Contributors

Friday, December 28, 2018

How Can Trump Supporters Look At Themselves In The Mirror In The Morning?

Yesterday, a former Mossad chief pointed out the obvious.

"Officials in Moscow looked at the 2016 U.S. presidential race and asked, ‘Which candidate would we like to have sitting in the White House? Who will help us achieve our goals?’ And they chose him. From that moment, they deployed a system [of bots] for the length of the elections, and ran him for president,” former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo told the audience at the Marker’s digital conference in Israel on Monday, where experts gathered to discuss online disinformation campaigns and bots.

“What we’ve seen so far with respect to bots and the distortion of information is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the greatest threat of recent years, and it threatens the basic values that we share—democracy and the world order created since World War Two,” Pardo noted, according to Haaretz.

And that's from the best intelligence agency in the world. So, how do Trump supporters look at themselves in the mirror every morning knowing that they are supporting a traitor to our country? They are acting against the interests of our country. Why? Because they have only one conviction: hating Democrats.


That makes them traitors and here is where we should send them, starting with right wing bloggers and commenters.


I wonder how many of them are actively involved with Russian trollbot farms. In fact, perhaps many right wing bloggers and commenters aren't even real people. They used fake names and certainly seem like caricatures to me.

If they are real people, I just don't see how they can NOT be completely disgusted with themselves.


Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Who the Hell Is Running this Country?

An article by Erik Wemple on the Washington Post posits the following: Television is running this country.

Wemple concluded that Donald Trump didn't read Jim Mattis's resignation letter because it contained serious rebukes of the way Trump runs our foreign policy, but Trump didn't realize this because he fired Mattis in anger a couple days later, after talking heads on Fox News told him that Mattis had insulted him. So Trump fired Mattis two months early.

Logically, one could infer that Trump hadn't read the letter. It was, after all, a whole page long. Another inference could be that Trump had read the letter, but hadn't understood it because it contained multisyllabic words.

Further evidence that Trump is being run by conservative blabbermouths comes from his decision to shut down the government. He had originally agreed to sign a continuing resolution to keep the government open (i.e., he had been talked into a deal by Democrats), until Ann Coulter starting whining that Trump supporters would abandon him if he didn't get the wall. I.e., Trump was pussy-whipped into shutting down the government by a scrawny blonde.

But then there's this:
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

Trump stunned his Cabinet, lawmakers and much of the world with the move by rejecting the advice of his top aides and agreeing to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two U.S. officials and a Turkish official briefed on the matter told The Associated Press.
Trump pulled out of Syria because Erdogan, the dictator Turkey, told him to.

Could it be any clearer that Trump is a senile old man who can be talked into any deal, who then changes his mind in an instant when he talks to someone else? Television isn't running this country.

The last person to fill Trump's empty head with a stupid idea is running this country.

I am truly getting tired of whining about Trump, probably even more tired of it than people who listen to me whine about Trump. But at this point it should be crystal clear to anyone who cares about the future of this country that he is incompetent, ignorant, petty and sclerotic.

And unable to make up his own mind about anything.

Republicans in the House and Senate seriously need to read him the riot act and tell him to resign so he can play more golf spend more time with his family. Mike Pence will pardon him when Pence becomes president and deliver the coverup Trump wants by shutting down the Mueller investigation. Hey, that's what Gerald Ford did.

After that Trump can watch Fox News all day long (instead of just until lunch), and not have to listen to any more of those stupid intelligence briefings that he totally ignores anyway.

Oh, and stay out of jail too.

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Sunday, December 23, 2018

89, 24 and 2

























89 indictments, 24 convictions, and 2 prison terms...wow, that's some "witch hunt."

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Trump's 2018 Christmas Presents

So many great things are happening together. We are really winning!

Trump is pulling American troops out of Syria, against the advice of all his advisors. All our allies, our entire military, and most Republican senators are horrified. Dictators in Iran, Russia, Turkey and Syria are thrilled.

Sanctions against a Russian aluminum company owned by a Russian oligarch are being dropped.

Trump is going to shut down the government, throwing the entire government into chaos.

Trump's secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, the "only adult left in the room," resigned because he can't stand working for a man who shits on American allies and gushes about being in love with the murderous tyrant running North Korea.

