Donald Trump's tweet about the Florida shooting has garnered many comments from students who were actually at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Here's my favorite.
“I don’t want your condolences you fucking price of shit, my friends and teachers were shot,” she tweeted. “Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this. But Gun control will prevent it from happening again.”
I'll extend Sara's fucking piece of shit comment to all the gun rights activists in the United States along with this promise. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that YOU are held responsible for the deaths of every single person who has died in a school shooting.
If I were in charge, you'd be at Gitmo right now and you'd never see the light of day again.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Another Shooting by a White Supremacist Terrorist
Several news outlets are reporting that the Parkland Florida school shooter, Nikolas (spelling Amerika with a 'K') Cruz, was a member of the "Republic of Florida" white supremacist group:
The [Anti-Defamation League] said ROF leader Jordan Jereb told them Cruz was associated with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tallahassee, said Cruz was brought into the group by another member and had participated in one or more ROF training exercises in the Tallahassee area, the ADL said. Law enforcement officials have not confirmed the link.
ROF has mostly young members in north and south Florida and describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and seeks to create a “white ethnostate” in Florida.
Three former schoolmates of Cruz told ABC News that Cruz was part of the group. They claimed he marched with the group frequently and was often seen with Jereb, who also confirmed to ABC News that Cruz was, at least at one point, part of that group.If this kid had even the most tenuous connection to any form of Islamic or liberal group, you can be certain that Donald Trump and the Republican echo chamber would be screaming bloody murder about the scourge of Middle East immigrant terrorists and the evils of Mohammedanism.
But since Cruz was a MAGA hat-wearing white supremacist gun nut Trump and the right are only talking about mental illness.
The one thing that all these mass shooters have in common is an infatuation with guns.
The one thing that all these mass shooters have in common -- from Columbine, to Sandy Hook, to Las Vegas, to Parkland -- is an infatuation with guns. Like Cruz, lots of people are depressed and have other mild forms of mental illness. But most don't pose a danger to anyone, except perhaps themselves.The real danger to society at large is not run-of-the-mill depression or even schizophrenia -- it's this infatuation with guns. It is so common that it needs a name: let's call it Gun Infatuation Syndrome. Gun infatuation is a form of mental illness, like drug addiction, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
People suffering from GIS make guns a basic part of their daily lives. GIS progresses as its sufferers come to devalue human life: since the only purpose of guns is to kill, killing is normalized in their minds. Their positive view of guns metastasizes into a positive view of killing and killers -- Cruz and other mass shooters idolize past mass shooters.
Conservatives are all about profiling people: they were livid when New York gave up the racist Stop and Frisk program, claiming that there would be blood in the streets. But the murder rate dropped precipitously during after stop-and-frisk ended, prompting honest conservatives to admit they were completely wrong about the policy.
Some conservatives want to profile American Muslims and ban all Muslim immigrants because some Muslims are terrorists. Even though the fact is more Americans die at the hands of right-wing racists like Dylann Roof and Nikolas Cruz than Muslims.
The simple fact is: the people most likely to commit mass shootings are those with lots of guns. People who have no compunctions about shooting other people. People who have a chip on their shoulder and feel that they have the right to use lethal force against those they think have wronged them. Narcissistic people obsessed with vengeance.
With a vengeful narcissist in the Oval Office actively promulgating this mindset, is it any wonder that we've already had 18 shootings at schools just six weeks into 2018?
People are blaming the FBI for not doing anything about Cruz after they received warnings about him. But there are literally millions of gun nuts out there like Cruz who post exactly the same crap on the internet that he did.
And whenever the FBI does go after these gun nuts they scream bloody murder about the Deep State and their Second Amendment rights.
So, sure, let's profile the people who are most likely to commit shootings -- people who have lots of guns and are suffering from Gun Infatuation Syndrome. Let's take their guns away and get them into treatment.
Before they shoot up your kid's school.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Surprise, Surprise: Trump Lawyer Admits Stormy Daniels Payment
After a month of claiming that Donald Trump never had an affair with that woman, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen admitted that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her affair with Trump.
In the most detailed explanation of the 2016 payment made to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, Mr. Cohen, who worked as a counsel to the Trump Organization for more than a decade, said he was not reimbursed by the Trump Organization or the campaign for the payment.Of course, everyone knew that Trump had an affair with Daniels and had paid her off. Nobody ever believed the denials: Trump just denies things, hoping that the nonstop chaos he generates will make everyone forget the impeachable offenses we learned about the day before.
