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.

Missing Their Opportunity

I haven't said this in a while but I really love Quora. Why? It's because of questions like this that produce a veritable treasure trove of wonderful answers for tens of thousands of people to see. Here are a few choice cuts...

Until the GOP really tries to shed itself of the policies that help perpetuate racism and poverty in America, they will have a difficult time attracting significant numbers of black or minority voters.

Yep.

They keep doing stuff like gerrymandering districts to minimize the effects of black voters, and passing voter suppression laws aimed at discouraging blacks from voting, and so on. They're actually proud of it. So there you are. The only black Republicans are so enthused by conservative ideology that they're willing to overlook the howling racism in their party.

Howling racism? Ah, Ernest...so many followers and so many views on your answers. I'd be jealous but you are saying all the things I would say anyway and so much more eloquently.

A signal doesn't clearer than that. As such it is no wonder that white supremacists and other racists naturally flock to the GOP, while blacks and other minorities find in the Democrats a more welcoming home.

Ooo...that one had some stank on it!

It will never cease to amaze me just how much the GOP is in denial about the racism in their party. They could attract so many more voters if they ejected the angry old white people by the wayside.

The Trumps Can't Do Basic Arithmetic

Mother Jones is running a series of articles about Donald Trump called the "Trump Files," which is pretty hilarious if you're a Democrat, and downright depressing if you're a Republican.

In one of his many, many appearances on the Howard Stern show (in which Trump usually talked about inane things like his wife's poop), Trump and his kids said they got into the Wharton School on their own merits, and not because of who their fathers were. Stern didn't buy it.



To test them, Stern asked them a basic math question: how much is 17 times 6? They couldn't figure it out. The boy variously offered 94 and 96, and the girl didn't even try, saying it wasn't a "practical application." Trump said it was 112. Even after Stern revealed the answer -- 102 -- Trump insisted it was 112; no wonder he thinks he's so much richer than he actually is.

Like the girl, many people may not think basic math is practical in this day and age of smart phone apps and Google. And, yes, the math itself is irrelevant. What's important here are the extremely useful skills of problem solving and BS detection.

There are two easy ways to solve this basic problem. Both involve breaking it down into components that you can easily answer. The first way is to realize that 17 is 10 + 7. You multiply 10 by 6 = 60, then 7 by 6 = 42, and then add them up to get 102. The other way is to realize that 17 is 20 - 3. Multiply 6 by 20 = 120, and then subtract 6 x 3 = 18 from 120 to get 102.

This mindset is essential to solving any complex problem. We can't solve modern society's problems with one masterstroke -- every problem this country faces requires addressing a bunch of smaller problems that we can solve.

Most of these problems involve numbers -- big ones: the federal budget, the deficit, the debt, tax policy, the GDP, the balance of trade, the influx of millions of immigrants, the outflow of millions of jobs to Asia, millions of unemployed people.

If you have a basic facility with numbers, you can use that a BS detector when someone spouts numbers at you. If their basic numbers don't add up, you know they're lying. If you can't understand basic numbers, you can't tell when people are lying to you.

Trump can't do basic arithmetic, and is surrounded by people who can't do basic arithmetic. If he and his people can't handle small numbers, they will be incapable of handling big ones. This is clear from his tax proposals, which are giveaways to billionaires, and would leave a giant hole in the budget, bankrupting this country.

Worse, Trump thinks it's okay. He's fine with the United States defaulting on the debt, and forcing creditors to "take a haircut." Yeah, Donald Trump wants to make America great again by copying Greece's economic model: low taxes and debt default.

A recent analysis by Moody's Analytics found that Trump's economic plan would be a disaster for the United States. Instead of being a stable haven for the world's wealth, the United States would become third-rate junk bond market. Just like the several casinos Trump used to own that went bankrupt because he borrowed money at high interest rates.

The mantra at Trump University was "OPM" -- Other People's Money. This was how Trump survived his catastrophically stupid business decisions: he used other people's money to prop up his casino corporation, then he loaded his personal debts onto the corporation, then he declared bankruptcy, leaving himself richer and all his investors poorer.


Now, the Other People are us, the US taxpayers. If we give Donald Trump our money, we know exactly what's going to happen to it.

Hold Them Accountable

When United States citizens are polled on guns, a majority (57%) want more strict gun laws and that includes Republicans. A massive majority (89%) want background checks on all gun purchases. A majority wants a ban on assault weapons (57%). With voting set today in the Senate on four separate pieces of gun safety legislation, keep track of who votes and how they vote.

