It's Boring (And Dark) In America

Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the 2016 GOP convention somehow managed to be both boring and dark at the same time. It also completed the picture of a man who views himself as the one man solution to all the "problems" we face as a nation.

I put those quotation marks around the word problems because most of what he said last night in terms of the state of our country was just flat out lies. Of course, that doesn't really matter to the folks in the GOP. It's all about feelings right now and it's the same three we've seen for the last two decades: anger, hate, and fear. These feelings, combined with Trump's narcissism, make the perfect mix for fascism.

As Trump went on and on (and on and on) last night, his dark vision of our country. All the fear that was ginned about over the last four days struck me as terribly frightening. People out in our country actually think this stuff? Why? What kind of a place do US citizens have to be in to think any of this stuff is true? If the world is such a scary place for them, that would at least explain the need for guns, I guess.

Even with all of this, I found his speech to be way too long and quite dull. 70 minutes? I truly hope that Hillary Clinton doesn't go that long. 30-40 minutes is just fine. More importantly, the Hilz needs to take the lessons from this week and focus on getting the vote out in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and possibly Wisconsin. Florida is also of paramount importance. The white vote in the rust belt is going to decide this election. She is not going to change the feelings of these folks who are firmly buying into Trump's vision of a white and authoritarian America. She needs all the Obama voters to turn out as massively as they did in 2012.

Here's my map as of today given both Nate Silver's data and the Times' model.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Note how her lead has softened or moved to pure tossup. She has to have a good convention and do more than present herself as a clear alternative to Trump. The key is the Rust Belt because that's the focal point of Trump's fear peddling.

Can she do it?

A Firing Squad

Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire representative who serves on Trump's veterans' coalition and as a Trump delegate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, said in an interview with a Boston talk radio host that Clinton should pay for the 2012 Benghazi attack.

"She is a disgrace for any, the lies she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi," he said on the Jeff Kuhner Show Tuesday. "She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something's wrong there."

"Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason," he continued.

As I have been saying all along, these people are an acute threat to our national security. They need to be put in jail now.

Profile in Courage: Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz stands for everything that I am against. He's truly a frightening man whose religious like devotion to conservative ideology borders on pure evil. He's such an asshole that most Republicans don't like him. In fact, they fucking hate him. But what he did last night at the GOP convention was a profile in courage and I have to admit it. He refused to endorse Donald Trump and rolled the dice for 2020.

Cruz is betting that Trump is going to lose and lose big. If this indeed comes to pass, Cruz will look like a conservative hero, a genius even, who stayed pure to conservative values (because Trump surely hasn't) and will have laid the groundwork perfectly for his next presidential bid. If not, however, his career may be over.

Suppose Trump loses but by a small margin. It's still Trump's party and his supporters will be running the party for years. Indeed, that may well be the case anyway because the people that support Donald Trump, like many conservatives, have no regard for reality.

Regardless, Cruz did something that the people want politicians to do all the time and often fail to do. Take a risk and stand your ground.

Arms up, laying down, no gun...still shot by police.

Oh, yeah...and he was trying to help an autistic patient from the home where HE WORKED HELPING PEOPLE.

Paul Ryan Only Hires White Interns?

Why does House Speaker Paul Ryan only hire white interns? The above photo was taken by the Speaker of the House himself recently and left me wondering...where is America? Cuz this ain't it!

I'm sure it has nothing to do with racism and the anger over this is reverse racism and race baiting being perpetrated by the gun grabbers.

Two Days of Insanity

The first two days of the GOP convention in Cleveland have been completely insane. Monday we had a plagiarized speech.

 

Then we had chants of "Lock her up" regarding Hillary Clinton.





The plagiarism is illustrative of the massive incompetence in the Trump campaign. They don't really know what they are doing and have no real GOP operatives supporting their candidate. It's completely obvious now that the Trump family is running the campaign which speaks volumes on how they would run the country.

The "lock her up" chants initially reminded me of this...


As I watched these hypocritical assholes mouth foam about Hillary Clinton, I wondered where their due process beliefs went. I believe it was out the fucking window. These people claim to be Constitution supporters and want rule of law but their emotions betray them. They are little different than the totalitarians they claim to hate.

By nominating Donald Trump has their standard bearer, they show the whole country that they want an authoritarian leader not unlike those of the early 20th century...with all the xenophobia and racism that the world saw back then...

Chaos!

Chaos erupts on GOP convention floor after voice vote shuts down Never Trump forces 

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!!!

Anger, Hate, Fear

OMG...the Polls!!!!!!

The massive freak out about the recent presidential polls has amused me immensely. Trump is even with Hillary! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! Look out!!! The reality is much more complex.

For those of you who are still pooping themselves, please make Nate Silver's 538 site a regular stop every day and take some time to examine the variety of polls as well as the "polls plus" predictors. Hillary is still the favorite to win despite having a terrible couple of weeks. Make it a point to focus on the state polls, in particular, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. These are the most important states in this year's election. This is true for both candidates and each represents a microcasm of the 2016 presidential election overall.

Recent polling suggests that the electorate has shifted slightly since the 2012 presidential election. States like Nevada, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina are skewing bluer this election cycle than previous ones. This is largely due to shifting demographics in the state to a less white populace. Given Donald Trump’s comments about Mexicans and Muslims, its no wonder that he is polling so badly in these states. If Hillary Clinton wins 3 of these 4 states, and it looks like she will, Trump has to win Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

Trump has appeal to many voters in the whiter states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Some traditional Democratic voters who feel like they are being left behind by the progression of our country are voting for Trump. This is making him competitive in these states. Florida has many voters like this as well but it also has many non white voters so what’s happening on a national level in terms of a battle between two demographic groups (older, white voters and non white voters).

So, it really comes down to these three states and the pressure is more on Trump, electorally, than Hillary. If she wins just one of the three, it’s over. In fact, if she wins Nevada, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina, along with Wisconsin and all the other states she is slated to win, she wins the election without Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. And, while Ohio and Florida have flip flopped back and forth over the last few election cycles, Pennsylvania has not gone red since 1988. Even with the shifting electoral demographic, it’s going to be tough for Trump to win the state as the Democratic voter machine is very well organized and funded there.

This is the time when it's going to be toughest for Hillary. The FBI report on her email mistake has taken its toll. The GOP convention is next week and Trump will likely get a bump, although that may end up not being true since so many high profile and well known GOPers are skipping the convention. Add in the not ready for prime time kids of Donald Trump and it could very well be a disaster. The contrast of the Democratic convention with all of its star power (President Obama, President Clinton, Vice President Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren etc) will be stunning. Look for the Hilz numbers to go up after the Democratic convention and likely return to her greater lead.

