Trouble In Right Wing Blogger Paradise

When you vote for a candidate with zero experience running a government agency, this is what you get.

You get a national security adviser on thin ice over his conversations with the Russian government.

You get a chief of staff that is perceived in conservative circles as weak.

You get a senior adviser hawking clothing lines like the presidency is QVC.

In short, you have a presidency in complete disarray.

Would we expect anything less from a right wing blogger/commenter president?

Besieged by Crime?

Yesterday, President Trump said our nation has been besieged by crime. Meeting with a group of our nation's sheriffs,Trump told them, “the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years.” He blamed the news media for not publicizing this development, then added, “But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, 45 to 47 years.”

This is, of course, not true. How do I know this? Well, gun rights activists on the inter webs remind me of this fact all the time. Here are the facts.

The murder rate is defined as the number of murders and non-negligent homicides per 100,000 residents. Beginning in 1957, when the rate was 4.0 murders per 100,000 residents, the rate rose steadily to a high of 10.2 in 1980. It then steadily dropped, to 7.4 in 1996, to 6.1 in 2006, to 4.4 in 2014. It went up in 2015 to 4.9. But that is less than half the murder rate of 1980. The raw number of homicides in America has actually declined from 19,645 in 1996 to 15,696 in 2015, even while the population has risen from 265 million in 1996 to 321 million in 2015.

The violent crime rate in America also has plummeted over the years. Defined as murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, violent crimes peaked at a rate of 758 per 100,000 residents in 1991, and the rate was about 373 violent crimes per 100,000 in 2015, again a decline of more than half. The statistics for 2016 are not yet available. Here is the FBI’s violent crime table for the years 1996 to 2015.

Today, Trump doubled down on these claims in what has become yet another example of this administration's cognitive dissonance. Like the right wing bloggers and commenters that religiously follow him, they create their own reality in which their anger, hate and fear are more justified.

Alternative facts indeed.

Not So Innocent

Well, President Trump finally said something that was dead on right. In his interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that aired before the Super Bowl, Trump responded to Mr. O'Reilly's comment that Putin was "a killer."

"There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?" Trump replied.

He's right. We aren't innocent. About 30 thousand people die every year due to gun violence. We bomb the crap out of people all over the world although I think most of this is largely justified.

Yet imagine if Barack Obama had said this. What would the reaction be from the alt right? How many right wing blog commenters would spew venom on the forums over how much he hated America? Fox would run a breaking news segment with the headline "Obama Hate America-Thinks We are Killers!" There's barely been a peep from any conservative over these comments.

This latest interview also underscores just how much Trump is owned by Vladimir Putin. He refuses to accept the type of person Putin is and what he has done. Worse, all of those mouth foamers who warned of the boiling pit of sewage that is the totalitarian state of Russia are now suddenly rolling their eyes and shaking their heads at the silly liberals.

Can't they see that Russia is completely innocent?

Whither The Shy Trump Voter...

The president's recent poll numbers show him underwater in terms of approval. Yet this recent piece from Politico reminds us of the "shy" Trump voter. These are the folks who are embarrassed to admit that they support President Trump and do so quietly. I have a few problems with this theory.

First, has anyone out there ever known a Trump voter to be shy? They seem all id to me and right in your fucking face. And if they are so shy, why are the being shy? Why don't they want to admit that they support the guy? I'm nearly certain that Trump's merry band of right wing bloggers and commenters would foam at the mouth about persecution and play the reverse racism card. Of course, if they did that. they'd essentially become the very thing they claim to be against: victims.

I submit that the real reason why they are so shy is they (once again) refuse to want to admit they are wrong. Worse, they are probably having trouble dealing with being in charge. Clearly, their guy can't handle it and neither can they. It must be incredibly foreign to them to not be in attack/block mode all the time and actually having to govern...if you can call it that. So, they hide their support because they don't really have any sort of foundation on which to stand.

Btw, holding up a decree after decree (in what looks like a Steak and Chop House menu) sure does make it look like he's "getting it done." PT Barnum and the all powerful Oz would be most proud...

Great Words

A friend of mine just wrote this on Facebook in his status update...

Our president says that freedom of religion is under threat all around us as he bans people from one religion from entering the country. The jibberish has escalated to new heights from this snake oil salesman. Buy my snakeoil, and the people bought it. It's bloody embarassing to have him represent a country with a rich history of smart and interesting people and thinkers from all political parties. We are better than this sad display of self serving garbage.

Amen.

The Bowling Green Massacre

To give you an idea on just what kind of fantasy world Trump supporters and the alt right live in, look no further than the Bowling Green "Massacre."  Senior Adviser to the president, Kellyanne Conway, was on Chris Matthews' show and regaled him the story of two Iraqi men.

