Tell me something I don't know

 It seems as if everybody's quiz category is The Bleeding Obvious, as John Cleese would say.  Why is it being reported as NEWS?

Mitch McConnell is not the dumbest member of his party by far, but when did he become an oracle?  Does it just come with being 83?  He gave an interview to the Lexington Herald-Leader yesterday and pronounced this "the most dangerous period since before World War II.  There's certain similarities right now to the '30s."  Similarities, you say?  Political violence, the erosion of civil liberties, the mainstreaming of racism and misogyny?  Not exactly.  McConnell pointed to "the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, widely believed...to have taken the Depression worldwide."  In other words, tariffs as a tool of isolationism, i.e., "America First."  That's why "North Korea, China, Russia, Iran and Iran's proxies" hate us.  He's not happy about the war in Ukraine because "we need to avoid the headline at the end of the war 'Russia wins, America loses.'  It has huge worldwide implications."  The implications for Ukraine are far worse.

The interviewer didn't ask about having a Russian puppet as president or a probable Russian agent as Director of National Intelligence, and McConnell declined to criticize this situation or to take any responsibility for bringing it about.  He did, however, point to the stuffing of the federal bench with Federalist Society stooges as his proudest achievement, the one that led inexorably to the Roberts court and its unprecedented invention of "presidential immunity," which in turn led to Trump's war on everything from private universities to late night television.  For McConnell the ultimate law, the Eleventh Commandment, is the word of St. Reagan:  "Do not speak ill of another Republican."  His reward is that Trump hates him and can't wait to see him replaced by Nate Morris.   Also, if you think there was a time when the Republican Party was a benign institution, you must be remembering Theodore Roosevelt.

Money talks, and when people who own the money talk, we're expected to listen.  Ray Dalio, whose hedge fund Bridgewater Associates owns around $19 billion, is worried about income inequality.  He too compares the present with the 1930-1940 period with "increased populism of the right and populism of the left and irreconcilable differences between them that can't be resolved through the democratic process."  Why does this sound familiar?  Maybe because Louis Brandeis said the same thing a hundred years ago:  "We can have vast wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy.  We cannot have both."  Over a hundred years earlier Alexander Hamilton, who more or less invented American capitalism, said something similar:  "As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard."  Dalio writes books in which he warns of the dangers of unsustainable debt growth and of attempts (Trump again) to interfere with the central bank.  Dude, you've got $19 billion -- what are you doing to reverse these abuses?  We know what the problem is and I think you might be part of it.

Speaking of interference in the central bank, Stephen Miran has been named to the board of the Federal Reserve but does not plan to give up his job as a White House economic adviser.  Conflict of interest?  What century are you from?

The White House, where organic intelligence is experiencing record scarcity, has an Artificial Intelligence Education task force, and who better to lead it than 30% silicone Melania Trump?  With Maleducation Secretary Linda "WWE" McMahon looking on, she called on "leaders and parents" to "manage AI's growth responsibly...as we would our own children -- empowering but with watchful guidance."  Poor Barron.  Anyway, it's something for MAGA Evita to do.

The Trump gang are taking actual steps to ban gun ownership -- but only by the transgender, who they brand "mentally ill."  Apparently it's not too soon after a mass shooting to "politicize" it.  And we inch closer to Soviet-style "psychiatric hospitals" for imprisoning the inconvenient.  Over at Newsmax Chris "House" Plante wants to ban Democrats from owning guns -- also "mentally ill"?  Everybody calm down -- the politicians haven't heard from the NRA yet.  A sale is a sale.

Totalitarian states also encourage/require people to rat on their neighbors, co-workers, even parents.  Texas has a law allowing anyone to sue abortion pill manufacturers, doctors and anyone who mails the pills for up to $100,000.  It has another law that imposes a $125,000 fine for using the "wrong" bathroom, which is clearly twenty percent worse.  Priorities.