Personally, I'm glad the polls are more even. People need to get out there and be more motivated. I don't want a mere victory in November. I want an ass kicking. And that happens if people think that Trump could win.

Not Just The Same (Part One)

In this year's presidential election, a theme is emerging which is an out and out lie. The media is playing it up but its origins are sadly with American citizens. One need only look at social media for it and it won't take very long to find it. Somehow, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are being lumped together as being equally disliked and deeply flawed. I find this to be completely erroneous on a number of levels. Starting today, I'm going to be highlighting the stark differences between the two candidates and with each segment, I'll focus on a particular theme.

Let's begin with the issue of race. How does a guy who has the total support of white supremacists even get put in the same ballpark as Hillary Clinton?

“The discussion that white Americans never want to have is this question of identity — who are we?” said Richard Spencer, 38, a writer and activist whose Montana-based nonprofit is dedicated to “the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent” in the United States. “He is bringing identity politics for white people into the public sphere in a way no one has.” 

Mr. Spencer, a popular figure in the white nationalist world, said he did not believe that Mr. Trump subscribed to his entire worldview. But he was struck that Mr. Trump seemed to understand and echo many of his group’s ideas intuitively, and take them to a broader audience. “I don’t think he has thought through this issue in a way that I and a number of people have,” Mr. Spencer said. “I think he is reacting to the feeling that he has lost his country.”

And...

In June 2015, two weeks after Mr. Trump entered the presidential race, he received an endorsement that would end most campaigns: The Daily Stormer embraced his candidacy. Founded in 2013 by a 32-year-old neo-Nazi named Andrew Anglin, The Daily Stormer is among the most prominent online gathering places for white nationalists and anti-Semites, with sections devoted to “The Jewish Problem” and “Race War.” Mr. Anglin explained that although he had some disagreements with him, Mr. Trump was the only candidate willing to speak the truth about Mexicans. “Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: It’s time to deport these people,” Mr. Anglin wrote. “He is also willing to call them out as criminal rapists, murderers and drug dealers.”

And...

This year, for the first time in decades, overt white nationalism re-entered national politics. In Iowa, a new “super PAC” paid for pro-Trump robocalls featuring Jared Taylor, a self-described race realist, and William Johnson, a white nationalist and the chairman of the American Freedom Party. (“We don’t need Muslims,” Mr. Taylor urged recipients of the calls. “We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”) David Duke, the Louisiana lawmaker turned anti-Semitic radio host, encouraged listeners to vote for Mr. Trump.

And...

Mr. Taylor, who has written that blacks “left entirely to their own devices” are incapable of civilization, and whose magazine, American Renaissance, once published an essay arguing that blacks were genetically more prone to crime, wrote on his blog that Mr. Trump had handled the attacks on him “in the nicest way.” Like others in his world, Mr. Taylor does not know if Mr. Trump agrees with him on everything. In an interview, he suggested that it did not really matter, and that Mr. Trump was expressing the discomfort many white people felt about other races. 

“Ordinary white people don’t want the neighborhood to turn Mexican,” Mr. Taylor said, adding, “They just realize that large numbers of Mexicans will change the neighborhood in ways they don’t like.”

Trump gets this sort of support because he calls Mexicans rapists, wants to ban Muslims from entering the US and likes to say things like this...



Contrast this with Hillary Clinton..



Given this clear distinction on race, Hillary Clinton is not "just the same" as Trump.

Another Dire Prediction That Did Not Come To Pass

Remember all that mouth foaming a year ago about how the Iran nuclear deal was a bad idea and that Iran wouldn't stick to the terms of the accord? Yeah, that never happened. They've given up 98 percent of their nuclear material, thousands of centrifuges and filled the core of a major plutonium reactor with cement. Inspectors roam freely around the country's various facilities. Even Israel's top military adviser is impressed.

“The deal has actually removed the most serious danger to Israel’s existence for the foreseeable future,” Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, told a conference in Tel Aviv, “and greatly reduced the threat over the longer term.”

The article goes on to discuss how Iran is still a pain the ass in other ways but we always knew this would be the case. For this particular deal and threat, the Obama administration, specifically Secretary Kerry, did a superb job. Thus, the sound of crickets we hear coming from conservatives:)

No, I Won't Carry A Gun

Good Words (2016 Election Edition)

"Right now, the G.O.P. is not a healthy center-right party. It is a mishmash of religious conservatives; angry white males who fear they are becoming a minority in their own country and hate trade; gun-control opponents; pro-lifers; anti-regulation and free-market small-business owners; and pro- and anti-free trade entrepreneurs."

---Thomas Friedman, in his recent Op-Ed, "The (G.O.P) Party's Over."

I am completely with him in terms of the sentiment of the whole column. Hillary Clinton can't merely win. She has to crush him with the Democrats taking back both the Senate and the House. The latter will likely not happen given the reality of congressional districts but even a shift to put the Dems over 200 in the House would be symbolically significant.

The anger, hate filled mouth foamers that are afraid of their own shadow (aka the Trump voter) need to be sent a message. Fuck your guns, bigotry, racism, ignorance of science and economics, and desire to return to the Antebellum South.

We are moving on without you.

Difficult At Best

The advent of open carrying a gun (see also: anger, hate, fear, paranoia, insecurity, inferiority, adolescent power fantasies) has caused a great number of problems for law enforcement. Two recent stories, one from the Times and one from AP, illustrate just how awful it is for them.

...city and county leaders said the presence of armed protesters openly carrying rifles on Thursday through downtown Dallas had created confusion for the police as the attack unfolded, and in its immediate aftermath made it more difficult for officers to distinguish between suspects and marchers. Two men who were armed and a woman who was with them were detained, fueling an early, errant theory by the police that there was more than one gunman.

Yep. Pretty much what I have been saying all along. It's very difficult to tell who is who when the bullets start flying. The idea that you can tell who the bad guys are because they are the ones shooting at everyone is complete nonsense. Even trained professionals couldn't tell and wouldn't have been very thorough as police officers if they didn't question anyone with a gun.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown estimated that 20 to 30 open-carry activists attended the rally. He said some wore gas masks, bulletproof vests and fatigues. They ran when the shots rang out, but the presence of so many armed individuals at the scene of a sniper attack caused instant confusion.

