The Bubble of Self Referential Confirmation

I posted a question on Quora regarding the Trump supporters video I put up yesterday. There are really some great answers. The top one included this sentence.

Since they live in a bubble of self-referential confirmation, there can’t be substantial amounts of people who disagree.

A bubble of self referential confirmation...that pretty much explains every right wing blog which I have ever read. So, that's now going to become a tag for future posts regarding the right wing cocoon they have all ensconced themselves in.

The best answer to the question was this....

They seem to be the kind of people who are taught from a very early age not to trust authority figures. Of course, the funny thing is, it’s always authority figures that tell them this, but it they won’t see that disconnect or even think about the double standard. The intellectual, people with “book smarts” (“Ever met someone who was so smart they were stupid?” is a favorite tag line), are just as dangerous as “niggers and Jews”, even more so, because “they look like us”. Since they are so smart, they must be using them smarts to “get over on us”. Why do they believe that? Because it’s what they would do if they were smart!

I have had to do a little self analysis to understand this phenomenon. Back in the 7os, there was a rumor going around that Ray Kroc, head of McDonalds, tithed to the Church of Satan. Here is how I fell into the pit of repeating it:

It originated at church. I do not recall that it was started or spread by a pastor, but it was in the church environment that I heard it. I was a naive, devout 16–17 year old who thought that all the people who went to our church were just as devout and would never lie about something that important…or slanderous. If “so-and-so” said it, it must be true. This was pre-Internet, so there was no way to Google it and very hard to squelch such things.

I also found that when I repeated it to like-minded people, their response was almost universally also acceptance, wide-eyed, “You don’t say!” kind of acceptance. WOW! This FELT GOOD! I experienced a frisson of superiority and authority that I had never felt before. I KNEW a secret, and by repeating it, I was elevated through the ranks to the dizzying heights of “the Aware”. It’s an incredible ego boost. Here we were, ready and prepared to boycott Mickey Dees, and I was in the vanguard, leading the way…with the pitchforks and torches.

Word finally reached the office of the man himself, Ray Kroc, and I just so happened to read the paper containing his response. It was pitiful; the gist of it was, “Look, I don’t know where or how this rumor got started, but it’s not true! I’m a Presbyterian for cryin’ out loud!” (may have been Catholic or Episcopal or somesuch). I don’t wish to pat myself on the back, especially after admitting to be one of the purveyors of the vicious rumor, but I differ from the Trump-type conspiracy theorist in my ultimate response. I felt sick. I had slandered a perfectly innocent man, and for what? Christian virtue? An ego boost? A game? Pure gossip, which is wrong even if true if the intent is to hurt (unless it is public knowledge).

I wish someone had had the courage to ask a simple question from the beginning: “How do you know this is true? Are you really willing to potentially damage a person’s reputation based upon such an unfounded accusation?” I might not have taken part, especially since I was young and teachable, in spreading the rumor. As it was, I learned my lesson and learned it well. NO, I am not willing to risk ruining a person’s reputation with unfounded and scurrilous rumors. I refuse to “follow the crowd in doing evil” (“Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness. Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.” Exodus 23:12) If anyone wants me to believe something, they damn well better have evidence to back it up.

Amazing...if only more people inside the bubble of self referential confirmation had such a high level of reflective ability...

The problem with authority thing is also important to note. It's like they never got over...BEING AN ADOLESCENT.

Beware of the....RIGGERS!!

Offshoring to India Results in Massive Fraud

For the last 20 years American companies have been offshoring their call center operations to India, Asia, Ireland and even Jamaica. Here's the result: 

Computer savvy criminals posing as Internal Revenue Service officers at call centers in India may have bilked unsuspecting Americans out of millions, police in India said Thursday.

Police in Mumbai conducted a dramatic midnight raid at a call center in the country’s commercial capital of Mumbai on Tuesday, and detained 770 employees for questioning, of which 70 were later charged with fraud, wrongful impersonation and violating the country’s internet safety law.

The call centers were making more than $150,000 a day through these scams that took place for a little over a year, police said.

