Solar Energy is Cheaper!

Ah, the free market. All those "liberal" economic believers swear by it...until it bites them on the ass.

The overall shift to clean energy can be more expensive in wealthier nations, where electricity demand is flat or falling and new solar must compete with existing billion-dollar coal and gas plants. But in countries that are adding new electricity capacity as quickly as possible, “renewable energy will beat any other technology in most of the world without subsidies,” said Liebreich.

At this point it doesn't really matter if you "believe" in climate change or not. The free market has accepted the settled science.

From The Bottom Of His Heart

Yes, Republicans and conservatives, we get it. You don't like it when liberals win and help people. It makes you stomp your feet and throw tantrums. So...what....you're just going to kick guys like this to their coffins so you can score points against those smug liberals who are all smart and stuff?

Whiny Little Bitch

The Siberian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate was both  a cold-war era book and movie about the son of a conservative politician who was captured and brainwashed by the communist Chinese to become their assassin.

Now it looks like the election we just endured wasn't the reality TV show that we all thought it was. It was actually a sequel to The Manchurian Candidate, called The Siberian Candidate.

For months now we've known that Russian hackers leaked emails from the DNC and John Podesta through Julian Assange and Wikileaks. American intelligence services have concluded without a doubt that Russia did so to discredit Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump.

When this all started it looked like Trump was denying this obvious truth because his ego wouldn't let him think that Putin handed the election to him.

But the truth seems to be much darker than this:

The chiefs of America’s intelligence agencies last week presented President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said.

In particular:

The memos suggest that for many years, the Russian government of Mr. Putin has looked for ways to influence Mr. Trump, who has traveled repeatedly to Moscow to investigate real estate deals or to oversee the Miss Universe competition, which he owned for several years. Mr. Trump never completed any major deals in Russia, though he discussed them for years.

Was Putin just leading Trump on, suckering him with promises of sweetheart deals? Or did they come to some more sinister agreement?

It appears one reason Trump has been so nice to Putin and Russia is that they have real dirt on Trump:

The memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes with Mr. Trump in a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel. The videos were supposedly prepared as “kompromat,” or compromising material, with the possible goal of blackmailing Mr. Trump in the future.

Trump, of course, has dismissed all this. He says it is fake news and a witch hunt. And he doesn't think there should be any further investigations into Russian hacking of the DNC, the RNC or Trump himself.

Russia echoed Trump's "witch hunt" meme, saying that the dossier on Trump is "pulp fiction."

But several Trump surrogates visited Russia during the campaign and just after it, with no explanation of what they were doing there. One of Trump's many campaign managers, Paul Manafort, was a foreign agent representing a deposed Ukrainian dictator beholden to Putin. Manafort was forced to resign during the summer when it turned out he was still being paid by shadowy Ukrainian political entities aligned with Russia.

Rex Tillerson, Trump's secretary of State nominee, has received state honors from the Russian government and has been working to derail sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Crimea and instigating a civil war in eastern Ukraine, where a Malaysian passenger jet was shot down by a Russian missile battery, killing hundreds of innocent civilians.

Michael Flynn, Trump's security nominee for national security advisor, received payments from Russia's propaganda outlet, Russia Today, and dined with Putin.

There are way too many substantive and documented connections between Russia and Trump and his cabinet to simply dismiss this as fake news. A special prosecutor should be appointed and Congress should hold hearings. Because these allegations are far worse than Benghazi and Clinton's emails. It's worse than Watergate. It is the most damaging scandal in American history.

Did Trump and his cronies commit full-on treason and conspire with the Russians to win the election? Or were they simply greedy dupes taking bribes from Russia and selling America out along the way? Or are they just victims of Russian kompromat, blackmailed by Putin's GRU?

The best-case scenario: the FBI and CIA present Mike Pence with the evidence and Trump has a "medical problem" shortly after inauguration. Trump steps down, setting the record for shortest presidency, and Pence succeeds him.

The most likely scenario: Trump blusters and threatens everyone. His administration becomes so bogged down in scandals involving nepotism, conflicts of interest involving Trump, his family members, and his cabinet, the emoluments clause and foreign bribes, insider trading, the collapse of the health care system because of a too-hasty repeal of Obamacare, weather disasters related to climate change, catastrophically huge deficits, construction delays on the stupid wall, a trade war with China, a Wall Street crash, soaring inflation and interest rates, deteriorating race relations and a few nasty riots, and general incompetence.

The Russians feel no need to leak the kompromat because Trump is an even worse president than George W. Bush and he loses the 2020 election in the biggest landslide ever. But the United States becomes a political and economic basket case, so it's a win for the Russians.

What's the worst-case scenario? It could be pretty grim.

Russia decides Trump is no longer useful since he so incompetent and compromised. So they decide to torch the United States.

Shortly after the inauguration the Russians burn him as an asset. They start leaking dirt that makes his pussy-grabbing video look like Sesame Street.

When Trump's prostitute videos come out he claims they're fake. Then he falls back on the "I can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and my people will still support me" argument. It goes something like this: "So I banged some Russian hookers. Have you seen the tits on those chicks? My supporters already knew I was nailing Karen McDougal -- who was a very, very hot Playboy model, let me tell you -- when Melania was lactating -- that was so disgusting. And the weight gain -- ew! What's a couple more Russian whores? Why do you think I bought the Miss Universe pageant in the first place? Besides, it's not like I was president when I did it. Bill Clinton should go to jail!"

There are calls for his resignation from both sides of the aisle. Trump refuses. Congress is in an uproar. There is a movement for impeachment. A full-on constitutional crisis erupts.