Gas masks and bulletproof vests? Really? Wonderful. These assholes want to play make believe like it's The Walking Dead while the adults are trying to figure out who is shooting people.

I've said this many times and will repeat it constantly until the problem is solved. These people are an absolute menace to society and need to be treated as a threat to national security.

"Guns Are This Era's Slavery"

I was recently asked to answer a question with prize money on Quora. There have been many interesting answers but the best one so far is from famed programmer, Ernest W. Adams. I am reprinting it here in its entirety.

The root cause (as opposed to the proximate cause) of the large quantity of gun violence¹ in the United States can be traced precisely to April 19, 1775.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

At the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the rebellious Massachusetts militia, composed of farmers and other local people, fired on British regulars who had come from Boston to search for weapons. The detachment was forced to retreat.

The opening battle of the American Revolution has been romanticized in story and song for nearly two and a half centuries. The story contains two elements that have directly influenced the culture of the United States from that day to this: first, the authority of the state (the British troops) being used to search for and confiscate guns; second, citizen ownership of firearms being used to oppose this action. Thus began the Great American Gun Myth—using myth in the sense of a body of cultural belief.

As the new nation spread westward, firearms were needed on the frontier to hunt, to protect people from wild animals, and to fight native Americans. They were also used in lawless regions by lawless people, which meant that peaceful people were obliged to keep them too. The idea began to grow up that the guns created the nation itself.

It did not take long for the Gun Myth to find expression in stories of adventure and daring. The Indian Wars were a particularly fertile source of excitement, and Buffalo Bill was adding to the legends in his Wild West show before the Indian Wars completely over, rather as we now make war movies before the war is even over. The mythologizing begins early. His shows often of featured sharpshooting skills of Annie Oakley and others.

The first Western novel, The Virginian, was written in 1901, and the first Western movie was made in 1903. There followed a flood of others. Gunsmoke began as a radio series in 1952 and ran continuously until 1975. Movies like Falling Down and God Bless Americapresent us with heroes who took up arms when “pushed too far.” Even if the film’s intention is satirical or fantasy-fulfillment, it nevertheless presents shooting people as appropriate, fun, and consequence-free. It’s impossible not to internalize some of this. People with poor judgment or intelligence want to actually make those fantasies come true.

We have now arrived at a point at which it is part of our national ethos that guns are a legitimate resort with which to solve a problem. They’re not even a last resort. Armed people don’t seek alternative resolutions to conflict; they just pull out their guns. The United States is no longer oppressed by Britain, nor is it the Wild West, but we continue to act as if it were.

The short answer to the question is this: Americans shoot people in disproportionate numbers compared to other populations because they have been taught ever since April 19, 1775 that it is an acceptable thing to do.

Many other nations—Canada, Finland—have a fairly high number of firearms in the population, but they aren’t used for homicide. Other former British colonies—Australia, India—achieved independence without warfare. They don’t have the Great American Gun Myth.

Nations that do treat gun ownership as an aspect of manhood and personal identity and a legitimate solution to problems (Pakistan, Afghanistan) have even greater rates of firearms abuse than the USA does.

The Myth has made it impossible to create a sensible firearms policy that restricts guns to the hands of those who are responsible users. The nation is awash in weapons and too many of those weapons are owned by people who should under no circumstances own them. But make the slightest effort to restrict them and the Gun Myth gets invoked: we need guns to make us free; we need them to fight tyranny; they are part of who we are as Americans and it is unpatriotic even to question this.

So many people now have a vested interest in guns that even without the cultural argument it is very difficult to reduce their numbers. The firearms manufacturing industry is worth $13.5 billion annually, and retail gun stores another $3.1 billion. There are four times as many federally licensed gun dealers as there are grocery stores in the United States, which gives you an idea of the absurdity of the situation.

Guns are this era’s slavery. They are America’s “peculiar institution.” The justifications for them are poor, yet a vociferous minority continues to announce that firearms are an inseparable part of their “way of life,” and threaten violence to anyone who would take them away.

I hope that it will not be necessary to fight a civil war over them, but ultimately I think the growing damage that firearms do in the wrong hands will lead to enough political support for controlling them properly that the gun control voters will outnumber the gun enthusiast voters. It will be solved, in answer to your final question, by political action.

Until that day, expect the deaths to continue.

What Bias Looks Like

Sunday Reflections

The racially charged violence that has taken place over the last week has me wondering about a few things. First, why hasn't the NRA and other gun rights leaders blown a bowel about the shooting of concealed carry permit holder, Philando Castile? Here was a guy who was merely exercising his 2nd amendment rights, even warning the police officer that he had a gun, and yet he still got shot. Where is all the mouth foaming about the state abusing the rights of freedom lovers everywhere?

I'll tell you exactly where it is. Castile was black and the NRA knows who butters their bread...angry old white men who love it when the police gun down niggers. Conservatives may be "rugged individuals" (I can barely type that without laughing) but they love themselfs white authority over the coloreds who are running all over the place asking for their damn rights. After all, recall how these folks profile from a psychological standpoint. They are hierarchical-individualists which more or less puts them at loggerheads with themselves.

So I call bullshit. The Gun Cult doesn't give two shits about the 2nd amendment. Once again we see how they really only want to make sure certain people are still able to cock ride their guns. That's why they are also silent on this steaming pile of bullshit.

Dallas Gunman Learned Tactics at Texas Self-Defense School

The gunman who killed five police officers at a protest march had practiced military-style drills in his yard and trained at a private self-defense school that teaches special tactics, including "shooting on the move," a maneuver in which an attacker fires and changes position before firing again.

Great...it's nice to know that gun cult hang outs are now officially training spree shooters to be able to kill people more effectively. These people are an absolute menace to civilized society. How many more people have to die before we act to stop them?

Peace

Star Trek's Sulu: Straight Arrow or Gay Blade?

Star Trek was a show ahead of its time. It portrayed a world in which human racism and sexism were long dead: the crew was made up of men, women, Americans, Russians, Britons, Africans, Japanese, who all got along without any racial friction. It featured the first interracial kiss on television (though it was coerced by a third party).

People were still people, however: racism persists in Star Trek. For example, in the episode "The Balance of Terror," a crewman suggests that Spock is not loyal to Star Fleet because his physical appearance is similar to the Romulans.

One thing that was never mentioned in the original series was homosexuality. Director Justin Lin and writer Simon Pegg have addressed this in Star Trek Beyond, the third installment of "new Trek," the alternate future version of the original series.

