GMO Crops Only Increase Corporate Profits

An analysis by the New York Times has found that the GMO (genetically modified organisms) crops have none of the benefits they're supposed to have:

The promise of genetic modification was twofold: By making crops immune to the effects of weedkillers and inherently resistant to many pests, they would grow so robustly that they would become indispensable to feeding the world’s growing population, while also requiring fewer applications of sprayed pesticides.

Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise.

An analysis by The Times using United Nations data showed that the United States and Canada have gained no discernible advantage in yields — food per acre — when measured against Western Europe, a region with comparably modernized agricultural producers like France and Germany. Also, a recent National Academy of Sciences report found that “there was little evidence” that the introduction of genetically modified crops in the United States had led to yield gains beyond those seen in conventional crops. 

Over the last 20 years pesticide use in the United States has fallen by a third, but herbicide spraying has increased by 21% — and herbicides are used in much higher volumes, so we're talking a hell of a lot of Roundup.

By contrast, in France, use of insecticides and fungicides has fallen by a far greater percentage — 65 percent — and herbicide use has decreased as well, by 36 percent.

As the article notes, herbicides and pesticides are toxic by design. Many of them are based on neurotoxins like sarin, a nerve gas developed by the Nazis. These chemicals cause measurable IQ drops in children and have a major role in the catastrophic decline of pollinating insects like honeybees.

Biotech seeds cost North American farmers almost double what normal seeds cost. Farmers also have the added expense of huge quantities of weed killer that's keyed to herbicide-resistant crops. Finally, farmers cannot use seeds from GMO crops in the next year's planting: corporate giants like Monsanto have taken farmers to the Supreme Court to stop them from using a practice from the dawn of agriculture.

In the end, GMOs have not increased North American crop yields above Old Europe's. The only thing that has increased is corporate profits.

The Hypocrisy of Our "Justice" System

After literally years of scandal mongering and a dozen investigations into Benghazi and Hillary Clinton's private email server, Congress and the FBI had to finally give up.

This summer the final Republican investigation found Clinton had done nothing wrong with regard to Benghazi. And FBI director James Comey pronounced the email investigation closed and that no crimes had been committed. But Comey couldn't just leave it there: he insisted on offering his personal opinion that Clinton was careless with her handling of email. 

It was highly questionable for the FBI director to make such a politically loaded statement in the first place, let alone in the middle of an election.

But last Friday Comey dropped a nuclear bomb on the campaign when he announced that emails from Clinton's server appeared on Anthony Weiner's laptop, which the FBI was looking at with regard to allegations that Weiner was sexting an underage girl. He offered no details; was Comey being coy, or was he intentionally muddying the waters as much as possible?

Compare this to the treatment Donald Trump received in the Trump University fraud case. In May Judge Gonzalo Curiel delayed the start of the trial until Nov. 28, weeks after the election, even though the plaintiffs had expected a July date. This saved Trump the monumental embarrassment of having to testify in a fraud trial during the Republican National Convention.

For Curiel's kindness, Trump blasted the judge a month later:

In an interview, Mr. Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had “an absolute conflict” in presiding over the litigation given that he was “of Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. Mr. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest,” Mr. Trump said. 

As for the emails: there are Huma Abedin's emails, not Hillary Clinton's. Abedin used the laptop to connect to the server, so some of Abedin's emails were left on it. Nothing has been said about the content of those emails, or how many were sent by Clinton.

Now it turns out that Comey knew about these emails several weeks ago, but waited until 11 days before the election before telling Congress. Clearly this wasn't that urgent: he waited two or three weeks to tell Congress. He waited exactly long enough to do maximum damage to Clinton's campaign. By the time we find out that there's still nothing to this phony email scandal, it may be after the election.

Comey has been blasted by Democrats and Republicans alike. Among his critics are the chief White House ethics lawyer of the Bush administration from 2005 to 2007, Richard Painter. Painter has filed a complaint against the FBI with the Office of Special Counsel, accusing Comey of violating the Hatch Act.