The callers told their American victims they were conducting a “tax revision” or that they had defaulted on payments to the IRS and would then obtain their personal finance information and withdraw money from their bank accounts, according to Param Bir Singh, a senior police officer in Mumbai who led the raid.

How many times have you gotten one of those scam calls from "Microsoft Windows" to help you get rid of viruses on your computer?

Meanwhile, in another call center in the suburb of New Delhi, police say workers allegedly duped thousands of American citizens by offering to remove a virus from their computers. On Sunday, police in Noida arrested six people for running a call center that sold insurance to Indians by day, but by night, also allegedly duped American consumers with fake offers of tech support to correct malware and viruses. 

Numerous American banks, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, have moved their call centers to India and the Philippines. These call center employees make peanuts, and they have total access to their customers' most sensitive financial information.

American companies have unwittingly provided criminals in foreign countries with the office space, hardware, training and information to defraud American citizens.

Wells Fargo is undergoing a PR crisis because their American employees committed fraud on a massive scale as a result of unreasonable quotas placed on them. They are opening their customers up to even worse kinds of fraud and identity theft by putting their call centers in third world countries, where poorly paid call center employees come and go without any kind of background checks.

How safe are these call centers from attacks by Russian and Chinese hackers? Or someone just walking in and using the computer of someone who went to the bathroom?

The president of the Philippines has been on an anti-American rampage for the last month, comparing himself to Hitler and threatening to cut military ties to the United States. This man controls the Internet infrastructure that connects Philippine call centers to bank databases in the United States. Do you trust Rodrigo Duterte with your financial data?

As Wells Fargo has shown, American employees are not angels. Wells Fargo management was in the same building where agents were creating fake accounts for customers, racking up billions in phony fees. But with call centers in foreign countries, management has no control over what happens to their customers' information.

I'm not an isolationist. If companies want to put tech support in India and Jamaica, that's fine. But putting all our financial data on the Internet in foreign countries seems extremely unwise: the US government has no jurisdiction over what goes on there; we're totally dependent on foreign governments to find and prosecute the people stealing our information.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It has the potential to be blow up even bigger than the Great Recession.

The FBI Vets CIA Analysts and Cabinet and Court Nominees: Why Not Presidential Candidates?

An opinion piece in the Times notes that in both the Obama and Bush administrations cabinet and court nominees were required to divulge their tax returns:

In both the Bush and Obama administrations, a bad attitude about paying taxes was a deal killer. Both of us saw instances of nominations that were doomed by the arguably legal but unsavory use of tax loopholes, as well as by the failure to pay Social Security taxes, the taking of excessive deductions for home offices or the sidestepping of sales taxes on out-of-state purchases. Explaining to the Senate and to the American people how a billionaire could have a $916 million “loss carry-forward” that potentially allowed him to not pay taxes for over a decade, perhaps for as long as 18 years, would have been far too difficult for the White House when many hard-working Americans turn a third or more of their earnings over to the government.

Furthermore, most nominees -- especially those nominated to sensitive national security positions -- are vetted by the FBI to make sure they don't have any serious conflicts of interests or skeletons in the closet that could be used to blackmail the nominee once in office.

When I was a senior in college I briefly considered working for the CIA because of my language background (my sister- and brother-in-law had long careers as translators there). One of the strangest questions on the application was, "Have you ever used heroin?" It seemed crazy that they'd ask this on a form, because it seems to be automatically disqualifying. Who would tell the truth?

But it isn't a deal-breaker. Since they do a background check, they're likely to find out if you're lying. When you tell the truth you get credit for not being deceptive: if your positive assets outweigh the negatives of your drug history, they'll still hire you.

The FBI does extensive background checks on cabinet and court appointees, but also deputy positions in executive departments, NSA analysts, and even low-level translators working for the CIA. CIA applicants are submitted to polygraph tests during their interview, and regularly during their course of employment (my brother-in-law says he always failed his polygraph, but he's still contracting back to the CIA).