In the upcoming film, Hikaru Sulu is depicted raising a child with another man. Pegg and Lin made Sulu gay in part to honor George Takei, the actor who originally played Sulu.

But Takei is not pleased. He came out as gay more than a decade ago, but he thinks this artistic choice is unfortunate. He feels that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, wrote Sulu as a straight man and that this choice should be honored. I can buy that.

Simon Pegg respectfully disagrees. Homosexuality was never addressed on television in the Sixties. Even if Roddenberry had wanted a gay character, it would never have happened -- the network censors would have crushed it. But Pegg's Sulu is not Roddenberry's:

Our Trek is an alternate timeline with alternate details. Whatever magic ingredient determines our sexuality was different for Sulu in our timeline. I like this idea because it suggests that in a hypothetical multiverse, across an infinite matrix of alternate realities, we are all LGBT somewhere.

I can also buy that.

But I don't think you need to go there: the Sulu who appeared on the screen in the original series could easily have been gay, from a continuity point of view. I've seen all the episodes, and they're sufficiently ambiguous to argue that the original Sulu could be gay.

Sexuality was addressed for most of the main characters: Kirk and Spock had several entanglements with women. McCoy and Scotty had similar dalliances. Nurse Chapel was hung up on Spock and had an old boyfriend in "What Are Little Girls Made of?". Chekov fell for a girl in "Spectre of the Gun." In the new continuity, Uhura is Spock's lover.

Sulu never really had his own episode, so we never knew his orientation; he mostly set courses, fired weapons, did countdowns, shot revolvers or froze off his ass. However, with 2016 hindsight looking back at the aired episodes, you can make a reasonable argument that Sulu was intentionally written as gay.

There are no episodes where the real Sulu is romantically involved with a woman. In "Man Trap" Sulu and Yeoman Janice Rand are shown as friends. Sulu is in the arboretum and she brings him some food. The interaction is not romantic in any way. This could easily be interpreted as Rand doing a favor for her gay botanist friend.

In "The Naked Time," the crew's inhibitions are stripped when they are infected by some weird pathogen. Spock gets all teary, Kirk loses his cool, O'Riley shuts down the engines and starts singing. But Sulu takes off his shirt, picks up a rapier and runs flamboyantly around the ship like a French swashbuckler, a gay blade.

In "Mirror, Mirror," a transporter accident sends Kirk and Uhura to a universe where the crew are Bizarro opposite versions of their normal Enterprise selves. There, the Mirror Sulu does show some interest in Uhura.

However, since it's the Mirror universe, Mirror Sulu's attraction to Uhura could be viewed as diametrically opposed to the real Sulu's true feelings about women. Alternately, even if Mirror Sulu is gay, given the Mirror Universe's misogynistic treatment of women (they are underlings and mistresses), Mirror Sulu is merely following societal norms of the male-female power dynamic. He had to go after Uhura on the bridge to "prove" he was regular tough guy to the other misogynistic tough guys the inhabited the Mirror Enterprise. Just like all the gay football and basketball players who have to prove to team mates they're not gay...

Roddenberry's dead, so we can't ask him. But if you were to pick a character from the original series who could be gay, it would have to be Sulu. And is it just a coincidence that Roddenberry cast a gay man in that role? And you can see why Takei wouldn't want to think that Roddenberry picked him because he was gay: actors hate being pigeonholed -- they want to believe they can play anyone.

And even if Roddenberry did originally conceive of Sulu as straight, it's very common for writers to reconsider and change the direction of characters and plots years later when they think of something better: their fervent fans are frequently more enamored of the status quo than they are!

We Need Him Today

Welcome to the NRA's World

3 Dallas Officers Killed at Protest Over Police Shootings

Three Dallas police officers were killed and seven others were wounded Thursday night during a demonstration protesting the police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana this week, according to Chief David O. Brown of the Dallas police.

Aren't guns wonderful? Isn't it great how cops use them to shoot dozens of unarmed civilians a year and terrorists and assassins can buy them anywhere without background checks and then use them to murder cops and innocent people at protests and in nightclubs, schools, churches, movie theaters and malls?

I feel so much safer knowing that any moron can go to a gun show or the Internet and load up on tons of weapons and ammo.

Hillary Email A Go Go

Here's a great list which summarizes FBI director James Comey's fact based, unbiased and emotion free testimony today regarding Hillary Clinton's email server (currently more important to conservatives than police shooting black people on a regular basis, Americans shooting people at an annual rate of 30K a year, ISIL, education, climate change, poverty, college debt, racism and inequality)

Here are my conclusions based on these facts:
1. Hillary Clinton made a mistake using a home email server
2. She went against State Department policy
3. She was careless with government information some of which was sensitive or classified
4. The emails were not properly classified by the State Department indicating a much larger problem beyond Hillary Clinton.
5. There wasn't enough evidence of criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt to pursue this case. Previous cases that have been mentioned had obvious criminal intent.
6. Hillary Clinton did not lie to the FBI.

Anything beyond this moves out of the realm of facts and evidence and into the realm of politics. I honestly don't fault her that much for making this mistake. Clearly, she would have done things differently if she could go back but it makes sense to me that you'd want to keep as much of your dealings private when you have an army of assholes out there ready to give you a colonoscopy over any little thing they can find.

Obviously, this will never be over because Republicans, as usual, have nothing else to run on. They can't actually tackle the real problems we face today because their solutions (the ones they have to keep beating over our heads because of their angry and hateful base) haven't worked and never will. I'm betting the a majority of the US voters don't care either and the GOP's continued mouth foaming about this will end up hurting them in the fall...along with their nominee:)

The Black Man With A Gun

The shooting of Alton Rouge, an open carry permit holder in Louisiana, was bad enough. Now my own home state has gone and done the same thing. And, once again, to a licensed gun holder. The Gun Cult wants as many people as possible carrying guns, concealed or open. But have they stopped to consider the cultural stereotype of a black man with a gun?

Whether people want to admit it or not, we are still feeling profound effects from the institution of slavery. Black people in this country are still at a disadvantage in this country on every level. Our criminal justice system is the starkest example of this disadvantage in that people are being shot on a regular basis as a result.

I am so thoroughly disgusted and heartbroken that this happens to black people on a regular basis. In the year 2016, it seems that we have not made any progress.

What Does It Mean To Be A Patriot?

Fuckin' A

Representing Whom, Exactly?

Livestream!