Trump tweets not-so-veiled threats and insults to all who oppose him. He threatens to shut down CNN and NBC and NPR and the failing New York Times. He uses Rudy Giuliani's cronies in the New York FBI office to spy on journalists. He jails reporters on trumped-up charges of treason and espionage, while still obliviously praising Julian Assange. His supporters threaten congressmen with murder. Several shoot people: a reporter, a congressman, a few Muslims and Mexicans, and maybe a delivery guy who works for a pizza joint that Russian fake news falsely tied to child sex trafficking.

Some of Trump's supporters, angered that their man is going down, take up Dylann Roof's call for a race war. More black churches are burned, shot up or worse. Blacks demonstrate angrily. Cops shoot blacks. Blacks shoot cops.

Trump declares martial law, but many generals refuse his orders. A Trump loyalist tries to arrest a refusenik for dereliction of duty. American troops open fire on each other. The country descends into chaos. Or worse. Trump has the nuclear codes, after all.

And that's exactly what Putin was thinking when he installed Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office.

Russia tried for decades to defeat the United States, and failed miserably. Now they may well have fooled us into destroying ourselves.

Trump Names Jared Kushner Head Babysitter

WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner will assume the duties of head babysitter to his father-in-law, Donald J. Trump, who will become president of the United States in just ten days.

Mr. Kushner, in an interview with Breitbart News, said he prefers the term "minder," because it more accurately reflects his duties. This will mostly consist of reminding Mr. Trump of what what he has already been told, keeping him from wandering out of meetings, cutting him off when he starts talking about women's breasts and vaginas, making sure he gets regular potty breaks, and dabbing the drool from his perpetually protruding pouting lower lip.

Mr. Kushner will also have the politically sensitive task of keeping track of what Mr. Trump knows, when he knew it, and most importantly, when he stopped knowing it, to ensure deniability in the conflict of interest scandals already under way with several foreign governments and businesses.

Software developers are said to be working on an iPhone app to help Mr. Kushner with this monumental task.

Mr. Kushner will be taking over head babysitter duties from his wife, Ivanka, who did it during the early days of the transition, sitting in on meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders. According to Breitbart, Ms. Trump decided against continuing as head babysitter because her father kept making lewd remarks about her various body parts and no longer seemed to remember she was his daughter.

Mr. Trump has been suffering from early onset Alzheimer's for several years now. Symptoms include:

• Lack of sleep.
• Inability to remember what he said only hours before. 
• Wild fantasies and fabrication of events that never occurred.
• Short temper.
• Inability to learn new skills, such as working with technology.
• Fear of new places, such as the White House, and an attachment disorder to Trump Towers and the Trump jet.
• Difficulty reading and speaking, which he does at only a sixth-grade level.
• Lack of focus and concentation: his mind wanders whenever he speaks, causing him to go off on wild tangents and forgetting what he was talking about in the first place.
• Poor judgment and bullying, impatient, childlike behavior.
• Extreme emotionality: Mr. Trump is thin-skinned, taking offense at any and every perceived slight, no matter how minor, and constantly resorting to childish threats and retaliation.

Though these signs of dementia were evident during the entire presidential campaign, Mr. Trump managed to win the a majority of electoral college votes (but losing the popular vote by almost three million) through a concerted campaign of computer hacking, fake news, propaganda and disinformation orchestrated by his joint campaign managers Steven Bannon, Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange.

As a show of solidarity with regular working-class Americans, Mr. Kushner will accept a salary of $15.34 an hour, the same as an average New York babysitter.

Freedom From Criticism

When conservatives whine about freedom of speech and "PC bullshit," what they are really saying is they want freedom from criticism because their precious little egos can't take it. This is certainly true of their hero and our president elect, Donald Trump. Odd, because they also bemoan people that get offended at everything...which they take offense to...:)

A great example of which is the recent Meryl Streep flap which went something like this:

Meryl Streep says, of Trump mocking a disabled reporter...

"It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can't get it out of my head, because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."

Trump responded in his usual way, calling Streep overrated.

Then Megan McCain says... "This Meryl Streep speech is why Trump won. And if people in Hollywood don't start recognizing why and how - you will help him get re-elected."

Right. So conservatives want to be able to say whatever they want...do whatever they want...bully whomever they want...and NEVER be called on it.

Happy As Clams

Trump supporters are happy as clams. Take Mr. David Gubert of Louisiana for example.

Like the Willises, he ruminated on what it would mean if the Russians had gotten involved, and possibly even swung the election. But Mr. Gubert came to a different conclusion. 

“If that’s what it took,” he said, “I’m glad they did it.”

He's glad that the Russians hacked the DNC servers and ran a successful propaganda campaign.

Wow...

The rest of the folks in the piece seem to not believe that it happened. This jibes with I've seen on Quora. This question and this question contain answers that really show the true colors of these "patriots." Thankfully, with the first question, we have the amazing and talented Sophia de Tricht to offer her expert insight of the document in question. Since she used to be an intelligence analyst, it stands to reason that she knows quite a bit of this sort of thing. Her entire answer is awesome but here's my favorite part.

My point is, when the entire IC comes together, as 16 different agencies with differing, often conflicting or at least adversarial missions and goals, and says anything with one voice, it’s been examined every single way it can be, and what you’re reading is as close to the truth as you’ll ever get without getting a clearance and joining one of these agencies.

Mic Drop.