Painter describes a different email scenario that Comey isn't talking about:

THE F.B.I. is currently investigating the hacking of Americans’ computers by foreign governments. Russia is a prime suspect.

Imagine a possible connection between a candidate for president in the United States and the Russian computer hacking. Imagine the candidate has business dealings in Russia, and has publicly encouraged the Russians to hack the email of his opponent. It would not be surprising for the F.B.I. to include this candidate and his campaign staff in its confidential investigation of Russian computer hacking.

But it would be highly improper, and an abuse of power, for the F.B.I. to conduct such an investigation in the public eye, particularly on the eve of the election. It would be an abuse of power for the director of the F.B.I., absent compelling circumstances, to notify members of Congress that the candidate was under investigation. It would be an abuse of power if F.B.I. agents went so far as to obtain a search warrant and raid the candidate’s office tower, hauling out boxes of documents and computers in front of television cameras.

The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election.

This isn't some fantastical story, it's an exact description of what Donald Trump has done. What Painter doesn't mention is that several of Trump's advisors have close ties to Russian oligarchs, getting paid by Trump and the oligarchs at the same time.

And about the same time the Abedin emails were found on the Weiner laptop, it was learned that one of Trump's advisers has held secret meetings with Kremlin officials.

Yet Comey has not publicly humiliated Trump by commenting on these investigations, or investigations into allegations that Paul Manafort and other Trump cronies are unregistered foreign agents for Ukrainian and Russian politicians trying to manipulate U.S. elections.

Comey is either grossly incompetent or intentionally interfering with the election. Or is he just pissed off that his boss, Loretta Lynch -- who told him not open his big fat mouth, is a woman?

What this incident clearly shows is that Trump's charges of the "system" being rigged against him are completely false. The legal system has come down on Trump's side every single time during this election cycle, while individuals like Comey have abused and misused the system's rules to hurt Clinton again and again.

The irony here is that the first time a woman has a serious shot at winning the presidency, the election is dominated by men's inability to control their lust: from Trump's bragging about pussy-grabbing, to accusations from more than a dozen women that Trump sexually assaulted them, to Trump dredging up decades-old accusations of rape against Bill Clinton, and finally now to Anthony Weiner's obsession with sexting.

Usually the charge against women being president is that they can't control their emotions. But this election makes a far stronger case that men are incapable of controlling their dicks.

The Biggest Villain of the 2016 Election: Laziness

Trump Voter Commits Election Fraud

For years Republicans have been claiming that the country is rife with election fraud as an excuse to place more restrictions on minorities and Democrats to suppress their votes. Now there's a bona fide instance of fraudulent voting. By a Trump supporter.

A woman in Iowa was arrested this week on suspicion of voting twice in the general election, court and police records show.

Terri Lynn Rote, a 55-year-old Des Moines resident, was booked Thursday on a first-degree charge of election misconduct, according to Polk County Jail records. The charge is considered a Class D felony under Iowa state law.

Rote was released Friday after posting $5,000 bond. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Nov. 7.

The Des Moines Register reported that Rote is a registered Republican who cast two ballots in the general election: an early-voting ballot at the Polk County Election Office and another at a county satellite voting location, according to police records.

Rote hadn’t planned on voting twice but said it was “a spur-of-the-moment thing” when she walked by the satellite voting location, she told The Washington Post in a phone interview Saturday.

“I don’t know what came over me,” Rote said.

She added she has been a supporter of Donald Trump since early in his campaign, after Republican candidate Mike Huckabee dropped out of the primary race.

Rote told Iowa Public Radio that she cast her first ballot for Trump but feared it would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton.

“The polls are rigged,” Rote told the radio station.

Leigh Munsil, an editor for the Blaze, noted on Twitter that Rote was the same woman who had caucused for Trump earlier this year.

This kind of fraud is exactly that Trump is implicitly telling his voters to commit. When he says the polls are rigged, he's actually telling his voters to rig the polls. Since Hillary is cheating, the logic goes, Trump supporters have to cheat too. And so they are.