Yet we don't thoroughly check out all presidential candidates. This person will have access to the most sensitive information there is, including the nuclear codes. You'd think the FBI should get involved here.

One of the candidates, in fact, has already been thoroughly vetted by the FBI. And Congress. Multiple times. All investigations, even the ones conducted by the most partisan hacks, found there were no crimes were committed. Yes, she's made some mistakes but she has copped to them.

In an interesting development Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security director under George W. Bush, has endorsed Hillary Clinton. This is odd not just because Chertoff is a Republican, but because he was the special counsel in the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons in the 1990s. As senator Clinton voted against Chertoff for positions that required Senate approval.

And yet Chertoff has endorsed Clinton for president. The guy who looked through all Clinton's dirty laundry still thinks she should be president.

The other candidate is constantly deceptive: Donald Trump routinely denies saying things that have been recorded on video and replayed on television over and over. He flatly lies about everything.

He has known ties to the Russian mob, East Coast organized crime, and Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. He broke the Cuban embargo. He illegally hired aliens for his modeling agency. He abuses the H1B visa program, giving hotel jobs to foreigners instead of Americans. He refuses to release his tax returns, which are essential to determine if he has any disqualifying conflicts of interests -- like, say, being in hock to a foreign bank for half a billion dollars.

Donald Trump even pleaded the Fifth 97 times during his divorce proceedings.

It's clear that the CIA would never someone with Donald Trump's resume and his propensity for blatant deception. Just ask Michael Chertoff, the guy who the director of the CIA reported to: he wouldn't hire Trump.

Why should the person the Homeland Security director reports to be held to a lesser standard than the lowest level employee in the agency?

Pence Isn't Running as VP: He's Running for President in 2020 -- or Sooner

The general consensus is that Pence won the recent vice presidential debate by not defending Donald Trump. And Trump was not happy, according to several reports. Trump is notorious for surrounding himself with incompetent sycophants because he doesn't want to be outshined by people who are smarter than he is. Pence is clearly smarter than Trump, and Trump can't abide that.

Matt Yglesias at Vox baldly states that Pence threw Trump under the bus. The Daily Beast says Pence ditched Trump and the debate was the beginning of his 2020 presidential run. That's assuming that Trump loses, which seems more and more likely based on his performance in recent weeks.

But the question is, why did Pence ever agree to run with Trump in the first place? Won't his association with this immoral, unethical, incompetent, tax-dodging, misogynistic corrupt businessman, bigot and serial adulterer tar his image?

It might, if Pence got too close to Trump. And the debate showed Pence has no intention of defending Trump. Pence contradicts Trump all the time on the campaign trail. He only half-heartedly defends Trump's nonsense, or just laughs it off. He accepted the VP nomination to give rank and file Republicans a reason to vote for the Republican ticket.

When Trump loses, Pence can claim to be a hero for sticking by the party from the get-go, while guys like Ted Cruz blustered and whined with wounded pride, then hemmed and hawed before finally caving in and sucking up to Trump. 

On the off chance that Trump wins, however, it still wouldn't be too bad: Pence will still only be 65 in 8 years. The problem, though, is that as VP he will run the risk of inheriting all Trump's baggage. And there would be a lot of it. After eight years Pence would be an ineffective nobody, because Trump won't trust him with anything that might upstage The Donald.

But perhaps Pence's plans are shorter term than that. It's extremely likely that some scandal from Trump's past will emerge soon after the election: it might be the Trump University lawsuit, the Trump Foundation bribery scandals, Trump's connections to the mafia, Trump's connections to Russia, some childish Trump meltdown during a public appearance, backroom deals with Deutsche Bank to settle his half-billion dollar debt, some colossal blunder in the Middle East, an affair in the Oval Office, ordering troops to commit war crimes, some crazy unconstitutional power grab, or a coverup of one embarrassing thing or another -- it's the coverup that always gets you.

Or Bluto -- uh, Trump -- could die of a heart attack, choke to death inhaling a Big Mac. Don't laugh, it can happen: W choked on a pretzel and fainted.