Hacker Sack

Putin Directed Psi-Op and Hacking of 2016 Election

The National Intelligence agencies have released a declassified report that details exactly how Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence intentionally interfered with the 2016 US election. In what is no doubt the greatest psi op and propaganda campaign every successfully executed against the United States, Putin directed his intelligence operatives to help Donald Trump win the presidency.

Of course, he had a lot of help from conservatives in this country who all too willingly filled up their brains with Russian propaganda via Russia Today (mentioned extensively in the report), the Drudge Report, Zerohedge, and various other conservative media outlets including Fox News who parrots much these site's talking points.

It's genius when you think about it. Hack into both the DNC and the RNC and release the dirt on the former for the kittens to lap up like milk. Hold the latter over the incoming president (who owes you a shit ton of money as well) and Republicans in Congress and PRESTO! You have yourself a weakened United States hegemonic power which you can now manipulate in your favor.

Vladimir Putin has for many years wanted to extend his global influence and with his puppet now in the White House he's pretty much set. Add in all the right wing bloggers and commnenters out there who hate liberals so much that they are willing to give up all of their convictions just for the childish win and it's going to be extremely hard to stop these folks.

I think I get it now. When conservatives foamed at the mouth about this....

...they became perfect conduits for propaganda to enable the very outcome they fear.

Thanks, assholes!! I hope that we can clean up your mess in 2018.

Challenge Extended

President Obama has extended a challenge to Congressional Republicans. Come up with something better than the Affordable Care Act and he will publicly support it. I am extending that challenge as well to any of my readers. Post your plan in comments, show me examples of how this has worked more effectively in the past, and I will publicly admit that the ACA has been defeated by a better plan.

My bet is the GOP comes up with nothing and just repeals the ACA out of pure, adolescent spite.

Our New President

So let me see if I have this straight....

1) Trump owes Blackstone/ Bayrock group $560 million dollars (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns)

2) Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Putin and have made billions from their work with the Russian government.

3) Other companies that have borrowed from Blackstone have claimed that owing money to them is like owing to the Russian mob and while you owe them, they own you for many favors.

4) The Russian economy is badly faltering under the weight of its over-dependence on raw materials which as you know have plummeted in the last 2 years leaving the Russian economy scrambling to pay its debts.

5) Russia has an impetus to influence our election to ensure the per barrel oil prices are above $65 ( they are currently hovering around $50)

6) Russia can't affordably get at 80% of its oil reserves and reduce its per barrel cost to compete with America at $45 or Saudi Arabia at $39. With Iranian sanctions being lifted Russia will find another inexpensive competitor increasing production and pushing Russia further down the list of suppliers.

As for Iranian sanctions, the 6 countries lifting them allowing Iran to collect on the billions it is owed for pumping oil but not being paid for it. These billions Iran can only get if the Iranian nuclear deal is signed. Trump spoke of ending the deals which would cause oil sales sanctions to be reimposed, which would make Russian oil more competitive.

7) Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) is the head of ExxonMobil, which is in possession of patented technology that could help Putin extract 45% more oil at a significant cost savings to Russia, helping Putin put money in the Russian coffers to help reconstitute its military and finally afford to mass produce the new and improved systems that it had invented before the Russian economy had slowed so much.

8) Putin cannot get access to these new cost saving technologies OR outside oil field development money, due to US sanctions on Russia, because of its involvement in Ukrainian civil war.

9) Look for Trump to end sanctions on Russia and to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, to help Russia rebuild its economy, strengthen Putin and make Tillerson and Trump even richer, thus allowing Trump to satisfy his creditors at Blackstone.

10) With Trump's fabricated hatred of NATO and the U.N., the Russian military reconstituted, the threat to the Baltic states is real. Russia retaking their access to the Baltic Sea from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and threatening the shipping of millions of cubic feet of natural gas to lower Europe from Scandinavia, allowing Russia to make a good case for its oil and gas being piped into eastern Europe.

(Sources: Time Magazine, NY Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian UK.)

It's painfully obvious that Trump is completely beholden to Russian interests hence his refusal to accept the facts about the hacking.

Advice from a 12 Year Old

I might have to rethink my whole "adolescent" rip on Trump and his supporters. It's an insult to adolescents like Kid President.

End of the Year Thoughts

As we head into 2017 with Donald Trump about to take the office of the presidency, I have a great deal of concern for our country. It doesn't necessarily lie with Trump himself who is clearly unprepared and unqualified to be president. It's going to be a disaster, folks. I don't think that's surprising to anyone that is blinded by adolescent fervor.

My concern lies with the folks out there who voted for Trump and are more happy that the smug liberals and crooked Hillary lost than their guy won. I'm not even convinced that they like Trump all that much. They just wanted people like me to lose because they are tired of being told what's best for them. Even if they know, deep down, that it is best for them, they don't want to do it. Why?

Because they are 12 fucking years old.

I'm more concerned that this immaturity is going to hang around for fuck up after fuck up from the Trump administration simply because they are completely incapable of admitting fault. Worse, I'm very concerned that Republicans in Congress are going to excuse Trump as along as they can because they know that they can use him as a puppet to push their agenda. How much damage will this cause our great nation? Their behavior up to this point starkly illustrates this.

• They have ignored the very intelligence agencies they wholeheartedly embraced during the Iraq war and essentially have concluded that Russia and its totalitarian leader are now OK.
• They have ignored repeated warnings over the rise of xenophobic nationalism and its similarity to Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. 
• They have excused Trumps non draining of the swamp and ignored his Wall Street appointments and cronyism.
• They have ignored Trump's clear business conflicts with his presidency and think it's just fine for him to not release his tax returns nor remove himself from his empire, apparently not understanding what third world dictators used to look like. 