Oh, and the stock market is going down the tubes, erasing all the gains from the "Trump boom."

And it's just another Thursday.

Could it be any clearer that Trump is taking his marching orders from Moscow, which is intent on driving this country into chaos and turning us into a third-rate banana republic?

I am so tired of all this winning.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

The Deep State?

When I hear people foam at the mouth about the deep state, I chuckle. Why are they so pissed off about civil servants? Moreover, have they forgotten where the spoils system brought us and why there was reform?

 Perhaps a review is in order...

  The Spoils System: Definition and Summary

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Being A Good Guy With A Gun While Black

The last few weeks in our country have shown that being a good guy with a gun while black doesn't really work out. Why? Racism.

The killing of Mr. Bradford is not a stand-alone example. Three days before his death, a young man named Jemel Roberson was buried in Illinois. An aspiring police officer and legal gun-carrier, Mr. Roberson singlehandedly apprehended a mass shooter at Manny’s Blue Room bar in Robbins, where Roberson worked as a security guard. A Midlothian police officer responded, and shot and killed Roberson. In June, Navy veteran Jason Washington was shot and killed by Portland State University police in Oregon, after reportedly trying to stop a fight outside a bar. Witnesses say Washington was trying to de-escalate the situation, including confiscating his friend’s gun. He had a pistol permit. A grand jury declined to indict the two officers involved.

There has been zero outrage from the gun humpers on their blogs and forums. Why? Because they categorically refuse to admit that racism is still prevalent in this country.

So, the "good guy with a gun" thing is a lie in more than one way. In addition to it being a lie by having a gun will somehow magically turn everyone into Jack Bauer and save the day, it's also a lie because you have to be the right color to be a good guy with a gun.

Sunday, December 09, 2018

Pray The Gay Away?


Friday, December 07, 2018

Loyalty vs. Ass-Kissing

The Trump administration, being the chaotic dumpster fire that it is, is going through more convulsions. John Kelly, Donald Trump's chief of staff, is out. A new attorney general has been selected, as well as a UN ambassador.

It's often said that Trump demands loyalty from his aides. This is wrong: he demands ass-kissing, sucking up and brown-nosing.

Loyal people have the best interests of their bosses -- and the country -- at heart. They have integrity and are usually competent. They will tell their bosses the truth even when it hurts, and give the best advice for the long term, even when they might take a temporary hit. Their primary concern is the safety and welfare of the American people.

Suck-ups and ass-kissers are opportunistic weasels. They are usually incompetent, having risen through the ranks solely by means of brown-nosing and backstabbing. They tell their bosses what they want to hear, even when they know it's wrong and will hurt the country in the long run. They are selfish and self-serving.

Trump started out by hiring a few people who had some semblance of competence and loyalty. But after two years he has fired every person with a shred of integrity, or they have quit. For all their faults, people like Nikki Haley, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly and Rex Tillerson had some semblance of competence, dignity or self-respect (though rarely all three at the same time).

Their replacements are all ass-kissing sock puppets who simply regurgitate Trumpian double-talk.

Heather Nauert will be the next UN ambassador. Her qualifications? She is attractive, blonde and worked on Fox & Friends. No diplomatic training or experience, except for blabbering at State Department press conferences in the last year.

Trump appointed Matt Whitaker attorney general, but when it became obvious his nomination would go down in flames Trump had to take his third choice, which Trump now inanely says was always his first choice.

The new AG nominee is William Barr, who was attorney general from 1991 to 1993. His qualifications? He thinks presidents have unlimited authority, that they should use pardons to cover up their crimes and that Hillary Clinton should be hounded to the grave for having an email server.

Barr was the AG who advised George H.W. Bush to cover up his own involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal with executive pardons.

In 1979 Iranian revolutionaries overran the American embassy in Tehran and took 50 Americans hostage. A couple years later the Reagan administration sold missiles to Iran and then used the profits to illegally fund the Contras (right-wing death squads) in Central America.

Yes, incredible as it seems, Ronald Reagan and George Bush broke the law to sell weapons to Ayatollah Khomeini while Iranians continued to yell "Death to America!" so Reagan could beat Jimmy Carter in 1980. And then they used the profits to illegally fund killers who murdered American nuns in Nicaragua.