Because so many Republicans absolutely despise Trump, even a small scandal would rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors." Trump could be impeached by his own party in order to install Mike Pence, a real Republican, as president.

Trump knows that Pence and the entire Republican establishment would be standing behind him with daggers drawn. The entire congressional leadership would be love to see Trump crash and burn: they could finally get Ted Cruz to agree to something.

Trump thinks his celebrity status and Twitter followers would insulate him from Republican backstabbing: the wrath of "the people" would stop Republicans from betraying him.

He would be wrong. By the time the Republicans impeach Trump the American people would have tired of his antics: Americans have a short attention span, and Trump would no longer be novel. His constant whining and excuses will turn even his strongest supporters against him, because he'll be the establishment, and he'll have to do establishment things, and they'll be pissed that Trump broke all his promises in order to achieve whatever self-dealing scandal led to his impeachment.

In the end, Trump -- who always bills himself as the outsider -- would still be the outsider, all alone in Washington, with only his kids and his wife on his side. The "establishment" in Congress would hold his fate in their hands, and after all the abuse Trump has heaped upon them, they wouldn't be kind to him.

In the backs of their minds, many Republicans are probably thinking, "I'll vote for Trump so that Pence can become president. Because there's always the Second Amendment solution."

Johnson-Stein Debate

Hump Day Roundup

I haven't commented much on a variety of developments in the 2016 presidential campaign so I thought I would have this post be a potpourri of various takes on the state of the race.

I thought Mike Pence did a better job than Tim Kaine last night in the VP debate. Kaine interrupted way too much and dodged questions, opting instead to fall back on canned talking points. He sounded very attack dogish at times and that may have been done to appeal to the base. Mike Pence and I have virtually nothing in common ideologically but clearly would be the better choice at the top of the ticket. If he were, Hillary would be in trouble.

Speaking of which, the Hilz has opened up a wider lead after Trump's insanely awful week last week. North Carolina and Florida are trending back in her favor. Here's my latest map.

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

Trump has to turn in a solid debate performance on Sunday night in order to make the race closer. He's certainly done it before but not with a night like the first debate in which 80-90 million people watched. Johnson supporters are falling away and most of their support is going to Hillary.

There could, of course be an October surprise. The short wave radio-email forward-right wing blogger-believer of all social media crowd thought it was going to originate from Julian Assange. Instead, he played them all like he always does. Will they ever learn?

William Weld has signaled that he has more or less had it with Gary Johnson. Here's why.




Gary Johnson is a fucking idiot and a shining example of how the libertarian (adolescent) mind works. Let's get the least qualified person for the job because we want to tear the adult world done with all their rules and stuff!!!

A lot my liberal friends are operating in the same reality (land of unicorns) where the right operate. They think that if Bernie was the nominee, he would be up 7000 points on Trump. How can Trump be so close, they ask? It must be Hillary!!

No....the problem isn't Hillary. The problem is that 40-45 million people in this country are die hard Republicans and will vote for anyone with an R next to their name. They are generally filled with anger, hate, and fear, viewing liberals as the cause of all that is evil and holy. If Bernie were the nominee, it would be just the same. They'd vilify him as an old, crazy socialist who wants to send everyone to reeducation camps. The race would be just as close.

Nikto put up a great piece about Trump's taxes and I don't have much to say about it. Some voters are going to be pissed that yet another rich guy didn't pay his taxes. But what Trump supporters and the right should be pissed about is how Trump took a billion dollar loss. How on earth can they still believe he would be effective at reducing government debt? He's clearly horrible at it in his own businesses and this was known before the taxes were released.

Chris Mooney continues to be proved right. It's all about emotion, not logic or rationality, when it comes to their reasoning process.

Kill Her!

Check this out

This is the Aurora, Indiana Lion's Club parade in which a gentlemen by the name of Frank Linkmeyer is putting on a mock execution of Hillary Clinton. Given the continual cries of "Lock her up," this comes as no surprise.