BREAKING NEWS: A group of gun violence survivors are in the Capitol Rotunda right now committing a new act of civil disobedience in an attempt to push House Speaker Paul Ryan to vote on meaningful gun legislation this week. Here is a livestream of their Sit-In. The survivors are Christian Heyne, Margaret Eaddy, Bob Weiss, Jeanette Richardson, Pat Maisch, Nardyne Jeffries, Eddie Weingart and Camiella Williams.

One of them just held up a photo of their dead daughter who had been shot with an AK-47. That's what I'm talking about...put it in their face!!!!

Which Door?

Good (Happy Birthday, United States) Words

For me, freedom means the ability to live free of fear, free of intimidation and free from gun violence. Freedom in America, as set out in the Declaration of Independence, is meant to be life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, there is a vocal minority who believe these fundamental rights are pre-empted by the right to unrestricted access to deadly weapons.

---Jane Doughetry, sister of Sandy Hook victim

The Republican Brain Part Seven: For God And Tribe

The last time we looked inside Chris Mooney's insightful and amazing book, The Republican Brain, we saw that conservatives are dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, fear death, less open to new experiences, less "integrative complexity" in thinking and have more need for closure...all backed up by peer reviewed science. The next section in Mooney's book, "For God and Tribe," examines the moral system created by this type of political personality.

Consider the trolley dilemma. You are on a trolley that is about to have an accident. Everyone on board will be killed unless you push off one person in which case everyone will be saved. Do you do it? The cognitive processes of most people reason that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one so the sacrifice is made. But what if that person is named Jerome Williams and the other people on the trolley are all Nazis? Or the one person is named Chip Anderson and the rest of the people on the trolley are all Muslims? Or what if the person you are pushing off is fat?

In the next section of Mooney's book, he takes a look at motivated reasoning and the emotional impulses that drive it. A UC Irvine study showed that when liberals were presented with the either/or of saving a white guy or black guy, invariably they chose to save the black guy...even though they were explicitly told that race was not to be factored in to their answer. Liberals were intellectually more inconsistent conservatives. Perhaps race doesn't really matter to conservatives after all. At least it didn't in this scenario.

Yet when conservatives were presented with an alternate scenario...one that involved a military leader in Iraq trying to decide to kill opposition leaders...conservatives gave the thumbs up if Iraqi civilians were going to be killed but the thumbs down if American civilians were going to be killed. So. the same inconsistency was present. Further, they accepted either civilian casualty as being a part of war.

So, why does this happen? Recall that Mooney discussed how liberals and conservatives tend to have classification types in terms of their ideological bend. Liberals are more egalitarian-communitarian whereas conservatives are hierarchical-individualists. Thus, we see why conservatives and liberals fall into this cognitive trap. Liberals have an bias towards making sure that everyone is equal so they feel bad for Jerome who is about to get pushed off the trolley. Conservatives trust that authority figure of the military leader and tend to want to protect their tribe more than the other tribe.

Closely related to this study of cognition is the work of George Lakoff and how all of us tend to think in metaphors. We understand what it means for stock markets to rise and fall because we are familiar with those descriptors in everyday life. Yet the word "family" means something entirely different to a conservative than it does to a liberal. When conservatives think of family, they think of a strong father figure. Liberals tend to think of a more caring and nurturing parent that is gender neutral. So, the way each political ideology views authority is different and this extends to science. Conservatives have no problem with nuclear energy, for example, because it fits in with the strong father figure that goes out and provides for his family in the free market of energy. Liberals, conversely, have no problem with climate science because it show the necessity of nurturing one's planet. It's not surprising that the science is denied is the one that goes against neurological type.

I was pretty amused when I read this because I simply accept the science of both. The cool thing about science is that it's true whether you believe in it or not. Why try to buck reality? Besides, I don't have any emotion invested in nuclear energy or climate science. My rational mind accepts the science of both. They are what they are.

The takeaway from all of this is that the leaders of the conservative base know exactly what kind of authority their people respond to and they use that to manipulate them. If an authority on climate science comes out and talks about how it is settled science, they will throw a competing authority that matches conservatives' God and tribe out there and all is well. The need for this becomes more stark as Mooney notes in the closing pages of this chapter how science, and, indeed, academia in general has people that are more liberal in ideology. Why? As previously noted by Mooney, liberals tend to psychological be more open to new experiences, novel ideas and want to use science to improve society. In short, they are progressive whereas conservatives are not.

Mooney uses the example of Galileo and Darwin. Even though they were separated by hundreds of years, each man was confronted with the same problem: instransigent, conservative ideology rooted in emotion, not logic and rationality. Each man had to buck the powers that were deeply entrenched in God and tribe. At this point, Mooney interestingly notes that even conservative intellectuals are aware of this. Yuval Levin, conservative science and policy writer, notes that conservatives have a problem with science when it directly threatens the imperatives of their cultural continuity. Again, God and tribe...

Mooney concludes this section by noting that the ol' conservative meme of academia creates liberals no longer applies when considering the research in this section. More liberals are in academia because of how the brains work to begin with and they are naturally drawn to places where openness to new experiences are the order of the day. All of the information in this chapter reinforces the overall thrust of this book so far. The conservative brain is, by nature, far different from the liberal brain.

Oblivious Truck Driver Kills Man Driving Tesla

My headline just doesn't have the zip of the New York Times headline: "Self-Driving Tesla Was Involved in Fatal Crash, U.S. Says." The news outlets are reporting this as, "A man died when his Tesla broadsided a semi while he was watching a Harry Potter movie."

As a programmer, I have been skeptical of self-driving cars since Google started talking about them a few years ago. The question of liability if someone is killed is a legal rats nest, as we are now seeing.

From the New York Times article:

The death is a blow to Tesla at a time when the company is pushing to expand its product lineup from expensive electric vehicles to more mainstream models. The company on Thursday declined to say whether the technology or the driver or either were at fault in the accident.

The thing is, it's not complicated at all: the driver of the truck is at fault!

The crash occurred at the intersection of Highway US-27A and NE 140th Court in Williston, Fla. Here's a diagram:

 

The truck (V01) was turning left in front of the oncoming Tesla (V02). If you look at the Google Street view of that intersection from the point of view of the truck that was turning, you'll notice that the truck even had a YIELD sign.

The driver of the Tesla clearly had the right of way: the truck turned left directly in front of him, causing the crash.

I'm not sure why all the news stories failed to note this, or why Tesla declined to say whether the driver or the car was at fault: the truck driver killed the Tesla driver by obliviously turning left in front of oncoming traffic.