That's the kind of criminal behavior that Trump's new attorney general thinks is just fine: but running your own email server is against the rules! Lock her up! 

Clearly, Trump hired Barr because he has experience using executive pardons to allow the president to break the law.

But Bush only got away with pardoning his Iran-Contra co-conspirators because he had already lost to Bill Clinton. A better example is Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon: Ford lost his re-election bid, in large part due to that pardon.

Federal officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect the nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is the only loyalty real Americans should have.

Trump is trying to turn this country into a nation of ass-kissers and suck-ups instead of loyal patriots.

Loyal patriots will eventually sell Trump out to save the country. Ass-kissers, having no real loyalty, will ultimately sell Trump out to save their own asses.

Ass-kisser Michael Cohen has already turned states evidence against Trump, while suck-up Paul Manafort and brown-noser Roger Stone are still wangling for executive pardons, so they have yet to sell Trump out.

The Mueller investigation may be proceeding too quickly for Trump to wait to pardon Manafort and Stone. But doing so while still president risks impeachment. It would also have a catastrophic effect on his re-election prospects -- and those of every other Republican office holder.

In the end, Trump can't win: the ass-kissers will eventually sell Trump out. And then they'll paint themselves as loyal patriots.

Wednesday, December 05, 2018

Here Is the Real Voter Fraud

In recent years Republicans have been screaming about voter fraud, but the real fraud is what Republicans have been doing.

The first fraud is the way they've gerrymandered the states. In 2016 they received a minority of the popular vote in Congress, but because of the way they gerrymandered districts around the country after the 2010 election, they still wound up with a majority of seats in the House.

The second fraud is the disenfranchisement of millions of voters, placing onerous restrictions on voting, most particularly voter ID requirements, but also restrictions on former felons, closing of polling places, intentionally misallocating resources to cause long lines in minority areas, etc.

The voter ID requirements have always been bogus because in-person fraud, where you show up at the polling place and pretend to be someone else, almost never happens.

No, as I have long said, the real action is in the third Republican fraud: absentee ballots. Usually it's small potatoes: people voting twice by filling out their senile parents' or spouses' ballots, or wealthy people voting in both Florida and New York -- because if they own property in two places, they deserve two votes!

But Republicans have now been caught red-handed committing absentee ballot fraud on a massive scale in North Carolina.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections, which has twice refused to certify the results in the Ninth District, now plans to hear evidence from an investigation into allegations of widespread electoral fraud committed by an operative for the Republican campaign [of Mark Harris]. Testimony submitted in a set of affidavits outlined a type of scheme known as ballot harvesting, in which people are hired to pose as state employees to collect absentee mail-in ballots from voters and then either alter the ballots to support preferred candidates or destroy those that support an opponent. According to previously unreported court documents, operatives in Bladen County, which has become the epicenter of the current scandal, have been accused of tampering with absentee ballots for at least the past three election cycles. The documents also allege that the conspiracy involved some of the most powerful individuals in the region, including the county sheriff and the head of the local Republican Party, both of whom were connected to a local Republican political consultant named Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr.
Republicans should be the first in line to stamp out this kind of fraud, because it's being used against them by other Republicans:
Harris ultimately ousted the incumbent Pittinger in the 2018 primary by eight hundred twenty-eight votes, claiming ninety-six per cent of the absentee ballots in Bladen County. On Thursday, Pittenger told Spectrum News, “We were fully aware of [the accusations of fraud]. There are some pretty unsavory people, particularly out in Bladen County, and I didn’t have anything to do with them.”
The question is, if this Republican knew he lost the primary due to absentee ballot fraud, why didn't he raise holy hell? Has the Republican Party become so inured to corruption and fraud that they just roll over when another Republican uses it? Do they think, "Oh, well. He just played the game better than me. He had the sheriff in his pocket, I'll just have to take my lumps."

Is the entire Republican Party corrupt, from Trump at the top all the way down to the grass roots county level? And is it just the Republican Party? Mark Harris is a pastor and a leader in the Baptist Church in North Carolina. Is the entire Baptist hierarchy corrupt as well?

Republicans and evangelicals didn't invent this kind of fraud. But Trump's endless corruption at the very pinnacle of American democracy and their tacit endorsement of his fraud and lies, the Republican Party and the religious right have given up any pretense of honesty and integrity.