“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,” Mr. Cohen said in a statement to The New York Times. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”
A couple of questions about this: how much money has Trump paid Cohen over the years? How much has money has Trump paid Cohen in the year and half since the payment was made?
It's irrelevant whether Cohen submitted a expense report with a "porn star payoff" line item. That's the reason the wealthy pay lawyers $1,500 to $2,000 an hour: so that they can make problems like these go away as quietly as possible. Cohen will just bill Trump an additional 90 hours for, say, "legal research," "discovery" or the old standard, "services rendered," and poof -- he's made his $130,000 back.
And despite what Cohen says, paying hush money to a porn star weeks before an election is a campaign expenditure -- an illegimate and illegal in-kind campaign expenditure, to be sure, but a campaign expenditure nonetheless.
Had Daniels' story about Trump banging a porn star without a condom appeared while his wife was still nursing their child come out immediately after the pussy grabbing tape, it might have been too much even for the soulless vipers that Republicans had become. It might have cost Trump the election.
It's all part of the pattern that Trump and his family use to buy off politicians and prosecutors to escape prosecution. In 2012 Ivanka and Jared's lawyer bought off the Manhattan DA with a campaign donation to avoid indictment for fraud. In 2013 the Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's reelection campaign in exchange for dropping her fraud case against Trump University, as well as giving her a large in-kind donation of a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago. Other states proceeded with their fraud case and Trump admitted guilt in the form of a $25 million settlement. Pam Bondi screwed over her constituents -- Trump's victims in Florida -- by not pressing their case against Trump: they got nothing, while Trump's New York victims got compensation.
Any one of these illegal transactions should be sufficient to put these people in jail. But, as Trump loves to say, the system is rigged: the rich can get away with anything.
And this is why the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling is the most corrupt and corrupting ruling in American history.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Pulling a Putin
Donald Trump finally released his budget, and of course it massively increases the federal debt. When Barack Obama wanted to jump-start the economy with infrastructure spending in the aftermath of Bush's economic meltdown, Republicans refused, claiming that the federal debt was absolutely horrible.
Now, with the King of Debt as president, Republicans are now completely in favor of having the federal government go on a huge borrowing spree to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and a massive increase in military spending.
Trump ran for president on promises of extracting us from foreign wars. But he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and sent troops to Syria and back to Iraq. American troops have died in Africa on secret missions. Trump is on course to start wars with North Korea and Iran. He's starting programs to build new, smaller, nuclear weapons to respond to "extreme circumstances" and non-nuclear attacks. This is the same idiot who wondered during the campaign why we couldn't use nuclear weapons.
But the biggest lie in Trump's budget is the "infrastructure plan." The plan claims to spend $200 billion over 10 years. Notice how they always do these things over 10 years to make it sound like a lot of money? The budget is redone every year, so these 10-year budget proposals are a total joke -- it'll all be thrown out next year.
But Trump's budget actually includes $168 billion in infrastructure cuts to programs that Trump doesn't care about, such as mass transit. So Trump is really only proposing to spend an additional $3 billion a year on infrastructure, which is only a hundred miles of interstate or a couple of big bridges.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated last year that $4.6 trillion is needed for our roads, bridges, ports, drinking water supplies, dams, airports and mass transit. Trump's plan does absolutely nothing to address those needs.
What it does do is to privatize billions of dollars of federal assets, including airports, roads, and federal land. Trump is doing what Vladimir Putin did: give away government assets to his pals so they can get rich.
Trump wants to turn every interstate in the country into a toll road so his buddies can soak you every time you drive to work. Trump wants give his campaign contributors a private monopoly on airports so they get a cut every time you fly. Trump wants to sell federal lands --including parklands -- to Canadian and Chilean mining companies that will leave the land a toxic mess for centuries.
This is the very definition of crony capitalism and corruption.
Now, with the King of Debt as president, Republicans are now completely in favor of having the federal government go on a huge borrowing spree to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and a massive increase in military spending.
Trump ran for president on promises of extracting us from foreign wars. But he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and sent troops to Syria and back to Iraq. American troops have died in Africa on secret missions. Trump is on course to start wars with North Korea and Iran. He's starting programs to build new, smaller, nuclear weapons to respond to "extreme circumstances" and non-nuclear attacks. This is the same idiot who wondered during the campaign why we couldn't use nuclear weapons.