Insurance companies deal with this kind of thing all the time. They assign some percentage of blame to each driver: to the truck driver for ignoring the YIELD sign, and the Tesla driver for not seeing the truck in the way. But since the truck driver violated the law by failing to yield, he is at fault.

Now, I'm not defending the Tesla driver's stupidity. Clearly he was an idiot for watching a movie while driving down the highway. But this kind of crash happens every day to people who are distracted for the briefest moment by eating a sandwich, drinking coffee, talking on their cellphones, flashing LCD billboards on the roadside, or glints of blinding light from the setting sun; you can't blame the victim when some idiot fails to yield the right of way and turns right into their path.

This is why I'm still of the opinion that there's too much crap going on on regular streets for computers to drive cars autonomously in traffic. The infrastructure is completely inadequate: road markings aren't clearly defined. Maps can never keep up with detours and construction. Delivery trucks stop in the middle of the street and double park. Drivers make sudden turns without signaling. Morons fail to properly secure cargo, which falls off and causes accidents. Pedestrians dart out from between cars and bikes whiz through intersections.

Computers are good at doing things that their programmers have anticipated. I'm sure they'd do fine in a controlled system where the vehicles run on tracks closed to human traffic, are programmed with all the speed limits and rules, and can communicate with each other to avoid collisions (something like Personal Rapid Transit).

But when you introduce stupid, impatient, irrational, oblivious humans into the mix, and put them in control of 40-ton vehicles of mass destruction, the computer will never be able to make the "right choice."

Our Mice Are Alive, Your's Are Dead

California is now the 6th largest economy in the world? All while being run by those tax and spend Democrats? GDP at 4 percent? Surplus at $11 billion? Compare this to Kansas and Louisiana.

I know it's hard to let go of something so personal as an economic ideology but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Supply side economics doesn't work. It never did. Conversely, raising taxes on the wealthy and increasing government spending improves economies. It ALWAYS has.

The World is Ending Because Expensive New Cars Are Expensive!

The headline sounds so dire: "New Cars Are Too Expensive for the Typical Family, Study Finds:"

AS prices for new vehicles continue to rise, the cost of an average new car may be a stretch for typical households.

A new analysis from Bankrate.com found that a median-income household could not afford the average price of a new vehicle in any of the 50 largest cities in the country, though cars are more affordable in some cities than others.

“The new reality is that cars are becoming more expensive,” said Steve Pounds, a personal finance analyst for Bankrate. “People are having to make tough decisions about financing.”

You'd think our entire economy is on the verge of collapse.

But the basis for this alarmist article is completely false. The problem isn't that new cars are too expensive. It's that people are spending too damn much money on cars they can't afford. No one needs to spend the "average" $30,000 on a car.

Checking the current price of the class of cars that I have bought brand new over my entire 40-year new-car-buying lifetime, they range from about $13,000 (Chevrolet Spark) to about $26,000 (Subaru Forester).

And that's first-time new cars -- if you're buying a replacement, you can sell your old car for a decent chunk of change.

And since when are new cars a necessity? When I was a kid, in a family with six kids, my dad always bought used cars (he still does). You can get perfectly serviceable used cars for half the price of a new car.

That puts the cost of a car completely within the economic grasp of the average family, which has 2.54 people in it. The average family does not need a car that holds eight passengers or tows four tons. A five-passenger sedan or hatchback will fill the needs of the vast majority of American families.

And don't feel sorry for people with a ton of kids, who "need" a gigantic SUV: they made their bed, now they can sleep in it -- or maybe not, since that's what got them into trouble in the first place. They can just buy a used station wagon or van, like my dad did. If their kids won't be caught dead catching a ride to school in a junker, they can take the bus or walk.

The reason the average price of a car is "out of the reach of the average family" is that a relatively small number of really expensive cars dramatically raise the average price. No one needs to buy an expensive car. Too many people treat their cars as a measure of their manhood or social standing, so they have to buy the flashiest or fastest car.

Cars are just a way of getting to point A to point B reliably. Thankfully, many millennials have seen the light and are not stuck in the car rut: they don't even want drivers licenses.

The main reason for the financial meltdown of 2008 was that banks encouraged people to take out loans on houses that they simply could not afford, which drove up the price of housing even more, which exacerbated the problem.

This is the same mistake that's driving the "I have to buy an expensive car" mentality. Most expensive cars get you coming and going: pricey Cadillacs, BMWs, Mercedes, and big honking SUVs get terrible mileage. For example, the $151,000 Porsche 911 Turbo gets 17 mpg city, while the $24,000 Toyota Prius gets 58 mpg. The Porsche costs 6 times as much and gets about a quarter the mileage.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. The Porsche can go 205 mph. As if someone stupid enough to drop that much money on a car is actually competent to drive that fast...

The End of Reverse Racism and Race Baiting

Conservatives love to foam at the mouth about race baiting and reverse racism. Somehow, all racism is very minimal in the US today and anyone who cries racism is a (gasp!) race baiter!!! All of this caterwauling amounts to (yet another) responsibility dodge.

Turing to a much larger audience than this blog, I posted the following question on Quora.

In the United States, what is more prevalent: racism or reverse racism?

This was a question based on the poll results that I posted yesterday. Here are my favorite answers.

I feel like the headline could be more accurately written “half of all Americans don't understand racism” To more accurately answer the question, racism is a bigger problem. A more prevalent problem is ignorance of racism. I think the biggest problem is bystanders not condemning racism when it's taking place because they don't see it, or are afraid to speak out or don't know what to say.

That was the top answer so that means it was the most accurate. I think that most of the people who cry race baiter are largely ignorant of what racism is and are too lazy to take the responsibility to find out.

Do people of color sell their houses when a second or third white family move onto their street? How often do you hear about black police officers shooting unarmed white males? Has the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ever had a year when no white actors were nomimated for a major award? Do people of color get a six month prison sentence for a rape conviction? Of course there are instances where a qualified non-white student or applicant is selected over a qualified white applicant. It does happen. Other times it goes the other way. There is always the question, “Did race enter into the equation?” Things are much better than they used to be, but in my humble opinion, reverse racism is not as prevelent or as harmful as its conterpart.

Great answer and very illustrative of what actual racism looks like as opposed to the fictional oppression of white people. And now my favorite...

Racism. The people who talk about reverse racism haven’t suffered anything more than the refusal of other people to feel sorry for their racist ideas. There really isn’t any reverse racism of any sort in this nation. White people, particularly white men, are still in the driver’s seat. The problem in America is that the there are a lot of working class whites who think that they should be treated better than people of color in similar position just because they are white. It’s something they have been buying into ever since the days of Jim Crow.