The election in NC-9 must be overturned. And not just the general election, but the primary as well: Harris's Republican primary opponent Pittenger was royally screwed. Mark Harris should not be the Republican candidate for Congress: he should be in prison.

This is the problem with amorality and corruption. It spreads like a disease, infecting everything it touches. Once you convince yourself that committing fraud against Democrats is justifiable, it's just a tiny step to committing fraud against fellow Republicans.

And when you see Donald Trump using and discarding associates like Michael Cohen, having them lie for him in congressional testimony and to the Mueller investigation, and then bitching when they turn state's evidence, how long will it take every Republican to emulate him?

Welcome to Trump's hell, where liars, frauds, sexual predators, election hackers, neo-Nazis, foreign agitators, polluters, mail bombers, synagogue shooters, poisoners and murderers like Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman have totally free reign.

Tuesday, December 04, 2018

Voice of America Is Still Here

Last week Donald Trump expressed a desire to imitate Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and create his own version of Pravda:
Trump pitched the state-run network as an alternative to CNN. "Throughout the world, CNN has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!"
The thing is, there's already such a network: Fox News. Yes, it's hard to tell whether Trump is controlling Fox News or Fox News is controlling Trump, with Sean Hannity constantly buzzing in Trump's ear and even appearing at campaign events.

I calculate the odds of Trump dumping VP Mike Pence for Hannity as vice president in 2020 at 60-40. Trump's hired pretty much everyone else who's left in the White House based on much they kissed his ass in interviews on Fox News.

All joking aside, the US government already has a news service that provides factual reporting around the world: Voice of America.
President Franklin Roosevelt created the VOA during World War II to broadcast behind enemy lines what its current director, Amanda Bennett, said was "truthful news about the war, in contrast with Nazi propaganda."
VOA was a lifeline for people behind the Iron Curtain during the Soviet era, because it reported the truth, warts and all, about Russia, Europe and the United States. That tradition continues today: take a look at this article about rampant absentee ballot voter fraud in North Carolina.

VOA, a government agency, is reporting the same truths that CNN, NPR, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and other "mainstream media" organizations are reporting.

During the worst of the Cold War most Eastern Bloc citizens had a positive view of the United States and America, because VOA and Radio Free Europe didn't slant the news. They just gave the facts.

That's how you earn people's trust.

But Trump doesn't have a clue about that.

Monday, December 03, 2018

Sunday, December 02, 2018

NRA R.I.P

This recent piece from the Christian Science Monitor effectively declared the end of the NRA's stranglehold on gun legislation. Consider the facts contained therein.

Democrats in congressional races defeated more than a dozen Republicans who hold an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA), including longtime Reps. Mike Coffman of Colorado and Pete Sessions of Texas. In Georgia, Democratic candidate Lucy McBath, a prominent gun-control activist who lost her son in a fatal shooting in 2012, ousted Rep. Karen Handel, the Republican incumbent. A ballot measure to dramatically tighten Washington State’s gun policies passed by a wide margin, and across the country, 60 percent of voters who headed to the polls favor strengthening gun laws. 

Gun violence prevention groups advanced that cause in this year’s election. Candidates endorsed by Everytown for Gun Safety, founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, won 46 of 57 congressional races. Everytown and Giffords – a group founded by former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was gravely wounded in a 2011 mass shooting – spent a combined $11.8 million on the 2018 campaign, or $2.4 million more than the NRA.

Guess who else votes now, assholes? We do. And we have the young people on our side (aka the NUMBERS).

Further,

The $9.4 million that the NRA contributed to campaigns this year marked a drop of almost two-thirds from its spending in the 2014 midterms.

It must be hard to spend money without all that Russian flow coming in anymore...hee hee...

The gun lobby is dying. Thank god.


Saturday, December 01, 2018

Maricopa County Man Nearly Shoots Off His Dick

A couple of days ago at a Maricopa County Wal Mart , a gun humper was adjusting his penis extender in his waist band and guess what happened?

He shot himself.

And, yes, I laughed about it. Heartily.

Then, of course, I wondered is said person was Kevin Baker or one of his trolls. But it appears it was not one of them.

Darwin's natural selection at its finest.