Trump has also told his supporters to "monitor" the polls. This is nothing but a blatant attempt to harass and intimidate minority voters. Trump is asking his supporters to threaten minorities with violence if they show up to exercise their constitutional rights.

The Republican Party of New Mexico is even harassing their own voters, threatening to expose them if they vote for Democrats. The Republicans sent out a mailer that stated, "When the Democrats win the election and you didn't do your part to stop it... Your neighbors will know." Now, how could they know? It's supposed to be a secret ballot. How can the Republican Party know how you voted, unless they commit a crime to find out?

The fact is, over the last four presidential elections there has been a significant amount of manipulation of elections by Republican officials: in 2000 in Jeb Bush's Florida Republican operatives threw a hundred thousand voters off the rolls in coordination with George Bush's Texas. In 2004 Ohio closed polling stations in minority areas, creating huge delays that prevented thousands of people from voting. Bush won those states by the tiniest of margins; there's no question that manipulations by Republican officials threw both those elections to Bush.

The Bush administration fired US attorneys who wouldn't play the voter suppression game at the behest of Karl Rove, who was forced to resign when the scandal was revealed. Voter ID laws were passed explicitly to prevent minorities and Democrats from voting in Texas and Pennsylvania (Republicans in both states acknowledged this publicly). In states like Ohio Republicans gerrymandered Democrats into a few crazy-shaped districts to pack them with 90% Democrats, while creating a large number of districts with only 55-60% Republicans to allow them to win more House seats, even though there are more Democrats in the state.

In the 2012 election Democratic House candidates nationwide got a million more votes than Republicans, but because of gerrymandering Republicans won a substantial majority of House seats. In 2008, before the gerrymandering, Democrats won the majority.

The fact is, in-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare. The vast majority of fraud by voters is committed with absentee ballots. The most common fraud is children or nursing home staff filling out absentee ballots for senile elderly, or parents filling out absentee ballots for children who are away at college. This kind of fraud is favored by rich white people, and voter ID laws do absolutely nothing to prevent it.

The wealthy can commit fraud by voting in multiple jurisdictions: rich New Yorkers like Donald Trump will vote absentee in New York and in person in Florida. Anne Coulter got in hot water a few years back for lying on voter registration forms. Typically, they claim residency in one state to get special tax treatment on their homes (homesteading), but then vote in another jurisdiction. A national voter registration database would fix this (and also the problem with people remaining on voter rolls for years after they move to another state), but for some strange reason Republicans resist this.

So when Trump says that the election is rigged, in one way it's true: Republicans officials have been rigging elections for at least the last 20 years. Since Trump has pissed off so many in the Republican establishment, he's afraid they'll use their clout to make him lose.

Chill Out, Dudes

As the political world whips itself into a tizzy about the letter that James Comey sent to Congress yesterday, I find myself very unmoved by all of this. I can see why Democrats are pissed off but what else was Comey supposed to do? Sit on it until after the election? As I have said all along, James Comey is straight shooter. Republicans are pretty hilarious, though. Now, I guess, Comey is great. Poopy head before, but now awesome!!

Here are the facts based on the letter and what we know as of today. The emails did not come from the Clinton server. They were on a laptop owned by Huma Abedin and used by Anthony Weiner for his weener related activities. The emails did not come from Hillary Clinton. They are related to the still closed investigation. There are only three emails being checked as having classified information. And, most important, the Clinton campaign is already calling for transparency.

We won't get it, of course, because the investigation is ongoing. Many in the political world are saying this will make the race close and it certainly might. I'm going to hold out until next Friday before making any judgments in terms of the polls. Let's remember that a significant number of people in swing states have already voted and Hillary has the favor in this department. I also think that we may have yet another Trump bombshell before election day, whether by his own doing or externally.

Ultimately, though, I don't think it will matter in terms of the election. There are very few undecideds out there. Voters know these candidates and this latest information isn't going to change anyone's mind. Democrats need to chill the fuck out and get the vote out rather than bitch about James Comey. I also don't think it will matter in terms of Hillary Clinton's ability to govern save some earth shattering information in the three emails (which I highly doubt). The first woman being elected president as well as all of the challenges she faces will overshadow the continuing email nonsense.