Sadly, this is just the beginning. I know it's in their DNA to laugh and point at us smug liberals, viewing our serious and fact based concerns in the same arena where their paranoid hysteria resides. "You guys thought we were all out of our minds about Obama. I guess it's your turn now. HAHAHAHAHH!" they have been chortling.

Honestly, they should be more grateful. As they take over the reins of governing, they are inheriting the following from Barack Obama.

The economy grew at a solid 3.5 percent clip in the third quarter, and is now significantly larger than it was before the Great Recession. The jobless rate is down to 4.6 percent, which almost qualifies as full employment. The stock market and high school graduation rate are at all-time highs, while the uninsured rate, abortion rate and teen pregnancy rate are at all-time lows. Oil imports, crime and health care inflation are also near historic lows, with carbon emissions, foreclosures and illegal immigration falling, too. Meanwhile, retirement assets, auto sales and renewable power have skyrocketed, and the once-teetering Medicare Trust Fund has stabilized.

All of this, despite their intransigence and complete opposition to the president. Of course, this also begs the question...why was this "not great?" Regardless, this is my closing year message to those folks who voted from Trump and are now happy that the smug liberals got their walking papers:

You get to govern now. That means it's all on you and you have to own it. When the responsibility of governing gets to be too tough for you and your guy, we'll do what all responsible adults do when teenagers are home alone for the weekend. We'll clean up after you while you continue to howl at us for thinking that "we are so smart" and "know what's best for you."

That's what people of good nature do.

Bill Maher on Donald Trump

Memo To Right Wing Bloggers and Commenters

Read this.

Reflect. 

Trump In Wonderland

Because of Computers

Donald Trump is still refusing to accept the reality of Russia (Putin) using propaganda to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

Trump — who, for extra flair, spoke with an American- and Israeli-flag-wielding Don King at his side — blamed the whole controversy on the confusing nature of “computers.” “I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on,” he said. “We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind of security we need.”

He sounds as bad as Hillary did when wondered if you could scrub a hard drive with cloth. Also, this is not a good image for the president elect...

Just sayin'...

By the way, speaking of election meddling...what happened to all those mouth foamed cries of voter fraud? Now, it's not as rampant since Trump won?

Once again, voter fraud is very rare in this country and in no way did it affect the outcome of the 2016 election. There's a big difference between the hacking of emails combined with the spread of propaganda through fake news to an all too gullible conservative population and the hacking of actual voting machines. The latter never happened and there was virtually zero voter fraud.

Trump Then and Now

Donald Trump has not even taken office yet and he's already broken a series of promises. The Times has a handy check list for keeping track. Here's my favorite:

BIG DONORS

Then: "Crooked Hillary. Look, can you imagine another four years of the Clintons? Seriously. It's time to move on. And she's totally controlled by Wall Street and all these people that gave her millions," Trump said at a May rally in Lynden, Washington.

Now: Trump has stocked his Cabinet with six top donors — far more than any recent White House. "I want people that made a fortune. Because now they're negotiating with you, OK?" Trump said, in a December 9 speech in Des Moines.

The biggest giver? Incoming small business administrator Linda McMahon gave $7.5 million to a super PAC backing Trump, more than a third of the money collected by the political action committee.

Ah, the sweet smell of hypocrisy...I wonder how his supporters feel...

Just Awesome

From an answer on Quora...

Conservatives are more persuaded by passion than facts. Conservatism has a lot of religious people where logic and facts just aren't comfortable to them. Most internet trolls are conservatives not actually interested in discussion but just jabbing at people's sore spots to get a reaction. It's why so many people hate conservatives and will never listen to a genuinely logical conservative argument with a clear mind. For every genuinely interesting conservative I've talked to, there's about a hundred despicable bullies. 

Hmm...reminds me of my comments section before I fixed it:)

A Christmas Gift to the Right Wing Blogsphere

I recently posted a question on Quora wondering whether or not the right wing bloggers and commenters would own the Trump presidency. They elected him and soon they will have control of all three branches of government. Guess what that means?

They have to fucking own it.

Yet, by the looks of the responses, most folks don't think they will. Now, I know how insanely insecure right wingers are so it is in the spirit of the season that I offer them the gift of over 20 responses (and counting) that they can wring their hands over for the next few weeks. Will they reflect upon them?

I bet not. My guess is it will be more end zone celebrations and adolescent taunting of liberals (see also: bullied as youth, making up for it now) rather than actual governing.

14 Defining Points of Fascism

It seems like we are pretty much there. 

Without A Shot

When Trump Declared Martian Law

The day Donald Trump declared Martian law, the world was aghast.

"As my first act as president, I hereby declare Martian law," he said as he squinted at the teleprompter. Looking up, his eyes regained their focus as he roared, "As the first Martian lawgiver, I will make Earth great again!"

The crowd roared. How could they not? They had been mind-controlled by the Martian's orbital laser batteries for years.

The most conspiracy-minded of his followers were not surprised, but the vast majority quickly adjusted their thinking to accommodate this final revelation that explained everything else. Trump's orange hue and his strange alien sex practices should have given them their first inklings as to his true planet of origin.

His close association with Plutonian gray aliens Rudy Giuliani and Vladimir Putin added fuel to the fire.

When bloated Jovians Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie waddled into Trump's orbit it was clear to those in the know that an alien takeover was in the offing.

Trump's recruitment of reptilian Martian generals, men like Michael Flynn, who had been fired from their posts for incompetence and insubordination, provided further hints.