Hold them accountable.

The Trump News Network

Remember back when email started? It was right around that time when that crazy uncle you have got on the computer machine and started in with the email forwards about how Bill Clinton was building an army of robots that were going to steal our luggage.

And take away all the guns.

Now, with the age of social media, Facebook has become the new haven for the "email forward" crowd. These mentally unbalanced conservatives have concocted all sorts of bizarre nonsense about Barack Obama, liberals, and Hillary Clinton. This is Donald Trump's crowd...the voters that have propelled him to the GOP nomination...and he knows it.

So, when he says, "I hear that ______________" he's talking about this network of insanity that bears no resemblance to reality. He's getting his information from people just making shit up on the computer machine! In fact, the political pundits of Morning Joe think that Trump isn't really serious anymore about running for president. He's merely priming these people for being the future audience of his own news network.

Makes sense now, doesn't it?:)

The Arrogance of the Gun Cult

Here's a great example of the arrogance of the Gun Cult.

“I think a lot of the fear comes from something [people] don’t understand,” said Maxwell. “They don’t understand that there is a sport that revolves around shooting. They just know that [the AR-15] looks scary on TV.”

What's not to understand? It's a toy. You guys like it a lot. And, like children, you don't want it to be taken away.

Further, it's not the gun that scares us, asshole. It's the mentality behind it...a mentality which continues to allow events like Orlando to happen on a regular basis and is directly responsible for murder.

An AR-15 Owner Has Had Enough

Daniel Hayes' recent piece says it all. He's an AR-15 owner and he's had enough. His solution?

There’s a saying that goes “when seconds count the police are only minutes away.” It’s meant to enforce the truism that we are all ultimately responsible for our own defense when the chips are down. But what it really reinforces is the importance of time. Time matters immensely when you’re defending yourself. You need time to do so. You need opportunity. Ban magazines over ten rounds. Give potential victims time and opportunity and in giving them that time we will deter murderers from attempting these mass shootings. They will fear that they won’t be able to kill enough to make their point before they are crushed by their chosen victims. They are cowards. Give them reason to fear.

My only quibble is that non gun owners have, in fact, been calling for this for quite some time. So, a little bit of the gun owner condescension aside, he's right that this would make an immediate impact. Of course, we have to do more.

Heed This Warning

A recent answer on Quora struck a similar tone to what I have been saying in terms of the Gun Cult giving a little now to save a lot of pain later.

I think the pro gun camp is making a mistake. They are letting the anti gun camp look like the reasonable side and they are letting the anti gun camp control the message. The pro gun camp is looking more and more like a bunch of gun crazy conspiracy theory nuts.

I think the pro gun camp needs to take a step back and stop being so defensive. They need to calm down and start sounding reasonable and controlling the message. Most gun owners want there to be common sense regulations for guns. The second amendment and the Heller decision allows for those regulations so the pro gun camp should be the ones proposing the reforms that will help decrease these big mass shootings.

If they don't, I suspect that the pro gun camp is going to create exactly what they fear the most by being defensive and obstinate. They are going to let the anti gun camp win.

Indeed.

Mic Drop (AKA what it's like having an adult for president)

The Not So Lonely Lone Wolf

The State of Gun Violence in the United States

The video below is a fairly unbiased look at gun violence in the US. They do a great job of explaining the proportions of mass shootings to suicides etc while illustrating just how grave the problem is and how it's gotten worse.

Orlando: Homophobia, and not Islamic Terror?

Republicans like Trump are framing the Orlando massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub as an act of radical Islamic terrorist. The fact is, these murders had nothing to do with Islam: it was an act of hatred aimed at a social minority, motivated by conservative and religious intolerance of people who are different.

This attack is like the church shooting in Charleston last year, the abortion clinic shooting in Colorado Springs last November, the bombing of the Otherside Lounge (a gay bar in Atlanta in 1997), plus numerous other attacks on gay bars over the last 50 years.

The Orlando shooter was a nut who hated gays, just like the Charleston shooter was a nut who hated African Americans, and the Colorado Springs shooter was a nut who hated people involved with abortion.

It looks like Mateen was a lone wolf who had nothing to do with ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Yes, he called 911 to proclaim his allegiance to them. But why?

Mateen's choice of targets tells the real story. He was an American, born and bred, and he knew that if this was written off by the media as an attack on gays by a homophobic nutjob, it would be immediately forgotten and he would lapse into obscurity like the dozens of conservative Christian nutjobs who have committed the same crime.