Could Trump blow it in Texas?

Maybe. I'm inclined to say no but the polls are pretty close.

The Trump Effect

Sadly, I've encountered far too much of this in the past year and a half. Thanks, conservatives, for bringing your bile and mouth foaming out from a blog comments section into the schools that you say are already broken. What a bunch of fucking assholes.

Mea Culpa, Right Wingers?

A Lesson in Linguistics from the Little League Candidate

Much of what Donald Trump says is incoherent and simplistic -- his sentences run on and on, he uses fifth-grade vocabulary, he repeats and contradicts himself endlessly. But the one thing that really made him an object of derision was his use of the word "bigly."

It turns out that Trump isn't saying "bigly." He's trying to say "big league." The problem is that he's pronouncing "big league" incorrectly, which makes people hear it as a different word.

Standard American English has a rule for pronouncing vowels when they appear before a voiced consonant at the end of a word. A voiced consonant is spoken with vibrating vocal cords; an unvoiced consonant is not. These generally come in pairs: for example, "d" is voiced and "t" is its unvoiced partner. Other voiced/unvoiced pairs are b and p, g and k, v and f, z and s, the "th" in "that" and the "th" in "thin," the "ch" in "church" and the "j" in "jerk," the "sh" in "shut" and the "s" in "measure."

Now for that rule: when a root word ends in a voiced consonant the vowel preceding it is doubled in length. This is not at all obvious, even though we speak English all the time. I didn't realize this myself until I studied Japanese, which uses double-length vowels in any position in a word, treating single- and double-length vowels as completely different sounds.

You can hear the difference by comparing English words that differ only in the voicing of the final consonant. For example, bed and bet, ride and write, rod and rot, fad and fat, bid and bit, and league and leak. If you pronounce "bed" with a single-length "e", it's harder to distinguish from "bet."

When Trump says "big league" he usually does so very quickly, with two shorter vowels, instead of two longer vowels. Americans are used to hearing those long vowels before voiced consonants at the ends of words. When Trump incorrectly uses shorter vowels our brains try to interpret the sounds using the standard pronunciation rule, and we come up with "bigly."

Additionally, Trump constantly uses "big league" as an adverb (modifying a verb), and since most adverbs end in -ly, the usage doubly reinforces the "bigly" interpretation of the sounds.

Why does this pronunciation rule exist? Doubling the length of the vowel disambiguates the final consonant, providing more time to hear that it is voiced. Not all dialects of English use this rule: in several UK and Irish dialects vowels aren't doubled before final voiced consonants.

Russian and German, on the other hand, always devoice final consonants. In many German cognate words the change is reflected in the spelling. Bed is "Bett," God is "Gott," bread is "Brot." I'm guessing that the American doubling of vowel length before final voiced consonants is partially a result of hypercorrection from German and Slavic immigrants to emphasize the voiced consonant. It's "bed" not "bet," you lousy kraut!

Why does Trump use "big league" as an adverb so much? Is it a real estate thing? A New York thing? A rich guy thing? "Big league" is usually used as a noun, such as "Playing in the big leagues." Most people going for a sports-related adjective would use "major league," such as "major-league yabbos" (from a scene in Animal House).

But then Trump is little-league presidential candidate, isn't he?

Son of Skewed Polls

As yet another severe case of cognitive dissonance descends upon conservatives across our nation, so does the growing cries of skewed polls. Remember how well that worked out in 2012? The polls were accurate in predicting the election.

Nate Silver put up a piece a few weeks ago that should have put all of this to rest. But it didn't. Take a look at this nonsense. Aside from the fact the Silver (and the reality of 2012 outcome) have already pwned this shit, Durden misses a very key point. Polls showing a big lead for Democrats can actually be detrimental to voter turnout. People will see how high up she is and maybe just stay home if their XBox or latest binged watched show seems more alluring.