But it was Trump's appointment of Venusians Rex Tillerson and Rick Perry (whose name had inexplicably escaped me) that provided the final clue. Their plan to veneraform the earth by burning all the coal and oil on the planet, increasing CO2 concentrations and accelerating greenhouse warming, would turn earth into a carbon copy of Venus.

This would in turn make Earth suitable for immigration by Venusian guest workers. These alien workers would soon be arriving in huge numbers to take positions at Hardee's and Carl's Jr. restaurants, fulfilling Neptunian labor secretary Andy Puzder's pledge to destroy the minimum wage.

The other members of Trump's cabinet were mostly Mercurians, who had made their billions by paying the miners in Mercury's gold mines slave wages. They were minor players in interplanetary politics, but influential in the financial markets on Uranus.

(Note that Trump's cabinet appointments completely stiffed the planet Saturn -- he wouldn't give that failed car company the time of day.)

No, the Trump administration's alien origins did not give his supporters a moment's pause. They knew it was time to kick out the elites, time to drain the swamp, time for an alien overlord to take charge of earth. Time to trump those bitches.

As the applause died down, Trump squinted back at the teleprompter. "Sorry folks, that was an L, not an N. I hereby declare martial law. And it's gonna be the most bigly martial law ever!"

Trump's supporters blinked, readjusting their finely honed sensibilities yet again. "Oh, martial law," they said. "Does that mean we can start beating blacks, killing Muslims and grabbing pussy right now?"

Trump Has Normalized Gang Rape

A few days ago the University of Minnesota football team announced that they would boycott all football activities, including a bowl game, because 10 fellow players had been suspended in a sexual assault investigation:

A woman secured a restraining order against six Minnesota players — one of whom was later dropped from it — after an episode in September in which she said she was sexually assaulted by several men, some of whom were suspended for three games by the university. The men have insisted the sex was consensual.

The whole team — and its coach — were blackmailing the University, threatening the loss of tens of millions of dollars of revenue from the Holiday Bowl, to go to bat for real-life gangbangers.

Coach Tracy Claeys' tweet was especially dense: "Have never been more proud of our kids. I respect their rights & support their effort to make a better world!"

Huh. How can a world where football players can rape women without consequences be "better?"

Answer: a world where Donald Trump is the president elect, and misogyny is the order of the day.

These punks took a cue from Trump. Instead of admitting wrong, they just blustered through. They thought that if they just screamed loud enough everyone would back down and they'd get their way.

If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency I don't think these idiots would have tried to blackmail the university. But with Trump as president, these football players think all women are fair game.

The boycott was short-lived. A couple of days later the players manned up and decided to do their jobs, instead of pissing and moaning about the unfair treatment of pampered players.

The team had thought their brothers weren't  getting "due process." Minneapolis police had reviewed the case and decided not to press charges. They hadn't committed a crime, the team reasoned, so why should the rapists have to do the time?

There are several spheres of influence that govern human interaction: legal, moral, ethical, cultural, contractual.  What is allowable in one sphere is frequently disallowed in another sphere. This is the source of society's many conflicts.

Football culture finds gangbanging bitches who implicitly asked for it to be perfectly acceptable.

The law, having insufficient evidence to press charges, has so far declined to indict the players (though this decision is under review at the county level).

Football fans are often the most religious and patriotic people; they love to talk about god and country. Many teams, especially in the South, gather for a prayer before each game. Christian morality dictates that gang rape is unacceptable on several levels: it is fornication, and having sex with a woman who just had sex with nine another guys is essentially the same as banging those nine other guys.

Ethically, the incident was clearly gang rape: it is impossible for a lone female to freely give sexual consent to ten hulking football players. The atmosphere of coercion is too strong to give any illusion that the woman had any kind of choice.

But more to the point, this gang rape was contractually banned. Football players are constrained by NCAA regulations. One of the participants in the gang rape is reportedly an underage recruit. Providing sex to recruits is a recruiting violation. The university must sanction NCAA violations, or face serious financial consequences.

Also, while the contents of the team members' contracts have not been disclosed, it's not unusual for such agreements to include morals clauses, which allow termination of the scholarship after morally egregious conduct has been uncovered.

It's easy to see how these gang rapes occur. A player brings a girl to a party. He gets her drunk with vodka shots. They have sex. She's lying in bed, totally out of it. Another guy comes in and bangs her. And another. And another. Pretty soon there's a line.

In their minds, when a girl drinks with a football player, there's only one endgame: sex. Because everyone "knows" what football players are like. And if she did the first guy, she would do them all, because they're team mates!

But Minnesota culture does not want their university to employ gangbangers. It's bad enough that the university's two most expensive teams — football and basketball — never win anything, but they've had one sex scandal after another, year after year after year, including another basketball group sex scandal just this past February, and the resignation last year of the former athletic director Norwood Teague for groping women.

Clearly the men at the U of M athletic department do not have their heads in the game: they're too busy harassing women to do their jobs properly.

But not everything is so grim in the U of M sports program: the women's hockey team regularly wins the NCAA championship, and the women's volleyball team has made three Final Four appearances in the last seven years. And all the players have decent GPAs, some in fields like chemical engineering, and they all graduate.

It's amazing what you can do with a little hard work and discipline. The guys should really try it.

Hey Media, Shut The Fuck Up About White Working Class Voters

I haven't gone off on a full rant in awhile but the douchey hipster sitting next to me at Caribou right now has inspired me (Why do these asshats all the same? Always a goatee...bald...skinny sweater...super complicated coffee order...says the word "useability" 89t times...they are working on via their laptop is cutting edge...vital...limited edition "thing" that will change everyone's lifestyle....like they are a Google engineer or some fucking thing...fucking millenials...)