“I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre,” Conway said. “Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”

First of all, no such ban ever took place. So, straight out of the gate, she's lying. But then to completely make up a massacre when NO SUCH EVENT EVERY FUCKING TOOK PLACE is mind boggling. Is this what we have to put up with for the next four years? The paranoid, fever dreams of short wave radio turned email forwarder turned blogger turned social media troll dimwits?

The good news is that the interwebs don't leave stuff like this alone:)

Anil DashVerified account‏@anildash

Unlike Bowling Green, the Oak Creek massacre did take place & the Trump Republicans have never decried the white supremacist terror attack.

I think the last one is my favorite.

How This Autocracy Will Play Out

David Frum has an interesting piece up about how President Trump's first term might play out. Actually, it's more frightening than interesting. Frum details how everyone could easily fall in line, largely due to apathy. After all, this is how Trump got elected.

Here's my favorite part.

Nobody’s repealed the First Amendment, of course, and Americans remain as free to speak their minds as ever—provided they can stomach seeing their timelines fill up with obscene abuse and angry threats from the pro-Trump troll armies that police Facebook and Twitter. Rather than deal with digital thugs, young people increasingly drift to less political media like Snapchat and Instagram.

In many ways, this has already happened. The Pro-Trump troll armies were already formed out of right wing bloggers and commenters that had been honing their hate, anger and fear for years.

So, will Frum's prediction end up coming true?

Coup?

Interesting piece up at the now black listed CNN regarding President Trump and Steve Bannon. Are we witnessing typical actions which usually follow a coup?

Besieging your targets until nothing makes any sense -- giving them no time to absorb or recover from attacks -- is a time-tested strategy in the history of war and authoritarian takeovers. One might cite what's gone on in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It's now being employed at the pinnacle of American democracy. It's particularly useful in situations where the leader is vulnerable due to possible investigations, blackmails or other circumstances that close off gradualist approaches to implementing an agenda. With all the emergencies going on, who is bothered at the moment about those Trump tax returns, or even his ties to Russia?

Exactly. I have to admit I've been pretty disheartened by many of Trump's actions. His supporters, who supposedly are against this sort of authoritarian action, are all in. As longs as it's one of their own, it's all good.

Yet, as I was reading the back pages of the New York Times the other day, I saw this headline on the other page....

New Italian Trial Set for Berlusconi in a Corruption Case

...and it made me smile.

Call to Jihad

The Cracks Begin To Show

The Times has yet another (yawn) piece up about Steve Bannon and his Dick Cheney like influence in the White House. It's mostly more of the same but this tidbit was most interesting.

In theory, the move put Mr. Bannon, a former Navy surface warfare officer, admiral’s aide, investment banker, Hollywood producer and Breitbart News firebrand, on the same level as his friend, Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, a former Pentagon intelligence chief who was Mr. Trump’s top adviser on national security issues before a series of missteps reduced his influence.

Missteps? Say what?

But Mr. Flynn, a lifelong Democrat sacked as head of the Pentagon’s intelligence arm after clashing with Obama administration officials in 2014, has gotten on the nerves of Mr. Trump and other administration officials because of his sometimes overbearing demeanor, and has further diminished his internal standing by presiding over a chaotic and opaque N.S.C. transition process that prioritized the hiring of military officials over civilian experts recommended to him by his own team.

Ah, I see. I was fairly concerned about Flynn but not so much anymore. It looks like Bannon is going to be around to mind him which makes the whole thing even more of a mess.

Again, folks, the best way to combat a Bannon type is to ignore them and go about the business of registering voters in key counties in swing states. Let's take all this energy from the protests and turn it into votes in 2018!

When Right Wing Bloggers/Commenters Run Things...

....they fuck them up because they don't know what they are doing. What an absolute cluster fuck the last 24 hours has been with President Trump's latest imperial decree. Nikto has chimed in already but I'd like to point out some facts.

1. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, no one has been killed in the United States in a terrorist attack by anyone who emigrated from or whose parents emigrated from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, the seven countries targeted in the order’s 120-day visa ban, according to Charles Kurzman, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina.

What does "no one" mean? It means ZERO FUCKING PEOPLE. So, why is this considered a threat?

Because of the paranoid fever dreams of alternative facts land (aka Right Wing Blogs and Right Wing Blog Commenters).

2. 123 people have been killed in the United States by Muslim terrorists since the 2001 attacks — out of a total of more than 230,000 killings, by gang members, drug dealers, angry spouses, white supremacists, psychopaths, drunks and people of every description. So the order addresses, at most, one-1,870th of the problem of lethal violence in America. If the toll of Sept. 11 is included, jihadists still account for just over 1 percent of killings.

And where are those jihadists from?