Perhaps the skewed polls mouth foamers should spend more energy on nominating a conservative candidate who is more appealing to voters. It can't possibly be that voters don't like what we are selling. Or that it doesn't function in reality!!

Sex and the Presidency

There's a bit in Woody Allen's Annie Hall where Allen and co-star Diane Keaton are talking to their therapists on split screen.



The dialog goes like this:

Allen's Therapist: How often do you sleep together?
Keaton's Therapist: Do you have sex often?
Allen: Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.
Keaton: Constantly. I'd say three times a week.

This is funny because it's so true: most men think about sex all the time, while most women don't. Estimates vary, but some studies indicate that men think about sex 34 times a day.

If men could have sex all the time, they would. And all that sex has consequences. It either requires birth control, or it results in pregnancy. And if those pregnancies are undesired, it can result in abortion.

The American right wing always frames abortion issue as a moral failing of women. But all of those women are pregnant because men had sex with them. That's why women are more hesitant about having sex: they can get pregnant. Men initiate sex far more frequently than women and they often use coercion -- physical or emotional -- to get sex when women really don't want it. For this reason, you can blame most abortions on men.

A lot of evangelicals support Trump, even knowing his history of greed, immorality, divorce, adultery and assaulting women. Evangelicals famously used to say that "character matters," that immoral private behavior disqualified a person from higher office. Well, they don't say that anymore: Trump has endorsements from numerous prominent evangelicals, including Jerry Falwell Jr.

In just five short years evangelicals have completely flipped on this issue: 30% used to say that "an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life." Now 72% say that. The reason? Donald Trump.

Why have evangelicals abandoned their moral high ground and talked themselves into this flip-flop? Because they think Trump will nominate Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.

I don't know why they think he'll keep this particular promise. He denies things he's said on video. He's declared bankruptcy multiple times while enriching himself at the expense of investors. He's cheated on his wives, failed to pay people who did work for him, failed to release his tax returns, and screwed Trump University students out of millions of dollars for phony "courses."

Electing Trump will normalize sexual assault

But the worst thing about Trump is that electing him will normalize sexual assault. When his private banter became very public, his supporters passed off his bragging about molesting women as locker room talk. This gives men license to think that this kind of criminal behavior is normal. People at Trump rallies brag about how his pussy-grabbing makes him a real man.

The corrosive influence of Trump's sleaze is already affecting how people think: it has already convinced 42% of evangelicals that immoral and illegal behavior is okay.

In evangelical parlance, electing Trump would embolden sexual predators like him. A Trump presidency would encourage more licentious and aggressive masculine behavior. It would result in more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions -- whether abortion is legal or not. There will always be abortion because the bastards who get women pregnant always bail on them.

So, let's look at the moral implications of this election, as if evangelicals still practiced what they preached:

With Donald Trump as president men will think they can do whatever they want to women, then brag about it, and then lie about it. They will cheat on their wives, their business associates and their taxes. They will get their mistresses pregnant and force them into back-alley abortions.

With Hillary Clinton as president people will think they can delete old emails and make lame excuses about it. They will forgive their spouses, work to cure malaria around the world and pay their taxes. They will practice consensual, protected sex to avoid unwanted pregnancy and reduce the number of abortions.

It seems like a pretty simple choice, based on the morality.

What 130 of the Worst Shootings Say About Guns in America

Great article. Check it out!

The Rigging Process

How Everybody Can Win

Mark criticized Trump's debate claim that the United States isn't  making things anymore as false. However, not everything Trump says is an outright lie: sometimes there's a glimmer of truth to it.

Mark's observation that manufacturing in the US has doubled since 1979 may be true, but it ignores important facts. Pretty much all consumer products -- cell phones, clothing, shoes, TVs, computers -- are no longer made in the United States.

We were #1 in manufacturing until as recently as 2002. But by 2012 China had overtaken the United States, producing 22% of the world's manufacturing output, with the United States coming in second with 17%.

Clearly the United States still does a lot of manufacturing and export, but a lot of what we're manufacturing is high tech tools and machinery that are sent to foreign countries that are then used to manufacture consumer products that are then imported into the United States. We also build expensive things like airplanes and gigantic earth movers: things that cost a lot but employ a small number of Americans.