In the conservative mind, I'm sure this is all well and good. After all, Hillary is a criminal and a traitor. She doesn't even deserve her constitutional rights! Guilty until proven innocent....which will never happen.

What an angry, hate filled and fucked up world they live in...

Why Trump is No "Genius"

After the New York Times published its story about Donald Trump claiming a billion dollar loss on his 1995 taxes, his surrogates rushed to Sunday morning shows to brag about what a genius Trump is for avoiding taxes.

 

This reminds me of last summer, when Trump angered a lot of Republicans by saying of John McCain: "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, OK?"

To paraphrase Trump: "He's a tax genius because he had a huge net operating loss? I like people that didn't lose a billion dollars in a single year."

You don't need to be smart to take advantage of tax laws that were put in place by real estate and business special interests before you were born. You just need to have a rich daddy.

The wealthy have used this gimmick for decades: they buy oil leases or some other risky enterprise that are big money losers on paper in years when they know they were going to make a lot of money, in order to have losses to offset their profits. With those huge paper losses, and an S corp, you can flow all those losses into your personal balance sheet and pay no taxes.

Trump didn't buy paper losses as a canny financial maneuver, he lost all that money through terrible business decisions.

Furthermore, Trump's tax acumen isn't his own: in addition to all the money and property Trump inherited from his dad, he inherited a legal team that had been using these tax gimmicks for decades.

Before Trump's tax data were released I speculated that he was getting all his income through an S corporation as dividends, distributions and interest, and paying himself no salary. I was right: his 1995 taxes show him getting only $6,000 in salary.

The advantages of this are threefold: 1) you only pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on earned wages (not on interest, dividends or capital gains) -- with $6,000 of income, he paid next to nothing. 2) You pay the significantly lower capital gains tax rates on qualified dividends and capital gains. 3) Trump's merging of his personal and business lives through an S corp means that his lavish personal expenses (travel, clothing, meals, entertainment, his apartments, etc.) are tax deductible if they can be claimed as business expenses, which you can be damned sure he's doing. I'm guessing he also deducted his wives' jewelry and clothing as business expenses as well, because he takes them to business functions as a party decoration.

This means that when Donald Trump goes to a football game and sits in the pricey box seats, his company pays for it all, and then deducts it from his taxes. Great deal, huh?
We'd need to see Trump's full returns to know if he's really doing these things, but we can be pretty sure we won't because these things are almost certainly on them.

Mitt Romney angered a lot of people with his comment that 47% of Americans don't pay taxes, when the truth is that most of those people are paying taxes: Social Security and Medicare taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc. Trump has repeatedly made the same mendacious claim that 50% of Americans don't pay taxes.

Like Trump, they don't pay income tax, but they do pay payroll taxes, which Trump does not, because he doesn't collect any wages. And that's why Trump always says he's giving his book royalties to his "non-profit" foundation -- they would count as income, which he would have to pay Social Security taxes on.

Geniuses don't lose a billion dollars in a single year. Why did Trump lose so much money? He opened a new casino in an overheated market, lied to regulators about his financing and sold junk bonds that paid 14% interest, because respectable banks would no longer do business with him.

Real geniuses are people like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates or Robert Noyce (of Intel) who recognize or create real value, instead of losing money hand over fist like Trump did. Geniuses create value for their employees, investors, and the companies that do business with them. When geniuses are at work, everyone around them prospers.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Robert Noyce created software and hardware companies that blossomed into entire new industries: millions of people earn their livings that grew out of the software and hardware platforms that Gates and Jobs built. Companies like Oracle and Google and Uber and Facebook are all built on the computer revolution that Apple and Microsoft started.

Donald Trump increased only his own wealth (and his lawyers, sure): he has stiffed his investors, suppliers, contractors and employees time and again. And then he sues them when they dare complain about how he screwed them.

Trump is no genius, he's just an incompetent and selfish dick.