But when he pledges allegiance to ISIS he suddenly becomes an infamous Muslim terrorist and can sow terror and fear into the hearts of every American, not just the small percentage of Americans in the LGBT community.

By attacking a gay nightclub, Mateen made it clear he was motivated more by the recent flurry of bathroom bills in Florida, rather than a radical Islamic agenda.

Orlando Falllout

Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS, official says 

"In the beginning he was a normal being that cared about family, loved to joke, loved to have fun, but then a few months after we were married I saw his instability. I saw that he was bipolar and he would get mad out of nowhere. That's when I started worrying about my safety," she said.

When you support our nation's current gun laws, you allow someone like this to acquire a firearm. Thus, you are just as responsible as he is. Thankfully, there are members of Congress who agree.

“This phenomenon of near constant mass shootings happens only in America – nowhere else,” Murphy said Sunday. “Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence. This doesn’t have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing – again.”

It's bizarre, really, because we're talking about a threat to our national security and yet they do nothing. As a side note, it's interesting how the ISIL angle is being played up but not the mental illness nor homophobia. At this point, it seems like the ISIL connection was after the fact and merely thrown in as an excuse by Mateen in the hopes of denying his individual problems.

As mass shootings plague US, survivors mourn lack of change

"The deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history has people around the world wondering why mass violence keeps happening in America." 

Uh...because a third of our country (gun owners) has a totalitarian stranglehold on the rest of us, peddling ideological nonsense based purely on their need for empowerment?

Not Working

The 28th Amendment

I was planning on putting up a post this week on how a 28th amendment should be added to the US Constitution that rewords the 2nd Amendment. Today seems a good day to do so given what has happened in Orlando. Thanks in advance to John Paul Stevens, former SCOTUS judge, for the inspiration.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, while serving in a militia, shall not be infringed.

Unless you regularly train for active shooter situations, other forms of combat, and get regular mental health and background checks, no guns for you. This would drastically reduce gun violence in our nation and would clearly have prevented this event.

I’m past the whole “shocked, outraged and saddened” tripe. Events like the Orlando shooting happen on a regular basis in the United States and it’s entirely the fault of the gun lobby and its supporters. Worse, international terrorist organizations are now exploiting this.

As a citizen of the United States, we are at continued security risks as long as we have a completely warped view of firearms. The shooter in this case was on an FBI watch list but because gun rights activists have used their power to maintain lax gun laws, this guy was able to procure guns.

The Gun Cult is, once again, criminally responsible for this. We need to stop them before they allow more  people to be killed.

What Happens When You Aren't An Asshole

Guns Save Lives!!

I Rest My Case

Idiots

Mocking The Disabled

When I watch the video below of Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter, it reminds me a lot of the bullying that goes on in the comments sections of blogs. Childish...insensitive...someone who was obviously bullied themselves... and much more.

The people that run these blogs and the commenters that follow them finally have a candidate that represents their values.


 

I'm going to truly enjoy watching them get their ass kicked in November.

Trump's Waterloo?

What amazes me the most about this is that high ranking GOP members are shocked, SHOCKED, that Trump is being a racist. What the fuck did they expect? And what does this say about the GOP base?

Exactly what I have been saying all along...:)

Republican Strategy: Pump and Dump Trump?

It has been a mystery to conservative pundits across the country how supposedly honorable Republicans are supporting Trump. See any column written by Jennifer Rubin or George F. Will at the Washington Post to see what I mean.

But with the release of court documents in the Trump University case the way forward is clear.

It is now obvious that Trump is an immoral, unethical, lying, cowardly, bullying crook with mob connections and a two-year-old's inclination for temper tantrums. He has forty years of dirty laundry with extra-marital affairs, tax evasion, bankruptcies, shady deals and so on.

All the Republican establishment need do is nominate a vice president that's smarter than a bucket of warm spit. If Trump is elected, they impeach the bastard.

They'll have their choice of hundreds of Trump scandals to choose from.They need only dig up four or five oldies but goodies, as they did with the Clintons. Trump has literally dozens of Whitewaters. Set up a few congressional investigations, which will find probable cause for impeachment. Appoint a special prosecutor, who will most assuredly find numerous high crimes and misdemeanors because, well, Trump. After a brief impeachment trial in the House, Trump will be convicted in the Senate.

Their chosen VP will become president, and Bob's your uncle.