We're mostly out of mass-market consumer goods business -- that's why Trump's "Make America Great Again" hats and plastic Fourth of July American flags are made in China.

But developing countries like China and India are finally developing a middle class and the consumer market has grown drastically. That means manufacturing worldwide is way up, but the US share of worldwide manufacturing has declined markedly; more to the point, the number of people employed in manufacturing in the US is way down.

This is why Trump's claims on US manufacturing are false. To do make the US the largest manufacturer of consumer goods again we'd either have to pay Americans the same slave wages that Chinese factory workers are paid, or our factories would be totally automated.

In 1960 manufacturing had a 25% share of employment in the United States. In 2011 it was about 9%. Manufacturing as percentage of GDP has remained stable at about 12% the whole time.

This is the "gotcha" that Trump isn't mentioning. If we bring manufacturing back to the US according to Trump's plan, it'll mean a huge cut in pay for American workers, or it will mean more automation and fewer workers in manufacturing. We can't create more well-paying manufacturing jobs unless other conditions change.

We do lead the world in some export categories, notably agriculture and aircraft. If Trump starts a stupid trade war with the rest of the world by slapping tariffs on imports, we will lose all our export markets.

This is the key: in order for the people in developing economies to be able to afford to buy American goods, they need jobs that pay enough to afford to buy our stuff.

The current problem is that large parts of the world pay their workers a lot less than the American or European middle class wage: their labor markets are cheaper than ours. Those people want to make as much as Americans, and it's in America's best interests for people in those countries to make more: their countries will lose the advantage of lower labor costs.

It might seem contradictory, but for Americans to prosper, the rest of the world needs to prosper -- so they can afford to buy our stuff.

That should inform how we write the trade agreements. We shouldn't be shutting out products made in foreign countries with Trump's prohibitive tariffs, we should be making sure that companies in other countries pay their workers salaries commensurate with Americans. One way is to require that all trade agreements with the US have anti-corruption clauses and strong protections for trade unions -- something we should have in all states of the Union. The agreements should also eliminate tax havens, like Ireland.

This would have another benefit: if people in Mexico and China are paid salaries that approach American levels, they'll have no incentive to leave their countries and come to the United States.

History shows this to be true: in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Europeans flooded into the US by the millions. But after Europe stopped being a war-torn hellhole, they stopped emigrating here in huge numbers.

If we use trade as tool to improve the lot of people of in other countries, they will want to stay home and they'll be able to buy American stuff.

Everybody wins.

Trump does not think this way. For him, and an awful lot of Republicans, life is a zero-sum game and there can only be one winner.

This, in a nutshell, is why someone like Hillary Clinton will make a far better president than an egotistical narcissist like Donald Trump.

Third Debate Post Mortem

While the rest of the media falls into yet another Trump Trap (OMG!! He's not going to accept the results of the election), I'd like to focus on a few other items from last night.

Donald Trump said "We're not making things anymore, relatively speaking." Well, the relativity dial must be broken because US factory production has more than doubled since 1979. The problem is that computerization has taken the place of the human worker. That's simply the free market doing its thing and if you are one of these workers, time to get a college degree or be retrained in another line of work.

Hillary Clinton would add more than a penny to the national debt...about $200 billion dollars over 10 years. That's what independent analysts have said of her economic plan. Donald Trump's plan would about $5.3 trillion dollars to the debt with all of his tax cuts.

I could give two shits that Hillary Clinton wants an open, global market, for energy or any other economic sector. Free trade prevents wars. Period. If we go back to protectionism or mercantilism, we raise the risk of blood conflicts again as we saw in World War I and World War II.

The Latest 2016 Election Map

Here's my latest 2016 Election Map.

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

As we can all see, Hillary Clinton is poised for a landslide. Most of the major polling outfits and predictors are seeing a flip to a Democratically controlled Senate. And now it looks like House is in play with Republicans scrambling to retain their majority.