Excuse Prep

It HAS to be Fraud

A recent poll from AP shows that half of Trump's supporters think that if their candidate loses, there will be fraud. It can't possibly be that their ideas are backward and hateful. There has to be cheating somehow. More than ever before, we are seeing a large block of US voters burying their heads in the sand and completely denying reality.

Gail Collins, a columnist for the New York Times, recently asked the question, "How can anyone vote for Trump?" I posted this piece on my Facebook feed and a friend responded with this comment.

I keep hearing about white male alienation, and how all the alienated white males are going to vote for Trump. But I wonder if the reason all these white males are alienated is because they’re stupid. If you’re so deluded that you think Trump is presidential material, maybe you should be alienated. 

It’s possible that people alienate you because you’ve made bad decisions all your life, you didn’t get a decent education, you’re intellectually incurious and you can’t tell the difference between a slightly flawed, politically astute and highly prepared candidate and a man with a raccoon on his head whose campaign slogan is “No fat chicks."

Right, The real problem is THEM. It's not liberals, the media, the elite or voter fraud. They completely fail to look at how the choices they made in their lives are directly tied to their lot in life. Essentially, they aren't taking responsibility for their mistakes. Odd, considering they in the part of people who foam at the mouth of the lack of individual responsibility.

Here are a few pieces on the voter fraud myth for your reference.

Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth

The Success of the Voter Fraud Myth

THE MISLEADING MYTH OF VOTER FRAUD IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS

Time for Evangelicals to Dump Trump?

How is it that evangelicals are supporting the candidacy of a man who's checking out sex tapes on the Internet at four in the morning?

Trump was up late tweeting up a storm of bile at the woman he called "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping" back in 1996. He says she's not Mother Teresa. Okay, fine. No one said she was. She was just a teenager when Trump humiliated her in front of the world 20 years ago.

But how did Alicia Machado, the object of Trump's venom, get started down the road to perdition? Why, it was Donald Trump's Miss Universe contest, which had women parade around half-naked. Trump treated them like slabs of meat, poking and prodding and inspecting them.

It was Trump who led the 19-year-old Machado unto temptation. It was Trump who kissed her and put his hands all over her at various functions. It was Trump who insulted and demeaned her and messed with her mind and gave her an eating disorder.

Evangelicals like Michele Bachmann once thought that God chose Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee. How can that be? Has Trump been doing God's work these last 40 years, with all his casinos, and bankruptcies, and divorces, and extra-marital affairs, and hundreds of harassing lawsuits, and tax evasion, and thefts of money from people who did work for him?

Trump has flopped every time he's pretended to know something about the Bible ("Two Corinthians," anyone?). Notice that he always uses a teleprompter when he talks about the Bible, because he knows nothing of the Bible.

God works in mysterious ways, they say, but it's clear that Trump has nothing but disdain for the Bible and everything it stands for. He's said he's never asked God for forgiveness. More recently he said he doesn't like to ask God for forgiveness because he doesn't do "a lot of things that are bad." But he explicitly said this was only in the "last number of years." So he's never owned up to any of his sins. That's a Christian?

Then there are the lies. Trump has demonstrably lied over and over about any number of things: his treatment of women, his support for the war in Iraq, his contributions to charity, his claims about President Obama being born outside the US, his associations with mobsters, his shady business dealings, and on and on and on.

Isn't Satan the Father of Lies?


Whenever Trump speaks he will make a statement, then form it as a question, then contradict what he said, then go off on some wild tangent that has nothing to do with anything, then make a joke about it, then pretend he's being sarcastic. Is he just an idiot, or is he intentionally unintelligible?

If you don't listen critically to Trump you will hear him say something you agree with. He claims he's not a polished politician, but really, doesn't that kind of double-talk make him the worst kind of politician? His speeches are just vipers' nests of lies.

The only thing you can be sure after listening to him speak is that he has no respect for the people he's talking to. 

There's an evangelical term for a man like Trump. What was that? Oh, yeah. It starts with "anti" and ends with "Christ."