Saudi Arabia. Egypt. And, of course, our own country.

Yet there are Trump Inc. business interests  in these countries so they get a pass. Wow...

3. The Muslim ban violates the US Constitution, specifically the due process clause of the 5th amendment. Did they get a fair hearing? Nope.

It's also in violation of US federal law itself. The 1965 law, the Immigration and Naturalization Act, clarifies that people should not experience preferences or discrimination on account of their "race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence."

Man oh man, did our new president step in it big time. What a fucking buffoon.

I realize the facts listed above will fall on the deaf ears of those who know only hate, anger, and fear but they need to be aired anyway. We live in a country of immigrants and to haphazardly ban people from coming in based on nonsense is not what we stand for.

Not now.

Not ever.

The Definition of A Real Leader

 Follow

Justin Trudeau 

✔@JustinTrudeau

To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada

2:20 PM - 28 Jan 2017

 
•  250,153250,153 Retweets
 
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What The People Are Readng

You can always tell the mental state of the public by what they are reading. "1984" is flying off the digital shelves at Amazon as is Sinclari Lewis' book, "It Can Happen Here," which tells the story of a loudmouth populist who wins the presidency but ends up secretly being a fascists dictator (!).

I'm still wondering who is going to be the first in the alt right to cave and recognize that what they have feared for years from liberals is coming true right now with their guy. Were they just fucking posers all along, secretly dreaming of authoritarianism? Or are they just too childish to admit what they have wrought?

Yet Another Stomp Down The Hallway (Complete With Door Slam)

So, apparently Steve Bannon had yet another hissy fit yesterday and launched into a very played tirade against the media. Only he knows the truth and the media are all liars blah blah blah....stomp stomp stomp....fuck you dad!! (SLAM!!) Like most adolescents, he does this sort of thing to get a reaction and rile up supporters. His rant, like most right wing bloggers and commenters, smacks most of jealousy and insecurity more than anything else. Why do these guys view themselves as so inadequate?

Bannon's latest outburst made me realize something much larger. It's not just the media that they hate but the entertainment world in general. Why? They have a very deep envy of the elites and that's exactly why they vilify them on a daily basis. Because THEY aren't a part of it. Somewhere along the line in their lives they got dissed by someone who was more successful than they were and petty jealousy took over. They just want to be part of the "Hollywood Club."

So, every time a Meryl Streep or some media giant like the New York Times speaks the truth about the alt right, they not only get pissed about what was said but by who said it: the people who they are massively jealous of every day. My advice to people who get pissed off at Bannon and other right wing bloggers and commenters is to ignore them. That's what I do with teenagers who act up. They just want the attention because they then feel like they are important.

Oh, one more thing. The media and the public in general knows why Trump won. In the following order...

1. Russian Propaganda/Psi-Op
2. Voters as conduits of anger, hate and fear
3. Electoral math
4. Mistakes made by the Clinton Campaign
5. Weak, establishment type candidate who ran in a change/populist year.

The same people that voted for Barack Obama twice voted for Donald Trump. I wonder what Steve Bannon has to say about that.

I'm more interested to see how Bannon is going to take responsibility for what he does. Will he own it when his policies don't work? Or will he continue to blame the media/libtards/everyone else?

First Regrets

I have a friend named Bill who owns a manufacturing concern here in the Twin Cities. His hatred of Hillary Clinton was so all consuming that he voted for Trump. He tried a few times to defend him and has always voted Republican but after Trump's first week in office, Bill has finally started expressing regret. Why?

Beer, snacks and cars: How a 20% Mexico tariff could cost US shoppers

President Trump wants so slap a 20% tariff on goods coming from Mexico and use the money to pay for his wall. As any economist knows, this would be a disaster for our country and for Mexico.

Bill can't believe it. His main client has a plant down in Mexico. If there ever actually is a tariff, this client will lose millions of dollars and, thus, Bill will be out of business. I gave him a call yesterday to hear his comments on Trump's announcement.

"Crazy," he said. "What was I thinking? At least with Hillary, I had just another crooked politician. This...this is erratic."

I had explained to him many times during the campaign that this is what Trump was going to do. Bill didn't believe me. He thought Trump was just saying those things and wouldn't really follow through.

I suspect this will be the first of many regrets...:)

Our French Revolution

Last night I was at a baseball association meeting. My son plays high level baseball and I serve as the fundraising coordinator. The mother of one of my son's teammates from last year came up to me and wondered if she could help out with fundraising. We talked briefly about how she could support the organization and then I remembered a conversation we had last spring about the election.