One thing to note about this map is the grey shade of Utah. I don't Hillary will win Utah but I do think that the presence of popular son, Evan McMullin, on the ballot will take away votes for Trump. They could end up tied or McMullin could just win it.

Donald Trump has been in a tailspin since the first debate. He's made it much worse with this complete and utter lovemaking to right wing bloggers in the last week. Arizona, Alaska, Georgia and Missouri are now in play. I actually think that Arizona will go for Hillary. The rest, we'll see with some more polls. Even Texas is getting tight now.

As I have said many times, she needs a landslide in order to govern effectively. On the day of the last debate, it appears that she has one in the making.

Crocodile Tears

Boy oh boy, have we heard a lot of mouth foaming and "See? I told you sos" from Republicans these days regarding the Affordable Care Act. They've even pointed to Mark Dayton's recent comments about rising insurance rates as evidence that Obamacare has failed and stuff.

Today, my esteemed governor has penned an op-ed which offers a more insightful analysis.

As disturbing as the falsehoods is the hypocrisy of some Republican politicians, who are crying crocodile tears over problems with the Affordable Care Act, which they have prevented solving. Time after time, Republicans in Congress blocked changes to the ACA because they want to destroy the law, not improve it — and because they believe that the worse the ACA’s current problems, the better their chances of re-election.

Indeed.

The real challenge with the ACA is that we need more young people to get insurance. They'd rather take the hit on taxes than pay a premium every month. Better marketing, more incentives and perhaps stricter punishment for being uninsured should all be pursued. The rate increases were going to happen anyway and likely be worse without the ACA.

And in that world millions would have been uninsured and thousands would probably be dead. I think I'll take the whining...:)

America Is Already Great

Here's why...

I'm Just Askin'...

The day after three Kansas militiamen were arrested for plotting to blow up a mosque and an apartment building where hundreds of Somali immigrants live, someone threw a firebomb into a Trump campaign office in North Carolina.

Trump blames "the animals representing the Clinton campaign" for the firebombing, even though no one knows who is behind it.

At least one of the militiamen is a confirmed Trump supporter. By Trump's own logic, if we can blame Clinton for the firebombing, can't we blame Trump for the plot to kill Somalis in Kansas? The assault was planned for the day after the November election: clearly they anticipated Trump will lose, and wanted to exact revenge for a humiliating loss.

Trump has adopted the style and rhetoric of right-wing neo-Nazi hate groups and conspiracy theorists, normalizing racism and misogyny and bringing it to the forefront of a presidential campaign. Trump has advocated violence repeatedly: he's told his supporters to assault protesters at his rallies. Trump has said that if Clinton wins she should be dealt with by "Second Amendment people." Trump has advocated torture and murdering the wives and children of terrorist suspects.

One of Trump's more vocal supporters is Alex Jones, of InfoWars infamy. Jones is an alt-right conspiracy theorist, who has put forth various conspiracy theories, including several about 9/11, that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked, and that the Orlando shooting was a "false flag operation."

Lately Jones has been pushing the conspiracy theory that Clinton will somehow steal the election. Jones was apparently prodded to do this by Trump campaign operative Roger Stone, a dirty trickster who has worked for Republicans since the days of Dick Nixon (he even has a tattoo of Nixon on his back).

I myself don't go for conspiracy theories. But since Trump and his supporters are so enamored of them, here's one: what if the firebombing of the Trump campaign office was a false-flag operation ordered by Roger Stone to distract attention from the arrest of Trump supporters who were plotting to murder hundreds of Muslim immigrants?

Put on your tin foil hat for a moment: if "truly evil" people were behind the firebombing, why would they do it when the office was empty? Why was no one hurt?

Doesn't that seem more like a Roger Stone dirty trick? Or at least a shady landlord trying to collect on an insurance policy, taking a page from Donald Trump's playbook?

There's no possible benefit for Clinton's campaign in the North Carolina arson. Isn't it more likely the Trump campaign itself staged the fire to elicit more outrage from his supporters?

I'm just askin'...

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