Exactly. And these are the folks who support Donald Trump. For some extra fun, check out Richard White's brilliant answer and the ensuing comments.

So, that's pretty much it, folks. We can finally put an end to all this nonsense about reverse racism and race baiting. It doesn't exist.

And it never did.

The Scourge of Reverse Racism

Half of US Citizens think that reverse racism is a real problem. That's according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute poll. The numbers are even higher among working class white Americans — 66% of them believe that discrimination against white people is as big a problem as discrimination against "blacks and other minorities."

As noted in the piece, reverse racism doesn't exist. Here's why.


And that's the end of that bullshit...

Are They Merely Lonely?

This showed up in my Newsfeed recently and it really struck me as being true. I've felt pity in the past for gun rights activists but not like this. A big reason why this resonates with me is my experience interacting with gun bloggers and their commenters. I got the real sense that they were pretty lonely people who were likely bullied in secondary school. The guns make them feel important.

If we can understand how this works on a sociological level, we can finally begin to take substantive steps towards progress.

Trump Supporters View Blacks Negatively

In what can be filed quickly under "No Shit," Donald Trump's supporters are more likely to view blacks negatively, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Supporters of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump are more likely to describe African Americans as "criminal," "unintelligent," "lazy" and "violent" than voters who backed some Republican rivals in the primaries or who support Democratic contender Hillary Clinton, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. Some 31 percent of Trump supporters said they "strongly agree" that "social policies, such as affirmative action, discriminate unfairly against white people,"

Right...because reverse racism is so much worse than racism...wow...

There Is A You

Now that the 89th Benghazi report has been released and no new evidence has come to light regarding malfeasance on the part of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Ladies Auxiliary of Hibbing, MN, it's my hope that we can move past the conservative obsession (see also: jealousy, Obama better than Bush on terrorism) with this event. It might have been nice, however, to have such a report and investigation on the Bush Administration after the 9-11 attacks considering they represented the worst attack on our home soil in our history and cost many more lives. But you know conservatives...zero fucking logic. All anger, hate and fear...

As a post script, this pleased me greatly.

Amb. Stevens' sister: Don't blame Clinton for Benghazi

Nice.

In short, here is my message to conservatives now that Benghazi is all wrapped up.

Why Gun Nuts Lie

David Smalley has a great piece up over at Patheos called "Why Gun Nuts Lie – I Know From Experience."  It is filled with many wonderful things but I'd like to start with two of the images from the comments.

Right. He was a carpenter after all:)

And fool them they have. Remember, a lot of these guys live in their parents basement and play video games all night so it makes sense. Here are some choice cuts from the rest of the piece.

Secondly, what if you were? I could hand you 50 AR-15s, give you 1000 illegal bombs, steal you a couple of tanks, and smuggle in some bazookas, and even let you fully train 500 of your closest friends. If the government wants your shit, they’re going to take it. You still wouldn’t be a match for even a single battalion of the United States Marine Corps. Not to mention the Air Force, Army, Navy, National Guard, Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Seals. So stop acting like your little AR-15 is going to stop tyranny..

And you will give it to them without any sort of fight. Internet comments bravado is largely BS. Gun bloggers and their commenters like to brag about how they will never hand over their guns and would welcome a shootout with the federal government but they are completely full of shit. These are people who have families and children in their house and they will avoid any sort of conflict. And honestly, they are cowards at heart. The louder the protestation online, the quicker they will be the ones giving up their guns willingly.

The only reason you want to protect your second amendment now, is to justify buying an AR-15 or weapons for your home. I understand. I have them. But is it worth it? Does it really make you feel safe? If it does, it’s a false sense of security that statistically puts us in more danger.

Yes, it does. And, unlike the Gun Cult, I actually care about what happens to other people in my society. More guns mean more chances for accidents...accidents, btw, which happen more often than defensive gun use as study after study has shown.

Treat guns like cars. Mandatory licenses License renewals Mandatory training Mandatory insurance Operating laws Operating age limits Restrict some models Require safety inspections Mandatory registration Background checks. 

Amen. It's not all that I want but I'd go along with it for now to see how it would work.

Perhaps Smalley is the start of a trend and the ultimate defeat of the gun lobby will come from within. Isn't that what happened with tobacco? Reading this, I can see a few folks breaking ranks at first and then some sort of event will trigger a larger group breaking away. And then we might actually get some real progress.

Another Gun Rights Activist Goes On Shooting Rampage

Texas mom Christy Sheats liked to post stuff like this on her Facebook page.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Well, two days ago she called a family meeting and proceeded to shoot and kill both of her daughters before finally being gunned down by police. It turns out she had a history of mental illness but thank goodness she retained her constitutional right to carry a firearm.

Two beautiful young women are now dead and why? Because...ground stood!!

Lessons from Britain

Now that Britain has voted to leave the E.U., millions of people who voted for it now want to change their vote. They want a do-over. Why?

The proponents of leaving the union lied about pretty much everything: how it would affect immigration policy, how it would affect the budget, how it would affect the stock market, how it would affect the value of the pound, how it would affect free trade and free movement of British citizens in Europe.

Many of the people who voted to leave did so out of frustration. They didn't really think there was a chance Britain would leave the E.U. and they didn't want Britain to leave. But they wanted to register a protest against the "elites."

Many of the people who wanted to remain in the E.U. didn't bother to vote because they were too busy, or automatically assumed the referendum would fail without their vote. They were wrong.

A lot of the people in this boat are young. They are like the people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but didn't bother to vote in 2010, because they assumed they had won, and the fight was over. But 2010 was a turning point -- Republicans, angered by their crushing defeat in 2008 and using the health care law as a rallying cry, took over the House and many state legislatures. They used that control to gerrymander House districts, and further increase their control.

In 2012 Obama won again, but the House remained in Republican hands, and Republicans in the Senate followed a scorched earth policy, preventing Obama from making any progress. Discouraged by Obama's "broken promises" many young and minority voters stayed home again in 2014, and this time the Senate was lost.

The United States is now facing its own "Brexit" vote this November. Trump has been spouting the same lies as the Brexit campaign. Trump wants the United States to seal its borders against the world, abandon our allies and trade partners across the globe and in the process destroy our economy.

People voting for Trump are motivated by the same impulses that motivated Brexit voters: frustration, fear, uncertainty, racism, nationalism. If Americans elect Trump, they will have the same buyer's remorse that Britain is now having.

