and its immediate devastating impact on the markets. We draw parallels between this administration's trade "liberation" and the Bush-era Iraq War disaster, examining:
The fallout from Trump's sweeping tariff announcements that wiped $1.65 trillion from the US stock market in minutes
The mass layoffs hitting public health agencies, senior services, and cultural institutions
How Elon Musk's DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is driving record job cuts across the country
Surprising Democratic victories in local elections across Wisconsin and Illinois despite Musk spending millions
The ongoing SignalGate scandal expanding as more security lapses are revealed
Laura Loomer's alarming influence over national security personnel decisions
Join us in the Cornfield Resistance for our trademark blend of political analysis, righteous anger, and sardonic humor as we document the latest chapter in Republican mismanagement. As we remind our listeners: "Never forget, it was our Republican neighbors, colleagues and family members who did this. This is what they voted for."
In episode 888 of The Professional Left Podcast, hosts driftglass and Blue Gal dive into the political landscape of April 1st, 2025, where April Fools Day is effectively canceled at the Cornfield Resistance due to the real Fool occupying the Oval Office.
The hosts examine how Republicans have weaponized language over decades, tracing the destructive path from Newt Gingrich's slash-and-burn politics through Rush Limbaugh's hate radio to Trump's presidency. They contrast this with Democrats' constant pressure to be "civil" and "bipartisan," recalling Senator Durbin's tearful apology for his anti-Gitmo torture comments while Republicans never apologize for anything.
Also covered: Senator Cory Booker's filibuster against hate, the White House Correspondents' Association's capitulation by canceling comedian Amber Ruffin, Elon Musk's dangerous plan to replace the COBOL code running Social Security payments, and a news roundup featuring Trump's latest attacks on democracy—from Signal-gate to tariff impacts, DEI funding cuts, and threats to the Smithsonian.
Don't miss this sharp, unapologetic analysis of why "talking to the other side" isn't viable when the other side has abandoned democratic principles entirely.
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner
In keeping with the tenor of our times, I'm not going to apologize in advance
for what I am about to do.
Apologies are so 2012.
Instead I'm going to focus on how perilous this post is about to
become.
Will it be as dangerous as the Triple Lindy?
Possibly. Because today I'm going to try the rare 20th Anniversary Fundraiser
Double Post, and feat which has driven men mad in the attempt. Others have had to be hospitalized with severe leg cramps and
loss of object permanence.
But for you good people, I'mma give it a go.
First, some business. This is part of my 20th blogiversary thing, so
here's the tip jar if you feel so inclined.
Burn The Lifeboats
With that out of the way, next up is this bit of prose. If you're so inclined, let me know what
you think of it down in the comments:
Every few years some new, soulless, ambitious goon clambers out of the moral
sewer of the Party of Personal Responsibility to seize control of the
vocabulary of Hate Radio and appoint himself the party's Demagogue-in-Chief
for the moment, harvesting the ever-ripe-and-ready paranoia and rage of the
GOP base and dragging us all a little further down the road the Hell.
Checks a lot of boxes, doesn't it? The depravity of a party that just
keeps spawning monsters. Hate Radio vocab being the Mother Tongue of the
party base. The party's lust for an authorization strong man who would
harvest the preexisting rage and paranoia the Republican voters.
Pretty standard stuff these days, right? Nothing you wouldn't hear on
any given day in 2025 from any MSNBC Never Trumper, or in any essay at The
Bulwark, or on any Lincoln Project podcast.
Bold. Edgy. Truth-Telling.
Except its not from 2025. And it's not from an MSNBC Never Trumper, or a
Bulwark, or a Lincoln Project podcast. In fact, it's from
2013. That's two years before Trump even existed in the
Republican firmament. And it's from me. And I can tell you that,
back in 2013, such talk was not greeted as
Bold, Edgy, Truth-Telling back by all those Republicans would later respawn
and re-emerge as MSNBC Never Trumpers and Bulwark publishers and Lincoln
Project advertising moguls.
In fact, such talk was mockingly dismissed by such people as ...
Liberal. Crackpot. Alarmism.
In fact, many of those same people have blamed people like me for conjuring
Trump into existence So you can maybe kinda see why actual Liberal voices are
not welcome on the largest Liberal and/or Resistance media platforms.
Because we remember all the inconvenient things which those platforms are
designed to erase of the memory of man.
Back in 2013, the Republican thug de jure was a fella named Ted Cruz,
and while he had been a darling of the moutbreathers and Khaki Klansmen who
make up the base of the GOP, his doomed strategy of trying to filibuster and
shutdown Barack Obama and Democrats into defunding Obama's signature health
care reform flopped hard. And almost overnight Republicans who had sworn
fealty to Canadian-born Zodiac killer prime suspect, Raphael Edward Cruz began
to bail:
Again, from 2013:
Now that Republicanism Personified Ted Cruz is starting to rot from the
amygdala down, members of the
still-batshit-crazy-but-not-quite-that-batshit-crazy sub-genus of the
Stupid/Crazy Party are stumbling over each other to score their "I've Been Against Ted Cruz Since..." Red Badges of Political Courage. For example, here is what
confidence trickster Peter King -- a man who was perfectly happy tossing
gobbets of red meat to the teabagger crocodile until it turned on him -- now
has to say about his competition for the hearts and wallets of the rubes:
“I took a chance when Ted Cruz was the darling of the
Republicans,” King added. “It was only two weeks ago, but he was the darling of Republicans. I was
the only guy taking him on nationwide.”
Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Robin...
But, as I warned back in 2013...
Of course, Cruz and King and all the rest of the Koch brothers' hired help
are not the problems: they are merely the latest and most stomach-churning
surface manifestations of the long, deep, Conservative rot that has been eating at the heart of the United States for generations:
...
Unfortunately, the calamity of a potential default has tempered neither
judgment nor passion. On Saturday, Ted Cruz—the man who lit the match, won
the Values Voters Straw Poll with 42 percent of the vote. Channeling her
inner Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) concluded that the
President “committed impeachable offenses.” Bachmann also proclaimed that
civil disobedience was a potential response to Obama’s “thuggery,” and
compared the Obama presidency to Egypt’s deposed Muslim Brotherhood...
Yep. Still more stuff which all of your favorite Never Trump teevee and
podcasting celebrities dismissed at the time Liberal. Crackpot.
Alarmism.
In fact, you'll never guess what former Bulwark employee and frequent Bulwark
returning guest Amanda Carpenter was doing for a living back in 2013 as I was
writing this. From Wikipedia:
In January 2013, Carpenter became senior communications advisor and
speechwriter for Senator Ted Cruz
Wowsers.
But hang on, because here comes the second part of the extremely difficult 20th Anniversary Fundraiser Double Post.
Because that 2013 post warning about the rise of Republican demagogues and how
Cruz very publicly screwing the pooch it was making life difficult (with the
emphasis on "cult") for Republican quislings and collaborators who had gone along with Cruz, in
turn referred back to a post I had written during my very first few days as a
blogger.
Back to April 1, 2005, to a post that had originated as a comment over at the
late Steve Gilliard's News Blog as I believe was the impetus for Steve kicking
me out and insisting that I start a blog of my own.
(This particular bit started life as a comment in Gilliard's Shoppe but has been Repurposed to better serve You, The Customer :-)
The little-“p” politics of this is fascinating. [The fact that] Over
the long run that the GOP is demographically/electorally doomed to become
the minority Thurston Howell Party again. Either when the Fundy Shining Path
Rebels that make up their margin of victory make one too many batshit
demands, or are are told “No” once too often.
(If you want to get a clear picture of how this will look, rent “Fatal
Attraction” or “Play Misty For Me”. I’m not going to be ignored,
George!)
So either they take their bat and ball and stomp disgustedly back to Mordor,
or a handful of moderate Republicans get so freaked out by the Randall Terry
Wing of the Party that they bolt or stay home.
But short run…Tom DeLay is now a Household Name. Been waiting 10 years for
that to happen and always amazed that Republicans had no
fucking clue who he was, even though you’d tell them five or a hundred
times. Sheesh. All RAM and no Hard Drive with some people.
Every GOP Leader knows the Gingrich Lesson: No matter how much the
membership owes you, they’ll go absolutely Lord of The Flies on your
Piggy-ass the minute you becomes a measurable liability. Newt was so
completely “I Am The Reich” that he would have been perfectly happy to go
into the bunker and fight it out until the GOP was razed to rubble had he
not been stopped by his own House Republicans.
And since the Suddenly Huge Liability named Tom DeLay is now just “Tell Tale
Heart”--thundering away under the GOP floorboards, threatening
to drown out everything else, the question is, will that same dynamic play
twice?
Well DeLay ain’t Gingrich. He learned from that episode, and they don’t call
him The Hammer for his shipwright skills. He spent a decade forcibly
collecting GOP testicles and caching them in his private Crown Royal bag. At
the slightest provocation he will to politically and personally destroy
anyone who doesn’t bend a deep knee to His Gorgon Awfulness.
And both the Texas and National Republican parties have shown absolutely
craven willingness to rewrite the Rules on the fly any time the Beast’s
wet-bar needed to be restocked with virgin’s blood, or whenever a law or
policy might make threaten to cinch-in the bottomless lust he and his
stooges have for Power, Money, Trinkets and Perks, even a trifle.
So (hahah!) they’ve kinda disarmed themselves to accommodate him, and now
they’re stuck very much up on that very windy gibbet with him. So if you
were running in 2006 and playing How Do I Save My Pink Republican Skin while
DeLay is holding your ass held hostage, what do you do?
Got to time it juuuust right. Jump away from Herr DeLay too soon and he’ll
blow your head off. Jump too late, and your face will be morphed into Tom
DeLay…into Randall Terry…into, I dunno, Osama Bin Laden? in every ad, every
day, for the entire election cycle.
My simple suggestion for voters in 2006?
Shoot the hostage ;-)
I concluded my 2013 Ted Cruz post with this:
For the record, to my knowledge not a single Conservative politician,
professional Both Sider or mainstream media creature who has ever even
briefly awakened to the fact that the GOP is run by monsters has ever
acknowledged that the Left was right all along.
And damn if it this isn't still 100% true.
Finally, a sincere "thank you" for your readership, support and (mostly) kind words lo' these
many years.
And if you missed the tip jar at the entrance, for your So convenience the
staff has helpfully placed one nearby which you can see as you exit through the gift shop.
Sorta like ATMs at casinos: :-)
Except for the fig leaf of a warrant, it's all there.
The smarmy, arrogant ignorance.
The dismissal of all warnings that what this idiot is about to do will cause a
disaster. From Wired:
DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse
Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.
And, of course, after the disaster, this idiot blaming the people who tried to stop him from blowing everything up.