But the biggest lie in Trump's budget is the "infrastructure plan." The plan claims to spend $200 billion over 10 years. Notice how they always do these things over 10 years to make it sound like a lot of money? The budget is redone every year, so these 10-year budget proposals are a total joke -- it'll all be thrown out next year.
But Trump's budget actually includes $168 billion in infrastructure cuts to programs that Trump doesn't care about, such as mass transit. So Trump is really only proposing to spend an additional $3 billion a year on infrastructure, which is only a hundred miles of interstate or a couple of big bridges.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated last year that $4.6 trillion is needed for our roads, bridges, ports, drinking water supplies, dams, airports and mass transit. Trump's plan does absolutely nothing to address those needs.
What it does do is to privatize billions of dollars of federal assets, including airports, roads, and federal land. Trump is doing what Vladimir Putin did: give away government assets to his pals so they can get rich.
Trump wants to turn every interstate in the country into a toll road so his buddies can soak you every time you drive to work. Trump wants give his campaign contributors a private monopoly on airports so they get a cut every time you fly. Trump wants to sell federal lands --including parklands -- to Canadian and Chilean mining companies that will leave the land a toxic mess for centuries.
This is the very definition of crony capitalism and corruption.
Monday, February 12, 2018
More Bari Weiss, Please!
If the #MeToo movement is going to succeed, it's going to need more people like Bari Weiss. Logical, rational, civics minded....all traits she has in abundance.
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Boo Hoo! Trump Feels So Sorry for His Wife-Beating Aides
Donald Trump is whining again about unfair everything is for powerful, rich, white men, and how their stupid and worthless wives are destroying their lives just because their husbands slapped them around for mouthing off:
President Trump on Saturday appeared to side with men accused of domestic abuse or sexual misconduct, following a week of turmoil surrounding allegations of spousal abuse against two male aides that brought the national #MeToo movement inside the White House.Yes, Donald, there still is something called due process. And these men have received it. They are still walking around free, and have not been charged with a crime, even though they abused their wives, multiple times. They are not in prison. They were never charged with crimes. Law enforcement is not harassing them or forcing them out of office. They either resigned voluntarily or were fired by you because they embarrassed you.
In a tweet, Trump questioned whether “due process” is being given to those accused of wrongdoing and expressed sympathy for their damaged careers and sullied reputations.
“Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”
Their rights have not been violated: no one has beaten, bruised and bloodied them, or falsely imprisoned them. Which is not true for the wives they've assaulted and divorced.
These men have been paid big government salaries for the last year, even though they still only had temporary security clearances. That's because they were still being investigated by the FBI. They had access to top secret government documents even though they had embarrassing secrets that they could be blackmailed with. Secrets dark enough that, when revealed to the general public, forced them to resign.
Their terminations show exactly why people like this should not have security clearances and work for the president.
Yeah, Trump says these guys deny they beat their wives. That's so lame -- everyone knows they did it. How stupid does Trump think we are? Wife-beating is a badge of honor among these clowns. They brag about slapping the missus to keep her in line, just like Trump bragged about grabbing women by the pussy.
These men have no inherent right to work in the White House. These weasels sealed their own fates when they assaulted the wives they had pledged to love and honor till death do they part. These weren't one-time temper tantrums -- Porter has assaulted at least three women. Only now, years later, has he finally been held to account, albeit in the most minor way. Because we all know that by next week Porter will have a seven-figure job working as a lobbyist for some billionaire Republican or foreign government, because he has the ear of the president.
Working for the president is a privilege that should be reserved for people with the highest moral character and integrity. Not lying, cheating, wife-beating scumbags.
But when the president himself is a lying, cheating wife-beating scumbag with the morals of an alley cat in heat, the only people who will agree to service him are incompetent, corrupt and immoral thugs.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
An Epidemic of Black Lung in Trump's Coal Mines
Donald Trump got elected with the promise of bringing back coal mining, an industry that has been failing for years. Trump blames renewable energy sources like solar and wind for coal's decline, but the real culprit is fracked natural gas, which is much cheaper and cleaner than coal. Natural gas is also technically far superior because natural gas turbines can spin up in seconds to satisfy shifting power demands, while coal power plants are big, slow dinosaurs.