Anyway, I'm way past tired of all the attention white working class voters are getting these days. Every single media elite is falling all over themselves to breathlessly explain how the Democrats have lost their connection to this group. Of course, Democrats must listen to the media who, just a few weeks ago, were talking about how Republicans had lost their connection to this group, because if they don't they are going to lose every election ever until the end of all that is holy!!! Never mind the fact that Democrats won back seats in both the Senate and the House. Facts be damned!!!

Yes, Hillary Clinton should have gone to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania more as Barack Obama did. It would have helped if she took of the pants suits and maybe wore jeans and hung around some local cafes in the precincts that mattered. But that's putting all the blame on her and that's simply not fair. Why not look at the people themselves? These are the folks that voted for Donald Trump and they should be accountable for that.

Catering to their every whim and making sure they are all tucked in at night in comfy, flannel pajamas is ludicrous. Someone needs to tell them that their jobs are not coming back. They have been replaced by robots and, unless they go back to school or retrain, they are going to be sitting at home, watching Fox News and reading Drudge all fucking day. In short, they will amount to nothing regardless of what Donald Trump does in the White House.

It's not the rest of the country's fault that they have made shitty choices in their lives. It's certainly not my fault or anyone else's fault that they are so fucking ignorant that they voted for the worst possible human being to run our country. Can anyone honestly think of someone who is worse? Maybe Kim Jong Un....

My point (and rant) is this. White, working class voters, are not the center of the universe. In fact, they are part of a United States that no longer exists. The media's obsession with them does a great disservice to all of the other Americans out there who don't fall into this demographic. Honestly, it's mildly racist to obsess about them so much considering they have lived a life of privilege and your average black person has not.

The worst offender in all of this is Morning Joe. I used to really love this show but since Trump has won (and since Joe and Mika are apparently advising the Donald), their tone has gotten really ugly. They aren't talking much about Russia which I find to be most interesting. They are trying to make the massive train wreck that is coming seem like it's not big deal. They simply refuse to accept anything less than gargantuan criticism of the Clintons and rip anyone who tries to point out that Hillary really had a lot of nasty shit done to her in this election.

Remember, folks, every thing is Hillary's fault...especially her failure to connect with white working class voters!

How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler

Smithsonian magazine has a great piece up reminding us how journalists in the past covered the rise of Mussolini and Hitler.

But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a “nonsensical” screecher of “wild words” whose appearance, according to Newsweek, “suggests Charlie Chaplin.” His “countenance is a caricature.” He was as “voluble” as he was “insecure,” stated Cosmopolitan. 

Hmmm...sound familiar....

Propaganda 101

Take a look at the image below.

For me and other citizens living in the US, this represents right about where all the various media outlets fall in terms of political bias. Yet, the right wing blogger mentality that will sadly soon be running our nation would see this and howl in derision. All those "useful idiots" in the middle? Yeah, they're all secret communist agents. Fox is more middle of the road. And the Daily Caller, Drudge and Zerohedge? Well, they are the only truth tellers out there, dammit!!

This is EXACTLY how Donald Trump won the election.

Paul Krugman has a great piece up called "Useful Idiots Galore" which perfectly summarizes how much like a fiddle we were all played. In particular, his comments about the mainstream media were dead on right.

The bigger surprise was the behavior of the news media, and I don’t mean fake news; I mean big, prestigious organizations. Leaked emails, which everyone knew were probably the product of Russian hacking, were breathlessly reported as shocking revelations, even when they mostly revealed nothing more than the fact that Democrats are people. Meanwhile, the news media dutifully played up the Clinton server story, which never involved any evidence of wrongdoing, but merged in the public mind into the perception of a vast “email” scandal when there was nothing there.

I completely agree. But there's something deeper that Krugman has missed. Propaganda 101 tells us that the first thing you have to do is get a good chunk of people to stop listening to trusted news sources. After that, it's merely a matter of introducing alternative news sources that don't cause heads to hurt (see: cognitive dissonance.). Enter the Drudge Report, Zerohedge, InfoWars and, of course, Fox News...all of which peddled pro-Russian stories the entire election. What does all this amount to?

President Donald Trump.

What a bunch of suckers. Putin probably has daily stomach aches from laughing at how easy it was to fool so many Americans. When US hegemonic power begins to erode in the world because of all of this and we start to see hints of authoritarianism here at home, will they still find a way to blame liberals?

Or will they finally understand what they have done and accept responsibility?

The President's Press Conference

A stunning press conference and, I have to say, one that really pissed me off. One of the president's biggest faults is to under react to situations. He sure did when he found out that Russia and Putin personally hacked the DNC and the RNC. You didn't want a scrum, Mr. President?

Well, life is messy...sorry to be the one to inform you...sheesh.

Crack That Nut!

Who is Behind the Great and All Powerful Trump?

Politifact Lie of the Year

Politifact has released its Lie of the Year and it's fake news. The saddest part about this is just how much it's contributed to the election of Donald Trump. At t his point, it's not the fact that Trump is going to be a disaster that's the worse thing. It's that people will blame liberals and the media for his incompetence.

In short, they will continue to believe the fake news.

#Knockitoff

Taking to social media to declare how 2016 sucks because of another celebrity death has become sooooo played. Yes, we all know that your lives are over now that someone you didn't know from a very large demographic (which means every year for the next few years is going to #suck) has passed away.