Another Hitler Starting a Holocaust

People like to throw the "H" word around a lot. But it's not often that people apply it to themselves. But that's exactly what Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte did today:

President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he would like to kill millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, defying international criticism of his country’s bloody war on narcotics and escalating his brutal rhetoric with a reference to the Holocaust.

“Hitler massacred three million Jews,” Mr. Duterte said after returning to the Philippines from a trip to Vietnam, understating the toll cited by historians, which is six million. “Now there is three million, there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

Duterte started a "war" against crime and drugs after coming to office. More than 3,000 Filipinos have been slaughtered without arrest warrants or trials. About two-thirds of the killings were by vigilantes, which Duterte has blessed.

Hitler started in a similar way, attacking, imprisoning and ultimately murdering minorities like gays, communists, and Jews. But before long his tyranny was extended to political opponents and anyone who dared speak against him.

Duterte has frequently been called the Trump of the Philippines because of his boorish dickishness. But is Donald Trump really like Duterte and Hitler?

A recent New York Times review of a book about Hitler's rise to power reads like bullet points from Trump's presidential campaign: Hitler was an narcissist with a fondness for superlatives, Hitler had a boundless mendacity, Hitler promised to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness, Hitler intentionally dumbed down his speeches to a few slogans because he thought the understanding of the masses was feeble, Hitler blamed Jews and foreigners for all Germany's economic problems. And so on.

It sure sounds like Trump, if you replace Jews with Mexicans.

But is Trump really going down the same path as Duterte and Hitler, or are people making the same old lame Internet Hitler analogies? It's impossible to say for sure.

But American Nazis, alt-right activists, klansmen and white supremacists and white separatists are all backing Trump to the hilt.

If they think Trump is the second coming of Hitler, perhaps we should take the comparison seriously.

He Can't Sleep, Someone On The Internet Is Wrong

When I think of a right wing blogger or commenter, here's the first thing that comes to my mind...

Sums them up perfectly in many ways:)

So, it comes as no surprise that their current champion does the same fucking thing. Check out these tweets from Donald Trump.

 Follow

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an "angel" without checking her past, which is terrible!

4:14 AM - 30 Sep 2016

 
•  6,6736,673 Retweets
 
•  17,11217,112 likes

 Follow

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.

4:19 AM - 30 Sep 2016

 
•  6,7776,777 Retweets
 
•  16,80816,808 likes

 Follow

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?

4:30 AM - 30 Sep 2016

 
•  7,6757,675 Retweets
 
•  17,58417,584 likes

Look at the times on them. What kind of a person is up this late obsessing over something so ridiculous? This is who 40 million people are supporting for our next commander in chief? Really?

A Trump-Machado Weigh Off

During the debate Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump for calling the 1996 Miss Universe winner, Alicia Machado, "Miss Piggy." Instead of letting this go, Trump went on the warpath the next day. Calling in to Fox News he kept repeating, like a broken record, that her weight was a "real problem, a real problem."

Okay, let's have a look at this "problem."

When Machado gained weight during her reign as Miss Universe, Trump got angry. He said she ballooned up to "160, 170 lbs." She says she gained 10-20 lbs. Other articles say she gained 40 lbs.

So instead of bickering about numbers, let's take a look at the photographic evidence. Here's a photo from the workout that Trump actually invited reporters to, in order to embarrass Machado into losing weight. This was from the time when Trump called her "Miss Piggy."

Now, does that woman look grossly overweight? No. She's jumping rope, and looks completely normal. In this one workout she probably burned more calories than Donald Trump has burned since college, when he reportedly stopped exercising because he thinks exercise will kill you. The most exercise he gets these days is waddling from his golf cart to his limousine.

Now, let's have a look at Donald Trump. He usually wears suits, which are specially constructed to obscure men's weight problems. But there are pictures of him cheating at golf wearing golf clothes, so this is the best we can do.

To put it politely, Trump is a porker. When he went on the Dr. Oz show, Trump claimed to be 6'3" and 236 lbs. Not surprisingly, Trump lied about his height: he's actually 6'2", based on previous reports and comparisons between Trump's height an numerous other people whose heights we do know for sure.