Trump has insulted pretty much everyone in the Republican Party, and sure, it'll be embarrassing for the House and Senate to impeach a president who's nominally a Republican.

But shutting Trump's fat mouth with an an impeachment trial will be so worth it...

Five Undisputed Facts About Clinton's Emails

From The Hill...

First, the former secretary of State did nothing illegal by having a private email system. The department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) pointed to “policies” that were violated but cited no laws that were violated and said these policies were inconsistently applied and need to be further clarified in the future. 

Second, Clinton was not trying to hide her use of her own private email address. In fact, 90 percent of all the emails she sent went to State Department employees with a state.gov email address, which she thought, mistakenly, would be automatically preserved on the department’s email server. How could she be seeking to hide her use of a private email address if she sent her private email to so many people at State? 

Third, no email received or sent by Clinton was labeled at any level of classification. Multiple references in the media and in the right-wing blogosphere to Clinton emails containing “classified” information all refer to post-facto opinions — what could be accurately called classification by hindsight. State Department experts disagreed with many of those opinions. 

Fourth, according to the OIG, there is no evidence that Clinton’s private server was ever successfully hacked. In other words, all the dire and dark warnings from partisan Republicans about the secretary of State risking the nation’s security by using a private server are, in fact, all speculation — based on no facts whatsoever. 

Fifth, as pointed out by the inspector general, there was ample precedent for the use of private emails for official and private business, from Colin Powell to senior aides for Condoleezza Rice.

If you head hurts, that's the ol' cognitive dissonance happening.

The second one is my favorite because it shows how silly the Hillary mouth foamers are. Email goes two ways, right? So..um...that means that there are always copies out there FROM THE PEOPLE WHO SHE SENT EMAILS TO!!!

Freaking Out Over Dead Lesbian Syndrome

A couple of months ago the CW show The 100 killed off Lexa, a lesbian character, right after she had consummated her relationship with Clarke, the main character.

Fans went nuts. Many stopped watching the show, and its ratings crashed. The showrunner has apologized profusely, but critics have not been mollified (note: Clarke had a previous lesbian liaison and everyone lived!).

The 100 is a post-apocalyptic science fiction series. A nuclear war killed most of earth's population. A few thousand people survive on space stations in orbit. But after many decades, the space stations are running out of resources: in particular, oxygen. Because of this, pretty much any infraction is punished by death, as a form of population control. But it's not working any more; the only way the human race can survive is to return to earth, which is still a radioactive hell-hole as far as they know. So the Sky People, as they are called, send 100 kids sentenced to death down to earth to see if they can survive.

NPR has a story about this today: 

About 10 percent of the deaths that I counted were gay, bisexual or otherwise queer women, which, when you think about it proportionally, is kind of nuts because not many television shows, unless it's "Orange Is The New Black" or something, have more than one or two maybe gay, bisexual or otherwise women. And the fact that most of them - a lot of them end up dead is troubling.

Now, there may be a real Bury Your Gays or Dead Lesbian Syndrome in TV and the movies, a holdover from the 50s when various ethics codes in the media required that no sin go unpunished, at a time when homosexuality was considered aberrant.

But in this case The 100 is 100% not guilty of Dead Lesbian Syndrome. The lesbian character didn't die because she was a lesbian, but because the main character loved her. In this show, every loving relationship eventually ends in death.

Bellamy's girlfriend dies. Jasper's girlfriend dies. Clarke's dad dies. Octavia's boyfriend dies. Monty's mom dies. Everyone in Mount Weather dies. Clarke's previous two boyfriends die; Clarke herself was forced to administer the death penalty to the second one to avoid all-out war with the "grounders," as the natives are called.

The 100 is literally the grittiest show on TV. Most shows starring people in their teens and 20s have them running around with perfect clothes, hair and teeth and makeup, regardless of how barbaric their situation. Not The 100. When someone gets beat up, they're bloody and bruised and the damage lasts multiple episodes. They live in a post-apocalyptic world that has devolved to a medieval level for most inhabitants.

Life on The 100 is dirty, short and brutal, regardless of sexual orientation. So don't stop watching the show because Lexa got killed. Anyone Clarke loves is gonna die: hers is the kiss of death.

A far better reason to stop watching the show is that is essentially the anti-Star Trek: everyone acts like an idiot, all outsiders are distrusted, hated and killed, everyone holds a grudge and nearly every character has lost their moral center, at a time when humanity needs it most. The show has a dismal, hopeless view of mankind and its ability to survive its own self-destructiveness. Each season the plot lurches from one looming catastrophe to another bigger and even more calamitous disaster, with any rays of hope snuffed out within one or two episodes.