As both my son and daughter pointed out tonight at dinner...how about all the civilians that have died for the last several years in Syria? Or the family members you know who have suffered and died from cancer? Or the people that simply passed away this year in Anytown, USA that were loved and will be missed by many?

Sure, I miss Prince and David Bowie among others but turning it all into a giant obsession about the year 2016 is completely ludicrous. Knock it off, inter webs!!!

Quote of the Year

Donald Trump understood at least one thing better than almost everybody watching the 2016 election: The breakdown of a shared public reality built upon widely accepted facts represented not a hazard, but an opportunity.

---The New York Times Editorial Board

Hi, I'm A Puppet

TRUMP: I'm a 'smart person,' don't need intelligence briefings every single day

Translation: "I'm a puppet of authoritarians in league with Vladimir Putin."

Full interview below...

Coup D'Etat: 2016

With the recent announcement that the CIA concluded that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump win the White House and that Rex Tillerson, former Exxon exec and Putin tied individual, I think we can officially state that the 2016 election was a coup d'etat. The question is...how did it happen? It's pretty simple when you think about it. Imagine you are Russia and its oligarchy...

First, you cement ties with like minded (and by like minded I mean people that have the same sort of authoritarian ideology that you do) individuals that could be maneuvered in key positions of power. I'm talking here about Michael Flynn, Rex Tillerson, and Donald Trump.

Second, you identify any opponents and exploit their weaknesses. If you hack the DNC and the RNC, for example, you only release information about the DNC. You use dupes like Matt Drudge and Zerohedge to do your propaganda work for you in terms of Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates.

Third, you disseminate propaganda to the angry populists in the country you are targeting who are filled with fear and xenophobia. This is half of the people who vote in key counties across the battleground states. You play to their weaknesses and make them believe that your candidate (Donald Trump) is going to solve their problems. Most importantly, you employ fake news that is as enticing to them as catnip. They lick it all up because you have convinced them, quite successfully, that your opponents are the ones who are "commies," "statists," and Marxists. This is the part where you LAUGH YOUR FUCKING ASS OFF because you are actually doing what they are deeply afraid of....

Weakening United States hegemony in the world.

I'm not sure what is going to come from President Obama's deeper dive into all of this. At the very least, it will weaken the Trump presidency and give the Democrats some ammo to stir up the shit storm. I sure hope they do because I don't want to see our country lose power in the world.

There's No Question Any More: Dinosaurs Had Feathers!

It's long been a topic of debate: were dinosaurs warm- or cold-blooded? Were they crocodile-like lizards or were they chicken-like birds? Did they have leathery skin or bright feathers?

Now there is irrefutable proof: dinosaurs were like birds and they had feathers. Scientists have found the tail of baby dinosaur preserved in amber, and it was covered in tiny feathers:

The dinosaur was a coelurosaur, a theropod related to Tyrannosarus Rex and the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame. It was trapped in amber 99 million years ago.

By coincidence, last night I happened to watch the 1997 sequel of Jurassic Park, in which a human-engineered T. Rex somehow escapes from one island, populates another island and grows to full size in just a couple of years, and then rampages through the streets of San Diego when idiotic humans bent on corporate profits threaten its baby and underestimate its potential for death and destruction.

But the 1997 Jurassic Park T. Rex still had reptilian skin instead of iridescent feathers.

For decades scientists had come to believe more and more that dinosaurs were the precursors of birds, and that reptiles like crocodiles were a separate classification. There were clues in the structure of the hands and wrists, the hips and ankles. There was fossil evidence of feathers in several types of dinosaurs in the past, but rock fossils aren't as detailed or dramatic as amber. Amber almost literally freezes soft tissue in time.

DNA in dinosaur blood in the gut of a mosquito trapped in amber was the conceit for Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park dinosaurs. Sadly, DNA has a half-life of only 521 years, so that means it completely degrades in less than seven million years. It's impossible to recover dinosaur DNA.

Or is it? Birds descended from dinosaurs, so that means their DNA started on the same branch of the evolutionary tree as T. Rex. Might it be possible to "rewind" millions of years of evolution in bird DNA to that branching point, and then engineer that DNA, "fast forwarding" it with mutations that imbue T. Rex characteristics?

Scientists have already done experiments on chicken embryos that cause dinosaur-like snouts to develop. And tooth-like protrusions have been found in chicken embryos with a mutant version of the talpid² gene, which turned on the sonic hedgehog gene (yep, it's really called that), which is involved in tooth production in vertebrates.

If you put that engineered DNA in an ostrich egg and hatched it, you wouldn't have the T. Rex. But you would have a kind of T. Rex that might have existed in some alternate version of reality.

In the Jurassic Park movies the T. Rex was portrayed an unstoppable force of nature that men could not hope to control. So would recreating one be a foolhardy and dangerous experiment?

A T. Rex is about the size of an African elephant: the gigantic T. Rex "Sue" has been estimated to be about nine tons, while the largest elephant discovered weighed in at 11 tons. T. Rex had a bigger brain relative to its body size than most dinosaurs, much of it dedicated to the senses of vision and smell.

But elephants have much bigger brains than T. Rex, and humans are generally able to control elephants. So, yeah, a newly engineered T. Rex might get loose and kill someone. But elephants -- and lions, tigers, wolves and humans -- have been doing that for millennia.

If we want to worry about people getting killed inadvertently by inappropriate use of biotechnology, the potential for death and destruction is much greater from super bacteria created through overuse of antibiotics in hog production than it is from re-engineering dinosaurs.