The lie about the height is important. If you go to your favorite BMI (body mass index) calculator and enter Trump's claimed height and weight of 6'3" and 236 lbs, it comes out to 29.5, or overweight. If you input Trump's actual height, 6'2", it comes out 30.3: obese.

Trump's weight has variously been reported as high as 251 and 267 lbs, though his doctor claims Trump has lost 15 lbs in the last year. Sure, that's possible.

Weight is a very touchy issue. Human bodies evolved to store as much fat as possible as a hedge against starvation. This helped our ancestors on the plains of Africa and the ice-bound reaches of northern Europe. But it plays hell with our metabolism in calorie-rich modern America. It's really hard to keep weight off if you're under stress, not getting enough sleep or exercise, traveling, and eating fast food. (Various chemicals introduced into the environment that simulate estrogens and other hormones are also playing a role in the epidemic of obesity the Western world faces.)

So I try not to judge people by their weight, especially when they're trying their hardest to do all the right things. But Donald Trump isn't trying: he doesn't exercise, he doesn't get enough sleep, and he eats junk food. He's fat because he loves to eat and just sits around.

In other words, he's doing the same thing that he accused Alicia Machado of. Now, you might say, Trump isn't trying to be Miss Universe, he's running for president. Trump's campaign keeps bringing up questions of Clinton's health and stamina.

There are numerous studies that indicate exercise improve brain function and memory. It's not a coincidence that both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were quite diligent in making sure they get enough exercise.

With Trump so obese and sedentary, he is just not going to be as mentally sharp as someone who exercsies, and he is at a much higher risk of heart attack and stroke.

But, like the pig calling the hen fat, he still has the gall to this day to complain about Alicia Machado's weight problems.

I think one final picture, the cover of next week's New Yorker, explains everything there is to know about Donald Trump:

"Miss Congeniality"

When Teenagers Run For President...

...this happens...

 

Where Trump represents the anger, hateful and fear filled bombast of the right wing blogger/commenter, Johnson represents the other part of that particular personality...zero command of facts....a spine made of jelly...unable to comport themselves in venues with live human beings.

A recent discussion on Facebook with a friend of mine who is a Johnson supporter informed me that he had no problem with this lack of knowledge. In fact, he thought it was a badge of honor because he doesn't have any respect for any world leader so why should he know their names?

More than anything else, this election has exposed a part of our electorate that merely wants to tear the whole playhouse done merely due to ideological spite. Like Mr. Johnson here, they don't care about knowledge or facts. They just want "Not Someone Who Threatens My Own Sense Of Self Worth" in office.

Trump on Coke

I turned to my son during the debate and wondered the same thing. Of course, speculation about this stuff is ludicrous and has no basis in reality. But isn't that what this election is about? Trump is doing well because he tells lies and people believe it. Everyone believes the stereotype about coke users (sniffing alot, meglomania, bluster, and then crashing) whether it's true or not so Dean doubling down on this makes sense given the current political, environment.

I find it hilarious that everyone in the media is outraged by this. They complain that the Democrats aren't adjusting well to a non traditional campaign and then bitch like crazy when they do it.

Good Words

From a question on Quora...

From Trump’s display last night I saw the following:

• A constantly repeated thesis that American is in the worst shape of its life, using hyperbolic phrases and words designed to intensify fear (“disaster,” “terrible,” “worst ever,” “tremendous”)
• Very little discussion of plans to fix this “disaster”
• A wide variety of bold faced lies as proven real time during the debate
• An inability and lack of humility to admit to mistakes or take any ownership
• An unapologetic admittance to dodging taxes and bragging that this is “smart”
• The inability to absorb the slightest insult (of which there will be MANY as president)

With Trump I see a textbook narcissist whose ego has a thirst many of us don’t understand. Becoming president, for him, is the ultimate win purely for the fame and title. This election is unlike any other, so my methods have had to adjust from how I’ve arrived at decisions in the past. So here we go, my first blue vote.

We welcome you with open arms.