The one good thing the series does is emphasize our predicament: for the human race to survive, we need each other. Otherwise we won't have a civilization; we just have an ever-growing pile of corpses.

Children Need Protection!

How is it Not Racism?

I'm sure in Donald Trump's mind, calling out U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge in the Trump University fraud case, for being Mexican isn't racist. Never mind the fact that Judge Curiel is an American citizen who was born in Indiana. He's a beaner!!! Fuck him...

 

Someone Woke Up Hillary

The video below is an excellent illustration of how you take down Donald Trump. I'm happy to see that Hillary Clinton finally woke up. She looks presidential and he looks like some angry, old white guy yelling in a hat. Speaking of such guys...

I noted how her critique of Donald could also be applied to right wing bloggers and commenters. After all, they are essentially the same animal. Example...

"Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different -- they are dangerously incoherent. They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies."

Sums up nearly every conservative, especially the Gun Cult, that I've ever had a discussion with over the years...:)

Great Answer!

I'm wondering why we have to continue to coddle gun rights supporters as if they were self entitled teenagers. We too easily give in to their nonsense and allow them to control the conversation. We should call them out for exactly what they are: paranoid liars who should find alternate ways to soothe their insecurity and inferiority...ways that don't cause the deaths of thousands US citizens every year.

A Preview of a Trump Presidency in Alabama

Alabama is going to hell.

Michael G. Hubbard, the speaker of the Alabama House, is on trial for corruption. The chief justice has been suspended for ethics violations. And the governor is under investigation for talking sex with his top aide (whose company received $400K in campaign cash from the governor and whose husband landed a state government job after the governor was elected).

The case of the speaker is most illustrative of what we'll see in a Trump administration. His business was having trouble, and he needed cash, but no one would hire him:

Such reluctance, the emails showed, deepened the frustrations of Mr. Hubbard, who lamented that companies hesitated to hire him, even though he had helped strengthen Alabama’s reputation as a business-friendly state. Eventually, Mr. Brooke and others agreed to invest in Mr. Hubbard’s struggling printing company.

Prosecutors also brought out testimony that depicted the extent of the speaker’s ties with lobbyists. One lobbyist, for instance, described how he and two others had once met about their business in Mr. Hubbard’s conference room in Montgomery, the state capital.

Mr. Hubbard faces 20 years in prison on each of the 23 counts against him. Testimony will continue Thursday.

Now, as president, Trump wouldn't be looking for a job. Previous presidential candidates haven't been actively running companies the way Trump does; they do the honorable thing and step down. Even though he's running for president, Trump is still involved with the day-to-day business of his companies: he's going to Scotland soon for the reopening of the Turdberry -- excuse me, Turnberry -- golf course.

Previous presidents have turned over their investments to a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest. Not Trump. He said he'd turn over the management of his businesses to his children.

That doesn't resolve the conflict of interest. The businesses of children and other relatives of presidents still represent a huge conflict, especially in the case of Trump, a control freak who is completely incapable of relinquishing control of his companies.

For example, in the 1980s Neil Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, ran Silverado Savings & Loan into the ground, resulting in a bailout costing taxpayers $1.3 billion. The FDIC sued Bush but the case was settled out of court. The 1980s S&L scandal under Reagan/Bush was a prequel to W.'s meltdown of the financial system in 2008.

Did Neil Bush get kid-glove treatment because he was the president's son? I don't know. But based on everything Trump has said about abusing the system to get what he wants, you'd have to be a fool to think that he wouldn't take advantage of his position to increase the value of his companies and help his children out.

Because if Trump's companies went belly up while he was president, it would be a huge embarrassment to him. He will never be able to step away from them.

It's inevitable that a Trump presidency will be consumed by and endless run of scandals: conflicts of interest, funneling money and business to Trump companies, mob cronies showing up to collect favors, his tirades against world leaders, further revelations about Trump University and other real estate scams, his uncontrollable urge to get even with old enemies, murders at his casinos due to security cuts to save money, his incompetence with military affairs (he had no clue what the nuclear triad was in a December debate, has said Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons, has advocated torture and murder of innocent children in violation of the Geneva Conventions, like some third-world despot), and, given Trump's braggadocio and very long history of marital infidelity, at least a few sex scandals.