Trump's big promise was to bring back coal mining jobs. But the problem with these jobs is that working in a coal mine is getting deadlier and deadlier. Miners are coming down with black lung disease (progressive massive fibrosis, or PMF) at an increasingly horrific rate:
"When I first implemented this clinic back in 1990, you would see ... five [to] seven ... PMF cases" a year, says Ron Carson, who directs Stone Mountain's black lung program.That a 50-fold increase. Black lung kills miners by destroying lung tissue: they literally suffocate to death. Last year NPR found that the rate of new black lung cases had increased 20 times, and it has continued to get much, much worse. The only "cure" is a lung transplant.
The clinics now see that many cases every two weeks, he says, and have had 154 new diagnoses of PMF since the fieldwork for the NIOSH study concluded a year ago.
Why is this happening? Because we're running out of coal:
The NPR investigation also found that the likely cause of the epidemic is longer work shifts for miners and the mining of thinner coal seams. Massive mining machines must cut rock with coal and the resulting dust contains silica, which is far more toxic than coal dust.The large (and profitable) deposits of coal have already been mined. Yes, there's a lot of coal in the ground, but it's spread very thinly now. It is much more expensive, dangerous and environmentally destructive to mine these inferior seams. Coal is already more expensive than wind and solar in most parts of the country, and it's only going to get worse.
Trump promised coal mining jobs, but what good is a job that destroys the land you live on, poisons your water and and slowly suffocates you while your family members watch helplessly?
Thursday, February 08, 2018
The Great Bald Spot
Well, one of Donald Trump's coverups has been exposed: the man is bald. Here's the evidence:
For years Trump has insisted that he's not bald. He has maintained that the thing on his head is his real hair. But, surprise, surprise: he's been lying the whole time. Hair stylists say that it's just a bad weave.
Now, generally I don't make fun of things people don't have control of, like having to wear glasses, baldness, or obesity (which is mostly genetic and societal). But Trump has a long history of making fun of people for things they have little to no control of, like that disabled reporter he mocked in a campaign rally. Then he had the gall to call women like Rosie O'Donnell "fat pigs, dogs and slobs" when Trump is such a porker himself. And in the late 90's he ranted that then-current (and gorgeous) Miss Universe Alicia Machado was fat, embarrassing her in front of a phalanx of photographers. But check out the wattle on Trump when he kisses her (he just can't stop himself!). He was already a fat slob 20 years ago.
So Trump deserves every bit of ridicule he gets for trying to cover up his baldness in such a tacky and phony way.
Trump is ridiculously vain. He thinks baldness is a sign of weakness (Washington and Churchill were such wimps!). After his presidential physical we learned that Trump takes a drug for baldness: finasteride. This has a number of side effects, including many with which Trump is afflicted: confusion, bloating of the face and redness of the skin. And impotence!
Trump even went through a painful and obviously pointless surgical procedure to reduce the size of the Great Bald Spot (a "scalp reduction"). Afterwards he reportedly yanked out his wife Ivana's hair and raped her (an accusation she withdrew when Donald dangled millions of alimony dollars in front of her).
Trump's hair has always been completely ridiculous. It's an obvious combover, looking like a helmet of hair-sprayed yak fur. Even his daughter Ivanka ridicules it.
Trump's baldness is nothing to be ashamed of or made fun of. What he should be ashamed of is how he insults other bald men, how he lies about his own baldness, and the ridiculous lengths he goes to cover it up, and how stupid the result makes him look. And he has so little self-awareness that he's completely oblivious to all of this.
That makes the Great Bald Spot a perfect metaphor for every other disaster in the Trump administration.
For years Trump has insisted that he's not bald. He has maintained that the thing on his head is his real hair. But, surprise, surprise: he's been lying the whole time. Hair stylists say that it's just a bad weave.
So Trump deserves every bit of ridicule he gets for trying to cover up his baldness in such a tacky and phony way.
Trump is ridiculously vain. He thinks baldness is a sign of weakness (Washington and Churchill were such wimps!). After his presidential physical we learned that Trump takes a drug for baldness: finasteride. This has a number of side effects, including many with which Trump is afflicted: confusion, bloating of the face and redness of the skin. And impotence!
Trump even went through a painful and obviously pointless surgical procedure to reduce the size of the Great Bald Spot (a "scalp reduction"). Afterwards he reportedly yanked out his wife Ivana's hair and raped her (an accusation she withdrew when Donald dangled millions of alimony dollars in front of her).
Trump's hair has always been completely ridiculous. It's an obvious combover, looking like a helmet of hair-sprayed yak fur. Even his daughter Ivanka ridicules it.