She told me back in June that she had this feeling that Trump was going to win. She seemed gleeful about it. After talking with her for a bit, I realized that she was one of the folks not very connected to politics who went on pure emotion. She's wealthy, white and pissed off about the direction of our country. This is actually a more accurate demographic than the stereotype that's out there about the Trump voter (dumb, toothless, racist etc). At the time, I thought she was nuts but she ended up being right.

The question I'm pondering today is why was she right? How can such a large group of people be so irrational as to vote for Donald Trump? By any indication, he's a despicable person and a horrible image for our country. Yet he is going to keep behaving the way he does until he loses because up until this point, it's worked. People who support Trump are convinced that everything he does is great and the criticism against him is all lies.

When I brought up the Access Hollywood tape, she said that she didn't believe it was him and that it was all taken out of context. She called it a witch hunt! Even his own voice saying his own words didn't fucking matter. I realized in the that moment that we weren't fighting the last battle of the Civil War, as I previously thought.

We are experiencing our own French Revolution complete with massively high levels of irrational thought and behavior.

Consider Trump's assertions over voter fraud and his recent call for an investigation. Even proceeding down this path is crazy. He won. Hillary Clinton lost. The popular vote does not matter. Why seek to undermine your own election? Further, it was Donald Trump himself and his own lawyers who called Jill Stein's recount efforts crazy and worthless and sought to stop them. So, when she says it's rigged it's not true but when he does it is true? Republicans and Democrats alike have called his claims entirely baseless. All 50 secretaries of each state have stated unequivocally that there was no voter fraud in this election and for millions of illegals to vote around the country would be completely impossible. Trump has also misrepresented the studies he says that show there is voter fraud but that doesn't really matter. He believes it's true. His followers believe it's true. So, it's true.

This same kind of thinking was in full gear during the French Revolution. People were so angry at their leaders that they would believe anything. The only saving grace we have now is that Trump takes office with the lowest approval rating of any president. My thought is that patience is required right now. It does indeed seem that Trump is invincible. He can do whatever he wants. But let's remember that's what Al Capone thought as well. They tried many conventional ways to bring him down and in the end it was something small like tax evasion. This is what I think is going to happen with Trump. Interestingly, Vegas has Trump's odds of being impeached in the first six months at 4 to 1. I think that might be a little too good but who knows?

In the meantime, I'm still really bummed that so many people out there are that irrational. How can we bring them down to more grounded reason? The fate of our nation rests on our ability to be critical thinkers and accept reality for what it is. We can ill afford to behave so erratically when it comes to these serious issues. Leaders like Trump and his followers are why civilizations decline and fall apart. Oddly, I think some of Trump's followers want this. They want to tear down the whole playhouse merely because they don't like stuff.

Can we stop them? How?

Two Action Items For The Marchers

I was pleasantly surprised to see all of the marchers around the world on Saturday and Sunday getting out to protect the progress we have made over the last 8 years. I was mildly to moderately irritated that they didn't turn out to vote for Hillary Clinton but we have to deal with the hand that we have been dealt.

I have two action items for the marchers.

1. Getting out the vote in every single election year including the odd years. I want to see above 60% every year. We see that and we will see the end of the Right much faster than already scheduled.

2. Marches and events in rural counties in the Rust Belt started by local people. Bernie can help with this. The electoral college is a reality. Marches in big cities are great but we need that local strategy to win big.

My second action item has already happened with an event in Marcomb County Michigan attended by 5,000 people. Senators Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders were on hand to speak and rally in support of keeping the Affordable Care Act. And take a look at this...

Alaska? Wow!

I say continue to organize in these rural counties all across the US and get out the vote this year in the local elections. Lay the groundwork for 2018 by getting people registered to vote THIS year.

Well, To Be Fair...

Right Wing Commenter in Chief

President Trump spent his first day in office behaving much in the same way he did during the campaign. As AP recently noted...

The day left no doubt that Trump will govern, at least for now, as he campaigned: fixating on seemingly minor issues, letting no perceived slight slip by unchallenged, and, sometimes, creating his own set of facts.

Those own set of facts included questioning how many people attended his inauguration. I noted yesterday that his inauguration was sparsely attended compared to Barack Obama's from 8 years ago. Yet Trump and his angry band of followers want us to disregard our lyin' eyes and believe that the turnout was "Yuge."

What was actually huge was the turnout around the world AGAINST Trump and for women's rights. I seem to recall a whole lot of chiding about how sparsely attended anti gun rallies have been over the years. So, if size does matter to the alt right, what must they think of these crowds compared to the one for their guy on Friday?

It looks like we will continue to enjoy Trump's penchant for not being able to do to bed because someone on the internet is wrong. Most adolescent...

Notice any differences?

The photo below is from yesterday's inaugural ceremony.

Here's the photo from Barack Obama's inaugural in 2009. 

Notice any differences?

Some "revolution."