The 2 Year Olds

Politico has a great piece up about how it's time that the press start treating Donald Trump like a 2 year old. Considering he is the nominee of the GOP, I think we should start treating all conservatives as described by Mr. Shafer. This is especially true for the right wing bloggers and commenters out there who (metaphorically) want to have ice cream for breakfast every day when it comes to running our nation.

So, how will this be done? First, let's take a look at the symptoms.

This is the first time we’ve seen a candidate assume the psychological and reactive profile of a small child. Trump seethed like an irritable 2-year-old instead of exhibiting the kind of restraint and comity we usually associate with a finalist in the presidential sweepstakes. I’m a big baby, the Trump outburst announced to all, and I’ll just act out until my anger is appeased!

As the emotional equivalent of a toddler, Trump can’t articulate the rage he feels, and the interrogations at news conferences seem to make him only angrier.

Not only is this illustrative of Trump but it's a pitch perfect description of every single comments discussion I have ever had with conservatives.

How does one confront this?

First, you can’t manage a toddler if you play his game. if there’s one thing you don’t want to do is get in a name-calling contest with someone so emotionally stunted and so talented at giving nicknames (“Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” “Little Marco,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Pocahontas,” et al.).

Second, the press needs to be more practical. Sometimes when a toddler acts out the way Trump does, the underlying cause is quite simple. He’s tired. If so, put him down for a nap. Or he’s hungry. Feed him!

I guess a reporter from Hollywood Reporter recently gave him some ice cream so that was nice.

Third, offer some distractions. The smart parent always keeps in reserve ways to distract his toddler. In Baby Donald’s case, the solution seems to be a few beautiful young women, preferably “10s,” just outside his field of vision.

Positive reinforcement helps, too. Whenever an hour or two passes without him insulting somebody as ugly, a fool, a dummy, dopey, a lowlife, a clown, a dog, a lightweight, a disaster, stupid, grubby, nasty, incompetent or one of his other pet epithets, give him the praise he needs to develop into an ethically centered, considerate human being. “You were such a good boy today,” will succeed in shaping him a lot further than the biting criticism so many have used against him.

If all else fails, Shafer notes, take away his Twitter feed! I believe they do have rules about how people conduct themselves on there.

The above is great advice for dealing with conservatives, especially the Gun Cult:)

Trump Chumps

Court documents released yesterday showed without a doubt that Donald Trump is con man out to screw regular guys:

In blunt testimony revealed on Tuesday, former managers of Trump University, the for-profit school started by Donald J. Trump, portray it as an unscrupulous business that relied on high-pressure sales tactics, employed unqualified instructors, made deceptive claims and exploited vulnerable students willing to pay tens of thousands for Mr. Trump’s insights.

These aren't just disgruntled students who felt they got screwed over paying $35,000 for bogus real estate investment classes that were supposed to be delivered by Trump himself. These are the instructors and sales people who worked for the fraudulent school.

Trump likes to claim he didn't really have anything to do with the scam, that he just lended his name to it. That's a lie:

Mr. Trump, who started the university in 2005, owned 93 percent of the now-defunct company. From the start, he acted as its chief promoter, rather than day-to-day manager, selling it as a tool of financial empowerment that would improve life for thousands of ordinary Americans. It would, he said, “teach you better than the best business school,” according to the transcript of a Web video.

Trump's con job was the worst kind of scam: taking money from people who could least afford it, ruining their lives:

The most striking documents were written testimony from former employees of Trump University who said they had become disenchanted with the university’s tactics and culture. Corrine Sommer, an event manager, recounted how colleagues encouraged students to open up as many credit cards as possible to pay for classes that many of them could not afford.

“It’s O.K., just max out your credit card,” Ms. Sommer recalled their saying.

Jason Nicholas, a sales executive at Trump University, recalled a deceptive pitch used to lure students — that Mr. Trump would be “actively involved” in their education. “This was not true,” Mr. Nicholas testified, saying Mr. Trump was hardly involved at all. Trump University, Mr. Nicholas concluded, was “a facade, a total lie.”

Trump says that lots of students felt they received good value for their money. Sadly, that's not true: they're are just losers haven't yet realized that they were conned.

Exactly like all those voters who still support Trump...

Not That Close

Here's a great piece from Charlie Cook on how the Clinton Trump race is not as close as it seems. The simple fact is that once the Hilz is the nominee, her numbers are going to return to what they were before Trump become the de facto nominee.