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Republicans are pretending to be upset that Obama didn’t attend Scalia’s funeral.(I say pretending because of course they are.  Everything is a  political calculation  with  these guys.  They have no true emotions) Trump tweeted a funny little joke that Obama probably would have attended if the funeral were in a Mosque, ha ha.

The thing is, if he’d attended, they’d be saying he  was showboating, taking  advantage of Scalia’s death for a photo-op, making it all about himself, etc… You can’t win.

Does anybody remember Paul Wellstone’s funeral?  It was 2002, pretty much the year of peak evil.  Paul  Wellstone was a liberal Democratic Senator from  the state of Minnesota who died (along with  his  wife, his  daughter, and a few staffers) in a small plane crash.  Things happen. No conspiracy was ever proved, although  I have  my suspicions.  But that’s not  my point.

A bunch of Republicans showed up  for  the funeral.  Which  would have  been O.K., if they were truly there out of respect, but they  weren’t.  They acted like  assholes  during a eulogy, they got booed, and the next day the  Republican propaganda machine,  led  by Fox News, swung into action.  By the end  of the  day, it  was the Democrats who’d turned  the funeral into a tacky political rally.  It was one of the most  fucked up things  I’ve ever  seen the Republicans do, and they totally got  away with  it.

So,  here’s the  way I see it.  If  you want to respect the  dead, and their family, but you didn’t really respect them in life (and, let’s face  it, Scalia was a  piece of shit) just  stay away from their funeral.

Thursday, I tried something new  in my German kids’ class.  This is far my most difficult class, they  have decided  as  a group that their  main goal in life is to make my life miserable.

There were only two kids in  the  group, one of  my regulars,  who is,  in many ways, the worst one, and another kid  from the kindergarten who I didn’t know.  They do that sometimes.  If there aren’t enough kids in the group they’ll invite one  of the other kids  to try the English lesson.

Anyway, my brilliant new plan was an obvious one, I  guess; puppets.  I kept their interest for  about the first 15 minutes, but  for that lot, that’s  a  minor miracle.

So, I tried it  today with my slightly  older group.  It worked super well.

I need to work on  my routine quite a bit , but I’ll have lots of time for that.

One little girl, who doesn’t talk  if  she can avoid it, made a puppet  of the own, a little pink thing made from her hat and  stuffed into her jacket sleeve. At the end of the class , I told her that ‘Max’ was our best student.

She  was very pleased with that.

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As long as we agree that governments have to collect some taxes, for civilization to continue, so the police and firemen can continue to get paid, so the schools will remain open and the teachers continue to teach, so the garbage will be collected and pothole will continue to get filled, even if not always in as timely a manner as we would like,  then all we are really arguing about is the amount of those taxes.

If you do not  agree that governments have to collect some taxes, then our views of civilization are divergent enough  that you might as well stop reading now.  I’m not going to convince you of anything.

What Bernie Sanders is suggesting is a 4% increase – 4 pennies on the dollar – on incomes of over $250,000 a year.  It’s very modest.

It’s not punitive, as I’ve heard some people say.  Punitive would be throwing people in jail for making that much money, and nobody’s suggesting that.  It’s not even confiscatory, as I’ve heard others argue.  If someone is making over $250,000 – a quarter of a million -a year, and they don’t want to spend the extra 4% in taxes, all they have to do is re-invest that portion of their annual income over $250,000: open a new branch, buy a couple of new trucks for the fleet, hire a few people.  They’ll still have the wealth, just not in paper form, and the economy will still get a boost, so everybody wins, either way.

The other new tax he is proposing is one half of one percent on stock market transactions. So, if you buy $10,000 worth of stock, you’ll have to shell out a $50 transaction tax.  That’s dinner and drinks and, for those guys, not even an expensive dinner.  I don’t think it’s going to chill the market.

Sander’s is not asking for a lot, and we’d get universal health care, a better education system, and badly needed repairs to the infrastructure.  Repairing the infrastructure would provide jobs, which would reduce welfare and, overall, improve the economy.

Socialism?  O.K.  It sounds like a good deal to me.

I  know I’ve been writing about politics an  awful lot  lately but the crazy  train is picking up speed and if you skip a  day  you miss some incredible  lunacy.

I’d like to offer one sobering observation at this point, though.  We know pundits have been  constantly amazed that Trumps support has  not imploded – not after the Mexican rapists comment, not after insulting John McCain and everybody who’s  ever been a  POW, not after saying he could shoot somebody on  5th  avenue and get away  with  it, not after saying ‘Ted Cruz  is a Pussy’ (which was not like an accident  when he  didn’t know the mike was turned on; He said it, in front of a large crowd, and they  cheered).  We have gradually come to  the  realization that  Trump’s support really is that solid.  It’s weird, but there it is.

The strange thing is, none of the other Republicans can be forced out, either.  Pundits thought Rubio was finished after his comically robotic response to Christie during a recent debate.  But he’s still in there, just picked  up an endorsement from Nikki Haley, governor of a  Carolina, never can remember which one, and that the same day as he was busted making an ad saying “Morning Again in America,” even though one of the scenes  shown was of Vancouver.

Jeb Bush is still in, despite only having 1 or 2% in the polls.  Tweeting his gun earned him a lot of derision among liberals, it certainly makes him look more ridiculous than Dukakis  in a tank, but it won’t hurt him a bit with Republican voters.

Ted Cruz is still going strong, despite his wife’s crazy speech about how he is God incarnate, damned near, and despite his outrageous claim that Obama plans to sandblast the crosses off all the Christian graves at Arlington cemetery.

The craziest thing John Kasich has done is to suggest a cabinet level Department of Christian Values, which is totally unconstitutional and scary but, by Republican standards, totally normal.  And he’s still in the race.

The way I see it, none of them can be forced out at this point.  Rubio, Kasich and Bush are just hoping that Trump and Cruz will destroy each other and they, like Romney, will be the only choice left.

Any of them could  be right.

Chelsea Clinton’s comment today that Sanders opposition to mass incarceration is ‘worrying’ is, in itself, a little bit worrying.

First, because up to  this  point, I had no particular reason to  dislike  Chelsea Clinton.  I still think of her as the nice,  little girl who lives in the White House.  Sure, she’s out on the campaign trail speaking  for her Mom, who I particularly dislike, but I can understand her motivation.  It’s her Mom, for goodness sake.  Every politician is at least loved by their family, with the possible exceptions of  creepy Ted Cruz, and backstabbing  Donald Trump.

Sure, she’s insanely wealthy and never had to work for it.  That’s O.K.  If I could be wealthy without working for it, I’d take it.  Most people would.

But, when  she says that, she is saying it’s O.K to have prisons run for profit, and it’s O.K. to throw people in jail for bizarrely long  stretches for a bit of weed.  It’s  not O.K.

It underscores one of Hillary’s biggest problems.  Whatever she says (or has her  minions say) is not going to get her elected.  In fact, it seems how unelectable she is.  If she comes out against fracking, or for solar panels, or in favor of maple syrup on pancakes,  Bernie  was there first.  If she tries to draw a distinction, she  comes off looking like a shit.