One Month After the Election...

As of right now, Hillary Clinton has received 65.4 million votes. Donald Trump has received 62.8 million votes. And yet 80,000 people in only three states decided this election. What does that tell you?

It tells me a few things

1. The math has officially become absurd.

2. People that whine about the tyranny of the elite are hypocrites if they think that 80,000 people in three states can decide what is best for the rest of us. 

3. Trump has no mandate. There was no Brexit style rebuke of the establishment. More people in this country voted against him or are ambivalent.

4. Vladimir Putin is laughing his ass off  at how easily the right wing in this country has been duped by fake news and propaganda designed to bring out the worse aspects of nationalism and authoritarianism (racism, xenophobia etc). And they call the left "useful idiots?" Keep an eye on what Putin does in the next four years.

Weather Channel To Brietbart: Shut The Fuck Up

The Weather Channel issued the following statement today.


And, because several readers have requested it, here is the list of all the bullshit arguments climate deniers make fully and completely refuted by peer reviewed science.

If You Are a Right Wing Blogger or Right Wing Blog Commenter...

Anyone that has frequented right wing blogs as I have knows that their news sources are largely full of crap. Considering that they are being utilized in a "Lenin-useful idiot" sort of way by Russian companies (and Vladimir Putin) working to undermine the United States takes the bullshit to a whole new level.

Of course, it's entirely possible that they aren't really being scammed and are doing all of this willfully. If this is indeed the case, then my previous thoughts on the liberals with a little "l" are confirmed. They, not the liberals they foam at the mouth about, are the authoritarians. It's not really all that surprising given their predilection for bombast, hysteria, and out and out bullying.

The recent shooting at the pizzeria in Washington DC illustrates just how serious this issue has become. Making the matters worse is President Elect Trump's choice for national security adviser, Michael G Flynn. Apparently, Flynn and his son are quite the purveyors of fake news.

The elder Flynn, who served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency before he was pushed out by the Obama administration in 2014, called attention to the phony story just days before the election last month with a breathless posting on Twitter: “U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!” Hours after the gunman was apprehended, the younger Flynn renewed his support for the lie. “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story,” Michael G. Flynn said on Twitter late Sunday evening. “The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.”

Well, that's just great. Everything that we hear is true until proven otherwise. I've said many, many times that this ideology is a national security threat and now they are in charge of national security? Worse, supporters are cheering this on as if this a blog comments section that they so desperately need to "win." I'm wondering what goes through their heads when they read this:

The son traveled with his father to Moscow last year, according to family associates, where his father was seated beside Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at a gala thrown by RT, the Kremlin-controlled propaganda news outlet.

Could this BE any more obvious?

If you are a right wing blogger or right wing blog commenter who has warned us all about the boiling pit of sewage that is communism and are now ignoring this...blaming the liberal media for this...downplaying this as nothing...or secretly embracing this because you are a closet authoritarian...

a). kindly go fuck yourself
b). see someone in the mental health profession because your mind isn't right
c). stop trying to throw our country into the shitter just because you are afraid of progress and aren't getting your way.

This isn't a game anymore, folks.

Great Response!

11h

Donald J. Trump 

✔ @realDonaldTrump

Just tried watching Saturday Night Live - unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad

 Follow

ABFoundation 

✔@ABFalecbaldwin

...@realDonaldTrump

Release your tax returns and I'll stop.
Ha

11:34 PM - 3 Dec 2016

 
•  12,88412,884 Retweets
 
•  31,47831,478 likes

A Liberal Elitist Speaks

As a member of the liberal elite in the US, why am I responsible for the poor life choices and willful ignorance of other people? As a teacher and highly educated person, I've been told in this election by voters, pundits and the right wing media that I am a smug liberal who has been taught a lesson now that Trump has won. Apparently it's my know it all ness and desire for progression that offends them.

At the core of this issue is the concept of responsibility. Far too many people don’t want to take responsibility for their lot in life and want to blame others for their choices. The factory worker in the Rust Belt who voted for Trump and is angry about the liberal elites would serve him or her self better by accepting that the computer chip, not the faux boogieman of media/Democrats/Progressives/academics.

It’s not their fault that he/her chose their path in life. People who are filled with anger, hate and fear need to scapegoat and are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves. It always has to be the fault of someone else and why not someone who is more accomplished and intelligent? In the final analysis, this kind of stuff (seen in the OP’s link) is petty jealousy and insecurity.

Of course, the bigger issue of the coming Trump presidency is not so much the man himself but the masses that will believe when he refuses to accept the responsibility of his actions. They will cheer him because they too always love to blame others, specifically the media and liberals, for their actions not really working out in reality.

We live in a post truth world. and when the reality of the 21st century starts to sink in, the authoritarians like Trump and his supporters will do what their ilk always do: find a scapegoat. Some would argue that they already have…

Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election

Oh, The Irony...

Right wing bloggers love to haul out H. L. Mencken and use his writings as some sort of prophecy towards the doom that liberal are all leading us towards. How fitting that this cartoon has recently been making the rounds...

At What Point Does The Math Become Absurd?

Clinton Lead Tops 2.5 Million as Trump Popular Vote Lie Spreads

And that's not even the worst part of this piece...

The apparent origin of the 3 million figure and that false claim that Trump would have won the popular vote had it not been for illegal voters—cited by both the Trump supporter and the candidate himself—is the conspiracy theory web site Infowars. Trump, by the way, called Infowars founder Alex Jones to thank him for his support after the election and has appeared on his show.

I wonder if Alex Jones is up for a cabinet post.