Trump's baldness is nothing to be ashamed of or made fun of. What he should be ashamed of is how he insults other bald men, how he lies about his own baldness, and the ridiculous lengths he goes to cover it up, and how stupid the result makes him look. And he has so little self-awareness that he's completely oblivious to all of this.
That makes the Great Bald Spot a perfect metaphor for every other disaster in the Trump administration.
Wednesday, February 07, 2018
Please Do So, Mr. President
Despite all advice to the contrary, President Trump thinks it's a good idea to sit down with Robert Mueller and talk about Russia. I hope that he does. Let's consider both men for a moment.
Robert Mueller is a cool, savvy investigator with decades of experience in criminal justice. As the head of the inquiry into the Trump campaign's ties to Russian intelligence, he has been the consummate professional.
Donald Trump is an arrogant dumb ass.
Who is going to win this battle?
Robert Mueller is a cool, savvy investigator with decades of experience in criminal justice. As the head of the inquiry into the Trump campaign's ties to Russian intelligence, he has been the consummate professional.
Donald Trump is an arrogant dumb ass.
Who is going to win this battle?
Saturday, February 03, 2018
The Memo Was A Giant Yawn
After a week of breathless hand wringing, the GOP and Donald Trump finally released the Congressional Memo that supposedly illustrates how biased the FBI is towards Donald Trump. Before it came out, I was most amused at the notion that this was some sort of smoking gun that Devin Nunes uncovered in the deep, dark bowels of the FBI on a super secret agent spy mission.
THEY WROTE THE FUCKING MEMO!!
By this same measure, I could write a memo about how Donald Trump secretly formed ISIL back in 2011. Then I could release and claim that it was so. Sheesh...
After reading through the memo, I was please to see confirmation that the investigation into Donald Trump and his ties with Russia began with George Papadopolous and his drunken night of bragging. It did not begin with the FISA warrant on Carter Page based on the Steele Dossier. Carter Page was also under scrutiny long before the Steele Dossier.
So, the whole thing was full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Honestly, it's not surprising given the fact that Republicans are madly scrambling to somehow blunt what's sure to be coming this year: an indictment of President Trump for money laundering.
THEY WROTE THE FUCKING MEMO!!
By this same measure, I could write a memo about how Donald Trump secretly formed ISIL back in 2011. Then I could release and claim that it was so. Sheesh...
After reading through the memo, I was please to see confirmation that the investigation into Donald Trump and his ties with Russia began with George Papadopolous and his drunken night of bragging. It did not begin with the FISA warrant on Carter Page based on the Steele Dossier. Carter Page was also under scrutiny long before the Steele Dossier.
So, the whole thing was full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Honestly, it's not surprising given the fact that Republicans are madly scrambling to somehow blunt what's sure to be coming this year: an indictment of President Trump for money laundering.
Friday, February 02, 2018
The Stock Market Just Took a Giant Hit. Will Trump Accept the Blame?
Just the other day Donald Trump bragged in the State of the Union that he was responsible for the increase in the stock market. The market had just hit its highest ever value, 26,616.
Since then -- because of Trump's speech, or the release of the stupid memo? -- the market has plummeted more than a thousand points, to 25,521.
Will Trump accept the blame for that?
To be honest, the market is overheated and a correction has long been overdue. But the real problem is that the stock market consists of scumbags trying to outguess other scumbags. The market dropped because the Friday unemployment report was good and there have been some meager wage increases.
That raises the bogeyman of inflation, a fear Republicans falsely raised throughout the Obama administration. Inflation was always around the corner, they said, and businesses used that as an excuse to keep wages down.
Now that they think inflation's really here they're ready to tank the stock market. It's just a scam to get corporations to fire a bunch of employees, lower wages, increase stock buybacks and increase dividend payouts to shareholders to make their stock more attractive.
Whenever something good happens that benefits the people who actually do all the work that makes the country run, the stock market tanks. The second it looks like companies will have to pay workers more, the greedy bastards bolt or demand a ransom payment. And since CEO bonuses depend on stock price, they always screw the employees to make themselves richer.
That's why communism happened. You can blame Marx. You can blame Lenin. But no one would have listened to Marx and Lenin without the greedy bastards who kept forcing more work out of people for less money.
And the scumbags like Trump and his cronies are trying to force us down that road again.