Trump's reaction to Brexit was typically stupid. Trump was in Scotland for the opening of a new golf course. His reaction was delightedly selfish:

"Look if the pound goes down, they're gonna do more business," Trump said. "You know, when the pound goes down, more people are gonna come to Turnberry, frankly, and the pound has gone down, and let's see what the impact of that is."

Which -- again -- shows what an idiot Trump is. His golf course is in Scotland. Not very long ago Scotland held a referendum to leave the UK. It failed, for exactly the same reasons that that leaving the E.U. was a bad idea. In this recent referendum Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the E.U. (as did Northern Ireland, which now enjoys decent relations with the Republic of Ireland, which remains in the E.U.).

Now, Brexit may not even happen because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have the power to veto it. But Scotland may also decide to be done with England, have their own referendum to leave the U.K., and then join the E.U. And then Trump's golf course will still be in an E.U. country.

Trump doesn't seem to be very good at real estate, does he? Or at business, considering that the sport of golf has been in a tailspin for the last decade and a half in the United States and the U.K..

In addition, Northern Ireland may decide they've had it with England, quit the U.K., and unify with the Republic of Ireland. That would stir up quite a hornets nest among Orange loyalists and possibly restart the Troubles.

The lesson for young and minority Americans is: old white people win elections in America because they show up. Hillary Clinton may not be Bernie Sanders, but if you sit on your hands you'll give the presidency to Donald Trump. And if Trump wins the presidency, he will appoint three or four Supreme Court justices. And then you can kiss the future goodbye.

It's not enough to vote in presidential elections. You need to vote in federal House and Senate elections as well, and your state legislative and gubernatorial elections to boot. It's once every two years; it's not that hard. But because people stayed home in 2010 and 2014, Republicans were able to run out the clock for the last six years of Obama's presidential term.

If you want the policies Bernie Sanders proposed to have a chance of succeeding, Clinton and Democratic senators and representatives have to have a majority in the House and Senate to make it happen. They need enough wiggle room to enact progressive policies without fear of losing to the Republicans again, and to know that you'll be there to vote for them in the next non-presidential election year.

If you get these people elected, they will owe you. None of them like hustling Wall Street and Silicon Valley for campaign cash 24/7. If they know they have the power of the people behind them we can get reasonable campaign finance laws passed, and other common-sense legislation like gun safety.

As well as put reasonable justices on the Supreme Court.

Gun Toting Soccer Mom=Dead

Remember the woman pictured left? This was Melanie Hain, the gun toting soccer mom who made the headlines when she open carried and stood her ground against the dark denizens that were ready to pounce on her and her daughter any second in suburban Pennsylvania.

Yeah, she's dead now.

Was she shot by the gun grabbers? Mooselems? Those evil criminals that lurk around every corner with the weapons they will always have even if there are new gun laws?

Nope.

She was shot by her husband in a domestic dispute who then turned the gun on himself. Most sadly, both of their children (ages 2 and 6) now have to live the rest of their lives without their birth parents.

Perhaps that's a good thing, though, given both of the Hains were part of the Gun Cult and clearly presented a danger to themselves and others. I guess I'm wondering what happened to the whole guns protecting people and good guys with guns thing here.

Sorta looks like that theory just shit the bed...again!

Banned?

Britain Was Suckered by Russia

So, Britain decided to leave the E.U.

Putin's devious plan is working: have Assad torture his own people, force them to flee to Europe, which makes Europeans crazy with paranoid Islamophobia, which destabilizes European governments and makes Britain leave the E.U.

Phase One is now complete. On to phase Two.

Once Europe is no longer a unified force, Putin can pick them apart one by one, and reassemble the Soviet empire, starting with the rest of Ukraine -- the original Kievan Rus, the real Mother Russia.

After Trump is elected, he pulls the United States out of NATO. Putin and Trump form a mutual admiration society. As long as Putin keeps praising Trump's wisdom, brilliance and handsomeness, the United States won't interfere with Russia's territorial acquisitions.

Putin goes into high gear. He retakes the Baltic states, then the rest of the former Soviet Union (especially oil-rich Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan). Putin moves on to Poland, then the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia, Romania, etc.

Putin makes a deal with Trump to let Germany keep the part that used to be East Germany, as long as Germany agrees to buy Russian oil and gas at inflated prices. Trump claims this is a foreign relations coup, and he has bested Putin at his own game. He congratulates himself on Twitter.

Seeing how successful Putin is, the Chinese and North Koreans start praising Trump for his brilliance and wisdom. And handsomeness. Trump withdraws American troops from Japan and South Korea. Japan and South Korea start building nuclear weapons. There are a few . . . unfortunate incidents, but scientists estimate that the craters where Pyong Yang and Seoul once stood will be habitable again in another 200 years.

Meanwhile, Trump spends $500 billion building a wall between the United States and Mexico, using mostly illegal immigrant labor.

It's the biggest, greatest, most beautiful wall in the world.

Real Work?

Pick Up Those Scraps!!

Real Leaders

House Democrats, lead by civil rights icon John Lewis, are staging a sit-in on the floor of the US House of Representatives demanding a vote on new gun legislation that will expand background checks and prevent terrorists from acquiring firearms.

A live feed of the sit in is available here.

This is what real leaders do. They fight for what is right despite any minor discomfort they may feel. Poor leaders, like Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, chicken out, refuse to call a vote, shut down the cameras, and go on summer vacation...while continuing to allow terrorists access to whatever firearms they choose.

Do Republicans really think they can fuck with this guy?

He's the one about to be cracked across the head on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma, 1965. Today, in 2016, he's doing it again.

Domestic Terrorists

With the failure (once again) to pass any sort of meaningful new gun safety laws in the wake the Orlando shooting, the president should declare the NRA a domestic terrorist organization. This should extend to all gun rights groups and activists as they are essentially accessories to terrorist attacks on home soil.

He should direct Attorney General Loretta Lynch to use the FBI to investigate and possible arrest high ranking members of the NRA for aiding and abetting enemy combatants who seek to murder US citizens. If they are found guilty, they should be sent to Gitmo. Since we can't seem to close it, why not use it for the purpose intended?

The NRA and gun rights supporters are unmoved by the piles of dead bodies we accumulate every day. They feel that their entitlement is more important than US security. They have created a country that has zero domestic tranquility and an incredibly warped reality where we actually bear little children gotten shot in the face. US citizens need to understand that we can't negotiate with these guys. They essentially have the same level of ideological intransigence as the fucking Nazis. They only understand one thing: force. 

So, let's start using it.