Since then -- because of Trump's speech, or the release of the stupid memo? -- the market has plummeted more than a thousand points, to 25,521.
Will Trump accept the blame for that?
To be honest, the market is overheated and a correction has long been overdue. But the real problem is that the stock market consists of scumbags trying to outguess other scumbags. The market dropped because the Friday unemployment report was good and there have been some meager wage increases.
That raises the bogeyman of inflation, a fear Republicans falsely raised throughout the Obama administration. Inflation was always around the corner, they said, and businesses used that as an excuse to keep wages down.
Now that they think inflation's really here they're ready to tank the stock market. It's just a scam to get corporations to fire a bunch of employees, lower wages, increase stock buybacks and increase dividend payouts to shareholders to make their stock more attractive.
Whenever something good happens that benefits the people who actually do all the work that makes the country run, the stock market tanks. The second it looks like companies will have to pay workers more, the greedy bastards bolt or demand a ransom payment. And since CEO bonuses depend on stock price, they always screw the employees to make themselves richer.
That's why communism happened. You can blame Marx. You can blame Lenin. But no one would have listened to Marx and Lenin without the greedy bastards who kept forcing more work out of people for less money.
And the scumbags like Trump and his cronies are trying to force us down that road again.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Trump's CIA Chief Meets with his Russian Bosses
While everyone was oohing and ahing about how Donald Trump managed to deliver the State of the Union speech without drooling or pooping his pants, further evidence of collusion with the Russians went mostly unnoticed by the media:
Two top Russian spy chiefs traveled to Washington last week to discuss counterterrorism issues with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, but the unusual visit also raised concerns among some U.S. officials that Moscow could interpret the encounter as a sign the Trump administration is willing to move beyond the issue of election interference, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.Naryshkin and Bortnikov are both subject to sanctions for Russia's invasion of Crimea and supporting the ongoing guerilla war against Ukraine. They should not have even been let into the country, much less be meeting with American national security officials.
Pompeo met with Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR, and Alexander Bortnikov, who runs the FSB, which is the main successor to the Soviet-era security service the KGB. The head of Russia’s military intelligence, the GRU, also came to Washington, though it’s not clear that he met with Pompeo.
It recalls the meeting that Trump had with Sergei Kislyak last year, when he bragged that he had gotten rid of the Russia investigation by firing James Comey, making Trump sound like some junior employee trying to impress the big boss.
This is unprecedented (or should I say, unpresidented, as Trump seems to think it's spelled). These three Russians are the sworn enemies of the United States, and Trump's national security apparatus is colluding with them.
The evidence that Russia interfered with our election and is continuing to attack American institutions is undeniable, yet the Trump administration totally blew off a law Congress passed to enact further sanctions on Russia.
Trump's Treasury department was supposed to draw up a list of bad Russian actors and sanction them, but all they did was copy and paste a list of Russian billionaires from Forbes' website, fifteen minutes before the deadline.
These people are not professionals -- they're middle schoolers cribbing their homework from the Internet.
Trump is selling this country out to the Russians, and Republicans in Congress are sitting idly by as the worst treason in American history unfolds before their eyes.
White Evangelicals, This is Why People Are Through With You
John Pavlovitz has knocked it out of the park. Here is the open letter, reprinted in its entirety and dedicated, with fondness, to Ed "what the heck" Heckman who trolled this blog for so many years as A. Noni Mouse and still obsessively reads it every day, unable to comment. Ed, your kind has reached the end of their time. Buh-bye...
Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you. They’re done. They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why: They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.
For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity. They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.
And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was, you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy, your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership, your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him, you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him. And yet today, you openly give a “mulligan” to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles. And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion. With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution. With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission. With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart. With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement. With him, you see only Providence. And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly. They recognize the toxic source of your duality. They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities. They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus. They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself. They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it. They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition. Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more. You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness. You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation. You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness. You’ve lost the plot. And most of all you’ve lost your soul. I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.
But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.
Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you. They’re done. They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why: They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.
For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity. They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.
And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was, you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy, your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership, your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him, you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him. And yet today, you openly give a “mulligan” to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles. And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion. With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution. With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission. With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart. With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement. With him, you see only Providence. And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly. They recognize the toxic source of your duality. They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities. They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus. They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself. They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it. They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition. Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more. You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness. You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation. You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness. You’ve lost the plot. And most of all you’ve lost your soul. I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.
But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.
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